meanwhile, when asked what she dreams of, she answers with a smile: i want to accumulate forever. ema stadnyk, andriy polikovsky, espresso tv channel. saturday politklub, live on the espresso tv channel, and today we are returning to our traditional format. andriy smoliyu. in the studio , vitaly portnikov is now joining us via skype technology, mr. vitaly, good evening, congratulations, mr. andriy, congratulations, dear viewers, so today for two hours with vitaly portnikov we will analyze, we will talk, we will discuss, we will to discuss what happened during the current week, what concerns the whole country, what... for the whole country, and of course what will

happen in the coming days, and of course we will start traditionally from the security block, from the security direction, because this the most important thing for our country, for example, from the latest news, which is discussed by the whole society, is the actual destruction of the first plane... and the actual resignation of the commander-in-chief volodymyr zelenskyi, the head of the air force, mr. oleshchuk, and all these things, of course, many people connect them, including the statements of maryana bezogloi, mr. vitaly, how would you evaluate these changes, how would you evaluate the reaction.

society's reaction to it, and why this reaction is often quite violent, quite contradictory, and why to some extent it creates a split in the unity of ukrainian society. i think that this is most importantly related to the fact that we do not have a certain trust in opaque actions, as you understand it. this is a real problem that is worth talking about. and i think, in principle, that we should follow the path of those states that create such critical moments transparency for the decisions of the top political and military leadership. well, what do i mean? i have before my eyes the experience of israel, which... won many wars, in

many wars there were serious problems before this victory, and always the parliament, i will remind you that israel is a parliamentary state, created special commissions from people who were respected society, from people who were trusted to investigate the actions of the political and military leadership at this, i would say, critical moment for the country, and the consequences of those decisions. these commissions both personnel decisions and decisions about the political responsibility of many important people for israeli politics for the israeli state were adopted. of course, i will not say that this should be done precisely during wars, but perhaps there is a certain form of interaction at such a time. i keep reminding you that we live in a parliamentary-presidential republic. functions of the president, let him even be there.

the supreme commander of the armed forces, let him be responsible for defense and foreign policy, they are quite limited, according to our constitution, deputies should have the right, at least to understand the logic of the president's decisions, deputies could create commissions either in the parliament or from people outside the parliament, but those who usually have access to secret information, which would investigate one or the other. a critical incident, we do not know to what extent the resignation of the commander of the air force of ukraine is connected with the f-16 plane crash, we do not know at all what happened in general, but this requires an investigation, based on the results of this investigation, a decision could be made in terms of responsibility and commanding himself , his subordinates, if such responsibility exists, we have not... we have never heard

clear explanations from the president of ukraine as to why he makes certain personnel decisions, although this is logical in a state, especially in a state that fighting for its very existence. well, when the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of ukraine valery zaluzhnyi resigned, there was no clear explanation of why this happened, because all the talk about rotation, they do not look convincing in this situation, in which we are with you. we need efficiency and not spin, efficiency must be backed up by some clear reasoning about what is going on. so, basically, after...before this resignation, there was a lot of talk about why it happened in the first place, right? there were talks about the fact that this is connected with the political situation, that the president's office is afraid of popularity, the chief executive, that he enjoys popularity with much more authority

than the president of ukraine himself, and this is of course terrible, if society in general is discusses, because it believes that for the president of ukraine and for his closest circle, the issue of preserving power is much more important... the issue of preserving the country, who needs it for such thoughts to prevail in society at all. now regarding the resignation of the commander of the air force, well , if the president simply signs a decree, and people do not know the reasons for it, one way or another they start to create their own versions, for the plane, for the fact that things went wrong with maryana bezugla, for the fact that had some involvement with... the military leadership that was formed during the time of zaluzhnyi, and all this certainly does not help mutual understanding between the government and society, i repeat once again, in the midst of a war, it is not just some kind of situation that the war ends or begins there, i would say, in the midst of the war, no one in ukraine does not

