we can, in the battle we are leading, because perhaps this is our so-so mission, unmask the devil who attacks us today, unmask that moscow, which today is no longer the bearer of high culture, but the bearer of the newest genocidal ideology, because unfortunately, today the world... has the same danger that it was in, let's say, before the beginning of the second world war, but let's remember that time in europe, everyone wanted to prevent the escalation of the world conflict, do you remember chamberlain, who i was so happy about that with a piece of paper, they supposedly satisfied the aggressor, gave him a part of some country there. and

now he has already satisfied his appetites, at that time the average european associated the word germany with high culture, philosophy, music, and the nazis were in power, and then at the end of the second world war, everyone was horrified to ask themselves how this became possible , that such a civilized, cultured nation allowed ... to the crimes of auschwitz and committed genocide against an entire people, which we call the holocaust today, is exactly what is happening to russia today. russia, in particular, after the collapse of the soviet union, invested huge amounts of money in order to spread the illusion of its high culture. today, when someone is looking

for some kind of expert on russia, they will always come across an adept who was brought up on the uh illusion of the greatness of russian culture, and therefore always, when they hear about russia today, they will uh, uh, first of all boil down to categories his own illusory thinking, without asking himself what is really happening in russia. in russia today, i would say, there is actually such a neo-colonial, genocidal regime, which has nothing to do with the examples of high russian culture, from dostoevsky or other so-called classics of russian culture, because this culture is no longer available today, and this is a certain shock that the west, all those who respect themselves, may be experiencing today. as experts, this is our

perhaps historical role, it is to expose everything, to warn the world, to close it to this huge danger, so i hope we will fulfill our role, eh, we will win, and then everyone will understand us, i am convinced, that the lord today, god is always on the side of the one who... is a victim of unjust aggression, that the lord god is by our side, by our side. you said that god is with us, but i would like to finish with this question, because many people ask today, where is god, and why is this with us, and how jesus was asked whether his parents had sinned, or he, why is he blind, and now people will ask, yes, who sinned, articles are written, intelligent people write, explain why we lived in quotation marks this war and say,

so what, who, who sinned, so would like to you said your word, here it is important for people to understand where god is, if i don’t see him, i don’t feel him, all this is happening, and why do we need it, well, we will answer this question until the end, maybe at the end of the story, when the whole process will take place , then we will see everything in its entirety, but now it is christians. have the key to interpret this reality, why? because we believe in a suffering god, not the god who is somewhere far away, somewhere in the heavens, in his kingdom, no, but the god who became a man. we believe in the son of god, who entered human history, took upon himself human body and voluntarily came out. to the cross,

that is, today we christians see the suffering christ in the suffering of every person. i want to share my such, maybe my own spiritual experience, you know, when i visit our wounded guys, or even civilians who have suffered injuries due to bombings, you know, well, just some kind of truly reverent awe at the suffering of people in ukraine, who have is god really present, or exactly... i caught myself thinking, you know, seeing those wounds, i say to myself: "jesus, it's you, i see you in this and indeed, today christ is suffering in the body of the suffering ukrainian people.

therefore, the pain and suffering of our savior in the body of the suffering ukrainian motivates christians to... works of mercy call us not just to honor suffering person, but to protect human life, that is, this is a kind of, i would say, a truly religious motive for all our social service, all that we do to protect, save human life in the name of god, this is not some kind of ordinary, i would say philanthropy, and it is truly diakonia, that is, service, service to god through service to a needy man.

and this is an experience, not only my personal one, but the whole of our church, you know, no one has ever asked in our communities, in our parishes, what church do you go to, what language do you speak, when we saw a person in need, a wounded person , a refugee, a person who needs to be helped, warmed, or maybe even advised, how to proceed further in life, in life , here, and this is the secret of stability, i am convinced that this is not abstract, but very concrete presence... between us, in particular because of his suffering in the wounds of ukraine, this is a very, very deep, i would say, foundation for the proclamation of christ's gospel, christ's gospel today in ukraine.

that is why we say: "god is with us." because god is always in the one who suffers. there is such an early christian sermon from the second. century, then something of the persecuted church, which spoke, says that christ is being killed in everyone who will be killed until the end of the world. christ was present in joseph, who sold to egypt. christ was present in abel, who was killed by cain in the old testament, and today he is present in every person who is in need. weak, that is why we read in the gospel from matthew about the terrible judgment, says christ: what you did to one of the least of these, you did to me, so we

christians know where god is present, we see him, and we we want to serve the lord god and our long-suffering but heroic people. thank you, bishop sviatoslav was with us, head of the ukrainian greek catholic church, and i congratulate you too happy independence day of ukraine and your entire christian community, well, i ask you to stay with the espresso tv channel, it will be interesting from now on. fm galicia. listen to yours. there are discounts until

