to terass zavhorodny polytechnologist serhiy taran, a political scientist who was our participant in the verdict program, thank you for your attention. russia is actively attacking kharkiv, as a result of which dozens of people have died in the city, and even more have been injured. so how to save kyiv, the largest front-line city? of ukraine, the next 15 minutes of the bbc broadcast will be broadcast from london. jafer umerov works in the studio. therefore, the largest front-line city of ukraine: kharkiv is under constant attack by russian missiles. and today, may 27, a day of mourning was announced in the city for those who died as a result of the attack on construction hypermarket epicenter on may 25. at least 16 people were killed and more than 40 wounded in the russian attack. some of

the dead, some of the dead were identified using dna tests. according to store representatives, there were about 200 visitors in the middle of the building at the time of the impact. an eyewitness to the attack described it as hell. and the official day of mourning did not prevent russian troops from striking the city one more time. according to representatives of local authorities, russia struck a civilian enterprise and there are victims. and president of ukraine. vodymyr zelenskyi and the mayor of the city ihor terekhov called on the western partners to protect the skies of ukraine, to provide air defense and modern combat aircraft for the civilian population. so kharkiv is the second most populous city in ukraine and the largest city near the front, for example, it is less than 100 km from russian belgorod, which makes it an easy target for russian strikes. and, for example, in just about a week, the russians attacked the city at least three times. in some

cases several times a week. so, how does the city live now in the constant threat of the ruinous blows of the russians, we are talking about this with kharkiv journalist oksano chapurenko. i congratulate you, ms. oksano, the russians struck another blow at the city today. according to the latest data , one woman died. is the final death toll known during the attack on the construction hypermarket epicenter? so, indeed, today is... the day of mourning for those who died from the russian strike on the epicenter, and today we have new victims again, one dead, 11 injured, from what the russians launched in a civilian enterprise. currently unknown the number, the final death toll, that morning the figure was known, 18 people who died in the epicenter, but it is not final.

because the work of clearing and searching for the bodies and remains of the dead is still continuing in the burned-out epicenter, for example, today the body of a 17-year-old boy was found, he was identified only by the dna provided by his mother, human remains were also found with the remains of work clothes , so it's obviously not yet identified, but it's obviously one of the workers... the epicenter. the city was actively attacked at the beginning of the full-scale war invasion then hundreds of thousands of people left, many returned, and now the russians intensified their attacks. are people leaving the city, and what is life like in kharkiv now? i want to say that after the impact on the epicenter , the very next day in the city center in the shopping areas or led.

the number of people in their shopping centers was significantly reduced, people were really scared, it lasted from 16 to 20 hours, and still from such a mass exodus that we observed at the beginning of a full-scale... there is no traffic from kharkiv, that is, our city lives at this pace, small shops, grocery stores are working, public transport is working, both ground and metro work in our country, of course people are discussing the situation we have and the constant shelling of the city, but there is no panic in kharkiv. thank you oksana,

journalist oksana nechuporenko was in touch with us from kharkiv. thank you. so russia started using guided aerial bombs en masse, but so what? what type of aerial bomb is this? initially it was a free-fall bomb, but the russians improved it by making models for correction flight this allows the bomber to attack ground objects without entering the air defense zone. the weight of such bombs can range from 250 kg to 1.5 tons. they are much cheaper than other rockets. for example, the russians used heavy aerial bombs under the coal mine. such ammunition creates a powerful shock wave. capable of penetrating cover and causing concussions and injuries even at long range. observers say that anti-aircraft defenses are difficult to fight with them, for this you need to attack not the bomb, but the carrier. and the main problem of the ukrainian army is that

