the program of the ukrainian voice of america chas time is on the air, i and the host oleksiy kovalenko. us president joe biden met on wednesday, january 17, with speaker of the house of representatives mike johnson and other congressional leaders. to discuss the continuation of aid to ukraine and negotiations on changing us immigration policy, without which the republicans do not want to approve funding for kyiv. after the meetings , speaker mike johnson said that republicans will continue to push for border changes. before they are ready to discuss ukraine. my colleague yulia yarmonka follows the development of events in washington. julia, congratulations. greetings, oleksiy. yulia: after the meeting in the white house, the leaders of the democrats and republicans did not make any unequivocal statements. what results did these negotiations bring and how can they actually affect the issue of aid to ukraine. of course, oleksiy. today, us president joe biden said that the meeting went well. the administration says that the president clearly explained the urgency once again. the urgency of the need for approval

additional funding to help ukraine, the administration says if republicans are sincere about wanting to strengthen border security, they should agree to find a compromise, and today, when president biden was asked by reporters how he felt about the prospects of approving additional funding for aid to ukraine, that's what he said. i believe that the majority of members of congress support aid to ukraine. question: will a tiny minority be able to block it? that would be a disaster. mike johnson today rather, after the meeting the day before, he said that once again the republicans understand the need for assistance to ukraine. he even reprimanded president biden for the fact that , in his opinion, the administration does not provide all the necessary types of weapons for ukraine to win, but he ... said that for republicans, after

all, the priority is the sovereignty of the united states, and only then the sovereignty of ukraine, and he says that the republicans believe that the democrats and president biden should still agree to the demands of the republicans in order to to tighten conditions for migrants to enter the united states. let's listen to his comment. about the security and sovereignty of ukraine, but the american people have the same concerns about their own sovereignty and security. we have already talked about the necessary elements to solve this problem, and we have passed a bill in the house of representatives that restores the "remain in mexico" policy. it stops the practice of "catch and release". he is reforming the broken temporary asylum and humanitarian system password we understand that all the other things in this package are important. but we must

insist that the us border be a priority. oleksiy, the more optimistic leader of the democrats in the senate, chuck shumor. he already stated in the senate today that he can say for the first time since the beginning of the negotiations that the chances of approving the request for additional funding for ukraine , israel and taiwan are now more than 50%. and he said that indeed there are still many differences between republicans and democrats, but so what? to the continuation and necessity continuation of aid to ukraine, everyone agrees. although the two parties have many differences, all sides have agreed on several important points. first, congressional leaders understood that we needed to approve a request for additional emergency aid to ukraine. the opinions of the parties differ on many things, but with regard to ukraine, everyone agreed that we must act. i made it very clear to everyone in

the room that now the war in ukraine is beginning to turn against the ukrainians, although the ukrainian fighters do not lack courage and determination, they will soon face shortage of supplies, ammunition, weapons, which is largely provided by america. secondly, everyone agreed that something must be done to correct the situation at the border. the president has said over and over that he's willing to work with republicans on the border, but it has to be on a ... bipartisan basis, as you know, republican leadership, so i have a good feeling and i'm optimistic about the direction of the negotiations, but i'm warning my colleagues: nothing not yet decided, there is still a lot of work to be done. yulia, and yesterday there was information that there is a definite decision on the border issues progress. so when can this issue be resolved and when will funding for ukraine be approved. oleksiy, it's hard to say, the negotiations are ongoing, we don't have an exact date, where... legislators in an interview with our

colleagues say that it could be mid-february, and here is chuck schumer today from the podium of the senate, he said that the senate and the house of representatives must first agree on... a short-term resolution to fund the government to avoid a shutdown, and the senate is here today, in just a few minutes to our air, approved that resolution, it has to go to the house of representatives later and potentially has to be signed by the president to avoid a shutdown, and as chek schumer said, after they do that, he wants to bring up the additional funding request for ukraine . we don't have dates yet. julia, and to what extent the americans themselves share this concern about the border issue, which we see has become decisive in providing additional funding for ukraine and for other us allies. you know, alex, we just

came back from the state of iowa, where the presidential campaign started, the iowa presidential race, the iowa republicans were the first to choose who they want to see as their presidential candidate. united states, i talked to voters there, and very often their concerns echoed the same the border issue, they said it was the number one issue for them. it is not known whether this is an organic concern, or whether it is the result of the rhetoric that sounds from a number of television screens, voiced by a number of republican politicians, but this issue is important, but also an important issue, according to washington , should be aid to ukraine, because aid ukraine is also in the interests of us national security, and on the eve of my trip to iowa, i spoke with the president of the german marshall fund here, heather conley, she, and this marshall fund and also the howard buffett foundation, they've started a big campaign together where their experts are going all over

the country, especially the states, the farm states inside the country, to explain why it's in the interest of ordinary americans to help ukraine, and we can see this plot. viselstap is the english name for small railway stations where the train stops only on demand. in american history , short pre-election rallies of politicians, which they held directly from the train in 1948, the famous resignation of president harry truman by america provided him with re-election and support for the idea of.

