this video is dated august 6, 2024. glory to the armed forces of ukraine and death to the russian occupiers. throughout our broadcast, friends, we are conducting a survey, today we are asking you about whether the ukrainian orthodox church can become independent from the russian orthodox church. well, we mean the ukrainian orthodox church, which we call the moscow patriarchate. everything is quite simple on youtube, yes, no, two answers. well, and if you have.

if you have a separate opinion, please leave it in the comments below this video. if you're watching us on tv, pick up your smartphone or phone and vote by numbers if you think that the uoc can become independent from the roc (0800-211-381) no (0800-211-382). all calls to these numbers are free, vote, at the end of the program we will sum up the results of this vote. i would like to introduce today's first guest, ihor lapin, major of the armed forces of ukraine. appointee, people's deputy of ukraine of the eighth convocation, mr. major, i congratulate you, thank you for being with us today, glory to ukraine, glory to the heroes, let's start our conversation, sir major from the situation in the kurshchyna, because today the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of ukraine reported to president zelensky about new advances in some directions in the kurshchyna from one to 3 km, let's listen to what oleksandr syrskyi said. the troops of the offensive

occupation continue to fight, they have movement in some directions from one to 3 km in the direction of the enemy, the steady front line continues to fight, in general the situation is under control, all measures are carried out according to plan, at the moment there are battles in the maloknya area, i hope will be taken there a lot of polony. mr. mayor, how do you assess the kurdish special operation, i wanted to say, the kurdish operation, and let's talk about that, what is the strategy of the ukrainian leadership, the military leadership, in this operation? let's be honest , to date , no one knows the strategic plan of the head of state in the context of this operation, and thank god that no one knows, i can't call it another way, because...

you can comment only when you have full information about own forces and means, well, of course, about forces and means opponents. what is the ultimate goal? well, we can only guess there that the ultimate goal is to exhaust the russian occupation forces on the territory of ukraine as much as possible, so that the russians start transferring them to the defense of purshchyna or belgorod and so on. this is one of the elements that we... would like to see, to date, we only see the withdrawal of russian troops from certain areas of the kharkiv direction, namely near vovchansk , and moreover, there is not a very large, large, large team, they withdrew somewhere around a battalion, this is according to the information that has been confirmed, i don’t know the others yet, maybe there are some additional data, but nevertheless there are certain successes, as far as the exchange fund is concerned, well, there are colossal successes, you just show...

where the russians are surrendering, and in principle, in addition to the capture of russian prisoners, we see, well, let's say this, that the fighting spirit has risen very seriously, including the armed forces of ukraine, some are now starting, you know, to play with the theme of victory over russia, what about kurshchyna - kurshchyna, but for some reason it is so from mass media sources the topic of the pokrovsky direction is missing from the information, and we see that it is seriously unfolding there very seriously. a tragedy, but nevertheless, the transfer of the war to the territory of the enemy is an unequivocally positive moment, and we have been talking about it all this time, these years, let's say this, if the russians will not suffer in this history and there will be no war on their territory, then ukraine will be destroyed, and we will not last long like this, especially since a small soviet army will never defeat a large soviet army, so we have to change our approaches, and as for kurdish operation. i give a positive assessment,

because i have always said: maneuver warfare and guerrilla warfare are our everything, given that we are a smaller army, no matter what, and a static front means death for us, well, in principle. we see that the russians, having a total advantage in artillery and in aviation, in fact with a static front, well, they are causing us quite serious problems, and this is confirmed by the donbas, where the hottest battles are currently taking place, of course i am not only in the donbas, there is also kharkiv region, and we know there is an advance of the russians in the direction kupyansk, and we know about the situation that is happening in other areas and in zaporizhzhia, but nevertheless there... a static front is much easier for the russians, because they have a lot of meat, artillery and aviation and they have a lot of cabs. as for other points regarding the kurdish operation, i want to say, well, first of all

