this is bbc news. the headlines at the top of the hours straight after this programme. obviously how i feel about what is happening in ukraine is the least important thing about what is happening, but i have to say, i thought living through brexit would stay with me for the rest of my life and there is a whole new load of images i will never forget. then, living through the pandemic, this is the biggest thing i will ever live through, these are the things that will stick in my mind and i will never forget and now just in the last seven days there is a whole load of really powerful images of what a huge story we are living through that are going to be stuck in my brain for ever.

i think that is right. it is the whole thing, isn't it? it is language, place names, characters, politicians who might not have heard of at all, but i think for everyone this is a terrible conflict that is unfolding on our television screens and on our phones and the images, in just seven days, or so, so extraordinary. we are going to show you some of them tonight, newscasters. yeah, remember that day when we woke up to that image on the front page of the newspapers of the woman in kharkiv with the bloodied face and the bandage around her head. and then over the weekend, putin was sat at another long table, which we always sort of use to laugh about, but this was him telling his nuclear forces to go on standby, massively upping the ante. and then in the last couple of days, we have seen again and again the satellite images of the russian military convoy, maybe as long as a0 miles, on its way to the ukrainian capital, kyiv, and all the people in kyiv knowing it is on its way to them. and then in the middle of all of this, you have got the incredibly charismatic president zelensky rallying his people, having played a fake president of ukraine in a comedy show. now he is a world leader in his khaki t—shirt,

every time you pick up twitter. and then the one that i found hardest to see, the image at the end of a news report from one of our colleagues, a little boy puts his hand on the train window and his dad matches it on the other side as they say goodbye. hard to see, but my goodness, seeing it, not remotely a comparison to what people are living through right now. and we will talk about some of the facts and the stories and the analysis behind those pictures on this episode of newscast. newscast. newscast from the bbc. hello, it is adam in the studio. and laura in the studio, hello. and you can feel, laura, that actually, it just feels quite different in westminster and whitehall and it is not just the fact that there are ukrainian flags on all the government buildings and everyone is talking about it, there isjust something, kind of in the ether that feels like it is a different world. yes, i think because lots of people around the place believe that it is a different

world, because it is now a world where the stability of european security cannot be relied upon any more. and that even though in this country, as in america, the intelligence was all pointing towards vladimir putin going ahead with a pretty major attack and assault, people did not really want to believe it. and now they have to believe it, because they see it, and then the second point is i think we are in a moment where you have the centre of government absolutely focused on one thing and that is very unusual, that happens very rarely, except in times of emergency, there is always something rambling around the place, a row about that or a row about this, but actually we have the centre of government, downing street, completely focused on one thing and here also it is one thing that has so many consequences, whether it is for energy bills or whether it is for who gets to play in sports tournaments, there are just so many other consequences of this. and also it is different for borisjohnson. it is interesting when you talk to some of his colleagues, he seems actually much more comfortable in this role,

involved in a battle of ideas, if you like, than sometimes he has done when he is dealing with, grappling with a tricky domestic policy issues and that is an interesting thing in itself. also, isn't it interesting that in westminster, this place is full of trueisms, isn't that right, and one of them is, when it is national security and peace and war, there is not as much politics as there normally is for other issues, when it comes to the likes of the nhs and the economy. i just do not think that has been true for very long time. certainly since iraq. you look at it, some of the themes have gone through all the other stories we have dealt with in the last few years, divisions on the tory bench, labour trying to carve out a tough on national security kind of thing, they have played out this week you have got tory backbenchers who are much more gung ho about a no—fly zone, you have got keir starmer trying to outflank boris johnson when it comes

to sanctioning oligarchs and actually that idea that there is a consensus about war and peace, that is just not true. i do think that there is a consensus on the broad approach. you do not have one party saying we should not be doing anything or one party saying we should be putting boots on the ground, i think that there are differences and there are differences that are very obvious and i think there are differences of scale, scale and pace, if you like, rather than differences over the whole thing. you know, no one is having an argument saying, we should not be helping and no one is having an argument saying that we should be sending british service people indirectly to be fighting in the streets of ukraine, but you know, there are still tensions and their are are absolutely still tensions and none of this is straightforward and there is a sense, i think of real foreboding in government, notjust about what might happen on the ground in ukraine in the next few weeks, but also about how ministers might be able to manage public opinion, because this is not going to be over quickly. we have now got a new spin off forecast, on bbc sounds, called ukrainecast, presented by victoria derbyshire and gabriel gatehouse, our amazing, very, very wise colleagues and we have got