even know the year when we will come out of the war, which means that we will have to live in such a state for a very long time, when public trust in the authorities is needed, and in order for this trust to be preserved... because of course the lack of such trust helps, helps, as we understand, those who today is trying to destroy our state, of course, in such a situation, this is a very, very alarming symptom. mr. vitaly, how would you rate the statements of people's deputy mariyana bezuglai, it's just that the situation is like that in our country, which is actually very common at first. maryana bezugla comes out with certain accusations or disclosures of insider information, and then we see either the release of these people, or a wave of such hate in some mass

media, in some channels, including telegram, well, in fact, with mr. olyschuk a very similar situation turned out, the statement is without corners. then a heated discussion, allegedly, again, before any official investigation was made public, of information about the alleged downing of the f-16 again, i will remind you that the bezugla said it was a patriot shootdown, but that according to her, officially we did not receive such information, and then the actual dismissal of oloshchuk, do people's deputies have the right to be like meringue? to bring such information into the public space, and does it de facto undermine trust in the armed forces of ukraine and to the actual top military leadership of our country? well, i repeat once again, the only cure for this situation is transparency,

if you and i are completely uninformed about some important points in our defense, those who will try to hype this situation will use it, transparent. this is a more important condition for the survival of the state in conditions of war, i do not mean, as you understand, the disclosure of secret information, but the authority of the armed forces of ukraine must rest on the sincerity of communication with those people whom the armed forces ukraine is protected. we cannot have untouchable zones, the government, the armed forces, the economic leadership of the country, all this must be transparent until it is about secret information, and this is a very important point that we always have with you... remember when you and i talk about what is happening and will happen in ukraine during these difficult years of the russian-ukrainian war. another topic that we wanted to discuss in our security block is, of course

, the offensive of the occupiers on pokrovsk or the pokrovsk direction, so there we see selidove, there we we see pokrovsk, actually the so-called pokrovsk. agglomeration, and this is what is now also the most discussed issue among ukrainian society, among expert circles, and among the military. on the other hand, this offensive of the russians is often compared with, or an analogy is drawn with, what is happening now in the kursk region of the russian federation. how do you assess now, perhaps, the ability or desire of the russians to push in this direction after all, and why putin still decided not to weigh in. on the offensive of the armed forces of ukraine kursk oblast, and conditionally speaking, to push

those directions in which they have opportunities in the territory of donetsk, luhansk, and kharkiv oblasts. well, it seems to me that you and i talked at the beginning of this whole situation, andriy. and i told you that i don't see any signs that russia will give up its offensive in donetsk region. region and kharkiv region, in order to liberate the territory of the kurdish region from ukrainian troops. it was absolutely obvious to me from day one. i have always characterized kurdish the operation as a primarily political moment, as a moment that brings the war into the territory of the russian federation itself, thus making the war a war, if you will, because it is a very important moment when the war, even if it continues for several years in a row, which is absolutely really promising development. more promising than the end of the war in the coming years, if it will take place on the territory of both states, because

the war of attrition of ukraine must be parallel to the war of attrition of russia, only if it will be a mutual war to the exhaustion of two states and peoples, at least a ghost will appear so that part of the elite and part of the population in russia will think about the need to end this war, at least on this line of contact, where the troops will be at the time of its end warring countries. another is possible. the end of this war does not exist in nature, and therefore i believed that the fact that the ukrainian troops moved into the so-called sovereign territory of the russian federation, that they control this territory, that they imposed on russia one front of this war, this is an important political moment, especially since this political moment also showed the so-called red line of the west, it showed that the western countries are absolutely now comfortable with the possibility of using their armed their... their weapons on the sovereign territory of the russian federation, that they do not have any claims against

the ukrainian troops who use these weapons, this is also very important for me, i would say, an instructive moment, as you understand, but at the same time it does not even occur to me it occurred to me that putin would withdraw troops from the donetsk front, transferring it to kursk, because we must look at this situation through the eyes of putin and his generals, through putin's eyes the war is generally taking place on the territory. of the russian federation, because both donetsk, and luhansk, and kherson, and zaporizhzhia regions have long been annexed by russia, for two years already in the russian constitution, they are mentioned with crimea as a subject of the russian federation, and from the point of view of russian constitutional law, nothing differ from the kurdish region, why it is necessary to transfer troops from russian donetsk region to russian kurdistan, if you look at it through putin's eyes, of course, putin could not even have such an idea, and i think that if... someone in kyiv at all had such hopes, then he means still does not realize how the russian

