serhiy zgurets, the director of the information and consulting company defense express, was with us as viewers of the espress show. it is now approaching 9:00 a.m., a moment of silence to honor everyone who died because of the russian occupiers. let's honor the memory of ukrainian soldiers and civilians with a moment of silence. countries that died in the war started by russia.

- said mykhailo podolyak, adviser to the head of the president's office. during these years, zelensky has been changing his mind about negotiations with putin. what does it depend on and to what? ukrainians are being prepared now. this is svoboda ranok, my name is kateryna nekrecha, join us, we're getting started. and let's start with the situation in europe with transit. this is brussels, not kyiv. banned the transit of russian look oil oil to hungary and slovakia. the minister of foreign affairs of hungary, péter szijártó, made such an admonition. on his facebook page, he accused the eu of inaction. he said that they have not responded to the shutdown in brussels for a week. transit

of russian oil through ukraine to hungary and slovakia and thus assumed that this ban was the work of brussels. brussels is silent despite the threat to the energy security of two eu member states, despite the crystal clear violation of the eu association agreement. there are two options. the first: the european commission is so weak that it is unable to defend the fundamental interests of two member states against one candidate. second, everything was invented not in kyiv, in brussels, not even in the ukrainian government, and the european commission wanted to blackmail two peacekeeping countries that refused to deliver weapons. there is still no reaction from the european commission to this statement by sijarto, she did not answer anything the institution's president, ursula fonlein, whom siyartogo mentions personally in her post. let me remind you that on june 24, kyiv imposed sanctions on one of the largest russian oil companies, lukoil, prohibiting it from transiting through ukraine. in response, hungary and slovakia. demanded that the eu hold

consultations on this matter with kyiv, in budapest the situation was generally called blackmail and they declared that they would boycott the allocation of money for ukraine from the european peace fund, in bratislava they threatened in response to suspend the export of diesel to of ukraine. the deputy minister of energy of ukraine roman andarak said in a comment to the reuters agency the day before that ukraine is ready to solve problematic issues with slovakia regarding the transit of russian oil. but if it unblocks the relevant mechanism of the association agreement with the eu. this has not been done so far, andarak said. he also noted that the transit through ukraine of oil and other russian companies that are not subject to sanctions is still ongoing. mykhailo gonchar, a ukrainian international expert, joins our broadcast of energy and security relations and the president of the strategy 21 global studies center . he is also the editor-in-chief of the black sea security magazine. welcome to our broadcast, thank you.

what's up, good morning, i hope you will help, i am sure that you will help to understand this whole story, to begin with, tell me what the ban on the transit of russian lukoil oil to hungary and slovakia means for russia and for these two countries of the european union, well first of all, this is a continuation of the sanctions policy against russian companies, and some separate ones there is no option to ban the transit of e., so if the oil ends up in lukoil, it means that lukoil has stopped shipping, i repeat, lukoil has stopped shipping its oil to the russian transneft pipeline for further transportation through the uktransnafta system to hungary and slovakia. that is , this is an important point: ukraine did not stop transit supplies as such, because if...

if this happened, then, firstly, it would be noticeable, and secondly, the mechanism that sijarto talked about would be automatically triggered, namely of early warning, which is actually recorded in annex 26 to the first chapter of the fifth chapter of the association agreement, which provides for the appropriate response procedure in case of interruption of the transit of oil, gas or electricity. therefore, the european commission acted absolutely logically and rationally. there is no reason to violate the operation of this mechanism, because there was no fact. termination of transit, there is media turbulence related to the fact that móvojla is no longer received in slovakia and hungary, but the question is that if

the transit flow in its physical volume has not changed, then there are no grounds for violating this procedure, there is no doubt that... there is an assessment and it goes through a rather complex bureaucratic system, it is detailed in this appendix of the 26th, and it will take a long time, that is why the european commission took such a very cautious position, but the fact is that it rejected the claims that came from bratislava and budapest, and most importantly, if you look at the websites, the official websites of the operators of oil transportation systems, which means transneft, oktransneft and transpetrol, then you will not find any reports that there have been any disruptions in the supply, transit of oil, as if this is an important point, it is another matter that it is not in

