how is russia's war against ukraine changing, what will the next year of full-scale war be like? we talk about this on bbc news ukraine live from london, i'm evgenia shedlovska. despite the high expectations of a counteroffensive in 2023 , there were no major events at the front. what's next for ukraine? the year of strategic defense, as some observers believe, well, brigadier general oleksandrnavskyi says, next year may be more difficult, and here is why: war is development, it should not remain in place, i will say frankly, yes, the russians are very they learn well from our mistakes, from their own mistakes, but what the russians take, the russians take with their numbers, their masses, human masses, this is theirs, this is what they do very well. strategic defense

instead of a counteroffensive is what western observers say about ukraine's future tactics at the front, while the war has turned into a positional one, and neither side can conduct a major operation. in general, the front line has not changed significantly this year, so the occupied territories of ukraine are marked in red on this map. the summer counteroffensive did not bring expected results, in particular because ukraine did not receive the necessary weapons in a timely manner, this is what the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of ukraine valery zaluzhny previously wrote about, and regarding the forecasts for 2024, general zaluzhny speaks with restraint, he says, they are doing everything to make the next year different from this one. brigadier general oleksandr tarnavskyi also says this, but he suggests that the next year may be more difficult than this one, because , according to him, the russians are a strong enemy, there are many of them, and they learn very quickly. and will do everything

to prevent ukraine from achieving its main goal: vacate the occupied territories, go to the borders. general ternavskyi shared his assessment of the situation at the front with us in an interview. we will show a fragment of this conversation, but first let me remind you, who is oleksandr ternavskyi? he commands the operational-strategic grouping of tavria troops, this is a difficult part of the front, on which such hot spots as avdiyivka, maryinka, robotine are now, it was general ternavskyi who led the counteroffensive. who freed the right bank of the kherson region from occupation in 2022, for which president zelenskyy then in just liberated kherson awarded him with an order, this very moment of awarding is in the photo. in general, general ternavskyi rarely communicates with journalists, so this is one of the few interviews he gave during the full-scale war, and my colleague oksana torop spoke with him. we would like to talk about the situation in your direction, but tell us in detail what is happening, what are the

cleanest points right now in your area of ​​responsibility? well, the situation in our direction is correspondingly tense and complicated. the enemy activated almost along the entire battle line aligning their actions, are directly aware that its strategic goal is liquidation. of ukrainian statehood, that is why the russian leadership wants to somehow directly implement all those intentions by the end of this year, at a minimum, this is the capture of the settlement of avdiyivka, and a more ambitious goal is to enter the administrative territories of the donetsk luhansk region and recapture it. in

the whole territory in these areas in these areas, you mentioned avdiivka, there, we know that the situation is difficult there, there was information that reinforcements were sent there literally in the last few days, but is it so, and what is happening there now? to date, for the third month now, the enemy is asking to crush, so to speak, our defenses, to push them out by creeping. what is so massive due to the constant replenishment of his losses, he does not feel sorry for both people and directly, losing his weapons and military equipment, so i will not say that he is today or yesterday, he is constantly increasing his efforts. and how serious is the threat of the environment now in avdiivka? well, you know, i'm at war, there's nothing serious there or a serious situation. it is always this

situation that exists today, and not only around avdiyivka. in avdiivka , the efforts of mainly the enemy are simply concentrated there. in two directions, and yes, we have other areas where the enemy does not leave his intentions, in general, the offensive is carried out by the enemy today and in the direction of the main strike, in other directions, distracting directions, so today, he today concentrated a large number of personnel composition, but i will tell you, with that force and means, it was possible to achieve better successes, that is, i think that... our soldiers are confidently conducting defensive actions, by the way, i want to say actively, if we lose a piece of terrain somewhere, we take immediate response measures to, so to speak, improve or return that piece of terrain that was lost. as for maryanka,

we have seen photos from drones, the city is practically destroyed, i understand that the russians control most of it, is there any point in keeping maryanka, we are defending ours today. land, today we have to fight for every centimeter of our land, and not by road there is stupidity there or the elimination of our personnel, skillful actions, maneuvering , fire, movement, misleading the enemy , so today the question does not arise, whether to withdraw there or something else, we are clearly aware today, today, if somewhere is destroyed, or somewhere does not give the opportunity for us, first of all , to preserve the personnel, then we... survive all the measures to ensure that it was , you know, how to say correctly, probably not at any cost, that is why the situation is like this today, well, maryanka, yes, you are right , marenko is an opponent he practically wiped it off the ground. well, now

