hello, i'm carl nasman. after months of stalling, the us house of representatives will finally move ahead with a vote on an aid package for ukraine — along with several other bills, including funding for israel and the indo—pacific. house speaker mikejohnson had delayed bringing legislation to the house floor amid republican opposition to funding for kyiv. his new proposed foreign aid package splits funding for israel, taiwan, and ukraine into three separate bills, with $61 billion in aid for ukraine and regional partners, $26 billion in support for israel, and $8 billion for taiwan and other us allies in the indo—pacific region. the bills are something house republican french hill would support, saying they're in america's national security. it's a fundamental tenet to improve national security. i would rather have training

dollars for 71—year—olds ukrainians going to be trained in germany to fight russians than my 25—year—old son be sent to europe to fight the russians. it is in our national security interest, our business and economic interest around the world to support our allies in the middle east, the indo pacific and in europe. saturday's vote will come with plenty of palace intrigue asjohnson is facing opposition from the right flank of his own party while some are threatening to oust him over the vote. but democrats like congressman tom souzzi expectjohnson to survive this weekend's vote. i am confident that ifjohnson does the right thing, which it appears he will do, and put these on the floor, more democrats will come to his aid. to stop marjorie taylor greene and matt gates and the others, tom massey, from kicking him out. meanwhile, early wednesday, a russian missile attack killed at least 17 people, in the northern

ukrainian city of chernihiv while more than 70 others were injured. ukraine's president volodymyr zelensky said the strike would not have happened "if ukraine had received sufficient air defence equipment." with american aid now hanging in the balance and its troops struggling on the battlefield, ukraine is facing a critical moment. my colleague sumi somaskanda sat down for an interview with the ukrainian prime minister denys shymal. we saw today the news the speaker of the house mike johnson released the details of a bill for support of funding for ukraine. around $61 billion of support. what do you think of this bill? first of all, thank you for having me here today. ukraine is continuing ourfight forfreedom and democratic values. we continue to protect european borders. the united states is one of the biggest supporters and investors in ukrainian economy and in ukrainian defence capacities. we are waiting so much for this draft law in one or other conditions which now are discussed in congress,

so we will be very grateful if it will be approved on saturday. we are waiting this for so much and especially our guys and girls on the front line. i can imagine you're watching closely the vote on saturday as well. did you receive any assurances from your conversations on capitol hill from lawmakers who say this will pass? did they tell you that? we have some conversations today. some conversations we will have tomorrow. all of the partners, all the congressmen, have very careful optimism for saturday, so we share this optimism and we need this money yesterday — not tomorrow, not today, but yesterday. we need this support, military support, yesterday, because the situation on the frontline is difficult enough. we need the support from our biggest partner, from united states.

at the same time, there are some republicans here in washington who are sceptical. they don't want this bill even to be brought to a vote. what is your message? if ukraine will fall, all the global system will fall and all the world will need to find and look into new system of security, or there will be many conflicts, many such kinds of wars. and at the end of the day, it could lead to a third world war. so our mutual task is to protect democratic values, to protect existing, after the second world war, global systems, global security systems, and break long—term and sustainable peace on european continent stops russia must lose this war and the aggressor should be punished.

the vladimir putin's regime should be destroyed. only these factors will lead us to the sustainable and long—term peace. i just want to follow up on that, we saw republican congressman mccoll say last week that he thinks that russia propaganda — he thinks it has infected some members of his party, that they are repeating that propaganda. what do you think of that? we shouldn't forget that russia is leading war on ukraine on the ground, but russia is leading war with the civilised world, with western countries, in the multidimensional spaces, cyberspace, propaganda, the information space, so in ukraine, we have war in the water, the ground, in the sky. all of this now brings us to these obstacles when we should understand that this information and propaganda is influencing

here in the united states and many people, such as in ukraine. we should count on this and we should make our work, we should fight against this absolutely unprovoked illegal action by russia. i want to move to the situation on the ground. we saw a russian strike in chernihiv that killed at least 17 people, and your president recently described the situation in dramatic terms. he said ukraine, "will lose the war if the world "doesn't act." he said that your forces ran out of missiles. that does sound dramatic. there was a strike on a key powerplant. how do you describe the situation on the front lines? unfortunately, russia continues its terroristic missiles and drones attack day by day, night by night. today in the morning,

they attacked civilian infrastructure — hotels and houses, civilian houses, and 16 people were killed by russians. 65 people were seriously injured, four children among them. this is, once again, another russian military crime in ukraine. we understand the situation on the frontline is difficult, but the most important message, "we are not exhausted, we are tired." it's natural because this is, we are waiting for ammunition to continue ourfight. we did see senior ukrainian officials who spoke anonymously to political — and they indicated they think the front lines in ukraine could collapse this summer when russia is expected to launch an offensive. it is a difficult question, but how close do you think ukraine is to actually possibly losing this war? we are fighting for our lives,

