US to defend ‘every inch’ as Russian drones enter Poland

Nato has announced plans to beef up the defence of Europe’s eastern flank as the US has vowed to defend “every inch” of its ally after Russian drones breached Polish airspace earlier this week.

The US joined other Nato countries yesterday to express concern about Russian drones entering Poland, accusing Moscow of violating international law and the founding UN Charter.

At the UN, the US called the Polish airspace violations “alarming” and vowed to defend “every inch” of Nato territory.

The mission will involve a range of assets integrating air and ground bases along Nato’s eastern flank, which stretches from the Baltic states in the north to Romania and Bulgaria in the south.

Polish air defences and Nato aircraft sprung into action on Wednesday after 19 objects intruded Polish airspace. There have been no injury reports and Moscow has so far denied responsibility for the incident.

Donald Trump has said that his patience with Vladimir Putin is “running out fast”, days after Russian drones breached Polish airspace in an act of provocation.

His comments come after Poland‘s prime minister Donald Tusk on Friday rejected Trump’s claim that Russian drones breaching Polish airspace might have been “a mistake”.

Springboks dismantle All Blacks in record Rugby Championship win

South Africa humiliated New Zealand and condemned the All Blacks to their heaviest ever defeat.

After New Zealand held on for victory to extend their unbeaten streak at Eden Park last weekend, the Springboks scored 43 points in a sensational six-try victory to revive their Rugby Championship title hopes in Wellington.

It was South Africa’s biggest ever score on New Zealand soil, while the 33-point margin of defeat was the biggest New Zealand had suffered in their entire history.

South Africa only led by three points at half time but were sensational in the second half, with tries from Cheslin Kolbe, Damian Willemse, Kwagga Smith, RG Snyman and Andre Esterhuizen.

Follow all of the latest from the Rugby Championship with our live blog below:

British couple held by Taliban are ‘literally dying’ in prison

A woman who was arrested by the Taliban alongside an elderly British couple has warned that they are “literally dying” in prison.

Faye Hall was arrested with Peter, 80, and Barbie Reynolds, 76, by the Taliban in February, when they were returning to the couple’s home in Bamyan province in central Afghanistan.

Ms Hall, an American woman, spent two months alongside Mrs Reynolds in prison before she was released as part of a negotiated agreement facilitated by Qatari officials.

However, she has warned “time is running out” for Mr and Mrs Reynolds, who still remain in prison without knowing why they are being held.

“We just have these elderly people, they’re literally dying, and time is running out,” Ms Hall said, as she described the harsh conditions they were held in.

She said she witnessed the elderly couple’s health deteriorate rapidly whilst in prison, where she said they slept on used mats on the floor in cramped cells.

Ms Hall said Mrs Reynolds had lost a significant amount of weight and was one day unable to stand or walk.

She has now pleaded to President Donald Trump and the UK government to work together do more to push for the release of the couple.

Asked if she had a message for them she said: “I love them, I know they will be out very soon, don’t ever give up.”

Mr and Mrs Reynolds have spent seven and a half months in detention without being charged and were held separately in a maximum-security prison until late May.

They were then transferred to the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI), with the promise of release within two to three days, but this has turned into on for months.

The British couple had been living in Afghanistan for the past 18 years, running education and training projects and decided to remain in the country even after the Taliban’s takeover in 2021.

The UN has called their detention “inhumane”, and the Foreign Office told the BBC it has met with their family to discuss the case.

Their children have spoken previously about fears they have for their parents’ health. Mr Reynolds, who has suffered heart attacks in the past, appears to have developed some symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, according to his son Jonathan Reynolds.

He said in July that his father had experienced shaking in his hands, arms and face “to the point he was on the floor and he couldn’t get up”.

He added that his mother’s hands and feet were going blue, due to “malnutrition and some kind of anaemia.”

He added: “The reality is they may die in that prison and this is why I’m pleading with whoever has the ability to release them and bring them home now.

In July the Taliban’s Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi rejected allegations of mistreatment regarding the couple, claiming they are “in constant contact with their families” and their “human rights are being respected”.

Lawyer for Air India families says one key theory has emerged

A lawyer representing families of those killed in June’s devastating Air India crash has dismissed claims that the pilots may have deliberately or mistakenly shut off fuel controls before the aircraft plunged into a building, killing 260 people.