there is a lot of talk about the results of the counteroffensive, that they are not as expected and so on, general zaluzhny talked about the fact that nato calculations based on nato textbooks are no longer ... so relevant, the secretary of the national security and defense council advised to send all these nato textbooks to archives, in your opinion, what went wrong, that the counteroffensive did not give the results that everyone expected, about which everyone talked so loudly, at the beginning of the counteroffensive, they also talked a lot, during the offensive , they also talked about everything and continue to talk, well this is the work of those officials who must... must, must say, our work as soldiers is to perform the relevant tasks. we understand that the main task, one of the main, one of the main reasons is a well- prepared defense. i will say that the enemy was preparing, and i repeat that this is one of the strongest

armies in the world, its defense consisted and consists not of one, but of several lines of defense. the enemy built these defensive lines directly in more than one month, during which he was preparing, during the period during which we were preparing for offensive actions, therefore you understand that intelligence works around the clock, the enemy used his strengths, this is manpower, this is minefields, this is prepared, prepared positions. as well as the readiness to throw his personal staff to death without pity. the advantage in aviation, the very high density of minefields, this is the saturation, probably,

of the enemy's battle formations, anti-tank weapons, electronic warfare weapons, and strike drones, as well as, accordingly,... the impossibility of our full use of armored vehicles, which made it difficult these immediate active advances of ours , also affected the speed of direct offensive actions, the most important thing is that our warrior was not afraid and he did what he was supposed to do, yes, it was slower, a lot slower than we saw it in previous wars, did we read in the books , what we were told, that is why the emphasis was placed today, that what was before is clearly expressed today on the battlefield, today tactics are changing, today the ratio of the power of means is changing, today

the means of influence are changing, like an army that is advancing, and on the troops that are defending , work has been intensified today directly, these are radioelectrons, these... thrones, these are kamikats, this is observation, this, you understand, this, this is the war of the future, but today we all learn from these mistakes, uh, they do conclusions, but i will say that... we may not have overcome those defined depths, but we have made a step that today gives us inspiration for our further offensive actions, i am sure of this, and how is the behavior of the russians in general changing in this war, it's been almost two years of full-scale invasion, something may surprise you, something they have learned, something that has changed, that's how you can assess, war is a development, it... it should not stay in place, i'll be honest, yes, the russians are very good at learning from

our mistakes , on their mistakes, but what do the russians take, the russians take with their numbers, their masses, human masses, this is theirs, this is what they do very well, but i say that they will not spare their human resources, they will continue to perform those tasks , who are standing in front of them, although they do not really understand that in some areas they are lose their combat potential. theirs and theirs and where - they especially do not have a moral and mental state at a very low low level. now we can say that the russian army dominates us a lot, so to speak, it learns from our means, it learns quickly and, you know, it probably adapts, maybe engages, copies

our actions, which are more effective here , because you know how smaller in number, but qualitative, the enemy is now going for the quality that we use today, even our tactical actions, the enemy takes weapons, during the same assault operations in the trenches, when approaching those trenches. i will say that somewhere - for example, very similar, very similar, they began to carry out attacks in groups, detachments, platoon, somewhere in this chain, with the support of two, at most four armored armored vehicles, somewhere, well, somewhere, somewhere yes, of course, there remains also... massed, er , massed infantrymen, so-called meat assaults,

i consider it, it is only, only so, but they also have a drawback, so to speak, and this is a huge loss of life strength, and their losses, well, i'll say three, five, and even more in some areas, well, you talk a lot with the military, what can you say about their morale, because well... now there are so many problems, and demobilization, it is not known when it will be, and conflicts in the top leadership , zelenskyi with zuluzhnyi and so on, how the military generally perceives all this, what they say, what they think about it all, first of all , the army is a politician, it is outside the political, so to speak, those i don't see the negotiations that the politicians are doing around the army there, i don't see them at all problems, that somewhere there are clashes between one and another official, it's neither me, nor my military... regarding morale, morale, yes, some people lose, some we don't

support, and that is, the concept of such support is psychological, you understand, somewhere somewhere there is help, moral help, somewhere we are tired, we carry out the relevant works in order to , well, suggest, support, this is the support of a comrade, this is the support of his loved ones, which works very well, that is why even today we... well, how do we deal with these issues leave, leave is given to the personnel, somewhere rest, yes, when there is a tense situation where today everyone who is able to complete the task must be a group , you know, it is easier for a father to be a group, for all the situations that are happening around there, you know, this is not our issue, because, as they say , we have no problems, you can also read an exclusive interview with general ternavskyi on our website bbc.ua and you can watch the full version of the conversation on the bbc news youtube channel. ukraine. that's all, until tomorrow.

