[000:00:00;00] and in ukraine, our team on the ground and in the studio will inform you about the dynamics of events. this is the most relevant news from franz 24 in ukrainian on espresso. you can watch the program of the ukrainian voice of america service while there. i am nataliya leonova . i congratulate the new major russian offensive in ukraine. the nato secretary general has already begun. jenstotenberg at a meeting with the press on monday, we will increase and make more sustainable aid to ukraine, said the secretary general and emphasized the need to speed up the provision of ammunition, fuel and

spare parts to ukraine against the background of possible new offensives russia's briefing was devoted to the meeting of ministers of nato member countries, which will be held in brussels on february 15. before that, on february 14, a meeting of the contact group on the defense of ukraine will be held in brussels, where the minister of defense of ukraine, oleksiy reznikov, will also participate . our european correspondent bohdan tsyupin is following the events in brussels. greetings to us from london bohdane so he will be traveling to brussels, minister reznikov informed that on the agenda of these discussions will be, in particular, issues of protecting the ukrainian sky, the development of the tank coalition and the training of the ukrainian military, so what decision do we expect from these meetings? in fact, it should be emphasized that there will be two meetings or meeting formats: a meeting of the defense ministers of 30 nato countries and also a meeting of the so-called contact group in the defense of ukraine

, and that's where it goes about a much wider circle of countries outside the 30 nato members - these are several dozen countries, we know that in past similar meetings representatives of more than 50 countries of the world, i.e. western countries , as well as their allies concerning the main topics on which ukraine's partners are currently focused, listening to the press conference of the nato secretary general and jens stoltonberg today, it was possible to conclude that the most important word or the most important slogan on which western representatives are currently focusing is ammunition and today the nato secretary general and anton berg emphasized precisely this because, in particular, he spoke about the fact that in ukraine much more

ammunition is spent much faster than it is produced in the same time in other countries, and in particular, here are what he provided details about this problem in the war in ukraine, they are spending a huge amount of ammunition and their number is decreasing with the allies, the current level of ammunition use by ukraine is many times higher than the level of production, this is a burden on the defense industry, for example, the wait for large-caliber ammunition has also been extended from 12 to 28 months said that the alliance is discussing the issue of providing combat aircraft for ukraine; the meeting in the rammstein format has passed; it was christened the tank, because it was after it that a number of countries decided to provide western-style tanks for ukraine, president zelensky expressed hope that this ninth ramstein will be an aircraft from those public statements that have been made in recent

days and what does this prospect look like bohdan i would say that judging by today's statements of the secretary general of nato and insul stoltonberg, this ramstein if it is possible to say that no, it is not certain that it will be only an airplane or not mainly an airplane. several times journalists tried to get a drink from mr. stoltonberg. are there actually any specific steps in providing western-made fighter jets to ukraine, and mr. stautenberg is clear. yes, you understand that now this issue is not a priority, and we know that even before, western partners, in particular, even great britain, which has already announced a training program for ukrainian pilots on western- made planes, even here in london, representatives state that it is about the perspective is far

away, instead, it is about urgent needs, that is , ammunition, in particular about the need for western industrial companies to receive orders already to replenish the arsenals of western countries, but probably also to increase supplies in ukraine, because it is now extremely necessary in connection with the activity of hostilities in the east of ukraine, and the general secret service said that the actual sign of such high activity could be what has been talked about for a long time, namely the beginning of the new offensive of russia, these are his words. i think that in fact we are already seeing the beginning. because we can see what russia is doing now, what putin is doing by sending new thousands and thousands of troops, he is going for a large number

of casualties, a high level of losses, but so much pressure on ukrainians and where russia lacks quality, it is trying to take the number, it is about command, supply, training equipment, which they do not meet the level of ukrainian forces. but they have more soldiers and the russians are ready to send their troops and suffer greater losses, in my opinion, this only shows the importance of time to ukraine it is necessary to urgently provide more weapons, the trunk also calls for speeding up this aid, speed will save lives, he said at the same briefing on monday, his deputy mircea joane called for anticipatory action and not reaction on the brutality of the war, so what countries can speed up aid to ukraine and also whether it is possible to shorten the time period between the decision-making and the concrete actions of bohdan natalya, it is obvious that this is a very difficult question to give any one significant answer to it at least from what we heard, for example, just now from mr. stountenberg and what other representatives say