victoria to send us a little note about some of the things she has been seeing and hearing in the first week of the podcast�*s existence. laura and adam, on ukrainecast we have been trying to make sense of what is going on in ukraine. we are talking to people who live in various towns and cities across the country and we are also hearing from bbc experts back here as well. we have talked to anna, who describes sitting in her bathroom, on her bathroom floor, because she says that was the safest place in herown home. she described having a panic attack as she waited for the bombs to fall. she talked about, well at least in the bathroom, she would be able to drink the water from the toilet if the water supply was cut off. we have talked to families in the capital, kyiv, who have sort of agonised over whether to leave or to stay and today we talk to hussain who is in your son which was

the first major city to fall to the russian troops and this is what he had to say. the first thing is, - there is no law here. this is the level of insecurity that you could get shot - on the straight and no one is accountable. i there is no law or law enforcement here. i the only law that exists i is that they have been told by the russian military- authorities, that is the law and how it feels is terrifying. you feel insecure. i mean, living in any country, you are guaranteed that - you will be protected, your families will be l protected, your properties will be protected. - that sense of security has . gone, it does not exist at all. that is the thing, i meanl everything is so terrifying and insecure. i am talking to you right now next to my windowl and i could just get shot- here and no one is accountable for that, actually. i must mention max and his family, from the capital, he told us about his teenage son and his wife who were injured in a missile strike list saturday. max told us, this is not war, this is slaughter.

he said that fact that his family survived was a billion to one chance, there is some good news, the family have been reunited and they are hoping to make their way out of kyiv and we are going to follow theirjourney on ukrainecast in forthcoming editions. so, do download and do subscribe. well, why don't we get an update from somebody who is living through this and joining us now from kyiv, the ukrainian capital, is yuri. hi, yuri. hello, hello guys. now, up until last week, you were basically like me and laura, you were a journalist. yes, i was a journalist for more than 20 years of my life. it is the case of you were a journalist, though, now you're kind of dedicating your life to something else. last week, thursday, at five o'clock in the morning, i was woken up by missiles which were flying through my windows. it was explosions all around.

my own personality is split into two. the first of my personality is my personality of a journalist. this personality told me, no, no, you should not go to the army, you should not take a gun in your hands, because it is against all your principles, it is against all the rules you have followed all your life, but another part of my person, i called it today, it is a citizen part, as it is in part of my person and my soul, and this part told me, no, the wars that you have seen before before were not your wars. this time you cannot stay to the side. this time you need to beware, this time you need to take a gun, this time you need to take arms and this time you need to protect your

homeland, your loved ones, your family, your daughter, and all the people around you. so, i took my helmet, i have a helmet, i have been in a lot of wars... is that one of the helmets you would wear with your flak jacket? yeah. yeah, it was my helmet that was with me in the gaza strip, in iraq, in syria, in centralasia... it had the words 'press' on it and i took my daughter's black marker and painted it out. now, i am not press, i am a soldier. our defence minister here, a guy called ben wallace, he is a former soldier, he has had lots of experience of kind of counterinsurgency stuff like that, he said earlier this week that in his view every day that russia attacked ukraine would create a year of resistance among the ukrainian people. that is the effect this has on somebody going through this. do you agree

with his calculation? yes, i agree with his calculation, but his calculation excludes one very, very important commodity, every day of the fighting, every day of the rockets, every day of the barrage is, there are also a lot of civilians killed. and your government could establish a no—fly zone allaround ukraine, to protect my parents in kharkiv, to protect the little kids in mariupol, to protect women in cherniv, we know that we can do it, we can save lives of innocent ukrainians, civilians, civilian people, right now, we can do it right now, we can do it like this, you know, but we are trying to do something, no, no, no it is not time, we should wait, and then a million ukrainians will have died. i don't know,

i can't understand. i do not want to disappoint you, yuri, but the rhetoric from government ministers in the uk about a no—fly zone is so strong. i just cannot see them changing their minds, certainly not in the short term. as i told you, you know, it is like choosing between war and dishonour. if you are choosing dishonour, war will come soon to you. when you think about that gun you have got in your apartment now, when do you think you will be using it? what you think it will feel like to have to pull the trigger? where do you think you will be and what will be happening around you when you first to use it? for sure i will not have any regrets if i kill russian occupants, for sure. i don't know where it will be, when it will be, or if it will be at all, but for sure, i will not have any regrets or hesitate, i will use it

