i suggest you watch the video of the first hours of the offensive on the kursk region of russia, this video was published by the command of the armed forces of ukraine in the video of demining, breaching the border, destroying the enemy's defensive lines, the work of aviation, artillery and prisoners. let's see how the ukrainians entered enemy territory.

this video is dated august 6, 2024, glory to the armed forces of ukraine and death to russia. the occupier throughout our broadcast, friends, we conduct polls. today we are asking you about this, whether ukrainian can the orthodox church to 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, if you have a separate opinion, please leave it in the comments below this video. if you are watching us on tv, pick up your smartphone or phone and vote for the numbers. if you think that in... the obc can become independent

from the roc 0800 211381 no 0800-211-382. all calls to these numbers are free, vote, at the end of the program we will match the results of this vote. i would like to introduce today's first guest, ihor lapin, major of the armed forces of ukraine, special agent, people's deputy of ukraine of the eighth convocation. mr. major, i welcome you, thank you for being with us today. glory to ukraine. glory to the heroes. let's start our conversation, mr. major, with 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 hear what he said oleksandr syrskyi, the troops of the offensive pony continue fighting, have progress in some directions from. one to

three km towards the enemy, fighting continues near the front line, in general the situation is under control, all measures are carried out according to plan, at the moment there are battles in the area of ​​mala loknya, i hope that a lot of people will be killed there. mr. major, how do you assess the kursk special operation, i wanted to say, the kursk operation, and about that, let's talk, what is the actual strategy of the ukrainian leadership, the military leadership in this operations? well, let's be honest , to date , no one knows the strategic intention of the commander 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 complete information we have information about our own forces and means, and of course about the forces and means of our opponents. what is the ultimate goal, well, we can

only guess there that the ultimate goal is to exhaust the russian occupying forces on the territory of ukraine as much as possible, so that the russians begin to throw them over for protection kurshchyna or belgorod region and so on. this is one element we would like to see. to date, we have only seen the withdrawal of russian troops from certain areas of the kharkiv direction, namely near vovchan. and moreover, there is not a very large, large, large team, they removed somewhere close to a battalion , this is based on the information that is 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 it a picture where the russians surrender, and in principle, in addition to the capture of russian prisoners, we see, well, let's say this, that

the morale, including the armed forces of ukraine, has risen very seriously, some are now starting, you know, to play with the topic pobedabesiya, what a mess, but for some reason this is the case with... media sources are missing the topic of the pokrovsky direction, and we see that a very serious tragedy is seriously unfolding there, but nevertheless, the transfer of the war to the enemy's territory is definitely positive moment, and we talked about it all the time this time, these years, let's put it this way, if the russians do not suffer in this history and there is no war on their territory, then ukraine will be destroyed and we will not last this way for a long time. moreover, a small soviet army will never defeat a large soviet army, so we have to change our approaches, and as for the kurdish operation, i am positive , because i always said, maneuver warfare and guerrilla warfare are our everything, considering the fact that we are a smaller army, no matter what, and a static front is death for us, and in

in principle, we see that the russians, having a total advantage in artillery and in aviation, actually at a static front, well, they are attacking. we have enough 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 the kharkiv region, and we know that there is an advance of the russians in the direction of kupyansk, and we know about the situation that is happening in other areas and in zaporozhye, but nevertheless, where there is a static front, it is much easier for the russians, because they have a lot of meat, artillery and aviation and cabs much as regards other points. regarding the kurdish operation, i want to say, well, first of all, we pushed back all of putin's red lines, including, and we must give credit, that the western partners also erased some of the brown lines of their fear and stopped shouting about god forbid, no in in which

case it is possible to do this and so on, they supported us, there are statements from western partners, the united states, germany, by the way, they said that... well, leopard tanks should be given to ukraine, you see how they are working well here in the kurdish direction , then we we see the statements of the netherlands, which said that we handed over the f-16, 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 partners in the context of stormshadow on the territory of russia, i am talking about britain, we did not overcome the fear of the germans about giving us taurus missiles at all. 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 these are still the first swallows, when after all the world unanimously supports the actions of ukraine and

recognizes the legality 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 that is again after all, we do not violate any norms. of international humanitarian law, many ukrainians like it or not, 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 we are accused here that we are bad, as they say, russian propaganda will not be able to defame the honor of our soldiers with the help of their manipulations. and their so-called military cows and peacocks, of course, won’t be able to, and these are already positive things, the kursk operation brought a lot of positive things in this context, well, from the point of view of an already ordinary combatant, i can say that recently somewhere there, military soldiers wrote that they have the bridge blew up, i don't know why it broke