, at least it is about the fact that the western partners understand the urgency of the needs and about what they say that they are trying to work faster and today, for example, with toltonberg, he spoke about the race between the systems between the supply services of russia and also the partners who provide aid to ukraine, and ukraine , meanwhile, of course, also bears the burden of receiving this aid and using it properly when it arrives. days, we will talk about it on our broadcasts , for president biden , the visit to poland is extremely important, which is timed to the first anniversary of the large-scale russian invasion of

ukraine. this was said during the briefing in the strategic communications coordinator of the us national security council, john kerby, told the white house with whom the president will talk about the importance of nato unity and continued support for ukraine. he said the president is very much looking forward to this visit. support for ukraine and the generous host not only for american troops but also for millions of ukrainian refugees who fled there for safety and we really appreciate this support president biden wants to personally thank to president duda, he wants to personally thank the polish people, he wants to note how important it is to have a courageous unity of poland and other

nato members, which will continue, and i am already saddened by the second year of the war. security of the white house, alex winman, who today is the director of the institute of informed american leadership , the vetvoice foundation, an organization that unites american veterans , about the possibility of providing ukraine with new western weapons my colleague tatiana goroshko spoke to him about a new massive russian offensive and scenarios for the end of the war. do you think that russia is ready for a massive offensive? do you foresee this? if so, what will this offensive look like? i don't see it. it's not easy to hide . from open sources, what suggests that russia is ready to launch a large-scale offensive in some areas, the russians will try to advance, they want to stabilize around crimea around

luhansk, they want to finally capture bakhmut they are going to throw some more troops in there but it won't be a broad counterattack at least so far there's no sign that russia is ready to do that we've seen massive amounts of equipment massive amounts of troops and frankly my own government the us government is pretty good at exposing this kind of stuff isn't it so when my the government says what is called an attack, we can have some confidence that there is something on the mountains, but now there are no sufficient signs to start a major offensive before ukraine receives the last batch of military equipment as far as price opportunities such as tanks and artillery with a longer range change the situation for ukraine. i think that russia has certain advantages in terms of tank armor, although the russians

have lost many tanks, the reserves are no longer as large as at the beginning of the war. but among tanks , there are other armored vehicles that are not available in the country the germans and other european countries, the leopard bradley striker, all this equipment is going together in what we call combined arms, this is what will allow the ukrainians to start breaking through the lines of the russian defense to free the territory, i think the russians are understand, they understand the advantage of western equipment, bradleys are very powerful, they are not tanks, but they are capable of destroying soviet tanks, then strikers, i was the commander of a company of strikers , i understand well the capabilities of this platform and the ability to safely move a large number of troops to important areas of the battlefield , and the russians want to try to conduct some offensive operations but this is the same mistake they made all the time as they say in the us they bite off more than they can swallow

even if they capture a limited amount territory, it will be only temporarily, the independents will be able to liberate them, the main element of the last package was long -range artillery, which, according to the pentagon, doubles the effective radius of the current ammunition, will this be a decisive factor? 150 km with seven wonder bombs russia has already had to move most of its command and control and logistics away from the battlefield to secure the wedhammers now they will have to double this distance and this is also somewhere in ukraine the opportunity to reach almost everything in the kherson region including command and control reach deep into the south reach deep into the south of donetsk region no russian forces on the territory of ukraine except crimea will be safe how deez revolutions about crushing

how to investigate conversations about corruption in of the army , where there is a transfer of reznikov to another position , it affects the military support of ukraine, the eu and then ukraine is uncertain whether it really affects the support. i believe that the minister varshikov has thrown away a very good job cooperating with western colleagues, heading the ministry of defense for an almost impossible time, certain changes in leadership will take place, i remember how quickly people changed in the ukrainian cabinet of ministers when i was in the white house, but this corruption scandal is in many ways a good thing for me sign, it is certainly terrible that there is corruption and that there are people who are called on the limited budget of the armed forces. when they conduct military operations, these people should be brought to justice and punished throughout the strictness of the law of untouchables should not be independent of the position and this will become a powerful signal to the rest of the world that ukraine

is no longer what it was a year ago. this war has changed a lot, it has changed how ukrainians see themselves, they have realized that this is actually a powerful and important country. ukraine is important among hundreds of countries and billions of people, ukraine is very important in changing the way of thinking when people will not tolerate what happened before the war, you are one of those people who here in washington advocates that instead of gradually supplying ukraine to provide as many weapons as needed as soon as possible. so, i have a question, even if a political decision is made, is it possible to provide it from a material and technical point of view, from a logistics point of view, it is possible , of course, there will be certain challenges, but almost everything rests on a political decision, it is possible to find financial resources and means to ensure the capability of ukraine, the most relevant topic at the moment is the m1 abrams tanks, the problem is that they come through the funds of the initiative to promote