this case, at least for transpetrol, slovak and ukrainian transpetrol, it is good, because it is necessary to give information, in uk-transnaft, unfortunately, they took some strange. the position that they say all this data is secret, well , secret from whom, from the enemy, it is quite clear, but all the oil, the oil flow, is coming from the territory of russia, that is , they know perfectly well what they are shipping, whose oil the owner of this information is the russian transneft, transneft simply receives, if only, a quantitative indicator without a breakdown of whose oil it is, and transpetrol knows, well... it receives this oil for transfer to the company that bought it, well, for processing, so in fact, here you have to look at this whole story from a different angle, namely, it seems to me that budapest has run out of arguments for blocking these 6.5 billion euros for

ukraine, and therefore it is looking for additional arguments, conditionally, clues, something to cling to, and they used this one. the fact that additional sanctions were imposed against lukoil by the government of ukraine, and they turned it into such a powerful informational and psychological operation, in fact, they are trying, now they see that it is a fiasco, and they are trying to turn the arrows not only on kyiv, but also to brussels, let them go this way, but one more important point, well roughly speaking, well, let's... i'll give you my situation, that ukraine has blocked something there and is lacking. in fact, the hungarian mall has, and the hungarian mall controls not only hungarian oil refining, but also slovakia, there is a technical possibility to get

the same oil, if they like lukoil oil so much, but from another route, an alternative one, which has also existed since the 60s, like the druzhba system. this is adria's route. from the croatian omisal terminal in the adriatic sea and the adria pipeline system to the hungarian and slovak oil refineries. moreover, in 2015, transpetrol very confidently, and above all the hungarian mol , reported that they had completed the necessary work on modernization, expansion capabilities and can now transport the necessary volumes of oil from the adriatic sea. for processing in the hungarian sasholambata and slovakian bratislava slovnav, and they can even pump a little more for the needs of the czech republic. all this was possible, that is, everything can be bypassed, even if you say that kyiv would have blocked this transit, that is, not hypothetically

so, it happened, then they can, but here is such a very important point, why is there such a media campaign in... pest and bratislava precisely for lukoil oil. my guess is that that actually oil from lukoil had a special preferential price. well, in principle, all russian oil that is exported to hungary has a discount, but it is probably lukoil oil, especially since it was somewhere in the general flow of russian exports to these two central european countries, somewhere on the order of up to 40%, it had an even greater price preference, i.e. for orbán and fico, and... the margin is disappearing, on which they, so to speak, earned not only their

entourage in their pockets, but also earned political dividends, which, as they say, look, in us, the price of fuel is cheaper because we know how to do business, how to get the cheapest resource, this applies to gas and oil, by the way, we know how to negotiate and strike the best conditions for ourselves, but look, peter sijarto says that this ban can pose an energy threat to energy security in... and slovakia, that is, it is not true, it is absolutely absurd, even if you look at what slovak analysts and industry experts say, they point out that this is an exaggeration, well, as i mentioned, it's not all oil, it's the first, the second, you have an opportunity alternative supplies, moreover, you always had them, that is, if there is any threat to budapest from their point of view, then... then alternative options are involved, they exist, they are technically functional, they

are tested, moreover, i myself remember, well at one time i held positions up to the deputy chairman of the board of uk-transnafta, and during meetings of central european operators, it was mol who boasted to a great extent that they know how to process more than 50 different grades of oil, which ... they experimented with to get these other grades oil from precisely through the croatian terminal mishal and the adria system, because only russian oil and only the urals oil went through friendship, there can be no other, and here suddenly they show that they are so helpless and that they have such problems with energy security , well, this is absurd, of course, and in brussels in the european commission, they see this absurdity, and therefore it is no coincidence that from brussels... it sounded like such a thing, they got it from the basket, and that is why now they

