← Ukraine: The Latest
Ukraine: The Latest
Russia ‘violates’ Ukraine’s ceasefire offer, killing 27 in air strikes & ‘paranoid’ Putin bans staff from using phones amid assassination fears
00:35:14
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- [00:04]
Antonia Langford
The telegraph.
- [00:10]
David Knowles
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.
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James Kilner
Foreign.
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Francis Dernley
I'm Francis Dernley and this is Ukraine. The latest Today Putin gives his answer to Zelensky's offer of an open ended ceasefire, a brutal attack on civilians which killed 20, including 12 in a single strike. What does this mean for the likelihood of a ceasefire over Moscow's victory day parade? Then later we hear the latest from Kyiv and hear what's going on in Russia and how Putin has banned staff from using phones amid further assassination fears. Bravery takes you through the most unimaginable
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James Kilner
hardships to finally reward you with victory.
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Francis Dernley
Russia does not want peace. If I'm President I will have that war set settled in one day.
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Antonia Langford
24 hours.
- [01:30]
James Kilner
We are with you. Not just today or tomorrow, but for a hundred years.
- [01:40]
Francis Dernley
Nobody's going to break us.
- [01:42]
James Kilner
We're strong. We're Ukrainians.
- [01:45]
Francis Dernley
It's Wednesday the 6th of May, 4 years and 71 days since the full scale invasion began. And today I'm joined by journalist Antonia Langford, live in Kyiv and our Russia analyst James Kilner. But first, the most significant update of the past 24 hours. Yesterday, on the same day as Russia opened its pavilion at Labiennale to present a civilised face to the world, it presented another to Kyiv's offer of an open ended ceasefire, unleashing a massive missile attack against Ukraine's civilians. As Dom spoke about yesterday, Russia had said it would hold a ceasefire on May 8th and 9th to mark the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany, an opportunity to ensure that its victory day parade in Moscow was spared any embarrassing interruptions. President Zelensky had responded by saying his country would observe an open ended ceasefire from May 6 at midnight and Ukraine would act symmetrically from that point on. So only responding to Russian attacks. Within hours of our broadcast, a massive wave of attacks hit Ukraine prior to midnight and beyond, too seemingly rejecting the ceasefire proposal completely. The first wave of attacks apparently before midnight, though I think we should question whether the time had any influence on Putin's actions as we'll come to killed more than 20 people across the country. Authorities in Zaporizhzhia said 12 had died in a single attack, which President Zelensky described as a cynical terrorist strike. At least another 39 people were injured overall, including one who's in a critical condition and seven who hospitalised in the evening. The Russian scumbags also launched attacks on Dnipro. Zelenskyy said as of now, four people were reportedly killed there. My condolences to the families and loved ones. It is utter cynicism to ask for a ceasefire in order to hold propaganda celebrations while carrying out such missile and drone strikes every single day leading up to it. Russia could cease fire at any moment and this would stop the war and our respons. Peace is needed and real steps are needed to achieve it. Ukraine will act in kind. Andrei Sibya, Ukraine's foreign Minister, said this shows again that Russia rejects peace and its fake calls for ceasefire on May 9 have nothing to do with diplomacy. Putin only cares about military parades, not human lives. Five were also killed in Krematorsk in the east. We understand there's also footage from Sumy in the northeast where a kindergarten was reportedly hit. It's important to underscore here that the attacks continued past midnight, as I say, hence why we should reject the notion, I think, that this time had any bearing on the attacks at all. This shouldn't come as a surprise, of course. It certainly hasn't led to widespread condemnation from world leaders. But nonetheless, this is yet another example we should chalk up of Ukraine offering a ceasefire proposal and it being publicly rejected by Moscow in the most brutal possible terms. Now there are claims filtering through of a Russian thermal plant burning in Orenburg, southwest Russia, and that a Ukrainian flamingo missile slammed into Cheboksary. What isn't clear is whether these attacks took place before midnight or were a response to Russian attacks, or indeed, if these attacks actually took place earlier in the week. Our graphics team have just put together a helpful map showing the sites of recent Ukrainian strikes on Russia, which we'll link to in the description. If you're watching the video version, you can see it now. And it really underscores how nowhere is safe. Almost every part of Russia's west and south has been struck at some point. The Ukrainian General Staff reported yesterday that Kyiv's hit against the Tuapsi oil refinery in Krasnodar Krai alone caused over $300 million worth of