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Apply with £100,000 annual income or £100,000 savings or investments with HSBC UK or Premier status abroad. Hello and welcome back to the new Wednesday episode of the Battleground Ukraine podcast with me, Patrick Bishop, and Saul David.

Well, we're going on Wednesday now because thanks to popular demand, we thought we could ramp up to two episodes a week,

an in-depth interview on Wednesday and a news update, the traditional one we've been doing, with listeners questions on the Friday.

Today, for our first in-depth interview, we've got a real cracker. We hear from the brilliant

chronicler of Russian history, Simon Seabag Montefiore.

The author of many bestselling and prize-winning books on Russian rulers, including the Romanovs,

Young Stalin, Catherine and Petemkin, and the Court of the Red Tsar, Seabag Montefiorei,

or Seabag, as he prefers to be known, recently brought the story of Russia and Putin up to date in his fabulous

global history, The World. This is what he told us.

Seabag, you've written many books about Russia, and your most recent book, The World,

brings the story up to date in your final chapter when you talk about Putin.

And we'll come on to Putin and the war.

But if you don't mind, can we start by talking about the relationship between the Ukraine and Russia since the 18th century?

So we're going all the way back to Potemkin and Catherine the Great.

Can you give me a reasonably sort of concise history of that relationship

since then? Well, the northern part of Ukraine, which had often been in Polish territory,

joined the Russian Empire, which was then the Muscovite Empire in 1654. And there's a very complicated

series of events with Hept and Kiewiczki, and he ultimately sought, he was a Cossack leader, and he ultimately sought the protection of the Tsar of Moscow via Lexi.

...