here's the nearest synoptic perspective, of course, keep an eye out, as always, for our updated weather forecasts on the espresso channel. good evening, we are from ukraine. today in the verdict program with serhii rudenko. exacerbation in the north. russia is preparing an information and psychological special operation to open a new front with belarus. is russia capable? army to launch a real offensive in sumy oblast and chernihiv oblast. to survive the next winter, ukraine's partners allocate international aid for the restoration of the ukrainian energy system. will it be possible to compensate? capacity damaged by the development of green and distributed energy? outright sabotage, public organizations accuse the parliamentary majority and... the leadership

of the council of blocking the draft law on the banning of the moscow church, which in fact restrains the restrictions on the activities of the russian orthodox church in ukraine. glory to ukraine, this is the verdict program, my name is serhii rudenko, i congratulate everyone and wish everyone good health. in the next two hours, we will talk about ukraine, the world, the war and our country... today we will have people's deputies of ukraine mykola on the air knyazhytskyi and oleksiy kucherenko, as well as military expert mykhailo samus. in the second part of our program , political experts maksym rozumny and viktor boberenko will join the invited guests. however, before starting our big conversation, let's watch a video of how the fighters of the 79th separate airborne assault brigade stopped the enemy.

offensive near novomykhaivka, several tanks and six armored vehicles of the attackers remained on the battlefield, without reaching the positions of the defenders, another 80 invaders were eliminated, let's see how it was. glory to the armed forces of ukraine and death to the russian occupiers. friends, we are... working

live on the espresso tv channel, as well as on our youtube and facebook platforms, for those who are currently watching us there live, please take part in our survey. today we ask you this question: will putin dare to use nuclear weapons? yes, no, everything is quite simple on youtube, if your answer is not so unambiguous: yes, no, you want to give an extended answer to this question, please write in the comments under this video. well, for those watching us on tv right now, the hotlines if you think putin would dare to use nuclear weapons (0800-211-381, no (0800-211-382). all calls to these numbers are free , vote at the end of the program, we will sum up the results of this vote. our first guest is mykola knyazhytskyi, the head of the verkhovna rada's subcommittee on cultural policy. i congratulate you and thank you. that you are with us today, congratulations, thank you

by invitation mr. mykola, let's start with the information, rather alarming information, which the supreme commander and the minister of defense are talking about, about a possible russian offensive in the north, and that the russians are trying to gather a large group there, well, as i understand it, for the attack on sumy oblast and chernihiv oblast, in your opinion, under these conditions, the authorities should act in relation to efforts, including political consolidation of efforts, because we understand that the war is clearly moving into the next phase, during which political consolidation and consolidation in ukrainian society, although both zelenskyi and umerov talk about this possible offensive in interviews with foreign journalists, perhaps it is still necessary to somehow work with the domestic audience and explain to them more what awaits in... the country, these are many different issues,

of course we need unity because we are at war and because it is obvious that during the war it is impossible to hold elections, but if elections are impossible, then first of all there will be external provocations regarding the legitimacy of the ukrainian government and president zelensky himself, what is his the services warn about it, and russia is doing everything to show that he is not legitimate, and putin says about this that it is obviously a complete delusion, because the elections cannot be held now, and despite the fact that i am an opposition politician, for me, state interests are always in the first place, and we all perfectly understand that we cannot choose anyone , and the country must have a leader... during a war, it is another matter that this leadership must be trusted, and in such a situation, this trust can fall, and in order to gain this trust even more would be it is positive to unite the entire political society, in what form it can be done, of course, the president should communicate with

representatives of all political factions, involve all pro-ukrainian forces in cooperation, because we can be the government or the opposition, when we know that... will the next election process, and now we do not have such an understanding that there will be a next election process, because we are not thinking about elections, we are actually thinking about how to protect the country, and the authorities should take such an initiative simply in order to be more effectively and in order to use the opportunities as representatives of the ruling faction, there are these opportunities, but there are not so many of them, we know how this faction was formed, and there were actually representatives of all opposition forces, it is possible, because i say once again, that there is nothing to compete for now. if we talk about the offensive, well, i wouldn’t particularly scare anyone here, it’s obvious that the russians are trying to stretch the front line and weaken our army, it’s just that they have greater mobilization resources and greater financial resources, because they don’t even conduct mobilization, they

