[000:00:25;00] on the air from washington, the program of the ukrainian service of the voice of america, time i, maria prus, congratulations, we are starting with the main event of the week itself, nato in vilnius, the key for the second day of the summit was the agreement by the countries of the group of seven on the declaration on support for ukraine, which provides for a long-term bilateral security commitment on the way ukraine joins nato european correspondent of the voice of america bohdan tsyupin joins our broadcast. he follows the development of events in the lithuanian

capital. congratulations bohdan good evening i offer first of all, listen to what ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyi said at the end of the day, and the most important thing is that we equally understand the conditions . and when and how ukraine will join nato , someone may not communicate all the details. but nevertheless , it was very important for me that it depends on security, that there is ambiguity in the fact that ukraine will be in nato, that no one will be a member of nato to trade, what is their name, what will it be, a real political decision based on the security situation in ukraine

. declaration on security guarantees in ukraine and what is very important in this security guarantees in this declaration if you pay attention to what is important that we have kept one very important point is that in the declaration it is written that these security guarantees are on ukraine's path to nato so bohdan if we speak about the expectations of kyiv and what was actually achieved in terms of security assurances for ukraine and on the way to nato, can the results of the meeting of world leaders be called a diplomatic victory for volodymyr zelenskyi and his delegation? in fact, it can be called a victory that ukraine announced that kyiv is a member of the north atlantic alliance. but i think that in reality the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, not everything is as good as ukrainian leaders say , who should show the results of their work , and maybe not everything is as bad as critics

of the ukrainian government say separately, it is worth paying attention to the fact that at that time the ukrainian president, you just literally heard them, and in excerpts from his speech at least three times used the word guarantees, guarantees of security, such a phrase sounded from his lips but if we look, for example, at the declaration of the countries of the big seven, we also know that other countries join this declaration of support for ukraine, there is the word guarantee in the english counterpart, it is not there, and i think that many ukrainians are trained by the experience of previous promises, previous statements about security guarantees and what were declared after budapest in 1994, which in reality did not turn out to be such, or the declarations that ukraine will be a member of nato in 2008 in

bucharest , many ukrainians were taught by such bitter experience and experience sprinkled with blood these words and such statements are now viewed with extreme caution. i suggest to support my words that you listen to what the president of the united states, joe biden, said, what wording he used . nato while ukraine continues to advance necessary reforms but we are not waiting for the end of this process to make a long-term commitment to the security of ukraine so today the long-term commitments we are making are supported by the idea that in the meantime we will provide security support

to ukraine for its needs and against any possible aggression. today the members of the g7 are publishing a joint declaration of support for ukraine . ukraine to build a powerful military defense on land, in the air and at sea, which will be a force of stability in the region and deter any threats of a meeting with the free world of the university, in particular, promised that the support of ukraine from the us and its allies will not decrease. i suggest listening to this quote as well. putin still mistakenly believes that he can overcome ukraine. he cannot believe that this is their land, their state and their future, and even after all this time, putin still doubts our

only strength, he still makes a false bet that our determination and our unity among shai allies will fall apart, he still does not understand that we will never retreat from our knowledge of our values ​​and our freedom so bohdana i would like to ask you to sum up the results of this two-day summit. what, in your opinion, were the most important statements made for ukraine? well, let's try to start from what we heard today from the american president joe biden in vilnius and combine it with what the ukrainian president also said in the lithuanian capital. first of all, the american president said that lithuanians won their freedom at a heavy price and came to this situation in which they are in the european union, they are in nato , they feel much safer than many other countries and in particular than ukraine

also, the ukrainian president, speaking in the lithuanian capital, said that he sees lithuania as a model for ukraine, that ukraine is already a candidate for eu membership, a model for what ukraine wants to see with nato, although the actual candidate for nato does not exist, so other ways must be needed, and on for the coverage of this website of the european department of the voice of america bohdan, the results of the nato summit for ukraine can be considered a diplomatic failure and not a breakthrough, according to the former minister of foreign affairs of ukraine pavlo klimkin in comments for the voice of america, he told what ukraine's path to nato might be now and how kiev and its allies can reduce the threat from russia, what i saw about the guarantee of military aid that even we should be

