something like 5000 years old. it is embedded in the historical culture of minority so, you raid, you go across, you take something that belongs to your opponent and you bring it back. it allows you to be bruce lee when he goes up and faces eight, nine people from different angles. this is the same. you have to go up against seven opponents, seven against one, and it allows you to build your confidence up, it is team work, it is individuality. why is kabaddi so popular, especially in places like south asia? kabaddi has always been very popular because it was a sport that you didn't need anything for, you just needed a patch of land. you don't need a ball, you don't need a bat.

the tournament is scheduled across the uk. they are putting it forward for the commonwealth games. we they are putting it forward for the commonwealth games.— they are putting it forward for the commonwealth games. we will be lobb in: commonwealth games. we will be lobbying the _ commonwealth games. we will be lobbying the commonwealth - commonwealth games. we will be l lobbying the commonwealth games commission etc to be included in the next commonwealth games, if not as a full sport, a demonstration sport. we would like to think that is a road we are already on. a lot of people before us have done some great work on that but we look to polish that and get it to a level where it can be sustainable. it polish that and get it to a level where it can be sustainable. iii the where it can be sustainable. if the launch of this _ where it can be sustainable. if the launch of this league _ where it can be sustainable. if the launch of this league is _ where it can be sustainable. if the launch of this league is successful, it may start the next chapter in the development of the sport and wider recognition on the international stage. that's all from sportsday. you can stay up—to—date on the bbc sport website. next up on the bbc news channel,

has putin's plan failed? this is now shockingly familiar. death and destruction right on europe's eastern flank. missile roars overhead. because russia's invasion has shattered cities. explosion it's killed thousands and driven millions from their homes. and now president putin's war machine is accused of genocide and atrocious war crimes. almost no one expected ukraine to be able to stand up to vladimir putin's army but this war has not gone according to plan. it surprised everyone and, to be honest, including me, as to how poorly the russian

army has performed in this war. so, what we are going to try and do here is break this down and explain how putin's plan, his initial plan, went wrong and, what are the options from here? russia's forces outnumber ukraine's by several times. they have attacked ukraine on three fronts, with tanks, planes, warships, allaiming for a swift victory and a collapse of ukraine's government. well, that hasn't happened, so, how does all this translate into progress for russia on the map? you can see the red areas here. they show where russian forces are largely in control. there is no question that they have definitely bitten off a significant chunk of ukrainian territory, possibly more than they can handle, but they have made gains in the south, but in the north, the ukrainians have largely held off the russians and they have stalled their advance. as russian troops have withdrawn from towns around kyiv, they have been accused of carrying out atrocities on the civilian population. ukraine's president calls it genocide. russia says it is fake news.

so, what was moscow's original plan for ukraine in this war? put simply, putin wants to bring ukraine back into moscow's orbit. nojoining nato, nojoining the european union, in fact, he would like to bring it back to where it was before it had a change of government in 2014, when a pro—moscow government was replaced by a pro—western one. putin wants to see a complete restructuring of the whole security apparatus for eastern europe. to make that happen, putin needed regime change in kyiv, the capital, because there was no way that president zelensky and the ukrainian government were going to bow to moscow's demands. hence the invasion.

when the invasion began on february 2a, it was a three—pronged attack — from the south using crimea as a springboard, from the east, the donbas and from the north, where belarus helped russia launch this invasion. the initial idea behind the invasion was a pretty simple one, seize the capital kyiv, secure all important sites in the main cities, kill or capture president zelensky, or let him run away and replace his government with a sympathetic pro—moscow one. well, it hasn't worked out that way. ukraine stood its ground. its army has been outnumbered and outgunned, but it's people and outgunned, but its people have been fighting back hard and their morale is pretty high, extraordinarily high given what they have suffered. russian tactics have been often very poor. the commanders have failed to combine inventory to combine infantry with tanks and artillery

to the best effect. they have missed a big opportunity there. then there are the russian logistics which have often failed, and that has meant their convoys have got bogged down and stalled as they wait for fuel and supplies and that makes them an easy target. and yet russia's president vladimir putin, the man behind this invasion, says it is all going to plan. i am haunted by the sense that this will be the first phase in a much bigger european crisis. professor michael clarke is one of the leading experts on military strategy in britain and i think he is as surprised as i am at the shortcomings of the russian military. the only way that this invasion could have worked, with the