greetings to everyone watching. chiv espresso, thank you for being with us, thank you for the opportunity to be with you, my name is khrystyna yatskiv and it is the day before one of the biggest christian holidays - christmas. we have the great honor to be here and have the opportunity to talk with the father and head of the ukrainian greek catholic church, his beatitude svyatoslav shevchuk. greetings everyone, christ was born, let's praise him. well, it's your holiday, you and i finally have

an opportunity to talk about major christian holidays and not feel the time. gap as much as it was before, so with the difference in calendars, in dates and different readings. most christians in ukraine, in the end, are united now in one date, in one stream, of love, i hope that this is our great achievement, not only ecclesiastical, perhaps even national, that we were able to reach this point, what possible steps we still have to take should be done in this direction. well really, uh, christmas is special this year, why? because we shine it together. together , not only orthodox catholics, greek catholics, but also protestant brothers, together, er, as believers in ukrainian society, and also together with the whole world. is,

it is so important for us to feel unity, togetherness and solidarity among ourselves, in particular. in such difficult circumstances of the war, i can honestly say that this decision was very special, i think, both on the part of our orthodox brothers and our synod of bishops, we somehow felt that the moment had come, so theologically we call it kairos, this wave , which the lord god gave us , we were waiting for it, maybe for centuries, er ... our people, our predecessors, we also felt that if we had done it a year or six months sooner, it would have been much faster, uh, if six months later, it would have been too late, we did it very, very in time, and really, uh, we really wanted to feel how our people would react,

our believers in ukraine, in particular, you know what the reaction was... styna with great joy, out of all our parishes, only one parish in ukraine asked for permission to remain on the old calendar for a while longer, and this is one of our communities in the kharkiv region, well, the whole church accepted it as something very natural, and why our people is grateful to the church leaders who dared to undertake this reform. therefore, thank god, we have christmas, christmas together, a christmas that is a sign of solidarity, unity, of the internal ukrainian people, and a celebration of the unity of the whole world with us, us with the whole world. but we cannot lose sight of the christians in ukraine who, for various reasons, i would like

to emphasize, still remain faithful. the ukrainian orthodox church of the moscow patriarchate, the russian orthodox church, and we have to understand people who, again, have different motives for staying, and it's not always love for the russian federation, it's still not understanding moments of canonicity, for example , of the orthodox church of ukraine, how quickly tomos... that was recently, here is a century-long history, history, some simply find it difficult to accept the new circumstances and go to meet him, but together with how we in our country , now, which is very polarizing, in a political, social sense, we see what is happening, two years of war, it's just

hard, and people feel it, and very often this kind of anger is already starting... against each other just somewhere to splash out more than necessary, how we all these processes harmoniously to experience and accept, to wait for those christians who are still somewhere in their thoughts, well, maybe i will start with the first accent that you mentioned, indeed, war is a tragedy, and it marks all of us deeply... with trauma, perhaps until the end, we have not yet realized to ourselves what features of our personal life, the life of our society are known... by this reality. we all feel growing pains. the first reaction to the crimes of the russian aggressor is

hatred. how to deal with those feelings? we have been thinking about it, talking about it since the very beginning of this war, but we see that these problems are deepening. and today, uh,... every priest who tries to build the unity of his parish, i think, our public leaders, political figures who feel certain trends in society, feel new lines of tension that are being built, which are not connected ee with whether a person lives in a russian-speaking region of ukraine or a ukrainian-speaking one, whether it is... orthodox, whether it is catholic, new lines of tension are built on the basis of personal experience of the tragedy of the war, here we see it,