are driving themselves into a trap, try, they tried to act in such an escalation scenario, raising the stakes, well, as they are taught by their patron in the kremlin, putin, but this does not happen in the case of european institutions, where there are clear procedures, where the mechanisms are detailed, in particular in the same annex 26 to the association agreement with ukraine, and therefore ... in this context, of course, it is now about the various other so-called arguments in quotation marks that you are trying to pull by the ears. mykhailo, thank you, as we promised, as we calculated, you explained everything, and now we are waiting for the comments of our viewers under this video, what do people think, our viewers, and why is this what is going on, what is the purpose of hungary and such sharp statements that are heard in the direction of brussels, it must be said, even more now than in the direction of kyiv. mykhailo gonchar. an expert on international energy and security relations and the president of the strategy 21 global studies center

was a guest of svoboda ranok. meanwhile, lithuania will appeal to the european commission against hungary's decision to facilitate the entry of citizens of russia and belarus into its territory. the minister of foreign affairs of the country gabrilius lensbergis said this in a comment to the baltic news service news agency. according to the minister the decision of budapest to include citizens of russia and belarus in the national map of hungary, which gives them the right. to freely enter and move within the eu within the schengen zone, poses threats to the security of this zone and many european countries, so this decision should be reacted to at the level of the european union, the head of the lithuanian foreign ministry is confident. i would like to note that budapest included citizens of russia and belarus in the program of the so -called national card after viktor orban's visit to moscow. this card allows you to work in hungary for two years and it can continue. such a step has already been called in brussels. a threat to the growth of espionage. radio svoboda's european correspondent olena

abramovych will tell more details. hungary needs russians to build a nuclear power plant, they say in budapest. rosatom is to start construction of the paksh-2 station this year, and the first of two power units will be completed in 2032. earners can bring their families with them, and after 3 years get the right to permanent residence. and, as the german media write. the scheme is already in effect. for several days now, russians have been able to enter eu through hungary without security checks and move freely to other eu countries. this is made possible by registration. in hungary, which prime minister viktor orbán expanded in july to include people from russia and belarus. the european commission stated that they would wait for an explanation from budapest, although the european union did not prohibit russian citizens from entering the territory of the bloc, a number of measures were taken after the full-scale invasion of ukraine. direct flights from russia

to the eu have been banned, agreements on a simplified visa regime have been suspended, a third of the eu countries in general stopped issuing visas to tourists. from russia, these are the baltic states, poland, the czech republic, slovakia, denmark, belgium and the netherlands. since the end of june this year, latvia no longer issues any visas to russians. and in the last two years , russian diplomats who were suspected of espionage were expelled from many eu countries. will hungary's decision increase the presence of spies? a question that the european commission will study? the european commission will be in touch with the hungarian authorities on this issue to clarify the scope of this scheme and whether it falls under the eu rules. as you are well aware, according to our policy, russia poses a threat to the security of the eu, and therefore all instruments at the level of the union at the level of the member states must ensure the security of the eu. meanwhile, in the european parliament, we are sure

that hungary's decision does pose a threat to the bloc's security. the letter with such a warning is the head of the largest flight. group of the european people's party sent to the head of the eu council. weber called the need for a new immigration system in hungary doubtful and warned that it could create serious loopholes for espionage and potentially allow large numbers of russians to enter hungary with minimal oversight, posing a serious threat to national security. webor called on eu leaders to take the strictest measures to immediately protect the schengen area. and to prevent similar initiatives in the future, and asked to bring this issue to the discussion of the leaders of the eu countries at the summit after the summer vacation. olena abramovich, marok hajduk, radio liberty, brussels. who needs negotiations? bigger, bigger this topic, you see it on our youtube channel, be sure

to join the discussion in the comments, put your favorites and share your opinion, it's important. we really exchange opinions, theses, theories in the comments. ukraine is ready for talks with russia, mykhailo podalyak, adviser to the head of the office of the president of ukraine, said in an interview with radio nv. but he says the question is under what conditions, he says that it is important that they, that is, the negotiations, be based on international law, in which the most important thing is territorial integrity and state sovereignty. ukraine is not an aggressor country. ukraine did not start this war, and certainly, in order to position itself correctly, ukraine says that we are ready for the negotiation process. russian propaganda spends a lot of money to create an impression like the war is on, but we are ready for negotiations. ukraine is not ready for negotiations. no, ukraine is ready for negotiations, this is the main point. in general,

