Peter Beaumont

I mean, already we've seen Poland, Romania, the countries that are closest to conflict, stepping up their preparedness for defences.

I mean, there is already talk about moving assets, particularly around air defences, to help shore up countries that are more vulnerable to these kind of overspills.

And

This week we saw the first time Poland being able to spend extra money from this new agreement to bolster its defences in terms of the collective defences of NATO and Europe.

So I think what this does is it dramatises a problem that everyone is aware of and everyone is very, very concerned about.

And I think it's an opportunity because, you know, at a time where, for instance, Ukraine is facing crucial shortage of Patriot air defence missiles because of the war in Iran, it gives people an opportunity to stand up and say, look, this is a really big deal for Europe, particularly looking across the Atlantic towards the United States and saying,

This is how bad the security situation is.

And I think that's as important as the kind of local issues about whether you bring in more defences to help cities on the edge of the conflict.

I think it's like saying, hey, there is a big war going on here.

The United States is part of NATO.

We're all part of NATO.

Everyone needs to start pulling together because, you know, we're in very risky territory.

So far, it's been a kind of very classic Russian response from the Kremlin.

You know, the one spokesman said they are aware of the allegation that something's happened.

And, you know, at some stage, you know, they will...

You know, over the next few hours, I think we can expect a sort of mealy-mouthed explanation.

I mean, Romania has already kicked out a Russian diplomat, one of the consuls, and I think it's in southeastern Romania.

And so Russia's rather typically moved on saying, well, we're going to respond to Romania's diplomatic response.

So at the moment, it seems though, you know, they're sort of doing their usual thing.

We are outraged that you should think that, you know, you should chuck out one of our diplomats over this, which is unfortunately sort of standard crime and operating procedure really, isn't it?