non-stop, and how they see the end of the war in ukraine, peace plans, behind-the-scenes games and everything you need to know about the us election and its impact on the fate of ukraine. in the radio svoboda video podcast. state situation. ukraine is discussing the possible resignation of kyril budanov. budanov, who... in his time, one might say, is hard-working, has a high trust rating. critics of the president say that it is possible that bankova wants to get rid of political competitors in this way. are there any real reasons to say so? svoboda live will talk about it today, but we'll start with ugledara, where russian flags are already flying. this is svoboda live, my name is vlasta lazor. russian troops entered the coal mine and reached the center of the city. it is almost impossible to deliver humanitarian aid to uglydar. the head of the region vadym

filashkin said. at the same time, according to him, 107 civilians remain in the city. the russian ring around the coal miner is narrowing, the deep state project reports. according to analysts, the russian military hung russian flags in the western part of the city. here it is worth noting that during in the last few days, many videos have appeared on the internet from the ugledar, as the russian military hangs their flags. a week ago , dibstate analysts assumed that the loss of ughledar is... a matter of a few days, maybe weeks, the general staff of the armed forces of ukraine does not officially confirm the information about the battles in ughledar, well, let me remind you that ughledar is of great strategic importance, it is located at a height and at the junction of two fronts, the eastern one in the donetsk region and the southern one in zaporizhzhia, 18 km east of the city there are railway tracks that the russian army can use to

72 separate mechanized brigade named after the black zaporozhets continues to hold its resources along the donetsk-volnovakha line, and further south, the defense of ughledar about... recently , literally in the midst of fighting for ughledar, it became known about the dismissal of the commander of this brigade , ivan vinnik, who led brigade from the summer of the 22nd year. in the operational command of the north, vinnyk's dismissal was explained by a promotion, but not everyone agrees with this. well , for example, deputy maryana bezugla, who is distinguished by sharp criticism of the address of the military command, stated that he had approved combrig's dismissal. commander-in-chief oleksandr syrskyi, in order to allegedly reduce the unit's combat effectiveness, according to her , this had already happened to other commanders before, and this, they say, had negative consequences. to what extent this may be true, we will talk now on the air, well, ivan vinnik himself rather warmly thanked the 72nd brigade for their service, but he did not talk about the reasons for his dismissal or promotion. yuriy butusov, editor-in-chief of the online publication, joins our broadcast "cenzorgnet", military correspondent yuriy.

my greetings. good evening. good evening. yuriy, is it correct to state that ugledar is practically a lost city for the armed forces. is it too early to draw such conclusions? well, i think it would be incorrect to say something about any territory, object, which is being defended by our soldiers at the moment. therefore, to say that it is lost is an incorrect approach. i use in this case it can be said that further maintenance. spectators, this is more heroism, it is no longer a profitable tactic the position it was in for 2.5 years, now it is a deeply surrounded city from the flanks, in which street battles are already taking place, and where the enemy is trying to cut off the only, in fact, supply route and is firing from almost all types of weapons, that is, if the angle was previously advantageous tactical position, now holding it... has more

advantages for the enemy, unfortunately, you said that this city is surrounded from the flanks, if i understood you correctly, it is surrounded there, and the ukrainian military remains there, so our soldiers remain there and battles are being fought on the flanks of the city, on the road, the track that leads him to it. from what you described, it makes sense for the ukrainian armed forces to stay there, but it cannot be said that it makes sense. it makes no sense, because this is a ukrainian city, and it is up to the command and those soldiers who are fighting on the spot to decide, if you look at the map and make decisions solely from the point of view of the map, then keeping the voglidar in such conditions will only bring great losses, on it is a pity, and will not allow, will not allow to hold the enemy further, his holding at the moment makes sense, but only in that, but only for one, in order to build...

