really starting to recognise that we need to nurture and support that talent, because it's so important. today's figures show that despite the will to reopening post covid, and with people struggling to afford to live as they used to, many are still making the choice to stay in and play. steffan powell, bbc news, newcastle. the time is 10:30pm. sarah is here with the weather. how is it? it has been another grey and drizzly day out there. i've managed to find you a bit of colour this evening in the beach huts of herne bay in kent, but cloud and rain overhead. that area of rain should clear the way over the next two hours, which sets us up for another unsubtle day tomorrow. some strong winds and heavy downpours, but there should be cloud in the east. that area rain clears away

from the east coast, but scattered skies rattling in on that wind from the east coast, particularly heavy for scotland and northern ireland, wintry over the high ground, and most of the same temperatures between 4—7, to a largely frost free start to your wednesday morning. wednesday sees low pressure sitting to the north of the uk. the proximity of the isobars shows us it will be another blustery sort of day, those wins really picking up for the english channel and those irish sea coasts as heavy downpours, mainly in the west during the morning. there could be some thunderstorms drifting their way further eastwards by the afternoon. early sunshine in the east, but we will all see rain at times through the day. winds gusting 50—60 mph close to the coast. temperatures a little bit down on what we have had today, between 7—11 and feeling cold where you are exposed to those brisk winds, and with heavy downpours around too. as we head through the night, more rain to come into the early hours of thursday morning, particularly across england and wales, a little bit drierfor a time

further north, but another unsubtle, blustery day on thursday, with the next area of rain pushing its way gradually eastwards. they also many of us but turning my other, particularly in the south, 13—14 there. there are warnings out for rain and strong winds for some of us and you can check the details where you live by heading to the bbc weather app. many thanks once again, sarah. in this bbc news at ten on tuesday, january to ten. there's more analysis of the day's main stories on newsnight with victoria derbyshire, which is just getting under way on bbc two. the news continues here on bbc one, as now it's time to join our colleagues across the nations and regions for the news where you are. but from the ten team, it's goodnight.

welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. vladimir putin's ruthless bid to impose his will on ukraine hasn't worked, at least not yet. on the contrary, it has taken an enormous toll of russian blood and treasure, and left the country militarily and economically weakened. so, how come there hasn't been more open dissent within the russian elite? is it fear, brainwashing or a deeper, shared ethno—nationalism? well, my guest, boris bondarev, is unique. he's a russian diplomat who quit and condemned putin's ukraine war. why is his a lone voice of insider dissent?

boris bondarev, in switzerland, welcome to hardtalk. i want to begin, if i may, by getting a sense of what life is like for you today. last may, you quit your post. you delivered a scathing condemnation of putin and his war. so how is life for you today? well, it's become relatively easier than it was because i don't have to go to my office any more. and i... well, officially and practically, i am now unemployed, so i have a lot of free time

to think and to read and to look for information i need in order to have my opinion on what is going on around russia and ukraine and europe and all. you can't go home? no, i don't think so. i don't think i can. well, i can physically, but i don't think it would be a very pleasant trip, you know. so i have... i think it's better for me to stay outside for some time. and... as for many other russians. yes. for our audience, just to be aware of the situation, you made it plain to us it wouldn't be wise for you to reveal your location in switzerland. why is that exactly? well, that's the concerns of the swiss authorities,

which take care of my family's safety and security. first of all, they are concerned that there might be some risk of threats to my safety. well, so if they have some reasons to think so, well, yeah, why not? i don't... i don't intend to exaggerate my own significance, of course. well, we'll talk about... but for some reasons, yeah. we'll talk about your significance, mr bondarev. let us begin that by discussing your decision in may of last year to not just quit your post as a diplomat in geneva, working on arms control issues, representing the russian government at the united nations in geneva. not just that, but also to leave with the most vitriolic condemnation of what you saw as vladimir putin's entirely unjustified aggression in ukraine. how difficult a decision was that to make? how long did it take you to reach that decision? well, first of all, it was it was both easy and hard. easy, because, from the very

beginning, i realised that i had to quit, because to keep working for the government, keep working in the mfa of russia, would mean that i approve this war, i approve this policy. i approve all these crimes committed on behalf of my country and on my...my own...my own name, eventually. but difficult, of course, it was to do it, you know, practically, because it would mean that i would have to quit myjob, i would have to leave my country to stay somewhere and have no prospects, no certainty about my future, first of all. and, yes, it was not very, very, very, very light decision for me, of course. so it took some time

