Conscription crackdown: Ukraine gets tougher
Ukrainecast
BBC
4.7 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 19 January 2024
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With little progress being made on either side of the front line, Ukraine is also facing a challenge when it comes to the recruitment of new soldiers. A bill to increase the number of people who would be eligible to be conscripted recently stalled in the Ukrainian parliament. Victoria and Vitaly speak to Lily, who hasn’t seen her husband for nearly two years, after he volunteered to fight at the start of the war. She’s calling on the government to put a much shorter time limit on how long soldiers can serve. And Veronika Melkozerova, from Politico Ukraine, explains how many more soldiers are needed in Ukraine and what the situation is with the Russian army.
Today’s episode is presented by Victoria Derbyshire and Vitaly Shevchenko. It was made by Keiligh Baker. The producers were Arsenii Sokolov and Ivana Davidovic. The technical producer was Matt Hewitt. The series producer is Lucy Boast. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham. Email Ukrainecast@bbc.co.uk with your questions and comments. You can also send us a message or voice note via WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram to +44 330 1239480
You can join the Ukrainecast discussion on Newscast’s Discord server here: tinyurl.com/ukrainecastdiscord
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:04.5 | Hello, it's 695 days since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. |
| 0:10.3 | As we approached the second anniversary of this war, President Zelensky says he wants to avoid a frozen conflict. |
| 0:18.5 | And we can do it. |
| 0:20.5 | Ladies and gentlemen, this year must be decisive can freezing the war in Ukraine be its end. I don't want to settle for the truism that any frozen |
| 0:39.0 | conflict will eventually reignite. |
| 0:43.0 | Well, you could already argue that the conflict is frozen because the front line is pretty |
| 0:47.7 | static, we know that some foreign money has stalled, and there are problems at home when it comes to the numbers of people who |
| 0:54.2 | Zelensky's government need to fight on behalf of Ukraine. We're going to be |
| 0:57.9 | looking at the challenges when it comes to recruitment and mobilization of |
| 1:02.3 | troops and do we know Vitali? to recruitment and mobilisation of troops. |
| 1:03.8 | And do we know Vitali, specifically, |
| 1:06.4 | how many people have been called up |
| 1:09.1 | to fight on behalf of Ukraine? |
| 1:10.8 | We don't know the exact number Victoria. We think somewhere in the region of half a |
| 1:16.9 | million Ukrainians are serving, but the Ukrainian government is painfully aware that it's at risk of running out of people |
| 1:29.7 | to fight. |
| 1:30.7 | As it happens over the weekend I've been chatting to a few Ukrainian women who are here |
| 1:37.6 | in the UK as refugees, but they've been to home for Christmas and they told me that the whole mood music in Ukraine has changed. |
| 1:50.0 | It's kind of grim and a lot of men who are not in the army yet they are afraid of being |
| 1:58.0 | mobilised and think twice or thrice about popping up to the shops or going on a journey by car because they think |
| 2:09.4 | they can be mobilised and sent to the front lines which is a terrifying prospect for a lot of them. |
... |
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