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00:00Well, it does seem to have been Kiev that was particularly targeted in the early hours
00:04of this morning, though Kharkiv was also hit and some other places around Ukraine.
00:08Fifty-eight projectiles in total, if you count the rockets and cruise missiles.
00:15Quite a lot of ballistic missiles were fired this morning.
00:18They're among the hardest to shoot down, yet the air force is claiming to have shot down
00:23the majority of them.
00:24And they're saying that the damage that has been seen around the capital
00:28is due to fragments falling rather than direct hits.
00:32I think that's probably consonant with the level of damage,
00:35because apart from some places that are just identified as non-residential buildings,
00:41it's a college where there was a fire.
00:43That's nice on the first day when kids and university students are resuming their studies.
00:50A metro station where a lot of people in Kiev take shelter, but it was only lightly damaged.
00:56Quite significant damage has been suffered by a mosque and Islamic cultural center.
01:02And that's quite interesting.
01:04And if you remember that the largest Muslim community in Ukraine are the Crimean Tatars,
01:08who are absolutely opposed to Russia's occupation of Crimea.
01:13The ones who long to go back there and for Ukraine to take back over.
01:19Refat Shabarov, who is the head of the Mejlis, the main political organization of the Crimean
01:24Tatars, said this morning that these attacks were proof, yet once again,
01:29that Russia is the incarnation of evil.
01:33Gulliver, as you're talking there, we've got a couple of quotes coming in from Vladimir Putin.
01:37In fact, Putin saying Russia will deal with Ukrainian bandits in the Kursk region,
01:42obviously referring to that incursion into Russia there.
01:46Also saying, Vladimir Putin, saying that Russia is advancing in the Donetsk region
01:51at a speed not seen in a long time.
01:54And there's no doubt, is there, that Russia is having some successes at the moment in Ukraine.
02:01Oh, absolutely.
02:02Every day they take a few more villages, mostly to the east and southeast of Pokrovsk,
02:07this key city that they've got in their sights in Donetsk region.
02:11Volodymyr Zelensky a few days ago tried to say that the Russian offensive there had slowed down.
02:16That's clearly not the case.
02:17Even if the Ukrainian authorities want to try to put a more positive spin on this,
02:22too many people know people who are fighting there and know exactly what's going on.
02:25And there are a lot of accusations flying of mismanagement,
02:28poor communication between brigades, Ukrainian brigades,
02:32who have too little experience being deployed in this direction,
02:36whilst more experienced brigades are being deployed to the north,
02:40to this offensive in Kursk in Russia.
02:42But this morning I got a message which echoes something that I also saw
02:48published by the experts at the Institute for the Study of War.
02:51A soldier I know who's fighting, defending that Pokrovsk direction
02:54wrote to me saying things have got a bit better.
02:57It looks like the Russians have redeployed some of their reserves to defend Kursk.
03:02So if Putin's now saying that he is really determined to kick the Russians out of that,
03:06the Ukrainians, I'm sorry, out of that part of Kursk region in Russia that they've occupied,
03:11perhaps he is finally deciding that he has to devote more military resources
03:15to defending those Russian territories.
03:18That's certainly what the Ukrainians are very much hoping.
03:21They're hoping that, A, the Russians will have to deploy more military resources to defend Russia,
03:26and B, that they will simply run out of steam before they get to Pokrovsk city centre,
03:32that they will basically flounder on the outskirts of the city industrial ground there.
03:36I've heard that hope expressed by numerous different soldiers.
03:40So we'll see how it pans out in the weeks to come.