A lot of the info in this book I knew from the tiny tiny free press newspapers that still exist in the UK. However, the past year has seen regular nuclear weapons threats from Russia, some veiled, some on ‘escalation’, and some directly aimed at NATO countries such as the UK.

But I think the actual result is it’s very harmful for the country and that it really amounts to a transfer of wealth and safety and all kinds of things from the many to the few. The programme works with European and regional governments, local voices, and civil society to advance channels of dialogue as well as providing direct policy prescriptions to secure conflict de-escalation, regional stabilisation, and democratic transition. Dr Lewis argues that if the war is truly about Putin’s ‘imperial legacy project’ and an attempt to bring Ukrainian territory back under his control, then creating an uninhabitable post-nuclear wasteland, would make ‘little strategic sense’. I thought that the case that you made was very clear and obvious, especially stuff about how we have nuclear-capable weapons systems within range of Moscow. To solve a dangerous and complicated problem, there has to be a willingness for open and honest debate, devoid of emotional, manipulative argument.How ever much we disagree with Russia’s undoubted authoritarianism, nationalism and intolerance it is vital to understand Russia’s perspective rather than lazily resorting to relentless demonisation. The most popular view in Russia and China is to expect a more even distribution of global power among multiple countries – namely, for multipolarity to emerge. Real Change: I wanted to start by asking who you are, what kind of work you do and how you came to be interested in the subject. It’s pretty remarkable that states have agreed to get around the table on these issues because there’s been so much trust and good will lacking, an increase of nationalism and so on. We are resolutely against the division of the continent into military blocs facing each other, against the accumulation of military arsenals in Europe, against everything that is the source of the threat of war.

The survey reveals that Vladimir Putin’s war of outright aggression, and his military failures during the conflict, do not appear to have caused people in non-Western countries to downgrade their opinion of Russia or to question its relative strength.Warnings have also emerged from the West, with US president Joe Biden declaring the risk of a nuclear armageddon to be at its highest level for 60 years, bringing the nuclear issue firmly back to the forefront of discussion. But the study also reveals a wide gap between the West and the ‘rest’ when it comes to their desired outcomes for the war and differing understandings of why the US and Europe support Ukraine. The poll took place in December 2022 and January 2023 in nine EU countries and Great Britain, and in China, India, Turkiye, Russia, and the US (the CITRUS countries, to use the shorthand of the University of Oxford’s Europe in a Changing World project). Suggests we need to do a deal of we are to avoid nuclear war and I think everyone would want to avoid that.

The programme also supports EU decision-makers work on a unified and coherent policy to address the challenges resulting from Russia’s full scale-invasion of Ukraine. This war could have been avoided, if USA simply got busy with their own problems, instead of trying to destabilise the whole world. Dr Vines says: ‘Non-alignment is much more comfortable than being pigeonholed as part of a Western position – or indeed an Eastern position. Many in China state that American and European support for Ukraine is driven by the desire to protect Western dominance. The reason for this Western uncertainty probably comes from Turkiye’s flaunting of its new sovereign foreign policy while remaining, at least on paper, a member of NATO.

This is a game-changer in the way that Europe in particular is looking at African energy to help in the energy transition.

Putin has ‘managed the trick of pulling NATO closer than ever before’ says Jamie Shea, with larger exercises, more readiness, and reinforcement strategies. The responses are less clear cut in Russia and Turkiye, but, still, Turks’ most frequent response is their own country (36 per cent). Perceptions of the European Union and Great Britain are also predominantly positive: Indians see these as either an “ally” or “partner. Seventy-one per cent of respondents in the US, 77 per cent in Great Britain, and 65 per cent in the EU countries polled alight on one of these two terms; they regard the future of relations with Russia as one of confrontation.

Just 9 per cent of people in the US, 7 per cent in the EU countries polled, and 4 per cent in Great Britain see American global supremacy as the most likely state of affairs in a decade from now. Would you describe yourself as kind of like an anti-war activist, or how would you characterize your views there?