how long will the enemy be able to press on the east of ukraine despite the successes of the armed forces in the kursk region. slow and scattered reaction. ukraine's western partners note the kremlin's lack of determination in response to the introduction of ukrainian troops into the territory of the russian federation. where did putin's red lines go? ratification of roman. statute zelensky suggests that the verkhovna rada urgently introduce changes to ukrainian criminal legislation that would give ukraine full membership in the international criminal court? in ukraine, this is the verdict program. my name is sergey rudenko, i congratulate everyone and wish everyone good health. in the next two hours we will talk about ukraine. about the world, about

the war and about our victory. let's talk about the current situation in kurshchyna, about the reaction to the offensive of the ukrainian army on russia, from our western partners, and , of course, about how and in what way the ukrainians will develop combat operations. among the topics that will be covered during today 's two-hour broadcast is... not the story of how the head of the anti-monopoly committee, who previously governed donetsk region, pavlo kyrylenka accused of illegal enrichment and the way in which two heads of tsc, buchanskyi and boryspilskyi, were caught organizing schemes to evade mobilization. we will talk about all this in the next two hours. in the first part of our program we will have majors. of the armed forces of ukraine ihor

lapin, diplomat oleksandr khara and political expert volodymyr tsibulko. in the second part of our program, which will start in an hour. we will have a traditional friday journalist club: olga len and bohdan butkevich. we and colleagues will comment events of the week however, before starting our big broadcast, i suggest watching the video of the first hours of the offensive on the kursk region of russia. this video was published by the command. by the armed forces of ukraine in the video demining, breaching the border, destroying the enemy's defensive lines, the work of aviation, artillery and prisoners, we see how the ukrainians entered the enemy's territory.

this video is dated august 6, 2024, glory to the armed forces of ukraine and death to the russian occupiers. throughout our broadcast, friends, we are conducting a poll, we are today we are asking you about whether the ukrainian orthodox church can become independent. from the russian orthodox church, well

, it means the ukrainian orthodox church, which we call the moscow patriarchate. everything is quite simple on youtube: yes, no, two answers, and if you have a separate opinion, please leave it in the comments under this video. if you are watching us on tv, pick up your smartphone or phone and vote for the numbers. if you believe that the ukrainian orthodox church can become independent from the russian orthodox church, call 0800 211-381 or 0800 211-382. all calls to... numbers are free, vote, at the end of the program we will sum up the results of this vote. i would like to introduce today's first guest, ihor lapin, major of the armed forces of ukraine, special officer, people's deputy of ukraine of the eighth convocation. mr. major, i welcome you, thank you for being with us today. glory to ukraine. glory to the heroes. let's start our conversation, mr. major, with the situation in kurshchyna, because today the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of ukraine reported to the president. zelenskyi about new

developments in some directions in kurshchyna from one to 3 km. let's listen to what oleksandr syrsky said. the troops of the offensive offensive continue to fight, have an advance in some directions from one to 3 km towards the enemy, along the front line the fighting continues, in general the situation is under control, all measures are carried out according to plan, at the moment there are battles in the mala loknya area, i hope there will be taken a lot of booty. mr. major, how are you? evaluate the kurdish special operation, i wanted to say, the kurdish operation, and about that, let's talk, what is the actual strategy of the ukrainian leadership, military leadership in this operation? well, let's be honest

, to date , no one knows the strategic plan of the head of state in the context of this operation, and thank god that no one knows, i can't call it another way, because you can comment only when you have a complete understanding we have information about our own forces and means, and of course, about the forces and means of our opponents. what is the ultimate goal, well, we can only guess there that the ultimate goal is to exhaust the russian occupying forces on the territory of ukraine as much as possible, so that the russians began to transfer them to protect the kurshchyna or belgorod region, and so on. this is one element we would like to see. to date. so far, we only see the withdrawal of russian troops from certain areas of the kharkiv direction, namely near vovchansk , and moreover, there is not a very large, large, large group, they withdrew somewhere close to a battalion, this is according to the information that is confirmed, i do not know the others yet, maybe there are some

