of the voice of america chas time service, i am its host oleksiy kovalenko. president of ukraine volodymyr zelenskyi arrived in vilnius on wednesday, january 10, starting a trip to lithuania, estonia and latvia, the baltic countries, members of the european union and nato. the visit takes place on the day of the meeting of the ukraine-nato council in brussels, where it is expected that the ukrainian side will call on partners to increase the supply of weapons and, in particular , air defense equipment in response to massive russian attacks on ukrainian cities. during the visit, as well as after the meeting of the council ukraine-nato was followed by our european correspondent bohdan tsyupin. congratulations, bohdan. bohdan, what did zelenskyi hear in vilnius and what to expect from other visits of the president of ukraine to the baltic states? the ukrainian president once again heard from, in particular, from the baltic leader, from the president of lithuania, that, in particular, lithuania. it is also obvious that the other

baltic countries firmly stand by the fact that they support ukraine in the fight against, as was said today in vilnius, bloodthirsty russian imperialism, and this support, these words are very important, not we forget that all three countries, the former republics of the soviet union, the baltic states, are members of nato, are members. of the european union, their voice is very loud there, and it is not only about statements, today gitanas nausieda, the president of lithuania, reminded that his country leads the so-called coalition, the international coalition for demining ukraine and already has clear plans to supply additional weapons to kyiv, and numbers speak very, very seriously about what they actually do. such small

countries as lithuania, estonia and latvia. when it comes to the recalculation of aid amounts to share of gdp, lithuania leads, as you can see on this graph, the list of countries that allocate the most generous aid to ukraine. so are the other baltic countries, as you can see, and also norway, which... is not part of the european union, but provides very serious assistance to ukraine, so it is about ukraine feeling support in this, as the ukrainian president stated today in vilnius is probably a turning point in the russian war against ukraine, and today zelensky also outlined the main...

tasks, the main needs of ukraine for this specific time, air defense systems is that what is missing, number one: the fight against drones, here i am glad that we have agreements with lithuania and with many other partners as well, the production of their drones, i will not talk about the number now , but we are also increasing our domestic production, this is... what is required by today's time and security for our civilians. bohdan, what aspects did the ukraine-nato council focus on during the meeting in brussels, what priorities were discussed? again the anti-aircraft defenses were on at the top of the list of what ukraine wanted to talk about with its nato partners, and of course what... the reason for this or the reason that allowed

ukraine to convene this meeting, and the new format of ukraine's relations with nato gives ukrainians such an opportunity, that was exactly what happened the fact that russia in december started this huge new massive campaign of missile and other bombing of ukraine in this very winter time, especially the infrastructure, is obvious. it is vitally important for ukrainians that russia uses more and more missiles and, in particular, means such as aerial drones, attack drones from iran, attract special attention and condemnation from nato countries, and the fact that the commander of the ukrainian air force, as well as a representative of the minister, participated in the meeting via video link.

of the ministry of internal affairs of ukraine, the deputy minister of internal affairs also shows that ukraine's partners in nato today received first-hand information about how russia is acting at this time and what partners can do to help ukraine in the best possible way? bohdan, thank you very much, i will remind our viewers that he was in touch with us european correspondent of the voice of america, bohdan tsyupin. the un security council convened to discuss russia's use of weapons from north korea in the war with ukraine. these are the actions of russia. violate un resolutions that prohibit north korea from international trade in arms and military equipment, resolutions that russia itself supported in the un security council hall. voice of america at the un correspondent iryna solomka followed the details of the meeting. greetings iryna, can you tell us more about today's

