thank you for the invitation, congratulations. well, first of all, mr. mykola, i wanted to ask you about your bill on the regulation of the messenger in ukraine, telegram, you initiated this bill. please explain how dangerous this messenger is for ukraine today? well, firstly, the bill does not regulate messengers, secondly, telegram is not a messenger, thirdly, telegram is not mentioned in the bill. the bill is about platforms. access to information, that is, a signal, for example, is a messenger, because it simply transmits a message from one subscriber to another, and telegram, facebook, youtube, these are sharing platforms where people can receive news, follow news, for a creative product, so to speak, and if video platforms in our country were regulated earlier in the media law, such as youtube, for example, then a whole series platforms that provide both video and text were not regulated, it is somewhere... what

is surprising, because technologies are developing and even youtube is now not purely a video messenger, there are also text messages and a text news feed, just like in telegram has a video picture, so obviously everyone information dissemination platforms should be put on the same page and the same should be demanded from them. what does the law offer? the law essentially copies the european digital act, the european rules of cooperation with sharing platforms , and they consist in... that such a company, such a social network must open a representative office either in the countries of the european union or in ukraine, respond to the remarks of our regulator , if they spread pornography, call for the overthrow of the ukrainian system, oppose ukraine or degrade human dignity, then the national council has the right to refer to such messengers, or rather not messengers, platforms, you see, i got infected from you too, to such platforms, and they are obliged to take it away, in addition, they must, at the request of the national council, present who ... to their

owner, media ownership in our country should be transparent, and where their servers are located and what they are financed by the russian army would already have to be alert, therefore telegram should also be subject to such regulation, just like there twitter, whatsapp or tiktok, all networks should be subject to such and such regulation, and telegram certainly too, because... telegram has opaque ownership, and it is a loss-making and loss-making platform, it is not clear who is financing it to the end, there is a lot of information in the press about what the russians are doing, so obviously those who use telegram to transmit information or to create telegram channels were very worried that this could directly apply to telegram, maybe yes, maybe not, maybe telegram will respond positively, disclose its ownership and respond to the remarks of the ukrainian authorities, as well as to the remarks of the russian authorities. because president

putin directly said that he was grateful to telegram for their cooperation, and they closed more than 400 channels before the russian elections, because ukraine does not have this, it can relate to politics and russian ipso, we see it directly, but it can also relate to other areas, for example, yesterday the lviv agency ngl media published a large study about how closed groups in telegram engage in teenage bullying, demand money to shoot videos in which they are humiliated. summers, and even more money to find out who exactly posted this video, there are ads for the sale of drugs in the comments, obviously all this poses a real threat to both our national security and the security of the state in general, and to leave it in such a situation, as it is, it is inadmissible in principle, by the way, the head of the main department also spoke about the threat to national security from the telegram network intelligence of the ministry of defense of ukraine, general. budanov, let's listen to what he said,

from the point of view of national security, this is definitely a problem, it must be understood, despite the fact that i am absolutely against oppression of freedom of speech, but this is already too much, that is, in our country any person can make a channel , start announcing on it everything he wants, absolutely everything he wants, and... when they start doing something, cover up that it is the freedom of the people, but it is not the freedom of the people, it is a little different, it is called differently, mr. mykola , in may 2017 in ukraine, the russian social networks vkontakte and classmates were banned, and actually one of the creators of vkontakte is now the creator of this telegram, and as you rightly noted that in russia they praise and praise this peace... which

exists, and why is it so, well the reaction of the ukrainians is not quite adequate during the war, when they talk about the fact that they want to shut down telegram, but we want to shut down telegram. program, we will learn news and everything else, that is, it is a lack of understanding that russians can work with this network and through this network influence in including ukrainians? well, first of all , it must be said that there was also great indignation when the national security and defense council, then without a law, according to the decision of the national security council, actually blocked the vkontakte network, the vkontakte network was also used by an extremely large number of ukrainians, but nothing... on facebook and nothing nothing terrible happened, in this case we do not even propose to ban anyone, we want this network not to distribute anti-ukrainian content so that the state can regulate it, there is no direct prohibition in the law, although this way of prohibition through the nsdc is certainly possible, well, we have a catastrophic situation,

