Welcome to the world in 10 in an increasingly uncertain world.
This is the Times daily podcast dedicated to global security.
I'm Toby Gillis, joined today by Alex Dibble.
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are to speak on the phone about Ukraine.
The US President says the division of Ukrainian assets,
including land and power plants, will be discussed,
but so far, they've been a long way apart on the terms of a ceasefire deal.
So what do both of them want from this call and how are they planning for it?
We'll look at each of them in turn, and we'll start with Putin with Emily Ferris,
who specializes in Russian domestic politics in the International Security Studies department at the think tank Rusi.
Emily, will Putin be going it alone in his planning for this,
or are there advisors he actually does trust helping him?
Oh, well, these are lots of big questions about whether, whether Russia has a strategy,
how many people really feed into that strategy,
whether Putin is a rational actor within his kind of his own frame of reference.
Look, I guess the answer to some of these things is, yes, Russia does have a strategy.
Putin does have a strategy.
It's an increasingly small group of people that make decisions,
key decisions, especially on big things like this.
One of the big problems, I think,