a line of defense further behind the coalfield, entrench there, deploy troops, organize killzones, organize intelligence, and meet the enemy after having to retreat. for this it is really worth fighting for the city, if this has already been done, then the departure will be justified, and what can you say about the dismissal of the commander of the 72nd brigade, which defends the city of ughledar, now ivan vinnik, is this really a promotion, or is it as mariana bezugla wrote, she was very critical of this decision and said that it was adopted almost so as not to reduce the combat effectiveness of the units. i think that this is the decision, the logic of our command, unfortunately, in this war, and without a continuous staffing of brigade commanders, i want to say that there are brigades where the commanders have already been changed four, even five times, that is, this continuous personnel blunder, it is not

directly related to hostilities, but this is just such juggling of the higher command to first of all remove responsibility, and we do not see this... and ordinary people do not see it, and even the majority fighters, but our army is governed by huge papers, a huge amount of paper, and the real war is in the headquarters, it is all conducted by official investigations, criminal cases, reprimands, severe reprimands, and this is a huge layer on which our generals live, the main task of all these papers - is to show that, for example, the city of lost position. not because there was no proper planning, deployment of troops, deployment of reserves, preparation for defense, introduction of replenishment of men, qualified, prepared ammunition, responsibility always falls for some serious loss of the line, on some brigade, combatant,

company, desired, well, on the soldiers themselves, this is a story of exactly this, this type, it is almost impossible to save the city now without using reserves. the reserves, as we can see, are not sent there, so it is necessary to show that they took measures to report back, so wait, they said that he was promoted, what measures were taken then, we have him removed from the brigade and shoved somewhere, you know, that’s the saying, fire up, in the army is huge bureaucratic structure, there are hundreds of headquarters, hundreds of rear positions, in which a person in principle does not carry anything. well, he just does paper work, which is empty, absolutely, does not make any sense, a person is pushed there, because according to our legislation, when a person is promoted, supposedly formally, then he has no right to refuse, and the easiest way in our country is either to promote , shoved somewhere far away in

an unnecessary headquarters, or sent to study at an academy, which is also considered to be such a punishment for military commanders, of course, that this is not the case... at the moment i want to say that vinnyk was also replaced by a sufficiently competent commander, officer, oleksandr khrymenko, who, i think, is not inferior to him in terms of his management level there, but really, when this is done in the midst of battles, in the midst of battles, when yes, they were just in the midst of fought for ughledar, that is how it is now, it is a complete absurdity, an absurdity, it is not done like this, it is absolutely unprofitable, it is an illiterate decision that, unfortunately, our command oleksandr syrsky makes. constantly and thereby really worsens the management of the troops, because the new commander during maneuver battles, he arrives and instead of leading the troops, making decisions, he has to delve into the complex situation, study the people who have changed there, study what is happening, well, this is complete absurdity, and it is,

unfortunately, an illiterate decision, which in is repeated time and time again, the reason is this, it is the removal of responsibility from the generals, as i said, yuriy, you just stated that syrsky is an illiterate general, i want to tell you that, well, i did not say that, i said that it syrskyi's illiterate decision, unfortunately, for them a lot, and we see syrsky, he had both successful and unsuccessful operations, there were many of them, and this, unfortunately, is one of the unsuccessful operations that he conducted, they can be listed, both successful and unsuccessful . i 'll just try to translate from military language to a more civilian one, that is, when the military command announces the promotion of someone, then with a high degree of ... dignity, or probably it may not be a promotion, but rather a removal, and this is what happened with combrig 72- th brigade, i understood correctly, in the midst of fighting for the ugledar of the brigade commander, who led, who defended the ugledar, was simply removed, i want to say that these are not just my own

thoughts now, but this is the position of the majority of the commanders of the battalion units that are currently fighting in the 72nd brigade zone, and to put it mildly, are very critical of... such confusing chaotic actions in the heads of the military leadership, and how directly this personnel decision, which was made in the midst of the battles for ughledar, will affect the battles for ughledar and the defense itself. bugledara, well, of course, there will be an effect here, certain things will get significantly worse, because there are heavy maneuver battles, and now the new brigade commander has to familiarize himself with the situation, the personnel in the midst of these battles , and of course he cannot make decisions so quickly in this situation, since he is not even familiar with all the people, of course it won't improve management, as we understand it, that's obvious, but... well, can we state that syrsky deliberately wanted, as she said bluntly, to reduce

the combat effectiveness of the unit, well, it's unlikely that he wanted to do something bad to his own army ? i in fact, i do not agree with this thesis. i do not think that syrsky wants to weaken combat capability. syrsky simply, like our generals, people are appointed as generals in our country for loyalty, not for the fact that they are responsible, independent. and... they are responsible for the result and are responsible for the result of combat operations, generals are appointed precisely for loyalty, for the ability to report and for the ability to remove, to shift responsibility for some failures to some subordinates, unfortunately, this is exactly the case, and oleksandr syrskyi now, he does as he likes, he is responsible for what volodymyr zelenskyy asks of him, volodymyr zelenskyy asks for what, for the kurdish operation, he does not ask for... if you look at today's awards that the president made, today there were many

