1,000 days since the full scale invasion began

I'm Dom Nichols and this is Ukraine the latest. Today we report on Russia's response to President Biden's change of position regarding long-range weapons and hear from our team on the ground in Ukraine relaying the mood in the country on this, the 1000th day of the full-scale invasion. Bravery takes you through the most unimaginable hardships to finally reward you with victory.

The first duty of my government is security and defence to make clear our unshakable support of NATO and with our allies towards Ukraine. Keep stand strong. Nobody's going to break us. We're strong. We're Ukrainians.

It's Tuesday, the 19th of November, two years and 275 days since the full-scale invasion began. And today, I'm joined in London by senior foreign correspondent Roland Olifant and Francis Scar of BBC Monitoring, who has been looking at Putin's media machine and how he uses it to engineer the reality he wants people to believe, and later will hear from Francis Dernley, who is somewhere in Ukraine. I started with the latest news from the battlefield.

Western leaders, officials and diplomats have been expressing support from the very early hours of today, marking the thousand days since Russia launched its full-scale invasion. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that all EU buildings were illuminated with Ukrainian flags in tribute to the country's defenders.

She said in 2022, Russia thought its full-scale invasion would end in days. A thousand days later, Ukraine bravely resists on the battlefield and against criminal attacks on civilian targets. Tonight, our buildings adorn the Ukrainian flag to honor the brave men and women of Ukraine.

US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas Greenfield announced plans for new defence assistance for Ukraine in the coming days, calling on UN member states to back President Zelensky's peace formula. She said, until then, and at the direction of the President, as in President Biden, the United States will continue to surge security assistance to Ukraine

including artillery, air defence, armoured vehicles and other needed capabilities and munitions. And we will announce additional security assistance for Ukraine in the days to come. There have been many, many more accolades and comments and tributes from world leaders. Obviously, we won't go through them all here. But suffice to say, it is a day to be marked.

Now then into the battlefields, and a Russian drone attack in Sumi Oblast late last night killed at least 10 people, including a child and injured a further 13. That comes from the state emergency service this morning. The drone attack struck a dormitory building of an educational institution in the town of Hukif at about 11.20 pm local time. That comes from the local authorities there. That's about 100 kilometers northwest of Sumi city, only about five Ks,

from the border. That follows multiple missiles strikes on the city during that massive wave of aerial attacks over the weekend, which hits a number of residential areas. We spoke about it yesterday, killed 11, including two children there. Now yesterday, a ballistic missile attack on the port city of Odessa, killed at least 10 and injured 55.

So those two attacks alone accounted for the majority of the 25 deaths and around 80 injuries inflicted across Ukraine by Russia. Yesterday there were also deaths and injuries in attacks in Harkiv and Donetsk Oblast. Ukrainian air defenses say they shot down 51 of 87 drones fired across nine regions. Comes from Ukraine's air force. They say 30 drones were lost across Ukraine due to active countermeasures, which would take to me electronic warfare.

Now, staying in Ukraine and Russia's FSB, the Federal Security Service, this morning announced the detention of two residents in Russian-occupied Crimea in connection with that car bombing we spoke about. The car bombing in Sevastopol on November the 13th that killed a Russian naval officer Captain Valeri Trankovsky. According to the FSB,

A 38-year-old resident of Sevastopol tracked Trankovsky's car while a 47-year-old resident of Yalta reportedly constructed and placed an improvised explosive device under the vehicle. Authorities claimed to have found 1.2 kilograms of explosives in the 47-year-old suspect's garage. Because you would, wouldn't you? You would leave it there.

Now, into Russia, Ukrainian forces hit a Russian logistics centre in the town of Karachev in Brienzk Oblast last night. That comes from the general staff of Ukraine's armed forces. That's about 100 Ks northeast of the nearest bit of the border with Ukraine. About 200 km north of the area in Kursk Oblast, currently held by Ukrainian forces.

Just to finish off with these sort of numbers, Russian MOD said its air defense had shot down 12 drones across France Oblast. And the local governor, Alexander Bogomaz, said the attack caused no casualties or significant damage, of course. But hey, we got no way of verifying it. That was key of independent reporting that with no way of verifying. So that was announced early this morning. However, just a few minutes ago, the Russian defense ministry has said that that attack launched by Ukraine against Kalachev in Briansk Oblast

had been conducted with US-made ATACAM's missiles. The Russian MOD pronounced statement saying six missiles were used, five were shot down by S-400 air defence. Now that sighting carriage have reportedly stored artillery ammunition, including North Korean munitions, glide bombs, anti-aircraft missiles, rocket launcher ammunition, and so on. So exactly the sort of target ATACAM's is designed to go against, plus

There were 12 secondary explosions reported around 2.30am. This morning, that news comes from the General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces. So, what do we know? We know that Ukraine has hit similar facilities in the past without using attack arms.

And after the song and dance, which we discussed yesterday about President Biden saying, Attackums could only be used in Kursk Oblast. I just wonder if this is an example of Russia playing fast and loose with the facts in order to try and get us to believe that Ukraine has gone against those wishes by Joe Biden and done their own thing by firing into Brienzk Oblast.

Or, or, or, or. As President Zelensky said yesterday, the missiles will speak for themselves. President Biden says it's only in Kurskfellers and we all go, well, that's rubbish. What do you mean by that? I wonder if that's all a bit of subterfuge and actually Ukraine have been given permission to fire wherever they like. That would be very interesting. It would necessarily be in keeping with the Biden administration, their normal modus operandi. They haven't really been that sort of

Clever, if you like, I don't know. But maybe, maybe they've been given permissions or maybe it wasn't an attack on his missile that landed in Brienzk and it's all a bit of a fiction. If it is a fiction, I think that's Russia trying to drive a wedge between Ukraine and America. If it's not, then I think that's very clever diplomacy indeed. Now, just the last one for me on the military side of things, two undersea fiber optic communications cables in the Baltic Sea have been severed.

One links Finland and Germany, the other is from Lithuania to Sweden.

So what do we know? The 200-kilometer cable linking Lithuania and Sweden's Gotland Island stopped working at about 0-800 hours GMT. That's London time on Sunday, according to Lithuania's Telia-Litova, that's part of Sweden's Telia communications company. Then yesterday morning at about 0-200 London time, the 1200-kilometer cable connecting Helsinki to the German port of Rostock went offline.

