welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. after two years and eight months, is there a new dynamic in russia's war on ukraine? on the front lines, russian forces are making gains in the east of ukraine, but the more significant shifts may be in geopolitics. very soon there will be a new us president in the white house. and on the russian side, there is evidence that north korean troops are being deployed alongside russian forces. my guest today, here in his residence in london, is russia's ambassador to the united kingdom, andrei kelin. the russians seem to believe the war is going their way. are they right?

ambassador andrei kelin, welcome to hardtalk. ambassador, has russia's all—out war on ukraine been a success? well, just trying to respond to your question, this is not all—out war. it has started as an operation, a limited operation. right now it is larger, but i cannot say...compare it with great patriotic war or with something like that. what about the current situation? i can say that we are making very serious successes, especially in the south of donbas. as an example, i can say that in the recent days we have done not tactical advantages but already kind of operational advantages over there, seizing villages, towns. in 72 hours, seven of this

settlement has been seized and we continue to move further. your answer tells me quite clearly it hasn't been a success. you're talking about taking seven villages. let's look at the reality. within 48 hours! let's look at the reality. the reality is that in march of 2022, after one month after the all—out invasion, you controlled roughly 27% of ukrainian territory. now you control 18% of ukrainian territory. in doing the war for two years and eight months, you have lost around 600,000 russian military personnel. aha. what a terrible indictment of putin's strategy. well, initially, the situation isn't incomparable with �*22, so it is not compared. at that time, there was no serious military action at all.

it was negotiations, and it was a kind of a... with respect, it wasn't negotiations, it was an assumption. it was an assumption from vladimir putin that the ukrainians would roll over and that your troops would end up in kyiv. so the second issue about our losses, this figure has been taken just out of the blue, out of nothing. it is only... it is a habit of war when one side is exaggerating the losses, his losses, and diminishes its losses and exaggerating losses of the opponent. 0ur army at the moment, it is very professional, those who are fighting over there, differently from the beginning of it. and professionals, they are attacking with small mobile groups. all these things about great losses of the russians, it is nonsense, because only the general staff is aware what kind of losses there are. your problem is that the numbers have actually been collated from data derived from russian sources — that is records of funerals, obituaries.

the numbers have been... no. the numbers have been collated from russian sources. the calculation done by the bbc, which i am reading, they are saying about 70,000 of losses. no. that's dead. i talked about 600,000 military personnel who have been lost from the battlefield. that is... of course, there are many more wounded than dead. but whatever the official figure — and you won't give me yourfigure, will you? what is your figure for the losses of the russians? neither you nor me are military persons at all. i guess i'm pure civilian. i will say that i do not know, but i am seeing that the troops on the ukrainian side, they are mostly now territorial defence. they are badly educated, and they are just seized from the street and put in the trenches. and, of course, against a professional army. it is absolutely clear that they will lose much more. you talk about a professional army. of course, many of the fighters that you've lost were in

the mercenary wagner group. we also know that you've emptied your prisons to take prisoners onto the front line. in a novaya gazeta report from just a few days ago, we now learn that those who are facing trial are also being told that if they go to the front, they won't face trial anymore. these are the desperate measures you are taking to keep your army going. i do not go to speculate about that. but what i perfectly know, that those professionals, they are highly paid. now they are getting prizes as well for advancement or something else. and they now know how to conduct combat over there differently from the resources that are now very thin on the ukrainian side. i guess the problem you've had over this two years and eight months is that ukraine has not buckled. farfrom buckling, ukraine has shown its military adaptability. they are now striking targets deep inside russia with their drones hitting your oil infrastructure, for example.

