The mayor of Bakhmut: a town that no longer exists
Ukrainecast
BBC
4.7 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 30 April 2024
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ukraine's longest-serving official on death, exile and Vladimir Putin...
Victoria and Vitaly speak to Oleksiy Reva, the mayor of Bakhmut, who has been in his position since 1990.
The town he runs was the focus of one of the bloodiest battles of the war so far, and is now mostly in ruin.
He discusses losing friends and colleagues, what he’d like to say to Vladimir Putin and his hopes to one day return to Bakhmut.
Today’s episode is presented by Victoria Derbyshire and Vitaly Shevchenko. The producers were Arsenii Sokolov, Cordelia Hemming and Elliot Ryder. The technical producer was Philip Bull. The series producer is Tim Walklate. 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. |
| 0:04.6 | Hello, it's 797 days since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. |
| 0:10.1 | And today we're talking to the mayor of Bakmut. |
| 0:13.0 | This rockets destroyed our hopes. |
| 0:17.0 | Our hopes for a bright future because |
| 0:20.0 | 2022 and 2023 were supposed to be successful years for us, but rockets destroyed it for us. |
| 0:28.0 | Bahmut was obviously a Ukrainian town in East and the Netsk region which was almost completely destroyed by Russian forces. |
| 0:37.0 | And the Alexia River, its mayor, is the longest serving elected politician or official in Ukraine. |
| 0:44.9 | 70 years old. |
| 0:47.1 | 70 years old. |
| 0:48.1 | He's been in charge of Bahmut since 1990 and now he's in exile because... So that's before Ukraine's independent, is it? Yes, it became independent |
| 0:59.7 | and that's true and he can't be in Bahmut obviously right now and he heads the Bahmut |
| 1:07.2 | government in exile in the central Ukrainian city of Nipro and I do remember Vitali when we first started talking about that because of the fighting there, |
| 1:18.0 | you were telling us how it was famous for its salt and also its sparkling wine. |
| 1:23.4 | Well, absolutely. |
| 1:24.4 | Artemiski as it was known was produced in Bahmut because of its gypsum mines, |
| 1:31.7 | derelict gypsum mics, where the temperature and the humidity are exactly |
| 1:37.2 | the salt you need to ferment your sparkling wine. |
| 1:41.2 | And also nearby there were salt mines and both the sparkling |
| 1:45.7 | wine and the salt works ported all over the world. So yeah it was a reasonably |
| 1:50.2 | famous town as well, but if you talk to people from Bahmut, |
| 1:55.0 | Koes is the word they keep using, leafy, beautiful, and very comfortable to live. |
... |
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