additional data, but nevertheless there are certain successes, as far as the exchange fund is concerned, well here colossal successes, you are just showing a picture where the russians are surrendering, and in principle, in addition to the capture of russian prisoners, we see, well, let's say this, also, that the morale, including the armed forces of ukraine, has risen very seriously, some are starting now , you know, to play with the topic of victory, the devil, that kurshchyna is kurshchyna, but for some reason the topic of the pokrovsky direction disappears from the sources of the mass media, and we see that a very serious tragedy is seriously unfolding there, but nevertheless... less, the transfer of the war to the territory opponent, that is this is definitely a positive moment, and we have been talking about it all this time these years, let's say this, if the russians do not suffer in this history and there is no war on their territory, then ukraine will be destroyed, and we

will not last long in this way, especially that a small soviet army will never defeat a large soviet army, so we have to change our approaches, and as for the kurdish operation, i am positive, because i always ... said, maneuver warfare and guerrilla warfare are our everything, considering the fact that we are smaller than the army, be that as it may, a static front means death for us, and in principle, we see that the russians, having a total advantage in artillery and aviation, in fact, with a static front, well, they pose quite serious problems to us, and this is confirmed donbas, where the hottest battles are currently taking place, of course i am not only donbas, there is also kharkiv... we know that there is an advance of the russians in the direction of kupyansk and we know about the situation that is happening in other areas and in zaporizhzhia, but nevertheless where static front, to the russians it's much easier, because they have a lot of meat, they have a lot of artillery and aviation and cabs, as

for other points regarding the kurdish operation, i want to say, well, first of all , we pushed back all of putin's red lines. including, and we must give credit, that the western partners also erased some brown lines of their fear and stopped shouting about god forbid, under no circumstances should this be done and so on, we were supported, there are statements from the western partners, the united states, germany, by the way, they said that there are leopard tanks it is necessary to give ukraine, you see how they are working well here in the kurdish direction, then we see the statements of the netherlands, which said that we handed over the f-16. and where ukraine will fly them, well , we are not interested in that, that is, we see that in principle there are a lot of positive statements, yes, unfortunately, we have not yet overcome the fear of western partners in the context of stormshadow over the territory of russia, i am talking about britain , we did not overcome the germans' fear of giving us

taurus missiles at all, even now we are not talking about the territory of russia, even though we could work in other regions that are occupied, in particular crimea, we also... did not break through the situation with the attack in the united states, but these are still the first swallows, when after all the world unanimously supports the actions of ukraine and recognizes the legality of these actions, and this is the main thing. in accordance with the norms of international law, we have the right to do so, and that is exactly what it is, again, we do not violate any norms of international humanitarian law, many ukrainians like it or not , but we give the residents, civilian residents, the opportunity to evacuate, who supported putin and the svo and so on, we give them the opportunity to evacuate, provide humanitarian aid, bring a humanitarian woman and so on, so here we are to be accused that we... as they say, russian propaganda will not be able to defame the honor of our

soldiers in any way with the help of his manipulations and their so-called military cows and pubs, of course he will not be able to, and these are already positive things, the kursk operation brought a lot of positive things in this context, well, from the point of view of an already ordinary combatant, i can say that recently somewhere the soldiers wrote that they had a bridge blown up, why it blew up, i don’t know, probably some good people blew it up, i’m bugging , of course, but blowing it up... and there they still have several crossings that need to be destroyed, and in fact there are around 700 russians in the encirclement, cut off, not that in the encirclement, but cut off from replenishment and so on, and this is a good story, again , of the success of this kurdish work, that is , they approached creatively, maneuverably, well, it is not necessary to hold back , yes, by the way, this is you you show the footage that was there, it is in the glushkov district, it is on the other side of the border, so sure, so sure. here we are, well, the most important thing, we don’t need to, we need to turn back all the way,

maintain our logical paths, so that the forces and means that we entered the kurt region, so that they do not end up being cut off, because remember, the deeper the russians across ukraine, all the more so that our partisans could destroy their logistics routes, and we need to understand that this war is a war of logistics, whoever won logistics, that director, well the general... staff of the armed forces of ukraine says that over the last day, the most battles took place in the pokrovsk direction of defense, here the russian army stormed the positions of the ukrainian military 41 times, the army also approached pokrovsk, a city in the donetsk region, almost 10 km there, someone says someone says it was 6 km away and used to be a city, and now the administration, the local administration in pokrovsk is urging... residents to leave the city, in addition