, we moved away all of putin's red lines, and we must also give credit to the fact that the western partners erased some of the brown lines of their fear and stopped shouting for god's sake ... in no case can we do this and so on, us supported, there are statements from the western partners, the united states, germany, by the way, they said that what, leopard tanks should be given to ukraine, you see how they are working well here in the kurdish direction, then we see the statements of the netherlands, who said, we f- 16 were handed over, and where ukraine will fly them, well, we are not interested in that, that is, we see that in principle there are a lot of positive statements, so unfortunately, we have not yet overcome the fear of the west... in the context of storm shadow over the territory of russia , this is me about britain. we did not overcome the fear of the germans about giving us taurus missiles in general. even now we are not talking about the territory of russia, although we could work on other regions that are occupied, in particular crimea. we also did not break through

the situation with the attacks in the united states, but everything is fine, these are the first swallows when, after all, the world unanimously supports ukraine's actions and recognizes them as legitimate. of these actions, and this is the most important thing, in accordance with the norms of international law, we have the right to this, and this is exactly what, again, we do not violate any norms of international humanitarian law, i like many ukrainians may not like it, but we give the residents, civilian residents who supported putin and the svo, and so on, the opportunity to evacuate, we give them the opportunity to evacuate, we provide humanitarian aid, we bring a humanitarian woman and so on, so here... we are to be blamed , that we are bad, as they say, well, russian propaganda will not be able to defame the honor of our soldiers in any way with the help of their manipulations and their so-called war cows and publicists, of course it will not be able to, and these are already positive things, a lot of positive things have been brought by the kurdish

operation in this context, well, from the point of view of an ordinary combatant, i can say that recently somewhere there, soldiers wrote that they had a bridge blown up, why it blew up, i don’t know, probably some good people blew it up, i’m sorry... of course, but the blowing up of this bridge, there are still several crossings in them that need to be destroyed, and in fact there are around 700 russians in the encirclement, cut off, not just in the surrounding area, but cut off from replenishment and so on, and this is not a bad story, again after all, the success of this kurdish operation, that is, they approached creatively, manoeuvrable, well, you don't have to be careful, hold back, yes, by the way, here are the shots you show, which were in the glushkov area, this is from that side, so exactly, so exactly, here we are, well, the main thing is not necessary, we it is necessary to turn back all the time, to maintain logical paths, so that the forces and means that we entered the kurtsk region, so that they do not end up being cut off, because remember, the deeper the russians go into ukraine, the more

our partisans could destroy their logistical paths, and we need to understand that this war is a logistics war, whoever won the logistics is the one director. well, the general staff of the armed forces of ukraine says that over the last day, the most battles took place in the pokrovsk direction of defense, here the russian army stormed the positions of the ukrainian military 41 times, and the army also approached pokrovsk, a city in the donetsk region, almost 10 km there, someone says someone says 6 km from the outskirts of the city, and now the administration, the local administration... pokrovska is urging residents to leave the city, in addition , fighting is being recorded in the turkish direction, and there are attacks by occupation troops in the krasnohorivka districts, georgiivka, paraskoivka and kostyantynivka. in

the bakhmutsky and lymansky directions , ukrainian defenders also write that the russians are attacking, as well as from. a noticeable decrease in the intensity of enemy assaults has not yet been recorded, and this was stated in an interview with espresso by the officer of the planning section of the rubizh brigade, dmytro kozhubenko. let's listen to what he said. said dmytro kozhebenko in the defense area of ​​the rubizh brigade, unfortunately, there is currently no such a noticeable outflow of the enemy, but they continued to carry out their assault actions and they continue to carry them out, but the only thing is that relatively recently the enemy has changed the tactics of assaults, so now they have made the assault groups smaller, but this is not related. with the fact that our troops began active combat operations in the kursk region, not before the federation,

mr. major, but after what is happening and happened in the kursk region, the offensive operation of the armed forces of ukraine has been going on for the 11th day. how do you assess the potential of the russian army, in terms of maneuverability, how quickly they can make decisions, how they can choose not to worry, because it is absolutely obvious that they were not ready for such a development of events, and why were they actually not ready for such a development of events, did they not think that the ukrainian army would never come to their land? well , your last sentence just says that they thought that the brown lines of fear of the western partners would not allow the ukrainian army on leopards and bradleys to ride on the territory of russia. i thank god. that we have broken this stereotype, as far as readiness or unreadiness, well, in general, in the north of our country, the russians have concentrated