Finnish state-controlled cybersecurity and telecoms company Cinea reporting that. Finland and Germany released a statement about that incident and said they were, quote, deeply concerned about the severed undersea cable and were investigating an incident that immediately raises suspicions of international damage. Of course, you'll know, we've spoken about it many times, so you'll know that the issue of Europe's security

can be a sharp focus in recent years, in particular when it comes to this so-called grey zone or hybrid warfare. Both fairly clunky terms, but trying to describe militia state actions short of traditional conventional warfare, although I do think we need to update what we consider traditional

Now, the statement by Germanian Finland referred to, quote, hybrid warfare by malicious actors, but didn't name the actors, and finished up by saying, safeguarding our shared critical infrastructure is vital to our security and the resilience of our societies. I mean, the whole undersea cable business is really a focus, I think, of naval and wider military minds.

On to the diplomatic front, Estonia's foreign minister has said European leaders should be prepared to send military forces to Ukraine to underpin any peace deal engineered by Donald Trump between Kyiv and Moscow. So this is Margus Sakner speaking to the Financial Times said the best security guarantee for Ukraine was NATO membership. But if the US was opposed to that, Europe should step in with troop deployments once the fighting is over to deter further Russian aggression.

So he said to the FT, if we're talking about real security guarantees, it means that there will be a just peace. Then we're talking about NATO membership. But without the US, it's impossible. And then we're talking about any form of guarantee in the meaning of boots on the ground. He said it would be really, really, really complicated for Europeans to provide security guarantees to Ukraine without US backing.

and said Britain had the opportunity and the responsibility to take leadership of Europe's efforts to bolster Ukraine's security with Poland also playing an active part in any discussion. So you may remember there was a report in I think the Washington Post last week citing three Trump staffers that were suggesting that the US could substantially pay for but not provide any troops that pay for any ceasefire monitoring and any force there on the ground.

I think it's interesting. I was invited on to the Daily Tea yesterday and we were speaking about this. Are there any security entities short of Article 5 that are actually worth what they say they are?

is difficult to say but you know if there was a ceasefire along the current lines at four example and some of those lines are policed by european troops nato troops etcetera etcetera you know now would they allow even if they came under extreme pressure from the russian force mounting on the other side of that ceasefire line would they allow them through knowing what would happen i would venture they would not you know we also have been into a beneath your nineteen ninety five so i wonder if that's a kind of

Defacto Article 5, if there's a ceasefire and you have NATO troops there, or a coalition of the willing, which is a phrase we're hearing more. Anyway, that's got to run and run, so I'm not going to answer it today. Just last on for me, French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed President Joe Biden's decision to allow Ukraine to strike targets in Russia with attackers, calling it a good decision.

Now, in remarks reported today by Politico, he said, Russia is the only power that made an escalatory decision. It's really this break that led to the US decision. Now, almost certainly in response to Biden's decision rather than Macron's comment there.

almost certainly in response. A Russian presidential decree published on a government website earlier today says Putin has approved updated principles of Russia's nuclear deterrence policy. Now that is old news. We knew they had updated their nuclear doctrine. They made that public back in September. So I'm not sure if we were waiting for some form of official sign off or if they've just taken this opportunity to rattle the increasingly tired and dented nuclear saber.

But anyway, the revised doctrine outlined scenarios that the Kremlin says could justify a nuclear strike, including, quote, aggression against the Russian Federation and its allies by a non-nuclear state with the support of a nuclear state.

So basically, that's a heavier cake and eat it, policy of nuclear deterrence, and one to which we're all supposed to quiver and give in to whatever they want. But I haven't had to read the document. Luckily, I know someone who has and can give us the skinny loan out on it. And whether or not it's a marked change from the nuclear doctrine that was in force before. Roland, you've been scouring the document. What's caught your eye?

Yeah, I've got it in front of me, actually. Eight pages if you want to read it, it's on plava.gov.re which is where the Russian government posts all their legal documents. It's quite easy to read if you Google translate it if you want to.

Look, I think this is an existing document like Russia's always had a kind of publicly available presidential decree that outlines roughly their principles of nuclear deterrence and roughly the circumstances under which they might consider using their nuclear weapons. And as you said, they've tweaked it a bit. To be honest with you, I'll say right at the top, I'm not sure that it's been tweaked quite as much as it's being reported, to be absolutely honest.

There are two particular tweaks that the Kremlin certainly seems clean to emphasize. Those are the tweaks that we're seeing a lot of at the moment. The first bit is in the section defining the principles of deterrence. It's just a part of the decree that says, this is what deterrence is all about. It doesn't say this is when we use nuclear weapons. This is what it's all about. It's got a section that says, if Russia was attacked by a non-nuclear state,

or any aggression against Russia or her allies by any non-nuclear state with the involvement of or support of a nuclear state will be considered as their joint attack. And it doesn't say whether that's a nuclear attack or a non-nuclear attack. It doesn't say what Russia would do in that event. They're just saying, if that happens, we would consider it a joint attack. So that basically says, as we said, if Ukraine attacks Russia with American help, then it's America that's deemed to have attacked Russia as well.

There's another little tweak that says Russia would consider an attack by one member of any military alliance to be an attack by all members. So by extension, that also means that if Ukraine's attacked Russia with American help, and because American is nuclear power, that means that America has also attacked Russia. By extension, because America's in NATO, all of NATO is attacked Russia. So you could read that into it. The second tweak is in the section that actually defines the conditions under which Russia would consider using nuclear weapons.

And I think this is the real meat of the decree, right? So it's two scenarios. One is a nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction attack on Russia or its allies. I think that's quite understandable. I think most, you know, Britain, the United States, everybody has that as part of their deterrence doctrine. The second scenario is a conventional attack, an attack using conventional weapons against Russia or Belarus.

They're putting Belarus into this for the first time. They have a close alliance there. They never said explicitly Belarus as well. A conventional attack against Russia or Belarus, that quote, creates a critical threat to their sovereignty and or territorial integrity.