awards to heroes of ukraine. a large number of soldiers, junior officers, sergeants, only three teams were awarded on the occasion of the day of defenders and defenders , and only three commanders of units who are heroes of ukraine were awarded. all these three units are now fighting in kurshchyna. it the priority is not syrsky, it is the president's decrees. that is, volodymyr zelenskyi, the commander-in-chief, who determines the priorities of military operations, believes that now the most heroic actions and the most important part of the front are kursk, although in fact the fiercest battles are taking place in donbas, but not in kharkiv oblast, he does not pay attention to this attention, and syrsky does as he is asked, well, what can i say, in this case it is not he who sets the priorities, he is just an executor, but the president also does not choose who to... reward, who not, it is up to him awards are offered to whom to award, the military command, in the office of the president

in the awards department, there are several hundred submissions to the hero of ukraine, of course, not all of them are satisfied in the necessary order, of course, what the military command submits, but there are priorities, we can see them now, the president could ask, well, where are the other directions, who is fighting for voglidar, and who is fighting now in the pokrovsky direction. what is happening, who is holding pokrovsk, for example, there is just desperate fighting there now, just very brutal, with with great losses in general, from our side, what is happening in the kharkiv region, where there is a breakthrough there on the sand, who is fighting there, restraining the enemy, this has a stake, listens to it every day, you understand, and holds meetings about it twice a week reason, all this is analyzed, of course, that this issue should have been raised by the political leadership, but in our country priorities are set differently: that is, in our country you can be a hero, receive, i mean not a hero of ukraine, and

today very worthy people were awarded, and they are needed to congratulate, and i'm glad that it was done, but we set political priorities and so the heroes of the stories, the heroes of the day, we don't have the places where the biggest battles, where the most difficult situation, where the biggest resources are actually introduced by the enemy, and there, where it is important and media for the political leadership, well... in reality ugledar is that place and pokrovsk too, but today we pay more attention to ugledar, it is the city where now, as you said, the fiercest battles, and what are the prospects for the next day or two, those are the military you are talking to do you share the opinion, which deepstate analysts have repeatedly voiced before, that there are only a few days left before the takeover of the uglydar? i emphasize again, i am against giving estimates on how much... we will be where to conduct hostilities, the conduct of hostilities is determined by many factors, commanders, and

we cannot talk about all these factors on the air, it is not yet the environment, but really , if we were talking about tactical expediency, then it would be necessary to leave ugledar now, we simply do not know what is there, what the plans of the command are, but if if you just look purely at the map, then in principle there is nothing to do there now, because the city... is deeply surrounded from the flanks and according to the map, the enemy is about 15 km from our only communication route, he is striking at it, as we can see from of russian videos, drones and... and causes us losses on the logistics route, of course it is unprofitable to fight in such conditions, and of course adequate tactical decisions are needed, but when they follow, well, let's hope that we will not have a higher command to be driven by some incomprehensible ambitions, on time and prepares adequate actions on the spot as quickly as possible.

yuriy, i have one more question for you, we have the next topic, we will talk about the probable release of kirill budanov, in addition to the fact that you... probably have some thoughts on this matter, there are also sources, probably in intelligence , in general, how likely and realistic do you think the release of kirill budanov in the near future? the dismissal of budanov is supported by andriy yermak, and because, of course, it has great prospects and great chances that it will be carried out, two deputies have already been removed from budanov, and of course, that budanov will be, well... the dignity of his elimination is very great, and everyone is talking about it now in guri, but what did budanov do to yermak? there are two factors: firstly, andriy yermak is systematically cleaning out all the people in volodymyr zelensko's circle who have the right to independently approach the president without his approval. if you look, all

such people are completely removed from the office of the president, and of course others are cleaned, for example, in the government of oleksandr... kubrakov, who was a confidant for a long time, and the number of those who could can go to zelensky himself, it is rapidly shrinking, there are already literally several people, and well, this is a political component, and there is also a financial component, and kyrylo budanov is very, i would say so, a person who in many very economic topics in the last two years appeared, and these agents. in very many, freelancers, lit up in many very business issues in ukraine, and therefore, of course, there are a large number of disputes and showdowns, what gur is doing in one or another, for example, financial, business matters, and why this is repeated, because

