Following Sam’s example I thought I should try to assess my own performance over the past year. From the moment we set up the substack it was clear that the big issue for me was going to be the Russian threat to Ukraine. I wrote five pieces in the period before the war and another 35 once it started. In the pre-war pieces the question was whether there was going to be a war and if so what form it might take. Once the war began the issue became one of its likely course. The big questions were - and sadly still are - about who was ‘winning’, how long the fighting would last and what it would take to bring it to an end, along with the risk of nuclear use and the economic dimensions of the war.