in 1947, when the idea appeared to help europe recover after the second world war, the americans were not there. from that , inflation was high , sounds familiar, at that time the truman administration was going all over the country, they were reaching out to every section of the population, they were telling people, let us explain why this is important, if we don't, all the extraordinary the sacrifices we all had to make will be useless it was not an easy conversation, but they toured the whole country, and public opinion began to change. our visle stop tour is inspired by the fact that the tour started in minnesota, with at least nine more states to go: missouri, kentucky, iowa, texas, oklahoma, colorado, michigan, illinois and pennsylvania, all states where, like in ukraine, agriculture plays an important role.

we want to spend a very concentrated time in the heart of the country and work in regions where there are strong agricultural communities that understand the importance of the land and production we want to help explain what is at stake, and if ukraine is not successful, what price the us and our allies will have to pay. in each state, speakers, including ukrainian ambassador to the usa oksana markarova, hold small meetings with community leaders, local activists, and farmers. heather konlya, who herself grew up on a farm, says the villagers have a very strong sense of community. farmers understand that if there is a... some farmer in their community gets hurt and can't farm anymore, the whole farming community has to come to his aid. we apply the same spirit to ukraine. ukrainian farmers are in trouble. our community, our international community, must help those farmers get back on their feet. this argument,

says heather conley, is especially successfully conveyed by the philanthropist, photographer and also farmer, howard buffett. this really resonates with howard buffett. who has already been to ukraine, i think, 10 times, he shares with them his first-hand experience, about how farmers have to buy tractors with thick armor, because the fields they work on are all inimin and... about farmers who lost their legs while working on combines during sowing or harvesting. when you tell that to farmers in the midwest, they're shocked, and they understand the need to help that farmer, and when we explain what russia is doing, stealing grain, mining the fields, taking over the fields, everybody who's ever worked the land, understands that he would defend his land in the same way, this is a very human reaction. after her first stop in minnesota, gezar says, she was overwhelmed. on how local it is the community already supports ukraine, but speakers and participants of the initiative are ready for difficult

conversations in communities that do not understand why helping ukraine is in their interests. for such cases, there are pragmatic, and not just moral, arguments. additional funding for ukraine remains in the united states, it goes to an american defense company for the production of equipment, it stays here, so even if you are not motivated by the sea. argument: land, sovereignty, protection of families, so my god, why give up economic benefit for your state or community the marshall plan 75 years ago was an important investment in europe. 75 years later, our biggest trade and investment partner is europe. who is our most important security ally in nato? this is europe. so 75 years ago we made an investment that paid off in an incredible way. and i think the american people often hear about the... the costs, the costs of additional funding, the costs of nato membership. i 'm not sure they always know about

the extreme benefits. as the second anniversary of the full-scale invasion approaches and in the background negative rhetoric from certain conservative opinion leaders, support for ukraine among americans began to decline. heather conley sees her main task as listening to and informing americans and at least trying to convince the skeptics. if it doesn't work, i can. oleksiy osyka, voice of america. you know, oleksia and gazerkonli in an interview with me, she nevertheless expressed her belief that the democrat-republicans will be able to agree and approve funding for ukraine already at the beginning of the year. thank you very much, yulia, you were in direct contact with us yulia yarmolenko. ukraine is actively working to restore air connections from kyiv and lviv. this was announced on january 18 by the deputy head of the office of the president of ukraine rostyslav shurma at a panel discussion at the ukrainian

house in davos. aviation connections with ukraine may resume as early as 2024. the mayor of lviv, andriy sadovy, expressed his hope for this in an interview with ostap yarysh, a journalist of the ukrainian voice of america service. according to him, for this it is necessary to strengthen the ukrainian air defense system, as well as take a number of other measures to international level. well, from the point. from the point of view of security, this issue is sensitive enough, i would like aviation to return to ukraine in general, because a country that does not have aviation loses a lot, and conversations are held at different levels, and this is real, for this, of course, you need a little it is not enough to move the air defense system from the polish side to the ukrainian territory, it is necessary to put a 70 km line there, plus the corresponding ones. have yet to be done at the international level, but when i talk to the americans about it, and they

say, that's how we think about it, and we're ready to help you in this, that is, these ideas that we had last year, they are already falling on the warm ground, and i believe that this year air traffic will be restored, the world, ukraine. every day in the belgian town of schaler. the prayer for ukraine continues from brussels. such a tradition was initiated after the full-scale invasion of ukraine by the belgian priest of ukrainian origin mykhailo dymyt. his 26-year-old son artem dymyt gave his life defending ukraine from the russian war. how they honor the fallen ukrainian soldiers in belgium and how they help to resist russian aggression, my colleague hanna tverdohlip learned. today we trust you again and ask with confidence. save us from war, death and evil. in june 2022 , icon painter ivanka krypyakevich dymyt