as soon as i need it. yuri, thank you for sharing all those emotions and all those amazing details with us. thank you, thank you. thank you so much. stay safe. thank you so much. thank you. well, let us zoom out now and see the bigger picture and get some analysis about what is going on with the former international development secretary rory stewart, who is now a senior fellow at the jackson institute for global affairs at yale. hi, rory. hello. i have got to ask, where are you in the world at the moment, then? i'm right up in northern jordan, just on the edge of syria, so i am speaking to you on a dodgy internet connectionjust on the jordanian—syrian border. 0k, people... i am working here with syrian refugees but it is extraordinary, i think, the most amazing reaction even here to what is happening in ukraine. i was in a very small cafe right opposite the golan heights and they were

playing ukrainian orthodox music which i had never heard injordan before. wow, that's amazing. so the ripples are just spreading out all over in all sorts of ways. that conversation with yuri is going to stick in my mind for a very long time. i am just wondering, though, in all the places you have been in the world, afghanistan, etc, is thatjust how people talk when they are becoming the resistance? is that just what this does to them? yeah, it does. i think the thing to bear in mind with yuri isjust how terrifying what is happening there is. he is staying away from the windows because obviously they are very dangerous, glass is dangerous in that kind of situation, and he will be worried that russian tanks are coming down the road, and he will be worried that he won't be able to speak to you again, and it is a very strange and precious conversation that you have had, there, and a very brave man. but of course, he, like many of the other people he's talking about, are not trained, and experiencing the brutality of that will be horrifying.

and what is your take on just what the russian invasion, let's call it that, how it is playing out so far? so far, obviously, it is not going to plan. it looks on the basis of what the cia thinks as though they have committed 90% of the 200,000—odd troops that they had around the border and they have not succeeded in capturing ukraine so that is a very, very big problem. they are not moving at the pace they wanted to. their troops have not performed in the way that putin would have expected. he would have imagined he had enough soldiers to deploy across the border and ukraine would fall very quickly and of course that is for a number of reasons... one of them is the ukranians and zelensky have been extraordinary. zelensky, obviously, his communications campaign has been unbelievable, his domination of twitter and social media. but actually, we need to shout out also to europe, the uk and the us, who have been much stronger than putin would have ever anticipated. and i think the final thing is the russian army. this is not like going into chechnya or grozny.

these are people going into a place that feels very much to them very familiar. it is a place where, you know, their grandmother might live or they will have a lot of friends. it will feel to many russian soldiers as though they have been launched into something much more like a civil war. you can sort of get a sense of relief from people that maybe this giant column of tanks bearing down on kyiv has been bogged down, but isn't the reverse also true, which is actually this will force putin to take even more extreme measures and he will be getting angrier and maybe even feel more threatened? that is certainly true. so he had hoped that he could do this with minimal casualties. he would have hoped that he could intimidate and maybe zelensky would flee, he would put in a puppet government, he would be able to rely on cyber, information warfare, and that stuff is not working for him so now, as he is bogged down, the risk is that he is going to feel forced to get involved in much, much nastier street combat. in other words, it is going to become heavy, casualty heavy and brutal. that is where we are going.

i think the question then is, will the russian people put up with it? the thing that putin will be most worried about at the moment is not actually sanctions, it is the people of russia and whether in the end they are going to put up with a leader who seems increasingly deranged, with all the propaganda, and it's true, as you will know, that the russians are hearing extraordinary nonsense being fed to them by putin's propaganda machine, but many of them can see through it and many of them are horrified by what he is doing. and, certainly, the concern in the uk government that actually, his volatility could mean that we witness in the next few weeks really terrible brutality and a really appalling conflict, much worse than what we have seen already, because he has encountered much stiffer resistance and the western response has also been stronger than he expected. but, rory, while it's always very hard to predict this very volatile situation, what do you think the likely outcome will be?

