of the information and consulting company defense express was the talk of the press, but in the meantime we are already giving the floor to iryna koval, who is ready to share with us fresh and relevant information, iro, let us give the floor to you and tell us what this issue will be about? thank you marta, in this issue about the search of pashynskyi, i will tell you about the situation on the polish border, and also about who joined and now also started the blockade of the borders, in addition to the polish farmers, wait. it's 5 p.m. in ukraine, news time on the tv channel espresso, in the studio of iryna koval. i welcome all the viewers and now to the most important events. the russian occupiers are pulling up reserves to bohdanivka, which is near bakhmut, donetsk region. the enemy is not stopping the pressure on

the bakhmut direction, the head of the press service of the khortytsia military group, ilya yevlash, said on radio svoboda. according to him, the defense forces, in turn , repulse enemy attacks, pull up their reserves and inflict fire damage on enemy assault groups. at the same time , the number of shelling has decreased significantly, probably this due to bad weather, yevlash said. two damaged launchers of the hymars missile system were delivered to the usa. the military writes about it. the video of the unloading of cars at the airport in harrisburg, pennsylvania, was published by a youtube channel. after loading other vehicles, the us army an-124 ruslan took off two hours after arriving. i note that this is the first publicly known confirmation of damage to these machines. one of the cars is missing a front wheel and is damaged below. part, the other installation has

damage probably from debris. to the former people's deputy serhiy pashinskyi and his business partner were charged with causing losses to the state of almost uah 1 billion. in 2014, the state confiscated almost 100,000 tons of oil products from oligarch serhiy kurchenko. the fuel was transferred to a specialized state enterprise. most of the oil products are sold. the group of companies, the owner of which was the business partner of the ex-deputy, then sold the fuel at gas stations and chain gas stations. the ministry of defense received only 1.5% of kurchenko's oil products. serhii pashynskyi rejects the accusations. the suspect was declared under articles 191 and 255 of the criminal code of ukraine. the ex-people's deputy publicly denied friendship with his. with a partner who was

the owner of a company that was involved in the criminal scheme, but, as the collected evidence shows, the participants actively communicated. all the so-called embezzlement consisted in the confiscation of this fuel and its transfer to the armed forces. i reject the accusations, i see in the actions of the law enforcement officers indirect work for the country of the aggressor, who, for the sake of disrupting the combat capability of the armed forces, must remove me from my official duties as head national association. enterprises of the defense sector, it is interesting that the text of the suspicion was prepared on the basis of my 2015 interview with the ukrainian pravda publication. polish farmers renewed their protest at the zosen checkpoint. the reason for the blocking was the decision of the european commission to extend for another year the full opening of the eu market for ukrainian agricultural products. farmers assure that polish agricultural production is suffering losses, and the prices of goods are increasing. poles demand

to cancel the green agreement for ukraine, to compensate farmers for lost income and increase subsidies for agricultural fuel. the action has a polish-wide character, today all checkpoints on the border with ukraine are blocked. our goal is to block the uncontrolled import of agricultural products from ukraine. another goal is the cancellation of the green order, although this does not apply to ukrainian farmers. for example , in the direction of the yagodin checkpoint, when it is fully functional, the border can be crossed by 1,200-1,400 freight vehicles per day, whereas in the past day, 145 freight vehicles crossed the border of vehicles, five of which went to poland and 140 to ukraine,

the flow, or the number of cargo vehicles, that crossed the border in the direction of the ravarusk checkpoint also decreased by 2.5 times. moldovan farmers and protesters blocked the ausheni albitsa checkpoint on the border with romania, the moldovan publication newsmaker reports. law enforcement officers maintain public order and restore road traffic, it is recommended to use three alternative crossings. association power of farmers reported that farmers will hold protests across the country. the participants of the action block the highways, demand from the government and the parliament. immediately start a dialogue with farmers and provide them with urgent financial assistance. and among the wreckage of the shakhet attack drone found in moldova near the border with ukraine, a warhead containing about 50 kg of explosives was discovered. according to