probably some good people blew it up, i ’m waiting of course, but the blowing up of this bridge still has several crossings there that need to be destroyed, and in fact there are around 700 russians surrounded there, not only cut off... but taken away from replenishment and so on, and this is a good story, again, of the success of this kurdish work, that is, they approached creatively, maneuverably, well, there is no need to hold back, yes, by the way, here are the shots you show, what it was like, it was in the glushkov district, it was from on the other side of the border, so sure, so sure here we are, well, the most important thing is that we don't need to, we need to keep turning back, maintain our logical paths, so that the... forces and means that we, we entered the kurt region, so that they do not end up cut off, because remember, the deeper the russians went into ukraine, the more our partisans could destroy their logistics routes, and we need to understand that this war is a war of logistics, who won logistics, well, the general staff

of the armed forces of ukraine says that over the last day , the most battles were on pokrovsky direction turn around 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 away. someone says, someone says 6 km from the outskirts of the city, and now the administration, the local administration in pokrovsk is calling on residents to leave the city, eh, in addition, battles are recorded from the turkish direction, and there are attacks by occupation troops in the areas of krasnohorivka, georgiivka, paraskoivka, and kostyantynivka , in the bakhmut and... lyman areas, ukrainian defenders also write that the russians

are attacking, as well as 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 dmytro kozhubenko said, in the area of ​​the defense of the rubizh brigade, unfortunately, there is no such tangible result. the enemy, they continued to carry out their assaults, and they continue to carry them out, the only thing is that relatively recently the enemy has changed the tactics of assaults, now they have made the assault groups smaller, but this is not due to the fact that that our troops began active combat operations in the area of ​​the kursk region, not before the federation. mr. major, 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, in terms of how quickly they can make decisions, how they can defend themselves, because it is absolutely obvious that they were not prepared for such a development, and why they were not actually prepared for such developments, are they? did not think that the ukrainian... army would never come to their land, well , your last sentence just says that they thought that, after all, the lines of fear of the western partners would not give the opportunity to the ukrainian army on leopards and ride on a bradley across the territory of russia. thank god that we broke this stereotype. as for ready or not ready? well, in general, in the north of our country, the russians concentrated about 70 thousand according to some estimates. personnel analysts, 50 of them are involved, let's say, in the vovchan direction, well that's

now i'm just saying with the reserves together with everything that they gathered there, and they still have 10 in belgorod region and in kuzh region, well , in fact, they have quite a lot of personnel there, but mainly there were conscripts, if we say about the furish direction, and of course the fighting spirit of the soldiers, who saw that... akmat is tea, not silage, of course it was very strongly undermined, plus there was an absolute lack of information in the media, no one publicized the upcoming counteroffensive, yermak's office was silent and information did not go beyond the limits of, as they say, planning, and it was precisely this that gave us the opportunity, this suddenness, unexpectedness gave us the opportunity to achieve such results, well, i can say that with regard to the russian... idleness and so on, listen, let's not forget, the russian army remains the second army in the world, it has, if i am not mistaken, there

in the armed forces, in addition to those currently concentrated on our territory, it still has a very serious number of personnel, they are now true, false, in fact all conscripts start signing contracts, well because you remember this story with the conscripts, with the boys there in panties and so on, but of course the conscripts don't know that. what are active hostilities, and this hooray, their victory, as they say, is not fixed in their heads, like gastelo, they do not direct their cars to enemy columns and do not blow themselves up with grenades, because they saw all this in books, but when you have to do something yourself, it's not the same as shouting at rallies, we russians here , sejach veskh parvyom, that's it, second moment, after all, no matter what, russians are all exactly have very serious defensive lines, we have seen these video frames. defense lines 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 shots, listen, well, the defense line of zelensky and yarmak, it is even half, for what half, for a quarter, the fortifications built by the russians, including in the kurdish province, let's say this, now you rightly reminded me about pokrovsk and mirnograd, well, let's be honest, pokrovsk is less than 13 km away... five, less than five, about 100,000 civilians are currently being evacuated, but very slowly in mirnograd, 20,000 civilians, i don't know when they... they will be evacuated, the distance, in fact, the distance of the barrel artillery work does not give any problems let us do it, without problems for them, but with problems for us, and exactly what was dragged to the last, i cannot understand, just as i cannot understand the statements of ms. vereshchuk, regarding the evacuation of peaceful residents of kurshchyna in the territory of sumy oblast, well this in general, it's just some trash