i mean, someone shared some analysis with me in the last couple of days about five possible outcomes. either the palace coup that you've just suggested could happen, depending on what happens with the russian psychology, a scenario a bit like lebanon, where actually, they achieve their aim of total takeover, that, after the last few days, looks much less likely, an afghanistan—style scenario where you have a very long, really terrible war, or perhaps something like cyprus, where in the end, putin gets part of his way and you end up with some kind of partition, but of course it would have to be negotiated and talks for that to take place, and what some people have discussed, a sort of finland scenario, where you end up, which of course, people like yuri and so many ukrainians would fight, as he says, fight to the death, where ukraine takes some kind of neutrality or part of the country does. i know i have thrown a lot of scenarios at you, but with your sort of international hat on... he's from yale, he can handle

all those scenarios. exactly, if anyone can answer, comb through what might be the most likely outcome, what is your sense of where this is heading? let's try to go through this. i think those are very good scenarios. the first one, palace coup — you could see very much when he was briefing his foreign intelligence chief and his military chief, there was some footage of this, how freaked out they seemed. yeah, they looked terrified. yeah, and there are stories about senior russian generals contacting other countries to say, _ "don't worry, we are not going to fire nukes" in defiance of putin. something is going wrong there with his relationship to the military. and if they genuinely think he's out of control, they will move against him, and i think it's important to understand that even though he is a ex—kgb man, the kgb will be confident that they can get in with the next guy too, so i don't think putin should be overly confident about his situation.

i think the second scenario that's worth looking at is your cyprus scenario. i think it is going to be difficult for them to take the whole country and i think they are getting bogged down and, obviously, it is the eastern bits of ukraine which are traditionally the bits with the strongest connection to russia and the most russian speakers and in terms of what's happened since 2014, he's taken chunks of that in effect anyway. i don't think it's going to be afghanistan because it feels very different to russians than the soviet invasion of afghanistan. as i say, it feels more like a civil war. ukraine, for all of the reasons, bad and good, that putin has gone in there, does feel very much as though it's something very close to russia. it would feel more like — it is a student analogy — —— it would feel more like, it is a stupid analogy, but it

very, very limited. they are not going to be up for... kyiv, i'm trying to get through the scenarios, but kyiv is an incredibly important place in russian culture and civilisation, it's one of the great cultural capitals of the belarusian, ukrainian, russian world. it would be like trying to bomb durham cathedral to the ground. it's not going to feel like going into grozny. there's not going to be public support, i suspect, in russia, from trying to flatten kyiv, and the problem is that now that he is bogged down, the only thing really remaining to him to try is to take — much more brutal methods, which i think would be unacceptable. it is fascinating to hear those scenarios and it gives such an insight into how these things work in the foreign office and the crisis centre, in the cabinet office, because you have got to have a framework to understand what is going on, but i wonder how we all fall into the trap that we've been accused of doing in the build—up to this, which is thinking about the past, comparing it to rational things, and actually, this is a completely unprecedented situation, and we could end up with something that the world has never seen before. i'm sort of hinting at,

i don't know, the detonation of a tactical nuclear weapon in a city that we have heard of, or even in a city we have never heard of. rory, even somebody as wise and imaginative as you maybe needs to think about even worse or be even more imaginative? you're totally right. look, we've all got caught out. people were not anticipating this. if you look at the integrated review, which was the big strategic defence review conducted by britain, and basically the same thing in the united states, it was all about a tilt towards china and asia, it was all about cyber, it was all about saying we're not going to be fighting land battles in europe. so anybody who pretends people really expected to find themselves with the tanks rolling towards kyiv are kidding themselves. we had the ex head of the british intelligence service saying flatly he did not think it would happen, so adam's challenge is right. we need to be much more imaginative and we need to take seriously the fact that russia has tactical nuclear weapons as part of its normal planning, as part of its

normal operations. it does seem to me that people are starting, in sw1 at least, to creep towards the idea of something that a week ago would have seemed unimaginable, stopping buying russian oil and gas in the uk and mainland europe. if you were still in government, would you be arguing for that to happen right now? 100%, and the point is this, that the damage... it will do damage to economies, particularly in italy and germany, because unlike britain, they are more than 40% dependent on this oil and gas at the moment. but it is nothing compared to the damage it will do to putin. it is the one thing he will struggle to survive. the rest of the sanctions that have been imposed, he's been planning on, he has spent the period from 2014 till now preparing himself. he's pretty insulated in a way that he wasn't in 2014. but the one thing he doesn't expect us to do is that, and the point is, our economies, cumulatively, europe and the united states,

