we will talk with you about the hottest topics of the current day, and for now a word to colleagues from the bbc: more than 200 missiles and drones in the morning russia attacked the territory of ukraine, under attack... 15 regions. in the kremlin, they say that the energy infrastructure was targeted, which is known, what conclusions can be drawn after the most massive attack of this war. find out in today's edition of the bbc. i am olga polomaryuk. an attack that russia had been planning for a long time. this is how today's massive shelling is described in the office of the president of ukraine. it all started at night, the russians released drones, struck in the morning rockets 15 regions were affected and. later

summed up prime minister denys shmehal. it is known that at least six people died in lutsk, zaporizhzhia, dnipropetrovsk regions, zhytomyr region and kharkiv region. the goal of the russians was the energy infrastructure, so says the political leadership of ukraine , and the kremlin emphasizes this. the kyiv hpp was among the objects targeted by missiles and drones. well, in total, russia launched 127 missiles of various types and 109 shaheds. these are the data of the general staff - the most massive attack of the first full-scale invasion. one drone flew into the territory of poland, now they are looking for him, the polish armed forces announced. it is not officially reported which energy facilities were affected. the minister of foreign affairs of ukraine called on western partners to allow ukraine to carry out long-range strikes on the territory of russia. volodymyr zelenskyi said this again in his address. there can be no long-range restrictions in ukraine. combat, when terrorists do not have

such restrictions, defenders of life cannot have restrictions on weapons, when russia uses its own weapons of all types, and shahed, and ballistics from north korea. america, britain, france, other partners have the power to help us stop terror. solutions are needed. we are talking about how ukrainians survived today. with my colleague from kyiv zhana bespiachuk with us, i congratulate you colleague, the last time russia shelled ukraine so massively, if i am not mistaken, was at the beginning of july, and many experts said that the kremlin was stockpiling missiles, someone even predicted that the strikes will take place on independence day, what is known about the state of energy facilities, so congratulations olya, first of all it is worth emphasize on... the fact that

the ukrainian government and the military do not comment on the state of the energy facilities themselves, it is related to security, because, as they explain to the journalists, any information about the direct ones can be sent to russia to correct future, possible future strikes on the energy infrastructure, but there are still several points that... er , have already been publicly commented on by ukrainian officials, which, in general, journalists managed to find out today, first of all, really russian troops this time they hit the hydroelectric power station in the kyiv region, and in the case of hydroelectric generation , it is very important that the most dangerous thing is actually not a hit on the generation. as such

, to the machine room or substations, this is a possible strike on the dump, that is, the question immediately arises that with the dam from sources in ukrhydroenergo, the bbc previously knew that during previous attacks on the energy infrastructure of ukraine, in particular the attack that you also mentioned, on at the beginning of july, there were strikes on water supports, water reservoirs of some ukrainian hydroelectric power plants, and here it arises question: why is this being done, because this is no longer a story about a violation, about destruction, an attempt to destroy ukrainian electricity generation, as such, it can have environmental consequences, it can be a water spill, and ukraine has already experienced something similar in kherson oblast in june of last year , when the russian troops destroyed the kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station, and accordingly the reservoir, so... that's why

, actually, it's worth watching, although officially officials in the field of energy and... the military say that to destroy the zurnidam with the help of missiles, it seems it is impossible regarding the state of hydro-generation facilities after this attack, officials were informed that there were strikes, hits on critical infrastructure facilities in the ivano-frankivsk region, in the kyiv region, and what is the actual state of these facilities? we will be able to talk about this in the coming days, when we will see if there will be long-term power outages, but they are already there, and in kyiv, right now, when we are talking to you, and there are also power outages in some areas, and this is also in other cities of ukraine. yes, and actually about whether

will threaten ukraine with a blackout, we will talk about it later in our program, but i want to ask one more thing, russian propagandists say that... this strike was a response to the offensive of the armed forces of ukraine in the kursk region, it began, remember, three weeks ago , but are these events connected ? well, the fact is that, as we can see, russia regularly strikes the ukrainian energy infrastructure, and any mass shelling of ukraine can be tied to some actions of ukraine in one way or another. and, for example, some previous ones. hits on energy could also be associated with shelling, well, in that case, without invading the territory, but with shelling of objects on the territory of russia, so i would say that the main question here is what could have

prevented such a massive strike on energy infrastructure, on critical objects for ukraine, for the population, for industry. and it is not entirely a matter of whether or not ukraine will carry out one or another military operations, here is exactly the case when wartime diplomacy and politics should play their role, and in fact, precisely in in august of this year, such an attempt was made, with the mediation of qatar, and the russian and ukrainian delegations were supposed to take part in the consultations, rather they were supposed to be international negotiations. precisely with regard to both sides mutually refusing any strikes on each other's energy, but these consultations did not take place in the format as expected, and accordingly we see that further escalation took place, the ukrainian operation in the kursk region and the shelling of the whole of