for our homes, for our land, our families. so i can't even imagine that we will lose this war. the truth is on our side. the support of all the civilised world is on our side. we have absolutely encouraged to go in to liberate our lands and we have everything we need. we need more ammunition, more weaponry and we will roll in and liberate metre by metre our land and our sea, and in the end i believe we will win this war together with our allies, our partners, together with united states and european union. your president is also calling for more air defences, saying this is absolutely critical, and he pointed to the way that israel was able to ward off the attack by air by iran. what do you think needs to happen most urgently to turn the tide?

priorities. you are absolutely right. we have a good example how air defence may and should work to protect human lives. first of all, we need air defence. it is crucial now. we need more air defence missiles and more air defence systems to protect ukrainian cities, to protect civilian infrastructure. don't let russians destroy our economy and push our people towards the next wave of migration of the refugees so this is number one, critical priority. we need this yesterday. the second very important priority is ammunition for artillery. this is something we are waiting on the frontline, what our guys and girls are asking us for and they say if we have enough, if it is balanced with russia, we will prevail. and the third very important thing is f—i6. we should protect our sky because now russia is prevailing in the sky.

they use only 300 airjets but, anyway, we have no—one. we need f—i6, and these three priorities are very important. defence experts who spoke to the bbc said that they believe russia's objective right now in this conflict is to create a sense of hopelessness in ukraine, to convince the west that this war is no longer worth it to support. do you think that is what russia is trying to do? thank you for this question. i think that russians are doing this since the first day of this full—scale war. they use all possible ways — propaganda, disinformation, internal and inside influences inside of ukraine, but i think that nothing can break ukrainian will to win this war, to liberate our land, to protect our families, so i think that it is impossible to win the war when you are aggressor and impossible to lose the war when you protect your families, your land.

it is enough ukrainian power and the ukrainian moral power to go — we need weaponry, ammunition and we will do ourjob. prime minister, thank you so much for the conversation. thank you so much. a bbc investigation reveals the death toll is rising on both sides of the fighting in ukraine. more than 50,000 russian soldiers have been killed so far in the war. the figure comes from ourjoint reporting with independent russian website mediazona, which managed to verify the identities of those killed and found that the figure is much higher than russian authorities in moscow admit. on wednesday, the kremlin responded to the bbc�*s report, neither confirming nor denying that figure of 50,000, saying it has laws on state secrets. bbc russian�*s 0lga ivshina reports.

in russia, the number of war graves is growing fast. "fifth of november. " "ninth of november." listing the dates of death, volunteers have sent us this video from the city of vladivostok. and here is the same cemetery from above. in the last two years, it has grown twice in size — a pattern seen in graveyards all over russia. since the start of the invasion, the bbc and its partners have been verifying photos of graves, social media posts and news articles to track down the number of russians killed fighting in ukraine. so far, we have verified 50,000 names. our data shows that russia has lost 23% more troops in the second year of invasion compared to the first. this increase reflects a shift in tactics. at first, russia relied on its professional soldiers deployed to carry out complex operations. but since january 2023,

russia began sending thousands of inexperienced troops forward in waves, to weaken ukrainian positions and expose their location to russian artillery. soldiers themselves call it the "meat grinder". the russians are now able to bring a lot more firepower to bear against ukrainian positions when they go into the offensive. as long as the ukrainians are unable to shift that balance of firepower, the meat grinder tactics will very likely continue to be quite successful in taking limited areas of ground across the front. prisoners, recruited and sent to war, have been crucial to these tactics. in return for six months on the front line, they were promised freedom — if they survived. we have tracked down more than 1,000 russian inmates from the day they signed up till the day they died. of that number, more than half the prisoners were killed

within just 12 weeks of arriving at the front line. while our account only includes deaths recorded publicly, data from cemeteries across russia suggests the true figure is likely to be twice as high. and as russian forces continue to push on, pictures of new graves keep coming every day. 0lga ivshina, bbc news. around the world and across the uk, this is bbc news. let's look at some other stories making news in the uk. members of the house of lords inflicted a second defeat on the government's plans to send some asylum seekers to rwanda. peers backed an amendment that would exempt afghan soldiers who served alongside british forces from being sent to the east african nation. the bill will now be sent back to the house of commons for further consideration. the scottish government is set to ditch its flagship target

