A special episode in support of the Vladimir Putin Do F*ck Off - #VPDFO - festival. This event, held in Kyiv earlier in October brought together soldiers, journalists, activists and politicians with the primary purpose of raising funds for a group of charities doing essential work on the ground in Ukraine. Go to VDPFO.org to find more details of the charities involved and please donate using the link below:

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/ukraine-can-win-vpdfo-2024

This is a straightforward way to get funds to some incredibly valuable organisations. Everything you donate goes direct to the charities.

The festival ran for two days and there were several sessions. This episode contains highlights of the first day and you'll get to hear from day two in a subsequent episode.

During the recording you'll hear from Mariia Chepa, Vlad Demchenko, Paul Conroy, Caolan Robertson, Paul Niland, Liudmyla Buimister and Dima Kovalchuk . The event was of course moderated by John Sweeney.

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Veteran China correspondent Michael Sheridan has published a biography of Xi Jinping, China's leader, entitled The Red Emperor, published by Headline. You can find details of his book here:

https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/michael-sheridan-2/the-red-emperor/9781035413478/

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In July this year, the well entrenched autocratic regime that ruled Bangladesh, a country of nearly 200 million people, was toppled entirely unexpectedly by a student-led democracy movement, ushering in an interim government led by a Nobel prize-winning peace and development activist. How the Bangladesh Spring happened and whether it is likely to succeed is the subject of this episode. I spoke to Dhaka-based expert David Bergman about the extraordinary events and their political background. Bergman also covers the surprising role played by supporters of Bangladesh's ruling party in British politics.

https://www.channel4.com/news/tulip-siddiq-uk-wing-of-bangladeshs-ruling-party-appear-to-be-campaigning-for-labour-candidate

You can find David's work here: thedavidbergman

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I spoke to Professor James Crossland about the extraordinary life of diplomat, secret agent and journalist Robert Bruce Lockhart.

You can find James's book on the subject here: https://eandtbooks.com/books/rogue-agent/

James is on Twitter @drjcrossland

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Veteran foreign correspondent Jonathan Rugman is the author of The Killing in the Consulate about the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. More recently he has produced a fascinating two-part documentary about MBS and his rise to power. You can find it on BBC Iplayer here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001zprq/the-kingdom-the-worlds-most-powerful-prince-series-1-1-game-of-thrones and you can find Jonathan's enlightening article about MBS here https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gz8934wrro

Jonathan is on Twitter at https://x.com/jrug

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James Dorsey is a writer and journalist and author of the new book The Battle for

the Soul of Islam - Defining the Muslim Faith in the 21st Century, published by Macmillan.

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