which peace formula, in december the saudis held a secret meeting regarding peace negotiations in the ukrainian war. attacks on the houthis strengthen the position of saudi arabia and weaken iran. by the way, about iran, it is he who supplies weapons to the hussite militants. therefore, switching iran's attention to yemen and the hussites may be beneficial to ukraine, which is being bombarded by russia with iranian shaheeds and amid reports that iran may soon provide russia. also missiles, when the middle east is on fire, and there are iranian direct interests there, maybe tehran will not have missiles for russia. just a moment you can now hear that the usa and britain have shown determination when there is a threat to navigation in the red sea, but they would act so decisively when russia threatens navigation in the black sea. there is logic here, but the reality is that the hussites are an armed group. vyks, and russia is an aggressive, but

state, violator of international norms, but a permanent member of the un security council. the work in the black sea to clear it of russian ships and encroachments is done by the armed forces, destroying the black sea fleet of russia and pushing it out of sevastopol. by the way, restored by ukraine without russia, the grain corridor, precisely in the export routes, relies on the swedish canal and the red sea for delivery. of ukrainian grain to africa and asia, therefore the actions of the houthis, as well as russia, harm the program of grain from ukraine. there is another argument, they say, operations against the hussites divert the attention of the usa and britain from the war in ukraine. but is it so? just the arrival of the italian prime minister risha sunak to kyiv contradicts this statement. britain and the usa, as global powers, are able to keep several problems at the same time on their strategic ones. radars, and now about the visit

rishi sunak to ukraine, as i mentioned earlier, announced the topic, so volodymyr zelenskyi and prime minister of great britain rishi sunak, who has now arrived in ukraine, signed a security agreement that will be valid until ukraine joins nato. the document is entitled agreement on cooperation in the field of security between ukraine and the united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland. according to british prime minister rishi sunak, this agreement prevents a new attack by russia after the end of the current war, and zelenskyi said that if such guarantees were reached in 1991, in particular with britain, then the war would not have started, so what exactly does this agreement, which kyiv and london signed today, provide, how can it be used not after the current war, but already during it, this is what they said sunak and zelensky, listen. the validity period of this agreement with

britain is 10 years, the term can be extended by analogy with other similar security treaties concluded by global leaders. i particularly appreciate the fact that the united kingdom supports ukraine's accession to nato and recognizes that our security, security ukraine is part of the entire euro-atlantic security. that is why the provided guarantees will be valid for a time until ours. accession to nato, if it happens earlier than the term of the agreement, the security architecture created by us will actually be incorporated into the security system of the entire alliance. we have now agreed with britain on security in all areas, on land, in the air, at sea in cyberspace. the first in a series of new bilateral documents on security guarantees, which were promised by 30 countries at last year's vilnius summit. it. in order to confirm that

if russia attacks ukraine again, ukraine will be, britain will be with ukraine, providing security and assistance. we will help defend the sky of ukraine, we will help ukraine through sanctions together with our allies. no need to ask for help, no need to prove that it is needed, britain is with you from the first moment to the end. i will remind. that the g7 countries at the nato summit in vilnius adopted a declaration according to which each of the participating countries undertook to provide security guarantees to ukraine, and accordingly, great britain became the first of the countries of the great seven, who made such an agreement, and today it was signed. upon his arrival in kyiv , the british prime minister said that he had come to convey a simple message: britain is with ukraine as long as it is needed. earlier, let me remind you, the british authorities announced that in 2024-25 they will provide military

aid to ukraine in the amount of 2.5 billion pounds, which is 200 million more than in the previous two years. well , i will add that great britain is the largest after the united states. supplier of military aid to ukraine. joins our broadcast ihor kharchenko, diplomat, ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of ukraine to great britain, 2005-10. good day, good evening. good evening. this agreement, it has already been published on the website of the president's office, if, there it is big, but in short, it formalizes the assistance that great britain already provides to ukraine, including the exchange of intelligence data, cooperation in the spheres of cyber. security, defense industry, training of doctors, military and so on. ukrainian officials call it historic today, whether you agree with such assessments or not too high an estimate, or the deal is really very serious, very powerful and very effective. not

only ukrainian officials call this agreement historic, i do today. looking at the materials on this topic, i saw that british commentators, solid commentators , also use the term historical, with obvious reasons for this, because the security agreement, the agreement itself, is what this document is called in the 21st century, this is basically the terminology of... the kind that has already been weaned in europe, in the americas, from such terminology, because for the last 70 years, all security issues there, it the issue of nato, nato decided everything, ukraine

