00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Video Bulletin for this Thursday.
00:04My name's Dale Miller, I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman
00:07and I'm joined by our investigations correspondent, Martin McLaughlin.
00:11Martin, effectively we're going to get into your front page story of today's Scotsman
00:18and you'll see that there on screen.
00:21So we let in on the line of the UK plans to mass produce new drones to help Ukraine
00:26but Martin, you've written in detail there about developments with the situation
00:34regarding Poland and Russia that developed overnight into Thursday.
00:41Poland accusing Russia of advancing drones effectively onto its territory
00:47that it had to shoot down Poland, as we know, is a NATO member
00:52so there was high concern and some strong rhetoric about the extent of the attack
00:57and what it meant for the situation in that part of Europe as well.
01:02Martin, I know you spoke to quite a number of Scottish experts in the field on this.
01:07What was the view of the significance of what took place?
01:11Yeah, Dale, I canvassed opinion across international relations
01:15and security experts across Scottish universities yesterday.
01:18The general consensus was that this was a deliberate act on the part of Russia.
01:25Moscow has issued its time honoured denials about these drone attacks
01:31but the consensus seems to be very much that this was a test on the part of Moscow
01:37of NATO's readiness and how it will respond.
01:41It seems that the repercussions of this could be quite far-ranging.
01:47It's really important to make clear that the precedent that has been shattered here,
01:53this is the first time that a NATO force has engaged with Russia.
01:59It might only be drones but the significance of that engagement can't be understated
02:05and the experts I've spoken to have suggested that we could see an intensification
02:11of the forward-line deployments across those parts of the NATO alliance
02:15that are particularly vulnerable and uneasy about Russian aggression.
02:21So not just Poland but the Baltic states as well.
02:25So we're going to see a lot of intensification around NATO's defences, I think,
02:32over the coming days and weeks.
02:34And already this morning Poland has said the UN Security Council has agreed to a meeting
02:39in the wake of the drone attack.
02:41So there's a lot to play on this one.
02:44Martin, there's been a lot of manoeuvring around with Donald Trump,
02:47meetings with Zelensky, meetings with Putin,
02:50suggestions that they're working towards some sort of peace deal.
02:54But this really indicates that things aren't heading in that direction currently.
02:58Is this bad news generally for the West, including the UK,
03:03about the direction of travel with the conflict?
03:05I think so.
03:07I mean, the greatest force that the West has against Russian aggression, Dale, is unity.
03:13And if the US is preaching from a different hymn book to what NATO are saying,
03:18then that immediately weakens NATO,
03:21not just countries like Poland and those with geographical proximity to Russia,
03:26but the entire alliance.
03:29I mean, President Trump has only made one public comment about the Poland events,
03:35and that was to say what was with the Russian drones.
03:38It's hardly the kind of forceful repudiation that we've seen from the Defence Secretary here
03:45and the Prime Minister, both of the UK and Poland.
03:50So that kind of unease and that discrepancy and rhetoric is something that I think
03:54Vladimir Putin is very mindful of,
03:56and it's something that he will be exploiting for as long as it lasts.
04:00Just on the subject of Trump, some quite shocking news out of the US overnight again,
04:06or that happened sort of late on Wednesday night,
04:09a Trump ally, Charlie Kirk, assassinated.
04:13I want to ask you about just what you think this will mean for Trump and the administration.
04:18We know, obviously, in the build-up to the presidential election as well,
04:21there was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump as well,
04:26and, you know, this could have some sort of implications as well.
04:31What's your thoughts on the scenes out of the night?
04:34Yeah, absolutely horrific scenes.
04:37I was watching CNN last night, Dale, when this story broke,
04:41and, you know, the footage and the reaction to it are really quite humbling,
04:46the violence and the fact it was taking place in front of so many young students
04:52is really quite shocking.
04:54I mean, gun violence, as we know, is an unfortunate staple of US life,
04:59but political violence is now a norm, sadly.
05:05You know, it's been spoken about for some time since the kind of advent of Donald Trump
05:10as a political force that politics in the US is broken,
05:14but I think this really lays at home and, you know,
05:17the violence and the fact somebody is being assassinated live on a student campus
05:23is being streamed, it's really disturbing and distressing,
05:28and I think it really undermines, underlines the need for cross-party consensus
05:33to tackle this issue, whether that's possible in the US,
05:37given the fractured state of political debate is something I'm less than optimistic about,
05:42and we've already seen, in the wake of Charlie Kirk's death,
05:46some right-wing figures have been calling for retribution,
05:49and they're doing so on social networks,
05:52where those kind of voices are being amplified,
05:54so the kind of feverish, hate-fuelled rhetoric is being amplified instead of tampered,
06:03and I think that's something that every party,
06:06including, you know, the Trump administration, needs to tackle.
06:10You can read stories on what we've discussed there on the developing situation with Poland,
06:16involving Ukraine and Russia, as well as charliekirk at scotsman.com.
06:20If you ever can't find any of our foreign or our world coverage,
06:23there's a world tab available off the navigation bar.
06:26Please follow us on all social media channels,
06:28and pick up a copy of the Scotsman in print tomorrow.
06:31We'll have the latest from the First Minister's questions,
06:33the conclusion to the nomination period for the Labor Deputy Leadership as well today,
06:38and there will be more on the UK politics front that you'll want to pick up a copy for as well.
06:43Thanks to you, Marden.
06:45Thanks to everyone else for joining us.
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