to fly to beijing. you re watching bbc news. now it s time for president zelensky: unspun world special. this is just one very small part of all the destruction that russia has visited on ukraine during the past year. we are only 18 miles from kyiv here, the closest the russian troops came to the capital before they were thrown back. one man has personified ukraine s resistance to the russian onslaught. an actor who used to play the part of ukraine s president in a television soap opera, and then ran for the job for real, and won, only to find last february, he had to play a new role the leader of a country that was fighting for its very existence. president volodymyr zelensky. mr president, a year ago, would you have thought that you would be sitting here, still president, and the war would still be going on? but did you think you would survive? we are going to go back to february of 2022. these are russian vehicles building up towards the invasion, in this case. helicopte
as the russian troops made their drive for the capital, an assault which the kremlin assumed would only take around ten days, we saw the kind of scenes that were more reminiscent of 1940 in belgium, holland and france than something in the 21st century right here. after this key bridge linking irpin to kyiv was destroyed, the local residents could only escape by going through the ruins on foot. these were just some of the millions of president zelensky s people who have been forced by this war to leave their homes. let s look at the pictures of what happened in those very early days, with huge numbers of people trying to leave the country. yes.
this is bbc news. i m frankie mccamley and these are the headlines: downing street says talks with the eu over a brexit deal covering northern ireland have been positive raising hopes of an imminent new agreement on trade. also in northern ireland a fifth person has been arrested in connection with the attempted murder of the off duty police officerjohn caldwell in omagh who remains in a critical condition in hospital. millions of nigerians have been voting in their country s most competitive election since military rule ended there more than two decades ago. china s plans for peace in ukraine cause ripples around the world president zelensky says he wants to hear more and the leader of russia s key ally belarus announces plans
to fly to beijing. you re watching bbc news. now it s time for president zelensky: unspun world special. this is just one very small part of all the destruction that russia has visited on ukraine during the past year. we are only 18 miles from kyiv here, the closest the russian troops came to the capital before they were thrown back. one man has personified ukraine s resistance to the russian onslaught. an actor who used to play the part of ukraine s president in a television soap opera,