there have been changes in the rhetoric of the ukrainian authorities regarding negotiations with russia. openly admit readiness for... promotion began after the peace summit in june this year, said the minister of foreign affairs of ukraine, dmytro kuleba. at the same time, there were statements that representatives of the russian federation should also take part in the second peace summit. a few weeks later, zelensky announced his readiness to negotiate with russia through intermediary states. in a couple of weeks, in an interview with the bbc, zelenskyi said that in 2024 , negotiations with the russian federation on ending the hot phase of the war will begin, and force can help to bring russia to the negotiating table diplomacy, although for the entire previous year , zelenskyi answered journalists' questions that negotiations with russia are impossible, because she does not want it, and there is nothing to talk about with putin at all. in october 23 , the ukrainian president put his signature into effect the decision of the national security council on the impossibility of negotiations with putin, although it should be noted here that in

the first weeks of the full-scale invasion , zelensky publicly tried to call on putin personally to negotiate and... stop the russian invasion. now he declares ukraine's readiness for negotiations one of finland's allied countries, the newspaper lemont writes that the president of finland, alexander stup, believes that ukraine is now in a stronger position than a few months ago, and this, they say, is a good moment to start negotiations. ukraine and zelenskyi are in a much stronger position than two months ago. they receive the equipment and funds necessary to maintain their positions. we are no longer in a situation of almost despair, in which we were in the spring with the blocking of american aid, europe's difficulties with the delivery of equipment to kyiv. there is no russian breakthrough either. russia, according to our information... is not moving forward and her losses are even greater than before. putin thought that the west would tire of war. he thought he could wait for the american election, but he

was wrong. zelensky himself is now pinning his hopes on the second peace summit and the consolidated support of the usa and europe in political pressure on russia. and he says that ukraine will prepare an action plan to achieve peace by november. and before that, kyiv will hold discussions with countries regarding territorial integrity and other issues. oleg shamshur joins our broadcast, ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of ukraine to the usa, 2005 and 2010 and to france, 14-20 years old, i welcome you to our broadcast, thank you for joining, congratulations, thank you, we asked this question to our viewers during this broadcast on the radio liberty channel, and who needs negotiations more, ukraine or russia or the countries of the west? honestly, i will listen to you. well, in principle, i have the impression that now, first of all, i see a certain cacophony, uh,

both on our side and on the side of our partners, regarding the possibility, expediency of negotiations, that should be negotiable, i read stub lumont's interview very carefully, and to be honest, that's exactly what i said, that is, there are conflicting statements, statements, wording in this interview, and the main thing, it seems to me, now, why is it dangerous, because it changes the emphasis, the emphasis should still be on, as macron said, that now superpowers are needed to ensure. victory of ukraine in the war with russia, and it is quite clear that the only conditions on which russia would be ready to lead

the negotiations are absolutely unacceptable, neither for ukraine, nor, i hope, for our partners, the conditions put forward by putin, therefore, as far as i am concerned, now, since there was no subject to negotiate, there are none, and it is very strange when the or stupa... says that now the conditions for conducting negotiations are better, maybe they are better, compared to the beginning of the year, here i, although not a military expert, can agree with this, but they are even worse than they were at the end of the 22nd year, when the russian army was demoralized, and so on the drive was on the side of the ukrainian army of the ukrainian armed forces, that is... and now, from this side, the situation looks absolutely unfavorable, even to think about negotiations. and the last thing i would like

to say is this, i would say, not a good memory, in my opinion, this initiative to hold the peace summit, it is quite clear that the first one ended in nothing, and i am, as they say, lost in conjectures, how... it is possible to ensure the success of the second summit, even more so to invite russia to it for the introduction of some negotiations, that is, again it is unclear, that is, summarizing, i would like to say that now the emphasis should be on making efforts in our fight against russian aggression, and this applies both to our partners and to ukrainian society at large, because the problem of remobilization is moral. ukrainian society, it is very relevant, as evidenced by the latest polls of public opinion. mr. oleg, you mentioned putin's conditions for the start