un meeting, what was its main purpose? congratulations oleksya. so, probably, for the first time, russia was accused at such a high level. violations of the resolution of this very body, because this is quite unprecedented, because russia is a permanent member of the security council, and it is precisely supposed to monitor and ensure the implementation of those norms and rules that this body establishes for the whole world, and it does not just buy drones there in iran, and what it was accused of, it is already buying ballistic missiles in north korea, from which, firstly , any military trade there is prohibited, and secondly, this country, in principle, according to the resolution of the security council, has no right... to even have its own program for the development of this direction of ballistic missiles. therefore, of course, this is quite unprecedented, but if we talk about the meeting itself, then exactly four countries - the united states, ukraine, japan and south korea, which this time also joined the meeting, they directly said that

the situation is difficult, and and it has to be solved somehow, but probably the main newsmaker after all was the deputy permanent representative of the united states prion robert wood, who did not... speak more and just according to the diplomats' assessments , it is obvious and visible that the rhetoric of even the united states in relation to the fact that russia is a permanent member of the un is changing, it was visible in this speech, so he was just saying that a number of countries, including the united states, warned the world that russia and north korea were holding these talks back in august of last year, and today they issued statements in which they, in which, in which they already condemn that russia is not just buys these ballistic missiles and... uses them against the civilian population. russian troops have already used dprk ballistic missiles in ukraine several times. we expect russia to use additional missiles to destroy more ukrainian infrastructure and kill ukrainian

civilians. adherence to the un charter and the resolution of the terrible situation that has been going on for almost two years in ukraine also require a reaction to violations of the security council. we call on all member states. make it clear that the actions of the russian federation are unacceptable, especially as a permanent member of this council. ironically, what kind of evidence was presented during the meeting and whether more detailed information was provided during the speeches of the parties about russia's use of north korean missiles. you know, oleksii, there were expectations that, for example, briefings from the council from the un, because i will remind you, the briefing begins with a speech by representatives of the un secretariat, who give their such... conclusions on this topic, so there were expectations , that it will still be possible to get such independent information from the un, but obviously it's still too early to have this information from them, so deputy secretary general antonio guterres guterres rosemarida carlo, she talked about the political,

security, humanitarian situation, as well, despite the expectation that the united states should present some more evidence there, regarding of where they have information regarding the use of ros'. korea, that didn’t happen either, after all, the statements were, well, they were more political, but serhii koslytsia, the permanent representative of ukraine at the un, speaking, he, he just, that is, gave the evidence that the ukrainian investigative bodies now have, in particular, representatives of the kharkiv regional prosecutor's office, he said that in particular the missile that hit kharkiv on january 2, it is similar to the iskander, but it is not a typical iskander, for example, it is smaller in size, there is also . and the other marking is not russian, in addition, there are no elements of protection against rap, and there are other evidences that, in principle, there is a connection with north korea, and serhii kasitsia told all this and said that the investigation is ongoing, of course, when it will end, and then the relevant authorities will

informed about its results. oleksiy, the consequences of this un meeting are still realistic, and can this discussion in any way shake russia's position? in the un security council. yes, oleksiy, everyone is very much hoping for it, because the accusations, as i said at the beginning, are unprecedented, i managed to talk to serhiy kislets after the meeting. so let me remind you that the briefing is not intended to make any practical decisions, it is to inform, but according to the information of serhiy kislytsia, within the framework of the un secretariat the relevant structures have already sent written requests to the countries involved, as he said, he did not specify which ones, but we can guess that it is probably russia, north korea, because whether ukraine and the united states are talking about it, they should send written answers to the secretariat, then these answers should be transferred to the specialized committee of the security council. which deals with the issues of north korean sanctions, and only then this issue should be brought

to the meeting of the security council, and that is exactly what may be the consequences of this meeting, you can hear from serhiy keslyts. we are dealing with a situation where this is no longer a defect of the design, but it is already a defect of its presence , clearly of the russian federation, because the russian federation... will not allow any decision to be made, and we will simply see how decisive the actions of the other responsible parties will be members of the security council, the security council in relation to russia, i also suggest that you pay attention to certain provisions of the speech of the united states today at the security council meeting, in which it seems to me that they are gradually evolving. in those terms and in those assessments that they apply

