political analysis objectively and meaningfully, there is no political season, exclusive interviews, reports from the hottest points of the front, free openly and impartially, you draw your own conclusions, vasyl zima's big broadcast, two hours of airtime, two hours of your time to to learn about the war and what the world is about, two hours to keep abreast of economic and sports news, two hours in the company of favorite presenters, presenters who have become like-minded to many, as well as distinguished guests of the studio, the events of the day in two hours, vasyl zima's big broadcast, a project for smart and caring people, an espresso in the evening, a verdict with serhiy rudenko, from now on in a new two-hour format, even more analytics, even more... more important topics, even more

top guests: foreign experts, inclusion of abroad, about ukraine, the world, the front, society, and also feedback, you can express your opinion at any time of the day with the help of a telephone survey, turn on and turn on, the verdict with serhiy rudenko, every weekday from 20 to 22 at espresso . congratulations! friends, the politclub program is on the air espresso tv channel. vitaly portnikov is with you. these two hours we will talk about the most important events of this week, this day, about what happened, about what the trends should be for the following days and weeks. and our first interlocutor, the founder of the charity fund zakyrye nebo ukraine, deputy chief of the general staff of the armed forces of ukraine in 2006 and 2010 , lieutenant general ihor romanenko. congratulations, mr. igor. i congratulate you. well, let's start with

what is happening in kharkiv oblast, which there are tactical goals of the enemy, what he can succeed in, how to stop him from doing so on this part of the front. please explain to us. judging by the introduction of hostilities, it is tactical actions that take place there. from the old side, as is known, the enemy struck in the area north of kharkiv, this. in four villages, shooting and three more, and in the north-eastern direction, this is vovchank and the power of gatishche, west of vavchank. the enemy acted on selected vehicles, used several battalions, before that, carried out a fire attack and advanced for... some time

advanced in different directions along the contact line from three to 5 km and is trying to gain a foothold in this territory, which before that was, let's say, defined as a gray zone, the defense forces of ukraine have transferred reserves to this direction and are trying to disrupt the enemy's plans, respectively. and first to stabilize the situation, and then, depending on the forces to be used there, to restore, let's say, the state at the beginning of these hostilities, in general , three options were considered for the direction of kharkiv and the kharkiv direction, the first one was planned by the enemy and the representative general said skibitskyi from the main office.

intelligence to organize appropriate actions against the city directly, this requires a grouping of enemy troops with somewhere from 150 thousand weapons and equipment, which is not currently observed in this direction, and therefore there is no point in talking about such actions at the current time. the second option is that the enemy, for this it is necessary... from 50,000, somewhere in this direction, 55,000 are concentrated, but there are not enough separate forces to make the so-called border strip, or putin characterized it as a sanitary one, that is which move our troops further from the border, 75 km from the border, they are building an airfield there.

it's close to that, well, taking everything into account, it means to complete this kind of task, for which there is still not enough strength in full, but here is the question. perhaps in time, and now exactly what is happening now is most likely reconnaissance by combat, the purpose of which is to capture the territory, push back our troops, and also withdraw part of the forces from the eastern front in order to weaken the potential of conducting combat operations of the defense forces of ukraine on in this direction. but what is happening around vovchansk, do you think this is it? here is the desire to capture this city and what it gives the russians, and it is included in the capture of this city is included in what we are talking about, that is, using the intelligence of the battle, having identified some weak points, to capture the place

in order to make it the basis for further advancement, if not advancement , then ee means build your defense system by capturing these territories that you and i are talking about in order to further influence, or if they add reserves, forces, for this we need to get these additional forces for the time being, well, in order to conduct artillery shelling, and well, to influence the nearest objects, to give an opportunity. of its artillery, this is within a radius of 20 km, to actively act on our facilities in this zone. mr. igor, how do you assess the situation in the donbas area? it is difficult, the enemy still has enough strength to

organize offensive actions, unfortunately, of a tactical level, but offensive action as much as possible. the defense force tries to carry out stabilization, it means to stop the advance of the enemy's actions, and that is why this kind of intensive combat operations are conducted primarily in the directions of bakhmutsky, avdiivskyi and southern shimarinka, and in general in the near future, that is, until the end of may, the beginning of june, on the organizational side. accomplish the task: the enemy of conducting its strategic defense operation, will it gather the forces to begin the second phase, which our president spoke of, of actions in this direction, the defense forces, will they be able to gather the appropriate forces to