they've even hit moscow, showing how vulnerable your air defences are. and they've even taken a chunk of russian territory for the first time since 1916. you have territory under military occupation by a foreign power in the kursk region. again, when one looks at the way the war has worked, what it shows us is russia's weakness and vulnerability. mm. the chunk that they have got in our country is now...uh, they're taking only half of it. it is less than 5,000 square kilometres. in the beginning, it was... and taking some of it back has cost you tens of thousands of new losses. your questions are longer than my answers! if you would like to interrogate me, then it will be better, of course. so the chunk that we are keeping, that they are keeping, it is still half of it than they have done. and these are the best forces. i think it makes sense just to keep the best forces in the chunk of land because otherwise they will go to the donbas. if you are right and your

forces are scoring victories and are so professional and so efficient, why have you chosen to deploy thousands of north korean troops in this war? are you sure? are you sure that we have chose to deploy? i have... yes, i am sure, actually. i have no exact information, uh... ..uh, do we, uh, deploying koreans over there or not, so it is still hypothetical. this story has been around for weeks, ambassador. i cannot believe you haven't spoken to your masters in moscow to check out the veracity of this story. even if it will happen, and so what? ambassador, it is happening. well, what's the problem is with that? we have thousands of the mercenaries from different countries that are combating right now on the side of ukrainians. we have thousands and thousands of instructors that are dealing with. . .that are teaching ukrainians how to deal with foreign arms, tanks and all of that, reparations

and all of that. intelligence officers, uh, intelligence given to the ukrainians and all of that. and what's the problem? it is... the french president... i'll tell you what the problem is, ambassador... french president macron has suggested that they should send combat forces, regular forces to ukraine. yeah? and with koreans, yes, we do have a treaty. we do have a treaty. as you know... we have an article 4 of this treaty. and we can do within this article 4 whatever we can do on bilateral basis. "what is the problem?" you say. i guess the problem is that around the world, this is seen as a very grave escalation. to quote lloyd austin, the us defence secretary, "the deployment of north korean troops represents a very "serious escalation that will have ramifications far beyond "the battlefield in both europe and asia." that's the reality. you're a diplomat. you know the reality. i think that we don't care about the opinion of mr austin about that. i will say that we have

a relationship with north korea for many, many years, and this is a country which we actually continue to deploy our relationship also in the field of defence. why not? yeah. it's interesting you say you have a relationship with north korea — in the past, russia has signed up to un security council resolutions trying to ensure that north korea does not develop new ballistic missile technologies. it signed... russia signed resolutions i718, 1874, 2270. you know that. you're a diplomat. there were resolutions. and you also know...you also know that now putin says he has — quote unquote — a "no—limits partnership with pyongyang". so what are you going to give the north koreans as they give you military personnel, and thousands — no, sorry, not thousands — millions of artillery shells? what are you giving the north koreans? that's a question you have to put to mr putin when you will go to moscow. i hope you will. but there are thousands of actually resolutions on israel which are not implemented.

of course, yes, there are, there are some outdated resolutions. i read all of them, actually. yes, there was an idea to establish a blockade of north korea. this blockade does not work, actually. so you're saying that those resolutions you signed, you are now violating? uh, no. there were resolutions about north korea. i know, and you signed them. russia signed them. the last one was in 2019 if i am not mistaken. is it a problem? has us has never violated the resolution of the security council? well, believe me, it is nonsense. it is... i wouldn't say that we are violating. it's a conversation for a different side, for a specialist. interesting that the south korean... if i may — interesting the south korean president has said that we will not sit idle as north korea sends troops and military equipment to russia. mm—hm. what you have accused the ukrainians of is essentially risking a global war. strikes me that what russia is

doing is risking a global war. it is very simple. this world cooperation under article 4 of the treaty is not directed against the third countries. this is what we're told, we're told to south koreans, so they should not afraid. it is not about them. we are not saying that they are near kursk or something like that. it is all from the press, and there are only some facts that every day are now rotating in the media. i do not know whether it will happen or not, but i do not see any problem... ambassador, i think you do know. but i also think you can't tell me, because apart from anything else, it's deeply embarrassing for russia, isn't it, that it now relies on north korean troops? it is a coalition of the country which is...of western countries, which is conducting a proxy war using ukraine against us. it's a hybrid war, very serious one. and we have all rights to defend ourselves with all means that are at hand.