of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2030. the final goal of reaching net—zero by 2045 will remain, but the bbc understands the government's annual climate targets could also go. ministers have have been told that reaching the target by the end of the decade is unachievable. hugh grant has settled a privacy case against a british newspaper publisher. the actor claimed journalists from the sun used private investigators to tap his phone and burgle his house. news group newspapers had denied wrongdoing. grant said he'd been offered an "enormous sum" to stop the case going to trial, but insisted he'd been forced to accept the money. you're live with bbc news. returning now to a busy day on capitol hill, and the democratic—controlled senate has dismissed the impeachment case against homeland security secretary alejandro mayorkas. in a party—line vote delayed by several procedural objections, the senate swept aside the two articles of impeachment that alleged mayorkas mismanaged

the us southern border, wilfully refusing to comply with the law and breached public trust. in february, mayorkas became the first cabinet secretary to be impeached in nearly 150 years. democrats have condemned house republicans, saying the procedure was used to solve policy disagreements. i spoke to luke broadwater, congressional correspondent for the new york times, about how this all played out. this was a trial that was almost over before it started. are you surprised about how quickly this took place and how quickly these two articles of impeachment were dismissed by the senate? no, it was perhaps the worst—kept secret in washington that the senate democrats planned to dismiss this case pretty quickly. they did not see this as a valid impeachment attempt. in the past, impeachment has been used for corruption,

the us constitution states it is to be used for high crimes and misdemeanours and specifically mentions treason and bribery. there is nothing close to that i was alleged against the homeland security secretary mayorkas. the republican case against him came down to that they believed he was failing at his job to secure the border, which is very different than being involved in corruption or bribery or something like that. we heard the figure that this was the first cabinet secretary in almost 150 years to be impeached. remind us how unprecedented this moment was? it is highly unusual. the last cabinet secretary to be impeached was in the 1870s, and that was a corruption scandal, and the secretary of the navy and he resigned before the impeachment. there was nothing like that alleged even close

to that here. in many ways this plays to a new reality on a capitol hill, which is that impeachment has become extremely politicised and is now used as a part of that weapon, perhaps by both parties. the republicans wanted to do an impeachment to get back at the democrats for impeaching former president donald trump. they do not have the vote to impeach president biden so they went after the homeland security secretary, he was an easier target. now there is worry that if the chambers flip, there will be payback on the other side as well. i want to ask you, what does this do for impeachment itself? does this become less of a scarlet letter if a politician were to be impeached? does it lessen the stain on somebody? it is pretty clear now that impeachment has been devalued in america. it used to be people are impeached when there

was a big uprising against them across the country, they did something really bad and both parties could agree they deserved impeachment. now, as we see, it is breaking down along party lines, something republicans want to do because the democratic administration and the democrats want to dismiss it quickly. i assume if the parties change hands and we have donald trump back in the white house in the house controlled democrats, they will then impeach him rather quickly as well, you will will see a similar scenario play out where now this has become a partisan tool and america is not what it used to be, another the calls for it to be. what do you see happening next? how will this dismissal, the saga in general, affect mayorkas and his ability to do hisjob and whether or not we will see any meaningful action

in congress over the situation at the border? what is interesting is mayorkas has essentially ignored this whole proceeding. he has gone about his dayjob, rarely commented on it. he negotiated a border bill with republicans, with senate republicans while the investigation into him was going on. he has always pretended it is not happening, and i asked him what he planned to do, how he going to celebrate now that he had been essentially acquitted of the charges, and he said he would essentially continue to ignore it and keep going about hisjob. i don't think it will have that much impact on him, but they are trying to get some sort of a border deal to fix the problems at the border, and that does not seem like it will happen any time soon, given the deep divisions between the two parties in america.

luke broadwater. our new york times correspondent across all the news taking place today on capitol hill, thank you very much forjoining us. israel's allies continue to take action after last weekend's attacks by iran. leaders from the european union have agreed to impose new sanctions on iran's drone and missile producers over tehran�*s unprecedented weekend attack on israel. it comes one day after the us announced its own sanctions on iran. but allies are also urging israel to exercise restraint in its response, as the british foreign secretary david cameron stressed during a meeting with israel's prime minister on wednesday. we wanted to demonstrate our solidarity with israel because it was an appalling attack by iran, but to be clear, we have repeated our view that any response should be smart and that should be designed in a way that is going to limit and try to de—escalate this conflict. nobody wants to see this conflict grow and spread.

the 2024 paris 0lympics get under way in 100 days�* time. almost 8 million tickets have been sold for games. the last batch went on sale today. the president of the organising committee says there'll be unprecedented security at the sporting venues, but he is "very satisfied" with preparations for the event. 0ur sports editor dan roan sent this report from paris. the view from the top of paris's most famous landmark is changing, 0lympic venues springing up across the city as the biggest event france has ever organised looms into view, with almost 8 million tickets already sold. paris is getting transformed into an olympic park. as you can see, most of our most iconic venues are going to be hosting some of the major events. the stands are being built. i think our city is ready to welcome you and the athletes. we were granted access to one of the most spectacular sports venues being built for the games — preparations gathering pace with just 100 days to go.