given, in fact, the transitional formula for nato membership will be conditional to be called alliance without membership with preparation for future membership, this is the logic of our allies called, of course, disturbing because nothing is more permanent than a temporary model, what we saw is actually not accurate completely a failure at the same time in no way a breakthrough, it is to some extent a balanced solution that we ukrainians consider negative for us, but in general it gives us the opportunity to move forward and not stand

still and build an alliance with the west gradually acquiring the characteristics of actually western ukraine and of western society and how to reduce the threat from russia, which is weaker than russia , which is gradually declining than russia, which lives in illusions about some previous successes and which considers ukraine or russia or anti-russia and, accordingly, us ukrainians or non-russians or the wrong russians, all my experience and understanding of this russian regime, and during my diplomatic and political career i actually discussed any issues with

russia and discussed my impressions that it is possible to talk with russia but only from a position of strength no other tone does not work with russia russia understands the mentality of force russia understands not only military force russia understands economic hybrid psychological force and the west should talk like that, but the west is also afraid that such force talk will affect transformations in russia, which will be uncontrolled, will affect the fact that the chinese influence of russia will increase and take into account many other issues

, therefore, there is a fear of direct conflict with russia . the day before, the last two of the 10 victims of the russian attack on the night of july 6 were buried in lviv. of strikes on critical and military infrastructure last year in april , seven people died as a result of being hit in one hundred. of the unesco architectural heritage, dozens of families from one of these families met omelyan on a daily basis, yury dankevich, in these shots in the first hours after the attack on lviv, we drew attention to two men carrying children's car seats from the yard, one of them pointing at the camera, the license plate of his destroyed car, this is igor kiselevich, who, together with his wife miroslava and five children, managed to get out of the house engulfed in chaos between the second and third explosions that thundered over them that

night, we had some intuition before this, some we had a restless evening. we just didn't sleep. we just started anxiety. we immediately went to the corridor with the children. well, how many of them would we have physically not had time to cross because the shelter at the other end of the yard and the first arrival of explosions - that's all , but the second fatal reason was still after 5 minutes, well, that is, if we were walking in the yard at that time, we would just be in the sieve like all the cars in the yard. that is, it probably saved us that we still remained in the corridor, well, in two walls with video on surveillance cameras in the yard of the house and also from others a kilometer from the epicenter, one can conclude about the destructive force after hitting the missiles or their debris, i understood that these could be the last minutes of our family's existence in general, the last minutes of our life and i didn't know any children. i have to remember forever after

after the second explosion, it was clear that death was breathing down our necks, and one of the boys began to shout, the main thing is to survive, the main thing is to survive, the other children screamed and squealed, and the explosion was very loud , that is, the house just to smoke, i.e., smoke began to come out of the chimneys, a very intense sound and the broken glass of the window, it was clear that there was trash in the rooms, and we already at that moment smelled the smell of gas , and we had to run out of the house because the light was on, which means that the gas could explode already in the very of such a house we are trying to open the front door, it was jammed , this was a problem with all the neighbors, no one could open the front door for us, young guys, the neighbors helped, they somehow broke the door from the outside , every next step and expected something the worst, that is, the first expectation was still opened their door, now there will be no stairwell well, thank god it is there, we ran

and went out into the yard i was very afraid of what would happen next hello, we managed to run out of the yard, well myroslava and igor five children to the eldest yaremi 15 to the youngest myroslav only a year ago, he was born during the war. the passage was jammed and everyone who was in the entrance wanted to get out, and they began to panic a little. some were wounded, and we have many children. one of the children went outside without a beast in the bricks, some beams, some metal fragments, all the cars were broken and covered with dust, some soldier shouted to us that now there will be another arrival, that we need to run, i took this bag of mine, because it is the fastest that i managed to take and the only thing that i took i was in my pajamas, i took my mother's green sweater, which was there in our hallway, i left the house and i saw that