it's interesting to look at the allies you've turned to for military support. we're talking troops from north korea. we're talking millions of artillery shells from north korea. we're also talking thousands upon thousands of military drones coming from iran. mm. tehran, pyongyang — they are your partners. what does that tell us about vladimir putin? i don't think so. actually, i have been at different exhibitions in moscow during my summer holidays, and i have seen the amount of drones that we are producing ourselves. there was a small exhibition by iranians, a small exhibition by chinese, but i can say that our defence capacity, defence industrial capacity now are much bigger to... and self—sufficient. we are self—sufficient on everything. interesting you say that "we're self—sufficient on everything". what is undoubtedly true is that russia has turned its economy into a war economy. a fully mobilised, militarised economy. more than one third

of government spending now is devoted to defence and the military. that's not long—term sustainable, is it? i can tell you that the official figure, and it's not official — real figure is that our military spending makes 6.8% of gdp. so it is not quite a lot. not very different from the united states. i think you'll find... i think you'll find that nobody finds that figure credible. it's roughly a third of your spending. neither me or you have said... you talk about the budget and we talk about gdp. so the budget can differ from one year into the other. i heard this morning that your government decided to spend another 3 billion. 3 billion of dollars on defence. it is quite a lot for the country which has a hole in its budget, an enormous hole in the budget. is it good? i'm not sure what kind of a percentage of the budget it is, but really it is quite a lot.

well, it's a tiny percentage, ambassador, unlike yours, which, as i say, is around a third of your government spending. let's get to the point. i do not suggest... what we see in the russian economy is an economy that is in grave danger of overheating because of this militarisation. you now have a central bank setting interest rates at 2i%. your inflation rate is actually official. ..double the official figure of 4%. it's at least 8%. 8%. your labour shortages are chronic. 8%... you cannot continue to run your economy like this. steve, 8% was... uk was 8% two years ago, i had. sure. inflation. uk. and now it's down at 2%, and yours is going in the other direction. and i appreciate that you have managed to do it. and our central bank is doing what it can to bring this inflation down. the plan is that next year it will be 4% and then we will come to the normal cifra. but right now we are in a difficult situation, and we have to deal with difficult situation. i do not see any contradiction to that. ambassador, what gives your

country the right to meddle, interfere, run covert operations in a whole host of other countries which have their own national sovereignty? yes. you speak about georgia. yeah. well, i didn't mention georgia, but let's start with georgia. the georgian president has just accused russia of running special covert operations to rig the recent election. you make me laugh, of course it is. georgian people have selected a party which is disliked in brussels, and brussels has started to intervene before and after and continues to intervene. in georgia, it was only one protest movement. that was on monday. neither yesterday and no other, so it is calm on the streets. and the main, uh... there is only one organisation that can judge whether elections were fair or not. this is 0sce — internationally recognised body, 0sce. 0sce observers, they have said that it was, uh, organisation was good, calculation was good,

and was minor problems. minor problems exist in every country, even in the uk when elections happen. yeah. i mean, what you obviously know, because you read the news wiresjust like i do, is that there's now an official investigation to widespread allegations of vote rigging and fraud in georgia. yes. you know that the president has — and i'm going to quote her words direct — called it a russian operation, a very sophisticated type of fraud. and the truth is moscow essentially runs proxy forces which control 20% of georgia's territory. in 2008, we saw russian troops storm into georgia. it makes sense, given russia's approach to control of georgia, that this is what russia would do. two things about that — it's a very strange president for this country. she is french. she spent all her life, professional life in france. and when georgians has invited her as a foreign guest, georgia was in a difficult situation. as for our possibilities to do anything in georgia,