Now, in a way that doesn't change much, because Russia has always said if we could use nuclear weapons, if we come under a very, very serious conventional attack as well, it's meant to deter attacks that might destroy the country. But in the previous doctrine, the term was a conventional attack which threatened the very existence.

of Russia. So I think what we've seen in the rhetoric coming out of the Kremlin, some of the reporting on this DOM, is this attempt to suggest that, okay, America granting Ukraine permission to use out of camps inside Russia in support of the Kerst operation counts as a joint attack, and that that or even the Kerst operation itself counts as

a critical threat to Russia's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Now, I personally don't really think that you could possibly say that the limited kind of use of Atacams against military targets around the Kursk salient really genuinely is a critical threat to Russia's territorial integrity. And I must say, if you look at the more detailed extra definitions they put in laying out when Russia might consider using nuclear weapons,

I don't think it meets any of those thresholds. So I think what you've got here is a document that's been publicly published, stamped, announced with clearly slight lowering of the threshold for use here. It's clearly meant to be a response to Joe Biden's decision to grant permission for the Ukrainians to strike in side case. But I don't think, I think a lot of the reporting saying that this gives Russia permission to launch a nuclear war as a response.

I don't think it really meets that threshold at all. And I think there's a deliberate attempt to muddy the waters and make the sound like something much more threatening than it actually is. And I wonder whether simply the fact of signing this, saying we are adjusting our nuclear stance and attitude to something, is meant to be the response to that American decision. Because I can't honestly imagine really the Russians turning around after an incremental

move like that by the american saying right we're using nukes it just it just doesn't stack up in my mind it certainly doesn't stack up i think with the with the tone of this document

Yeah, I was wondering when I heard about it. I was wondering if it was, you know, response to the Biden attack him's decision or or and or, I guess, an attempt to try and fix in the mind of the incoming Trump administration, this fear of Russia's nuclear weapons, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And just and just sort of trying to get ahead of the game, I think it's probably just a response to Biden. And you say, you know, is it a deliberate attempt to muddy the waters?

I've read it from Russia, surely not, perish a thought. I think you're right about it being kind of a puck put into Donald Trump's court. It passes the ball to him and might allow him to say, look, OK, we've got a serious risk of escalation here. Now we have to shut down this war or something. Perhaps it probably is partly framed in that way. But there's a few other interesting tweaks here, Dom, where it talks about what Russia's nuclear deterrence is meant to deter against.

There's quite a lot of new conditions and it used to be about nuclear attacks on Russia or Russia or attacks that might destroy Russia. But it also says the purpose of nuclear deterrence, the threats that nuclear deterrence is meant to neutralize include creation and expansion of military alliances closer to the Russian border. So that's NATO.

Actions of a potential adversary aimed at isolating part of the Russian Federation, including blocking vital transport communications. That seems directed specifically at Kaliningrad, that exclave between Poland and Lithuania.

Actions aimed at damaging ecologically dangerous facilities in Russia. I wonder if that's even a referral to Russia's own destruction of the khak of a dam in Ukraine and saying, you know, if anyone did that to us, we want to prevent people doing that to us. And also planning or holding major military exercises close to Russia's border.

The problem with this, Dom, I think, and you know a lot more about this than me because you've studied it, but as I understand, once you start expanding the things that nuclear deterrence is meant to deter against, it's much more difficult to keep it kind of credible because you've kind of lowered the threshold.

That's my thought on that. And I just wanted to add, I know we're pressed for time. One other interesting thing is when they're talking about the kind of threats they're responding to and also about the kind of weapons they're hoping deterrence will dissuade their opponents from acquiring. There's just interesting updates which I think talk about the state of the world at the moment. This isn't really about Russia. They used to talk about, we don't want our enemies just to get advanced missiles or nuclear weapons or something like that. They also talk about space weapons, directed energy weapons, hypersonic weapons,

I don't think that that is a specifically kind of Russia saber-athling thing there. I think that's the kind of thing you're going to see in all countries updating their defence doctrines in response to the kind of the realities of the modern era.

Yeah, I think he's looked at the West over the last couple of years, seen how we love to self-deter, we love to fix ourselves with our own red lines. And he's just given us a smorgasbord of occasions there where we could nuke ourselves and we just go down and tick the boxes and we're supposed to get to the end of that list and go, oh my God, I've ticked five boxes, we're definitely gonna upset him again, we're gonna provoke him again. So I'm not surprised that he's come out with all sorts of different reasons whereby they may use nuclear weapons. As you say though,

If this in some way lowers the credibility of Russia's threat of resorting to nuclear weapons, that is not good. Nuclear doctrine is very basic entry level of which that is me. I'm not suggesting I'm anywhere much further ahead than all of us. But it's based on the three C's, capability, credibility and communication. They've got to have the capability to be a credible

nuclear force. You've got to have the capability and we know Russia has got the nuclear weapons. You've got to have credibility. Credibility is there by do you regularly exercise? Do you think you do you know what you're doing with this stuff? Have you got a long established research and development scientific pathway to developing the kind of things that you say that you have got that all feeds into credibility? And then there's the communication even at this level probably more so than any other. You've got to be able to have the channels open to the other side.

so that they know when the tension is going up and when it's coming down. And if you muddy the water, as you say, on the communication or on the credibility, it just makes things very, very difficult to read from either side and difficult when it comes to nuclear deterrence equals very, very dangerous. So this is not good. I think this is all deliberate, designed to muddy and make it a more scary place.

I don't think that's by accident, but I think we just have to try and understand what they're doing, and they are seeking us to do their work for them, to self-deter. Anyway, that one's got to run and run. But as you say, time is marching on, Roduin. So I'd like to now move. I'm delighted to welcome, to the pub for the first time, Francis Scar, from the BBC. I'm sorry that we're coming to you a bit late, Francis, but...

A fascinating topic to discuss. You recently wrote a piece for us titled, my 24 hours strapped into Putin's propaganda machine. We'll put a link into the episode notes today. You described today, you spent binge watching Russian TV. Now, quite why somebody would want to do that is a good question, but you work for BBC monitoring. So it's not just the past time, it's your job. I understand it. Now, what is BBC monitoring, please? Welcome to the Pod Francis.