damage. What we don't know is whether this will lead to any attempt by Ukraine to disrupt the Victory Day parade in Moscow later this week, or what remains of it, stripped, of course, of all of its military equipment, as we reported. Despite what's happened, they may calculate there would still be risks for Kyiv in seeking to do so, we know that air defence has been pulled back from many places to Moscow, so any attacks may not succeed, for one, but especially because perhaps of a political risk of potential potentially being seen as having broken a ceasefire, which we know Putin spoke about with Trump over the phone. Now, Speaking of the US, the State Department has just approved a potential $370 million sale of military equipment to Kyiv, including extended range joint direct attack munition systems. The main contractor for that deal will be Boeing. Now, that forms part of the $400 million aid package finally released by the Pentagon after months of delays, as we reported. But as we've seen, with the delays expected to the Pearl initiative, as we discussed yesterday, thanks to the war in Iran, there will be question marks now over whether all of these orders will ultimately be fulfilled on time. In another positive development, though, following the dreadful news from overnight and this morning, EU ministers have now formally voted through for the bloc to formally join the Council of Europe court that will prosecute Russia's leaders for the war. This is that special tribunal we've talked about recently set up to prosecute Russia for the same crime of aggression that Nazi German leaders were found guilty of in the Nuremberg Trials. This will, as we've discussed, really matter. It will be a constant presence whenever Moscow is talked about in the years ahead. Even if the war ends, this will make it an impossibility for a deal to be struck that invalidates the crimes committed in a legal sense. Although, as you'll have heard reiterated in my recent interview with one of the heads of the Ukraine inquiry at the un, under international law, war crimes can never be invalidated by any peace deals. But that hasn't stopped the Russians from trying to insert those clauses into the proposals we discussed some months ago. Now, just lastly, before we hear from Antonia in Kyiv, one major military drill ended. The French led one that we mentioned last week and another has begun, this time an exercise known as Spring Storm 2026. It will last for nearly a month and at its peak will involve over 12,000 soldiers from Estonia and allied nations, including France, the UK and Latvia. Its goal is to practice the planning and execution of defensive operations in cooperation between the Estonian division and its allies in the simulated conditions of conventional warfare. This is again a significant step given how recently we've been looking at these exercises taking place and in the manner of some kind of breaking of Article 5 or the possible probing of the borders of NATO. So an interesting development and one, of course, we'll bring you updates on. But let's go to Antonia now in Kyiv for the latest from there. Antonia, you've worked on several stories for the Telegraph this week, and we'll come to a couple of them in a moment. But first of all, just want to get your sense in the Ukrainian capital about the prospect of any ceasefire this week. Are people optimistic there, or is it still the same old picture?
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Antonia Langford
Well, I would say if anyone did believe that Russia would uphold the ceasefire that Zelenskyy had proposed, as you mentioned, they were probably fairly rapidly disabused of this notion. Although obviously it's not uncommon for Russia to target and kill civilians. This level of civilian bloodshed in one day is extremely stark, and I think for everyone demonstrates Moscow's attitude towards suspending the fighting. But I guess more broadly, I would say, in terms of the overall mood, it's relatively bright in the sense that, you know, there's certainly an impression here that Russia is on the back foot. They've been very anxious about a possible attack on the Victory Day Parade. And I think the attack on the Mosfilm tower, very close to the Kremlin in Moscow, also kind of illustrated this potential vulnerability. I think it's stark as well that Ukraine is obviously regularly intercepting around 90% of the hundreds of drones launched at its cities almost nightly, despite talk about air defence shortages. And I think people have found it pretty symbolic that of what seems like a pretty small number of drones, one of them did manage to hit kind of so close to the seat of Russian power. And then, yeah, I mean, if we talk about the Victory Day Parade, for example, obviously the decision, for example, not to display military hardware is extremely symbolic for people here in that sort of. In 2008, Putin had actually said that he would start displaying the hardware as a kind of symbol or a way of showing or proving to the rest of the world that Russia was capable of protecting its people. And so this very kind of neat symbolism of, oh, now we're going to stop kind of displaying it, what does that mean? I think has actually hit home quite a lot here. And obviously, this kind of sense that Moscow may be scrambling maybe on the back foot, is always going to be welcomed.