saw off her son, artem, on his last journey. sati once in this church, near brussels, artem, the son of the belgian priest mykhailo demid, almost arranged a poje. artyom once burned a kelim, as he lit it, like incense, and he was still small and did not know exactly how to do it, and coal, coal. fell on hernias artem dymyt was a seven-year-old boy, then he became a student of the ukrainian catory university in lviv, he loved extreme sports, he jumped with a parachute more than 300 times, in addition, in different countries of the world, which he visited more than fifty in total, he traveled all over the world, yes, he had a lot of contacts in america, a lot of friends, and he came there, he

had various business affairs there, he also worked for some american organization that serves the olympic games. artem was an active participant in the revolution dignity in kyiv, fought in the ato, was a scout. in february 2022, when russia's full-scale invasion of ukraine took place, he was in rio de janeiro. then artyom immediately flew to new york, bought a helmet, bulletproof vests and a rifle scope, and went to ukraine for the front. this is not his first participation. in 2008, he immediately left the maidan to defend ukraine, he was first in the garapun battalion, then in the azov battalion. in june 22, a few weeks before his 27th birthday, artem dymyt,

a belgian of ukrainian origin, gave his life, protecting ukraine. last year , priests of the ukrainian church invited four catholic bishops of belgium to ukraine. we thought to ourselves that it would be good to create such church diplomacy, and it would be good if, for example, french bishops, english bishops, and belgian bishops went to ukraine and felt the smell of war there. we were in kyiv, we were in yerpen, we were in lviv. and it was the best way to inform, showing all the wounds, all the pain of ukraine. at the end of the visit , the belgian bishops also attended dinner in the lviv home of artem demyd's family. we wanted to be close to this family as they have very close ties to belgium. father mykhailo, demi was born here

in belgium. it was also important for the bishops to express their support to this family. i really. i liked the atmosphere at the table , they talked freely, our children speak both english and french, i think they were interested, they were terribly simple, their panagies were terribly simple, there were no gems, no gold, no ee there were ornaments, one had just a wooden one, just a piece of wood and jesus christ, a monogram was scratched on it, they were sincerely interested in the situation. in ukraine , for me this is the most, the most stable support, the strongest stronghold, faith that the lord is leading, that he sees that, that we are in his hands, this, this is what you can build on when everything is shaking, it is there, this support is there, and then the bishops came here, and they, therefore, ah, well, i heard

the power of faith, passed it on to their own... in the same church, in the town of charleroi, where artem came as a small boy, every day at 6 :00 in the evening, for almost two years now, a prayer for ukraine has been heard. when the war started, i was here in belgium, and i didn't know what to do, i walked around with so much doubt, and then on the second, third day i would think to myself, well, you're a priest, what should you do? let's organize a prayer, because prayer, as it tears it... breaks through. more than 75,000 ukrainians received temporary protection in belgium. the belgians provided ukraine with weapons worth more than 306 million. also , almost 700 ukrainian soldiers were trained here. pergia has never been like this ukrainian, as now. it's a shame that it's because of the war. but for us ukrainians, this is a special

chance, let's say, maybe even an opportunity rather, uh,... to talk about our people, about our culture, about our church, about our traditions, uh, and show our, our, our the desire for this dignity and freedom that he is trying to take away from us. at the grave of artem demyd at the lychakiv cemetery in lviv, his friends and family laid a parachute as a sign of artem's love for the sky and free flight. hanna tverdohlip, dmytro savchuk. voice of america. after the destruction of the world, people dig up music and culture. such imaginary excavations became the preamble of the chernobyl archaeological opel. a performance by ukrainian authors has been shown for a week on the stage of one of the most prestigious american festivals of modern music and prototype opera in new york. ukrainian opera

became the only project from european countries that was invited to the festival this year. every evening, the opera gathers a full hall of the legendary new york theater la mama. iryna solomko and pavlo terekhov attended the rehearsal and performance. the opera chernobyl is a post-apocalyptic work about how merciless humanity has survived a series of disasters. they live in a world where capitalism, opera, and philosophy do not exist, and while traveling among the roins, they try to recreate a lost civilization. we also accidentally learned about a place in austria called svenddorau, a small village near vienna, on the banks of the danube, where the only nuclear power plant in austria was built in the 1970s, which did not open. and we combined these... places like utopia and dystopia, chornobyl and zventendor, and this is how our chornobildor turned out, such a fictional toponym about people who in some in an imaginary apocalyptic future