let's say, someone stayed in place, yes , someone who left, as an internally displaced person, then returns, and neighbors no longer understand each other. a man went to fight at the front, returns home , and his wife has a different experience of the tragedy of war, and sometimes a man and a woman do not understand each other, those who survived the occupation and liberation sometimes feel that those people who live relatively peacefully , the western region of ukraine, do not hear... they feel that there is a war going on. in such circumstances, how can we still build unity, the unity of our people, how to unite in the name

common goal? this is such a rather difficult question, we must answer it together, but from such a pastoral point of view, we already see one phenomenon that should make us think very seriously, sometimes we are looking for such, you know, a scapegoat, on on which to hang our own pain, and sometimes we choose it very spontaneously, yes, it can be, well, someone standing next to whom we just pour out our negative emotions, it can be some, i don't know, person or institution that has not done everything, what... was expected of her, or the way we imagined that she should do it, obviously, this is a very dangerous phenomenon, it is, on the one hand, natural, because

this pain, well, it hurts us, we want to spontaneously pour it out on someone, so it is very dangerous, you know, give in to the temptation, devour each other, uh, give in to the temptation, project this energy of ours. negativity, even some self-inflicted violence. we shouldn't uh do that. but all together, we must understand that the trauma of war is a certain challenge that we must cope with. there are many, er, those who are engaged in analysis social processes, even deep ones. analysts, psychotherapists say that our success, our victory depends not only on the strength of our weapons, but on the ability of ukrainians

to cope with the consequences of the trauma that the war inflicts on all of us, so here is the role of the church, the role of those who try to be the core of the consolidation of our sosp society is difficult to overestimate, because our future depends on our inner ability to withstand these challenges. thank you, it may seem strange to some that i am asking the head of the head of the ukrainian greek catholic church about orthodox, about their relation to the orthodox church of ukraine and about all these transitions, but... um, i would very much like that in our consciousness and in our ukrainian realities, the christian churches were real, really brothers to each other, and that we

could talk frankly about each other's processes, share experiences, especially since the ukrainian greek-catholic church is very, very modern, and i am very grateful to you for this work that is carried out every day, the understanding that the world does not stand still, and you are also ready to develop together with the world, this it's unbelievable, it's just what people asked to convey, to be honest, but still returning to the processes of 2023, we saw the work of the council to try to root out the russian agency in ukraine, which is very often covered by religion, as well as here there are the first steps in this direction, we will see how it will be in practice, because we understand that the processes there are not easy, we have certain actions regarding the great christian shrine, the kyiv-pechersk lavra, and we hope that very

soon everyone... a ukrainian will feel a sincere desire to come there and not feel ruskamirny dushok, i’m sorry, but i’m interested in the issue of the pochaiv lavra, for example, we understand the experience of this shrine and the ukrainian greek catholic church, a certain historical duration, how do you consider all these processes and do you hope that they will affect not only ky but also st. in the west, i think we are witnessing very interesting processes, thank you very much for the compliment about modernity, i think we should not be afraid of renewal, because the church is a living organism, it is not some ossified institution that just clings to stereotypes of the past, such a church will always be doomed to certain crises, if the church

sees itself as the leader of public opinion, the mother and teacher of its people, the soul of this people who are fighting for their freedom, it will always be modern, the eternal will always be modernized , to enter, to be embodied in our present, eh, but we have a very interesting historical moment that we cannot lose: in ukraine there is a process where... communistization and de-russification in various aspects of our life, i think, the same process the religious environment of ukraine must also undergo decommunization and de-russification. we must be sincere, we must be frank that the russian orthodox church was and, unfortunately,

remains today. a tool for the enslavement of peoples, a tool not only for russification , but for planting certain stereotypes or archetypes of social behavior that were created in communist times, we know that even the name russian and orthodox church was given to that church by stalin, who tried to use... to become a religion as a tool not for religious, but for atheistic enslavement, not only its own citizens, but also influence on the international arena. this church was an instrument of the destruction of the ukrainian greek-catholic church, and all our efforts to start a serious dialogue

in order to heal the wounds... and give this church an opportunity to change itself, did not achieve the desired success, and today society is making demands on these rudiments of soviet and russian imperialism, to ask ourselves very deep questions, therefore it is natural that ukrainian society demands de-rusification. these and decommunization, even from the orthodox environment, which unfortunately carries this negative baggage, that is why it is so important that the ukrainian state finally remembers that both the kyiv-pechersk lavra and the pochaiv lavra are state property, that it is a monument yatki, spiritual.