leader thinks, because volodymyr zelensky can think in terms of his own state, he fights for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of his own state, but the person who fights against him thinks in terms of the empire, for vladimir putin and for millions of his compatriots, their own state is the soviet union, and ukraine is only a separatist entity on the territory of this state, so to speak, an abscess on the body of russia. which must be destroyed for the sake of the further prosperity of russian statehood, and this is exactly how they treat it and will treat it, i do not think that even in the next ten years the russians' point of view on what ukraine is will undergo sensitive changes, and i have always been convinced that there is no need to even try to change this point of view, we need to fight back, not change russia and russians, this is the first point, the second point, even from a military-tactical point of view , to transfer troops from... this territory, where the battles are successful for russia, to the territory where

the ukrainians can now control only a small piece of the kurdish region, this means stopping their own operation , thus falling into the trap of a ukrainian raid on kurtshchyna, well, it could be assumed that the russians are capable of this, but then again, if they had political considerations, if they believed that they were fighting on ukrainian territory, here they are fighting in russian, but since there are no such political ... considerations, it was immediately clear that they will first try to deal with the donetsk region, and then think about kursk, how it should look in principle, when it turns out. that the ukrainian troops at a certain bridgehead will succeed in stopping the russian troops in the direction of donetsk and kharkiv, and the russians understand that they will not break through any further, that they have stopped and that they now have to hold this line of contact and possibly

prepare for a new offensive there, i do not know there in in the 25th year in the 26th, it's hard for me to say, then they will transfer part of the forces from the donetsk... direction to kursk to try to recapture this territory. by the way, i hope that by then some other territories of the russian federation will be under the control of ukrainian troops, the more we create such problems for the russians, the better for us, but it will be in this sequence, no other. and we can expect, for example, that russia, putin, the kremlin leadership. where there is some minimal mobilization in the fall or at least there for the next few months, or after all, he will form some brigades or battalions with the help of covert mobilization and throw them, for example, on this essentially small piece of the kursk region, are

they still a priority, in your opinion, politically, again after all, it will be a priority to... squeeze the same donetsk region, well, they can start from the same reasoning, for whom we say, they start in kyiv, when president zelensky says that for putin , kurshchyna is the end, that it all began with kursk will end in kursk, then he expresses an opinion which, well, it is purely theoretical, but it has the right to life, let's say a raid of ukrainian troops on the territory of the kursk region, he can reduce putin's authority in this way and... putin's rating has fallen, not significantly, but fell, that this will lead to the fact that his regime will not be able to hold out and thus the very nature of the war will change in a political way, but putin may just think that if he manages to break through the front, seize donetsk region there, open the roads to the dnipro and zaporizhzhia, then in this way he will contribute

to the collapse of the ukrainian state itself, why is he free to lay off kurshchyna, recruit some additional ones. as you say, it's different when you can simply destroy an enemy state and it will go down there by itself, because it will not exist. putin needs the capitulation of ukraine, what does it matter to him when this capitulation will take place and how many ukrainian troops will be on the territory of the russian federation, if the ukrainian army itself ceases to exist, well, these troops will simply lay down their arms, as they laid down their arms, let's say there were german troops on the territory of czechoslovakia already after may 9, 8-9, 1945 . that's all, they were there on the territory of a foreign country, they controlled prague, but when it became clear that their army in germany ceased to exist, they had to vacate this territory as well, it's absolutely simple there, i would say such an instinct, and putin can divide him, he can come from this point of view when he thinks about the attack on donetsk region, this is the first, and the second, these are still such boyish concepts, he is in his 22nd year