there was a green house near our neighboring house. there, there was simply no piece of the house. by their destroyed courtyard and church. there is also a shelter here, they simply lay down on the grass of the youngest myroslav igor covered himself none of them were injured, the blast wave and debris mutilated the family car with four car seats, two of them igor managed to extract, it was a seven-seater three-row car called the boy khropsia because we always associate ourselves with a family of moomin trolls, i am a moomin mother who always has stupid jam and all kinds of nice things, these are my children, i take care of everyone, we have moomin and this is our snoring, well, honda snored and she did she wheezed like that and that's why we called her the boys, the children loved her madly, she was so twisted by the blast wave that there was simply no

living space left, airbags, mirrors, well , nothing. that's what we did and lived to see . they took it from us. it's just a miracle that we all got out alive and the integrity of this hell , ihor tomirka decided to stay in ukraine during the war, they deliberately tell children about what is happening around you, you need to call things by their names, my children know very well that these rockets came to us from russia they they know the name of the president of russia. i don't hide it. they know that they are being destroyed because they are ukrainians. they talk about it at school. they talk about it at home.

lessons, it was just during the alarm, i had to wait until the end of the alarm because they wouldn't let me go and i heard them in the basement singing the national anthem of ukraine . that we stay here, we, well, we are this we prove to ourselves that we believe in our country and our future, the future of our children, according to the information of the lviv city council, after a rocket attack on residential buildings in the unesco buffer zone near the historic center of the city, at least 60 private apartments in the maidan were damaged daily yuriy dankevich for the voice of america from lviv's nature . a large part of them burned down due to fires from shelling and explosions. some ancient forests cannot be restored even after years

. near buchi, and what consequences will the destruction of ukrainian forests have for the entire planet in iryna shynkarenko’s story, there was also burnt russian equipment in this location, but on board it there were washing machines , dishwashers and so on that were stolen from people, parts of them are possible at the moment and i was left in the forests of obochansk. at this place, there were several russian kamazes . what kind of ammunition can you use them ? well, after our soldiers destroyed them

, the ammunition scattered across the forest, the pastures are lying they are still often covered with earth, so this problem has been a problem for years. the hand grenade that detonated small arms, there are a lot of small arms left here and it is the most difficult to collect them because they are shallow and you cannot see them. given projectiles, probably no one will be able to demine it for another 10 years, and this is only part of the positions, there are also their 80th ammunition. and this is the 120th . on june 16, after another missile attack on

ukraine, the forest caught fire, scattered ammunition began to explode and, according to the police of the kyiv region, about 10 hectares of plantations were destroyed by fire for about 6 hours, there was a very dense dense explosion, the fire here lasted for three days and extinguished the small ones in the ministry of environmental protection and natural, they say forest fires have become a mass disaster for the past year , more than a thousand of them were recorded in total with an area of ​​more than 15 thousand hectares of forest, and this is not taking into account data from the occupied territories and comparing, for example, 2022 and 2021 , the area of ​​fires in ukrainian forests has increased 56 times, we even know of such cases there chernihiv region, for example, when a fire breaks out after the deoccupation, hmm, the relevant specialists go there in order to localize it, but unfortunately the territory is mined, and this even sometimes leads not only to

mutilation there, but also to the death of those people who want to save the forest, in general, the forests in ukraine are more than 10 million hectares, according to the ministry of environment, in general , a third of this area has already been affected by the war . the world wildlife fund says that more than a part of the ukrainian forest was damaged directly by the hostilities, but they emphasize that it is too early to calculate the damage, because the war is ongoing. part of these forests is mined, part of the forests is physically destroyed as a result of military actions and bursting shells, and part of the forests simply burned down as a result of fires. more than a million hectares of forests were affected by military actions , and this is quite a significant part, because it is, in fact , the entire territory of switzerland most damaged forests in kharkiv oblast, luhansk oblast, and donetsk oblast, one from the holy mountains park, which was under occupation for several months, this is when you

see simply destroyed trees that were actually the pearl of donetsk region. it was a recreational area where many people came to the resort area not only in the summer, but today it is just burned trunks to restore the forest with unique trees that grew in the national park near sviatohirsk , they say. in the wildlife fund , it will most likely be impossible. this unique the territory with ancient forests and oaks that were more than 300 years old was destroyed forever. will we be able to recreate and restore these oaks is an extremely difficult question because these days began to grow, but about 300 years ago, when the climate and conditions in which this unique ecosystem was created were radically different . now, due to global warming