they are absolutely nothing. georgia has no relations with us. it is only tourists that then can travel over there. after the events of 2008, they have cut off relationship between our and all contacts, do not exist. we cannot influence... your contacts run deep in the georgian dream party, whichjust won — according to this disputed election — 53% of the vote. so don't tell me you don't have good contacts in georgia. we have no contacts with georgian dream party at all. neither on official line, neither party line, nothing at all. so they are lying themselves. but they do now understand that the rosy american project that has been developed with saakashvili in early 2000s, it has failed and it has damaged very seriously to georgia. as the investigations continue into what happened in the georgian election, there is also a great deal of concern about what recently happened in moldova, where they held a referendum

to ask the moldovan people whether they should enshrine the goal of eu membership in their constitution. maia sandu, president of georgia, says there was, "clear evidence..." of moldova. maia sandu says there was, "clear evidence that criminal "groups working with foreign forces hostile to our national interest tried to buy off hundreds of thousands of votes." you know she's talking about russia. she gets a teeny majority in this referendum due to the polling stations opened abroad, mainly in italy, austria and all others where most of moldovans are living. but they have opened only two, uh, stations inside russia, where there is a half a million of moldovans. they didn't have a right to vote. and do believe me, if they did have a right to vote, well, the referendum will have a different, absolutely different outcome.

same in georgia. you know that half a million of georgians are living inside russia, but there was no opening for them to cast a vote over there. it's notjust in those two countries where russia faces allegations of interference, meddling, covert operations, even hybrid warfare. here are the words recently of david lammy, the uk foreign secretary. "putin. .." — quote — "putin and his mafia state are trying to "poison the world with disinformation, division "and disorder, not least in the united kingdom." you're the russian ambassador in the united kingdom. has he said that to you direct? and what have you said to him? i have never seen mr lammy, but i can tell that in his position i would control his language, because it is very much impolite, and i do not know any politician in the world who is either...especially foreign minister who used this kind of words, especially in russia. if you will hear what putin or lavrov is saying,

this type of accusation of labelling is absolutely not a characteristic of us. it is mr lammy who allows himself, but he should know he is now foreign minister, and it is much better for him to stick to the diplomatic rules. mm. have you told that to your former president dmitry medvedev, who at various points over the last two years has threatened to send russian nuclear weapons to land on berlin, on paris, on london? have you told him to calm his language? it is only three persons who are allowed normally to speak officially for my country. this is president, the minister and the spokesman of the minister. mr medvedev is your former president and deputy chair of the russian security council. we do not a chair... we do not have a chair anyway. but mr medvedev is saying what he thinks, actually, but he is saying as a private person. he is not saying it like an official one. i suppose the point here, your president is wanted by the international criminal

court on charges connected to the deportation of children from occupied ukraine. mm—hm. the icc and the un have reported extensively on massive human rights and war crimes abuses by your forces inside occupied ukraine. mm. right now, russia is regarded as an outlaw by the international community. the international community does not consist only of western countries. it is just a teeny number of western countries that are supporting this kind of accusation. so you tell me — how many countries have supported your claim through annexation to now control. . . not just control but own four oblast regions inside ukraine? how many countries support that claim? this is a political process, and this political process... it's to do with international law, mrambassador. you could have seen a number of countries that are supporting, uh, probably, our position... i'll tell you who supports your position in international law —

syria, north korea... steve. ..belarus, nicaragua. you could have seen 38 big, really big countries in kazan two weeks ago where there was a summit of brics. very interesting event. so no—one is trying to isolate us diplomatically — with exception of uk, of course. 0n children, yes, one has finally to read what we are saying about children. there was one accusation invented by ukrainians — about 50,000 children are taken to russia. we have provided all kinds of explanation to un. yeah, mrambassador, idon't want to get stuck on that, because the point is, if vladimir putin... you mentioned children. ..if vladimir putin ever appears before the international criminal court, he'll have his chance to make his case, just as the prosecutors will have the chance to bring their evidence against him. but let's not get hung up on that, because that trial is not going to happen any time soon. the question for you, to end this interview, is what's the endgame for russia?