to the presence of the russian federation and the consequences of such a presence in the city of the soviet union on the run. thank you very much, iryna, we were directly contacted by voice of america von correspondent yerena solumka. we will continue. ecuadorian president daniel naboa announced an internal armed conflict in ukraine and recognized 22 mafia groups as terrorists. organizations the country's security forces were given the task of neutralizing them. the decree was passed after the day before, armed men with explosives broke into the premises of the tv channel and interrupted the live broadcast. a series of violent incidents swept across the country. members of mafia groups set fire to and blow up cars and kidnap police officers. a state of emergency has also been declared in ecuador for 60 days. everything happened after the leader of the influence disappeared from one of the prisons on sunday. of the los chonerus mafia group. the criminal had to serve a 34-year sentence, in particular for

drug dealing. about the situation in the country, voices america was told by the ambassador of ukraine to peru, colombia and ecuador, yuriy polyakhovych. a curfew has been introduced, respectively at night. documents are checked, appropriate actions are taken by law enforcement agencies. the most acute such situation is observed in the city. this is the largest city in ecuador, a port city, a city from which, from which most of the bananas, uh, produced in ecuador, including the bananas that we consume with you in ukraine, are shipped from. and that's why attention, well, you know, enough with bananas often send other things that are prohibited by law, and that's why the gangs are most active precisely in that part of the country, precisely in guayaquil, and the surge of er... crime and such criminal crimes is observed there , including those video frames that flashed all over

the planet, where er members of gang groups seized one of the television channels in the city of guayaquil, took hostages and, accordingly, made their appeals public there, but by now they have already been intercepted, the hostages have been released and similar actions are taking place in other regions. er closer to wojakil, in particular there was a situation with one of the universities, where hostages were also taken. english is one of the official languages ​​of the european union: in order for ukrainian business, education, medicine, science and economy and other fields to become part of a single european space, ukrainians in various professions are recommended to learn the working language of foreign partners. to support ukrainians in learning english, the government of ukraine launched a national program for its

mastery future perfect. yuri sonets talked to the project teams to find out where ukrainians can learn english online. on december 14, ukraine received a decision from the eu council to start negotiations on membership in the european union. for kyiv, this means that the introduction of a number of reforms, which are mandatory for eu countries, is ahead. at least. eight categories of ukrainian officials will be required to be able to speak english , including civil servants, customs officers, military personnel, law enforcement officers and others. almost 3/4 of the population of ukraine does not speak the english language at the required level, and this is really a problem for our country, and we must solve it. the ministry of statistics, together with international partners, conducted a survey among ukrainians aged 18 and over to find out their level of english proficiency. we divided the english language into four skills

that are standardly accepted and asked ukrainians to rate their knowledge, for example, in each situation, that's how we were... an indicator from zero to 10, and the average score was 2.83, that is, it is really low score at the same time, the analyst notes that ukrainians have an interest in learning english, and more there 60% say that they have a desire to learn english, and more than 90% of parents say that their children should learn english, and it will provide them with a better future, to meet the need of ukrainians to learn english? which language the government launched the national program future perfect. we are preparing a better future here and now. language program. the project will offer tools aimed at making english popular and accessible for learning. one of the platforms of the program is called speech. the service is offered to adult ukrainians who have access

to the internet and the action application, learn english online for free. where you can learn the language from a very basic level thanks to the fact that we combine small lessons that help you train your language every day, we have professional teachers who can help even point by point with improvement, with explaining everything with grammar and rules and generally with language teaching online, it is also important to note that we believe that... it is not enough to simply learn languages ​​today, take away the rules, it is important to be able to communicate with other people to the self-world of one language, and that's why we provide the cultural context of each language, that is, in our courses there are cool facts about about languages, for example, in ukrainian we talk about a dream, we talk about

our ukrainian songs of our directors'. a series of our famous figures and so on about each portuguese, english. the national program for learning english has been in effect since november. during these two months , 73,000 users registered on the platform, and more than 180,000 visits to the project's online resources were recorded there, says the future perfect team. as part of the program, it is provided as well as support for military personnel. for example, the training of ukrainian pilots on f-16 aircraft in europe and the usa. it started with english language courses, for us military personnel and veterans are one of the target audiences, because we consider the english language as one of the tools for the reintegration of ukrainians and their return to everyday life, when they will return from the war, and today for us it is a key such a reform, on which we will also work.

