ukrainian, it was almost total in all the top 100, it is almost all 95% of russian music, so unfortunately there is no reason to be surprised, but thank god, now we have somehow started to move away from it, well, let's listen to an excerpt from the song and think for yourself, what, does it sound like a song by the band tatu to you or not? well, for now, the bookmakers announced that they have identified the band, or rather the participants, who will most likely win the national selection, and they named jerry hale and alyona alyona, and they will perform with... with

the song tereza and maria, and of course there was also a controversy surrounding this song, i wouldn’t say it was a scandal, but it was a kind of passionate discussion, and it didn’t take place around the piece of music itself , as is usually the case, there is talk of plagiarism or something else, the point is in the fact that this song has lyrics about mary, maria theresa, mentions mother teresa in a positive way, and many... on social networks on twitter reminded the girls that how could this be, because mother teresa, she is nothing not a positive character, in general, it was a myth around her, and everyone has known for a long time that mother teresa is not so holy, she is accused of the cult of suffering, this is, first of all, that she did not help her patients, or patients in hospices , to ease their suffering, on the contrary, she intensified it, because she believed that people should suffer just... just

as christ watched on the cross. then she was categorically against divorces, abortions, contraception. i will say that, for example, many blame the catholic church for the fact that its priests in africa exacerbate the epidemic of breakfast, because, well, at least before , they promoted the abandonment of contraception. well and also mother teresa was friends with dictators. took money from them, supported them, and also in her hospitals there were improper conditions of various kinds, but well, let's first listen to the excerpt from the song itself, and then listen to alona alona and jerry hale's answer to it.

and the girls gave comments on the radio beam , let's listen to what they say about the criticisms of mother teresa, i looked at these comments and it's like, well, you didn't read the main message of what we wanted, it's not a song about a mother, it's not autobiographical the song where we get excited specifically like that, this is the same song where it's used as a symbol, so... if you call someone mother teresa, what do you mean they're like a very kind-hearted person, and that's about it , about the fact that these symbols of such femininity are with us, this song in general is about uniting around something like very bright, and in general this song carries such energy, so i would not focus people's attention on exactly the same thing mother teresa, she was, as we now understand, ambiguous, maybe, but people who write this do not consider the situation.

from both sides, they do not know who distributed this information about her, for what money, for what purpose, and many of the same subscribers still write that on foreign resources the information is completely different, but there are people who send counterarguments, and i myself am very deeply after that, when they started writing to us , they got acquainted with this issue, and it turned out that it was generally promoted by india on religious issues, that is, it is very interesting, well , the girls have already become a little bit conspiracy-minded, my personal subjective opinion is that. .. as in it often happens to us in show business , we did something, didn't think, didn't study , we just took it, as gerry says, it's just that the image is popular, what kind of image is it, and now we have to justify it, explain something, it seems to me that it's not it works out very well, but hey, let's see what will happen next, melovin is in second place among the bookmakers, melovin has already participated in eurovision, and now he wants to do it again...

let's try our best, let's listen to an excerpt from his song. well, in third place was anka with the song palala around her, i won't say that there is a scandal, you know, on social networks they like to exaggerate, someone said something there and there is already a scandal, already hate, already someone is canceled there, no, the fact is that her song is called palala. and when all these songs began to be publicly available, the singer nataliya valevska said, she did not accuse her of anything, she simply said that this song reminded her of her old song, that there are some similar words, similar images, let's

compare them, from heaven collected, well, i can name you a few more songs the star is burning one way or another, so i don't think it's plagiarism, and after all, if the song was allowed, it means they didn't admit that it's plagiarism, plagiarism, it's generally a very subtle thing, usually. it is proven and proven in a court of law through certain examinations, and these examinations can be quite subjective, and finally i will say that it has been determined who will host these semi-finals of ours before the eurovision song contest, first of all yulia sanina, who hosted her own eurovision song contest last year was great,

timur miroshnichenko, who is a standard, unchanging host of eurovision and also vasyl baidak, like comedians, especially vasyl yastrashin. glad, because i'm sure he will bring humor, which many viewers miss so much since serhiy prytula is not at these national elections, i'm sure that vasyl baidak will make up for it all, well, let's wait for the national elections, i hope that at we are waiting for not just a show, but another stormy discussion in social networks, at this i say goodbye to you, friends, and stay with espresso and have a peaceful evening. welcome to the espresso channel. today , our war and weapons program focuses on two