the moldovan police, sappers neutralized and collected all the debris, and in the near future they will detonate the combat unit under safe conditions. as you know, fragments. found the day before near the village etulia, vulkanesh district. moldovan border guards believe that the wreckage may belong to one of the uavs shot down by the ukrainian military during the russian attack on odesa on the night of february 9-10. eu countries should increase defense spending. this was stated by the president of the european parliament, roberta metzola, against the background of the presidential candidate's statements. usa donald trump, who once again criticized nato partners in europe and threatened to leave the north atlantic alliance in case of victory in the presidential elections. i think, that this is a call for us to do much more.

what the us presidential candidate says could also wake up allies who haven't done enough on defense. so hopefully we 'll all do more. together, we are stronger. regardless of who leads the next american administration, after this grand 2024 year of democratic processes, we are strong enough. we are able to protect each other. so any statement of the same kind is dangerous, but also adamant that we must do more, in case we have to to be left alone and at least four people were killed in a shooting at a greek shipping company near athens. greek media, citing the police, write that an armed man, probably a former employee of the company, entered the building and started shooting, as a result of which three

people died, including the owner of the enterprise. then the body of the attacker was found in another area, he probably shot himself in the head. the attacker turned out to be a 70-year-old citizen of egypt, there is evidence that... that he was dismissed from his position in this company. how to save the enslaved peoples of russia. since 2023, the temporary special commission of the verkhovna rada on the development of state policy regarding the enslaved peoples of the russian federation has been dealing with this very issue. today, representatives of the commission, people's deputies, scientists and public and political figures discussed the policy of ukraine in relation to such peoples and outlined further work plans. special commission, those present also presented a draft law aimed at interaction with national movements of enslaved peoples. their peoples also suffer from linguicides, ethnocides, is destroyed,

exhausted. on the basis of this , we came to the conclusion that we need a separate sphere of national policy that would concern enslaved peoples, we need to convince our own. that the decolonization of the russian federation , well, the russian empire, in fact never took place, and the fact that the colonial empires of britain, france, and spain were destroyed there, partly with the assistance of the soviet union, did not solve the issue of colonization and enslavement of more than 30% of the population of the so-called russian federation. the key position if to summarize the work of the commission, is to develop ideas that should take shape in the draft law. which should form the foundations of the state policy of ukraine regarding the renewed peoples, this is exactly what was missing, in contrast , when these or other bodies at the level of the ministry of foreign affairs or at the level of the intelligence agency of the ministry of defense, or at the level of the public sector, they

are still interacting in this context, but there was no unified coherent state policy in this regard to date. it is very important to us that we are talking about a specific case, this the draft law, which is on... the temporary special commission of the ukrainian parliament and which we are currently discussing at the expert level, and later it will go to the relevant specialized commissions. members of the verkhovna rada, as well as those departments and institutions that should give it a legal assessment, a professional assessment, but we can already see that at the expert level we can also make certain proposals to this law, which will only strengthen it and make it possible to its most effective and useful for the cause of supporting the enslaved peoples that was the news for now, our team is working for you to be the first to know all the latest news, so stay tuned for the next one... release at 6pm. you can read more on our website espresso tv.

follow us on social networks and watch on youtube. next, my colleagues, antin borkovskii and marta oliarnyk. the information day of the tv channel continues. thank you fellow journalists. thank you for being close. broadcasting to our colleague iryna koval, and we are now adding to our marathon yulia hryshyn, people's deputy of ukraine, head subcommittee on higher education, verkhovna rada committee on education, science and innovation. glory to ukraine, ms. yulia, we congratulate you. glory to the heroes, have a good day. well, first of all, we would like to ask you about the so-called optimization or the possible merger of several higher educational institutions, well, unofficially there is such information that they are generally planned. to reduce the number of higher education institutions in ukraine, well, accordingly, the ministry