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Francis Dernley
Well, you mentioned there that extraordinary raid on the Moscow skyline, as it were, and you wrote a piece that has some interesting graphics showing just how close to, as you say, the center of power that attack was. But you've written another piece for the paper, which I wanted us to focus on together, Antonio. And this is looking at a recent intelligence dossier that was released, looking at, well, Putin's Daughter Day, really, and his mentality at the moment. And James, as we'll hear, I'm sure more about later on, has been talking about the increased paranoia within Moscow of late, but this is a story really about, on a day to day basis, how he's even banning using his staff from mobile phones in his presence. I mean, just tell us about what this dossier shows.
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Antonia Langford
Yeah, so this is apparently a European intelligence dossier, which was provided to a number of outlets, including Russian opposition outlets. And also a variant of it is in CNN and the Financial Times, and they have a lot of very colorful and interesting details. The commonalities are that Vladimir Putin, as you mentioned, has now banned his staff from using mobile phones and ordered that surveillance systems be installed in their homes. Particularly it mentions in the homes of cooks, bodyguards and photographers. Putin is also apparently believed to spend increasing amounts of time sort of hunkered down in bunkers, obsessing over military developments. And that I found particularly interesting, actually, that kind of idea, which was in the Financial Times piece, that he's become increasingly cut off from civilian affairs. And obviously there has been kind of a certain amount of domestic upheaval recently, which possibly could be attributed in part to this detachment. It also says that he and his family no longer frequent their favored residences in the Moscow region. And Valdai, which we've obviously heard a lot about before. Before, but tend to take refuge in underground shelters. It mentions, particularly in the Krasnodar region, for weeks at a time. So, yeah, there's this idea that he's holding kind of daily, incredibly detailed meetings with officials to talk about small settlements that are being fought over in Ukraine, whereas he's only kind of speaking to his civilian officials maybe once every few weeks or a few months, which is very interesting. And meanwhile, kind of state media are being forced to, to publish this kind of canned footage of him meeting with officials to produce this illusion of normality. So a lot of very interesting details there. And I think the overall impression that the article gives similarly to what we've just been talking about with the strike in Moscow is maybe a sense that the mounting strain from this war is potentially becoming unsustainable. And obviously there is a hope that it's slipping beyond the Kremlin's grasp and that this is a symptom of that.
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Francis Dernley
Hmm, It's a really fascinating piece. And the bit that you've just highlighted, Antonio, is the moment in it that really stuck with me as well, which is just how much attention Putin, if this report is true, seems to be giving to the war. So 70% of his time running the war and the other 30% meeting with somebody like the president of Indonesia is what one source tells the outlet related to this dossier. So extraordinary. And if that is true, then we're sort of at Hitler levels of obsession with what's going on the battlefield. And yet that begs the question is how on earth can he think that the war is going well from his perspective, given that the spring offensive seemingly has got nowhere and the casualty figures have increased. So it begs the question whether what he is seeing in these briefings is accurate or are his generals giving him intelligence which you know is more favorable and suggests that things are going better than they are? Because one would assume prior to this dossier it had been quite possible that he would not be giving as much attention to the war as we might expect, and therefore any slow progress might be forgiven of his generals. But if he's obsessing over in this level of detail, then the opposite would be true. So a really, really fascinating piece. I know you've done reporting before, Antonio, I remember for our paper about sort of the places that Putin is staying. And so if he's now resorting to underground bunkers, what does that tell us?