ukraine in russia yes, thank you, colleague, unfortunately we have to finish, zhenna bespiachuk, a bbc correspondent was on our air. thank you, colleague. and about kursk, western analysts, among other things, also consider the revenge option, that today's attack is the kremlin's response, retaliation for the offensive of the armed forces of ukraine. one of them is the british columnist and former nato analyst patrick bury. the scale of this attack is important here, as well as the timing. usually, when we see attacks like this, they can combine 50 to 80 drones and missiles and sometimes guided ... air bombs together, but this attack, as the ukrainians say, is 100 missiles and 100 drones, so the scale up to one hundred, as zelensky said, unprecedented in the entire war, the scale, that’s what is more significant about this mass attack, usually when such attacks take place, the russians try to overload the ukrainian

air defense in several regions at once, ideally they use drones as a cover, forcing the air defenses to shoot them down, after that... using several different types of missiles to break through the air defenses. usually, when they do, they need some time to build up after that new stocks therefore, such large attacks occur approximately every three months. the last major attack happened in july, so it seems to fit into the pattern we're seeing. and i also think that putin wanted to make a very strong move with this, so he accumulated reserves and used them. and i am convinced that this is revenge for kursk. wants to show: if you find our weak point to put pressure on us, we can do the same to you. and yes, they have been successfully targeting the ukrainian energy infrastructure for a long time, which is really worrying the approach of winter. and secondly, and this is another very important thing: ukraine is also finding points

of influence, also attacking russian strategic energy infrastructure, striking oil and gas processing facilities, and achieving certain successes in this. so that's the... the answer to that. a more obvious solution to what is happening now would be an agreement with the allies on joint air defense. and it is worth hoping that there may be movement in this. however, one of the problems in... is that some countries promised but did not send air defense equipment. and of course, the biggest the debate that mr. zelenskyi mentioned is how long are you going to allow russia to use its capabilities, its weapons platforms from a safe distance. this also includes bombers that can be out of range of air defenses and drop cruise bombs that are very cheap to produce, equipped with gps and... target any energy infrastructure, so there are two issues that are debatable: first,

we more means of air defense are needed, why is it not coming, and secondly, what to do in the long term with long-range threats. currently, the main question remains what will happen to ukrainian energy, will the energy system cope and what to expect from the heating season? today's shelling only added pessimism to the already gloomy forecasts, and are these forecasts justified? my colleagues talked with the head of ukrenergo volodymyr kudrytskyi and the conversation was recorded last week. at the beginning of the summer, it was known that half of the ukrainian generation was destroyed. what is the situation now? at the end of august? those power plants that were damaged are being quite actively restored, not all of them were obviously destroyed. i cannot disclose information specifically, how much, what percentage or how much. megawatts of generation have already been restored and how much will be restored, you need to clearly

understand two things, firstly, all these 9 gw that we have lost, so to speak, from work, it will be impossible to restore before winter, ugh, that is, we will still operate with a certain reduced generation volume, compared to the situation, for example, in february 2024. and this is the first, but the fact that those plans for the restoration of power plants that were drawn up, they are now plus or minus being fulfilled, and the power plants are going plus or minus on schedule, so how many, for example, did we expect to have nuclear thermal or hydrogen generation there at the end of plus or minus, as i have already said, we are operating with these volumes, next winter we will have an important factor added: which was not there in the previous winter, this is the import of electricity, it was practically zero all last winter, but you

mentioned that it will not be possible to restore nine you won't say how much it will be, and how much the energy balance is also missing today, you can't say that either, how long it will take to restore that which is damaged, well, you know, different power units are objectively in different technical conditions, somewhere the damage is total, ugh, somewhere they... well, they are the nature of damage by lightning strikes or a blast wave to some equipment or infrastructure, where steam is supplied, for example, turbines or something like that, so it can be from several weeks or months to a year or two, some power units obviously in the foreseeable future will not be restored at all, if you sum it up like that. the basis of this traditional generation, especially thermal, it

decreases with every year of a full-scale war, because large-scale shelling, they occasionally lead to the fact that some power units are so badly damaged that it is impossible or impractical to restore them in the foreseeable future, and precisely therefore, time plays against traditional generation and... this is why it is so critical to deploy a decentralized new generation as soon as possible, a generation that will be more sustainable or resistant to missile attacks, due to its dispersion, due to the large number of such small power plants. look for the full version of the interview with the head of ukrenergo in the near future on our website bbc.ua, as well as on our youtube. and also subscribe to our pages on social networks, so as not to miss the most important news, we are traditionally on