because, as we've discussed, you right now control 18% of ukrainian territory. zelensky says there's no peace while that persists. you say that it's now russian sovereign territory. where... 0k. where is russia prepared to compromise? i don't think that it will be a compromise. it will be... the endgame was quite clear. ukraine will be a country non—aligned, non—nuclear, with normal relations with its neighbours. it will not have a nato membership. it will be demilitarised. and finally... and you will withdraw, will you, from its territory? and finally it will abolish all racist laws that it has taken during all these years. will russia withdraw from the territory that it occupies in ukraine? i don't think so, because earlier when we conducted negotiations in 2022, that was an option,

a possibility. right now, i am sure that these four regions will belong to russia. ambassador andrei kelin, we have to end there. i thank you forjoining me on hardtalk. thank you for good questions, stephen. hello. it's been a week devoid of sunshine for the vast majority due to cloud being trapped underneath an area of high pressure. that high pressure system stubbornly sits across europe for much of this week, but as it moves away eastwards at times and weather fronts get close by to the west, we should start to get a bit more of a breeze as we go through the week.

that will help to break up the cloud a bit more, so we should see a bit more sunshine come through later on, but that does mean some night time and morning fog patches are possible, and with southerly winds developing, it's going to be quite a very mild week — in fact, gets milder as we go through. notice on our anomaly chart, these deeper oranges and reds appearing in the north of scotland around the moray firth and also inverness — we could see temperatures six to seven degrees above average by thursday. it's here though, we start chilliest first thing on monday morning after clear skies through the weekend. eight or nine degrees for many elsewhere. another very familiar picture there, rather grey skies, cloud trapped under this area of high pressure. 0n the edge of it, though, so we may see a little bit more breeze help to break the cloud across some of these western areas to allow some brightness through. but it's here there's a greater chance of one or two light showers. we could also bring in a bit more sunshine as well to the south—east and southern counties of england every now and again, but a cloudier day in the north east of scotland and temperatures as they have been through the weekend. now, monday night into tuesday, cloud sits in place where you get any breaks. temperatures could dip down into single figures.

also, we could see some mist and fog with some clearer breaks towards east anglia and the south—east, but certainly into tuesday hot a huge amount change to begin with. but as we start to see this weather system get close by, it's not going to have a direct impact on us. but what it will do, it starts to bring in from the south more in the way of low cloud towards irish sea coast — could turn quite misty around these areas, damp and drizzly, too. and southerly wind also developing means northern scotland to get favoured for a bit of sunshine, maybe to the north east of wales, too, and still some sunny breaks possible towards the south and southeast. temperatures lifting just a little bit into tuesday. so it will be a mild day, fairly cloudy one. fireworks add a little bit of colour to proceedings in the evening for bonfire night, with most places staying dry and mild. as we go through the rest of the week, it's a familiar picture — high pressure to the east, but as these weather systems get a bit deeper towards the west, a strengthening southerly airflow. notice on our capital city forecast, the temperatures lift — could hit around 17 or 18 around the moray firth on thursday, but still to the south and east

during the next few days, the chance of lots of cloud and some overnight mist and fog.

live from washington. this is bbc news. kamala harris and donald trump keep the focus on key battleground states, as the us election enters the final straight. israel launches strikes on gaza and lebanon, killing dozens of people. and in spain, king felipe hears frustration and anger from those affected by the flooding in valencia. and forecasters are saying more rain is on the way. hello, i'm ros atkins. two days to go and kamala harris and donald trump

continue to focus on those seven swing states, the states that may well decide this election. kamala harris spent the day campaigning in michigan, an industrial state, and it's a crucial one for her to win. the vice president spoke earlier at rally at a university. 0ur correspondent ione wells is there — we'll hear from her shortly. this is live in georgia — we're expecting to hear from donald trump in a few minutes. here is the empty stage but lots of people waiting for donald trump to arrive. it's the final stop in a day that saw the former president also campaign in pennsylvania and north carolina. 0ur north america corresondentjohn sudworth is at the rally waiting to hear from the former president. i spoke with him a short while ago. we are still waiting for donald trump to arrive. we have been listening to a few of the warm

up listening to a few of the warm up act here, a number