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Antonia Langford
Yeah, it's interesting. There obviously has been for a long time talk of this kind of mounting paranoia. And obvious, obviously we've reported before on kind of the idea of identical offices across different residences. But I think this idea that he's not even visiting them anymore does potentially pretend something quite bad for him. On what you were just saying about commanders kind of misrepresenting battlefield information as well, I think that's also been such a common trope. So when it comes to, for example, commanders misrepresenting information about what's happening on the battlefield, I noticed in the, I think Financial Times piece as well, this mention of the fact that Putin also hasn't visited a military facility this year. And that's despite the fact that there were a bunch of highly publicized visits in late 2025 in which he very performatively donned these olive green fatigues and went to go and speak to different military officials claiming these incredible victories over Ukrainian strongholds. And the fact that he's not doing that anymore, not claiming to visit command posts, although it was potentially always spurious, maybe also does speak to this kind of like he may be obsessed with the war and he may be having these kind of very in depth meetings with officials about it, but he's potentially not getting any kind of stream of reliable information And I remember there have also been some interesting reports in Russian media. Actually, there was an interview with a deserter who said that when he was serving, there was a lot of pressure on him to fabricate maps to hand to his higher ups that would then be handed on to Putin. So I think that's always a theme, but it's certainly interesting to see it in this context.
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Francis Dernley
Well, thanks very much, Antonia, for your time, and we'll hear from you and your final thoughts in a moment. But this feels like the perfect moment to bring in our Russia analyst, James Kilner. I don't know if we're going to be talking about cucumbers today, but let's, let's start with the most important subject matter of the moment. Of course, these dreadful attacks on Ukraine, the rejection of a ceasefire. And there are, of course, open questions about whether there is going to be a ceasefire upheld by the, the Ukrainians on Victory Day. And so we start there, James, Victory Day parade. What's the latest on this? What's the mood in Moscow about it?
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James Kilner
Right, okay. Well. Hi, Francis, nice to be back on as ever. Yeah, the Victory Day Parade. We talked about this a lot. This is very important, this story. This is Putin's annual propaganda event of the year is also a very good opportunity for us as outsiders to take a look at the psyche of the Kremlin and see where they are this year. They're betraying all these paranoia signs. We've had a very harsh clampdown on mobile Internet connections inside Russia. There's reports of virtually no signal at all in and around Moscow, obviously causing huge inconvenience. There's lots of reports as well about extra air defense systems being planted around Moscow, around Russ Square. The atmosphere, I'd say, is so different from last year, the 85th anniversary when Putin really invited Tier 1 level foreign dignitaries to stand with him inside Red Square watching the parade. It's completely different this year, for a start. And I confirm, I've seen photographs of the practice of the build up to the parade and there are going to be no vehicles. We've been talking about this. Previously on the Port. It's the first time since 2008 there have been no vehicles, no tanks, no missiles parading through Red Square. So that in itself is a very paired back parade. The vision of soldiers alone, you know, suggests a weakened military, all this sort of thing. And then you have the leaders in, three leaders confirmed coming into Moscow for the parade to stand next to Putin. Last year, like I said, you had xi, you had Several other high profile guys this year is a very sort of anemic tier 2, tier 3 level. You've got Lukashenko from Belarus, you got to Kiev, the Kazakh president and you got Sade Japadov, he's the Kyrgyz president. They're the only three turning up. It's like the usual suspects. So we are looking at a very far back May Day parade on Saturday, really showing off Russia, Kremlin and Putin's fear of a Ukrainian attack, as we saw on, I think it was Monday morning, long range Ukrainian drone slip through the increasingly hardcore tight Russian cordon of anti drone jamming equipment and air defense systems and hit a high rise block only sort of a few miles from the Kremlin from Red Square. So Moscow is very, very worried about this and it's going to be very interesting to see how quickly they whiz through the parade, I'd say on Saturday and how it goes down.
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Francis Dernley
Well, thanks James for that. It is going to be fascinating to observe this and indeed the preparations beforehand. So we'll continue to bring everybody updates about that. But James, I imagine it was quite an exciting weekend for you. I mean, I imagine every weekend for James Kilner is an exciting one, but particularly exciting with the events at the summit in Armenia, a place that you of course observe very closely. There are obviously multiple summits we should be talking about, not least Meloni's visit to Azerbaijan, which we've not touched on yet this week. But first of all, I just have to ask for your reaction to the pretty extraordinary scenes there.