security in ukraine, which means that they coming off the assembly line they need to be built to specifications to be sent to ukraine to make all 31 will take months instead we have many tanks that are already in inventory they can be modernized some of the most habitable technologies could be pulled and they could get to ukraine twice as fast so, in fact, it is a question of the will of the united states to completely change its mentality, this can be a conversation for us about what this means for our relations with russia, as it has always been in the political history of the united states, relations with russia have changed forever forever or at least for the next few decades our relationship with russia will be very hostile based on this we need to prioritize our relationship with ukraine a powerful democracy that will be the birthplace of prosperity in europe as a whole and

that is where we should be active and like you see something how did russia surprise you on the battlefield ? how would you rate their capabilities? wars the ability to use kamikaze drones to launch munitions but in many ways their fundamental tactics have not changed in some ways they have degraded if before they tried to use mechanized infantry and light infantry to achieve objectives now they use human wave attacks the invasion of february 24th when did you realize that for a minute i definitely didn't miss the build up of the russians at the time i thought it might still be a demonstration to get the attention of the us government or to force president biden

and his administration to put pressure on ukraine so that it capitulates, let's say, regarding the minsk-2 dialogue. but in october-november, when we saw huge amounts of resources, all kinds of important capabilities, the number of the russian military, then everything became clear to me , more could be done, the ukrainians demanded preventive sanctions. had to be done, i asked for preventive sanctions directly from the administration, i said that we should introduce preventive sanctions based on the fact that russia has already mobilized 150 000 troops what do you still need why wait for the first shots we could also provide javelins and stingars at an early stage but then we had to start providing additional artillery we could have done a lot earlier to show russia that the west is serious about supporting ukraine why was there so little belief in

ukraine's ability to defend itself, people understand russia enough and even fewer people understand ukraine, if you look at the diagrams in the table, you will see that russia has much more opportunities, but if you spend a lot of time i was there for three years in moscow working with the russian military and observing how they work, it becomes clear that not everything will work and that they will not be able to apply the operational concepts necessary for success in ukraine, they would not have collected the necessary number of troops if they had mobilization would have had 300,000 more soldiers, then with about half a million soldiers instead of 150,000, they could have been successful in the first weeks of the war. another thing that the ukrainian people do not understand is that they are people

who have been fighting for 8 years and they are very stable off to what extent did the fact that ukraine was at the center of the impeachment proceedings affect the position regarding ukraine, military and other aid if strongly affected i think that trump actually made ukraine toxic nobody wanted to have a son nothing to do with it was from the trump administration from the biden administration the consequences were what did president biden say was helping ukraine through contraband ukraine was a closed topic until the meeting between biden and zelensky at the end of the summer of 2021 , and even then they began to improve relations, but it was terrible, we didn't have an ambassador there for a long time. and only recently did the us ambassador appear, and in many ways, i think the impeachment gave rise to putin 's opinion that the war in ukraine can get away with it, he saw that ukraine was toxic, he saw that

the us was ready to go to compromise on national security and postpone relations with ukraine what is your prediction when the war ends my prediction if we provide everything that ukraine demands there is a good chance that ukraine will be able to force russia to start negotiations by the fall but this will not happen if we continue slowly supply equipment then the war will last until the end of the year russia is a big country 140 million people live there but it still has limited resources every time it mobilizes into the country it leaves two or three times more people than mobilizes it does not have an inexhaustible supply we can start to see a stabilization of the situation maybe before the end of the year, we watched an interview with the former director of european affairs at the white house national security council, alex winman, you can

find an extended version of it on our website and on social networks for almost a year of a full-scale war, a significant number of ukrainian artists found themselves without work, many went abroad to help their ukrainian colleagues promote culture in the world, in such circumstances, the american playwright and actress audrey rose deges founded a theatrical residence in her parents' house in pennsylvania , the result of which was the creation of the theater of words and the play motherland, which the actors showed in chicago, washington and new york , met with ukrainian actresses and the founder of the theater residence in new york iryna solomko and pavlo terekhov in the spring of 2022, the american playwright and actress ot and rose planned to come to kharkiv a few months before, she won the competition and was to become the first international participant

of the legendary literary residence of the slovo house in the 30s . famous ukrainian writers lived in this house shot dead revival i was home three weeks postpartum when i found out about the full-scale invasion of a combination of how much time and energy i had already put into the project plus those crazy mother hormones made me very strong and i realized that i am not going to give up the project as an alternative to the kharkiv house . environment so that they could create, they developed this project with the idea that we will fight on the cultural front, talk about the fact that the war began in 2014 and not on february 24 every year

