russia's invasion has caused death and destruction in ukraine, but it's also doing some terrible things to russia itself. remember august of last year whenjoe biden announced that us troops were pulling out of afghanistan? it looked like clear evidence of america's reduced standing in the world. a country led by a weak elderly president unwilling to bear the burden of leading a superpower and apparently unaware of the disaster he was unleashing on millions of afghans who had relied on america to help them. we'll go back to afghanistan later in this programme. but the whole affair seemed to show that there'd been a major power shift in the world. and surely this belief in america's weakness must have played a part in vladimir putin's thinking as he took the huge gamble