facebook, instagram, tiktok, on youtube you can watch our news broadcast, if you missed it on the air, turn on our program tomorrow at 9 p.m., for everything good. well, it's a new week on espresso, thanks that you are with us this monday and all the following ones, i really hope, and once again we remind you that in this program we talk about the hottest topics for ... today and how they will develop in the near future 21:15 on your watches, that means , that for the next 45 minutes or so, i, khrystyna yatskiv and andrii smoliy, will talk with you and among ourselves about topics that may concern ukrainian society and definitely deserve your attention. let's go. well, of course, we

remind you first about the survey, we will definitely talk about this topic, and ours poll. today it sounds as follows: do you think it is necessary to regulate telegram's activities in ukraine? if so, call 0800-211-381, if not - 0800-211-382, all your calls are absolutely free, and in 40 minutes we will sum up and find out what you think, well, let's start with.. of course, from today's black day for the ukrainian energy industry, for ukraine in general, because any massive shelling, any strikes, any terrorist acts by the occupying state is a disaster for ukraine, it is a disaster for the ukrainian of the people, because these are the dead, these are the wounded, this

is the destroyed ukrainian infrastructure, this is ukrainian business, which today, unfortunately... once again, is not making profits due to the fact that blackouts are happening all over the country, a terrorist is a terrorist, and it's not about that it is necessary to forget, it is necessary to remember who is the enemy of our state, who kills ukrainians every day, who destroys our country every day, if we talk about this context, if we talk about possibly an informational context, because... that , which happened today, it aims not only to destroy the ukrainian energy industry, or not only to destroy any other ukrainian infrastructure. this is, first of all, for any russian propaganda machine, first of all informational influence, an informational tool to demonstrate to our fellow countrymen that

look, we showed them, we will prove something to them, we... did they take revenge there for the kursk region or for some of their failures, or for some of their failures, this is standard, the power of great russia, it is the task of each shelling to demonstrate and, as they say, to unite so the so-called russian society, i am right , is it possible that you have any other opinion about this, i would not say that i have like... a different opinion about this, i really believe that today's massive combined strike on ukraine had on the goal, the goal is to really have an informational psychological influence on russian society, to give at least something to the russians on a plate, to the ukrainians under fire, so that a wave of unnecessary

questions does not arise, because a wave of indignation, i think it sounds very funny, when we talk about... the russian federation, that is so that it does not happen, and that is why and that is not the only reason why this strike was carried out. according to my observations, this strike was also interesting because the russian federation aimed at our energy industry in the context of e-e gas storages and distribution capacities. if i understand correctly, in western ukraine we may be talking about the fact that in these gas... locations, objects, as you like, there may be gas intended for europe, for european countries, well, at least for some countries that still consume there, for example, this transit gas, transit fuel, and when russia fires at storage facilities with such gas, in which, in particular, is the gas for such countries

as i understand, hungary, slovakia, where politicians recently, in principle, you already... for quite a long time in the case of hungary, broadcast the world support for the russian federation, i am not afraid of this word, support for the russian federation federation, it seems to me that vladimir putin is trying, perhaps, to raise the stake and escalate, escalate the situation after it was escalated in a controlled manner by us, in the situation with the kursk region, i liked how, if i am not mistaken from... portnikov outlined our defensive offensive on kurshchyna, and called it escalation for the purpose of de-escalation, that is, sometimes. you have to push more to ease the situation in general, uh, that is, in our situation, it is clear what we are doing, and

the world accepts it, and moreover, agrees with it, but what vladimir putin is doing is trying to balance, to balance now our, in some sense even advantage, and i don't know how well he succeeds in this, but it's quite funny to watch how they react, in particular and... such liberal russians zmi, forgive me, sometimes we mention them in our conversations with andriy, jellyfish, jellyfish, actually, we thank lera burlakova for this post, for this news box with a similar title: russia attacked ukraine, using more than 100 missiles and about 100 drones, under attack kyivska gest and other energy facilities, this is... a response to the offensive of the armed forces of ukraine in the kursk region, as an established fact, the liberal russian media are absolutely sure that this is a response

to the situation in the kursk region, as as if undermining everyone who reads them, and many read them in the west, including representatives of democratic societies, democratic countries, who more or less speak the russian language, unfortunately, this is how they read it, and now the facts are being formed... but such vision, if ukraine had not gone to kurshchyna, russia would not have so brutally shelled ukrainian energy and now it is not at all known how the ukrainians, whom you support, on whom you spend your own tax money, will survive this winter, the same thing they did, they and russian liberals media, and the russian federation in general, after we brilliantly successfully disabled a certain percentage of the capacity of the kerch bridge and steel. this is in october, if i'm not mistaken, on october 8, 2022, already on the 10th or 9th, i don't remember exactly, we experienced a crazy

