In your briefing today:

📣 Prime Minister Andy Burnham hopes to find “common ground” with US President Donald Trump during a visit to the United Nations in New York today. The pair are in the city for an annual gathering of world leaders - Burnham will also deliver a speech to the UN on the opportunities and dangers of AI.

On the overnight flight over the Atlantic, Burnham told reporters he has spoken twice to Trump since becoming PM. "We've found a connection. So, I will go with where I feel it's right, to meet him where he is at, and search for that common ground, which I'm sure we'll find," he said. "I'm looking forward to it." (BBC)

📣 First Minister John Swinney is said to have expressed “anger and frustration” at SNP grassroots members who have publicly criticised the lack of action on Scottish independence.

Swinney used a meeting of the SNP’s ruling body, the National Executive Committee, on Saturday to chastise those who had publicly shared their concerns.

“The Herald was told the attempt to stop SNP members from speaking to the press was similar to Nicola Sturgeon shutting down concerns over party finances during a leaked NEC meeting in 2021,” Rebecca McCurdy reports. (The Herald has the exclusive)

📣 The much-anticipated Wargame, in which Michael Gove pretends to be Prime Minister and Nicola Sturgeon his deputy, arrived on our screens last night: the reviews of the first episode of the Channel 4 series are in…

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📣 Plans to reduce the number of Scottish councils to just six regional bodies have been unveiled by the Scottish Government - although they’d be supplemented by up to 160 “community authorities”, in a new two-tier system of local government. (Holyrood)

📣 “Free” universal services, including prescriptions, tuition fees and bus fares, now cost more than £5 billion a year. (Mail)

📣 There are 8,998 criminal suspects on the run from justice in Scotland, wanted for offences from murder and rape to domestic violence and drugs. (Daily Record)

📣 Scottish ministers are having a tricky return to work: after last week’s difficulties for Stephen Flynn and Collete Stevenson, rural affairs secretary Gillian Martin had to be made aware the government owns 10% of Scotland’s crofts. (Sun)

📣 Flights in the UK were disrupted by another technical glitch at the air traffic control operator National Air Traffic Services (NATS), with pressure mounting on the organisation’s chair and chief executive. (Mail)

📣 Andy Burnham has confirmed the RAF will be sent to help defend Saudi Arabia against the Houthis in Yemen. (Telegraph)

📣 “Martha’s rule” - which gives patients and their families the right to demand a second opinion on hospital care - is to be expanded to every A&E in England. (Guardian)

📣 One in five working-age adults are on Universal Credit, new figures show. (Times)

⚽️ The fallout from Sunday’s Old Firm continues to drift around Scottish football. Rangers are bathing in the second win over their old rivals in a week: on the other side of Glasgow, there’s open speculation about Martin O’Neill, and whether he’s the right man to lead Celtic on.

⚽️ Scotland coach Sebastien Pocognoli has drafted in Blackburn midfielder Kristi Montgomery after Kenny McLean and Kieran Tierney both pulled out. (Scotsman)

🏉 New Edinburgh defence coach Brad Davis believes fans will see a different Edinburgh side on the field this season. (Scotsman)

🗣️ Yesterday’s Early Line noted another weekend of dark warnings about what Russia is up to: about its desire to escalate the Ukraine conflict beyond its existing borders, to more deeply involve Europe, and test the Nato alliance.

Much of it was written as if all this was yet to happen. But experts are now warning we’re already in the middle of an escalation: it’s happening now, if we care to look, and our political leaders will be forced to decide how to react before long.

First: the evidence of an escalating campaign. Russia has long run shadowy operations across Europe, apparently scattergun in approach and hard to pin back directly on the Kremlin, even if foiled or successfully investigated. As the Guardian reported 18 months ago, Russia has long been setting stores and warehouses alight across Europe.

But things have escalated in the last two months, after a summer in which Vladimir Putin was reported to have been mulling whether to stick or twist with his “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine. The conclusion has been that, in order to save his own life, he’s decided to plough on.

“Mr Putin may express his aims in the language of geopolitics, but in fact he is guided by criminal logic: never show weakness,” The Economist (£) reports. “He may believe that failure to achieve even his minimum goal, taking all of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, would put him physically at risk. (‘They will hang me,’ he told cronies at one point during the war, according to an insider.)”

One Madrid-based analyst, exiled Russian Egor Kuroptev, says that earlier this year there was an “intra-elite struggle” between two groups at the top of Russian power: one that wants a strategic pause, to preserve economic stability, and one that wants permanent war, because war has become “an organising principle of the state”.

The balance, reports Kuroptev, has shifted against the advocates of a pause.

That means an August campaign across Europe - reports the BBC, a drone was found at Leipzig airport on 4 August, followed by fires at defence firms and warehouses in Bulgaria, Italy and Estonia. On the 25th, Slovakian police said they’d averted an arson attack on a drone manufacturer, and on the 30th there were two more suspicious fires in Poland.

What’s the purpose of all this? Analysts are divided. Some say Putin doesn’t want a direct confrontation with NATO; he wants to warn it off offering too much support for Ukraine.

Others, in effect, remind us all that politics are local, and Putin will do what is necessary to remain in power in Moscow. Failure, for him, doesn’t come via the ballot box: it would be a form of regime change more brutal than that. Thus, as one analysis has it, “The war is not governed by rational international relations nor conventional military strategy; it is governed by the political theory of autocracy and regime survival.

“An autocrat stays in power only as long as the coalition of elites around him believes he can still deliver what their loyalty is based on, whether it is revenue or victory. When that breaks, the elites that sustain an autocrat move against him.”

Thus, the attacks serve as “coercive signalling”, pressuring countries and attempting to deter support for Ukraine while also testing their resolve to defend themselves.

Might we see an attempt to invade one or more Baltic countries? We’ve read a lot about those nations’ preparations for war.

But the Atlantic Council thinks those fears are based on a poor understanding of the security situation the Baltic - in brief, it would be too difficult for Russia to encroach on their well-defended territory, especially as it fights its brutal war in Ukraine.

Rather than obsessing over the idea of a possible Russian land incursion, suggests the Council’s James Rice, European security analysts think more about the diverse threats posed by Russia and their escalation. “In parallel, it is crucial to keep the focus firmly on maintaining support for Ukraine,” he writes.

“Vladimir Putin only understands the language of strength. Failure to push back against increasing Russian provocations will only embolden Moscow and encourage further escalation. The Baltic states understand Russian realities better than most and have plenty of proposals for steps to effectively counter the Kremlin. Whether the rest of Europe can muster the necessary political will remains to be seen.”

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