is not a formal member of nato today, but in fact, i would say that the historicity of this agreement... well, as you rightly noted, it formalizes the strong support that britain already provides , especially during the last two years in ukraine, to repel russian aggression, it formalizes these relations, and in essence, it is, well, let's say, an agreement... on actual membership in nato without the application of article five of the washington treaty, that is, any -what kind of help, apart from troops to the territory, apart from joining the war. decide

sunak, i listened to the press conference, even used the term ally several times in relation to ukraine. and this is quite a noticeable change in terminology in the west, if you look in the media , the ally has already decided several times, but again, in 2008, in the british parliament, at that time, he worked in london for the first time... which today was embodied in the agreement, in the british parliament , such a summons was adopted, a resolution stating that the security of ukraine is strategic for britain, from the point of view of its own security.

let me, let me clarify, you say you also listened to the statements of rishi sunak today, our colleagues from european pravda, they too, who was there at their press conference, and... the author emphasizes that at the press conference volodymyr zelenskyi, when he described this agreement , he exclusively used the word guarantees, that is, or the phrase security guarantees, security guarantees. instead , the british prime minister chose a different term and emphasized several times that it was about security assurances, and that this terminology, the author writes, has an important political meaning, because security assurances, this very term was contained in the title of the budapest memorandum. my question is: is the current agreement a kind of variant of the budapest memorandum, or is it something more effective? i have already answered your question that it is actually, well, britain is a member of nato from the very beginning,

ukraine is not a member of nato, nato, the security guarantee, the main thing is if it is for one of the members. nato is attacked, then all other members of nato are considered to be attacking themselves, but it says, i understand, yes, but in... this agreement does not contain, it is an agreement on cooperation in the field of security, an agreement which britain has very little outside, very little, that's why british observers call this agreement historic, because it was concluded at a very specific time, with a very specific country, which today ... according to the admission of the same british, americans, actually defends, read , at least, i had time

to look at the preamble, very strong uh-uh text of the preamble , very strong text of the preamble, so from a political point of view, this is a very uh-uh powerful document, which is just the right time in the right place, it is concluded with our . the most effective european partner, let's say security industry in recent years in great britain. yes, but along with that , you know, there's been a lot of skeptical commentary that this agreement, well , sunak pointed out that this agreement prevents another attack by russia at the end of, well , after the current war is over, if russia plans to attack in the second, then this agreement will work, as i understood, better than it will work now. from the current war, during the current war, something radically new,

do you think, from great britain as support can be added, or plus or minus, everything will remain the same, just as it is now, britain provides both missiles and trains the military, and maybe there is some joint production of weapons, something radically new, you expect, i’m not just thinking , i know what will happen and i... expect it, but i won't talk about it on tv. i understood you. thank you very much. ihor kharchenko, diplomat, ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of ukraine to great britain, 2005-10. we talked about the security agreement, which was signed by the ukrainian president and the british prime minister kyiv. thank you very much. and finally, we will tell you the story of how snipers work on the battlefield. radio liberty correspondents worked with the ukrainian snai for several days. which group in the direction of bakhmut, in order to understand what kind of war well -trained riflemen are waging. look further.

the sniper's task is to kill the enemy and calmly leave. it should be a unit used by itself. for example, snipers entered the position, they see that there is such a thing going on. yes, it happened that sometimes they had to enter the meat grinders there. oh, but, well, the sniper there's a rifle on... corruption , well, there's really nothing to do there, wait a little, go away, wait, then do the tasks, that is , don't cut with stoppers, chainsaws, just take a scalpel, cut a little lung somewhere there, when everything is over, i've long since left the topic sniper duo , what if two people, they won't be able to do a normal job, because it's a very stressful job, two of them... it's quite difficult, either threes or fours, even,

again, let there be two snipers, one a machine gunner and plus a driver, that is, it is already close to a small sniper group , as soon as we start working, they are like kars right away as normal, and pass uh, let's say we started working, they hid, pass to their own, raise their birds, look for us, and only then the otvetka or mortar is turned on and ... well, we are already measuring the dog according to character, is it stronger in us, or is the second room there , or is there an escort, who is looking for a place to escape , where you can hide, where is safer, a dugout , a basement, it doesn't matter what kind of fortifications you can hide on top of, and that's how we work , you go out there for 12 hours there or more or less you froze, everything was thrown at you. and phosphorus, and orta, a barrel, anything, and you didn't kill anyone, but you, but well, they're