it lacks long-range ground-based air defense systems that can shoot down an aircraft at a long distance, and there are still no aircraft armed with long-range missiles. and today president zelenskyi spoke about how to protect ukrainian... cities from guided aerial bombs during his visit to spain. by the way, this visit was planned earlier, but it was postponed due to the russian offensive in the kharkiv region. this was reported to the spanish media, and the president of ukraine was met by king felipe of spain at the madrid airport. according to a bbc correspondent in madrid, this is a rare display of respect. then zelensky met with the country's prime minister petro sanchez. the leaders signed agreements on singing. work between countries in the field of security, namely on the provision of weapons, assistance in reconstruction and demining. spain also announced the provision of aid to ukraine in the amount of more than 1 billion euros this year, and at a joint press conference with the spanish prime minister, president zelensky called for

strengthening ukraine's air defense. the most important problem that exists today. russia uses more than 3 thousand cabs, managed. air bomb just on people, absolutely so that people in a month, in a month, we believe that next month there may be 3,500, this month 3,200, just thousands of air bombs are flying over people's heads, no one with any weapons in their hands, with any training, a person, no matter what protection he has, people are unable to withstand it, so in... ukraine, just to protect kharkiv from the kabis , two patriot systems are needed - president zelenskyi said in madritsa. in total, ukraine is asking its western partners to provide seven of these systems the shelling of kharkiv region shows russia's readiness to wage a war of attrition, experts believe. because of delays in

the american military aid package , the russians have increased their firepower and increased the military group pressing from the northern flank. how to resist this and when to... stabilize the front line, this is the opinion of the senior analyst of the come back alive fund mykola biliskov. the very fact that volodymyr zelensky decided to go to spain, and we remember that this visit was postponed due to the situation in kharkiv region. with from the point of view of the ukrainian military command means that the situation is difficult, but controlled, so in the coming days we do not expect significant negative developments, which actually allowed zelensky to go. currently, there is no doubt that the russians will occupy kharkiv, that's for sure, the russians want to advance, they want to attack the city with firepower. we must remember that this is, unfortunately, air terror, so it is extremely important now to strengthen air defenses, but as of now

the russians do not have enough and martial skill to take control of kharkiv, but only to make the stay there unbearable, and the city unlivable . through airstrikes. if we talk about today's visit of president zelensky, spain is a very important country from the point of view of capabilities and economy. ukraine appreciates the help of spain, appreciates the military exercises organized by it. the spaniards taught the ukrainian military to work with nasans, patriot, zemlya povitrya type missiles. ukraine appreciates the armored equipment transferred by spain. in a broader sense, it is also a way of showing russia, that ukraine is not alone, that nato countries are ready to invest in... the long-term security of ukraine, and the very fact of this visit aims, both from a military and a political point of view, to persuade russia to sit down at the negotiating table. the united states recently voted to allocate a package of military aid to ukraine, and it is already arriving. the only thing worth remembering is that we cannot change

the situation. the russians appreciate all the advantages and increase the number of military groups. and from september 2023 to may 2024 their number. increased by 90,000, this became possible due to there is a lack of firepower in ukraine, and in a month or two it is impossible to change the situation that was created due to the lack of weapons. for seven months. weapons are coming in, but in my opinion, a significant effect and full stabilization on the front line will be seen in mid-summer. ukraine, as before, calls on the west to lift restrictions on the use of western weapons to strike targets on the territory of russia and thus prevent their attacks. this call has already been supported by the head of nato and the minister of foreign affairs of great britain, david cameron, but in the meantime... ukraine is largely forced to use artillery and drones to push back the russian offensive.

bbc correspondent jonathon beale visited the advanced positions of the armed forces in the kharkiv region and saw how drones are changing the situation at the front. at the moment, it is one of the most powerful weapons in this war. cheap and serially produced drones, they are capable of destroying the enemy. and here at the front they help ukraine. to slow russia's advance, but this is still not enough. we can contain the further advance thanks to the drones to contain and it is very painful to bite them, but not to win, unfortunately. they call themselves sharp cartouches, like the heroes of the cult british tv series. however, this is all the similarity. they were trained by western special forces. in just