gave an order to his troops to restore the territories, so to speak. and no one is restoring any territorial integrity, well, in this situation, i apologize, it would be very strange to expect that it will change for the better if putin now transfers some part of his troops to the liberation of the kurdish people, well, of course not, he needs to show that indeed, this is what he started here for this so-called svo, it continues to do. that he continues to act, so to speak, according to the plan, at this very time, at this very time, well kurshchyna can wait, he announced there counter-terrorist operation, he reproached those who failed to properly protect the border, and this is also not bad, by the way, because we are talking about additional troops, but these additional troops are needed not only to liberate that the territory

of the kurt region, which is currently under the control of the ukrainian military, and we need to have them in order to protect the entire perimeter of the border. belgorod, kursk, and bryansk regions of the russian federation with ukraine. there was no significant news there until now, right? there were already troops who they were even staffed with conscripts who, in principle, should not serve in a combat zone. so, now it is necessary to approach this situation in a completely different way. in the current week, another act of russian terror against our state took place. it was on august 26 that the russians actually delivered almost the most massive strike, in particular with various types of missile weapons, drones. by shahed-type devices on the territory of ukraine. this is really one of the biggest strikes, hundreds, literally hundreds of missiles were used,

hundreds of barrage munitions, shaheed, and this, of course, all, allegedly, if we are talking about the russian information context, was used for the so-called act of retaliation for... kursk region, right? well, and in particular in the same context we can also say that in fact the last three weeks there, at least, and even four weeks, de facto, the russians have been carrying out constant daily terror, in particular the capital of ukraine, kyiv, and also neighboring regions, shahedam, well, in particular, the current night was no exception. mr. vitaly, in this context, it is... pre-planned energy terror, is this really such a response and an attempt to divert the attention of russian society from

the failure of the kursk region, and in your opinion, should we expect a continuation of such terror over the next few months, at least intensified terror for a certain... political stabilization of putin's ratings? well , you know, i don't think at all that this is intended for russian society, and that russian society is somehow very worried about this kurt region, that something needs to be seriously restored there. secondly, i believe that all these conversations about revenge, they do not take place in the russian context, maybe there are some telegram channels or some propagandists talking about it, in ukrainian. this is from some ukrainians, i hear that it is popsta for kurshchyna. and i believe that this is an absolutely planned and logical policy, which is already continuing. for a long time, i would say from the moment when putin became convinced that he would not be able to occupy the entire territory of ukraine.

it seems to me that yesterday or the day before yesterday we talked with the famous tv presenter yevhen kiselyovo, he he even told me the date, which in his opinion was the beginning of such terror, it seems to be november 2022, do you remember that there was a mass attack on kyiv, yes, yes, yes, yes, well, it was november 6 or what number, if ? i'm not mistaken, it was on october 10, 22, because by this time putin had such a blitzkrieg idea that he would take over this entire territory, and then the question arose, why destroy all the infrastructure that he would need himself, and around october he realized, that this territory really cannot be captured, that the russian army does not have such forces, and therefore a decision was made at that time, which is already taking effect... yes, that it is necessary to turn ukraine into an energy desert. this idea, it is absolutely correct, if you look at the logic of the aggressor, because it pursues several goals. the first

goal is to induce ukraine to capitulate, that is, ukrainians must understand that they cannot survive in a war with the russian federation, if they just want to survive, not about victory, but about defeat, about the normal survival of ordinary people, they need to surrender to metropolitan area, otherwise it will destroy everything here in ten... all this will not be restored, simple logic: first, second, if it is not even possible to force ukraine to capitulate, its punishment should be exemplary for all other former soviet republics, what with russia no need to get in touch, here ukraine tried to resist russia, russia did not succeed in conquering it, but it simply destroyed it, an absolutely known method, so to speak, of many empires, not even in the middle ages, i would say, in antiquity that's all it was carthage must be destroyed, that's how putin feels about ukraine, it just has