about 70 thousand, according to some estimates of personnel analysts, 50 of them are engaged, let's say so in the vovchan direction, well, i 'm just saying now with the reserves together with everything that they are there collected, and they still have 10 in bilhorod region and kun region, well , in fact, they have quite a lot of personnel there, but mainly there... conscripts, if we are talking about the kofur direction, and of course, the fighting spirit of the conscripts, who, who saw that the akmat - this is tea, not silage, of course it was very strongly undermined, plus there was an absolute lack of information in the media, no one did pr on the upcoming counteroffensive, yermak's office was silent, and the information did not go beyond, as they say, planning, and that's it. . and it gave us the opportunity, this suddenness, this unexpectedness, gave us the opportunity to achieve such results,

well, i can say that with regard to russian capabilities and so on, listen, let's not forget, the russian army remains the second army in the world, it has, if not i'm wrong, there in the armed forces, in addition to those who are currently concentrated in our territory, it still has a very serious number of personnel, they are now true, false, in fact all conscripts are starting to sign... contracts, well, you remember this story with the conscripts, with the boys there in panties and so on, that's why, of course , conscripts don't know what active combat is, and this hooray, victory frenzy, as they say, hasn't been fixed in their heads, like gastelo, they don't direct their cars to enemy columns and don't blow them up themselves with grenades, because they saw all this in books, but when you have to do something yourself, it is not something that is shouted at rallies: we are russians, here we are going to tear everyone apart, that's it, second point, after all, no

matter what, the russians still have very serious defensive lines, we saw these video frames of the defense line in kurshchyna, the fact that we broke through them is again an element, let’s say so, of suddenness, and thank god, and our skill, but you look at those frames, listen, well, the defense line of zelenskyi with yermak, it is not even by half, by what half, by a quarter, so much the fortification that was built. russians , including in the kursk province, let's say so. now you rightly reminded me about pokrovsk and mirnograd, well, let's be honest, pokrovsk is less than 13 km away, mirnograd is five, less than five, er, about 100,000 civilians are currently being evacuated, but very slowly, there are 20,000 civilians in mirnograd, i don’t know when they will evacuate them, the distances, in fact, the distance of the barrel artillery without problems does not allow us to do this, problems for them, but with problems for us, and exactly what was dragged to the last, i

cannot understand, just as i cannot understand ms. vereshchuk's statement regarding the evacuation of civilians from kurshchyna in the territory of sumy oblast, well, that's all, it's just some trash for me, it's not it is unacceptable, no, to make humanitarian corridors, of course, but not to sumy, as you imagine, well, yesterday they sent tanks to us, and today we will resettle their civilians where, in which houses, near sumy? well, this is some, well, this is some trash, but what concerns the army in general russians, it is still quite strong, they have a lot of power and resources, so they are scattered now, they must respond to these challenges. but i have not yet emphasized once again, i have no information that they are transferring their forces from the donetsk direction, our myrnograd city council is purchasing dragon teeth with a delivery date of december 31, attention of the 24th year, they have 4 km to the front, and in them, and they

make orders for defense structures in december, they are profiteers, sorry for the harshness of these words, well, in another way, i can’t... i can’t name them, it’s the most important thing to pay attention to is that there is a stupid embezzlement of money, about how much in total there is 17 and somewhere around 40 million hryvnias for the defense structures of mirnograd, and what were you thinking all this time when avdiivka was still held, the line of defense of zelenskyi on ocheretiny, how long did they build there, that's how they built, so it lasted, in general , the fact that the guys are holding these boundaries there now, that's in general. on the level edge, on the edge of fiction, because a soldier repels an attack in the evening, he digs a new trench in the morning, you understand, and this is a war of attrition for our soldiers, reinforcements and mobilization are disrupted by those military committees, which today the sbu seized more than a million dollars for the dams already on ukhylyan, well, that’s all, well, that is,

these are the priorities of today’s government, zelenskyi’s team, this is the second to call it the destruction of one's own army, i do not know. well, this is the vertical of the president, the head of the antimonopoly committee, who was recently arrested for illegal enrichment and so on, he is the former head of the military administration of the donetsk region, i remember him well, i am from it was crossed in the 22nd year, well, there are those defense structures, there are no defense structures, but apartments in kyiv and uzhhorod are full, you understand, and this is a responsibility, this is a presidential vertical, and it is president zelenskyi who appoints them, this is his personal responsibility for personnel policy. which disrupts, including the construction of defense structures, no, to make a detachment, to promote, to do an interview against the background of some roadblock, this is zelensky zmi, and let the technologist look at the footage shown by yura butusov and our military, what company strongholds, with ramps, with toilets, the russians have built in the kursk region, even with their corruption, they build everything exactly, ours don’t even