it was 100 years ago that between 1933 and 1937 a whole generation of artists and intellectuals was executed, and since then ukraine has been trying to develop its culture independently, suffering from oppression, and when i talk about the struggle on the cultural front, it also refers to the protection of this new generation of ukrainian creators so that history was not repeated when they die as a result of the war , five ukrainians daria golovchanska yuliya linnikova lesia zakharova veronika shuster and maksym panchenko won the competition in may they came to pittsburgh and started work the novella by mykola khvylovoi i, the romantic, was the basis of the play. at first, we wanted to talk about the motherland and motherhood through the prism of i, the romantic, because in the story the main character has to decide whether or not to execute his mother. then we realized that it was impossible to talk about personal stories and experiences. yes, we got a work

that was relevant in the american context , one of the participants of the residency, she worked the most on the essays that created the documentary line of the performance, the actress says that for her the project became an opportunity to believe in the power art during the war, when there are many doubts. is it time for me? romance for me is the whole history of this project and the whole history of this war, the main message that i carry inside me, which probably keeps me going is the belief in the individual strength of one person and i really know the history from the front, where one person can solve the lives of everyone, uh, and an example of our project, how it was organized, here is one person, one odria, who changed the lives of many people, an actress and puppeteer from luchana

studied in kharkiv before the war, but because of a full-scale invasion forced me to go to poland and continue my studies there for the performance dari created masks with her own hands and they became characters from mykola khvylovy's novel i am a romantic e-e degenerate e-e doctor and gabat and andryusha these are the chekists who worked with the main character i and which in fact are simply different sides of one person and in the play three actors play i, lesya and yuliya play this me, but at the same time using masks we see how these sides absorb this main character at

certain moments and they take the mountain on it actress olesya zakharova adds that her performance is an attempt to convey to the american audience that the war in ukraine and the tragedy it caused is not as far-fetched as it seems , moreover, some of the experiences of ukrainians are familiar to americans not because of the war, but because of the natural disasters that the country often suffers we tried to find these points, for example, the last scene of our play - these are messages that were very typical for sending, well , ukrainians wrote them and write them all the time, how are you, where are you, what are you, do you have electricity or... calm in the city and audrey threw a proposal er into this lacy message that is understandable to ukrainians and write the phrase martesseif, which is

a phrase on facebook that americans use to report that everything is fine with them and in ukraine, well, there is no such thing but as if here we found some kind of opportunity to talk about the tragedy on a very specific , precise, understandable level, and there and there, for many visitors to the performance, says the artist veronika shuster, her participants became the first ukrainians they saw not from news and now they will perceive what they see on television in a completely different way, we are our mothers, don't cry for us, don't cry for us bitterly, people have been seeing some news about ukraine for almost a year, hard news, so uh, there is already such a certain distance that you want to close yourself off from this and not hear and not see and can sympathize, can donate some money there, but do not let this pain inside and when they, some americans, when

they came to us for a performance, it was their first experience in general with what they faced live ukrainians are not in the news somewhere behind someone abstract unhappy people of the second world but artists who came and we can talk to them on an equal footing and the next time they see the news there will already be some kind of emotional personal experience for them because which you will not be able to worry about, according to audrey , a lot of money was not enough , ordinary americans donated, in general, the cost of the project is $140,000, the vikings have funds, we showed people that this is a serious project, i remember how after our first performance, people were amazed because they thought it would be a nice performance and saw that we are strong actors who did a powerful job, many people came up to me and said wow, i did not expect such a level of quality, they were the last participants of the project

, they have already returned to europe, they all dream of getting together on stage again and after the victory of ukraine to play a play in kharkiv from new york iryna solomko pavlo terekhov voice of america this is how we say goodbye you watched the program of the ukrainian service voice of america from time to time join also our daily briefings at 6 p.m. kyiv time on youtube and facebook, where you can ask your questions live to our thank you for trusting the voice of america service, i am nataliya lounova, have a good night and a good morning , we are looking for four-year-old anastasia tolstokorova, her search has been going on for almost a year

and all at this time, nothing is known about the fate of the girl. i know that nastya lived with her parents in mariupol on zelinsky street when the war started, the family was in no hurry to leave their hometown , nastya's aunt told me about this, she is also the godmother of also lived in mariupol very close to her niece's home, well, i was visiting them on march 8. i saw them for the last time, and my father went to see them on march 10. on march 11, they went to their parents, well, to her husband. they also lived nearby on the night of march 12, the area where the tolstokorov family lived began to be shelled en masse, and