to take the decision and to get myself prepared to do, to act on this decision. well, i'm always interested... i'm always interested in the nature of these personal tipping points, because for you, you'd spent two decades as a loyal diplomat, mid—ranking diplomat inside the russian government system. you had remained loyal to the government and its lines through russia's military actions in ukraine in 2014, the illegal annexation of crimea, before that, in 2008, you'd watched russian tanks get involved in georgia, you'd also seen russian air forces involved in assad's levelling of cities in syria, so, i'm just wondering what pushed you over the edge in the early part of 2022? well, i believe because it was the most outrageous thing russian government has ever done for all my 20 years in public service.

those events that you listed, like georgia, crimea, syria and all, i cannot say that i disapproved them when it was back in that time, because i was much younger. i was less experienced and i was more pro—moscow, so to speak. of course, i really shared a lot of things which are now... ..which are now obvious to me that they are wrong and they are counterproductive. they're counter genuine interests of russia. but ten years ago and even more, i was much younger and i was much more naive, i could say so. so when... i was...i was growing. i was growing, personally. so when you talked about your shame, "i am so ashamed of my country," you said

on 23rd of may 2022, had you felt shame before about putin's foreign policies and some of his military actions and interventions in the past? or was this shame new to you? no, it was not new, but it was maybe the highest... ..the highest level of shame. but, yeah, i did feel the shame before, but it was not about this military operations performed by putin's government. to the contrary, at that time, i did think of them that they were really a success and i wasn't ashamed of them, but i was ashamed for a lot of things which happened within the ministry of foreign affairs, for instance. i was ashamed for many russian political approaches, position, statements that had been done for many years,

and i wouldn't specify them, but, for instance, i was repeatedly shamed by how the spokeswoman of minister of foreign affairs, madame zakharova, behaved at her briefings, her statements, whatever...whatever she pronounced, because, yes, she's now is an embodiment of russian foreign policy. and it was shame to see and to hear what she was speaking many times, for instance. just wondering whether you now reflect on some of your own actions in the past and those of colleagues in the foreign ministry. and would you say that the way the foreign ministry works and the way you had to work in the past — and you've been very candid about it —

the degree to which there was a sort of yes—man culture, where you could not question the overarching strategies and decisions coming from the centre, coming from the kremlin, you simply had to support and service what you saw as the kremlin�*s needs. do you think that actually contributed to putin's decision—making in ukraine? because you, for example, you could have told him much more from your expertise in arms control about the weaknesses of the russian military as sanctions began to bite after 2014. but it seems you didn't really deliver that message. um... well, i didn't deliver that message because it wasn't my area of competence to do that. yes, because minister of foreign affairs is not about making our country less dependent on imports of critical components, because it is a job

for other ministries, like ministry of trade and industry, some state corporations which are directly involved in the production of military goods and commodities and weapons and armaments and all. of course, i had my glance on this and i was sure, pretty sure, that if i see that, if i know that, of course, those people who are professionally involved in that, they will see... they see it, well, as well. so i was sure for many years that it's not a secret. everybody understood that our military might is not that powerful as it is advertised, that our military industry is dependent, in many regards, on import from the western countries, mostly. and if i knew that, why

anybody else wouldn't? they also knew, but i believe they reported it, that it was not that, you know, that... . . really important. that everybody could be solved, everybody could be substituted, and all, everything could be substituted. and then i think this report made the very false picture at the very high. did you expect fellow diplomats to join you? were you convinced that there was a body of colleagues inside the foreign ministry who felt just as anguished and unhappy with the direction of putin's policy as you did? well, first of all, i knew, by the time, that there were some diplomats who had already quit from the service, some of them i knew personally, so... you mean, they'd quit since february of 20... since february 2ath? yeah, yeah. yes, yes. yes. but they did it silently?