Hi Dom, Hi Roland. Well BBC monitoring was set up in the second world war to listen into German and Italian radio broadcasts and then

After that, throughout the Cold War, it obviously turned its focus more to the Soviet Union. Nowadays, we focus on various countries, Iran, Russia, China, Latin America, basically any country where there's a need for open source information to provide to our customers who are the BBC itself, but also the UK government and a range of commercial customers. And so what we do is we translate and we analyze

the kind of information we're getting from media sources around the world. In my case, obviously Russia, state TV, it's newspapers, it's social media, so especially in the last couple of years, a lot of telegram and all of these military bloggers who have developed these huge followings there, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and offer this less varnished version of the war that you get from the official state media in Russia.

but also following independent websites, these investigative outlets that have mostly well now been forced out to Russia and are reporting on things that the Kremlin would rather not be reported on from outside the country. So talk to us a little bit about the Russian media landscape. Through which medium do most Russians get their news and how accurate fare balanced are the outlets that they have access to?

Well, most Russians, according to the data we have, which comes from the Nevada Center, this pollster, which is the last remaining independent pollster in Russia. But obviously you have to take this data with a pinch of salt because people in the environment in Russia, current environment in Russia are not always willing to speak their minds. But the data we have suggested around two thirds of people still get most of their news from state TV.

messaging on state TV is tightly controlled by the Kremlin and reports in the past have suggested regular meetings between the executives of the main channels with Kremlin officials and also the distribution of instructions on how to cover certain topics where there might be room to kind of err as far as the Kremlin sees it.

You also have websites reporting the news and newspapers. In the past, there was a bit more variety. There was some criticism. But over the years, the Kremlin has gradually turned the screw on all of these outlets. And nowadays, you won't find them reporting any kind of genuine criticism of the Kremlin.

There's also social media. In the past, social media was, of course, seen as the preserve of the opposition. It was where the likes of Alexei Navalny made such a name for himself, producing these high quality slick videos, exposing corruption among the Russian elite, for example. Nowadays, of course, you have more programmable figures who have decided that social media is also an avenue that they would like to exploit in terms of getting their narratives across.

People say that Russians don't have access to objective reporting on what's going on in their country or what's going on in the war. I think there is a difference though between Russia and the likes of China and North Korea because although many of these websites are blocked, you can

view them by installing a VPN on your device, although their government is making this harder by periodically blocking certain VPNs. So the Russians that do want to access independent news are still able to, but the Kremlin is making it harder and harder to do so. And even posting links to certain websites can get you in serious hot water in Russia. Some of these websites have been designated as

undesirable organisations which essentially makes them illegal not only to work for but to distribute anything that they have produced or even to speak to them to be interviewed by them is an offence. Francis, can we dive just briefly into a bit of terminology? So we talk about free speech, talk about it on the podcast a lot. Free speech varies from saying anything you like.

which can have legal implications through to government regulatory bodies such as off com which broadcasters to the BBC is held to or voluntary regulatory bridge such as ipso the independent press standards organization that we telegraph are held to account by even even with this with a podcast which you could argue is broadcast we still come under ipso so in terms of free speech i can't just come on here and slander anyone i like and say any any lurid ridiculous facts i get held to account for it you get held to account by off com

I mean we do know that there are obviously there are podcasts, there are commentators out there that do just shoot their mouth off and say anything they like and they wish. So on the whole free speech thing, how free do you think Russian media is? I would say that it's very unfree. I mean there are laws that were introduced in the wake of the invasion that actually make it illegal to criticize the war.

And as a result, many well-respected independent media outlets were forced to shut down or to leave the country. In 2021, the editor-in-chief of Novakazietta, this independent newspaper, Dimitri Murat, have received the Nobel Peace Prize jointly. And his newspaper now no longer operates inside Russia. And there was a prominent radio station in Moscow as well, Echo of Moscow, which

no longer operates inside the country because they wanted to criticize the war and it wasn't safe for them to do so and we've seen journalists jailed under these charges of discrediting the Russian armed forces or spreading fake news about the special military operation that that's the terminology used by these laws and this is also

affected people, ordinary people, writing things on social media, not just prominent journalists who have a platform. So someone who might have posted something, well, not even posting. I mean, recently, a pediatrician was jailed for allegedly criticizing the war in the conversation with one of her patients' parents. And then she was then informed on and is now in prison.

So I think we're talking about two different different universes when it comes to free speech. On the kind of more bland issues of which guests are chosen for TV shows, for example, you won't see any genuine opposition figures on TV in Russia. The likes of Alexei Navalny, he was never given any kind of platform.

For a while there was this illusion of debate on Russian TV, I think until the war started, when certain people who were ostensibly liberals or Ukrainian guests or Americans were invited onto the shows and they were used as punch bags and they were shouted down a lot and not really given a chance to express their opinion, they were laughed at. And so that was the kind of illusion of free speech we had before, but now it's very difficult to speak of anything like that.

Now as I said at the start, you've just spent a day 24 hours watching Russian TV. What happened? What did you find and what state were you in by the end of it?

The key thing to point out is that the narratives you see in the Russian media are very repetitive, and a lot of Russians I think have actually got quite bored with it, and there are some reports suggesting that people are turning away from news. That doesn't mean that they're in opposition to it, but they are now more interested in entertainment programs, for example.

And so you see like lots of narratives are there every day, especially at the moment is this drum roll of constant progress of Russian forces on the front line. So they like to reel off all these villages that they've captured or liberated as they claim. And Ukrainian manpower and equipment that they've destroyed, all these figures are kind of reeled off.

There are other underlying narratives such as the sense of victimhood and that is something that really comes through very strongly in the Russian state media that Russia is not the aggressor in this war and that actually Russia was trying to in some way restore historical justice by launching this invasion and then in fact NATO ganged up on Russia and stopped it from doing what it was doing which was right.

People who served in the war are spoken of as heroes. This idea that Russia is on the side of Good Wild, the West is somehow evil, is something that really comes through, even if some of the claims and disinformation you hear in the media are more kind of fanciful and unbelievable.

How does it work then at BBC monitoring? Are you a Russia specialist or do you look wider and does the team get together and compare notes? I'm just wondering if there's an autocrat's playbook that you see the same kind of tropes and techniques being rolled out across the world from the bits and pieces you're looking at.