actually doing economic mobilization, they pay quite a lot of people to fight these aggressors that they hire, and if they're somewhere around 30,000 people involved every month, that's a pretty big number that allows them to replenish their losses , even with a small margin. we simply have fewer people living in ukraine, and a lot of people have left the borders of ukraine, and our mobilization resources are much smaller, and we do not spend our finances, because we certainly pay ukrainian soldiers, but it would be possible to come up with some programs to support families, the same personal income tax that was once withdrawn from local budgets, which i... gave to places and paid some serious sums to families, families, those who are mobilized for the army, then i think that people had more incentives to mobilize, go to the defense of the homeland, this is extremely important, such things need to be resolved if we are going to receive western weapons, because the biggest

problem at the front is obviously people and weapons, then i think that we will be able to fight and defend the ukrainian land quite well effectively and for a long time, and this war may drag on for a long, long time in general, i do not believe in those in the current situation, well, not that i do not believe, i am not a military expert, it is difficult for me to speak, here professionally, but since i am a politician and talking to military experts, i see no such reason to think that it will be so easy for the russians to approach kyiv again, to capture a significant part of the territory of ukraine, but here are grueling battles where they capture meter by meter, there is one village or another village , these battles can continue, they definitely have ukrainians die in order to... to stop them, we need more effective weapons, regular, of course, more people, and therefore it is a problem for us, but we can say that we have already protected our statehood, i have no doubts about that, well to the word about weapons and western weapons, we are witnessing how the debate continues in the world, different countries

evaluate in different ways the possibility of using their weapons by ukraine against russia, against the territory of the russian federation, er... where there are military facilities or important critical infrastructure facilities which provide the russian occupiers, french president emmanuel macron shared a press conference with the german chancellor in germany, supported the proposal to allow ukraine to strike military facilities on the territory of russia with western weapons. let's hear what macron said. how can we explain to ukrainians. that we give them weapons so that they can defend their cities, but at the same time we prohibit them from hitting targets on the territory of russia, so we need to allow them to neutralize all military facilities from which missiles are launched in the direction of ukraine, at the same time the ban on hitting other

targets in russia, which are civilian objects, should remain. so, when ukraine is being attacked for specific purposes in russia, and we really want to help it, i think we should. allow them to do it, mr. mykola, what our western partners are afraid of not allowing, or not initiating the permission. hit objects on the territory of the russian federation with their weapons? they will allow it, and not all of them, many allow it, and we use these weapons when we aim at military facilities on the territory of russia, but the absurdity is that, absurdly to watch kharkiv being destroyed from belgorod and not fire back at the launcher in belgorod, you understand, well, this is not war, then, it is not knowing what, it is one thing when we were forbidden to do this, when a significant territory of ukraine was occupied. and we had to expel them from this territory at the first stage of the war, and it was successful, and then it was enough for us to destroy their logistics,

which passed through the territory of ukraine, western weapons, i mean, and it is a different matter now, when they, because of their borders destroy our cities and shoot at civilian objects, this it is simply inhumane to watch how they destroy and kill our citizens and forbid ourselves to defend ourselves, but it will come to that, since we were once not given a chance. then they gave any other aid for a long time, they gave american aid for a long time, they give f-16s for a long time, they think for a long time that nato countries protect the sky, at least over western ukraine, in order to free up air defense capabilities for the east, this is their long-term thinking, of course, leads to our great sacrifices, let me remind you that we are basically defending the whole of europe and, in general, the democratic future world, and it killed this long thought, on the one hand we are extremely grateful, because without them we could not defend ourselves. it's true, on the other hand, it's not, it's not completely honest, do they think to exhaust russia to the end, so that

russia itself will come to an economic crisis and no one will say that they are involved in this, or do they have some other plans, someone maybe he is really afraid of the use of nuclear weapons or some kind of response, but these are all completely wrong approaches, and i think that more and more people in the west understand this, so now most countries have permission to use these weapons, think what will happen... from everyone, i would like to remind our viewers that france, lithuania, latvia, sweden, estonia, poland, finland, the czech republic, great britain and the netherlands, i.e. 10 countries have already given such permission and obviously the number of these countries will increase. one more question, mr. mykola, is the washington jubilee summit, which is supposed to take place in... july, and today ztelegraph is writing about a link with a reference to sources,

