In your briefing today:

📣 Ukraine will resume attacks on Russian oil refineries, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, after a visit to London in which he was highly critical of the US’s withdrawal of intelligence support and Starlink satellite internet service, during a period of fierce Russian attacks. (FT) (Independent)

📣 The SNP kicks off its annual conference today in Aberdeen, with the party promising the biggest pro-independence campaign since 2014 to persuade the country of the merits of independence. (Herald)

📣 Comedian Russell Brand is a ruthless “sexual predator” who was pursuing a “goal” of sleeping with 5,000 women, a court was told yesterday at the opening of a trial at Southwark Crown Court in London.

Brand, now 51, is accused of three counts of rape, three sexual assaults and one charge of indecent assault against six women between 1999 and 2009, at the peak of his fame. He denies all the charges.

The court heard that as Brand's acting career took off and he became a Hollywood movie star, he was able to commit sex attacks in plain sight, with a complaint by one woman ignored by TV executives. (Mirror)

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📣 Plans to force civil servants to work from the office at least twice a week are “unworkable”, a union leader has warned. Managers have not been given guidance on how to make the policy work, they claim. (Herald has the exclusive)

📣 Another day, another barrage of complaints about shabby Edinburgh Airport and its arrivals experience. Dozens of businesspeople have branded the airport “woefully inadequate” for its baggage delays and shabby “back door” entrances. (Scotsman)

📣 A body has been found in the search for three men who were onboard a fishing boat that went missing off the Western Isles: a local councillor has said it was a “very dark day” for islanders. (BBC)

📣 Barack Obama was on stage in Glasgow last night: he told a packed Hydro arena that the world was in danger of forgetting the lessons of the Second World War and the Holocaust. (Scotsman)

📣 The UK has threatened to ban all Eritreans from entering the country if the African country does not accept more returns of small boat migrants and offenders. (BBC)

📣 Donald Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, had a tough start this week, and it may get worse: intrigue is growing over her claim to be a lawyer. (AP)

📣 Author Sally Rooney says she is being forced to withdraw her books from the UK because of her support for the banned organisation, Palestine Action. (Guardian)

⚽️ Wags might have called it the United Arab Emirates vs Qatar derby, but Manchester City v Paris Saint-Germain managed to rise, as a piece of sport, above the questions of how it was all being paid for thanks to PSG’s outstanding first half hour.

City staged a comeback of sorts to end the game 2-4 losers: the question is if any side in Europe can halt this impressive PSG side. (Report & 🎥 highlights)

⚽️ Aston Villa notched up the biggest win in their European history with a 6-0 victory over Turkey’s Fenerbahce. (Report & 🎥 highlights)

⚽️ Liverpool’s Bradley Barcola silenced critics with his first-ever hat-trick in a faintly chaotic 6-3 win over Austria's LASK. (Report & 🎥 highlights)

⚽️ We finally get some Scottish clubs in European action tonight: Celtic in the Europa League, and Hearts in the Conference League. Both play at 8pm, although some other fixtures in Europe kick off at 5.45pm.

🗣️ The Scottish National Party’s annual conference gathers in Aberdeen today with elements of the ruling party in fractious mood.

You might expect the event to be celebratory. The SNP comfortably won May’s Holyrood elections, seeing off the rise of Reform and relegating Scottish Labour to its worst-ever Scottish election result.

But it did not secure a majority of seats - a threshold John Swinney said would be the mandate for another Scottish independence referendum - and some party members are unsure where the party now stands on its raison d’etre of independence, or how it plans to achieve that goal.

In short, John Swinney’s “gradualist” approach to independence is coming under pressure from an impatient wing of his party.

The National newspaper’s letters page this week gives a taste of that frustration. One reader - Alan Crocket, from Glasgow - writes that the decision to fight the election seeking a majority of seats as a mandate was “foolish” because it wasn’t really a mechanism at all, despite claims it would place a legally enforceable obligation on London to grant a second referendum.

“No precedent applies, and no legal mechanism exists to compel London to allow an indyref,” he writes.

Crocket calls Swinney’s failure to run on “the appropriate extremely brief manifesto”, presumably one that simply calls for independence and nothing else, a “dereliction of the first order”.

But Crocket writes in frustration rather than expectation of change: some members may share his suggestion that Swinney should face some sort of leadership challenge, but it seems unlikely the First Minister will face a challenge to his leadership anytime soon.

Instead, suggests Simeon Kerr in the FT, the nature of the talk might shift - from the “how” of independence to the “why”. He quotes Alex Kerr, the party’s national secretary, who tells him: “We need to answer all the questions of what an independent Scotland could look like, which moves us on from the process argument. […] This is crucial.”

The party has set aside £100,000 for a “hearts and minds” pro-independence campaign to “get the message out across Scotland,” Kerr tells the title.

The implication is clear: the SNP believes that only by better explaining the “why” can it deliver the election results and pro-independence polling, over time, that create an unstoppable moral force for a second referendum.

That is all, one suspects, a little vague for the likes of Toni Giugliano, the former SNP official who has lobbied hard for a clearer path to independence.

Over the summer, he put forward a proposal for this week’s conference with a three-point plan to break the referendum deadlock: a Constitutional Convention to agree a “democratic, lawful and credible mechanism for Scotland to determine its constitutional future”, an independence campaign to build support, and a plan to fight the next UK General Election as a constitutional election - one where the SNP fights on a single issue.

“Sadly,” wrote Giugliano in The National, “despite being backed by [SNP] branches across Scotland, it didn't even make it onto the provisional long-list of motions.”

So, for now at least, Swinney’s gradualists will hold the floor. In a droll column in the Herald, Kevin McKenna offers an imaginary script for the First Minister’s speech: “Delegates; I’m here to talk about independence. If necessary, I will continue to talk about independence until the cows come home.

“And so, I say this to you: the SNP will never stop talking about independence. We are the only party that can be relied upon to talk about independence.”

Meanwhile, an independence group within the independence party will launch this evening. A new fringe group called Independence will hear from Giugliano and Lesley Riddoch, the pro-indy writer, who want a focus on driving another referendum rather than winning elections.

Talk, at least for some SNP members, may not be enough for much longer.

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