Well, we do have a sort of central editorial team. I'm in the Russia team, along with around 15 or 20 colleagues, and we distribute the duties among ourselves. So someone will watch the morning news bulletins. We have people covering the newspapers in the morning and summarizing them.

Throughout the day, we're publishing breaking news. The report you mentioned earlier on about the Russian defense ministry saying that they had shot down five attack arms missiles and at this facility in Brent's region. We will cover that and then we will cover the political talk shows, which last hours throughout the day, as well as covering comments on social media on telegram from war bloggers. So I can't say I have any particular expertise when it comes to other

similar states or am able to offer analysis of how they are similar or different but definitely when it comes to the Russian media I'm doing this day in and day out and have a reasonably good grasp of what is typical for them and what is unusual in terms of rhetoric.

Thanks, I'm tempted to ask, I've just told Roland that I've got one last question, I've actually got two, sorry, I'm tempted to ask, why do you do it? I mean, it is interesting, but it must cost a pretty penny for the BBC to do this. Does this feed into other BBC output?

You know, if you're monitoring, you are the BBC. You're monitoring these outlets, so Russia, for example, in our discussion here. You know, it's not a million miles away that they could say, well, you know, you're just an arm of the state. Obviously, the BBC is funded by the taxpayer, so it's not an independent

organisation. So why do we have BBC monitoring? Do you do your own journalism or is it just because it's making a record for history? Sounds very grand, but I salute your work. Is that what it's for? I think that's a question for someone far above my pay grade.

But we do provide extra insight for the BBC, but also for the, we have, as I said, government and commercial customers, and we're providing open source information to the UK government to give it a greater awareness of what's happening in countries around the world where the UK government might not have the linguistic expertise to keep such a close eye on those countries. We work closely with other teams in the BBC, like BBC Verify and

the Russian service, we have kind of multiple functions, I guess. Thanks. And just last for me, because I do have to give way to my learned friend, Mr. Oliphant, even if he's going to keep saying Atacams. What's been the reaction in Russia to the announcement about this change of US policy over Atacams, Atacams, the big long point of missile things? It's been quite a mixed picture, actually. Some of the commentators are downplaying it and saying, well,

Ukraine has been using missiles of this kind or similar ones on targets inside occupied Ukraine rather than Russia proper. They're saying we've adapted to this and we will have to adapt again. And they're also commentators who are saying, well, you know, they've crossed the red line now. This is it. We need to seriously up the stakes. When you tune into the kind of main programs on state TV, when it's on such a serious topic like this, they stick very close to the official line.

without giving much of their own commentary so they will just repeat what the defence ministry has said, what Demetri Pescov Putin spokesman has said, what the foreign ministry has said. And so far we're saying this, they keep on referring back to comments that Putin has made in the last few months on the subject of Ukraine possibly being allowed to use these weapons.

I've a number of questions lined up. Listen, you're talking briefly there about kind of the freedom of speech and the freedom of space, and you talked about how echomoscopy was shut down and that kind of weird semblance of free speech that used to exist have kind of gone. I'm wondering about whether you think that it exists to a degree

on the right in the Russian media amongst the kind of pro Kremlin crowd and we're all familiar with Igor Strocov was you know dragged off to prison eventually but we've all seen the kind of the dissent amongst pro war telegram channels and so on maybe it's been clamped down on since but I'm wondering whether you ever glimpse what what looks like some kind of you know robust or or serious disagreement on debate on on that side of thing amongst the within the pro war media if you see what I mean

Yeah, it's a really interesting question. Well, throughout this war, there have been setbacks for Russia and the leadership, it sort of has a need to find some scapegoat sometimes. And I think that these voices on the right, some of these military bloggers, for example, are quite useful in that respect, that the anger can be deflected towards certain generals or other figures rather than Putin himself, who is obviously the architect of this whole thing in Ukraine.

They don't tend to criticise Putin personally. They criticise other figures. Anyone linked to Wagner in the past was of course criticising Shoy Gu and Gerasimov very harshly.

But I think that's the key point is that Putin is above criticism, and as long as they maintain that, they are not seen as so much of a threat as figures in the liberal democratic opposition, who Putin seems convinced are being financed and aided by the likes of the CIA and MI6, which I don't think he thinks about the kind of pro-war opposition.

That's interesting. There's another broader point. I mean, obviously you spend a lot of time looking at, I don't know, watching the news and the crazy talk shows and reading the telegrams and channels and stuff. I was wondering if you could put it into a kind of broader context of the Russian media space. And I suppose in the sense that, you know, we're all when news reporters, we're very much focused on the war and so on.

If you were to talk about the broader kind of Russian media space, the average Russian is consuming as far as you can tell. I mean, how much of that is occupied by that kind of stuff? I mean, is it actually all that prominent?

No, that's another really good question because I think what's most striking about Russian TV if you were to come at it as someone from the outside is the sheer amount of airtime that is focused on international news. You tune into these talk shows throughout the day and they very rarely discuss any kind of domestic issues.

The only time they tend to is when President Putin has made some kind of announcement or he's given a press conference or perhaps he's launched some kind of major infrastructure project like a bridge in a city somewhere in Russia. But there's very little attempt to actually get into domestic news. There are certain local websites which cover issues and that's where often you see

reporting on things like men being killed in Ukraine, some kind of local figures perhaps, but in the national news there's very little focus on the domestic and there's a lot of criticism of how people live in the West.

In a way, they're quite effective at using this because in the West, of course, we have a media that is free and is critical often of the government here and other aspects of daily life. And so there will be critical reports that then Russian media can seize on.

And they will then tell their viewers that people in the UK are suffering under the cost of living crisis, or people in Germany are seeing their energy bills go up because they've renounced Russian natural gas supplies. And there won't be any mention of people in Russia suffering under similar issues when

In actual fact, in Russia, inflation is still much higher than it is in most parts of the Western world. And there are plenty of other domestic economic problems that people are faced with in their day-to-day lives that aren't covered in any way by state TV.

And one last thing, if I may, you mentioned just now, and you're talking to Dom, something that you've been doing for a long time, and you have a sense of what's normal messaging and what's unusual. I was wondering if you were able to pick out a couple of examples, maybe the most recent ones, when you've seen some messaging coming out of state-controlled TV that makes you think, that's a bit weird. Why are they doing that? That is not the normal kind of playbook, something's up here.