mass attack on the ukrainian energy industry itself, that is, everything is actually repeating itself, and we enter, and the russians enter again this circle, and the main thing, the main thing is to avoid all kinds of such manipulations, and i would like these liberal media ... not to pretend to be liberal, not to try to call themselves as journalists in this aspect. obviously , this, what we see now, is not journalism, this is an attempt to influence the opinion of those who are their consumers, they are not read in russia, they do not write for russians, they write for representatives of western societies who simply know russian language and can consume it. well why, anyone? some certain margin, perhaps for the russians as well, because we understand that there is still a certain percentage that

the liberal media are trying to reach, so to speak, and here i am more than convinced that a lot of the so-called liberals in russian quotes are very good at practicing these kremlin narratives in order to keep their own. the same citizens who do not have a positive attitude towards putin, but it is clear that they have a very similar attitude, an imperial attitude towards their country, by the way, here is a little more information, russia spent up to 1.3 billion dollars on today's missile attack, about this is written by forbes, and they point out that it is. indicator for the entire time of the full-scale invasion, the amount was slightly lower on december 29 of last year, when also

there was a very powerful shelling, including kyiv, if i am not mistaken, but there was talk of a figure of 700-800 million dollars, that is, we see that russia has money, they are ready to spend this money, and that , that they don't care about such and such things, that's why i was always quite skeptical when someone there counts russian money, because let's be honest, russia has money as long as there are states that buy , who supply, with whom russia trades, and in the first part of our conversation we mentioned one of these states. and to the budgets of pro-putin

oligarchs. uh, hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, well or not dollars, it doesn’t make a big difference, but we should talk, probably, rather about what we should do, how we should act in ukraine, and how we should conduct our policy, in that including information, this seems to me a bit of a painful issue, perhaps because we ourselves... work with you with information, and this is what we are in every day, and this is the information policy in our country, well , i would like to became a strong link, you know, in the context of our statehood, so far, as it sags a lot on me, why? well, i think that's partly what we're arguing now. we all know about the arrest of pavel durov, he is the inventor of the vkontakte social network, which is now totally, totally controlled by the fsb. and

thank you very much since 2016, without special gadgets, lotions and applications, ukrainians from the territory of our state, at least, cannot enter vkontakte, classmates and so on, in short, unfortunately, ukrainians consume information from social networks, why do i say, unfortunately, because we can't always talk about some verified sources of information, so very often channels in telegram. they are nameless, and you don't fully know who leads them, well, i'm sorry, if andriy smuliy has a telegram channel, then i know, at least, that it is andriy smoliy, that this is my colleague, and that this is a person who is responsible for the information that appears in the telegram channel under his name, and a huge number of telegram channels are in the status of unknown who and unknown under whom and unknown for whom or against whom, telegram invented.

supervised by pavlo durov, as well as the telegram team said that, actually, the arrest of the leader does not affect the situation with the availability of this network for consumers, and this brought us back to the topic, in the common sense of regulating the situation with telegram in ukraine, if it is a platform, a substantial platform, on which entities appear , which position themselves... as sources of information in our country, then it would be fair for ukrainians to understand what it is and what it is eaten with, what responsibility it bears, who to turn to if something sounds, well, let's say, discreditable in some it makes sense, but it doesn't exist, unfortunately, it doesn't exist in our country, and this is a big question, andrei, how, as a person who is familiar, not just familiar, as a person who devotes a large

part. of his life, andrei may seem a little sad and sleepy to you today, he is a person who spent virtually the entire night and the entire day with you so that you would understand what is happening in our heaven in general. so, how do you look at this whole story with durov, with telegram, and is it time to talk about responsibility in this social network? i would say yes, that we it is necessary to talk comprehensively not only about the regulation of telegram, but in general about the regulation of any social networks. by the way, when the draft law on the regulation of social networks was submitted to the verkhovna rada of ukraine, it was not written there that this was the regulation of telegram, it was written that ukraine, a state that is in the context of a large-scale war, in the context of a hybrid war, in the context geopolitical upheavals, a geopolitical de facto rift between two civils.

which is fighting today for the civilized world, that this country, that is, our country, should generally regulate the issue of access, well actually some pro-russian, russian narratives to social networks, and this does not only apply to telegram, i want to emphasize once again that we have other social networks, including carry a threat, an informational threat every day. which actually get into the brains of our citizens, ugh, and affect ours, this is also tiktok, for example, which in my opinion should be regulated by ukrainian legislation no less than telegram, and in many places in the world it it is already regulated, there are so many fakes, so many lies, so many racist narratives, which are, for example, in tiktok, well, i don't know where the other social networks are exactly. that

's why that's another.