Mike Andrews, who is pursuing lawsuits against Boeing on behalf of more than 100 families, said in an interview with The Independent that the suggestion of “self-sabotage” or gross pilot error is not only unsupported by evidence but also unjust to the dead.

Flight AI171, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner operated by Air India, took off from Ahmedabad on 12 June bound for London. Less than two minutes into the journey, the aircraft lost power, veered off course and struck a medical college building near the runway.

All 229 passengers, 12 crew members and 19 people on the ground were killed. Among the victims were 52 British citizens. Only one man, Leicester resident Vishwashkumar Ramesh, survived after being thrown clear of the fuselage.

It was the first fatal crash involving the Dreamliner, Boeing’s flagship long-haul aircraft introduced in 2011 and hailed for its fuel efficiency and modern design. The carbon-fibre twin-engined 787 was designed partly as a replacement for Boeing’s veteran 767 – but also to introduce passenger-friendly benefits such as larger windows and higher cabin pressure.

The Dreamliner was also friendly to airlines’ bottom lines, burning about 20 per cent less fuel than the 767, and allowed airlines’ network planners to dream of ultra-long routes.

But Mr Andrews argues that the aircraft had been dogged by technical concerns, particularly involving its potable water system – that supplies safe, drinkable water for passengers and crew – and its proximity to sensitive electronics.

He pointed to a trail of Boeing bulletins to airlines dating back years and recent regulatory warnings from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), all raising alarms over water leaks.

“Going back to 2016, 2017 and 2018 there were bulletins to air carriers in the United States to perform waterproofing maintenance,” Mr Andrews said.

“In particular, it speaks to couplings that join water lines underneath lavatories and galley areas. I’ve purchased some of these couplings myself – they’re simple clamshell devices that hold two lines together.

“But the way the final shroud is fitted can loosen the latch, and over time that leads to leaks. We know from FAA notices and directives that water has been found on 787s leaking into equipment bays, and in some cases equipment had to be replaced.”

The compartment he refers to is the aircraft’s electronics equipment bay, or EE bay. It sits beneath the cabin floor and houses the computers that control almost every aspect of the flight, including the full authority digital engine control, known as Fadec.

The Fadec is essentially the aircraft’s engine brain. Unlike older jets, where pilots manually controlled fuel flow, modern engines depend on this computer to regulate thrust, fuel injection and performance.

Fadec is a sophisticated digital computer system in aircraft that automatically controls all aspects of engine performance by receiving data from sensors, calculating optimal settings, and adjusting fuel flow and other engine parameters to maximise efficiency and performance while ensuring safety.

According to the FAA, “if the Fadec fails, the engine fails”.

Mr Andrews said a water leak does not have to destroy equipment outright to be dangerous. “Even if it doesn’t ruin the component, it can trigger a reset. And that cascade can initiate an engine shutdown. In Ahmedabad, we saw both engines shut down or lose thrust within seconds – that is extraordinarily unlikely without a common cause. Water reaching those systems is one plausible explanation.”

The FAA itself highlighted the risk only weeks before the crash.

On 14 May, the regulator issued an Airworthiness Directive – an order that requires mandatory checks – warning that “water leakage from the potable water system due to improperly installed waterline couplings” had been reported, and that such leaks could cause “equipment in the EE bays to become wet resulting in an electrical short and potential loss of system functions essential for safe flight”.

The directive ordered inspections of Dreamliners for missing sealant and moisture barriers.

Yet Mr Andrews said the directive lacked urgency.

“My understanding is that this directive wasn’t due to take effect until about six days after our crash. Obviously there’s insufficient urgency when something has apparently been known by Boeing for years. Aviation safety affects everyone.

“And one concern is that the FAA has authority inside the United States, but outside the US things often lose urgency, whether it’s political protection or simply a breakdown in communication.”

The Independent has reached out to Boeing seeking a response on the allegations.

India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau has floated a different possibility.

A preliminary report from India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, published in July, said both of the plane’s fuel switches moved to the “cut-off” position “immediately” after take-off, stopping fuel supply to the engine.

“In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cut-off. The other pilot responded that he did not do so,” the report read.

That has fuelled theories of self-sabotage by pilots, or that one of them mistakenly switched the fuel supply off.

Mr Andrews cautioned against drawing such a conclusion.