conducts the so-called integrative unification processes, causing very often, well, mildly in other words, a scandalous reaction on the part of these or other higher education institutions, so you have a word as to how this process is progressing now, have these or other generally used, generally accepted and transparent, understandable criteria been defined by which these or other higher education institutions plan to unite. educational institutions, yes, in fact, in fact, today we have a very acute issue, the question of unification of our higher education institutions is being discussed very actively in society and in the higher education system. for many years we have understood that the network of our universities, institutes, it is too broad, and for many years we have been discussing the issue of the fact that we also need to optimize our network, but what is happening now, how is

the situation different now from what it was all these years, now we, all of ukraine, have been fighting for two years in the conditions of a full-scale invasion, and in fact our resources, the entire economy and the entire country are moving to the mode where we must understand where every penny goes, and, for example, before the war we had... for a moment almost 1,500 institutions that issued diplomas of higher education, i.e this includes academies of sciences, universities , institutes, and professional pre-higher education events , and more than 300 institutions of higher education, in fact we were in this network, of course we all understood that this network was too big for our country, and somehow it it is necessary to optimize, and this optimization actually lasted every year, we had volumes. but they actually took place in such an evolutionary way. now we have come to the moment when we

understand that it is necessary to make a fundamental decision at the level of the entire country, which in the state does not have enough resources to finance so many of our universities. and we all understand it, rectors understand it, people's deputies understand it, the ministry understands it, and why is there such an active discussion now. the question, since everyone is talking about the fact that it is necessary to change the format itself somewhat, in what way this optimization and reorganization of our universities should take place, today i will tell you the first thing, we have just finished the meeting of the rectors' union, that is, today our all-ukrainian public organization , the rectors' union, held its meeting at the shevchenko university, where the minister of education, his deputy ... were present, where in fact, all former ministers

of education were present, people's deputies were present, and today we together discussed the most problematic points and and let's say the main aspects of higher education reform that are happening today, and the first issue that we discussed that attracted the most attention was the issue of directly optimizing the network, and i want to say that... that i, as the head of the subcommittee on higher education, spoke today about what we need from the ministry as well, we are waiting for the role of a coordinator who will unite everyone so that we have something in common. decision, but also from the rectors, from the union of rectors, we also expect an active position, that is , today we need to understand that in the conditions of war, we all, we all work as one team, we all have one goal, we all understand what is happening and what we need to come to, and it should be a joint

decision, no matter how painful it may be it was not difficult, because these are the fates of people , these are the fates of labor teams, but this decision needs to be discussed, strategic points need to be defined, criteria and horses will need to be defined yulia, we completely agree with you, but actually we would like to ask you about the criteria , we understand that this is not an easy decision, the process is extremely difficult and the communication between the ministry of education and individual higher education institutions was unsuccessful, for example, the story with the university of vernatsky yes. and there was a meeting of the labor team with representatives of the ministry, and it began to acquire, well, really such an unhealthy color, but as for me, we are media people, and we also understand that we need to speak a lot of things correctly and work out understandable for all the criteria, how the new system will work, which higher education institutions will

be reduced, which will join, according to which criteria, what will happen, for example, to the employees, who will... guarantee them, for example, maintaining the same rates and so on and so forth, for approximately how long, and we understand that today you mentioned the union of rectors, and the corresponding presentation, well, i even saw out of the corner of my eye, so to speak, a plan for an optimization schedule or downtime in the language of the merger or reduction of certain higher educational institutions, so please share the criteria and schedule plans, so today directly the minister... at the meeting of the union of professors presented a presentation, at which we were all introduced to the strategic points, and most importantly with the criteria, according to which the network optimization work will actually take place further, it must be said that of course all the criteria cannot be the same, it is impossible to approve the same

criteria that will apply to everyone, because our situation now the country is such that we have, for example, transcarpathia. destruction of infrastructure and so on, therefore there cannot be the same criteria for the entire country, but there must be transparent activity of the ministry, which will be clear to every participant of this process, because it is very important, it is the destinies of people, it is nerves, stress, people are afraid of losing their jobs and we need to preserve the intellectual potential of the country at the state level, this is exactly what we talked about today and everyone came to one point, to one opinion about that we will continue to work together, today we looked and familiarized ourselves with the criteria that the ministry finally presented today, we discussed it further, i.e. we listened to the opinion of people's deputies,