a few weeks, they hunted down more than a hundred russian soldiers, tracking them from the sky. today they seem to be hiding, so they are looking for something else. that is, you are taking machine guns from the russians? yes, these are russian aks. oleksandr is fighting for this for the second time. territory for his home, he used to cultivate fields nearby, then he grew strawberries, now he drops bombs. at the same time, he understands that what they are doing will not end this war, two gladiators, more or less equal to each other, have come together and are fighting, fighting, and no one can defeat the other. a freeze, a conflict, yes, maybe, maybe for several years, maybe for tens of years, but the conflict, i think, well, this one will be for a very long time. the russians also learn that when the sharp cartridges tried to launch a kamikaze drone at their

target, they jammed the signal. russian drones pose no less a threat to the ukrainian military. most of them hide under trees. it's easy now, but it's harder in winter. it is a constant game of hide and seek for both sides. attention, shot! the ukrainians claim that they have contained the russians, this has stabilized the situation, but the fierce artillery battles are still going on, and it will be a much more difficult task to push the russians back. maybe they'll just wait out this storm with more western weaponry. but what does ukraine really want, is permission to use these weapons for

strikes on the territory of russia? being only 15 km from the border, they do their best to destroy the russian supply lines, but in their hands are tied. we cannot stop the preparation of the attack. so, to stop their progress, it is necessary. still waiting for the west to provide them with weapons ukrainians are determined to fight, but they are for victory. so, that's all we have time to tell you today, subscribe to our social media pages so you don't miss... more important news, we're on facebook, instagram and tiktok, on youtube you can watch

our episode if you missed it on air , and that's all for today, take care! congratulations, friends, vitaly portnikov is with you! our interlocutor oleksandra metviychuk, human rights defender, head of the organization center for civil liberties, awarded with the nobel peace prize and laureate of the vasyl stus prize. greetings, good evening. let us. let's start with the report of the state department of the united states, which is dedicated precisely to human rights in ukraine, there are a lot of serious remarks about russia, which could be predicted, but there are also remarks about ukraine, so it seems to me that these remarks need to be analyzed, what is there however, the most important thing is how we should do this,

if you want to work on mistakes, because this is just a statement of facts, obviously, and we have to do this work on... mistakes, understanding the context, we are trapped between two logics, the logic of war and the logic of democratization, and it is difficult to balance between these logics, so the facts presented in the report should be viewed not as mere criticism, but as something that needs to be corrected, for example, considerable attention is devoted to the topic of freedom of speech, and it is clear that freedom of speech is not an absolute right, it can be limited during war . through reasoning security, but it can be limited only proportionally, and when at the beginning of a full-scale invasion, for example, a number of tv channels were turned off the air and deprived of the right to broadcast, our human rights organizations, and the center for civil freedom, the kharkiv provesna group and a number of others made a statement about , that this is a disproportionate

interference with freedom of speech, so it is not surprising that this report contains... criticism of the telethon, because the decision that was adopted in the 22nd year and could be relevant in that context, well, with a change the context in the 24th year needs to be revised, well , right here it is very important to understand, you know, where decisions are really made, which are justified by the needs of the war, which can also be right, which can be wrong, decisions are made, where the war is used to... to strengthen the monopoly of power, how to distinguish it? and this is not distinguished by the fact that we get into the heads of the executors or those who make these decisions, which is impossible to do, we conduct a test, for example, when we talk about freedom of speech, there is a three-step test, which is used in practice, for example, the european court of human rights, it talks about three components, whether there is a legitimate goal, and here

they will say yes, it is war, it is security considerations, whether these restrictions are necessary in a democratic society, and here quite often this proportionality, which is how the state can pull a blanket over itself, but no more than necessary, even in conditions of war, it just fails. here it is very important to realize how fundamentally we are now. if you will, selective law, and how society perceives it, because by and large, we talked about this even before the war, that of course the state there can adopt some measures, very often those that do not correspond to the current legislation of the constitution, against people we do not like, obviously, and this is a very dangerous thing, and i always as a human rights activist i remind you that