, the climate change in this area is completely different conditions. environmentalists warn that the large-scale loss of ukrainian forests can affect the entire planet. and without it suffers from global warming the loss of so forest in area equivalent to switzerland can mean on a global scale uh climate anomalies for example what can this mean this can mean what for example, in the countries of europe or asia, even as a result of the lost part of the lungs of the planet ukrainian forests, abnormal droughts or other natural cataclysms will occur together with rare plants due to fires and mining in ukraine, and unique animals die . european teeth were blown up - super european - this is a rare species of animal listed in the red book of ukraine, and

there are about 350 such animals left in ukraine , as the book says, because the ukrainian steppes were the only habitat for these animals has turned into an arena of hostilities iryna shynkarenko kostyantyn golubchyk voice of america how to cook traditional ukrainian dishes sing folk songs and guess at ivan kupala americans were taught this year even at the festival in washington the ukrainian delegation was invited for the first time to the annual event of the smithsonian institution which today helps ukrainian museums to protect the national heritage from the consequences of the war my colleagues ilona voytovych and dmytro

savchuk ukraine attended the event, it is very symbolic we hope that soon ukraine will liberate all its territories and we will celebrate our freedom together with other peoples who support us and help us to be free. thank you. meet our performers . the ukrainian ethnologist ihor shoshraylo brought ukrainian folk bands to the cultural heritage festival in washington . also performers in maria kvitka, suzanne karpenko, yaroslav jusa and katya chili , the ukrainian delegation brought with them authentic songs of ukraine, this is medicine , medicine of the soul, this is what opens the heart, we

we may not understand each other's language, but we absolutely know exactly what the other stars are about. ukrainian delegation for the first time participates in the festival on the national sea, which is organized by the smithsonian institute. the festival lasts two weeks and is part of the annual celebration of the independence day of the usa since 1967 , more than 100 countries from all over the world took part in this unique cultural exchange americans call this event the government of cultural democracy visitors are invited to take an active part in singing and dancing with the musicians and

dancers to learn folk crafts and games, to cook traditional dishes and to communicate with the participants . it was very interesting another master class about how ukrainians remember ivan kupala and get married wedding songs performed by a group of the ukrainian diaspora from new york songs from different parts of ukraine we were there forestry year, and we sang many of those other songs today, they were from those villages, from those grandmothers who taught us, that is our goal , the main goal of our band is to preserve these old songs and that they continue to sound, and that we will be young even now learn teach others kupala songs for some of the audience it was an emotional experience i was very impressed

by the authenticity of it during the performance i thought a lot about their heritage how they look great their clothes their voices i'm here because i love music i like that the festival is international, colorful, i love it, but the music festival clearly demonstrated to visitors only a part of what ukraine is fighting for, ukrainian culture and identity, which today ukrainians are defending in an unprovoked war that was unleashed by russia . for 500 very difficult days, we fought for our culture and our identity. more they will understand that we are the same as them, that we are people who value the same values, that we are people who just want to live peacefully with our family, that we are a nation that has so many talents, even more so

they will call, write to their politicians and speak. we are ordinary americans, we want ukrainians to win from washington. dmytro savchuk, voice of america. this is the end of it. have you watched the program of the ukrainian service of the voice of america from time to time ? also join our daily briefings. from monday to friday at 6 p.m. :00 kyiv on youtube and facebook where you can ask your questions live to our presenters ostap yarysh and yulia yarmolenko in the studio maria prus worked for you thank you for your trust and see you on the air

we are looking for 15-year-old mark smrodinov, who lived in mariupol and disappeared at the beginning of the full-scale war on february 24. at this time last year, during the year and almost 5 months of the war , there was no news about the child, where the boy may be now, no one knows, that's why yours is important help look carefully at the photo remember the face brand currant he is thin he looks like he is 15 years old he has light blond hair and dark eyes if you know any information about the child immediately call us on the hotline for short with the number 116,000, i would like to remind you that calls from any mobile operator are free. if you suddenly do not have a mobile connection , write to the chat bot of the child search service in telegram. believe me, even a small clue can become very important, so i want to remind you that we are continuing the search for five-year-old anastasia