that nato allies asked the president of ukraine zelensky not to insist on ukraine joining the alliance in the 24th year during the jubilee summit, i will quote what the newspaper writes: they are very skeptical about further progress of ukraine on the path to full membership in nato this year. united states . perhaps not as worried as germany, but there is concern about the threat of russia to the rest of the alliance, the publication quotes its source, how do you assess the prospects of ukraine in nato, it is not just about washington summit, at the washington summit, they can give another signal to the world and first of all to putin that ukraine will definitely be a member of the north atlantic alliance, no matter what he does? well, i also think we should be members. of the north atlantic alliance, and we must do everything for this, after all, this is a requirement of our constitution, but hey we, well

, russia after all, uh, of course, an aggressive gas station, as they once said, but despite this, it has quite a lot weapons, and putin is already constantly giving signals that he is supposedly ready to the negotiations, on the one hand, putin cannot be trusted in any way, and of course, any negotiations now... this is an attempt by putin to freeze the war that will be against ukraine, because i think that, well, the ukrainian authorities, it is obvious , does not support it at this stage, but the talks are still going on, and our membership in nato can definitely be a subject of negotiation, we must realize this for ourselves, we certainly should not agree to it, but it will also depend on how the western governments will act , and they depend on their societies, and russia for hybrid warfare and influence on their society, spends huge amounts of money, we don't know how he will behave in the future... will behave, for example, president trump, some say that russia is interested in him coming to power, he himself

recently, again, as the press writes, he says that he would have hit beijing and moscow a long time ago if china, probably taiwan, and russia attacked ukraine the way it did, so predicting the future is extremely difficult, we have to do everything in order to become members nato, the truth should be demonstrated and high political. standards and the standards of political democracy, and the standards of the absence of corruption, because membership in nato is not only military criteria, it is also criteria related to democracy, just like membership in the european union, so we must not forget about it, we must to demonstrate such leadership that it will be very difficult not to take us into nato, and all societies will support us in the societies of those countries that influence their politicians, and russian propaganda will not help in this, so far this russian propaganda, unfortunately, on unfortunately, it is working successfully, and we do not know what will happen, because after all, we are commenting on a publication in

the press, a publication in the press is not an official political statement, we have to wait for official political statements... statements and continue to fight for ukraine has become a full member of nato, and the talk about it will never stop. they cannot stop because we have already been promised it. the question is what the next steps should be. mr. mykola, explain to us one more situation that is developing around the law, about its prohibition of religious organizations originating from the russian federation for more than six months. this draft law is under consideration, the first reading has been passed, there is no way it will get to the second reading, because we saw that european solidarity was forced to block the rostrum and demand from the speaker of the parliament ruslan stefanchuk that he put it to a vote at the conciliation council and this draft bill

was included in the agenda, representatives of a number of ukrainian public organizations have already called on... people's deputies to adopt this draft law as a matter of urgency, and in their statement they emphasized that it is not only about this draft law, but also about the resolution on the decolonization of the names of settlements in ukraine, in this statement of public organizations it is said, in particular, about the following: in recent weeks, some actions of the ruling party are more like inconsistency and outright sabotage, it is about the blocking of the bill on the banning of the russian orthodox church by the monobolist party in the verkhovna rada. resolutions on the decolonization of the names of populated areas points, is there any obscure explanation and logical explanation why the monomajority does not want to vote for this draft law and why a number of public organizations are called outright sabotage. well, i am grateful to public organizations for their active civic stance, for this support they constantly provide

to building a strong ukraine, strong in the literal sense of the word, when... all these russian influences within our society are like metastases from a cancer in the face of russia will be thrown out of there, so only thanks to them. well, you said monomajority, well there is no mono majority, there is such a majority, it is no longer completely mono, because it is joined by factions of the former opzzh, who insist not to vote for it, otherwise blackmail them into not supporting the government, in those laws that needed by the government, and in the most pro-government majority, the majority of deputies there are truly patriotic. determined people who are ready to vote for it, but there is a rather influential group of sympathizers of the russian church, who got into the parliament with the help of the russian church, who are doing everything to so that the law is not passed. the russian church has a lot of money, it buys journalists to distort the norms of this law, and experts, a lot of people who