the ministry of statistics emphasizes that there is a national program for learning english a long-term strategy aimed at on the transformation of the language landscape of ukraine, the team has an action plan until 2030, which provides for educational reforms, the introduction of english in kindergartens, the introduction of external examinations in english, certification of teachers and teaching staff, reforms in higher education. the first two years will be a period of adaptation so that every ukrainian has time to improve their knowledge, the ministry of statistics says. yurii solonets, vyacheslav filyushkin, voice of america washington. russia's full-scale war against ukraine forced to change the methods of training not only people, but also service dogs. these animals have long served in the armed forces of ukraine as sentry guards, detectors of explosives and narcotic substances. currently, they are also being prepared for special forces to work in combat conditions. ukrainian cynologists borrowed this practice from their colleagues from the usa and great britain.

anna kostyuchenko and pavel sukhodolsky found out how these trainings take place in the zhytomyr region. tornado is a malinois dog , better known as a belgian shepherd. him a little over two years. tornado entered the service of special forces at the age of six months, he was selected from a kennel in kropyvnytskyi. the dog is highly motivated and resistant to stress. he proved himself well at the beginning in this direction from the first time. from the first lesson , he did everything clearly. a professional cynologist with the call sign ray began training. more than seven years ago, even before he started serving in the sso in 2019. good the main combat tasks for which the tornado is being prepared, he says, are the search for sabotage and reconnaissance groups, and as well as neutralizing the enemy during the clearing of premises. if a dog enters

a building where we know someone is supposed to be there, it will attack the first person there, that is, taco, and we also prioritize attacking people who have weapons, prepare them for uh, so that they are not afraid of explosions, shots, and little by little we are preparing them to work in... a group, these dogs are trained to bite the target in such a way as to inflict critical wounds on the opponent, so that the opponent cannot hit the dog in return, explains the cynologist. we we teach our dogs to attack the enemy as inconveniently as possible, it can be the back , as you saw at work, it can be a leg, it can be there side, it can be the same hand, just inconvenient under. armpit zone, it can be the same forward, just from these trainings, we try to take the maximum and make it as difficult as possible for them

to do, come on, only the handler can take the dog away from the target, and then not by verbal commands, but by literally pulling away from the stricken opponent, don't kill him, shoot vlad. freeze this is done so that the enemy cannot confuse the dog with their commands, because we do not teach them the give command, because this give command can be used by opponents, other people can use it. in everyday life, these dogs are disciplined and do not pose a danger to society, only to enemies. in the process of training dogs. contact all members of the group that will go on a combat mission. it is necessary to conduct long-term training on the contact of the dog with other members of the group in which he has to work, so that

they also become contact for him by persons, because in the case of a dog handler being injured, so that they can provide him with some medical assistance, carry out evacuation, and the dog, which will not know other members of the group, will simply attack them and not... provide assistance. such specific training of a dog requires at least six months. cynologists use the experience of the combat use of subats by special forces in the usa and great britain, as well as the ukrainian repulse training program and the methodology of the tunological training center of podillia in the city of kamianets podilskyi. in tornado has not yet participated in combat missions, but in october 2023, during training , he received an award as an assault dog of the armed forces of ukraine. for flawless. work in conditions of smoke, work of drones and explosives. anna kostyuchenko, pavel sukhodolskyi for voice of america from zhytomyr region. in 2022