states, are 20 times larger than russia's. we can take the pain and he can't and we must do it immediately. but you talk about the pain — the pain will be felt in everybody�*s gas and electric bills, which will go up even further, because even though we don't rely on a lot of russian gas imported directly, chopping off the russian gas supply will make the global gas price go through the roof. so are you sort of saying that almost like our version of the blitz in 2022 is just going to have to suck up, like, spending a load of money just to heat our homes? absolutely, because adam, as you reminded us, we are on the verge of a full european war, which could include tactical nuclear weapons. so whatever cost is involved, and it is less to britain, it is much bigger to italy and germany, of doing this, it is much less than the cost of european war. remember, germany has already had to commit an extra 100 billion euro in order to rebuild its military in the face of this threat. war is very expensive. the british economy during the second world war lost 40% of its value. so we have to be serious. if we have a rogue guy who is threatening ukraine in this way and may try to get into the baltic, of course,

yes, it will hit energy prices, of course it will drive up deficits and debts, but we can get the fuel from elsewhere. we can get it from qatar, we can get it from the united states, the germans and italians as well. we are not actually going to freeze to death. it's going to be expensive, but we have to bear that cost because putin must be stopped, otherwise this is all nonsense. i mean, it's all very well changing the flag on our twitter handle, but if we're not prepared to cut off the oil and gas, he's not going to be ground to a halt _ rory, thank you so much forjoining us tonight from thejordan—syria border. it's great to have you on and incredible, actually, thank you to technology, that we been able to talk to people in kyiv and on thejordanian border. amazing, thank you for being with us. safe travels to you too. thank you again, goodbye. we will be back on television very soon.

we will be back on television very soon-— we will be back on television very soon. newscast. newscast, from the bbc. hello there. cloud and outbreaks of rain are continuing to move very slowly eastwards. we should have more sunshine around across the uk this weekend, but on thursday, the best of the sunshine was across northern ireland. highest temperatures, though, were in the south—east of england — 14 degrees — ahead of that band of thicker cloud, which is taking that rain very slowly eastwards. there are some breaks in the cloud coming in from the west, a few showers around as well, but temperatures early morning could be close to freezing perhaps in northern ireland and western parts of scotland. further east, it's milder, but it is wetter. we've got cloud and rain from the word go. and for a while in the morning, that rain could be on the heavy side before it pulls away from much of eastern scotland and eventually from the north—east of england.

we keep some rain, though, further south across eastern england. further west, though, we're into that brighter sky, some sunshine and maybe one or two showers for northern ireland, western scotland, wales and western england. and these areas on the whole, a little bit milder, i think, on friday. still quite cold, though, for eastern scotland and the north—east of england. improvements, though, this weekend. more sunshine to come for scotland and northern ireland, and we should slowly see the weather improving across england and wales as that rain finally moves away. but we start the weekend cold in scotland and northern ireland, a slight frost here. there's even a risk of temperatures close to freezing in the south—west of england and south wales. further east, though, we've still got that band of cloud and rain. and that will tend to sink its way southwards and westwards, taking some of that damp weather towards the south—west of england, but allowing more sunshine in wales now, and the north of england, together with sunshine in scotland and northern ireland. and in the sunshine, temperatures 8, 9 degrees, so a milder day for eastern scotland and the north—east of england. second half of the weekend

sees the back of this weather front at long last. looks like it is going to be fading away a little more quickly now as that area of high pressure builds down from the north. so, the rain gets squeezed out. if there is any rain, it's really down through the english channel. a dry picture, generally, i think, on sunday. more sunshine to come across england and wales, certainly some brighter skies here, and we continue to see the sunshine after a cold start in scotland and northern ireland. still not particularly warm for the time of year. temperatures only around 8 or 9 degrees. high pressure builds in this weekend, and then it starts to slip away to the east of the uk, allowing a stronger wind to pick up, but it looks like all these weather fronts and rain are going to stay away towards the west.

welcome to bbc news. our top stories. one of europe's largest nuclear pants that make plants in ukraine is on fire after coming under russian bombardment. civilians are also underfire. president putin under fire. president putin remains underfire. president putin remains undaunted. translation: i will never renounce my conviction that russians and ukrainians are one people. find ukrainians are one people. and in the south, _ ukrainians are one people. and in the south, mariupol has become a city under siege as power and water supplies are cut off by relentless rushing shelling. washington is turning up shelling. washington is turning up the pressure on president putin, imposing fresh sanctions on oligarchs and associates of the russian media.