do that, that’s the story, thank you, mr. major , for the conversation, was the major of the armed forces forces of ukraine, special appointee, people's deputy of ukraine of the eighth convocation, ihor lapin. next , we are already working with oleksandr khara, an expert on foreign and security policy of the center for defense strategies and a diplomat, mr. oleksandr, i congratulate you, thank you for being with us today. good evening, mr. sergey, thank you for the invitation. well, first of all, we have been discussing the kursk operation for a whole week and of course we talk about... the successes of the armed forces of ukraine, let's talk about the world's reaction to the events in kurshchyna, and how this reaction will be transformed into the attitude towards putin's regime and to the fact that the world is starting to look at putin's regime and current russia in a completely different way,

did the world know all this, or does this operation show that... that putin does not control russia, and this is the situation, when already 11 days ukrainian the army is conducting an operation on the territory of the russian federation, it shows that, in principle, beyond the front line, further into the russian federation, not everything is as good as putin is trying to show to ukraine and the whole world. ugh, well, first of all, it should be said that whatever the war part ends. this operation already has certain positive political and diplomatic consequences for ukraine, the first, in my opinion, is that we have shown that we, this war, is not a dead end, and we have the opportunity to accumulate enough forces and means to , so that conduct offensive operations, i want to remind you that after the 23rd year, our

american and, in principle, european partners said that you better focus on protecting what you have and not risk any such large offensive operations, we have shown that we can act much achieve greater results more efficiently than before. the second moment, the clouds thickened, so to speak, above us and there were more and more calls to sit down at the transition table, this pushed president zelenskyi, his office to talk about what he can maybe russia will also be... at the negotiating table in the fall of this year at the second peace summit, it is clear that it is not relevant now, and it is unlikely that anyone will push us and say: let's go... think about peace, because we already don't wait, we are already tired, we are exhausted, we can't continue to help you like before, that is, this is also a very important point, the third point, we have shown that we can

win this war, and you know, we have a very important argument , this is the logical argument why those who say that russia is too big and that's why you can't win in it, the answer is very simple: russia really has a lot of resources, human, material and other, but... it is extremely bad at converting them into capabilities, we are not a model for converting those scarce resources that we have is capable, but we do it much better, and therefore, in principle, these theses are very important for our further diplomatic work, strategic communications, in order to reject the idea that we cannot do anything and it is time for us to go to territorial and other russian concessions federation, very positively. it was actually the reaction of our western partners, they were, in my opinion, well, actually taken so by surprise, i have two opposite theories,

the first is that our western partners did not know what we were going to do, at least in washington, maybe in london they knew , and the actual reason for this was our reluctance to be told, don't do this, because it could have some negative consequences, especially since we have an election campaign here. "let's be more conservative about this war, well, of course you have such information, because in the 23rd year it was one of the reasons that the russians were ready for our campaign, the second part is the opposite, it is that our partners were still aware of a limited circle of people and indirectly, this is evidenced by the fact that literally in the last few hours there was news that hymers were on several bridges in the direction of the movement of our troops in the kursk region, that is, this means that the americans gave permission to strike not only in

the border areas, as it was there near the kharkiv region, but a little deeper than the russian one territory, if it is true, if it is so, it means a change, at least a certain change in the policy of washington, maybe after a certain time they will abandon the senseless, counterproductive and superfluous'. of course valuable for ukraine the policy of not allowing strikes on russian territory, the policy that led to great losses of ukrainians and a great loss of ukrainian infrastructure, so i don't know how it actually happened, the advisor of the office of the president of ukraine podalyak said that the americans were aware, i don't i don't know if it's just theses or if it actually happened but in general, everyone looks at success. defense forces, of course, and putin's friends in the west, such as john merchimay and sachs, who write about the fact that this was

a strategic mistake of ukraine, that russia has a lot of resources and in fact we will not achieve anything militarily, have already been , that it is simply that they are in the grip of their illusions and their model of the world, which for several years have shown that they are inadequate. because of what 's actually going on, so i'd say overall there's a positive reaction that's favorable for us, and of course it's going to depend on to what extent we will achieve military goals, neither i nor any of the experts in ukraine know what the military goals of ukraine are in this operation, and this is very good, that is, this is operational security, we have shown a high class, as a government, as a civil society, and the expert community, no one... we can wonder whether we are going to get out of there after a certain time, whether we are going to pay off and hold the line of defense there, or whether we are going to hold the line of defense and then