financing, we all monitor the management of financial flows, especially shadow ones in the office, the elect. then he actively criticizes budanov for this for a long time, competes with him in some topics, and of course does everything to throw him out of influence on fundraising. interesting opinion, today we will continue and explore the prospects of kyryll budanov's release. thank you very much, yuriy butusov, editor-in-chief of the censornet online publication. we mostly talked about the situation at the coal mine, and we touched on the topic of dismissal budanova. thank you very much, and now we will talk in more detail about the probable dismissal of the head of gur kyril budanov. american political scientist and journalist jason smart reported that during zelenskyi's visit to the united states, the ukrainian president allegedly received a signal from partners that attempts to dismiss

budanov would have negative consequences for cooperation between the intelligence communities of the united states and ukraine. this message appeared against the background, one might say, of rumors and information that the president's office is considering the possibility of firing the head of the gur kyril budanov, although neither zelenskyi nor budanov publicly talk about personnel changes in the intelligence service, which could force zelenskyi to fire budanov, well, theoretically , of course, there may be objective reasons for this, perhaps the president is dissatisfied with the work of the intelligence service, well, in the end it is his right, but in the media and political circles they often talk about political reasons as well, partly about this just now yuriy... spoke, saying that budanov is too independent, which is why ope is allegedly not in delight, and too popular. for example, in the february survey of the kyiv international institute of sociology, kyrylo budanov took second place after valery zaluzhny in the trust rating. volodymyr zelenskyy then came third. at the same time, budanov never voiced his political ambitions. does he have them ? budanov's popularity is not

typical for scouts. usually scouts of this level are not public. instead, kyrylo budanov during his work... gave a huge number of interviews and comments, where he voiced dozens of forecasts, well, how exactly did he gain such popularity and recognition among the population, in the winter the war will reach a large extent, and after the winter the end of this conflict will begin with the exit of the first stage to the admindons, as of the 91st year, are you not afraid to give forecasts? no, i'm not afraid, this active phase has a lot. reduce by the end of the year, almost to zero, and then in what form the war will continue, the exit to our administrative cordon, this will end our war, i tell you once again, being a little... certain difficult times, but the loss of russia is already a settled issue, and they themselves know this very well, in october of last year you announced the exact date, it is

the end of spring and we will enter crimea, and the hostilities on the territory of ukraine must, must, it is important, end at the end of spring by summer of the 23rd, fell out of the schedule. 38-year-old kyrylo budanov has been the head of military intelligence since august 20. he then replaced vasyl burba, whose resignation, let me remind you, was also connected with wagnergate, an unsuccessful attempt to capture the wagnerites in belarus. this week, the nv publication reported that kyrylo budanov may leave his post in the near future, probably even a successor has already been chosen, nv writes, citing sources in the law enforcement agencies. according to the assumption of the journalists' interlocutor, the new head of gur may be 55-year-old oleg ivashchenko, who currently holds the position of head of the foreign intelligence service. of ukraine. rfe/rl's vhur sources say that zelenskyi and his, so to speak, managers have not made any open claims to budanov so far. however, budanov is allegedly ready for that until the end of it

year he may be asked to leave. it is an open question, exactly where, nowhere, or if it is possible to offer an alternative, well, for example, the position of ambassador, as was the case with general valery zaluzhny. rfe/rl's interlocutor in ukrainian intelligence, who is not authorized to comment on this topic publicly and asked to remain anonymous, believes. that the position of ambassador is unlikely to attract budanov, well, regarding personnel rotations in budanov's department, we also turned to the spokesman of gur for an official comment, for the answer we we are waiting, but as long as nothing prevents us from discussing this topic with roman kostenko, people's deputy, voice faction and secretary of the committee on national security, defense and intelligence, i have to say here that we have discussed this topic with roman on several occasions, roman, for starters i leave the political reasons in parentheses, but have you ever had... maybe at the level of the committee where you work, in addition to what you hear in the news, you hear about budanov's resignation being prepared, maybe even in the last day or two. well, of course, you and i

have already talked about it, and at the committee level we have well, as a committee on issues of national security, defense and intelligence, we definitely talk about this, so today we had a committee where we approved the budget for 2025, at which the minister of defense was present, deputies at the level were present there there, the head of the security service was not able to, budanov also had, let's say, they apologized, and i directly, well, seeing the information that there was a resonance there and people are also asking questions, i asked the minister of defense a question about whether is it planned at all, or are they going? talks about the fact that... kirill budanov will be removed from the post of head of military intelligence, the minister of defense, let's say, at the committee in front of everyone stated that he heard about it in the