because 73% of ukrainians get their news from telegram, in fact it is a monopoly, because if you have someone who controls more than 50%, they are already monopolists, or if two 75% or three of them together control there, these are also monopolists, such anti-monopoly ukrainian legislation, this is a direct violation of anti-monopoly legislation and the anti-monopoly committee should also respond to such a situation, and why do they receive this information, this messenger fairly quickly broke into our information field thanks to pro-russian channels, well , at least the sbu calls them created by the army of the russian federation, all these residents, legitimate and many other channels, they appeared first, wrote alleged gossip about the fact that... happens in the office of the president, who looked askance at whom, who wants to persecute whom, who is stalking whom, and people in principle love rumors, without thinking about how verified and true they are, and these anonymous pro-russian telegram channels actually collected a large audience,

the ukrainian authorities decided to take advantage of this, because they immediately bought or created a large number of ukrainian channels of anonymous millionaires, through which they often spread false information against their political... competitors, and therefore they are very afraid of losing this tool, because all the tools, what they have left is telethon and telegram, and telegram is in the first place, and youtube has only 16% of people get information from from youtube, if we talk about social networks, even in russia, 48% of russians receive information from telegram, we have 73, despite the fact that this network was created by russians, although they say that they are located in dubai, but there is no evidence that there is no russian money among the founders and that the servers are not are found... in russia, people do not even realize how dangerous it is, and state bodies support it, because criticizing telegram, all these ukrainian state services, including special services, have accounts on the telegram network, ukrainian banks, which collect personal information, have accounts on the telegram network, obviously

the russians have access to all this information, and this is really extremely dangerous in the conditions of war and extremely threatening, so you just have to be conscious citizens here, the network really has a convenient interface, and then we are all used to finding out from there . when what flew and where it flew, some of this information is true and some is false, and there are many other ways, what way to provide people with such important information, other sharing platforms access, and viber, and whatsapp, and facebook, and instagram, and many others, where it is at least clear who their owners are, that they are not controlled by the russians in principle, although some of them may also obviously have some. tensions, people just don't realize it, very often people don't care, just like people don't care that we don't have enough soldiers at the front, so many people are against mobilization, obviously the process itself looks idiotic to say the least, but we all we realize that mobilization is needed simply in order to protect motherland, we must also realize that

we must adhere to information security, well, information security, in particular, is related to the decision of youtube, which at the request of the ukrainian side, the disinformation center of the national security service of ukraine, blocked the youtube project of panchenko, a former tv presenter of the medvedchukiv tv channel of the sub-sanctioned news one, which went outside of ukraine and poured dirt on ukraine itself, well, we see how cooperation, or let's say, interaction with the management or with the youtube group is allowed to do this, i understand that with this is impossible with telegram, that is, in... the ukrainian side does not have such contact with those who administer a large telegram channel, and if something like this story can arise in the telegram channel, i understand that we, we cannot help it in any way , am i right, well, they don't respond to it,

some person called an official writes back , who is unclear, we say, he says, we'll take it into account, we'll think about it. how to do it and nothing happens, many call it freedom of speech, so it is obvious telegram does not react in this way, and this is the difference between these messengers and telegrams, especially these large western messengers, they have. system of self-regulation, if you call for an international conflict or humiliate someone there, the network itself will ban you, or citizens can go there if it offends them, such mechanisms do not exist in telegram, that is why it does not work in telegram, another network , which continues to work in ukraine, is a branch network of the russian orthodox church and at the end of last... last week, patriarch kirill gundyaev declared that a special military operation on the territory