, they are trying to create culture on the ruins of a nuclear power plant. composer elya rozumeyka is one of the authors of the opera. he works in tandem with his colleague roman grigoriev. this is already their 11th joint work. they work together on music. lieu was responsible for the libretto and dramaturgy in the production, and direction and choreography for the novel. inside chernobyl there are a lot of different stories, there are different voices, different there, different myths are reinterpreted, and therefore, in principle, we have such a structure somehow naturally it also happened that these are seven separate novellas, where there are the same characters, but during these novels they are transformed, in our country each artist has several roles, through which he passes through this opera. it was extremely interesting. to create music, music of the future , music after the death of civilization , after the death of culture as such, after the death of any

art, that is, a person is completely zeroed out, well, without any context, he finds on the ruins of civilization some, well, in the course of rituals, some there, i don’t know , in the course of certain rituals finds some spirituality, one of the cornerstones... this mix, we tried to combine, i don't know , to prepare the same bach and mahler and so on and so forth, and we combined and

united all this, to a large extent, we had a coexistence of music together with plastics, all plastic figures and images were actually born at the same time, and it all dictated such , well, the source of inspiration was the imagination of the future, the composers call chornoboldor an open work, that is... in fact, it is such a living opera, when each new performance changes a little , comparing with the previous one, in new contents, sounds and details appear to it, because when you play a performance, i don't know a certain number of times, there are 20-30 performances in the same way, you turn it into such a pattern, and you are already playing, just like, well, and she dies, her spirituality dies, and for the performance to be alive, you constantly need to make some micro... micro-changes, costumes and scenery play an important role in creating a post-apocalyptic atmosphere in the prop, computer boards were used and how

they were integrated into the costumes , we have such a computer board from medical german some device from the 80s, we found it on kurinivka, in this trash, in this garbage, and you know, we used them as a score, the opera itself consists of seven novellas, various artists. what appeal to orpheus is this to i apologize to eurydice, this is a brilliant poem by yuri izdrik and there is also such a moment... life and death, it seems to me that such thoughts and such experience make us appreciate life. marichka shtyrbulova

is an actress and singer. appears in several short stories. she says that folklore is part of her life, self-identification and outlook. there is a base ukrainian songs from the chornobyl district, as well as from other lands of ukraine, but they are somewhat reinterpreted. it is very difficult to create and play during the war, marichka says. more questions as to how useful it is. only this is necessary for our victory, you want to do as much as possible, as you can, and that is why you want to work professionally as well as possible, to have this right to express yourself and call on people all over the world, right now in america, not to be indifferent and understand the name i am the evil that exists in the world today, this is russia. opera was written before the full-scale invasion, on videoscapes that are

a meaningful ... part of the production , many places that were destroyed by the russians, for example, the kakhov reservoir. we have shots of energodar and across from energodar, these landscapes too, which are literally the front line now. that is, now, despite the fact that the opera was not about the war, our tour is now during the great invasion, this is also our chance to talk about ukraine, to tell about the invasion, and about ukrainian landscapes, and about the destroyed villages and cities, and so on . olga dyatel, producer opera, he says, on tour to the usa, the project was invited after the festival. rotterdam, where the european premiere took place. the americans paid for all the tour and preparation expenses. according to olga, this is approximately 120 thousand dollars. when we started leaving, you can see that there was, especially in the first months, a lot of attention to the country, a willingness to provide venues, but the question is, will they want to see you again? it seems to me that there are very few such ukrainian works in reality, and what

people will see and think, i... want to invest a lot of money in this to have it here festivals currently, the authors of the opera are waiting for an invitation to perform at several international venues, but the composers are already working on a new piece reflecting on the global impact of the war on the ecology of ukraine. the idea of ​​the play arose after the explosion of the kakhovskaya hes. from new york iryna solomko, pavlo terekhov, voice of america. download. voice of america mobile application. the application allows you to bypass blocking automatically thanks to the built-in vpn service. read news, watch informative programs and videos, as well as listen to ukrainian service podcasts voice of america this is where we will say goodbye, also watch our daily briefings at 6 p.m. on youtube and facebook, where you can ask us your

questions live. have a good night. 15-year-old ksenia zelena, 17-year-old dmytro gorbunov and 16-year-old anastasia pokhylyuk. all these children disappeared in the temporarily occupied

territories. daughters have been unable to find out where they are for a long time. that is why i really hope for your help, and , of course, i am mostly addressing the residents of the donetsk territories not controlled by ukraine region i know that ukrainian tv channels are not broadcasting in your country right now, but maybe you are watching this program on social networks, so please look carefully at the faces of the children. ksenia zelena looks 15 years old, she has dark hair and the girl was last seen in donetsk. dmytro gorbunov, he turned 17 relatively recently. but the guy looks, perhaps, a little older than his age. he has light blond hair and gray-blue eyes. dmytro was last seen in the volnovatskyi district of donetsk region, in the village of krasna polyana. and that -