of negotiations, i will remind the audience, they are demilitarization, non-aligned status of ukraine, withdrawal of ukrainian armed forces from luhansk, donetsk, zaporizhzhia and kherson regions, that is, there is a desire to control even those territories that are not occupied at the moment, to recognize the occupied territories as russian de jure, to cancel sanctions as well . and there is also distrust of zelensky, as the head of the russian foreign ministry stated, and therefore it is necessary to somehow return this trust, and where can we find a compromise here, because we are not talking about this topic for nothing, we quoted mykhailo podalyak, he said, that ukraine is ready for negotiations, he determined also an important point is that russian propaganda, they say, puts a lot of effort into making it look like ukraine is not ready for negotiations, so ukraine declares that it is ready. but taking into account the international legislation and the world also taking these things into account in a civilized way, so that there is also respect for the territorial integrity of ukraine, why

does it not matter. to what we hear from putin, you mentioned the survey, ukrainians are not ready to sacrifice everything, and to accept these terms of putin, which is the most important thing, but nevertheless, the topic of the negotiations, it is further, the more, the more active rises well, why it is violated, you need to ask mr. podalyak and other representatives of the authorities. and in this connection, i would like to note that on such cardinal issues, i wanted to hear not... dalyak, but at least his boss or the president, because such important, let's say, things for the whole country in the same united states comments not sullivan's advisor, sullivan himself, or blinken, or even higher than biden himself, that is, first of all, secondly, again, i do not understand why these conversations were activated. about

negotiations, because of conditions, or before some there are no prerequisites for these negotiations to be successful and provide the result we need, the same stubb says that the withdrawal of russian troops cannot be a prerequisite for negotiations, and what will be a prerequisite, what will be the result, if there is no doubt that now in there is probably no putin. grounds for making concessions, that is, if the situation had changed, well , it would be possible to negotiate something, but it must be understood that the plans, as we said ourselves, they are putin's plans, have not changed, and again, i what i said, now the accent is needed again strengthen to the utmost both on the part of our partners and on the part of ukraine, and it is necessary to understand that we can count on some

agreements with putin, well, again, for the 30th time, we will remember bismarck about the agreements with russia, how long they last and what they are worth , that is, you don't have to create, i would say illusions, i understand that it may be more profitable for some of our partners to start talking about this now than to produce more shells, more tanks and everything else, that is, this is the main question, because the insert in this game is to make so that... russia could never again to threaten neither ukraine nor europe as a whole, but here, let's say, in stub again about guarantees, well, we understand that there are no guarantees, there is no clear program of promotion to nato, how it should happen, we have to be honest, that is, the third year war and again some illusory statements. mr. olezh, maybe we don't know something with you, maybe something like that is happening on the sidelines, but kuleba was recently invited to china and according to...

the ukrainian minister of foreign affairs, he noted that china is not looking for temporary solutions, but is working on permanent and strategic solving the problem of the war, maybe something like that is really happening on the sidelines, and there are certain conversations, both with kyiv and with moscow, about what needs to be negotiated and concluded, or can this set of actions be aimed at this? i do not rule out that some negotiations, some contacts, some exchanges are taking place, that is, i do not have the truth about the latter. doesn't have an instance, but at the same time, again, you don't have to live, there is, i understand that there is, as a former diplomat, there is necessarily a program, that is, if you are invited to china, you go there, because it china, uh, maybe we must say that we are ready to consider diplomatic options, but we must not make it the basis of our real policy, and with regard to china, again for the 30th time, well, china, well,

there is no reason for ... for china to abandon support of russia, we will not see this either in the short or medium term. i hope that what kuleba said is such a mandatory program, and our leadership understands that china is absolutely not a partner for us, and in the long run it will not become one, because all we see being dumped is russia's help fight against ukraine. one of the goals of the russian federation is global dominance and all of ukraine, said podolyak, are there no differences in the vision of russia's goal? you also said that the goal should be for russia to no longer be able to attack and aggress it in the direction of europe, the countries of europe, and the western world, ukraine's partners, how do they see russia's goals in general and are they ready go to the point of really doing everything to make russia more.