for me, it is not unacceptable, no, to make humanitarian corridors, of course, but not a lot, as you imagine? well, yesterday they sent tanks to us, and today we will settle their civilians where, in which houses? near sumac? well, this is some, well, this is some trash, but as for the russian army in general, it is still quite strong, they have a lot of power and means, they are so scattered now, they must respond to these challenges, but i will not emphasize once again, i have no information that they are transferring their forces from the donetsk direction, ours is from the city the mirnograd council will purchase... dragon's teeth with a delivery date of december 31, attention of the 24th year, they have 4 km to the front, and they, and they have a delivery date for defense structures, the order is made with the calculation of december, they are swindlers, sorry for the harshness of these words, well, i cannot name them in another way, this is the most important thing to pay attention to, that is

, there is a stupid embezzlement of money, about how much in total there is 17 and somewhere around 40 million uah for the defense structures of mirnograd, and what were you thinking all this time, when avdiivka was still held, zelenskyi's line of defense on ocheretino, how long did they hold out, what they were building there, that's how they built it, it held out, in general, the fact that the guys are holding these lines, it's generally on the level of the border, on the border of fantasy, because the soldier in the evening he repels the attack, in the morning he digs a new trench for himself, you understand, and this is a war going on... the forces of our soldiers, reinforcements and mobilization are interrupted by those military commissars, who were caught by the sbu today and more than a million dollars were already raked into ukhylyan, well, that's all, well, that is, these are the priorities of today’s government, zelenskyi’s team, it’s another way to call it the destruction of one’s own army, i don’t know, well, it’s the vertical of the president, the head of the anti-monopoly

committee, who was recently arrested for illegal enrichment and so on, he is the former head military administration. oblast, i remember him well, i crossed paths with him back in the 22nd year, well, where are those defense structures, there are no defense structures, but there are full of apartments in kyiv and uzhhorod, you understand, and this is a responsibility, it is a presidential vertical, and it is he who appoints them president zelenskyi, this is his personal responsibility for the personnel policy that disrupts, including the construction of defense structures, no, to make a section to promote yourself, to conduct an interview against the background of some roadblock, this is zelenskyi's conspiracy, and those... now let him look at those the footage that yura butus showed, our military, what company strongholds with baths, with toilets, the russians have built in kurshchyna, even with their corruption , they build everything perfectly, ours don't even do that, that's the story. thank you, mr. major for talking to you, it was a major of the armed forces of ukraine, a special officer, 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, 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 exchange rate operation for a whole week, and of course, we are talking about the successes of the armed forces of ukraine. let's talk about how the world is reacting to the events in kurshchyna and how it is... the reaction will be transformed into an attitude towards putin's regime and 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 putin does not control russia, and

this situation, when the ukrainian army has been conducting an operation on the territory of the russian federation for 11 days, shows that, in principle, beyond the front line, further into the russian federation, not everything is as good as putin is trying to show ukraine and to the whole world well, first of all, it should be said that no matter how the military part of this operation ends, there are already certain positive, political and diplomatic consequences for ukraine. the first, in my opinion, is that. that we have shown that we, this war, is not a dead end, and we have the opportunity to accumulate enough power and means to conduct offensive operations, i want to remind you that after... 23 years, our american and, in principle, european partners they said you're better off focusing on protecting what you have and not taking risks with some such large offensive

operations, we have shown that we can act much more effectively than before, achieve greater results. the second moment, the clouds thickened, so to speak, above us, and there were more and more calls to sit down. negotiations, this prompted president zelenskyi and his office to say that it is possible that russia will be at the negotiating table this autumn at the second peace summit, it is clear that this is no longer relevant, and it is unlikely that anyone will push us and say: let's think about peace, because we can't wait anymore, we are already tired, we are exhausted, we can no longer help you as 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 a logical argument, why those who say that russia is too big and therefore cannot

be won, is the answer 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 converting those scarce resources that we have in capacity, but we are much better. do, 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 make territorial and other concessions to the russian federation, in fact, the reaction of our western partners was very positive, they were, in my opinion, taken by surprise. well, i have two opposite theories, the first is that our western ones the partners did not know what we were going to do, at least in washington, maybe in london they knew, and the real reason for this was our