organize a defense system that would disrupt these plans, that is, the strategic factor of time works. please tell me, mr. igor, how you consider it in general. the possibility of some retaliatory actions on the part of the ukrainian defense forces, so does your idea of ​​these retaliatory actions fit into the strikes that were delivered, say, on belgorod oblast today? certainly, this kind of action should be carried out in order to weaken the enemy's potential in these directions, and we understand, since missile weapons are launched from these territories. actions of enemy aircraft and so on, that means in the best possible way, in the best possible way , to strike by counter-attacks on these territories, where the enemy's planes, aircraft in general, where

the launchers are located, where their artillery and manpower are located, the question is how many and what means for this we have ? and with this there is a question, well, regarding the personnel, it is known that from the 18th the law on mobilization will come into effect, well, it is trying within the framework of the current legislation, that is, to carry out these measures, but they are not carried out so quickly and effectively, as we would like to replenish our brigades, especially in those that conduct combat operations directly in the line of sight. if we talk about the border areas of ukraine, about the kharkiv region, about sumy, what should be the approaches of the ukrainian state to the further provision of normal life and development of these areas in the future, because even if we imagine in some

foreseeable future the cessation of hostilities between russia and ukraine, all the same, our border ones will probably not be in any obvious way security, the question is normal, as you say, life can be ensured only by the appropriate results of the conduct of hostilities, they are now in a difficult state, and we do not have enough strength to stabilize them. i.e. to stop the actual advance of the enemy, he would be at a tactical distance of kilometers there, but he is advancing, and after that, depending on the capabilities of the defense forces of ukraine, i.e. , our reserves, which we do not observe significantly, we can talk about de-occupation actions, and due to their implementation and results of successful actions of this kind. it is possible to talk about your definition of normal actions in these areas of life, to what extent

it can be considered that the help that ukraine is currently receiving from the united states can significantly change the situation at the front, can it really be said that all the main problems arose precisely in connection in connection with this failure in aid, not only, this primarily concerns the armament of equipment, but we were late and still have not fulfilled the... submission on personnel, i.e. mobilization in the third year waging a large-scale war is a belated action, and in very difficult conditions it will now be necessary to solve this issue, to correct this strategic error, besides, you showed you engineering equipment, the next thing to do in such conditions is falsification. to build in the defense system, there is also a big delay with this, and not the efforts, if, but

this could also significantly weaken the potential of offensive action, the question is not only that the first lines in the defense system can be the engineering troops, or by themselves servicemen of the defense forces of ukraine, a powerful support of both state and private structures in this and will be involved in this, in the construction. sification, all the necessary border forces and not only throughout the country, only such powerful and fast help, well, will contribute to stopping the advance of the enemy. and tell me, mr. igor, what really happened to the fortifications? this is also important to understand, the fortifications had to be engaged in from the beginning of july last year, that is, by june it was already clear that... the offensive actions were not successful, they did not achieve their goals, there are no forces to carry them out, and these

the forces are gathered in full volume only in terms of resources for one direction, and we acted in the zaporizhia direction, led by general zaluzhnyi, as far as two militopol berdyansk and general syrskyi, well, with the control of the president, i would say, they initiated actions in the bahamian direction. it is already three, and in august a fourth kherson direction was added, that is , the resource collected not in full for one was distributed to four, of course, this meant that there would be no success, and in july it was clearly known, and it was necessary stop, move to strategic defense with the urgent construction of fortifications and a defense system. we were late by... half a year , we began to deal with all the fortifications actually from the beginning of this year and we have the consequences of this, and

you understand why because it was decided to stretch the front or for what, but on the other hand, well, the russians stretched the fronts and got a similar result, because a timely decision was made in july, by the way, nato representatives advised that it be distributed more than once. resources are gathered for at least one, these three, and then four directions, but the decision was made by the relevant military-political leadership, and we have the following consequences. do you think it will be possible to stop the enemy in the direction of kharkiv, can we say that these are local battles for now? well, you and i analyzed the situation, determined with three options, while the battles are still at the level of... well, tactical, but they can