“We don’t know what that exchange refers to. If there has been a reset of the Fadec or the electrical bus – essentially the main breaker system – then in that moment one pilot’s panel could shut down. Is it possible he was saying, ‘Why did you turn it off?’ about his own controls? We don’t know. That’s the point. It is premature conjecture to solely blame the pilots when we don’t yet have all the data.”

He said such insinuations are deeply damaging for families.

“The way the preliminary report was issued, the way it leaves out critical data, the way it insinuates rather than calls out what happened, has caused our clients to all question transparency.

“They are not convinced by the pilot error narrative. And I have cautioned them all to be patient, because it is just as wrong to blame the pilots without information as it would be for me to unequivocally blame Boeing without data. What we are saying is: wait for the full evidence.”

Part of that evidence may come from whistleblowers. Mr Andrews confirmed that four individuals with what he described as “vital technical and engineering information” have contacted his team since the crash.

While he declined to identify their backgrounds, he said they included individuals from “different layers of the aerospace industry”.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean they are inside Boeing,” he said. “The aviation industry has layers – subcontractors, maintenance engineers, suppliers. We’ve been contacted by people who’ve done their own analysis as well as people with direct aerospace experience. What’s important is to keep our field of view broad so we don’t miss something by focusing too early on one theory.”

While Mr Andrews confirmed that they have not yet filed a lawsuit in court, his legal team is gathering evidence and has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in the United States to obtain data from the flight recorders.

The Indian authorities have so far said they intend to keep the analysis within India.

There are also other concerns. Mr Andrews said his team is curious about whether leaks could have affected the lithium-ion batteries located in the tail section of the Dreamliner.

Those batteries, already known for their susceptibility to “thermal runaway” – an uncontrollable heating event – could pose additional hazards if exposed to moisture. “We’re curious whether water leaking into that area could trigger problems,” he said.

The sole survivor’s account has also shaped Mr Andrews’ thinking. In an interview with the BBC, he said that lights inside the aircraft “started flickering” moments after take off. Within five to 10 seconds of being airborne, it felt like the plane was “stuck in the air”.

“The lights started flickering green and white…suddenly [we] slammed into a building and exploded,” he said.

Mr Andrews said the accounts of lights flashing and changing colour “are all data points suggesting electrical issues”.

“Once we receive the timeline for why the ram air turbine deployed – a small emergency windmill that only comes out in certain electrical failures – we’ll be in a better position to know what precipitated this.”

For families, the legal battle is about more than money.

Mr Andrews said they have two overriding goals: “One is to learn what happened, why it happened, how it happened. The second is to prevent this from ever happening again. Every client has told us that. They want transparency and accountability. They want to know whether this tragedy could have been avoided.”

Some are also facing frustration regarding compensation from Air India. Mr Andrews said disputes within families over entitlements, combined with delays, have left some with “no answers, no compensation, no nothing – just a loss”.

As lawsuits take shape, Mr Andrews said manufacturers must not be allowed to push blame downstream. “If a coupling is defective, that’s on the subcomponent maker. If Boeing sells a completed aircraft that allows water to drip into flight computers, that’s on Boeing. What they cannot do is release defective equipment and expect airlines to engineer their way around it. That is not right.”

He said reforms will depend on the eventual findings, but the broader issue is oversight. The Dreamliner, like other US aircraft, was partly certified under a system known as ODA, where Boeing itself had authority to approve designs on the FAA’s behalf.

“A big question is whether this should have been caught during certification,” Mr Andrews said asking, if Boeing knew of leaks, “why wasn’t there more urgency about water dripping into flight computers? That to me is a serious issue.”

The Independent put these concerns to Boeing in a detailed questionnaire. The airline said it would “defer to the AAIB to provide information about [Flight] AI171”, citing international protocols around crashes.

For now, families are still waiting. Mr Andrews said their patience is not infinite. “They’ve earned the right to know what happened here and each of them… wants to prevent this from ever happening to any other family.”

Celebrated Pretty Things drummer Viv Prince dies aged 84

The Pretty Things drummer Viv Prince has died at the age of 84.

Known for his rowdy and eccentric on-stage behaviour, Prince enjoyed a controversial 18-month stint in the rock group from 1964 to 1965, and is said to have influenced The Who’s legendary drummer Keith Moon.

News of Prince’s death was shared on Instagram by the White Stripes frontman Jack White, who described the late musician as “wild and full of abandon”.

