No, I mean, I find it amazing.

So ju- just to explain, uh, I mean, I mean, Alastair's right, but so Na- Nathan Gill was, uh, uh, the, the kind of UKIP, the leader of UKIP in Wales, elected as an MEP, um, based in Brussels and Strasbourg, with an office right do- right next to Nigel Farage's.

Um, and he, um, essentially was recruited, uh, by someone I know very well.

Uh, a Ukrainian-born journalist, um, and diplomat and alleged Russian asset called Oleg Voloshin, whom I met in Moscow when he was press attaché at the Ukrainian embassy there as far back as 2007.

And Voloshin was basically paying Gill 5,000 euros in grubby notes wrapped up in a rubber band, handed in under the table in white envelopes, to make speeches in the European Parliament, basically repeating Russian talking points about Ukraine.

Um, and this went on for a period of several years.

Um, uh, Nathan Gill sub-recruited other members of UKIP, the UKIP, um, European delegation to, to say s- similar things, and he was being paid.

Um, can, can Ukraine survive that long?

This envoy was ignorant, credulous, and naive." Explain.

Uh, well, I mean, I think, I think...

Uh, hello everybody, by the way.

Good evening.

Very nice to see you.

Thank you for coming.

Uh, thank you, Alastair.

Is that not right?

So how do you explain that?

I mean, I think the problem is the sort of journalists and commentators, we get hung up on the vocabulary of negotiation and diplomacy.

We talk about meetings and discussions and shuttle diplomacy.

And it's none of a kind.

I mean, it really is an antimony in what's happening with Jared Kushner and Steve Wyckoff.

I mean, they made multiple trips to Moscow last year.

Then this sort of faux diplomacy fizzled out in February when Donald Trump attacked Iran, began a war in the Middle East.

Can you tell us why? Because obviously you've had a lot of bestsellers and you're enormous amount of experience in covering Russia, the Soviet Union and Ukraine.

So what betrayal or betrayals did you have in mind when you were writing this book? And was this concept of betrayal kind of in the front of your mind or did it come together after you put the book together? Yeah.

I mean, it's a great question.

I mean, to be clear, I'm a fan of short, catchy titles.

So the previous book, I was in Kiev in February 2022 when Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

And so my previous book, the last one, was called Invasion, which was about the invasion.

And I've done other books which have been a little bit playful and elusive.

For example, one about the murder of Alexander Levinenko.

How can we understand what is Trump in this world that we currently live in? And how do you interpret his moves when it comes to especially Ukraine and the war in Ukraine? I

I mean, do you just get your head down and crack on, or do you have tactics?

I mean, I have tactics.

I mean, I think the most important thing is truth.

Do you remember that? Vaguely.

It'll never catch up.

The idea of truth.

In other words, that we don't fall for both sides'ism, that he says this and, you know, they say that.

And you must be one of the least surprised people on the planet.

I mean, do you just get your head down and crack on, or do you have tactics?

I mean, I have tactics.

I think the most important thing is truth.

Do you remember that? Vaguely.

It'll never catch on.

The idea of truth.

In other words, that we don't fall for both sides and that he says this and they say that.

And you must be one of the least surprised people on the planet.

They are engaging in this broad, asymmetric warfare against us.

Why do you think that is? It's an interesting question.

I mean, I think ultimately it's a failure of storytelling.

Actually, there's no one who is fully recognising reality and telling the story of now.

And the story of now is that Russia is a fascist power which has launched the biggest war in Europe since 1945 that is chewing up Europe's borders, trying to make Ukraine disappear and redesign the map and re-establish a zone of... influence or indeed occupation over Eastern Central Europe of the kind that the Soviet Union enjoyed, you know, in the 20th century.

So there's a kind of grand plan, a messianic plan.

And that, this war and the fact that actually the Russians could quite happily go and attack somewhere else.