grow according to the second option to this sanitary zone, because the enemy is forming for this and currently has significant strength, what can you say about our side, so the time factor requires great efforts on our part and allies to gather such resources in order to stop the further advance of the enemy, including. not such important defense objects as there are kharkiv, sums, well, a number of others, by the way, another question is that these resources, they form two armies, so... that is, 14 divisions, 16 brigades, two armies, and that they will be exactly according to the plans that have become known, that is , kharkiv and sumy, from the point of view of such approaches, one can think about their military leadership to put pressure, for example, on the same kharkiv direction,

and strike at another, where to transfer these resources, the reserves that they will accumulate. thank you very much, mr. igor, igor romanenko, the founder of the charity fund we will close the sky of ukraine, the deputy chief of the general staff of the armed forces of ukraine in 2006-2010 was on our air, and now we will talk about the foreign policy of ukraine with the head of the hungarian community of kyiv region, tiber tompovy, congratulations mr. tybor, good evening, mr. vitaliy, well , the reason for our conversation was the fact that the president of ukraine, in sufficient detail according to according to his press service spoke. with the prime minister of hungary viktor orban, this is such an unusual contact, because volodymyr zelenskyi and viktor orban do not talk that often, what do you associate this revival of hungarian-ukrainian contacts with, and i would say such positive comments about the conversation of the president of ukraine prime minister of hungary? well, the contacts are really working and the working

group, and here in this regard, ukraine has done a lot in terms of perception. laws on national minorities, and this issue is still, unfortunately, still opened exclusively from the hungarian side, and the main purpose, why our president spoke with the prime minister of hungary, is to invite hungary, the invitation of the hungarian leadership to the swiss peace forum, which is to be held soon. in the first half of june this year. well, if the president talked to the prime minister, it means that gorchyna is ready to participate in principle, it's just that orban wanted a special invitation, is that how you can interpret it? unfortunately, not quite so, the fact is that orbán stated that he is constantly

on the side of peace, he is for peace and he supports all those initiatives. which are related to peace, but unfortunately, this has nothing to do with our interests in ukraine, because orban clearly defends racist interests, he does not understand what is happening in ukraine at all, and he is the only leader in europe who has not yet visited kyiv from the beginning of full-scale. racist aggression, and what about the fact that you ask that it is supposed to be self-evident that hungary will participate in the peace summit, well, god forbid that it will participate, but one of the state secretaries after this during a telephone conversation in the hungarian pro-government

press, he noticed that he did not understand the meaning of this forum at all. peace, if there is no russia there and what is there to negotiate about at all, but already during the stay of the president of the people's republic of china xijin pine in budapest, it became known that hungary is more inclined to the chinese than to the ukrainian plan to end the war, if viktor orbán arrives to switzerland, whether the hungarian president will come to switzerland, we do not know how it will look in practice. basically how do you think that in this situation it will be possible to say that the hungarian representative will represent the chinese plan there, er, most of all he will present his plan, which is very close to the chinese plan, he talked about it, and indeed you correctly mentioned it in

the press - conference, joint press conference ee... on thursday evening, orban that it is really necessary to sit down at the negotiating table and about the peace initiative, but he did not specify it at all. i am afraid that if even hungary someone participates, regardless of whether it is orbán or szijjártó or the president hungary, i think that... once again, there will be only hollow such populist statements, supposedly that they support peace, but really this... which , unfortunately, will have nothing to do with our ukrainian position. if we talk at all about how the foreign

policy of hungary is changing in connection with this visit of the president of the people's republic of china, it is obvious that he came to beijing for a reason, however, such visits are not accidental, of course, you are 100% right, sir vitaly, but what is characteristic of... authoritarians is very interesting regimes, hungary even at this press conference there was not even a press release, exactly what was agreed about these 18 so-called points between hungary and china, and literally an hour and a half later in the hungarian press there appeared an investigation carried out by marton tompos, the leader of the momentum party , who translated from the chinese press, what are these 18 points. excuse me, it's just neo-colonialism, neo-colonialism in europe, that is, in fact, hungary becomes a colony of china,

i will only mention one fact, there is talk of the construction of a railway that will connecting the chinese port there, which greece privatized with europe, will pass through serbia and hungary, so hungarian economists calculated that this iron will pay off. the road for hungary in 257 years, why all this for orban, why should he buy, let's say, russian gas, which is more expensive than the gas that can be bought on the spot markets, why should he build a chinese railway that will not pay off, what is the point at all his activities of this type, well, total politicking, forgive me, orbán is an autocrat, a dictator... and he today he is as isolated as possible, in fact no one welcomes him in europe,