about to be killed, well, that's considered, it's as if you're alive, but the task somehow didn't go there at all, well, of course , he even hit one, well, there are already indicators on average, well, two or three on average per exit, that is, one is already like that, so on a three with a plus, let’s say this, yes, it happened that there were ten exits at once, there were seven, 10, and at a distance of up to... 300 m, well , yes, this, this is a topchik, a healthy fool, this the most expensive well, it’s moral fatigue, well, physical, well, moral fatigue, constant tension , this resource is psychological, moral, that’s how it ’s used up, well, sports can be mostly physical, some people close in on themselves, some people sleep all the time, well, i think that after all after all , you have to do, well, move, well, do something there

with your legs, hands. that's it for today, svoboda live will be back on the air on monday, have a nice weekend. fyodor was a military man in the past, and now he is the owner of a family cafe in irpen. during the occupation. kyiv region, his institution suffered from the occupiers, after their escape, the cafe was also robbed. the entrepreneur applied for a grant competition, hoping to be able to resume his business. i won a project, i was doing my own, from the curator, which is that i want to buy a granitor, it's such and such equipment

for creating slush, i want to raise, raise the range, basically. for children, because i understand it, children will be happy to use it, so that you can make high-quality and healthy ice cream from natural juice. do your own thing, a competition for small entrepreneurs cities and villages. this year, it scaled up and in september launched together with the curator brand to support entrepreneurs in the field of pork, food establishments, hotel catering. 84 applications were received for the competition. of ukraine. the organizers selected 10 winners who received grant funds. this year , the focus was on initiatives related to volunteering or supporting the military. the main criterion was that we could help, first of all, the military, and secondly , internally displaced persons, that is,

you know, it is always difficult for us to help, because it is necessary to determine, and to whom now? the most difficult, that's why we took those sections of the population that are currently the most vulnerable, or those that need help here and now. due to the hostilities, thousands of food establishments have closed or suspended operations. charitable fund of mhp gromadi decided to help some of such businesses. since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the foundation has systematically supported communities and people in need. through this competition, we also develop services in... communities and contribute to the creation of jobs and, accordingly, the acquisition of the budget from the activities of these entrepreneurs, together with the curator we created this competition to support and stimulate business in the field of ferret for small hotels, restaurants, businesses, coffee shops. the organizers hope that the winners of the competition will be able

to restore and expand their businesses, such small businesses will help. identify the communities in which they are located and will provide new vacancies on the ground. since 2020, the winners and participants of the competition have created dozens of new enterprises in the agricultural sector, light and food industry, green tourism and others spheres new york of the 19th century is luxury, scandals and intrigues. gilded age from hbo. watch all seasons of the exquisite drama in ukrainian with a subscription. turn on aristocratic on mhogo. there are 20% discounts on bronchi pred in

psyllanyk, fanmtachat pharmacies. welcome to the espresso channel. today, in our military program, we will talk about the challenges in the military and defense sphere that ukraine faced in the 24th year. here as a starting point. the influential magazine time published 10 global risks for the world for this year, among which in the third position - it is as written. divided ukraine, in particular , the magazine's experts believe that ukraine will be de facto divided this year, and russia now has the initiative on the battlefield and materially. advantage and beyond. the 24th year is a turning point in the war, if ukraine does not solve its personnel problems, it is probably about the army, does not increase the production

of weapons and does not develop a realistic military strategy in the near future, its territorial losses may turn out to be permanent and may to increase, so they believe in the magazine. of course, challenges are necessary to see, although the halftime version, in my opinion, is quite... an inexhaustible assessment, and it is much more important to understand how to cope with certain challenges, relying either on the help of partners or on your own and looking for solutions that should really be effective , whether it is about the situation on the front line, or about our defense industry, for the development of which we need to adopt the best world experience, as taras shevchenko said, and what to learn and what not to shy away from, therefore... challenges for ukraine and the search for countermeasures , we will talk about it to speak in the next issue of our war and weapons program. my name is serhii zgurets, i am

the director of the information and consulting company defense express, which, together with the espresso channel, strives to highlight the most relevant trends in the defense industry and in the field of security. and now we are joined by valentyn badrak, director of the army conversion and disarmament research center, military analyst and writer. mr. valentin, i congratulate you, it would be nice to hear, congratulations, mr. sergey, i am always very happy to join and work in this field, so to speak, i first mentioned about tai magazine, where they evaluate the challenges for the world, however, in fact, not only the analysts of this publication do important work, there is also a similar work called five key challenges for ukraine in the 24th year, and this is a work that ... was made jointly by you and as the director of the army research center for armament conversion and academician volodymyr horbulin, who is the vice-president of the national academy of sciences, and there