Why do you think that is? I mean, if you can summarize the whole book collusion, but why do you think it is that he has this odd relationship with Putin, which he has with no other world leader?

is it to Putin's project of restoring the greatness of the USSR, returning Russia to the position he thinks that it deserves, to get this... destructive president elected to get this guy who would kind of lobotomize US intelligence and betray allies and launch this kind of chaotic reign where allies don't know where they stand, but the only person who does know where they stand is Putin.

I mean, what you have to bear in mind about the Soviet KGB and today's FSB, the successor agency, which Putin ran before he became prime minister and then president of Russia, is that they are not... omnipotent evil doctor-doctor overlords who push a button and things happen.

They're just classic opportunists and they try multiple things and sometimes they get lucky and sometimes they don't.

And with Donald Trump who, by the way, the communist East European spy agencies were following around and spying on since the 1970s when he married a woman from behind the Iron Curtain.

And I say that because I've seen the records in the archive of the STB, the Czechoslovak secret police.

They were spying on him, filing reports on his family, on his career.

Then the Soviet ambassador, but organized by the KGB, brought him to Moscow in 1987 and so on.

How close is the pro-Putin association psychologically in that anti-European relationship? what used to be UKIP is now reform world?

That relationship between the two men, if it is a relationship, what is it born out of? Which of them has the real power?

I mean, that's the question.

And, you know, I write in Betrell, it's the biggest mystery in international politics.

And the Alaska summit, Trump stood on a red carpet and waiting for Putin to descend from his plane and then burst into applause.

I mean, this was very strange behavior.

And then subsequently after that talk, sort of deferred to him at their joint press conference, let Putin speak first, then at length.

And clearly, whether you think That Trump is some kind of Russian asset or whether you think that's just a conspiracy theory.

You can go back maybe as far as Obama when the annexation of Crimea, you know, Europe, the West generally has not behaved perhaps as it should towards Ukraine.

Tell us about why you wrote it and what you were hoping to achieve with it.

Well, thank you.

I mean, just to kind of spool back a bit, I mean, I've been reporting from Ukraine for almost five years since before Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion.

And I wrote a previous book called Invasion, Russia's Buddy War and Ukraine's Fight for Survival, which came out in late 2022, quick turn, and then with the paperback in 23.

And I thought, probably I'm not going to write another book, you know, with a lot of the war about it, unless something so dramatically changes.

And basically, I decided to do Betrayal after two events, two big events.

The first was the return of Donald Trump and his second imperial presidency.

Just help me explain your thinking there.

Tell us about why you wrote it and what you were hoping to achieve with it.

Well, thank you.

I mean, just to kind of spool back a bit, I mean, I've been reporting from Ukraine for almost five years since before Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion.

And I wrote a previous book called Invasion, Russia's Buddy War and Ukraine's Fight for Survival, which came out in late 2022, quick turn, and then with the paperback in 23.

And I thought, probably I'm not going to write another book, you know, with a lot of the war about it, unless something so dramatically changes.

And basically, I decided to do Betrayal after two events, two big events.

The first was the return of Donald Trump and his second imperial presidency.

Just help me explain your thinking there.

Right

...

but they've been in short supply.

Uh, the UK hasn't got very many of them.

Uh, they're expensive.

And now what, what Burnham has announced is that, that this sort of blueprint, these sort of secret technology will be handed over to Kyiv so Kyiv can, can build its own Storm Shadows.

And I think the other crucial factor is that previously there's been a restriction of about two hundred kilometers in how far they, they might fly.

Yeah

Yeah, they were excited about him.

"Maybe he will help us," right? A- and, and I- I said, "No, no, he's gonna betray you." And, and now everybody realizes that's the case after what happened last year in the Oval Office where Zelensky was, was humiliated and, and, and, and chucked out.

And even now, you know, occasionally you'll see Trump swing rhetorically towards Ukraine, but practically everything he's done has helped Russia or, or at least not hindered Russia.

So, so the, the view of, of America is, is, is really dim.

I mean, a- Andy Burnham is, is in town now, but Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, Trump's two emissaries, the kind of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the piece, they, they, they were supposed to be in Kyiv.