“I’ve received word through my friend John Baker who knew the man well, that the great Viv Prince has just passed on,” he wrote.

“Viv was an incredible drummer, wild and full of abandon. He played for the band The Pretty Things, and he influenced many other musicians like Keith Moon.”

Continuing his tribute, White wrote that he had met Prince personally “some years ago”, while the drummer was working on his farm in Portugal.

“He was an inspired and eccentric rock and roller and maybe I’ll have to put together a team to work on a documentary about this man one day,” White added.

“Safe travels into the sweet beyond Viv, you were one of the real ones.”

Born in Loughborough in 1941, Prince started out as a jazz drummer, performing in a number of local groups throughout the early 1960s.

He also worked as a session musician, and earned a burgeoning reputation for his distinctive and charismatic drumming style.

Having joined the Pretty Things in the 1964, Prince recorded two albums with the counter-cultural rock group: 1965’sThe Pretty Things and Get the Picture?.

The drummer’s unruly antics became the focus of much of the media coverage of the band. He would engage in brazen pranks onstage, such as laying carpeting during other artists’ performances. Prince was expelled from the band towards the end of 1965.

In the years after his work with Pretty Things, Prince performed with artists such as the Honeycombs, the Who, and Hawkwind, and recorded with artists including Chris Barber.

Later in life, he reportedly joined the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, only to be ejected for misbehaviour.

In 1999, the Pretty Things recorded a song called “Vivian Prince” as a tribute to their former bandmate, included on the album Rage Before Beauty.

I wish my mum had contacted Macmillan Cancer Support

I wasn’t at my mum’s side when she learned she had breast cancer, but that made me determined to be there the day she was getting the all-clear 18-months later. However, things didn’t go to plan that day.

Mum’s cancer journey started over a decade ago, a few months after a routine mammogram – when she developed “a pain”. She told herself it was probably nothing, because the scan she’d just had was fine. When she mentioned it to her GP – a small lump that didn’t feel quite right – she convinced herself that she was just being silly. The biopsy begged to differ.

In the list you keep in your head of the cancers you worry your mum might get, breast wasn’t that high on mine. Yes, it’s long been the number one cancer affecting women, with Macmillan Cancer Support reporting that about 55,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer in the UK each year  – the risk factor only increasing with age. But my mum had other health concerns to contend with.

As a schoolgirl in swinging London, she’d been a back-of-the-bikeshed smoker, which had graduated into a lifelong habit. Lung cancer seemed like a possibility.

Mum’s also the biggest sun worshipper I know. Long before any of us had heard of SPF, she would think nothing of spending an afternoon in the garden, stretched out on a blanket, slathered in baby oil. So, given what we know now about UV radiation, I wondered about skin cancer too.

Mum went on to have a series of lumpectomies to get rid of three spots of malignant tissue. She would also have lymph nodes removed as a precaution, as well as undergo extensive chemotherapy.

For me, her diagnosis was as though a stopwatch had been started. How long might she have left? She did her best to be stoic. Which was just as well, given what government austerity measures at the time were doing to the NHS: budget cuts, hapless reorganisations, and an end to the “gold-standard” two-week referral from detection to the start of treatment.

All mum could do was wait for the brown envelopes to drop on the doormat detailing appointments at unfamiliar hospitals many miles away, sometimes after the appointment had been and gone.

If she felt let down by the bureaucracy of our health service, the same could not be said for the army of individuals involved in her care. On a human level, she found her nurses and doctors to be uniquely composed and compassionate throughout her treatment.

When the day finally came for her oncologist to tell her that all the signs of her cancer had gone, I was invited along to hold her hand. “The scans are back,” he began. “And I need to discuss your options for the next course of action.” It seemed the cancer hadn’t quite gone after all. She had fought so hard to get to this point, she was expecting good news, and was unprepared for the knockback.

But she did go on to beat cancer – and has been in remission for more than five years, which we couldn’t be more grateful for. However, should it ever come back, there’s one thing we’d do differently from the off: make a call to Macmillan Cancer Support.

Only with hindsight, did we realise how much help Macmillan would have been. Someone to provide her with a calming companion for the journey, someone to help with the cancer admin – the appointments, the prescriptions, the test results – and someone to explain what all the scans and tests were for, what the results might mean, and what to expect next.