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James Kilner
Yeah, well, yeah, I'm sorry your podcast has to suffer. My interest in the south caucuses in Central Asia, I do think they are good barometers about where we are and what's going on in a sort of slightly wider diplomatic context directly linked to the war in Ukraine. So we've had two summits now in succession. In Yerevan, capital of Armenia, we had the European Political Community Summit and we had a bilateral EU Armenia summit. The following following date on May 4 was the European Political Community summit. This was the eighth iteration of this project. This is a European Council project to really increase the diplomatic outreach of Europe around its fringes. In 2023, it was held in Moldova. So this is not the first time it's been held in a former Soviet country. But this sort of step change for Armenia from being a staunch Russian ally. So hosting this European Political Community Summit is remarkable and the change has happened very quickly. We're talking in the last two or three years. It was only really in mid-2024, when European and US senior European and US diplomats started visiting Yerevan in the hope that they could really entrench an increasingly anti Russia sentiment amongst the elite there. Armenia is still a member of the Eurasian Economic Union. It's a Kremlin economic group, is still a member of the csco, a Kremlin based security group. And yet here we are in Yellowban, Nicole Pashinyan, the Prime Minister, hosting, I think there's 47 leaders or 47 countries represented at this summit. And then the next day hosting the first bilateral EU Armenia summit where the EU was pledging to back his vision of bringing Armenia into the European Union, pledging huge amounts of money, support for two year programs, countering Russian propaganda, etc. Etc. This is a country which still hosts a major Russian military base. In Gyumri, the second city, about three hours drive from Yerevan. There's still a base with about 2,000 soldiers there. Until I think it was last year, Russian soldiers still guarded the Armenian borders and were present in Armenia's main airport. All this sort of thing. So the step change is remarkable. And you know, viewed from the Kremlin, they must be coming out in hives looking at this sort of project, how this has unfolded. And this is all because of Putin's priority of his war in Ukraine and also his arrogance around how he dealt with, well, he thought they were going to be staunch allies in South Caucasus and his arrogance really undermined that. One of the guests of honor was Zelensky. He turned up in Armenia on Sunday and he had been to Azerbaijan, neighboring Azerbaijan, only a week and a half earlier, 10 days earlier, again, the optics, and we discussed this last time I was on the optics of Zelensky popping up in the south caucuses is remarkable. It's unthinkable. A couple of years ago, first, you know, we saw Aliyah, the President of Azerbaijan, giving him a massive bear hug. And then on Sunday and Monday we saw him shaking hands with Pashinyan and Yellow Van. This is Putin's enemy number one, being welcomed with open arms in former staunchly allied countries. To my mind, okay, there's still the question of Georgia. Georgia's government is favorable or sort of leaning towards the Kremlin, although they have started picking up the phone and started talking to the US More recently. But to my mind, in the last couple of weeks we've seen just how far the south caucuses have traveled towards Europe and the US And I'd go as far to say as Russia has lost the south caucuses, certainly in the short and medium term and possibly for far longer than that.
- [24:17]
Francis Dernley
Wow. Quite a statement. We should get that on a T shirt, James. And we should do stash. I know many of you are asking where you can buy these mugs. It's a work in progress. We can get. Putin has lost the South Caucasus. With your face on, James, is another one. One and a cucumber on the back. But Meloni, Meloni. Let's talk about her visit to Azerbaijan as well.
- [24:37]
James Kilner
Yeah. So as soon as she'd done with the summits in. In yellow van, she dashed over to see Liev and Baku. She was the first Italian Prime Minister to Visit Azerbaijan since 2013. So 13 years. That's the context. And she was also the third European leader to visit in a very short space of time, in about 10 days, followed the Czech Prime Minister, the Latvian president. You also had. Zelensky was there and Kaia Kallis was also there yesterday.
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Francis Dernley
Yes. Really?
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James Kilner
Sort of, yeah. Kaya, she's well keen to undermine Russia at every prospect.
- [25:17]
Francis Dernley
My obsession with Kai Kallis is well known.