They've been to Moscow nine times and, and th- they haven't come because of recent bombing.

Well, well, w- why, [laughs] why do they think this bombing is going on, and what might they do about it? None, none of these questions are really being addressed with any urgency by, by a, a Trump administration that regards Europe as an enemy, Russia as a friend, even North Korea we now learn is a friend of sorts.

Because Luke, I mean, isn't it quite revealing that Zelensky's rationale for why you can't have a election is not the practicalities or the people would be in danger, it's that Ukraine would tear itself apart.

Is this the first time that we know that British drones have been involved in these kind of strikes inside of Russia?

The source of this story is The Sunday Times, which published a long article, uh, setting out, well, quoting sources and setting out what Britain is doing.

It appears to be there are, there are two drones involved, m- uh, one of them made in Wiltshire by a subsidiary of BAE Systems, which is a kind of short range drone called the Nian, about three meters long, which has been blitzing targets just over the border in, in Russian cities like Belgorod.

A- and a second drone, which goes further, as far as almost 600 miles, launched by a catapult.

We, we don't know who makes this.

Um, it's not public.

But this is the one that's been hitting various Russian oil refineries in places like Yaroslavl, just outside Moscow, in the Moscow region and further south.

Yeah

If you were sitting in the Kremlin in these years watching the Iraq war unfold, what are the lessons you're learning? Luke?

The famous speech by Colin Powell to the UN Security Council where he laid out the case for war and said that...

Iraq was developing chemical weapons.

And that is why the US was compelled to intervene.

Now, he mentioned a completely obscure enclave in Kurdish northern Iraq, where I was at the time reporting for The Guardian, where an Islamist group called Ansar al-Islam supposedly were presiding over a poisons and chemicals factory.

This was the kind of whole blueprint for war.

And With some difficulty, I went there with a group of journalists and we went to tour around this Islamist camp, which was the heart of this kind of power presentation.

Was that what was actually happening in these color revolutions, Luke?

Yeah

...

but with, with very little success because practically they're all killed and injured, and this has become a, a, a kind of superlative aerial contest, both sides using drones massively, a kind of race of technology.

Um, and I think what...

You know, one other really interesting development is that my sense is the Ukrainians have got an edge at the moment, and what, what I mean by that is that they've been really whacking Russian portsOil, um, infrastructure, terminals.

And, you know, Russia is a big country, and its air defenses are very stretched.

And, and the Ukrainians using both sort of ballistic missiles and long range drones are finding a way through.

And, and meanwhile there are these attempts by Turkey to get Russia and Ukraine talking again around the negotiating table, but it hasn't gone that well thus far, has it? Is there any sense that any progress could be made there whatsoever?

He's also covered Putin for several years inside Russia, so he is, to say the least, a little skeptical about the efforts by the US and Russia to make peace in Ukraine.

This "peace deal," in inverted commas, I'm- I'm waving my arms around just to make clear this is inverted commas.

Um, was released, 28-point peace deal, which, um, the Trump administration said it was a US plan, and actually, of course, it wasn't a US plan at all.

It was a Russian plan.

Basically it was the surrender document that was cooked up between Steve Wycoff, Trump's special envoy, um, who's been to Moscow many times.

He's m- he's making his sixth trip to- to Russia as we speak.

And, Kirill Dmitriev, who, um, is Vladimir Putin's emissary, a businessman, um, and they got together in October in Miami at Wycoff's place and hammered out this "deal," again in inverted commas.

Who is he?

24 hours is a long time in Donald Trump's world, isn't it?

Yeah.

Uh, I mean, it really is.

It's been a, it's been a tumultuous few days.

We saw the, the, the summit in Alaska with, with Vladimir Putin where really after just a few hours with, with Putin, Trump was reversing his positions on Ukraine, suggesting Ukraine has to cede land, that a ceasefire is not necessary.

Uh, and then, of course, he meets Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House yesterday, and Keir Starmer, and other European leaders, and it seems he's kind of inching back towards Ukraine.

And now we have him flip-flopping again.

(laughs)