even those people who support this, saying now he... and we have to use any methods, they think that they are using these methods against those who they call the enemy, they do not understand that if you break the rules of the game, then tomorrow these methods will be used against you. well , the question arises, how to explain this to a society that is already so traumatized by this long war and the realization that, relatively speaking, the dictatorship that is opposite, it is very often effective precisely because it does not care about any right, and she can... change the law, change the constitution, do whatever is necessary, i would say, patience is needed, but here i will also add, some probably very great love for people who will come to you in the comments, who will find you in social networks and they will start writing to you that you are not in the trenches, that you are a human rights defender, that you are wearing your rose-colored glasses, well, this is the mildest of

what i actually read when i wrote about such violations, which look to me even under time. wars are disproportionate and threatening, well, on the other hand, patience is understandable, but there is another side of the coin, which creates such obvious problems for law enforcement activities, that is, the very logic of war, it in one way or another calls into question our usual norms with which we treat human rights, and here we are, even if we speak not about the russian-ukrainian war, but more broadly, we see... how human rights organizations are now condemning the israeli army, israeli security forces for actions in the gas sector, demonstrations, reports, demands, eh... not to give military support, which are heard in in the united states, i can just quote senator bernie sanders, who says no, we are not against the state of israel, we are not anti-semitic,

we are just talking about the fact that you are violating human rights, but at the same time, there is a need to destroy terrorism there, to fight there with terrorist organizations, and the very activity of the security forces, when they do this, and this also applies to us, when we act, let's say there in the de-occupied territories and... fight with the occupied territories, it actually undermines the human rights we are used to, and what to do about it? it is difficult to speak in broad strokes here, because the approach to the protection of human rights requires an analysis of each specific case, that is, each specific case, to what extent both international human rights law and international humanitarian law come into force during war, to what extent these the two branches impose... on this specific example, on this specific context, they say whether the actions of this or that state conform to these norms or not,

because unfortunately, during war, people die, civilians die, and this proportionality, it, we just talked about freedom of speech, it is also present here, and it protects the civilian population, and it establishes norms and rules for waging wars and protecting its legitimate ones. interests, so it is necessary to go into each case, and not to look in broad strokes, to analyze, although i am from another side, i say this and catch myself thinking that when i talk about the russian federation, i just use broad masks, but we have factual confirmation under these broad strokes, we have a database in public organizations in which we have documented 70 thousand episodes of war crimes in just 2 years throughout the territory of ukraine, and i can definitely... using these facts in broad strokes say that this is a conscious policy of the russian state, to use war crimes, that these are not some excesses

of specific actors or some army unit that this is the method by which russia is trying to win this war by inflicting pain on civilians and breaking their resistance. well , russia itself, when you talk to your foreign colleagues, you don’t think that it has followed this palestinian path, conventionally speaking, it replaces the aggressor and the victims, says that the ukranian ukraine is committing crimes against the civilian population there, the ukrainian army is being conducted like this yes, here we see how they show the suffering of people in the belgorod region, as if it was just by chance that they got into this situation, about that ukraine wants to destroy the peaceful territory of russia there, as was the case with donbas before, this is the meme that you did for eight years when ukraine... donbas was heard not only in russia itself, it was always discussed in the right-wing environment as well. i just returned from a very long trip to

the united states of america. and i saw how widespread the narrative is that ukraine persecutes christians. well, here is a good example. and to be honest, that is, this statement by meijer was not accidental. it is not accidental, and unfortunately, it is not, not only she thinks so. many are convinced that ukraine persecutes christians, and you know, there is a special cynicism in that, because we have been documenting war crimes for 10 years, of course, a full-scale war is a completely different scale, intensity, but the trend was clear, even since 2014, russia considers freedom of religion exclusively as a collective category, there should be only one church, or loyal churches, for example, this transformation and taking control of the mufti. on the crimean peninsula, and all other churches, denominations, religious organizations, as well as their leadership, so are their believers, they are