I remember when Ukraine was having, you know, some major successes in the autumn of 2022 in the war. Up until then, there'd been this kind of these routine updates in the Russian media of how well everything was going. And then suddenly, they started to use this very strange language about trying to explain why things were going wrong, saying things like, we've moved our troops to more beneficial positions on the front.

It was a kind of rare moment when they were forced to admit that things weren't going to plan in a way that they hadn't been up until that point. The nuclear rhetoric, for example, it's quite difficult to say because for some time now some of the major TV

presenters have been issuing these nuclear threats to the West and showing these CGI visuals of the UK being flooded by a nuclear tsunami or the whole East Coast of America being blown to radioactive ashes. One key propagandist put it once.

And that's just to put that in context. That goes back years, right? I mean, you're talking about, is it Demetri Kissilioff with the radioactive ash? I mean, that was 10 years ago or something. Would you say that these are kind of hobby horses that are well worn? Yeah, I mean, really, since 2014, with the annexation of Crimea and

the revolution of dignity in Ukraine when this relations between Russia and the West really soured. That's when you started to see this out in our hostility towards, not only towards Ukraine, but towards the West more generally. And this real boiling over of the rhetoric that the West was the enemy

and that the West was somehow culturally depraved. One thing I haven't mentioned is the constant homophobia you see on Russian state TV. One of the main talk shows actually has a regular segment devoted to this and they will lean into certain controversial issues in the West and say this is how people in the Western living

you don't want to be like that, you know, in Russia we still value our traditions and we don't intend to go that way. Yeah, but these are things that have been mentioned for a long time and when Kissilov said something on Sunday night, for example, in response to Biden's decision, it didn't strike me as something out of the ordinary.

Ukraine the latest currently has a team inside Ukraine. France's Durnley has been assessing the mood on the ground in Kyve on the 1000th day of the full-scale invasion with France's Farrell of the Kyve Independent. They talked about what any future negotiations might look like and what the conundrums will be for Donald Trump's team. Here's their conversation.

Well, Francis Fau, great to see you. This time we're in Kyve, the last time we spoke you were in London at Telegraph Towers. Of course, a lot has happened in that three weeks or so. We arrive on the 1000th day of war. We'll come to that. But first of all, just very interested in your reaction and the general mood here to that decision by Joe Biden yesterday.

Well, Francis Durnley, great to have you with us and King for this exchange of offices and podcasts to continue. When that news came out, I think it was the same day, of course, as this first mass missile strike in a long time, which has now basically caused the first blackouts in a long time. And, you know, other people might have seen it differently, maybe someone who doesn't get that deep into

how there was really going now and what price has been paid for the delays with decisions like this. Maybe someone was raising a glass or something, but at this point, all of us who've been really watching this and watching Ukraine ask for this for a long time, watching

These planes do what they do flying from airfields that could be hit. It's just like a bit almost absurd at this point that it was so late. It was after the election and it was at a point where the battlefield is in the state that it is. And we don't even know how many missiles Ukraine has left to use in this way. And there's also the question of the fact that this was telegraphed for so long.

Russians, we know they prepared. We know they moved planes back from airfields. I saw some satellite imagery yesterday, some analysis about how they've been digging, building big earth and fortresses, little cocoons for each plane. It's just a bit of a almost tragic comical kind of microcosm of the West's policy when it comes to weapons deliveries, permissions, and the price we're paying for it now.

Would you say that that's a fair summary of the way it's being received within the government and among the population here, a general sort of sense of it's too little too late or has there been a morale boost caused by this? I think it's definitely appreciated. I think a lot of the way the government has to talk about this, especially in official circles, when it's something that you've been just begging for over a year.

when we're still hoping for more help, especially before January the 20th. I think they're being very thankful through gritted teeth. We commend the US on this brave decision and so on and so on. But at the end of the day, I think everyone's looking forward at this point to the winter that awaits us and to the next administration that awaits us and how to even navigate that world.

Well, let's move into that territory then. A thousand days of war, as I say, and it does feel like this decision by the Biden administration is in part designed to make sure that Keith holds on to Kursk due to the territorial limitations in the hope that Kursk can be used as a barbelling chip in upcoming negotiations.

We'll get into the negotiation subjects. I know you've got a lot of thoughts on this, but my first question on that is, do you think Ukraine, do you think politicians here, do you think the people are ready for negotiations? A short answer is yes. At this point, the battlefield has gone against Ukraine for long enough that most people, even those who had lived outside the realms of reality and kind of believed the everyday reports of its tough, but stable,

and just a little bit more, and we'll go on to victory and get Crimea back. I think those people have now corrected their views, and at the same time, we see the human cost. It's just more and more settlements that are lost, but more importantly, more and more people, again, still Ukraine's, truly Ukraine's best people.

who are lost in this war, and we see the options on the table. We understand that, for example, under a Trump administration, it's hard to imagine everything turning around dramatically, especially if you really keep a close eye on the war and how it's going. You'll understand that the biggest problem is, and has been for the whole of this year, manpower,

Just having combat effective brigades covering that entire huge front line, and that's not something that there's any silver bullet solution to. And then I don't want to read too much into this, but if you look under post on Instagram by Zelensky or something, for a while people are saying like, you need to finish this, and they've been quite critical of him.

And you know, it is what it is. There's only so much that a country can take when faced against a campaign of pure annihilation from a neighbor that's so much bigger. But within that, of course, there are a lot of questions because the fact that people see freezing the conflict as just a way for Russia to prepare for another invasion, people are aware of that. So there's an immediate wariness there.

That's why, and we talked about this last month, that's why the victory plan started with an invitation to NATO. And it also had this idea of this long-range packet of deterrence. And people here, they are tired, but they do understand that there's a difference between coming out of this, if you do freeze the line, coming out of this with a secure Ukraine or a Ukraine without any guarantee whatsoever.

But it was very interesting because you and I of course were at Chatham House when Solutiony spoke former commander-in-chief of Ukraine's armed forces. And he said that rather interesting line which was that it may be for our sons to solve.

the conundrums of some of that territory and I think that was suggestive of the movement that you've just described within certain political entities in the government and elsewhere in Ukraine that the time has come now to try and freeze things and then maybe at some point they'll be further compensated. That is not going to be seized by military power.

