and zelensky seems very confident not not the man who appears about to make major concessions judging by the speech nic was referring to. reporter: it s surreal, fareed because in kyiv the streets are very quiet but they are also calm. we do not see any evidence that people are preparing for any kind of a major assault and that s in part because ukraine s leadership has had a very different tone from the kind of rhetoric that we ve seen coming from the u.s. and from the white house. they say that they see the u.s. s intelligence, they don t dispute the u.s. s intelligence, but there is a matter of difference in terms of the interpretation of it. they don t believe that an all out invasion is indeed imminent. now, having said that, there are very real concerns here about what is going on in the east of the country along those front lines with donbas, with the pro-russian separatists. we have seen a high amount of ceasefire violations. yesterday, saturday, was the
ceasefire violations. yesterday, saturday, was the highest amount that we have seen in some years, at least three years, i believe. we had a cnn team who was out with the interior minister, they came under heavy and sustained artillery fire, they were forced to take shelter and they were pinned down for some time before quickly evacuating the area. we ve also seen civilian structures getting hit and shelling happening further back from that front line. so there is a real concern on the ground here that that could quickly escalate out of control. when you heard nic talking about the minsk agreements which are seen here as being very much playing out in moscow s favor, publicly the government of volodymyr zelensky, the president, has said we will not make any concessions, but privately it s our understanding that they are facing a certain amount of pressure to make some concessions on that front. remains to be seen how that will play out, as you mentioned, the
to try to resolve it. right, but my organisation, the bbc, still has courageous staff on the ground, very close to the front lines, monitoring and reporting on what is going on. and we value that. i m just wondering, what is the point of the osce if you can t maintain some sort of presence providing independent monitoring and verification of what is happening during this war. i notice your government, the us government, is very keen to move ahead with a prosecution at the international criminal court of the russian government and vladimir putin, but how can you do that if there isn t independent, verifiable evidence? well, stephen, i think it s hardly necessary at this point to verify ceasefire violations. i mean, we re watching russia pummel ukraine with missile strikes, artillery, aircraft. there s no need at this point to call out a ceasefire violation across
line of the eight year long conflict in the donbas region. as soon as putin s invasion happened, all of those monitors were pulled out. the entire osce presence in ukraine was pulled out. i just wonder why that happened when, goodness knows, monitoring what is happening across front lines is so very important at this moment. well, stephen, the special monitoring mission was designed to be able to call out ceasefire violations and the deployment of prescribed heavy weapons, and if it was falling on the russian controlled side of the line of contact, we wanted the world to know that it was russia that was responsible. and i think the osce monitoring mission, these are unarmed civilians, by the way, did a heroic job of doing just that.
hardly necessary at this point to verify ceasefire violations. i mean, we re watching russia pummel ukraine with missile strikes, artillery, aircraft. there s no need at this point to call out a ceasefire violation across the line of contact. the line of contact is a thing of the past. we re in a new reality. and so therefore, we have adapted the osce s mission in terms of what we re focusing on right now as you rightly said, to document gross violations of human rights, to look at possible war crimes, possible crimes against humanity, and the osce has experience there, too. and so we have now deployed or we will shortly deploy a set of monitors to look at precisely those sorts of egregious and gross violations of international humanitarian law. yeah, you ve used very strong language i mean, you personally about what you ve seen in the first days of this war. you ve referred to barbaric acts . to evil being done by russian forces on the ground.