in the weeks and days building up to this invasion, the world looked at this army of nearly 200,000 that had massed on the borders and we were told of the huge capital investment, that it had been upgraded, and it was supposed to be a really powerful force that massively outnumbered ukraine's forces. what has gone wrong with it? what are their mistakes? the army was not modernised in the way that everybody thought. the famous phrase has been used many times but the russians have a large modern army, yes, but the part that was large wasn't modern and the part that was modern wasn't large, and interestingly, even the elite forces failed in all of their objectives. they failed to hold their objectives so even russia's elite forces underperformed and their main forces disastrously underperformed because of structural reasons, that they did not give enough credence to logistics, they made the fatal mistake of underestimating their enemy, they assumed that it would be a quick campaign, so they were only equipped for a few days, they set off in quite difficult weather and did not have any warm—weather clothing. the mistakes went

on and on and on. we knew that the russian army had these sorts of deficiencies but we didn't believe that they would not have corrected them for this sort of operation, where they employed effectively half of their ground forces and we thought, these are the best half that they have, they must have got it right, they must have overcome all of the things that used to be wrong with the old red army, but apparently not. so given all of that, it did not take long before russian forces found themselves overstretched, spread out over too many fronts, and that has meant problems with supplies, fuel and morale. so, time fora plan b. this is unreal. it is like walking through a world war ii film set. this was the centre of grozny, these were 12—15 storey apartment blocks. chechens and syrians will be all too familiar with russian military doctrine when it comes to taking cities.

that doctrine means that if you cannot get into the city with infantry and tanks, if there is too much resistance, they simply stand off and batter it with artillery, rockets, missiles and drones from a distance. it happened in grozny in chechnya, it happened in aleppo and it has happened in mariupol. nowhere has been hit harder than the southern city of mariupol. before the war, it had a population of nearly half a million. today, it is 90% damaged or destroyed. the place is a ghost town, a husk of what it used to be. the reason is that it is strategically important. it is on the coast of the sea of azov, which is linked to the black sea and it stands in the way of russia linking up its forces from crimea in the south, with their allies in the donbas further to the north and east. and once that city has been taken, it allows russia to move further north and try to encircle the regular ukrainian army forces

and concentrate their efforts on the donbas. the forces in crimea looked as if they were more modernised because they were facing potential opposition in 2014 so they have sorted themselves out, they have shorter lines of communication, so they have been able to move out of the crimea towards donbas and towards 0desa more efficiently, so that is where they have made gains, where the back—up and logistics has been better and the russians, remember, it is a big military force, they can bring in more troops, more than anything, they have heavy firepower and this is what the russians always rely on. ultimately, they could still after a fashion prevail in this war if they used their heavy firepower, bringing in more missiles as they get more, particularly if they get some from china, they can bring in good old—fashioned artillery with its 15—20 mile range and they can pound cities and pound positions, and ultimately because they always have superior numbers to the ukrainians, the ukrainians cannot fight forever. there is only so much that flesh and blood can do

and the russians must be thinking that if they keep the pressure up, even if it is inefficient, eventually, the ukrainians will crack at more than one place simultaneously and that will give them their chance, then, to move forward, to use encircling actions to grab a big piece of territory that they can then bargain with. in ten years of the soviet army, the red army, fighting in afghanistan from 1979 to the late 1980s, russia lost roughly 15,000 troops. now, already, the most conservative estimate of troops killed in this war so far is around 7000. ukraine says it is more than double that. that is a lot of funerals taking place in russia. choral singing it might seem that russia is prepared to throw unlimited amounts of resources at what it

calls this special military operation, in other words the war in ukraine. there were aspects of russian culture and society that play out into this whole military campaign. suddenly you have to know everything about from javelins. .. for me, it all interconnects... to get a view on that i spoke to kataryna wolczuk, who spent the last 30 years examining russian society, a leading expert at the university of birmingham. putin has developed a passion for history so he has done a lot of reading on the history of russia and ukraine and developed his own interpretation, but also kind of obsession with ukraine and even before the pandemic, we believe that he was fairly isolated, he already started giving interviews on the historical unity of russia and ukraine and dwelling on religious