, a ukrainian startup became a popular platform for training a generation of specialists on the american market. the elevator online education platform offered courses on the newest professions in the field. it and video games. how does a ukrainian startup promote a ukrainian e-education brand during the war? khrystyna shevchenko asked about it from his hostages in los angeles. design of video games, leadership, soft skills, marketing, production, work with artificial intelligence. these and other courses can be taken on the elevator online platform. teachers here are professionals from top companies in their respective industries, such as google, microsoft, and blizzards. and... ukrainians were building a platform for quality online education. we are a ukrainian company, we work globally. we are present in the usa, but apparently, currently 80-70% of the entire

company are ukrainians. we had and still have an office in kyiv, where most of the people used to work, now many of them are scattered, some are in different cities of ukraine. elelevator was created in 2020 on the basis of a well-known ukrainian online resource. worlds in lab's business sphere and almost immediately began to enter the markets of america, canada and england, so the main office was opened in the usa, in the city of irvine, california. the founder of the startup is a citizen of the usa and israel, roman peskin. we are very proud of our ukrainian roots it's interesting, because i'm not ukrainian personally, which is sometimes considered a controversial issue. i was born in russia, i left it a long time ago, even before putin became president. but i spent the last 10 years living between ukraine and los angeles. roman and his team wanted the ukrainian online education platform to offer the world something qualitatively new in order to compete, for example, with such

bestsellers as " there was no, according to the rules of the platform , every instructor, no matter how titled, should work with students and receive from them reviews but this idea could not be realized due to the beginning of a full-scale invasion, the startup employees, most of whom were in kyiv at that time, went out for zoom calls from bomb shelters, in the end most had to leave the capital, some moved to lviv, some to europe, project manager of the company kiyanka anastasia yakovenko went to the office in hungary, and they helped us completely with the relocation there, and we went there... and it was our

kind of hap, and it was very cool, because we were, you know, like the whole family together . later anastasia moved to the american office. despite the challenges of the war, the girl says, the company not only stayed afloat, but also became even more successful. you don't know what will happen next, and work is like that place of stability, where you are understood, you all speak the same language, and we, on the contrary, became even closer to each other, i don't know. and the war, unfortunately, it became an even greater catalyst when you have to work, wherever you are now, and we ukrainians, we are now, wherever you are, you show who ukrainians are, what for we are capable of a full-scale invasion . elevator, roman jokes, disguised itself as an american company, after which, on the contrary, it proudly demonstrates its ukrainian roots.

i think that ukraine itself has become a brand, i think that i have never seen a country that could use the horror that is happening there to get a positive out of it in the context of being recognized on the global stage as a country of hardworking and brave people. zlosangelesa, khrystyna shevchenko, bohdan shevchenko, for the voice of america. download the voice of america mobile application. the app allows automatically bypass the blocking thanks to the vpn service, read news, watch news programs and videos, and listen to podcasts of the voice of america ukrainian service. that's when we'll say goodbye, subscribe to the voice of america ukrainian channel on youtube, where you can find even more interesting content. also watch our daily briefings at 6pm on youtube and facebook where you can ask us your questions live. thank you for

staying with us, peace be upon you. good night and good morning, see you soon. we are looking for 16-year-old anastasia pokhylyuk from donetsk region. official information about the girl's disappearance came in the summer of 2023, but

it is quite possible that... the connection with nastya was cut off much earlier, and this is not surprising, because the child disappeared in the bakhmut district, where the situation has been too tense for more than a year in a row. if suddenly someone knows about the possible whereabouts of anastasia pokhylyuk, or someone has seen the girl before and perhaps knows something about her fate, immediately call us on the hotline of the child tracing service with a short by number 1163. calls are free if there is no connection and it is not possible to call, write to the chatbot of the child tracing service in telegram. this is just one story of a missing child. in total, since the beginning of the war, we have received more than 200 requests for help in the search. fortunately, the vast majority of children have already been found, but the fate of many remains unknown. this especially applies to temporarily occupied territories, where the work of the police is practically paralyzed, from where it is impossible to leave.