But Francis, I'm really interested in what you think the next step is in even getting to the negotiations phase because we were speaking before we came on air that it's very vague, the conversation around this. I mean, what kind of pattern do you foresee this going? I mean, I remember when Putin a few months ago was talking about negotiations and he was saying that even to begin those negotiations would require an admission from the get-go

that vast amounts of territory, millions of Ukrainians would have to be seeded away to start. Do you think that's the start point or do you think we've moved away from that?

Yeah, I think you're absolutely right about it starts with Russia. And that's my issue with a lot of the reporting and a lot of the speculation about negotiations and conclusion of the war kind of outcomes because it often uses this really vague language, especially the word freezing the conflict. When someone says Trump is going to come in and freeze the conflict or we propose a peace plan that's going to freeze the conflict. When in reality,

The conflict is boiling right now. The front line is moving quicker than it has at any point per week since the first months of the full-scale invasion, when Russia was moving in and taking all that land in the south and the east. And this is what I say. I think I might have even said it back last month, that any question of ending the war first has to start with answering the question, why does Russia stop?

what Ukraine wants and what Ukraine is trying to lobby for and advocate and I'm sure they're really going on this charm offensive with Trump and his team as much as that might have success I don't know about peace through strength like we need to stop them we need to compel them to stop because you don't compel them to stop are you gonna give more of an incentive to stop more of a carrot rather than a stick?

And even then, why would they stop? If they feel the wind in their sails, and they're going forward, and they're taking more land in what they consider to be Russian regions. We're talking about Donetsk, we're talking about Zaparijo Oblast, where another potential large offensive could be brewing. And we're talking about Kherson, where they were humiliated and forced to go back across the river and leave the only main regional capital that they took.

And Putin did say that back in summer that any deal, well, he's mentioned many times that it needs to reflect the realities on the ground. I think he said in summer that it needed to involve not only the seating of the territory that they're already occupying,

but also all of these illegally act annexed new Russian regions, which of course is politically absolutely impossible in Ukraine and it involves literally the transfer of millions of people into Russian occupation in which we know is all about torture, deportations and the elimination of anything Ukrainian.

So that's what you need to first answer the question to. And that's when, I mean, this is what I think Trump and his team will probably come up against very quickly. I think they've probably already had that quick realization that, no, we don't have enough weight to just tell everyone to stop. Hence Marco Rubio's comments that we saw just a few weeks ago where he was talking about, we need to put Ukraine into the strongest military position possible.

But again, it's that going to be something that's feasibly going to be possible with the position as things are and the need from the American's perspective to get negotiations going.

Right, and if we do pivot to looking at Trump, the last thing I would say about Putin is that, yes, even if he feels hard leverage coming down on him, the battlefield going as it is, every week that he delays actually a ceasefire, every month is so much more territory that he's going to get before a so-called

Freezing of the conflict and it might happen that he just comes straight in and says no my Non-negotiable condition is getting all these all these regions and then there's course of course Which actually could go either way it could be a very strong bargaining chip or it could end up being this wild card that only hardens Putin's position and Ukraine's trying to hold on to it as a bargaining chip, but

He, on the other hand, is saying, I'm not going to even come to the table until you let that go. Before we go to the Trump position, I just want to stay on this very briefly. Do you think this is a solvable conundrum in the sense that Putin's position, as you say, there's a complete logic and him carrying on? So you've got a position where the Trump administration is coming in and saying, we want to stop this war. We want talks to begin. And Putin is saying, perhaps privately, but it's suggested in public too, that we want to keep going.

Are we going to be in a situation in a few weeks' time where the Trump administration comes in and says, right, we're ready for talks? And Putin says, no. Where do we go from there? I mean, it doesn't seem to me this is even being contemplated. Exactly. I mean, whether it's solvable or not, we'll have to see. But the first step is actually seeing the conundrum for what it is and talking about it for what it is, rather than just talking vaguely about a peace plan where the conflict is frozen, some peacekeepers come in.

I mean, peacekeepers coming in, that's basically you're asking Putin not only to abandon this momentum that he's got on the battlefield but also we'd like you to also abandon any hopes of taking more of Ukraine later.

and potentially overthrowing the regime, which you claimed was the beginning of the cause for the war anyway. Exactly. So, yes, when it comes to attacking this conundrum and tackling it, it starts with looking at it as it is. And I think at this point, Trump and his team, we have the Rubio's on one hand and the Musk's and the Gaba's on the other. I don't know what's going on there. And that's one of the big variables, actually, in this process.

But I think they have at least realized that this is not going to be easy. And they're looking at their options now. You know, this is where it comes down to crunch time because a lot of people, I think, speculating on negotiations and that that includes a lot of people here in Ukraine, they have this optimistic idea that, well, Trump wants peace at all costs. He's a tough guy and he could do a 180 on Putin and get really tough on him. And if he realizes, say that the conundrum is unsolvable and

Yeah, and bring down all the economic and military leverage that he can. But, you know, he might not do that as well. And so, I think when you're dealing with a leader who exists in a post-truth world, who never, ever takes responsibility for anything, I think the threat that he could walk away from this, and he has a lot of people to blame. He can blame Biden. He can blame Zelensky. He can blame Europe.

and say that, well, this was their problem. I hope that doesn't happen, but it could. So the real question here, and the real diversion or inflection point is between a piece where you convince Putin to stop, and there's some kind of freezing happening.

It might take a while. I think Ukraine could definitely lose, by then, Khurakh of maybe Prakrovsk, maybe some of these cities, because the battlefield will continue to probably get worse for a while, unless Ukraine does well to stabilize it, which is possible. And you could have a Trump that is tough enough on Putin to convince him to stop.

But on the other hand, Aputian, who does potentially see some benefits in stopping as well, maybe he sees that he really can't continue at this rate. Maybe he sees that he would rather kind of curry favor and humor Trump a little bit now so that he can work together with Trump on undermining the liberal order and NATO and so on.