interconnected topics, which some consider a challenge to our security, some, on the contrary, new opportunities for the country's defense capability. so, the first topic is the development and use in ukraine of the potential of private military and defense consulting companies as one of the tools for strengthening the country's defense forces. in ukraine, by the way, several draft laws regarding private military companies were prepared, but work on them was never completed, so what experience and practices should be taken into account right now in the conditions of war ukraine, what are the pros and cons here? and the second topic. the discussion is about expanding the rights of citizens to own firearms . it would seem that after the 22nd year , the need for an adequate law on weapons, an increase in the percentage of gun owners in the state - these are things that were clearly understood, and

society demanded a kind of liberal law on weapons. let me remind you that in the first reading the draft law on the right to civilian firearms in ukraine was adopted a day before the start of the active phase of the war 23 hatch of the 22nd year, however , the second reading of this draft law is currently being prepared in the parliament, and a significant number of amendments to this document have appeared, and in essence , these amendments can be considered rather as a step towards undermining the defense capability of our state, we will also talk about this in our program, my name is serhiy zgurets, i am the director of the defense express company, which is now jointly with the channel. esso strives to cover the most relevant events and topics in the life of our army and the defense-industrial complex. andriy kepkalo joins us now founder and head of omega consulting group. mr. andrii, i congratulate you , glad to see and hear you. greetings, mr. serhiy,

thank you for the invitation. well, before the broadcast, we had such a certain discussion, so as not to repeat ourselves. topics that we seem to have talked about before, but i looked and in fact we have very little talk now about private military companies, and here you are a person who has considerable experience in creating such ... companies, and there are a certain number of people who believe that that this step and this direction of movement in the state towards private companies is dangerous and irrational. unfortunately, we have not yet been able to find an opponent to your position today, so i will try to master some things that concern private companies myself. but first of all, given your experience, i would like you to tell us, conditionally speaking, what... what is a private company in a certain standard sense, if at all there is a standard understanding

of a pmc or a consulting company, because the word consulting is in the name i think your company appeared for a reason, so come on then start from the beginning, unfortunately we have private military companies, they are always associated with mercenaries. this is very bad, i do not support such an opinion, but if we are already talking about mercenaries, then i want to tell you that mercenaries have existed as long as there has been war, for example, about mercenary armies, it is even written in the bible, and there are many examples, when mercenaries were once used by someone, i even read machiavelli, machiavelli. against the use of mercenaries, but i have a different opinion on this matter

opinion, and there is the subject of both mercenaries and private military companies, it unfolded for a very long time, somewhere until the beginning of the 2000s, and in the 2000s , the industry of private military companies grew up and became more regulated, why? because... the united states of america, they started, they started fighting both in afghanistan and in iraq, and i was directly involved in those activities, and i just want to remind you that since the early 2000s this one, it developed we will not talk about the 90s, 80s, 70s and so on. like this topic of pvc, it has grown up in general. the united states

of america decided to enter the territory of iraq. and i remember the secretary of defense at the time, if i'm not mistaken, was donald rumsfeld, and he, he went on television and he said, let's put it this way, he, i think, he was trying to reassure the people of the united states. of america and he said these things: the war in iraq, it will last, maybe 5 days, maybe five weeks, maybe 5 months, but it will not last 5 years. and it turned out that they, the americans , counted on one thing, another turned out, and when the other turned out and they realized that it would be a war for years, then the question arose, what are we going to do about it? i... the american politicians, they decided to talk , to think together, and what to do about it, and

there were three options, again, this is not speculation, some facts, i was directly involved in this, and there were three options: the first option - is to collect your things and leave, to leave iraq, it was not immediately, well, they did not did not accept, the second option was to declare mobilization, and then eh... it was political suicide, also not suitable, and now they chose the third option: to create private military companies and use private military companies, as in the territory of iraq, as well as on the territory of afghanistan, that is , what we are getting to here in this such a short excursion into history, that the united states of america is the country that uses private military companies the most, the second country is probably the arab emirates, for them.. . a private military company was a support in a critical situation, unfortunately, in our country

we look at private military companies as some kind of caricature, you know, private military companies, there is a demand for them, everyone today uses private military companies, governments use private military companies, transnational corporations, such as mobil, shell, total, they all use, use the services of private military companies. non-governmental organizations, which, for example, save the children or caritas, they use the services of private military companies, a little bit of other services, even there some kind of logistics, or what... still others, but these are private military companies, the security of the vatican, who is doing it today, the swiss, well, so what , how the swiss got into the vatican, you could say mercenaries, and i don't want to use this example because it's very bad, i, well, i don't want to use it, but i have to, even terrorists have their own private military