advance in mobile groups deep into russian territory, spraying their resources, so let's see, i only hope that our military leadership will make decisions exclusively from the situation of military, and not political expediency, because the political goal... in this operation, in my opinion, is already 100% satisfied and not unnecessary , let's say, to put political goals above the life and safety of our military and to risk more than it is in principle, let's say, from the point of view of common sense possible, while the commander-in-chief of the combined armed forces of nato in europe, mr. alexander, general christopher cavoli believes that it is very weak there was a reaction. on the offensive of ukraine in kursk region, let's listen. russia is still gathering its reaction to the invasion of ukraine. that it

was only a rather slow and scattered reaction, partly because russia had not decided who had the authority there. the ministry of defense is responsible for military actions on the territory of ukraine, but not inside russia, correct? that is, it should be the ministry of internal affairs. mr. oleksandr, how did you see the reaction of putin and his closest entourage to the exchange rate operation. what is this reaction about? evidence? obviously, this is cognitive dissonance. it is obvious that putin did not expect. and you know, i have such a theory. do you remember bilousov's call to lloyd austin, and where he said that the ukrainians were planning something so terrible that they had better not do it. and at first i thought that this was a possible development of an operation to eliminate one of the leaders of a terrorist group called the russian federation.

but now. i suggest the opinion that then the russians, seeing the accumulation of forces and means of the ukrainian defense forces on their own border, well, they warned the americans, because ukraine does not exist in their imagination, we are, well, in fact , american proxies, if washington had told us something, of course we would have done it under the visor, probably, if it is true, then we simply reacted the way we reacted , that is, they continued to prepare the operation, started it, and perhaps this was the reason why the russians did not prepare there. this is my assumption, but in any case, we saw a confused fuehrer of russian peace, who instead of a counter-terrorist operation called the situation there, which, on the one hand, he really has there was a dilemma as to who should be responsible for this operation, because if this is a special military operation on the territory of ukraine, then how can the armed forces of the russian federation be involved, that is, the whole construction is pseudo,

so it is not a russian war. it would have collapsed, and so he chose the fsb, fsb, i apologize, as the main body that will restore order, and also appointed his overseer, who is not in the political or administrative hierarchy of the russian federation, but is a trusted person. next, of course, putin has several dilemmas before putin, ours the operation has put, and i'm not just talking about the fact that he needs to somehow act against... ukraine, and precisely because of that, he may have to withdraw more power from the hot front there in the east, and maybe he will have a dilemma about the announcement of general mobilization, and this will be an even bigger blow to his prestige, as it will mean that not only the zeki and those who got mad money went to kill ukrainians, but they will take everyone one after the other, and

in particular from the big cities. including moscow and st. petersburg, it is clear that this will not add the popularity of mr. putin, well, and i also think that putin understands that in his environment, even all these comrades of the ozera cooperative, caddies, they are not satisfied with the way the war is being waged, and maybe even there may be after a certain time, if not slaughtered , then a certain, certain opposition to his actions, i don't know if it is a traditional danger. for any power in the kremlin, august will end with putin being removed or something, god forbid, happening to his health, so basically we saw him at a loss as to how to act, he didn't pick up the right words, and plus he needed to show something to his friends xijinping, kinchen-in, and mulam in iran, because he, the head of the largest nuclear power, here, representatives invaded his territory. a country

that does not exist, that is, basically, all these things, they put pressure on him. john kirby, the white house national security adviser, says that putin is concerned about the situation in kursk oblast and is looking for ways to counter ukraine's advance to the north, but he is not ready to use nuclear weapons, to quote mr. alexander, john kirby. if he's moving troops there, he's somewhat concerned about what's going on. i don't know. whether it is drunk or not, but he is definitely responding to what is happening in kursk oblast, but we have not seen or heard any escalating rhetoric, especially regarding nuclear weapons in recent days, kirby noted. how, mr. oleksandr, can you explain the reaction of putin and, in general, the reaction of the russian leadership, which until now has spoken with the mouth, including dmitry medvedev, that in the case, if

threat. territory of the russian federation, then they are from the core.