this will be the playing surface for the beach volleyball competition. this 13,000 seater arena, a temporary venue, is rapidly taking shape. and as you can see, the setting couldn't be any more iconic. but at a time of high geopolitical tension and in a country that has seen extremist attacks, there are mounting safety concerns — especially over the unprecedented opening ceremony, with athletes set to sail along a stretch of the seine on barges. it will be well—organised. the man in charge of delivering the games told me he was remaining confident. security is the top priority. from day one, we put in place an unprecedented system. can you guarantee that an event that's open on the river is safe? yes. there is this expertise coming from the public authorities. i trust when they say "we know how to deliver an opening ceremony "on the river seine." despite such assurances this week french president emmanuel macron admitted the opening ceremony may have to move from the river

if the security risk is deemed too high. do you wish it was a different world that this was being staged in? we should not be too naive. and we know that people will try to benefit from this media exposure. but, again, it's up to us to remain calm and to promote and defend what is the most important in this event, and for me, it's sport. 0rganisers say the games will help to regenerate the suburb of saint—denis, home to the main stadium and athletes�* village, and one of the poorest and most diverse parts of the country. but some who live here have doubts about its legacy. it would be very complicated to travel. maybe for two months, there will be some jobs, but it won't last. will it change the everyday life of the inhabitants? i don't think so. despite concerns over swimming events in the seine due to pollution, organisers claim paris will set a new model of sustainability for future 0lympics

with 95% of the games in existing or temporary infrastructure. but with the final countdown under way, a successful event will depend on delivering on all fronts. dan roan, bbc news. an incredible setting for the olympics, just 100 days away. 0lympics, just 100 days away. we hand over now to our colleagues in london. stay with us more coming up, on bbc news. hello. slowly, but surely, the weather is going to turn a little bit drier, but not an awful lot warmer as we head towards the end of the week. high pressure is tantalizingly close — sitting to the west of the uk, but still far enough away that weather systems can move in around the top of that area of high pressure, bringing cloud, bringing outbreaks of rain. that's exactly what we're going to see through the day on thursday ahead of that cold, frosty start, but we will see some spells of sunshine.

that will hold on across southern counties of england, but further north, it's a story of increasing clouds, some outbreaks of rain. rain for a good part of the day across scotland, some patchy rain for northern ireland. temperatures just a little bit up on where they have been recently, 8 to 15 degrees. now, through thursday night, we'll see clouds and increasingly light and patchy rain pushing southwards. behind that, a northerly wind kicks in — a mix of clear spells and showers to take us into the first part of friday. so this weather system easing its way through, clearing southwards with northerly winds behind. you can see quite a few isobars squeezing together on the chart, particularly across the northeast of scotland. so, here, it is going to be windy through the day on friday, particularly around some coasts. it's a day of sunny spells and showers. some of the showers could be on the heavy side, perhaps the showers most frequent across the eastern half of the uk, not as many showers further west. temperatures, 6 to 8 degrees in northern scotland, elsewhere, 11 to 15 degrees. now, into the weekend, this area of high pressure

finally makes its move, building across the uk. but brisk winds still affecting eastern coastal counties with potentially quite a lot of cloud, maybe even some showery rain. best chance of any sunshine out towards the west. that's where we'll have the highest of the temperatures, up to around 13, 1a degrees. but it will actually be quite chilly for some eastern parts, particularly for north sea coasts. now, as we get into sunday, again, we'll see clouds, some showery rain perhaps spinning a little bit further west this time. the lowest temperatures always closest to these north sea coast, maybe some places stuck in single digits, 11 for newcastle and for hull. but further west, with some sunshine, northern ireland could see the highest temperatures, 16, maybe 17 degrees. nothing particularly warm in the outlook for next week. 0ften dry, there will be some showers.

voice-over: this is bbc news. we will have the headlines for you at the top of the hour, which is straight after this programme. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. israel, backed by the us and other allies, showed just

how effective air defences can be when faced with a missile barrage from iran. imagine, then, how ukraine is feeling right now. day after day, russia is targeting ukrainian cities and infrastructure with missiles and drones. kyiv�*s air defences are too few, too depleted to neutralise the threat. my guest is former ukrainian prime minister arseniy yatsenyuk. is air defence a symptom of a wider malaise, that ukraine lacks the backing it needs to defy russia's war machine?

arseniy yatsenyuk in kyiv, welcome to hardtalk.