company, i can call it malgam takactical, it is based, if i'm not mistaken, in afghanistan. but it works for the benefit of terrorist organizations, that is, the whole world uses the services of private military companies, and for some reason it is always taboo in our country, and i do not understand why, but when we talk about private military companies, what signs or symptoms are, well, basic things that it can really be said that this structure or this group of people is a private military company or a consulting company or a defense consulting company, what are the unmasking signs of a private company, it is a company, it is very simple, it is a limited liability company that provides services of a military nature, for example, we are engaged in the training of the armed forces , we were engaged in, we are not engaged in now, because we do not have resources, we were engaged in the training

of the armed forces of ukraine, we trained operators, for example, for atgm, manpads. we trained sappers, we trained saboteurs and so on, that is, this kind of activity, it has signs of military activity, well, for example, signs of pmk, fine, but if the company engaged in medical medicine, training of medics there, engaged in airport security, engaged in gathering intelligence in the interests of rural structures, are these also private military companies? no , but the last thing, when you said intelligence gathering , it can already be considered as a private military company, and by the way, there is a very big demand in the market right now for private, let's call it that, for private intelligence agencies, intelligence companies, if you want some example, then let me give

you that example bellingkat, well that's it a private company, you name it. but to the conclusions, the conclusions of this company are listened to, for example, by the geak court, well then it means that the boundaries of private companies are still quite blurred, it is difficult to determine here, why i ask this, because linguistically speaking, we had this one, 20- year, president zelenskyi says that we really need to define private companies, two draft laws are being developed, they are stuck somewhere, zelenskyi says that it is necessary to make sure that they do not become the basis of certain oligarchic forces there and so on. where does this threat or warning to private companies come from, if it does not correspond to the essence of the pmcs themselves, given what you said earlier. this, this is a very

, very relevant question that you have now asked , you know, in civilized... i don't want to offend anyone, but in civilized countries there is no such idea that a private military company can obey some oligarch and work in the interests of some private individuals there and, god forbid, they try to remove the government or something else, well, no the same large private military company in the united states, this is black water, which does not exist today, and i know it. the head of rick prince, well, believe me, he doesn't even think of the option that he could one day turn his private military company black water or some other, uh, against the government and go there, well, i don't know eliminate the government there, who is currently joe biden and change him to trump,

for example, well, such a very simple example, you understand, that is, those... events that we have had incidents in ukraine before , for example, if i am not mistaken, it was an incident in which mr. kolomoisky took part, when there were certain actions with ukrtransnafta, well, there were some people in black, armed, unarmed, they entered the territory of the enterprise and so on, listen, frankly speaking, it's not my problem that our power structures allow there to be some illegals in ukraine. formations and they could enter some enterprises there to close or open them and so on and so forth you understand, that is, a private military company, it is a... it is registered somewhere, that is, it is a legal entity, it can no longer be considered as an illegal group, because there is registration, of course, if there is a group, a group

of people who have weapons available and there are some means of personal protection , and there are a lot of them, so it falls, if i am not mistaken , under article 260 of the criminal code of ukraine, illegal er... armed or armed formations, but a private company, it, it is registered somewhere, you understand, this is the first secondly, mentality, mentality, we looked at what happened in the russian federation, when wagner's pmk went to storm, relatively speaking, moscow, i don't want to offend anyone, but people who have not done anything bad, they are not afraid of anything. you understand, that is, to be afraid that some pmcs will try to remove the government there, look at the events of 2014, ah, people, people did not like what

was happening in the country, people rose up, they used force, that's when we and lost this monopoly on force, the state lost its monopoly by force, the people rose up and they removed the government , that is, yanukovych fled from ukraine and... we , how to say, achieved this, in the ukrainian language, i don't remember, with the help of the population, and not with the help of the pvc, that is i do not remember any cases in ukraine where the pmc, private military companies were involved in some illegal activities, that is, these fears that we have are completely unfounded, the pmc is a tool of the state, not an instrument against the state. but for some reason people don't want to hear it, or just don't hear it, do you understand that is, as i understand it, the current attitude towards the pvc is rather a consequence of the fact that we are held hostage by our old