of ukraine is a holy war, well, in fact , he once again blessed both putin and the russian army for the killing of ukrainians, explaining it by the fact that russia has the right to do so, including and as for the spiritual component of this, well, if it can be called a spiritual component. people's deputy yevgenia kravchuk from servant of the people, who was on our air, she said that the bill banning the activities of russian churches in ukraine will be adopted in during the month let's hear what she said. the draft law, it is already in the second reading, i hope that, well, if not in april, because we will obviously have a question of mobilization in april, then... whether at the end of april or in may, it will be put to a vote in the hall, there is already a decision of our main committee

before the second reading, we will also take into account the position of the lawyers of the verkhovna rada, the ministry of justice and make certain clarifications this week, but literally the day after tomorrow we will convene the committee, and then it will be considered in the session hall, but i am sure that by there will be 226 votes of people who understand what a... threat this is, mr. mykola, but why couldn't the same servants of the people find 226 votes until now, understanding that this is a big threat. well, they found them, they just searched for a very long time, because i submitted my draft law banning the activities of the russian orthodox church in ukraine, back in 2022, and it dragged on for a very long time, then in the first... it was finally accepted, the government draft law was adopted, and not mine, but i actively worked in our committee on

humanitarian policy, and with the support of everyone colleagues from all factions, we have introduced very important, key norms from my law 821 into the government bill, i understood that the day before yesterday mrs. yevgenia spoke to you, because just today we had a committee, we made the final changes and already sent this bill to voting in the verkhovna rada, and i hope that we will vote now, it has been a long time since 2022. at first, no one did anything, then the president allegedly did not have this bill, instructed the national security council to prepare the bill, then the national security council entrusted it to the state service for ethnopolitics, they prepared it for a very long time, they prepared it, it was so toothless and ineffective, we improved it in the committee, now they are ready for the second reading, i hope it will happen quickly, but does he understand, for example , in your opinion, the current ukrainian... government about the threats posed by not solving this issue, i.e.,

no matter how the ukrainian orthodox church, headed by onufriy , tried to condemn it, or, let's say, to distance itself from the russian orthodox church church, after all, onufriy still mentions cyril among the patriarchs, orthodox patriarchs, and in this way makes it clear that in principle everything remains in place... only they declared declaratively that they are not part of the russian orthodox church? well, i think that many people understand, at least in our committee, which is headed by the representative of the servant of the people party, mykyta potoraev, and yevgenia kravchuk, who was his deputy, the other representatives of this faction voted unanimously for the bill in the second reading today, together with by representatives of other factions, but of our european solidarity, and for the future and the homeland, i know that the trust will be in favor of this... vote, just not all the servants understand it, there is a rather large such pro-russian church group among the servants, which defends

the interests this church, and plus there are these groups of the former opzh, who will also oppose it, and most other politicians in the verkhovna rada understand, i think that this understanding comes gradually, because now after this last council, where gundyaev declared a holy war, and then after the situation when gundyaev obliged this... led russia to pray for the victory of russia, that is, for the killing of ukrainians, actually blessed the war and turned his church into an anti-christian sect, i think... that many more people understand the need to quickly pass this bill in order for it to become a law, the very end of our conversation, mr. mykola, tell me if there is a crisis in the parliament or not, i mean with votes and in general with decision-making, yes, it is a crisis not of the parliament, it is a crisis of the majority, because

the majority of deputies from the majority, which elected more than 250, they simply do not go and vote, recently 107 vote . the tenth is even less, and they cannot pass laws without us, without opposition votes, and sometimes our votes are not enough, because we participate in meetings , and they just don't come, it's a crisis of power, it's not like a parliamentary crisis, it's generally a crisis of power, since the parliament can be said to have a one-party majority, and it is, it's a one-party coalition, and they definitely have a crisis , and this turns into, in general, parliamentary crisis. thank you, mr. mykola, for the conversation, it was mykola knyazhytskyi, people's deputy of ukraine, friends. after a short break, we will return to the studio, to our studio now in the office, not in the shelter. greetings, my name is yuriy fizar - this is an exclusive on espresso. today i will talk with my interlocutor about urgent ukrainian-american relations. what