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James Kilner
I think this really, you know, once again shows just how far Azerbaijan, you know, remarkable. Aliyev has all these sort of trappings of an authoritarian leader who should be casing up to Putin, but instead he's welcoming these European leaders. You know, he's selling a lot of gas to them, he's making money out of them, but also he's completely fed up with Putin and the way that he treated Azerbaijan and he personally treated Aliyev after the shooting down of the Azerbaijani passenger jet on Christmas Day 2024. It's again, you know, it comes down to complete arrogance and incompetence by Putin, really, in the way that he has dealt with these leaders in the former Soviet Union. He just treated them with contempt, and in return, they've drifted towards the eu. And here's the result. We have European leaders lining up to go to Baku, to go to Yemen.
- [26:13]
Francis Dernley
Fascinating. Well, another development in that part of the world. It feels like there's one almost every week. James, it's like you're pulling the strings in that part of the world so that we have you back on to talk about it. Now, before we go to this next story on Dagestan, just remind us, James, where is this? First of all, what's the significance of this region?
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James Kilner
Yeah, so we do talk about Dagestan and the North Caucus on this podcast. It is important to Russia for several reasons. It's a potential Achilles heel. It's restive, it's rebellious. It's difficult to control. It draws resources from central government from Ukraine, from Russian forces in Ukraine potentially back to the North Caucasus where where they have the control is also borders. It also lies rather on the Caspian Sea which we know is an outlet to Iran. And it also lies sits now importantly on this new trade route that the, the Kremlins developed to India, go through Dagestan and into aerial and then actually, well, it should be going through Iran and then across the water to India. That's the route. So Dangson is important to the Kremlin and the story here is that Putin sacked his relatively long term. Well, he's been in power for five years. Sergei Melikov, he's the governor. He was appointed by Putin to sort the place out five years ago and he's been sacked. I was on the pod, I think it was three or four iterations ago talking about these large floods they've had in Dagestan and how if the, if the Russian central government didn't respond effectively to these floods then this well known community groups, these well known grassroots groups in Dagestan would start to step in instead undermining central government authority, inciting protests, that that sort of thing. We have seen a lack of, a complete lack of response almost from central government. As we predicted on this podcast, we have seen some Muslim grassroots community in Dagestan step in instead. We haven't seen the protests yet, but there is a sense of their building and a sense that Putin had to step in and sack the governor. It's quite a rare thing for Putin to do because it's quite a dramatic thing move to pull off. Putin doesn't like doing this and his hand has been forced. He's appointed a former FSB officer instead potentially to take a harder line. We'll have to wait and see. I do think Dagestan is another region that people interested in Russia's stability, his ability to prosecute the war in Ukraine should be looking at.
- [28:55]
David Knowles
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- [29:26]
Francis Dernley
Well, thanks very much, James for talking us through those updates, let's go to our final thoughts. Now then, we have a quick favour to ask. Ask here at Ukraine, the latest in the episode description. You'll find a link to a very quick survey. Mostly just tick boxes. Don't worry. Don't you always hate it when it always has like loads of just boxes you have to write things in, which will really help us gather your thoughts as we look to expand our coverage over the coming months. We've already started releasing in video this year, as you'll be able to see now if you're watching this. And we have lots of other ideas and ambitions too, but first we want to hear from you, so please do help us out. That will be absolutely invaluable research for us. And one other final thing for me, if you're unlucky enough to attend Oxford University, I'll be speaking at a debate at the Oxford Union tomorrow titled this House would Go to War with Russia rather than lose Ukraine. It should be a feisty one and I promise I won't mention the boat race result once. But Antonia, where would you like to leave us?
