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entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. Hello and welcome to the Battleground podcast with me, Saul David and Patrick Bishop.

Well, later we're going to hear from veteran war reporter Julius Strauss about the conflict

from the Russian perspective. But first, let's have a

quick update from Kerskoblast in Russia, where Ukraine's military operation enters its third week,

and amazingly is still advancing, still gaining a little bit of ground. According to the Ukrainian

commander-in-chief Colonel General Alexander Sersky, his forces have advanced between

28 and 35 kilometers into Russian territory, that's obviously more than 20 miles, and now

control 93 settlements and 1,263 square kilometers. They are also, notes Serski, pressuring Russian

forces to redeploy units from the

front line in Ukraine, which is, of course, what we assume was one of the drivers for the operation

in the first place. The overall aim, says Sersky, echoing comments made by President Zelensky

earlier in the week, is to establish a buffer zone in Russian territory to prevent Russian forces

from shelling Sumil blast and, too, as he put it, outpace the efforts of the Russian forces at

large. A third rationale, advanced by Zelensky, was to replenish our exchange fund,

referring to the hundreds of Russians taken prisoner in Kursk and now available to swap

for some of the 8,000 Ukrainian POWs held in Russia. Yes, and the Ukrainian general staff added

a little more detail on Tuesday when they noted that Ukrainian forces are exhausting the

...