I couldn’t always be around while mum was living with cancer, and that’s where Macmillan steps in. Now, enjoying a slice of cake at a Coffee Morning, which is raising money to fund the work they do, seems like the least I can do.

Find out how you can help raise vital funds by hosting a Macmillan Coffee Morning. Sign up now on the Macmillan website

Macmillan Cancer Support, registered charity in England and Wales (261017), Scotland (SC039907) and the Isle of Man (604). Also operating in Northern Ireland.

Prince Harry told Stephen Lawrence’s mother she was being hacked

Stephen Lawrence’s mother has shared her “disbelief” after she was contacted by Prince Harry, who uncovered evidence she had been allegedly spied on by the Daily Mail.

Baroness Doreen Lawrence, a campaigner for reforms in the police service, has told the BBC that she was “floored” by what the Duke of Sussex discovered, as she is joining him and other public figures in suing the Daily Mail’s publisher, Associated Newspapers, at the High Court in London.

Associated Newspapers has denied claims that it hacked phones and called them “preposterous smears”.

Baroness Lawrence is one of six people, including Liz Hurley, Sir Elton John and politician Sir Simon Hughes, who brought legal action against Associated Newspapers in 2022.

She alleged the Daily Mail had illegally spied on her to gather information about the investigation into the 1993 murder of her son.

Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death aged 18 in a racist attack in Eltham, southeast London. The paper is accused of commissioning investigators to tap her home phone, hack her voicemails and monitor her bank accounts and phone bills.

Baroness Lawrence told the BBC that Prince Harry “was busy looking at his own case and then my name kept cropping up” and “felt that I should know about it”. She subsequently met lawyers Anjlee Sangani and David Sherborne, who told her she had been spied on.

She expressed her disbelief: “Why would anybody want to be listening to my calls, hacking into my phone?

“It just floors you, because you don’t expect that, but not somebody like me anyway,” she added. “You know, all I’m trying to do over the years is just to try and get justice for my son.”

The Independent contacted Associated Newspapers for comment.

The campaigner has said the paper had “added to the trauma” her family has gone through and called on the paper to issue a public apology over the allegations. Associated Newspapers is defending the legal action.

The High Court previously heard the campaigner had been “alerted” to a potential legal claim against the Daily Mail’s publisher by a text from the duke.

In July, a High Court judge asked Prince Harry must hand over documents that relate to alleged payments made for evidence in his legal claim.

A trial of the claims is expected to start in January and last for nine weeks.

If Britain’s dragged into war, this is who could be called up first

When news broke this week of Russian drones encroaching on Polish airspace, it was not only Warsaw and Brussels that jolted to attention. Across Europe, and here in the UK, the grim question has once again surfaced: how prepared would we be, really, if the unthinkable happened and a major war broke out on our continent? Nato chiefs have been blunt, warning that civilians must be ready to play their part. And that raises a sobering thought: if war came, would we actually have the manpower for battle? Who would fight, and how quickly could civilians become soldiers?

This question may sound abstract in Britain in 2025. We have become used to thinking of our armed forces as a lean, professional volunteer body – a far cry from the days of mass mobilisation. Yet events in Poland, and Nato’s warnings about civilian preparedness, remind us that conflicts in Europe can escalate with terrifying speed. If deterrence failed, Britain would be faced with the reality of having to field far more troops than our current army of just over 70,000 regular full-time personnel could muster.

I have seen with my own eyes how civilians can, with the right training, be turned into credible fighting men. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been leading Operation Interflex, a multinational training programme for Ukrainian soldiers, since 2022. Initially a basic combat course for civilians, it has evolved into a seven-week programme with advanced leadership and instructor training, tailored to the needs of the Ukrainian armed forces.

Last year, on a bleak training ground in southern England, I watched a squad of six young Ukrainians approach a dummy house. They moved silently, almost like dancers, flowing into positions they had drilled over and over. Within a minute, the “house” was cleared. This was no Hollywood shoot-’em-up. It was urban warfare training – cold, efficient, and absolutely real in its purpose.

These men were not career soldiers. Only weeks earlier, they had been IT technicians, digger drivers, postmen or students, about to enter into a programme that would transform them from civilians into fighters. On arrival, they were issued with 65 items of kit, shown their bunks, and plunged into 35 days of relentless instruction: weapons handling, trench warfare, battlefield first aid, mine clearance, urban combat. What takes between 12 and 18 weeks for a British recruit is condensed into little more than a month.

