Britain’s new government has a “split personality”, says William Hague in The Times. Dominating today’s front pages is its “humiliating” U-turn over a “reckless mini-Budget”. But on foreign policy, Liz Truss’s government has proved itself to be pragmatic, careful, and eager to “defuse problems in advance”. The same government that can’t resist embarking on “unnecessary and unwinnable battles at home” has made a concerted effort to improve relations with Dublin and announced fresh talks with the EU over Northern Ireland. On Thursday, the PM will attend President Macron’s “cherished” launch of a wider European political community, having wisely let him persuade her in New York.

If Vladimir Putin decides to fire a nuclear weapon at Ukraine, says Lewis Page in The Sunday Telegraph, he can’t just press the button himself. He would first have to seek agreement from the Russian General Staff, the high command of the country’s armed forces. And there’s no guarantee the top brass would play ball. If they don’t feel the threshold for taking nuclear action has been reached – that a conventional war being waged on Russia threatens “the very existence of the state”, for example – they can block the order. That decision will largely fall to one man: the Chief of the General Staff, Army-General Valery Gerasimov.