- [30:27]
Antonia Langford
Today I went to go and visit a Ukrainian school to witness Defence of Ukraine classes. I was really interested to see what students are being taught in that context. So Defense of Ukraine classes are effectively Ukrainian students introduction to not just military skills, but also imagining their identity in the context of the war. And we got to witness six classes across different subjects. And a lot of them were what you might expect. Like, for example, they were being taught to operate FPV drones and Mavic, and they were being taught to assemble and fire model guns as well. But one of the things I found particularly interesting was that they have classes on informational warfare. So that's, for example, how to distinguish between kind of propaganda and fake information and misrepresentation. But it's also really targeted at making them less vulnerable to Russian efforts to recruit them for sabotage attempts within the country. Which I thought is really interesting the way that Ukraine is adapting to that. And I will say that was actually probably the class that the students were the most kind of confident in, obviously, despite the fact that they are navigating online this world of misinformation kind of all the time, and all of these attempts, again, to recruit them for potentially malign acts against their own country. So I thought that was really interesting. But I also spoke to instructors and the headmaster, who are all veterans, and I was really struck by the way they spoke about these classes because obviously Russia does hold lessons for very young children, far younger than these teenagers on military skills, on, for example, piloting drones. Apparently some children as young as six are being taught that in Russia, on shooting and assembling guns with an aim to create future soldiers. And what the instructors at this school really wanted to emphasize was that this is just kind of about survival for them and that they may hope that these skills never have to be used by their students, but that there's no option but to teach them now. But really what they try to emphasize is understanding your identity and keeping your humanity at the heart of this horrible conflict, that nobody knows how long it's going to last or whether it will still be happening when they're adults.
- [32:41]
Francis Dernley
This reminds me of a similar class that I attended in Kharkiv some time ago where they were teaching children not to touch teddy bears anywhere that they might find because they might be booby trapped in those areas around Kharkiv. And it is heartbreaking to see these classes of children having to be taught essentially life skills to prevent harm in war as well as the things that you describe there. But Antonia, thank you so much for your time today. Let's end then with James's insights. James, over to you for your final thoughts.
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James Kilner
So today, yeah, I'm going to give a very quick economic update, starting with travel agencies in Russia. There's been 1200 reported bankruptcies of these small, small scale businesses, these travel agencies. There's a lot of them in Russia, sort of a cultural heritage thing. And 1200 have gone bankrupt this year already, 34 more than last year. I think that's a reflection of several things. I think that's a reflection of people feeling poor in Russia and also the Ukrainian drone strikes along the Black Sea coast. Obviously, those images of the oil depots going up in flames doesn't encourage tourism. Also on the economic front, Putin's ordered another casino to open. This is in the Altai region. Kremlin's running out of money, as we know France is, and it's basically throwing open the doors to a few regions to open casinos, hope of earning some more tax revenue. And finally, your elevator story.
- [34:10]
Francis Dernley
Yes, I knew that. I knew it was coming. I was waiting. I was waiting with anticipation, James.
- [34:17]
James Kilner
According to Russian newspapers, elevator factories are operating at only two thirds capacity because as we know, as we reported heavily on this podcast, and Russia state doesn't have any money to replace outdated new elevators, so there's no demand for new ones. There we go.
- [34:35]
Francis Dernley
I'm so glad we managed to fit that in there. I was getting worried there for a moment. Well, thanks very much James. Thanks of course to Antonio in Kyiv and thanks to all of you for watching. We'll be back same time, same place tomorrow. Goodbye from us here in London for now. Ukraine the Latest is an original podcast from the Telegraph created by David Knowles. Every episode featuring us in the studio maps and battlefield footage is now available to watch on our YouTube channel. You can subscribe at www.YouTube.com crainethelatest. There's a link in the description. If you appreciate our work, please consider following Ukraine the Latest on your preferred podcast app and leave us a review as it helps others find the show. Please also share it with those who may not be aware we exist. You can also get into touch directly to ask questions or give comments by emailing ukrainepodelegraph.co.uk we continue to read every message even if we can't reply to all of them. You can also contact us on X. You'll find our handles in the description. As ever, we're especially interested to hear where you're listening from around the world. And finally, to support our work and stay on top of all of our Ukraine news and analysis and dispatches from the ground, please subscribe to the Telegraph. You can get one month for free, then two months for just one pound at www.telegraph.co.uk Ukraine the latest Ukraine the Latest was Today, produced by Alexis in Audio and Sophie o' Sullivan in Video. The Executive Editor is me, Francis Dernley. The series creator is David Knowles.
- [36:15]
David Knowles
My name is David Knowles.
- [36:17]
Antonia Langford
Thank you all for listening.
- [36:18]
James Kilner
Goodbye.
- [36:21]
David Knowles
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- [36:41]
Antonia Langford
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