What’s happening on the front-line?
Ukrainecast
BBC
4.7 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2024
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How significant are Russia’s recent gains on the battlefront?
Karolina Hird, from the Institute for the Study of War, explains the current situation on the “dynamic” front-line, what a good year would look like for Ukraine and why the fall of Avdiivka isn’t as strategically important for Russia as it may seem.
And we hear from one Ukrainian soldier on why he decided to sign up to fight just six months ago.
Today’s episode is presented by Victoria Derbyshire and Vitaly Shevchenko.
The producers were Keiligh Baker, Clare Williamson, Ivana Davidovic and Arsenii Sokolov. The technical producer was Mike Regaard. The series producer is Tim Walklate. The senior news editor is Jonathan Aspinwall.
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 734 days since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. |
| 0:10.0 | And on Sunday, President Zelensky, for the first time ever mentioned the reported number of Ukrainian |
| 0:18.1 | soldiers killed during the full-scale invasion. Thirticht Agna. |
| 0:24.0 | 31,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed in this war. |
| 0:27.0 | 31,000 Ukrainians, which hurts us a lot. |
| 0:30.0 | But I cannot say how many wounded we have, because Russia will know how many people we have left on the battlefield. |
| 0:36.5 | Tens of thousands of civilians have died in the occupied territories. |
| 0:40.5 | We know about tens of thousands, but I don't know how many of them died, how many were |
| 0:45.9 | killed, how many were murdered, tortured, how many were deported. |
| 0:56.4 | So why do you think he's put a number on it and those are just soldiers that's not anybody else family civilians etc that's just members of the military yeah |
| 1:00.8 | of course people want to know this kind of figure it's a huge figure it works |
| 1:07.1 | out at 42 Ukrainian soldiers killed per day on average. However, it needs to be taken with a certain degree of |
| 1:16.7 | skepticism because loss estimates are routinely used by worrying sides for psychological warfare purposes. |
| 1:26.6 | The message being we are doing much better than our enemy. |
| 1:31.4 | So it could potentially be many more than 31,000. |
| 1:33.4 | Much higher and President Zelensky claimed that Russia lost five times as many soldiers. |
| 1:41.6 | Well as the war in Ukraine now enters its third year we are going to spend this episode |
| 1:48.2 | focusing on what exactly has been happening and what could happen on the front line. |
| 1:54.0 | This is Ukraine Kast. |
| 1:56.0 | Ukraine Kast from BBC. |
| 1:59.0 | Ukraine is an epicenter of unbearable heartache and pain. |
... |
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