Indeed. And we also have our diplomatic correspondent, james landale. How are you, james . Very well, sumi. Good to be here. Great to have you both. And i want to start with the fact that many of our listeners will know you, our viewers will know you, you attend summits, you travel the world, you speak to diplomats, you speak to lawmakers. In these conversations, what is the broad sense youre getting on how people right now see america on the World Stage . I think the one word i would use is uncertainty. I think that, in the short run, the world is watching and waiting for the outcome of the election in november to see what impact that will have on us policy. And i think more broadly, i think theyre just looking at the United States, thinking this is a country that is in transition, that its moving, and its a country that is having a debate with itself about what role it should play in the world, and its been doing that for many years. And it continues. And i think so the world is Sort
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Tired playbook. There is no floor for him in terms of how low he will go. We should be prepared for that. We should be prepared for the fact is not burdened by telling the truth. And, we should be prepared for the fact that he will probably speak a lot of untruths. Its like her monologue was going there. We should be prepared for anything. After all, her opponent is a wannabe dictator talking about imprisoning his political opponents. We have seen this Debate Playbook many times before. We saw this one trump creepily lurked behind Hillary Lake clinton, literally stalking her. You can see if there. In a way she said made her Skin Crawl which many of us watching understand. We saw this moment in the first debate between trump and Joe Biden in 2020. Im not here to call out his lies. Everyone knows he is a liar. I want to make sure dad spent you agreed with bernie sanders. There is no manifesto. Please let him speak. You just lost the love. Let your senators know. Make sure you, let people
So, obviously, my immediate question was, can we go? can we get there? setting it up with the ukrainians was not the hard bit. Actually, it was convincing my editors and, you know, layers of management back at the times that this was a safe thing to do, or that we could mitigate the risks involved in it. Because they weren t just about the danger there. They were also these legal risks about. . . . . The legal consequences of illegally crossing into russia, which is how the russian government have perceived the trip. But you obviously persuaded them, cos you went. Just to explain, then, who you did speak to and what the terms were. I suppose the question is, whether you were changing names to protect russians, because getting people, presumably, in russia to speak candidly to western journalists must be very hard? well, yeah, these are people who lived in a very quiet corner of russia, and probably had never had anything to do with a journalist, even a russian journalist, never mind a
To protect russians, to protect russians, because getting people, presumably, in russia to speak candidly to Western Journalists must be very hard . Well, yeah, these are people who lived in a very quiet corner of russia, and probably had never had anything to do with a journalist, even a russian journalist, never mind a foreign one. I gave them their choices. I used first names only. And, you know, gave them the choice. I also made. I made very sure to speak to them out of the earshot of ukrainian journalists as much. Ukraine and had taken aggressive action there. And you attended something that sounded very fascinating, which was that ukraines civilian Military Liaison Officers were showing films to local people about the invasion. And i wonder what the reaction was to the films as you were there . Yeah, i mean, that was extraordinary, and one of the most extraordinary things to watch. There was a small audience of older people who were watching it. I spoke to one of them afterwards,