to expect from washington, i mean the aid that is currently stuck in the house of representatives and much more. so, today the ambassador of the united states of america to ukraine, mrs. bridget brink. madam ambassador, i welcome you and thank you for joining me today. nice to be with you. so, you arrived in ukraine at the end of may 2022. how was the situation in our country different from the current one? the current situation is radically different from when i came to ukraine. in may 2022, the streets were practically empty and there were roadblocks everywhere. when i was driving then, i saw a lot of destruction. now, despite two years of russia's brutal war against ukraine, i see incredible progress. 50% of the occupied territory was won by brave defenders of ukraine. ukraine was able to export food

through the black sea ports, sending more than a thousand ships, that is, more than 30.3 million metric tons of grain and other cargo, and during two very harsh, but incredible winters, ukrainians were able to preserve energy and electricity for the entire country. these are really great achievements, and despite russia's military efforts, we see that the economy has not only survived, it is growing, talking about 5% in 2023 and projected growth. it is obvious that this is a difficult moment and a difficult situation for of ukraine, but we undertake to be with you in the future. right now, i see the incredible resilience of every person in the country who wants to win this fight with russia. thank you very much for

that, and thank you to all the american people for your help. which you provide us. let's talk about this help. now we are very dependent on external funding, and unfortunately, a bill from the white house, which provides ukraine with about 60 billion dollars, is stuck in the house of representatives. however, we do know that house speaker mike johnson is going put this aid package to a vote after representatives return from the easter break, around april 9. what do you personally think about it, will they vote for it, and if so, will it have the innovations that speaker johnson is talking about. i am sure that the us congress will support an additional bill regarding ukraine. of course, it is up to congress to decide when this

will happen, but my confidence is based on the fact that, in addition to the president of the united states and everyone... of this administration, ukraine has the bipartisan support of congress. many of its representatives visited ukraine, including senator schumer. he was here in lviv with a delegation just a few weeks ago, such visits further reflect the support of the american people. we know very well what is currently at kona. there is a fight for freedom, so that russia and putin cannot repeat something. similar in other places, we support ukraine in its struggle for its existence. what about innovations, huh? as for innovations, it will be up to congress to decide. we have prepared an argument based on the president's proposals. this is what we are we adhere to as jake sullivan said a few

days ago in kyiv, there is no plan b. there is no plan b because many american politicians are talking about plan b. they say, yes, we are talking about plan a because that is the master plan, but what about plan b. there is none. so we only have plan a. yes, and we support it. at the beginning of march, in an interview with cnn, you said that the united states of america has reached a critical point in its support for ukraine and that people in washington should redouble their efforts to help ukraine. or listened to you on the capital hill. i will say that not yet, but i am sure that our congress will reflect the will of the american people and the strategic interests of the united states, the essence of which is that... to help ukraine. i propose to talk about russia. only a few weeks ago , they held what the russians call

presidential elections. we in ukraine call it a farce. so putin reappointed himself again. but what do people in the united states of america think about what happened. we definitely are. we consider this election undemocratic, and i have nothing more to say about it, we do not recognize any elections on the sovereign territory of ukraine. let's talk about support from the western world. in february, french president emmanuel macron said that he does not rule out the possibility that one day western troops will be on the territory of ukraine. i understand that most western leaders disagreed with... him , but what about the united states of america? we understand that there will be no american troops in ukraine, but can we at least

hope for the signing of some kind of agreement with the usa like those we have already signed with great britain and france. yes, definitely. okay, can you tell me what will be included in this deal? not yet, still debating that. but it seems that we are already close to that moment. i cannot name specific terms, but i can say that there are active negotiations with representatives of your government about this. let's move on to the issue of corruption in ukraine. you once said that in order for western investments to come to ukraine, we need to have an independent judicial system, free mass media and the absence of corruption. is there any progress in these directions? i will say, yours. the president, who represents your people and your democracy, set an ambitious goal to integrate into the eu and nato. on this path, a strong democracy is especially important. its important components