are actually five main challenges, before which, well, you have to make some decisions and pay attention to them is the difficulty there? realism and somehow counteract it. we will talk about challenges a little later, but in any case, we are forced to react now. to reality, to the events that are currently happening in the world, and how they intersect with the challenges that you have outlined in your work, i first of all want you to now weigh and evaluate the events that took place tonight, when britain and the united states have launched such missile strikes against the houthi rebels in yemen, how does this affect the geopolitical schedule and how does this ... affect the challenges that will then be reflected in realities in ukraine. thank you, mr. sergey. first of all, i want to say that what

happened last night, mr. academician volodymyr horbulin and i have already been formalized in a certain, certain study, which will be available on the website of the army research center immediately after this broadcast. versions and disarmament, and strangely enough, but these are the five challenges, the five challenges that we previously identified for ukraine, at least four, today, well, can be considered as lessons and conclusions from the strikes by the coalition led by the united states states and great britain, and actually i say. well, the only remaining challenge is mobilization, if necessary, we will talk about this challenge separately, because all other challenges,

strictly speaking, they relate to the introduction of modern wars and the organization of modern wars at the political level, so let's try to remind ourselves to myself, to the viewers, what happened tonight, tonight... the coalition delivered massive strikes on 16 targets, of which 60 targets were hit and more than a hundred different high-precision systems, missiles, bombs, in particular, british air- guided bombs, including those from ships , were used. rockets that were used for the first time, for the first time in principle, that from this point on, i cannot help but remember here that i am fortunately one of the 12 ukrainians who managed

to be. physically on the aircraft carrier dwight eisenhower in 2007, when he was returning from the war in the persian gulf, i want to say that this is a super-powerful weapon, there were three generals among 12, they were crying, really crying, because they wanted ukrainians to get weapons, yes , well either to have, yes, or to build, but of course, no one but us will build it, and those more than 70. airplanes, they were constantly landing and constantly taking off for an hour, and it was a very, very spectacular thing, but now to business, yes , like this , what we can take from this for ourselves, for ourselves we can take, first, a political lesson, that the strikes are not done easily, in fact, the united states could

do all this on its own and deal with them. houthis, it is not even a whole state, but it is just a paramilitary formation in yemen, which well, now it controls the capital, but it 's still not even a state and a small state of yemen, but let's see what the united states did, they quickly organized a coalition with great britain, this is extremely important, a coalition, a political coalition is a huge thing, and we know there and ... and canada, and australia , and bahrain, that is, from all corners of the world came forward, for us this is absolutely necessary, because in order to deal with putin's regime, first of all , we need this political decision, the presence of a coalition, without this, unfortunately, we no, no destroy the regime without a coalition, without, even if we are given, well, of course, there may be, not an open public decision that we want to ...

destroy the putin regime, and i mean from a group of powerful countries, for example, when they will not tell us anything, but they will give us all the weapons we need, and then we will understand, we will go back to these houthis, look, and the houthis are a paramilitary group, which in the 21st year was recognized as a terrorist organization by the united states, it has all weapons are possible, it is on... order exceeds the missile arm of the houthis , some houthis there, by an order of magnitude exceeds the armed forces of ukraine, they have ballistic missiles with a range of 200 km, then they also have missiles that are the development of iranian clones, and there are missiles of 1,500 km, 1,400 km, again they

have... missiles that russia now wants to get from iran, and their advanced versions, which range from 700 to 1,300 km, again, i will not go through the exercise of listing these names here, but we see, missiles , they have an order of magnitude more than ukraine, in terms of distance, and in terms of number there god knows how many there are. how many do they have, plus they have these shahed 136s, yes, again, the range is 200, 2,500 km, more, at least twice as much as the ukrainian ones, and we must draw the conclusion from this that we are very seriously underarmed, the second moment, what is the anti-western coalition

doing, of course, i would like to rejoice, rub, clap my hands, regarding, regarding the fact that it was possible to make an asymmetric attack on the anti-western coalition with someone else's hands, and apparently it really is, but not everything here, not everything looks like that , because we can recall that when hamas attacked israel on october 7, 2023, the houthis, in principle , you... were on the side of hamas and tried several times to attack israel, but what was happening, well, first of all, to attack israel, it is necessary over the territory of saudi arabia to fly these missiles there and so on, but not only missiles and drones, and this continued until the 31st, when in fact it was october 31.