to be destroyed sooner or later, and there is no price that he would not pay for this final destruction, so this attack, it absolutely fits into this logic, this is the second point very important, because in this case all the other territories he claims will then be much larger. ready to make concessions when russia offers them certain integration proposals, this is the second such moment, the third moment is also very important, this is how you you understand, the demographic point, russia, in principle, even if it does not succeed in taking over ukraine, wanted to drastically reduce the population here, because ukraine throughout the existence of the russian empire and... and the soviet union, the ukrainian people were, relatively speaking, the only geopolitical competitor of the russian people. the number of ukrainians was always a large number, it

was a large nation with which you could... reckon and had to reckon with the other peoples of the empire , you didn’t have to reckon with them in particular, and it was second in number there were no people in the russian empire or the soviet union, we talk a lot about the resistance of the baltic peoples, the georgian resistance, the chechen resistance, but these are tiny nations, all a couple of million to a million people, estonians are a nation that does not have millions, yes it was a struggle, but it is a struggle... it was always in the conditions when the empire was glorified, because otherwise the estonians could have counted on the fact that all of them would simply be taken out of estonia, as it was after the war with the crimean tatars, with the chechens, with the ingush, as it was during the war with the germans of povorzhja, as was the case with the kalmyks, small nations cannot do anything from a large empire, no resistance helps, they can simply

load the entire people into wagons and take them somewhere else , and this has happened repeatedly in the history of russian there was an empire, population replacement, you can’t do it that easily with ukrainians, you don’t take 40 million and you don’t drive them out, so you won’t take them out in one fell swoop, and you won’t destroy them, you understand, we are talking about the holodomor and the final solution of the jewish question before the second world war world war and during the second world war war, but there... the numbers there, conventionally speaking, are in the millions of people, not in the tens of millions, even technologically, i apologize for the cynicism, it is very difficult to destroy 40 million people at once, like , let's say, the hitlerites did with the jews , it means that such people need to be reduced, you and i already understand that ukraine, which was there before the war, was a country of 40, with a population of 35-40 million, now there is probably a population of 28-30 million. lives on

the territory of ukraine, if you correctly conduct this story with the energy collapse, it is big number of people will be forced to leave, and you talked about kyiv, and you will mention yesterday's barbaric bombing of kharkiv, it is the same story, that is, the population must relocate, it was threatened, relocate from the east and south, to the center to the west, and from the center and west to the borders. and if even the russian army does not manage to establish full control over this territory, then at the end of the war, if there will be, relatively speaking, not 40 million people, but 15, the country, which was the size of germany demographically, will turn into from a country the size of slovakia, it will be a big victory for the putinites, they want this, and that is why a long war is beneficial to them,

because... this long war objectively reduces the number of the ukrainian population, even if you imagine that not all kill, a large number of the population will be pushed out of the borders of ukraine, many will not return, after the end of the war many will, of course, go to their families, this is a demographic war, we should never forget about it, and a plus, mr. vitaly, the creation of this ephemeral that putin dreams of buffer zone, but they are trying to create it in the north of our country. you mentioned kharkiv, absolutely right, the same can be said about sumy oblast, which is just every day, i don’t believe in anything, i believe that if they capture something there, they will be able to dig in somewhere in kharkiv oblast, in sumy oblast, hoping that they will not if they succeed, they will hold a referendum there in three months, announce the accession of the independent state of the kharkiv region to the russian federation, and demand that

ukrainian troops withdraw from the whole. territory kharkiv region, as they are now demanding that ukrainian troops withdraw from this territory of kherson or zaporizhzhia regions, and will already create a buffer zone for these regions in other regions of ukraine. this is the politics of salami. we can talk about the buffer zone in kursk oblast because, unlike russia, we respect international law, and we are not going to annex anything from someone else. and in russia, the issue of international law, as you understand, is very conditional, it destroyed it a long time ago, and that is why all these conversations about the storm zone. it's just preparation for a new annexation, it's just a way to justify what we're doing there, a buffer zone, and what, do you remember that they in donbas generally said that they are not there, and by the way, many people agreed with that , both in the west and in ukraine, for reasons i do not understand , these figures of the dpr, lpr, so-called separatists, although it was the socheny occupation, so all these are different receivers of gabis, there is a people's republic, here is a buffer

zone, then we wake up. one fine day, in the kharkiv region, referees.