yes. yes, they did it silently. most of them did it in moscow. and it's perfectly understandable why they did it silently. and i know also that there are also a few guys who quit after my statement, but not, i don't think, not because of my statement, butjust maybe, maybe my statement affected them somehow. well, why not? but i didn't have much hope that if i do this statement, if i make a statement, that it would, you know, encourage many other diplomats to follow this case. no, because i understood that those who wanted to quit, those who didn't want to keep working for that, they did it already or they had to adjust themselves to new circumstances. as i see also many of my colleagues who do not approve of all of this, who are not ok with the war, with this anti—ukrainian war and all these atrocities and all, and they're not ok with this

foreign policy which leads our country into abyss and total degradation and isolation. but they say, "what can we do? "we are small people. it is not ours to decide. "ours is to just to obey "and to do what we are told to by our bosses." what do you think of that argument from many people you know inside the system who say, "what can we do? we just follow orders?" what do you, on a moral basis, what do you think of that? i think that, of course, it's... ..it�*s morally very weak position, of course. but also, we must understand that there are different people and everyone acts differently in these circumstances in which he or she has never been before. and of course, this war has become the existential conflict for, i think, all russians, and each russian has or had to make the choice.

so i did mine. i thought it was only one possible choice, morallyjustified for me. others did theirs, and we also cannot blame them for this, because if someone makes the choice to stay and to work because he had some career prospects, well, i don't think it's a good idea. but if people don't wantjust to lose theirjobs and to go into nowhere, and if they have kids or very old parents to take care of, and if they lose a job, they don't have any income and all, that's a different situation. it's... and i don't want to blame any of them. yes. it's not just about fear, though, is it? and it's notjust about the pressure that comes with wanting to keep yourjob and keep feeding your family.

there are other motivations at work in russia too, and you know that very well from personal experience. i hesitate to get too personal with you, but isn't it true that your own father has disowned your decision? and indeed your own father, even though he's in his 70s, he actually made an effort to enlist in the russian military tojoin this war on putin's behalf. yes, i was told so, and i was, of course, surprised by this. but, ok, so, you know, he's an example how propaganda works with people. i rememberthat, in 2000, he was the only one around my circle who said, "don't vote for putin, "because if you vote for putin now, "he may become a dictator or something." and everybody said, "well, we want a strong leader. "we don't want a dictator, but putin will not be dictator, "he will be strong leader. "we need strong leader after

"yeltsin, after all this weakness and shame and all." and also, i was 20 years old, i did vote for putin. sorry for that. it was my first elections, presidential elections and putin was like, you know, what seemed then, in 2000, as like... ..as an only one option. i'm just wondering whether you feel that the decision you've made... and we see, you know, with your father's reaction, but we also see the evidence in russia that, yes, there are thousands of people who've protested against the war, but the real clear majority of russians, as far as we can tell in an authoritarian society, appear, for the moment at least, to be supportive of this war and still supportive of putin. so i'm wondering, do you think it's completely and forever destroyed your relationship with your own family and with your homeland? first of all, let's agree what we understand by the word �*support�* or �*supportive', because support may be active support, when someone calls upon you

and you rush to fight for him. yes, that we can call support. but if support means that people are asked whom they support and they say, "yeah, we support our president," but they understand that if they say something otherwise, there can be some consequences for that. but it does mean that they will rush to fight for him if he calls upon them. and we see that russian authorities relied on volunteers first to send to the front to ukraine, and they managed to get about 10,000 or 20,000. that's all, for 140 million population. that means that active support of this war, active support of putin, is much less than it is shown by all these polls. and you indicated it absolutely rightly that all the polls are conducted under the authoritarian dictatorship, while we should look at all their outcomes, results, with very much... ..with a very high degree of scepticism. but in a way, you're denying the agency of people

like your father and ordinary russian people by saying, "you know what? they're brainwashed. "they are fearful. they are repressed." all of that may be true, but isn't there something, which many ukrainians and outside observers also point to, which is that vladimir putin taps into something real in the mind—set of many russians? yes, there is this kind of imperial — imperial views among people. but what are those views? those views are typical psychological compensation for they being totally unfree, totally dependent on the government. people are very poor, very ignorant. they have no prospects, most of them, especially in those regions which recruit most soldiers to the front, like buryatia, like tuva, like some other remote regions. people, especially young people there, have no prospects. they have no decentjobs. they see they can do

nothing about the future. and then you come up and say, "ok, we'll pay you," a fortune to them — a fortune. and you can go to kill those...untermensch. well, wonderful. why not? i actually want to tap in to your expertise on another issue as well, because you worked on arms control and nonproliferation within the russian foreign ministry. we don't know how this war is going to end. it clearly, right now, is not going well for vladimir putin, and he has said that in the end, he will use all necessary means to defend russia's territory and national interest. as we sit here injanuary 2023, do you still believe there is a real threat of russian first use of nuclear weapons?