mass media, but this was never planned and it is not now the replacement of the head of intelligence is planned, since budanov is his subordinate, at the moment this is the answer i can give, it was literally there today an hour or an hour and a half ago this question, the answer was the minister of defense. after that , you should have asked the minister of defense whether or not your resignation is planned, mr. minister, because there is also talk of umierov's resignation. well, i will say more that today we saw the resignations of the deputy ministers of defense, then today they were all present at the committee, dzhugir as an adviser already, and the state secretary today is the state secretary, and tomorrow he will be an adviser, that is, people, they are simply leaving positions for... but they continue to work as advisers, who will be the successors, well , we don't know yet, we agreed at the committee that the minister will come in the near future

to the national security committee and will answer all these questions and also the question that we - let's say that we are interested in right now - is about the status of the draft law on demobilization, which the verkhovna rada decided to develop for the government. well, there is a deadline of eight months, the deadline is already coming up there in the fall, so we also want to talk about this, it is an open committee in closed mode, let everyone say how it works now, let's say this one, and including and the committee, i think, will work through it, send requests to the government regarding which now, well, at what stage is the development of this bill in progress, this is an interesting topic, and of course we have raised it many times and will continue to raise it, especially if there will be a bill, and returning to kirill budanov, we do not rule out that in...

in the future the president may make such a decision, i am again deliberately leaving political reasons in parentheses, and it is possible that the president will be dissatisfied with budanov's work, or will express some satisfaction, therefore, anticipating this moment, if it comes, i i want to ask you, do you see? you personally, or all of you together on the profile committee, have some objective reasons to change the head of the gur, for example, there are real questions for him in his work, look again what i said, this is the current state of affairs, what was emphasized there , but, let's put it this way, we understand that there is no smoke without fire, this was the minister's answer directly, and what is there, do we still have the supreme commander, or any other questions, if we talk about whether there are questions for the guru and or, well, the question is for each department, the question is for the ministry defense, there are many questions, there are questions about the security service, questions, for example, in its activities there, despite the fact that they do a lot of

good things, and the same... there are also questions about the guru, and you know, as a military person, if there the task was set to find the positive and negative, for example, to shoot there, it can always be done, and there would be a desire, and here i think that it should be directly related to those people who will have a desire to shoot there, for example that or another person, and then , i think, we will have reasons for this wartime to find a reason to remove it... let's say, you can always under the conditions, but today we accept budgets, the funding of some departments there is at the level of 45-50%, there is a little more than necessary, and you have to perform tasks during the biggest war there of the 21st century, i say that here the question could always be desire, the reason can be found, in this context a message appeared literally two days ago, in particular

an american... political scientist and journalist, his name is jason smart , it is famous in america journalist, he reported that during his visit to the usa, zelensky received a clear signal from his partners there that if he tried to release budanov, it would have negative consequences for cooperation between the intelligence communities of the usa and ukraine. does this message seem plausible to you, or could the resignation of just one intelligence chief really jeopardize the intelligence cooperation of the two countries. i don't know anything about this information, whether it was really true or not, but it seems to me that it could be this is because the heads of intelligence often communicate at the level of their own relationships , some of their personal, this is the first time, and secondly, that i spoke with some congressmen, including those who were very influential, they themselves wrote to me when they heard this news and they

were ... very much against this story, i'm just telling you that the real facts are not relevant to this whole process, i also have it, the committee, yes, but they also me, but it's not all 450, which are there, for example , there in the congress and there or how many of the united states of the states, or not all the senators there, but some of them quite close to me wrote and talked about it, so it may be, but i am not, this is my subjective point of view, but i ... i'm sorry, but what about your attitude to this stories? well, my attitude to this story, i will say it at the committee on national security, defense and intelligence, but keep it here, fine, then let’s see how it all happens now, then it’s immediately like this, i’m sure that this story was being talked about somewhere, now here is the minister's answer of defense, under whom budanov is a subordinate, i think that there is nothing to talk about here, i think

that the minister... he has information and this is his department, and he understands how events will develop, he was on the committee on issues of national security, defense and intelligence, under the control of which he is and the deputies appoint him there, i do not think that he would invent anything there, uh, well, and nevertheless, what do you think, if it still comes to resignations, where yes, if it comes to resignation, where... where where they can to send budanov, do you accept that he might agree? veiled, and now they are talking about the fact that he is no longer released, which means that some processes took place there as well.