The effect is profound. As Lieutenant Colonel Wilson, who commands the Interflex Training Delivery Unit, told me: “They come out walking taller and prouder. We do the basics really well, and we’ve been doing this for a really long time.” A senior Ukrainian officer put it even more bluntly: “Our best recruits come from Interflex.”

I met Vlad, a 23-year-old IT technician who would soon be on the front line. He was tall, slim, handsome, and already carrying that thousand-yard stare soldiers often acquire after combat. He told me quietly that he had lost friends, but still volunteered because he had to defend his homeland. Then there was Vitalii, 25, a burly digger driver. He admitted the course was tough, but knew he would be better prepared because of it. Both young men were conscious that in just a few weeks they might be fighting – and dying – in Ukraine’s trenches. I have no idea today whether they are still alive.

That civilian-to-soldier pipeline is exactly what several European countries have institutionalised. Finland obliges nearly all young men to serve in the armed forces, with alternatives for conscientious objectors. Sweden, rattled by Russia’s aggression, reintroduced conscription in 2017. Poland, now directly threatened, has invested heavily in territorial defence forces and civilian training, and has sent 40,000 troops to be deployed on its eastern border as it prepares for Russia and Belarus’s huge spectacle of joint military drills, called Zapad 2025.

These European military schemes are not a nostalgic throwback but a pragmatic insurance policy: a way to ensure that if the balloon goes up, thousands already know how to fight.

Britain, by contrast, abandoned compulsory service in 1960. Back then, young men were called up for two years, with exemptions for certain professions and deferments for students. The system was often unfair – those with connections dodged more easily – but it created a vast pool of men with basic military training. Were we to contemplate something similar today, the debate would be about not just logistics, but fairness and consent.

In the Second World War, unmarried men aged 18 to 41 were the first to be drafted, with “reserved occupations” such as miners, doctors and clergy exempted. Women were conscripted, too, though typically for war work rather than combat.

In today’s Britain, any call-up would look very different. Gender neutrality would be essential, as Norway already demonstrates. Doctors, paramedics, cyber specialists, and energy workers might be kept out of combat but still obliged to serve. The key would be fairness: nothing corrodes morale faster than a sense that the privileged can buy their way out.

Sceptics argue that drones, AI and long-range missiles have rendered mass armies obsolete. Ukraine shows otherwise. Drones can spot the enemy, AI can crunch targeting data – but only human beings can clear a trench, hold a street, or sweep a house. That is why Ukraine keeps training civilians by the thousand. It is why Finland and Sweden maintain their drafts, and why Poland has shifted to a war-footing posture. Numbers matter. Without sufficient manpower, even the most sophisticated weapons are hollow assets.

If, heaven forbid, Britain were drawn into a major European war, how would we prepare? A plausible option is a selective form of national service: short, intense training cycles – perhaps six to nine months, or even a five-week Interflex-style model – creating a pool of reservists who could be recalled. A dual track would widen the net, with civilians trained for hospitals, logistics, cyber defence and emergency response as well as combat.

General Sir Patrick Sanders, the former Chief of the General Staff, has been clear. He warned that Britain must prepare for a “whole-of-nation undertaking” and that “Ukraine brutally illustrates that regular armies start wars; citizen armies win them”. His argument was not for blanket conscription, but for the foundations of a voluntary call-up if needed. That idea may be unpalatable, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss.

We should not be naive. Training civilians into soldiers is possible – I have seen it happen in five weeks – but it comes with costs. Lives are disrupted, studies postponed, careers derailed. Some are simply not suited for combat, and pushing them into it risks psychological damage. Politically, too, governments must be honest. This is not a rite of passage. It is preparation for horror. It is justified only by the gravest of threats, and only if administered fairly.

When I watched those young Ukrainians moving silently through a mock house in southern England, I realised how fine the line is between peace and mobilisation. One month, you are an IT technician or working on a building site; the next, you are clearing buildings and preparing for the possibility of death.

The events in Poland this week have reminded us that Europe is not immune to war. For Britain, the question is not only whether our jets can fly or our submarines sail, but whether we have the people ready – and if not, how quickly we would be able to train them. Interflex shows it can be done. The Ukrainians have proved it. The uncomfortable question is whether, if war did come, we would be willing to do the same.