Yesterday, we reported that president Vladimir Putin had declared a partial mobilisation, after Russian forces were driven into a disorganised rout in the Kharkiv Oblast. In this podcast (recorded a few days before Putin’s announcement), Hamid Alizadeh and Jorge Martin, members of the marxist.com editorial board, discuss the main developments in the Ukraine war, and where the conflict is going.

Protests have broken out all over Iran, following the murder of a young Kurdish woman, Jina Mahsa Amini, by Iran’s notorious morality police. Beginning in the Kurdish areas of Iran, the protests spread to more than 30 cities, including all the largest in the country: Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, Karaj, Tabriz and the so-called holy city of Qom. What started as a reaction against police brutality has quickly turned into a mood of rage against the regime as a whole.