are dynamic and free media, an active civil society, strong institutions, a system of checks and balances, and an independent judiciary. this is the vision of your president, who reflects the interests of your people, and we strongly support you in this. in this keys, we supported and continue to support all the steps that were taken to solve some of the problems that exist in ukraine. this is the fight against corruption, raising the level of corporate governance to international standards, and reforming the justice system. all this is very important. to achieve our top goal, it's also critical for business, as we heard from special representative pena pritzker as part of president biden's initiative to

accelerate your economic recovery. availability of standards and the rule of law, so that businesses can be confident that their investments will be protected by laws and regulations, that's what's crucial: we hear it all the time, so it's extraordinary. it is important to achieve this goal, as far as i understand, it corresponds to the aspirations of the people of ukraine. madam ambassador, and my last question for today: republican senator lynsey graham visited ukraine a few weeks ago. and he said that he has changed his opinion about the expediency of holding elections, namely presidential elections in ukraine now. he claims that elections can still take place. what is the official position? american authorities on this matter. ukraine is a sovereign, democratic country, and only it can decide such issues. thank you very much,

madam ambassador, for your answers and... thank you for all the help we are getting from the united states of america. it was an exclusive espresso with my interlocutor, ms. ambassador of the united states of america to ukraine bridget brink , they talked about ukrainian-american relations, about the help we received, are receiving and will continue to receive and much more. my name is yuri fizer, do meetings this is the verdict program, my name is serhii rudenko, once again i congratulate you all and wish you all good health. in the course of this program, i remind you, we conduct a survey and ask you about the following: do you approve of the activities of the verkhovna rada of ukraine? yes no. please vote on youtube or with the button yes or no, if you watch us on tv, please vote with phone numbers if you approve of the activities of the verkhovna rada of ukraine, 0800 211

381. 800 211 382 all calls to these numbers are free, vote at the end of the program we will sum up the results of this vote. next, we are in touch with valentin badrak, director of the center for army conversion and disarmament research. mr. valentin, i congratulate you, thank you for joining our broadcast. mr. serhiy, i congratulate you and i am very glad for the invitation. first of all, mr. valentin, to a fairly simple question, it would seem, but at the same time it is difficult. zelensky said that the russian... federation is planning an offensive from may to june, or in may-june, and the prospects for the deployment of the front, how likely it is now under the current conditions, is it enough do the russians have the strength for this and in which areas of the front is this possible? very interesting question, and my center, the center for army, conversion and weapons research already made a statement this morning about...

this, and that this is part of another special operation, or rather, this special operation, it 's been going on for a long time, and it's actually about we are observing the peak, such a peak part, ipson, yes, of an informational and psychological operation, which is directed primarily, well, of course , against ukraine, but primarily against the west, why did such a conviction appear, let's... to compare, let's not say detached from something, but let's say, well, so to speak, let's try to analyze, the first moment, just during the negotiations with sergei shoigu, this is, let me remind you, the minister of the criminal putin regime, sebastien lecorno, with the minister of defense of france, as just

started... the issue of the introduction of french troops was discussed, shoiguza talked about what he would arrange, well , the istanbul peace initiative, let's say that this means that it is quite possible that the kremlin is bluffing and playing such a rather interesting game to raise rates. on the one hand , we are talking about increasing pressure, we remember that it was announced that 300,000 would be mobilized at the beginning of june, once again, it is interesting that the ministry of defense stated that the russian ministry of defense stated that after the terrible terrorist attack, which was ... as we see,

now we see that the results of the terrorist attack were very necessary for the putin regime and the entire organized criminal group of the criminal group, and that it turns out that, according to the statement, the number of people who want to sign a contract and go, go to the army. and this is one side of the question, the other side of the question, ah, there is no time and there is no possibility in the putinsky regime to prepare the mobilization contingent that they expect to attract. let's remember that this is...