independence day on imodium. 20% in travel bam pharmacies and savings. there are discounts until independence day on linex forte 15% in psyllanyk bam and oskad pharmacies. big broadcast of vasyl zema, my name is. winter, this is a big ether on the espresso tv channel. two hours of airtime, two hours of your time. my colleagues and i will talk about the most important thing for two hours, to learn about the war, about military, frontline, component, serhii zgurets, and what the world lives by. yuri fizer is already with me, and it's time to talk about what happened outside of ukraine. good evening, two hours to catch up on economic news. time to talk about money during the war oleksandr morchuvka, next to me, and sports news. i invite yevhen pastukhov to the conversation.

a new week on espresso, a weekly summary information and analytical program, a clear understanding of the key events of the past week, analysis of the causes and consequences of these events from experts, forecasts of the development of the situation for the current week, the opportunity to ask your own questions and join the discussion, spend the final monday evening with us and confidently step into the new week, the new week project with khrystyna yatskiv and andrii smoly, every monday at... weekly saturday political club helps to understand the processes

taking place in ukraine and the world. vitaly portnikov, khrystyna yavtskiv, andriy smoliy and invited experts based on facts give their assessment and forecast of the development of events. do you want understand how our today will affect our tomorrow, watch the saturday politics club, every saturday on espresso. greetings, you are watching the espresso tv channel, my name is lesya vakulyuk, and we continue the series of interviews on the espresso tv channel with people who make ukraine better, today i am a guest of a person who makes ukraine better in two ways, in terms of historical and in the plane, when he himself writes the current history with a weapon in his hands. volodymyr birchak, volodya for me, because i know volodya a little longer, when i asked myself how

to introduce you, volodya answered me: you can simply be a sergeant of the armed forces of ukraine, but from civilian life, a historian, archivist, head of academic programs of the liberation movement research center. you can also mention that the editor of the historical truth, if it is not too much, i believe that it is not too much, and there are still many different pages from your life that we will remember today, and i also want to tell our viewers that... i know volodya personally with so close to the summer of 2021 , a full scale invasion was just over six months away and we were just working with volodya in one documentary project, 10 days of independence, where i was one of the screenwriters, and volodya was my consultant and actually explained what and why, how everything happened over the last 100 years in the history of ukraine, and why we chose these 10 days of independence. because these are those... when over the centuries ukrainians gained independence, gained statehood, well, but then something,

something happened in our history, and the gaining of independence did not end in 1991, and now you, volodya, are literally celebrating our 11th day of independence, or you, as the historian foresaw and knew that you would have to go to war, well , actually... really, that is , i was preparing myself for a full-scale conflict, and in fact, i was preparing my relatives and friends about the fact that it is most likely inevitable, and that is i'm not the only one, i'm not unique in this, i know a lot of my brothers who analyzed the international situation, who analyzed the things that country 404 is doing, can we call it that today, so as not to speak like a volon de morda, but. .. that all this leads to a full-scale conflict, after all, you are very aptly mentioned this documentary series

that we worked on for 10 days of independence, and as far as i know the viewers of espresso had the opportunity to watch it, it can still be watched on youtube, absolutely, absolutely, and simply, if we analyze the history of the 20th century, actually of the ukrainian 20th century, the struggle of ukrainians and ukraine for its independence, we will see that yes... what is the scale of the war, that is, the war that began in the 14th year, which we now call the modern russian-ukrainian war, it obviously started much earlier, in the 20th century, and it is already... a full-scale stage or a full-scale cycle, it was inevitable, and maybe we will touch on this issue somewhere in today's conversation, this is a very important issue for understanding that you can never to believe in russia, you can never believe in any ephemeral peaces or truces that russia offers you, and at the same time you cannot

admire democracy. russia, why am i talking about this, actually, once again, i am appealing to our series, when we were preparing the series just in time about its independence day, and later about the referendum, there was once such a president in the russian federation, whose name was boris yeltsin, and the world admired him, because he was a democrat and so on, but if we look at the press of that time, yeltsin was a great democrat. at the beginning of 1992, he had already openly threatened the state of ukraine that if it did not get rid of its nuclear status, he would carry out a preventive nuclear strike on ukraine, and this is the year 1992, that is, the great democrat yeltsin threatens the neighboring already independent state of the fact that he will strike with a nuclear weapon if it does not fulfill its protections, and this is generally the whole

history of russia and the history of russia and its relations with ukraine, that is... this fail state that exists on the north-eastern border with us, they will never come to terms with our independence, they will never come to terms with our independence, so if we jump a little ahead, you celebrated the 11th day of independence, and actually this 11th day of independence, it will either take place in us, or, in my opinion opinion, in my personal opinion, or we will cease to exist as such. if the orange revolution or the revolution of dignity, these were our days of independence and our victories, and we obviously could have lost in them, well, in fact, there were various factors that contributed to the fact that we could lose, but then we still had some perspective, well, that is, we