persecuted, and all that we recorded during these 10 years, all this i heard, as if ukraine is doing it, kidnapping, killing and torturing priests in the occupied territories, and i, when i heard it, i was just telling these cases. which i personally documented, for example, i said that the protestant pastor oleksandr khomchenko told me, i mentioned the abduction of stepan podolchak from the village of kalanchak in the kherson region a month ago, but to be honest, i really think about what to do about it, because our voices , they alone, and russia used a powerful machine, hired lobbyists in the same washington, they bypassed all the congressmen and... and what does the ukrainian orthodox church of the moscow patriarchate mean first of all as an organization that is being persecuted? it is meant that when you say. average

american, they do not make a distinction, for them they are christians, and they do not know whether it is the moscow church or some other, and these christians are persecuted by russia, and how they package it already for specific congressmen, then this is a question that i do not i know answer, well, in the united states there is an american orthodox church, which is recognized by the russian orthodox church as autocephalous, its truth is not recognized by anyone else in the world orthodoxy, but it is a whole organization. which, again, its representatives can go to congressmen, to representatives of local legislative bodies, talk about all these sufferings, this is a whole church, but the situation, the situation is more complicated, even the evangelical churches, which are persecuted by russia in the occupied territories, they believe that ukraine pursues christians, and something needs to be done about it, because this is the narrative that is being actively promoted and used, including to not give

ukraine... the support that we expect from the united states of america. and in general, how did you feel that public opinion has changed during this time. i felt that people, and this is quite typical and natural, are already thinking about other things than the russian war in ukraine. and i felt, and it was, by the way, a surprise for me, because i was on such a tour at the invitation of seven american universities, that is, in different parts. country, that we still have a huge reserve of empathy, because wherever i spoke, it was always a very warm reception, people responded to what i told, well , actually human pain, it has no borders, these are very understandable stories, and i i came to the conclusion that if someone in america would constantly focus on this, it would be much easier for us, because people, they are not indifferent, they are

just busy with a thousand other things... which are happening in parallel in the world, as far as the principle is concerned we have to do to maintain this interest, primarily in the united states, but in european countries, because what you say, empathy is understandable, but the level of interest is also very important, we see it in the columns of the world media, the middle east is at the center of events for 200 days in a row, and this is a strategic region for the united states, and it is clear, and it is clear, ukraine is not the only one now... a part of the world where tragedies are happening, where people are suffering, that is, there is a lot going on in syria, about which also descended from the backbone of the world press, in sudan, in iran, well , that is, there are various points that needed respect, and our question is how, despite this change of attention, to ensure our interests, because it is difficult to fight with such a powerful military force as russia without international aid, and if

the west tells us that you are fighting not only for yourself, then, accordingly, i wanted it to be confirmed not just by words, but by concrete actions, so i have such a simplified answer to your difficult question, i it seems that if russia moves to the stage of a long, exhausting war, then we have to move to a long-term strategy, we have to build communities in these countries, and this is where we have to start, we have seven million, i don't know, i don't know how many million ukrainian refugees we have a super-active diaspora that became active after the 22nd year, we have caring artistic circles, right-wing circles, we need to expand these communities so that they are not purely ukrainians or people of ukrainian origin, and constantly involve these people in some kind of action, that is, we need to begin

construction works. such an international network, if russia builds on money, on propaganda, on some corrupt connections or on political influence, then we need to build it on values ​​and on such very basic things as human solidarity and empathy and a sense of personal responsibility for everything that happens in the world. but after this story with the termination of consular services to military men, will there not be cracks in the diaspora itself? it is obvious that they will go, it seems to me that this is a question in general mobilization, it is very complicated, and different parts of ukrainian society have different interests in this regard, and here the ukrainian state, it seems to me, is taking mutually contradictory steps, on the one hand, it seems to be emasculating this bill, not to and... .