we listened to the opinion of trade unions, representatives of the rectors' union, and we agreed that in the future we will somewhat we will change this process, communication will be more changed, we will, these decisions will be made with the support of people 's deputies with the involvement of rectors, the union of rectors, directly so that there are no such tensions, transparent decision-making, and we together in fact, we made these decisions together, no matter how difficult they were, they were not, and these are really difficult enough decisions for today, this is an extremely difficult story, ms. yulia, and i would like to ask you in general, about the procedure and maybe some kind of updated procedure for electing rectors, we understand that the story can also be extremely loud, in particular, it is about the introduction of so-called supervisory councils, which would be formed by the ministry and in this way they would appoint or elect rectors, we understand that previously the procedure for electing rectors was the other, here it is planned to create

so-called supervisory councils, their composition will be formed under the influence of the ministry. that is, about the so-called self-governance of universities and so on, well, we can forget a little, maybe i am wrong about something, maybe some additional mechanisms have been worked out that would allow this process to be civilized, taking into account the fact that universities are really self-governing autonomous units, and how will everything unfold here? yes, we have had a system in place for many years, when our rectors are elected in elections and elections are held with the participation of members of the labor team, that is, students with a certain quota, and members of scientific and pedagogical staff, even administrative staff participate in... rector's ban, and now such an initiative of the ministry is being discussed, which has not yet been set out in any regulatory act, but such an initiative is being discussed that

local authorities, central authorities, employers should be involved in the procedure for electing the rector of the university, that is, those people, in fact, for whom and under the leadership of whom in our country system of higher education works, i want to say that this opinion, it is not one that is perceived equally in society and by representatives of the system of higher education, it is quite controversial, it still needs to be discussed, debated, but before that we and called on the ministry today to change the policy somewhat, to change the communication somewhat, and these are the decisions they took after some discussion in the expert environment, because we all... understand that the higher education system needs changes, and the changes are quite drastic, and of course, the war, the full-scale invasion that is taking place in the country today, it only - says

that we need to accelerate these reforms, because we must, we are now going to europe, and we must be leaders, i.e. to have our position and our status in this market, we must be strong in order not to lose there, we must be equal players. we don't want, we don't want to lose, and we understand that supervisory boards are an extremely important story, but when, for example, the ukrainian catholic university is given as an example , yes, the work of which we greatly respect , love, respect the employees, it should be understood, that this is a private higher educational institution, and we understand that there is a supervisory board, yes, which one was formed even before the relevant process, so to speak, and we understand what to apply as individual vice-prems'. ministers, this is an example of state higher educational institutions or higher educational institutions of various fields, for example, well, we have such huge universities in kyiv, odesa, lviv

, and so on . the formation of supervisory boards, which would not be formed by the collective, for example, but according to some certain criteria, which would, for example, be worked out by will by the decision of one or another, for example, the deputy minister. of education, that's how he sees it, well, accordingly, we also live in a post-soviet country to a large extent, unfortunately, well, the fact that you exaggerate a bit so much, it's a little wrong, it will not depend on the decision of an individual deputy minister, it is proposed, yes i told you, it is proposed to take into account when appointing the rector of the university, it is proposed to take into account the opinion, in fact , of the ministry of education, as a body that... regulates activities and forms basic principles of the education system in ukraine , it is proposed to take into account the opinion of employers,

local authorities, that is, it should be , that is, they propose such a solution, and indeed uku was given as an example in our country , but i agree with you that it is a private university, and the basis on which their supervisory board works, we still need to analyze to what extent it can... be viable when we talk about our state institutions of higher education, so this issue needs to be discussed, we really, when we talk about the election of the rector, have different positions are different the points that influence and why this system is criticized, but i think there should be a discussion, we have such a time now that we need reforms, we all understand this, but there should be a discussion, and decisions should be made only after a discussion in an expert environment . i wanted to clarify with you, just at the beginning of our conversation, you took into account the fact that we really have a war and the situation in the country is changing somewhat, this is also the demographic situation, this is why we understand the need