do not really realize what they are doing, some of them are even patriots, but just people who do not realize that they are talking now. because the law does not in any way limit the freedom of religion, it only requires severing ties with the church, which calls for the destruction of all of us and declared a holy war against us, because of this it is no longer a church, but just such a satanic putin's sect, and the law only offers this, simply break these ties, then they will be able to serve absolutely peacefully, but they are strong and the fact that the law is not passed indicates that within ukrainian society, if on our borders our heroic armed forces the forces stop them, then... there are politicians within ukrainian society who let them in, open the door for them and do not let them walk out the door, and these politicians do not allow it to be put to a vote, because the majority faction, the leadership of the majority faction has fears of a factional split, because some people, as i have already said, patriotically want to vote for it, some do not want to, and they are trying to delay the consideration of this bill as much as possible. well, let's

hope that we will witness the passage of this law in the next week or two. because this is really a question of the future of ukraine and national security as well. thank you, mr. mykola, for the conversation and for the inclusion. it was mykola knyazhytskyi, people's deputy of ukraine. friends, we continue to work on the air of the espresso tv channel, as well as on our platforms on youtube and in facebook and that is where we are conducting the survey today. today we ask you this question: will putin dare to use nuclear weapons? yes, no, everything is quite on youtube... just, if you have your own opinion, please write in the comments under this video, if you watch us on tv, take it in your hands, the corresponding numbers are on your screens, 0800- 211. 381 if you think putin will dare to use nuclear weapons, no 0800 211 382. all calls to these numbers are free, vote, at the end

program, we will sum up the results of this vote. next, we will be in touch with mykhailo samus, military expert, deputy director of the army, conversion and disarmament research center, director of the new geopolitics research network. mr. mykhailo, i congratulate you, thank you for joining our broadcast. i congratulate you. let's start our conversation with two statements, statements by zelenskyi and minister of defense umerov about the possibility of a concentration of russian occupiers in the north of ukraine and the apparent opening of a front, a new front, as i understand it, in sumy oblast and chernihiv oblast, or enough now, according to your estimates, russia has the resources to deploy hostilities. in these two regions of ukraine and is ukraine ready for this? well, in fact, the russian strategic operation will continue, in relation to,

let's say, a new approach to the implementation of its strategic operation to break through the ukrainian front, if since october last year the main efforts were aimed at breaking through the donetsk front, donbas, in donbas, let's say, on the spur of the moment, pressure, then... from a certain point in early may, the russians began to use a new approach, which consists in the stretching of ukrainian forces, the stretching of ukrainian reserves, and that is why they started their so-called big kharkiv operation, which in principle was carried out with the aim, of course, of pulling ukrainian reserves away from donbas, and in case of success, possibly also the implementation of certain tactical and tactical tasks , well, in particular, for example, in the kupyansk direction, if they managed to break through the front in the vovchansk area, but it did not work out, so they have the next,

the next continuation of this tactic, this approach, this is the stretching of ukrainian reserves even further to the north, i will immediately say that they do not have the forces to carry out, let's say, operations that could have a real operational success, a breakthrough of the ukrainian front, for example, in the supka chernihiv region, they do not have such forces at the moment, for this the russians must either conduct open mobilization, or for a certain time to accumulate forces at the expense of their recruiting, using material incentives, incentives, but in any case , it is obvious that they will continue to try to stretch the ukrainian reserves, because they do not succeed in establishing a front in donbas. let's listen to umerev himself, because i mentioned his statement, he is just talking about the stabilization of the situation in the kharkiv region, about a possible new attack in the north

of ukraine, let's listen to what the minister of defense of ukraine says. their goal is to open a new front in the north to begin using all their manpower and firepower. against us, they continue to realize their goal - to destroy the nation, they have up to 500 thousand soldiers in the occupied territory, on our territory and near our borders. in addition, they want to increase this group even more 200-300 thousand. mr. mykhailo, how will the appearance of a new section in ukraine on the russian-ukrainian front affect other sections of this front, in donetsk region. in kherson region and zaporizhzhia? well, this is the intention of the enemy, i.e. to stretch ukrainian forces and ukrainian reserves as much as possible in order to create conditions for a breakthrough in precisely those