we can only stay in ukraine there, and we will repeat ourselves, another failed state like that. belarus, yes, which, unfortunately, is its self-proclaimed dictator now , is what they are, but we won then, now there is no longer a question of whether we will remain ukraine somehow ephemeral, in fact the question here is whether we will exist or we will not exist as such, and therefore this day will either happen, and it will truly be the day of independence and the day of our victory, or we will cease to exist, i very often , i analyze these things that happened in the 20th century. at one time, i worked a lot in the archives of the sbu in various positions, for about six years, my last position there, i was the deputy director of the archives of the sbu, the branch state archive of the sbu. and now during my treatment, because i am on vacation and due to my health,

as a result of combat trauma. and i remembered that in a previous life, before the full-scale invasion, i was from... and again i am twisting the materials that i wrote before, bringing up new ones, again bringing up the documents of the nkvd, the mgb, the kgb, and they are very illustrative, because they very clearly show what can happen to us if we lose, and this is conditionally, as, say, with an effective army of the onr or as the soviet special service called them with the petlyurivtsi, and that. the vast majority of military personnel, i mean, currently the armed forces of ukraine, will be there physically eliminated, even if not on the battlefield, then later tracked down and eliminated by the special services, a large part of ukrainians who fought for independence by other means of armed forces, i mean ukrainians in the body, who help, who volunteer, who donate, who are hurting ukraine, they

are, respectively, as supporters of, as the soviets called it, the ukrainian counter-revolution, and, well, that is, as supporters of, say, the ukrainian people's republic, they will be convicted, sent to siberia, and that part of the collaborators will remain and that part pochekuns or zhduns, who, unfortunately, still exist in ukraine and still exist, moreover, they are in different parts of ukraine, like here in lviv, where we are now having a conversation, or in odessa, or in kyiv, or in kharkiv , that is, i don't want to say that... we have a sad outlook, because we are now an independent country that has a fairly strong and professional army, which is helped by the west, and we have a chance. in this war, just for us to win this war, this war must become a people's war, it must not be a war of units, it must be a war

to the majority, when i talk about the people's war, that is, it is not only that there is somewhere there, we, you know, as it happened, unfortunately, somewhere in 2016, 17th, 18th, when the news from the ato zone, and then from the zone of operation of the joint forces. well, the recession, recession, recession has already passed, well, somewhere there are some guys and girls, somewhere in the east they are fighting with someone, it’s okay here, we have life here, but i have nothing against a peaceful life, even though i am a military man , but a peaceful life is a peaceful life, it is good, because you can actually go on vacation to a peaceful a city where you, or your wife, or your beloved, or your mother are waiting there to spend those 10 or 15 days of vacation there, but this is not a war... it must be fought in manivka, and it should never be forgotten, in civil life, in fact, when it will be popular, when the whole people will fight, then we will be able to win. february 24, 2022, it

looked like a national day, everyone mobilized then, what was your february 24 like this day? oh, i had a very funny day, well, i don't want to look like a clown, it certainly wasn't a funny day, not a funny day at all. but it started out interesting to me, that is, i had a premonition of something, and we had a meeting with the director of the center for the development of social sciences there in the evening, we were supposed to make a presentation of a book there, and i said, listen, well, it’s all good, what we’re planning, but it seems to me that with one day it will start, and i will not be at this event, but they convinced me that nothing will start, well, okay, and then i sat down in the middle of the night to finish the book, just then i and my colleague from the institute of the history of ukraine, national academy of sciences, tatyana pastoshenko, we... worked on the book pro-red camp security police of the isd, that is, it is a nazi camp on the territory of kyiv, which

existed from 1941 to 1943 and where a lot of people were actually murdered by the nazis, and we were working on a collection of documents on behalf of the university of jerusalem, that is why i mentioned it for a reason, because - putin came to de-nazify us, and i sat and worked. a collection of documents about the national camp, well , i don’t know if he knew about it, i guess he didn’t know, so i was working somewhere, the truth is somewhere until 1:40, and then i simply fell asleep on computer, well, that is, the beginning of a full-scale i overslept, and i was woken up by my good friend from the states, this is bohdan gavraliuk, he is from the organization of the defense of the four roads of ukraine, and he called me, i picked up the phone sleepily, i said what happened, he says , you have a war, i say, i’m either sleeping or something... he seems to be saying: the war is in the news , go to the news, and then i went to ukrpravda, saw that a full-scale invasion had really begun, and then everything turned upside down,