unwillingness to be told, don't do this, because it could have some negative consequences, especially since we have an election campaign here, let's take a more conservative approach to this war, and of course leaks of information, because in the 23rd year it was one of the reasons... that the russians were ready for ours, for our campaign, the second part, the opposite, is that that our partners were still aware the circle of people is limited, and indirectly, this is evidenced by the fact that just in the last few hours there was news that several bridges in the direction of the movement of our troops were destroyed by hymers in the kursk region, that is , this means that the americans gave permission to strike. not only in the border area, as it was there near the kharkiv region, but a little more in the depth of russian territory, if this is true, if this 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 a senseless, counterproductive and extremely valuable policy for ukraine, the refusal to strike on russian territory, the policy that led to great losses. ukrainians and the great loss of ukrainian infrastructure, so i don’t know how it actually happened, the adviser of the office of the president of ukraine podalyak said that the americans were in a circle, i don’t know if it’s just theses or in fact, this is what happened, but in general, all are looking at the successes of the defense forces, there are, of course , putin's friends in the west, such as john merschemeier and sachs, who have already been hanging around. who write about what it was a strategic mistake of ukraine that russia has a lot of resources and in fact we won't achieve anything militarily, i think it's

just that they are in the grip of their illusions and their models of the world, which have been showing for several years that they are inadequate because is actually happening, so i would say that in general there is a positive reaction, favorable for us, and of course everything will depend on... how far we will achieve the military goals, neither i nor any of the experts in ukraine know what the military goals are of ukraine is in this operations, and this is very good, that is, this is operational security, we showed a high class, both to the government, to the public, to the public, and to the expert community, no one knows, we can guess whether we are going to get out of there after a certain time, or we are we going to pay off and hold the line of defense there? we are going to hold the line of defense and continue to advance in mobile groups deep into russian territory, scattering their resources, so we will see, my only hope is that our military

leadership ... will make decisions exclusively from the situation of military expediency, not political expediency, because the political expediency in this operation, in my opinion, is already 100% satisfied and not unnecessary, let's say this, to put political goals above the life and safety of our soldiers and risk more than this in principle, let's say this, from the point of view of common sense , it is possible, at the same time, the commander-in-chief of the combined nato armed forces. in europe, mr. oleksandr, general christopher cavoli believes that russia's reaction to ukraine's offensive in the kursk region was very weak. let's listen. russia is still collecting the reaction to the invasion of ukraine. so far it has been only a rather slow and scattered reaction. this is partly because russia has not decided who has

the authority there. ministry. 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 does this reaction indicate? obviously, this is cognitive dissonance. obviously, putin did not expect, and you know i have this...theory, you remember the bilousov call to lloyd austin, and where he said that the ukrainians were planning something so terrible that they'd better not do it, and at first i thought it was a possible development of a liquidation operation one of the leaders of a terrorist group called the russian federation, but now i assume the opinion that then the russians , having seen the accumulation of the strength of the ukrainian defense forces on their own border,

warned the americans, because there is no ukraine in the imagination, we are, well, in fact, americans proxy if washington us said something, we certainly did it under cover and did it, probably, if it is true, then we simply reacted the way we reacted, that is, we continued to prepare the operation, started it, and maybe this was the reason that the russians did not prepare there, this this is my guess, but in any case, we saw a confused fuehrer of the russian mayor, who instead of... tory operation called the situation there, on the one hand, he really had a dilemma, who should be responsible for this operation, because if it is a special military operation on the territory of ukraine, then what how can the armed forces of the russian federation be used? that is, the whole structure is pseudo, so it is not a war of the russian federation, it would collapse, and so he chose the fsb, the fsb, i apologize, as the main body that will

restore order there, and... he also appointed his watcher, who is not in the hierarchy of political or there, the management of the russian federation, but is a trusted person. next, of course, that putin, putin has several dilemmas, our operation has put, and i'm not just talking about the fact that he needs to be countered in some way ukraine, and actually it, may have to withdraw more power from the hot front there in the east, and perhaps he will face a dilemma regarding the announcement of general mobilization, and this will be a blow to his prestige and even greater, since it will mean that not only the zeki and those who were hungry for crazy money went to kill ukrainians, but they will take everyone one after the other, and in particular from big cities, including moscow and st. petersburg, it is clear that this will not fail to increase the popularity of mr. putin,

well i also think that putin... understands that in his entourage, even all these comrades in the ozera cooperative, the caddies, they are not satisfied with the way the war is being waged, and maybe even there there may be after a certain time, if not slaughter, then a certain, certain opposition to his actions, i don't know whether traditionally dangerous for any power in the kremlin, august will end with putin being removed, or something, god forbid, will happen to his health, and so... basically, we saw his confusion, how to act, he didn't choose the right words , and plus he needed something to show his friends xi jinping, kinchen-inu and the mulam in iran, because he is the leader of the largest nuclear power, here the representatives of a country that does not exist, that is, in principle, invaded the territory of the country.