, battles are being recorded in the turkish direction, and there are attacks by occupation forces in the districts of krasnohorivka, georgiivka, paraskoivka and kostyantynivka. in the bakhmutsky and lymansky directions, ukrainian defenders also write about the fact that the russians are attacking, as well as a noticeable decrease in intensity. enemy assaults have not yet been recorded, and dmytro kozhubenko, an officer of the planning section of the rubizh brigade, stated this in an interview with espresso. let's listen to what dmytro kozhubenko said. in the area of ​​the defense of the rubizh brigade, unfortunately, there is currently no such a noticeable outflow of the enemy, but they continued, well, as they carried out their assault actions, and continue to carry them out, well, the only thing is... relatively recently, the enemy has changed the tactics of assaults, now they

have made the assault groups smaller, but this is not connected with the fact that our troops began active combat operations in the area of ​​the kursk region , not before the federation, mr. major, after what is happening and happened in the kursk region, the offensive has been going on for the 11th day. operation of the armed forces of ukraine. how do you assess the potential of the russian army in terms of maneuverability, how quickly they can make decisions, how they can defend themselves, because it is absolutely obvious that they were not ready for such a development of events, and why were they actually not ready for such a development of events, did they not think that the ukrainian army would never come to their land? well, your last sentence just says that they thought that, after all, the czech lines of fear of the western partners would not allow the ukrainian army on leopards and bradleys

to travel through the territory of russia. thank god that we broke this stereotype. as for ready or not ready? well, in general , the russians concentrated in the north of our country about 70,000 according to some estimates of personnel analysts. 50 of them are involved, let's say, in the vovchan direction, well , i'm just saying now with reserves, together with everything that they have collected there, and they still have 10 in bilhorod region and kurshchyna, and that's it in fact, they had quite a few personnel there, but mostly there were conscripts, er if... we are talking about the kofur direction and of course the fighting spirit of the conscripts who saw that the akmat is tea, not sila, of course was very strong undermined, plus absolute absence information in the media, no one publicized the upcoming counteroffensive, yermak's office was silent and the information did not go beyond the limits, as

they say planning, and this is exactly what gave us the opportunity to suddenly... unexpectedness made it possible to achieve such results, well, i can say, it concerns russian capabilities and so on, listen, let's not forget, the russian army remains the second army in the world, it has, if i'm not mistaken, there in the armed forces, in addition to those currently concentrated on our territory, it has more a very serious number of personnel, they are now true, false, in fact, all the linemen are starting to sign contracts, well, you remember. this story with the conscripts, with the boys there in panties and so on, well, of course, the conscripts do not know that such active hostilities are taking place, and this hooray, their victory frenzy, as they say, did not take root in their heads, as it was said, they they don't drive their cars into enemy columns and don't blow themselves up with grenades because they've seen it all in

books, but when you have to do something yourself, it's not something to shout at rallies, we russians will tear everyone here. that's it, the second point, after all, be that as it may, the russians still have very serious defensive lines, we saw these video frames, the defense lines in kushchyna, the fact that we broke through them is again an element, let's say yes, suddenness, and thank god and our skill, but you look at those shots, listen, well, the line of defense of zelenskyi with yermak, it is even half, or a quarter, so not the fortification that the russians built in that including in kurdish. province, let's say this, now you rightly reminded that to pokrovsk and mirnograd, well, let's be frank, to pokrovsk there are less than 13 km to mirnograd five, less than five, er, about 100,000 civilian residents are currently being evacuated , but very slowly in mirnograd , 20,000 civilians, i don't know when they will evacuate them, the distance, in fact, the distance of

the barrel artillery without problems does not allow us to do it, without problems for them, but with problems for... for us, and just what they were drawn to the latter, i cannot understand, just as i cannot understand ms. vereshchuk’s statement regarding the evacuation of civilians from kurshchyna in the territory of the sun region, well, in general, it’s just some trash for me, it’s not unacceptable, no, to make humanitarian corridors , of course, but not sumshchina, well, as you can imagine, well, yesterday they sent tanks to us, and today we will settle their peaceful inhabitants where, in which houses, near sumshchina, well, it’s some, well, it’s... some kind of trash, but as for the army of the russians in general, it is still quite strong, they have a lot of strength means, they are so dispersed now, they must respond to these challenges, but i do not yet emphasize once again, i have no information that they will transfer their forces from the donetsk direction, our mirnograd city council is purchasing dragon's teeth with a delivery date of

