what to do given that the first plan, which was a good plan, essentially came acropper because you just couldn t get people vaccinated. and as you said, once you have that many people, 40% of the country not vaccinated, the virus is going to replicate. it s going to spread. it s going to mutate. so they haven t figured out quite what to do about it. i still tend to think that covid is the big issue. if you can break the back of covid, you can bring about that restoration to normalcy that people were looking for. so i would try harder and maybe, you know, whatever ways you can, vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate because otherwise you re not going to get rid of covid. yeah. let s look abroad, okay, fareed? it s no better. big threats to the international order. the white house today expressing real concern about the possibility of a war on the russia/ukraine border. listen to this, and then we ll talk about it. our view is this is an
the hashtag bbc your questions. russia s foreign minister, sergei lavrov, says that moscow doesn t want war with ukraine. he appeared to strike a positive tone on us security proposals to ease tensions in europe. doubts over the timing of the positive covid test used by novak djokovic to enter australia. british sign language is on course to become a recognised language in england, making it more prominent in public service announcements. hello and welcome if you re watching in the uk or around the world. scotland yard has given more details about its contact with the cabinet office team preparing the report on lockdown gatherings at downing street.
extremely dangerous situation. we re now at a stage where russia could at any point launch an attack in ukraine. do you think that will happen? look, that s a very difficult question to answer. i would put it this way. putin has ratcheted up the stakes, and he has escalated because he wants major concessions. you know, churchill was once asked about stalin, does he want war? and he said, no, he doesn t want war. he wanted the fruits of war. in other words, he wants what he would get from a war. so putin is trying to he s playing a kind of poker game. my own sense is his preferred solution is no war because he understands that that would first of all, it gets him bogged down in a guerrilla war in ukraine with a population that really despises the idea of an occupying russian army. secondly, it would unify nato. it would trigger massive sanctions. it would in some ways cut russia
off from the global economy. but he s willing to take that risk because he really what he really wants is a subservient ukraine. he s made clear that to him, what is galling is the idea that ukraine, which he has always thought of as fundamentally part of russia, can be an independent state, can choose its own foreign policy, it s own economic policy. and the biden people have been, i think, appropriately tough and provided assistance to ukraine and rallied the european countries together. but without being foolish in trying to provoke some kind of a war because that would be you know, that would be a catastrophe for everybody. you know, the united states does not want to go to war. the ukrainians don t want to go to war. europeans don t. so everyone is trying to see is there some diplomatic path where you can address some of russia s security concerns without conceding on this fundamental
will still need to be worn in shops and hospitals and public transport and vaccine passes will still be needed in cinemas and theatres and for large events. mark drakeford has said they have been able to ease the restrictions because the peak of the omicron wave has passed here and the number of cases has been reducing more rapidly than the rest of the uk. the next review into the covid measures, into masks and passes, will be on the 10th of february. scientists have warned the government that allowing large numbers of people in lower income countries to go unvaccinated is reckless and could lead to new covid variants. more than 320 experts have written to the prime minister, calling for urgent action. they say more than three billion people globally have not had a first dose. tensions over ukraine remain high with russia s foreign minister this morning saying his country s interests couldn t be ignored, while insisting moscow did not want war. earlier, presidentjoe biden warned