well, last year we saw referendums in these newly annexed territories, and they were annexed to russia, so now part of ukraine is legally — "legally" russian. and after that, some of the territories came back to ukraine again. and putin did not defend those russian territories neither with nuclear weapons nor with any kind of other weapons. he just retreated. so does it make us think that all his threats about nuclear weapons are bluff? well, i'm very tempted to think so, but i would like to urge that there may be moments when vladimir putin feels himself ultimately cornered and he will have to do something to make his previous threats sound even more real

to support this, his threats. and maybe he will think, "ok, i threatened them with my nuclear weapons. "they didn't hear. they cornered me. "my troops are defeated. "then i should bomb them with some nuclear bombs." you say that remains as a possibility, although you say you don't think it's going to happen. isn't it, therefore, dangerous for you to call, as you have, for the west to understand that the only way to end this is, to use your phrase, to see that putin is comprehensively routed. the only way to win this war is for the west to determine what you want as the outcome of this war. because when i ask someone about this, some western journalists or some western experts, they say we want just to — to free ukrainian territory from russian occupation.

that's ok, but are you going to deal with putin after that? are you going to go back to normal with him? or you understand that it is putin, putin's regime, which is main threat to international peace and security, and not his war in ukraine? because war in ukraine is just the symptom. because even if he's routed in ukraine, even if he's defeated, but if he seizes, he keeps his power, he will be a threat. then he may resort to nuclear weapons use, or he may sell that to some other countries or some other terrorist organisations, or whatever he will do to harm europe, to harm the west. a final thought, if i may. as you say what you say about putin, i'm mindful of what has happened to others that moscow now dismisses as traitors, because they call you a traitor today in moscow. and we know that others they've labelled as traitors have been killed, wherever

they were in the world. i'm thinking of alexander litvinenko, poisoned in london. i'm thinking of the attempt to kill former kgb agent sergei skripal in salisbury in england, again with poison. do you fear for your own life, and will you continue to speak out despite what may be some fear? well... well, it's not the question that should be asked, really, i think so, because that's. .. we get what we get. you know, if something is destined to happen, it will happen. so i don't think about that. i think that as long as i have time, i must use it. so my life is not, you know, is not spent, wasted in vain, so to speak. and it's not only me. there are hundreds of thousands of russians who are now outside of country who cannot go back because they don't see vladimir putin

as their president. they see him as a traitor, as a usurper. so, while he may want to kill all of them, 0k. boris bondarev, we have to end there, but i thank you very much forjoining me on hardtalk. thank you. thank you for inviting me. hello. 0vernight rain is starting to clear away towards the east. so as we head through into wednesday morning, what we've got, we've got that front sitting out towards the east, low pressure in the west. lots of isobars driving in really heavy showers, so another very windy day ahead. during wednesday morning, the heaviest of the showers will be for scotland and northern ireland.

wintry over the higher ground here. gales developing in the west, more heavy rain and thunderstorms, perhaps, into western england and wales, and then that really heavy rain pushing into parts of eastern england during the afternoon, moving through quite quickly on these winds that'll be gusting 50 to 60 miles per hour around the coastal areas, 30 to 40 inland. so temperatures only about 7 degrees across northern areas for wednesday. some sunshine around later in the day. 10 or 11 in the south, so still mild but certainly not as mild as recent days. now, the next area of heavy rain moves across much of england and wales with brisk winds as we head through the early hours of thursday morning. drier further north to start the day, temperatures between around 4 to 10 first thing thursday. bye for now.

welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, i'm karishma vaswani. the headlines... beijing condemns what it calls "unacceptable" and "unscientific" restrictions on chinese travellers as it stops issuing visas to individuals from japan and south korea. the former vatican treasurer and australian cardinal, george pell, who was acquitted of sexual abuse allegations three years ago, has died aged 81. from one extreme to another — one of america's driest states is being battered by torrential rain and floods. and the first big awards ceremony of the year takes place in the next few hours — the 80th golden globes awards ceremony in los angeles.