december 31, attention of the 24th year, they have 4 km to the front, and in them... and they make the deadline for the order for defense structures based on december; to name, this is the main thing, for what it is necessary to pay attention, that is, there is a stupid embezzlement of money, about how much in total there is 17 and somewhere around 40 million hryvnias for the defense structures of mirnograd, and what were you thinking all this time, when avdiivka was still holding, the line of... zelenskyi on ocheretiny did it last, what were they building there? that's how it was built, that's how it lasted. in general, the fact that the boys are holding these lines is on the level of fantasy, because a soldier repels an attack in the evening, and in the morning he digs a new trench, do you understand? and this is a war on the exhaustion of our soldiers, reinforcements and

mobilization are interrupted by those military committees, which today the sbu seized more than a million dollars for... or for ukhylyan, well, that's all, well, that is the priorities of today's government, zelenskyi's team, it's another way to call it the destruction of one's own army, i don't know, well, this is the president's vertical, the head of the anti-monopoly committee, who was recently arrested for illegal enrichment and so on, he is the former head of the military administration of the donetsk region, i remember him well, i am from crossed it in the 22nd year, and where are the defense structures, there are no defense structures, but apartments in kyiv and uzhhorod are full. you understand, and this is a responsibility, this is the presidential vertical, and it is president zelenskyi who appoints them, this is his personal responsibility for the personnel policy that disrupts, including buildings. defense of buildings, no, make a detachment, promote, give an interview against the background of some roadblock, this is zelensky zmi, and now let him look at the footage shown by yura butusov and our

the military, what company strongholds with baths, with toilets, the russians have built in the kursk region, even with their corruption they build everything exactly, ours don’t even do that, that’s the story, thank you, mr. major , for the conversation, it was a major of the armed forces forces of ukraine. special appointee people's deputy of ukraine of the eighth convocation ihor lapin. next , we are already working with oleksandr khara, an expert on foreign and security policy at the center for defense strategies and a diplomat. mr. oleksandr, i congratulate you, thank you for being with us today. good evening, mr. sergey, thank you for the invitation. well, first of all, we have been discussing the course operation for a whole week, and of course we talk about the successes of the armed forces. let's talk about what is the world's reaction to the events in kurshchyna, and how this reaction will be transformed into

an attitude towards putin's regime and the fact that the world is starting to look at putin's regime and current russia in a completely different way, or was it all for the world it is not known whether this operation shows that putin is not in control. and this is the situation when the ukrainian army has been conducting an operation for 11 days of the territory of the russian federation shows that, in principle, beyond the front line further into the depths of the russian federation , not everything is as good as putin is trying to show to ukraine and the whole world. well, first of all , it should be said that no matter how the military part of this operation ends, there are already... certain positive political and diplomatic consequences for ukraine. the first thing, in my opinion, is that we have shown that we, this war, is not a dead

end. and we have the opportunity to accumulate enough power to carry out offensive operations. i want to recall that after the 23rd year, our american and, in principle, european partners said that it is better for you to focus on protecting what you have and not to take risks. with some such large offensive operations, we have shown that we can act much more effectively than before, achieve greater results. the second moment, the clouds thickened, so to speak, above us and there were more and more calls to sit down at the negotiating table, this prompted president zelenskyi, his office to say that maybe russia will be at the negotiating table in... this year at the second peace summit, it is clear that this is no longer relevant, and it is unlikely that anyone will push us and say: let's

think about peace, because we can't wait anymore, we are already tired, we are exhausted, we can't help you anymore , as before, that is, this is also a very important point, the third point, we have shown that we can win this war, and you know, we have a very important argument, this is a logical argument, why those who say... that russia is too big, and therefore it is impossible to win, there is a very simple answer: russia really has a lot of resources, human, material and other, but it is extremely bad at converting them into capabilities. we are not an example of converting those scarce resources that we have in our capacity, but we do it much better, and therefore, in principle, these theses are very important for our further diplomatic work, strategic communications, in order to... reject the idea of the fact that we cannot do anything and it is time for us to make territorial and other concessions to the russian federation. in fact,