I mean, it sounds vague, but that is the ideological position that a lot of Trump's team and Trump himself have taken, so maybe he sees a long-term benefit there. But whatever happens, it needs to be a Trump which will at least stand up for Ukraine enough.

to make Russia stop, even if it doesn't come with hard security guarantees later, and a Putin who will be ready to listen and ready, at least, to have those arguments play some influence on him. I think you've laid out the position at 1,000 days of war, very clearly, Francis. Just one other question that I have going back to the mood here in Kyiv.

particularly among politicians, I hear rumours, and this is, as I say, emphasised that word, that already politicians here are thinking about elections, and that's going to be one of the things that I'm looking into whilst I'm here. Is that fair that politicians are already beginning to look at there being some sort of peace and therefore elections beginning and the post-war future? And if so, what does that look like?

When I hear about politicians thinking about elections, when I hear about anyone thinking about elections, I sometimes, my reaction is, well, I hope you know something that I don't. I hope that you're pretty sure that this will end soon with a stable Ukraine in which it will be possible to hold elections, where Russia hasn't set up a puppet state or something like that.

Politicians are always going to think about elections. They're always going to think about the next step. But I just wonder how well-informed those kind of thoughts are at the moment. But it's fascinating. It's going to be a crazy, crazy time internally because there are so many big questions.

that are going to need a reckoning and people bringing up things that they wouldn't have brought up during martial law and during war time. It's very hard to predict, I think, the political climate here. I think, first of all, it's a question of who has the intentions, who has political ambitions. I don't know what your impression was of Xaluzhni, but I don't really believe that

He doesn't seem to strike me as the guy who's going to come out and run for president, although people say that he could be a figurehead for some different power. I've heard all sorts of things. Of course, Poroshenko hasn't stopped being a politician for one second. The former president let people treat him with a lot of suspicion.

But then there are also these kind of newer figures, these like big military volunteers and thought leaders. People think they could run. And of course the military itself. And that's a big question of who will try and capture the military votes or just the military political ideology and what that will even look like. Will it be kind of more far right or more big 10 trying to capture as many people? Will there be some kind of more

Not pro-Russian, but more re-consilitary, populist kind of provocateur. They'd been lying to us the whole time and so on and so on. It's going to be a very difficult time because elections aside, the one big question for Ukraine as soon as the ceasefire comes, what do you do with martial law? I mean, you need to get rid of martial law to have elections which everyone wants, but that means you need to let most of the army go.

you need to let them go home, and then the second question, do you start letting men leave the country? Eventually, that internal upheaval could stabilize, and you could have any government, and hopefully you had still a lot of flows of military and financial support, and you really start preparing for the potential of a second invasion. But immediately,

if martial law is cancelled and if people are starting to be laid out of the country, you have immediate weakening of Ukraine's capacity to defend itself. And I'm not sure if Putin already has his eye on that or he'd rather wait out a Trump term so as not to just spit in Trump's face, but it's going to be really tough.

I think you've just hit the nail on the head as to why those who think, oh, this is all be over in a few months time. It's for the birds, isn't it? Because root feasibly, it's not going to be in a position where you're going to have security guarantees in place, where you potentially have European troops on the ground that would enable martial law to be able to end in the Ukrainian army to be disbanded. And this is going to take a very, very long time. You've laid out the conundrum perfectly, but Francis, thank you. Is there anything else that should be on our minds whilst we're in Ukraine?

It's just great that you're here taking the pulse because this is really, I think, at first, when the elections happened in the US, there was a lot of emotional reaction going in different directions. But now, I think, once we see the appointments to the team, and once we really start thinking about what these negotiations look like, people understand. And we have, you know, missile attacks coming in now. People understand that this is really crunch time.

It's easy to think whether you're here in Ukraine as a normal civilian or you're someone abroad who is involved in supporting Ukraine. It's easy to think that now, well, it's going to be over soon. We don't know how, but there's not much left we can do to influence the situation and you kind of

Let go and just see what happens, get ready to meet whatever winter brings. But on the other hand, I would disagree. I would say that a lot still depends on those ordinary people who are part of this struggle, whether it's volunteering and donating, fighting, whatever, because there's still a front line. There's still battles going on every day and their intense as ever.

and where those battles are happening, how quickly the Russians are moving forward, and how stable or unstable Ukraine's defences is going to have a crucial impact on negotiations as well. It's very easy for a war to start, but much harder to see how one ends. Francis Farrell of the Keep Independent, thank you very much for your time. Always a pleasure, Francis.

Thanks, Francis. Let's start drawing to a close there. Final thoughts, please. Roland, can I come to you first, please? What would you like to leave our listeners with? Oh, gosh, now you're putting me on the spot. Shall I talk about some more? Oh, no, no, the Briense thing. I wrote a piece yesterday very quickly about how the release of the weapons, which I won't dare to mispronounce again, which fly very fast and come from America,

You know, it was too little too late and that it being restricted to curse didn't make sense because there's this huge arc of targets, you know, in places like Ijevsk and Voronezh and indeed Brienzk. I mean, then bang, they apparently hit something in Brienzk. So I might have to revisit that and I think if your second preposition, I suppose, is right, Don, that actually, you know, there was a little bit of misdirection here from the side of the Americans and

and the Ukrainians and an actual fact. This is not going to be strictly limited to Kursk region. Perhaps this is much more significant or slightly more significant development and deployment than it looked like at first. But Zelensky says, you know, the missiles will speak for themselves. In all our years reporting, and especially on things like Russia and Ukraine, you don't really listen to the words so much as you judge the actions and the results and the facts. So let's wait and see.

Yes, indeed. One thing is, I wouldn't want to be driving over the Kirschbridge right now. Anyway, Francis, as I guess, thank you so much for today. Absolutely fascinating stuff. Could have gone on for a little longer. Please do come back. But as I guess for today, would you like the final thoughts?

Just on the subject of the Russian media, really, since it's what we've been talking about, I think what we've seen in Ukraine in the last two and a half years or so just goes to show the power of information and how Russia has been able to mobilize its society in such a way that at the very least people are willing to accept and tolerate what's happening in their neighboring state, a kind of country which

until not that long ago was seen as fraternal and a country in which many Russians have relatives. Without the kind of the ground being prepared in terms of the information flow being received by Russians, I don't think that this could have happened in the way that it has done.

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