Friday Focus provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates.

This week’s edition of Friday Focus does a deep dive into the latest news out of the Ukraine War. What are we to make of Russia’s mobilization of 300,000 or more former military personnel? How is this escalation of the war likely to play out in the months to come? And possibly more worrying, what are the implications of Putin’s stark language this week with regards to the use of nuclear weapons to defend Russian territory and his assertation that he is “not bluffing”? Are we at heightened risk of violating the seventy-five-year-plus international taboo on the use of nuclear weapons? And, just how important is this taboo to international peace and security in the 21st century?

This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue.

More information at www.munkdebates.com.