in fact all these connections with him today are simply at zero, or below zero, and he openly declared that he will support china, the so-called open door east, and china is not for nothing. named hungary after this visit as a partner of four seasons, imagine, there are only six such partners in china, that is, one of them is hungary, his next such partners are venezuela, belarus, ethiopia, uzbekistan and pakistan, so in which turn has he placed in international politics to date. orbán, hungary. that is , there is no serbia, for example, because among these countries there is serbia, which xizen ping also visited. absolutely not. absolutely not. well, i think that serbia is simply not

attracted to such an authoritarian dictator as orban is. and in fact, hungary is the only country in europe, apart from belarus, that can count on such a high honor from sidzimpin. it also turns out that in order to be friends with china, it is necessary to establish. regime of such absolute personal power, unfortunately, it turns out like this, and orbán already has considerable experience in this, he already manages and started such authoritarianism since 2010, that is, in 14 years , he has already gained such, unfortunately, negative experience and actually isolated the whole of hungary from the civilized world, don't you think, now we can talk about a greater growth of such oppositional sentiments in the country compared to what we saw a few years ago. it can be said that a new generation

of hungarians is emerging, which is already looking at with apprehension orbán's experiments. thank god, yes, you have russia, as everyone knows, a new leader appeared, peter magyar, he used to be very close to the hungarian government, to fidesz , the ruling party, to... to orbán, and he was the first to break away from fidesz, and today he already has a rating of 24%, orbán, unfortunately, is still high, somewhere more than 305 is suitable for 40%, but it is very clear from these pictures that you are showing that the support is very, very large and what is very important. peter magyar has significant support in the province, and the province is in basically, there was always support for orbán , even eastern hungary - that's right, it's the most

backward region in hungary. by the way, he gathers a huge number of people there in support, well, we will see what will happen in the upcoming municipal elections and in the elections of the european parliament of hungary, i really hope that the opposition part of hungarian society will have a majority, a majority, for the first time in 14 years . in the parliament, i mean in the municipal elections, and in the european parliament, well, if it will be so, it will be a certain signal for viktor orbán, there is already a certain signal today, because today even in hungary it reaches such maximum isolationism, in budapest it does not

appear at all and... it appears only in such small ones, i would say villages, er, where he simply surrounds himself with the closest such supporters, and that, by the way, it is also very interesting that he began to speak less on the radio and on television. i understand that an important part of this election cycle is that there will be future debates on television, i... realized that they had not been held with the participation of high-ranking representatives of fidesz before fidesz for many years, so how can it be that in a european country that is a member of the european union, pre-election debates are not held, and the authorities do not want to participate in them? of course not, by the way, orban has not taken any part in any debates for more than 10 years, he is, again, an ardent populist, he is very afraid of losses. his

reputation, and he has something to fear, and peter magyar, by the way, has already declared that he will definitely initiate this debate on hungarian television, well, on orban media, there is a significant part of orban media in hungary, but even, i would say, there is already a separate such touch, a positive touch, i recently saw one of such on a very popular . a resource that is closer to orbán, materials criticizing his rule began to appear there, so this is already the first such correct sign. well, in principle, we can say that what happens in hungary is what happens in other such states with an authoritarian system, to a certain extent, when the anti-corruption investigation itself begins, then people start to think that maybe they are somehow

voting wrong, right? definitely, definitely, because precisely on these corruption scandals that have been opened, that have appeared to date, well, imagine, over the last 10 years, in fact, 40% of the subsidies that came from the european union, in fact, all of them were connected with corruption, connected with close people of orbán and his family, well... this is a well-known fact, but why did people never react to it when they wrote about it for decades, about such, i would say , verticalized corruption, which is connected with the interests of the prime minister's closest circle. er, there is, you know, such a great positive: thank god, in ukraine , civil society is, surprisingly, much more developed than in hungary, it has historical roots, in hungary in fact.

it's only budapest and a few big cities, because there is no european country with such oppression and serfdom as was the case in hungary, well , the exception might be the russian empire, but i don't consider the russian empire to be a european state, because of this, unfortunately, its echo is serfdom, the echo of such isolationism, monolingualism, this makes itself known, we can hope that these contacts between the president of ukraine and the prime minister of hungary will to continue and that viktor orban will pay more attention there to the assessment of ukrainian views on events? well, these contacts will be able to continue, but i don't trust orban, because again, i was watching.