military man, not by the army, the territorial center of recruitment and social support, tsk, known more, the distribution, the first, the first month is the defense of the ternopil airport, i was in the calculation, anti-aircraft guns, banally speaking, so as not to name the full full name, here, after that, after that, it is a countersabotage company, later an intelligence company, well and then from the summer of the 22nd year, this is direct participation on the line of combat, this is donbas, the north of donbas, the izyum direction, later the south of kharkiv region, then the kharkiv counterattack. offensive, then kupyansk, and now sumyshchyna. a long way from ternopil, 1200 km. eh, you

now on recovery? yes, recovery from injury, combat injury. yes, well, it is called a combat injury, but somehow, well, we like to joke with our comrades, somehow it happened, i jumped and broke my knee, well, it happens. yeah, did you just jump like that? we conducted measures to mine positions and unfortunately we were ee you can use slang burned us slang you can yes slang you can okay we were burned by the ork and ork hall well this is their reconnaissance drone and after that when they saw us from their a mortar went to the territory. shelling, and it was necessary to urgently take a position below the ground, there is such a position below the ground, and i was in this ammunition, i did not successfully jump somewhere from a height of 3 m, well, it happened that way, it happens.

this injury is the first injury of some kind, this is already the second, the second, eh, and that's it, everything is lucky for me on mines, all the same 82nd, because there was also an 82nd near kupyansk, but it hit the wall of the dugout in over my head, but there was this one there, there was also, well, such a scratch, as the boys say, ugh, boys, what are you with? did any of them have a question for you, or such a question from... claims as a historian, they say, if you knew that there would be a war, why didn't you warn, or why didn't you historians warn all of us, no, well, we warned, well, it’s true, i’m asking if people ask this, i even, i can even drop the articles where we warned about it, no, the guys didn’t ask such a thing, well, here it probably is, well, i won’t reveal some big secret now, here there are,

just as in ukrainian society, i see it... and among my brothers and sisters, there are such a certain question somewhere, probably to the authorities, i.e. that for a certain period, it went according to the principle, like this hollywood movie with leo decaprio, don't look up, i.e. don't look up, but it was a dangerous tactic, really many did not believe , what will happen, well, but everything indicated that, and our western partners indicated that, the guys do not have such questions, we are there when anyone... has time and mood, then we talk about other historical issues, and what interests people , who are with you in the trenches, who are shoulder to shoulder with you, but they do not have historical education, what interests them, is it history, is it from the history of ukraine? i apologize, well, it depends here, that is, someone is interesting, well, my brother actually fights in the same platoon with me, he is a historian and graduated from the same faculty as me, well, that is, he and i sometimes stick our tongues together, it can take a long time...

talk, but not only about history, there are also about international relations and about other things, it depends on who has what request, well, that is, i have my platoon, he is interested in history, and when we were more or less quiet there positions, well, near kupyansk it is always comparatively more or less quiet, but when it was possible to talk a little to himself there at the sp, he was forever asking himself, tell me about this, tell me about that. tell about it, well, he later even told this commander of the department in which i was, now he is my brother, because we are two teams of the department, well, even then he was a brother, so he even told him, he says so, i did not understand, and why i don't have a night shift with a flap, he says, why did you move me, well, i have a callsign flap, yes says why you me, and we have already found out why he is like that, he says why you moved me, we talk about history together at night, and you move me, he says no, no, send me back to duty with him, and, well , even this one, there are different ones. there are different stories,

that is, mostly the guys have a request for this and here maybe i will even say more about the entire structure of the armed forces that there is a request, a request for this, er, there is a request for this, as simple as that someone from boys is interested in history, asks to explain something more, and the second point is that in 2022 you mentioned that there was a people's war, that. well, that is, really, when i came to the army on the 24th - tsk, there i also passed a long time in the military medical commission and so on, and the very next day, the 25th , i arrived, i had to be assigned to the brigade, and i saw already on the 25th how the doors, the doors of the tsk were being broken by the volunteers, and then i somehow had a very, very, uh...

great peace, that is, i saw, yes, if such a number, so let's hold on, i know how to his other friends there, who were also in kyiv, that is, when they saw the number of people who left, that is, from it people, businessmen, millionaires there to simple guys from borshchagivka or troeshchyna, that is, everyone united and when they left, then also some such peculiar calm came, well, although they were already coming quite close, we know, they were coming quite close there and then. later irpin, later bucha is close to you, well , that is, whether it’s moschun or others, but there was a certain peace because of that, and what am i leading this to, now then there were volunteers, ugh, that is, people who had a very clear argument, why, why and for what, having at the same time families, having three children each, three underage children each, several of these brothers are serving with me, who are still having all the grounds for dismissal, everything

continues anyway. to serve for 2.5 years e