to save one or another of our expenses, both from the state budget, but see if at all someone calculated to what extent the institutions that may be planning to join one or another are self-liquidating in the sense that they are on private training orders, i mean contractors, can plus or minus provide for themselves, because we understand, state orders there are not so many, but there are enough people to study on a paid form of education, there are enough of them, and here it is important to understand whether the state somehow measured these numbers and how self-sufficient some educational institutions are in general, which can, in principle, calmly exist for your cost? well, look, that's enough here... any question, and i want to say here that we should proceed from the fact that if we are talking about our state-owned universities, then they are all financed from the state budget, of course

they are. .. the so-called special fund, that is, it is the special fund of universities that is replenished through thanks to contractors, thanks to any other services provided to universities, these are paid services, at the expense of this our universities earn these funds, everything else is university funding for account of the state budget, and this is where the main root of the problems arises, that all state universities are financed from the state budget, and there is not a single state university of ours. who would be able to actually weave it even now this difficult time without public funding, it must be understood when we say, when we raise these issues, so if it is a public university, ee actually, i think more than 60% of it is financed by the public budget, and that is why we are raising these issues now, because self-financing, self-sufficiency, this does not actually apply to

our state universities. this must be understood when we raise this issue. mrs. yulia, we would like to ask you about the story with contract workers, graduate students. as far as i understand, the committee and subcommittee submitted the corresponding amendment, we would like to ask you about its further fate and, in general, how it is formulated. yes, in the first reading we adopted a draft law that regulates the issue of mobilization, there is indeed a rule that stipulates that graduate students studying under a contract form of education, they will not have fun and today i already submitted an amendment from myself, accordingly, the content of which is that such a division of our graduate students, depending on who pays, depending on who pays for their education, of course, it contradicts the constitution, it contradicts the current legislation, we all

understand that today we have a war in the country and ... we need to make various decisions, no matter how difficult they were, but still, as far as our graduate students are concerned, i stand by the fact that we need to remove this disc a norm that is discriminatory, according to the constitution of ukraine, and to look for other ways to bring order in this area, because the number of graduate students studying at the expense of contractors has really increased many times, that is, we understand that there is there are graduate students who use this opportunity as an opportunity to avoid demobilization, this is a fact, it is necessary to agree with this, but the problem needs to be solved in a different way than simply forbidding everyone to study, rather not to bother to study, but to allow, well let's say, ban the postponement of mobilization yes, that's why i submitted this amendment today, there are other ways that we

will talk about with the ministry. with our chancellors about ensuring order and all graduate students who enter, regardless of who will pay for their education, engaged in science, who are not engaged in science, must be expelled, and tomorrow we will have a committee meeting, on to which we will also form our position according to those norms of this bill on mobilization, which relate to the education system. thank you, yuliya hryshina, people's deputy of ukraine, head of the subcommittee on higher education of the verkhovna rada's committee on issues. of education , science and innovation was on the air of espresso, we had time to discuss a lot with ms. yulia , what is really important, and we hope that all the viewers who are interested in this topic also found it useful to hear the people's deputy, who is actually in the relevant committee, some important things we heard from ms. yulia, we understand that the situation with the optimization of higher educational institutions will indeed be difficult, perhaps unfair in relation to certain

educational institutions, but we understand that the state is determined to ensure that this process takes place after all. we will now go on a short break, and after that we will add volodymyr tsibulka, a political scientist, to our broadcast, and we will have many topics to discuss with him, because in fact there are also many events, both today and over the weekend, so stay with us , stay with espresso, we'll be back in a few minutes and join volodymyr tsibulka and talk about the most important things. tired of heavy and bulky saws , then the strong saw from unpack tv is just for you, with it you can easily cut trees and bushes, it is so convenient to use for carpentry work, it is an ideal tool for your home or garden, and the price is only from 1499 uah, also reliable...