mythologists, and because of this, relatively speaking, we do not want to see the potential that currently lies behind the pvc as a union of structured citizens, which can provide, well, the improvement of training or the creation of high-quality units of the armed forces or individual units. there are divisions of other law enforcement agencies, but then there is the issue of rationing, the law on private companies, britain, the united states, there are no such laws, although these companies are represented by to the whole world, what path should we take then, this flirting with laws, they, the legislation must be limited, except by a certain licensing of such activities and to create transparent mechanisms of registration and control of such structures. well, it's like one of the options , well, let's say this, license, licensing, yes, maybe you can get it, but you

understand, we have licenses for, for example, knowledge transfer, if we talk about knowledge transfer, that is, we are limited only to training , that is, if a private military a company, for example, it goes on a business trip to the congo, in order to train the armed forces of the democratic republic of the congo, it needs a knowledge transfer license, but we restrict the pmc here, because we, we limit the activities of the pmc, because we are talking exclusively about the activities of the pmc abroad in ukraine. if we go back to the law of ukraine on pmcs, then the law of ukraine already corresponds. to the question, this is the law of ukraine, which can only operate on the territory of ukraine. the law of ukraine will not apply on the territory of mozambique, or on the territory there is mali or burkina faso. that is,

that in ukraine we regulate with such a law. unfortunately, when there was a debate on this matter, the author of this bill, mrs. vasylevska smaglyuk, she created a working group, but i don't know how many times this working group. sat, but i was invited to one meeting, i spoke there, and i was no longer invited to these meetings of the working group, because i was categorically against many clauses of this law, for example, i do not see why our ukrainian pmc should dispute any there are compounds with with ammunition, with weapons, with armored vehicles and so on, what will we do with it, that is, this law in this format. in which it was written, it is absolutely counterproductive, but it will never pass in the verkhovna rada, a law that says that a ukrainian private military company, i have

a training ground and... so what should i do now, i should drive it to the training ground 10 battleships, put mortars there, put machine guns, weapons, ammunition and so on there, put up security, the question arises, why do you need all this in the territory of ukraine, and that's why i i believe that the law, the bill that was written, it was written incorrectly, i have my opinion. i expressed, yes, from this , from this working group, and when we are still talking about private military companies, then what is the mechanism of financial existence for such, relatively speaking, enterprises, if we say that these companies perform tasks there outside the of ukraine, they really have contracts there with potential foreign customers, if they work in ukraine,

why should they pay money and who will pay what? ah, yes, also a very interesting question. well, first of all, let's understand, if a ukrainian private military company, ah, concluded a contract with a foreign customer, then this is the responsibility, the payment of services, this is the responsibility of the foreign customer exclusively. if a ukrainian private military company, for example, goes on a business trip, i call it a business trip, goes on a business trip, for example, to burkina faso, and it goes on a business trip in the interests of the state, then of course, first of all, such a business trip must financed by the state, because we work in in the interests of the state, after that there may be other financing options, but in

order for us to... have a start abroad in the interests of the state, the state must pay for it. if we are talking now in the conditions of a war, a full-scale war with russia, the use of private military companies in ukraine, on the territory of ukraine, yes, i understand that this is a very unpopular opinion, but it should be financed by the state, you know, a private military company is not a beggar , who should go and ask to find... you do you want us to do some, some specific actions? well, i can't, i have people, i have people in ukraine now that i can use, and they want to work for us, but i personally don't have the resources to attract these specialists. the problem is that i have specialists, and these specialists are currently working under

contract with the armed forces. of ukraine, but specialists work as stormtroopers, that is, they go and storm the trenches, i believe that this is an inappropriate use of resources. i have another proposal, i have already expressed this proposal, some people heard me, but there's no sanction , you know, no sanction, that i can take these people and use them in some other way, i have no money, no... no funding, no authority to, i to i could take these people and use them somewhere for their purpose, that 's the problem, i want to tell you that this is not the first case, because i watched, i saw how we use, this is not a criticism, maybe some experts or experienced people they will say that andrii, you are wrong and so on, but this is my personal opinion, i have seen how we use, use ssso operators.

on the assaults of the same trenches, and now i have a question, if both an ssso operator from our side and a banal mobilized one from the russian federation die in a frontal attack, how much time and money do we need, time is very important to prepare another operator sso, who accidentally died in frontal contact with... mobilized from the russian federation and how much time and money is needed to restore this mobilized from the russian side federations at the front in ukraine, you understand, we need to prepare an sso operator for at least six months, and the russians will replace this mobilized one tomorrow. i mean, we use our resources, sometimes, sometimes, i'm not criticizing again.