the reaction of our western partners was very positive, they were as for me, well, actually taken so suddenly. i have two opposing theories. the first thing is that our western partners did not know what we were going to do, at least in washington, maybe they did in london. and the actual reason for this was our reluctance to be told not to do this, because it could have some negative consequences, especially since we have an election campaign here, let's take a more conservative approach to this war, and of course you have such information, because in the 23rd year it was one of the reasons that the russians were ready for our before our campaign, the second part is the opposite, it is that our partners, after all... were aware of a limited circle of people, and this is indirectly evidenced by the fact that just in the last few hours there was news that the hymers were

several bridges were destroyed in... the direction of movement of our troops in the kursk region, that is, this means that the americans gave permission to strike not only in the border areas, as was the case near the kharkiv region, but a little more deep into russian territory, if this is true, if that's right, it means a change, at least a certain change in washington's policy, maybe after a certain time they will abandon the senseless, counterproductive and extremely costly. for ukraine, the policy of not allowing strikes on russian territory, the policy that led to the great loss of ukrainians and the great loss of ukrainian infrastructure, so i don't know how it really was, the adviser to the office of the president of ukraine, podalyak said that the americans were aware, i don't know , whether it is just theses, or in fact, this is what happened, but in general, everyone looks at the successes of the defense forces. of course they were already hanging out

putin's friends in the west, such as john merschemeier and sachs, who write that this was a strategic mistake by ukraine, that russia has a lot of resources, and in fact we won't achieve anything militarily, i think it's just that they are in captivity their illusions and their models of the world, which have been showing for several years that they are inadequate to what is really happening. so i would say overall there is a positive reaction favorable to us and of course it will all depend on how well we achieve the war objectives, neither i nor any of the experts in ukraine know what the military goals of ukraine are in this operation, and this is very good, that is, this is operational security, we showed a high class, both to the government, to the general public, and to the expert community, no one you know, we

can wonder if we're going to get out of there after a certain time, or if we 're going to pay off and hold the line of defense there, or if we're going to hold the line of defense and continue to advance in mobile groups deep into russian territory, scattering their resources, so let's see, i hope the only thing on the fact that our military leadership will make decisions exclusively from the situation of military, and not political expediency, because political expediency is in this operation. as far as i'm concerned, i 'm 100% satisfied and there's no need, let's say, to put political goals above the life and safety of our soldiers and risk more than it is in principle, let's say, from the point of view of common sense, it's possible, at the same time, the commander-in-chief of the united general christopher cavoli of the nato armed forces in europe, mr. alexander, believes that russia's reaction to the offensive against ukraine was very weak.

let's listen to the region. russia is still gathering its reaction to the invasion of ukraine. so far it has been only a rather slow and scattered reaction. this is partly because russia has not decided who has the authority there. the ministry of defense is responsible for military actions on the territory of ukraine, but not inside russia, correct? that is, it should be the ministry of internal affairs. mr. oleksandr, how did you see the reaction of putin and his closest entourage to the kursk operation, what does this reaction indicate? obviously, this is cognitive dissonance, obviously, putin didn't expect it, and you know, i have a theory, remember bilousov's call to lloyd austin, and where he said that the ukrainians were planning something so terrible that

they'd better not do it, and... at first , i thought that this was a possible development of an operation to eliminate one of the leaders of a terrorist group called the russian federation, but now i assume the opinion that the russians, seeing the accumulation of power of the ukrainian defense forces on their own border, warned the americans because in their imagination there is no ukraine, we are, in fact , american proxies, if washington told us something, we would of course have done it under cover. probably if that's true then we just reacted the way we did, which is we continued to prepare for the operation, started it, and maybe that was the reason why the russians didn't prepare there, that's my guess, but anyway we saw the confused fuehrer of the russian mayor who, instead of a counter-terrorist operation, called the situation there, on the one hand, he really had a dilemma, who has from...