relations in the 13th and 14th century, so this has become his interest and he certainly regards ukraine as an artificial construct. it is basically a by—product of western plotting against russia. he blames the poles, he blames austro hungarians, but he does not regard ukraine as a viable state and most importantly a nation. hence, this perplexing rhetoric, when it comes to ukraine that, on the one hand we are one people, russia moves into "protect" the russian speakers in ukraine. 0n the other hand, the invasion and the most brutal aspects of it happen in the russian—speaking parts of ukraine, so this reflects putin's understanding of what ukraine is. it only has the right to exist if it is with russia, if it is subordinated with russia and anybody who opposes this is a nationalist and a nazi.

given the shortcomings of the russian military, shortages, the low morale, the problems with tactics, how much longer can russia keep this war going? if there is no peace deal, if the two sides remain far apart in their demands, can russia keep doing this indefinitely? it can. we have supply problems. we have corruption. we have expired military rations, they are out of date, but the sheer sort of size of the apparatus, which is not functioning well but is still there, means that russia can go for a long time, not least because of this industrial scale censorship in russia, it can gloss over the casualties, and the media present it as a success story.

let's just be clear about one thing, though. as with almost any conflict, social media and mainstream news do not necesssarily paint an accurate picture of what is going on on the ground and propaganda plays a huge part in this on both sides. press briefings and tweets and video clips put up online... the big question now is, where does mr putin go from here because this is after all his war, his goals, his aims, and the problem is that the two sides, russia and ukraine are still far apart in terms of what they are prepared to settle for. russia can't afford a big, long—term occupation. it can't hold down the whole country. it hasn't got enough troops so it will want to settle for some sort of territorial compromise. it is not going to give up crimea, and it may be reluctant to give up the territorial gains it has made so far, but ukraine has said it does not want to give up one inch of territory. what the west has done albeit quite belatedly is give the ukrainians everything that they can handle,

everything that they are trained for — there is no point in giving them weapon systems that will take time to learn so we have given them everything we can. the problem for ukraine is that these weapons have been used in an excellent defensive structure, but can it be sustained? do they have sustainment? it isn'tjust the weapon systems, it is the flesh and blood and guts of people prepared to back them up. which i suppose begs the question, at what point are we risking escalation from russia and some kind of retaliation against nato, which has tried very hard not to get militarily involved, beyond supplying weapons? there is a great danger as this crisis goes on, it will not lapse into being a grumbling war. the longer it goes, the more likely it is it will become a more general european conflict. it is a very dangerous conflict and i think we are at a dangerous stage of that conflict, as we confront the possibility that it is not going to be over quickly.

so, it's possible that this is conflict could drag on for many more months, possibly even years, and against that backdrop there is always the risk that it could drag in nato, and expand into a wider and even more dangerous european war. hello there.

ca rd card increasing, thick in some western areas, mainly northern ireland to give some rain here. temperature a shade higher than yesterday. some sunshine in the east later. some rain, not very much, most for northern ireland, breeze picking up overnight, result of the breeze and more cloud, milder than last night, was minus six in some places, should be frost—free tonight and the rest of the week. looking at some warmer air heading in early in the week, potentialfor some warmer air heading in early in the week, potential for some some warmer air heading in early in the week, potentialfor some rain, mostly overnight into tuesday. couple of short bursts of rain heading northwards. midlands into eastern england, should be dry. windy on monday, temperatures rising in the south east is high 17

celsius.

hello. this is bbc news — welcome if you're watching here in the uk or around the globe. i'm annita mcveigh. our top stories... voting is under way in france — in the first round of the french presidential election, with president macron facing a strong challenge from marine le pen. marine le pen, this year, instead of focusing on immigration and in some, in the public discourse, it is still in the public discourse, it is still in her programme, has managed to focus on the cost of life. britain says there's further evidence that russian troops have a deliberate strategy of targeting civilians in ukraine. �*put the weapons down�* — pope francis calls for an easter truce in ukraine, and negotiations for peace. 0pposition parties in pakistan are preparing to form a new government, after the removal of imran khan in a late—night confidence vote.