areas that are considered important for the russians, the most important, from a political point of view, this is the donbas, obviously they would like to occupy all of donbas, all of donetsk, luhansk region, of course, it is possible to capture also some parts of the kharkiv region, the zaporizhia region, but... judging by the way , for example, their big, so -called, so-called operation in the kharkiv region took place, which did not have the success they had hoped for, and in principle , now it looks like the ukrainian command managed to stabilize the front in the kharkiv region without making any significant transfers of reserves from the donbas, it is obvious that in the donbas the russians are also not ... having significant success against this background, the opening of another front concerns precisely this task, which the russians set before themselves to stretch our reserves, from the point of view of the ukrainian forces,

of course this... this is another challenge, this is another challenge to the ukrainian command to distribute reserves in such a way as to prevent the russians from breaking through the front , or it can be the south, donbass, or the same kharkiv direction. i can also say that, in fact, we should now feel and perceive any section of the belarusian or russian border precisely as a front, as a front line. not believing it to be a quiet line border, which is drawn on the map, is delimited and recognized by international law, in fact, the russians consider these lines simply as a front line, and this is how we should treat these borders, that is , to ensure as much as possible the construction and engineering of the defense line, which should pass completely along all e... lines

of ukraine's border with belarus and russia. andriy kovalenko, director of the center for countering disinformation at the nsdc, says that russia is stepping up an information campaign about a possible attack from belarus, but on today the enemy does not have the strength and means for this. according to kovalenko, the enemy's goal is to stretch ukrainian forces and reserves. i will quote mr. kovalenko. to do this, they will push the situation informationally so that. our command paid more attention to this direction, however , belarus is under constant surveillance - notes the head of the center for combating disinformation, but against this background created by russia, we see how our western partners are working rather slowly in the direction of providing us with f-fighters 16, belgium has already promised that these planes in the amount of 30... fighters

will reach ukraine by 2028, although i remember conversations in 2023 when they said that the first planes would appear in the ukrainian sky in the spring of the 24th, spring is already ending , why are western partners delaying the provision of fighter jets to ukraine? well, if we're talking about belgium, belgium is on the contrary accelerating, because belgium is not... shouldn't be giving us planes in '24, they were talking about the first planes could come in the 25th, early 25- th year, and now there was a statement about that it is possible that a certain amount will be transferred even before the end of the 24th, that is, belgium is accelerating, and as far as i know that indeed such steps are being taken by belgium, as for other countries that are transferring f-16s to us, then as far as i know, the process is ongoing, and here

it is multi-faceted. a parallel process of training ukrainian specialists, and pilots, and technical personnel, and of course, the infrastructure on which the f-16 will be based, because in fact we cannot simply bring the f-16 to the territory of ukraine, and immediately russian intelligence will determine, where they are are located and will try, of course , to destroy them, that is, we have to create such an infrastructure that would provide full protection and basing, and combat combat behind... thrusting f16 and this process is not easy, for the first time such systems will be placed on the territory of ukraine, it is very complex , a very complicated process, but in any case, the first f16 will be in the near future, and by the way, the transfer of the rri long-range radiation detection aircraft by sweden, that is, it is actually a wax analogue, or if, to be even clearer, it is

an analogue. russian a50, this is an airplane and editorial intelligence, and a targeting aircraft that will provide a whole range of guidance, including for the f-16, that is, i am considering a decision on the transfer of such aircraft, including in the systematic preparation for the transfer of f-16 aircraft to ukraine and their effective use. and how will the appearance of these planes change the nature of the russian-ukrainian war and will it change the nature of this war? because there are a lot of expectations from the f-16, but will the armed forces of ukraine get that effect from the transfer of these aircraft? well, if we now look at the nature of combat actions, on any part of the front, that is, it can be the kharkiv region, the donbass, the zaporizhia region, and the kherson region, the russians now have dominance in the air, they use up to 100 or more cabs. per day

and thus can ensure...