here in the uk, 2022 saw the highest number of excess deaths outside the covid pandemic in half a century. and france tries again to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. it s an unpopular reform that didn t go well last time it tried. we ll be live in paris. we start in ukraine. president volodymyr zelensky has said ukraine s army is facing an extremely difficult situation as fighting continues in the eastern donbas region. the focus is the salt mining town of soledar. the uk defence ministry says it s likely that russian forces including wagner group mercenaries now control most of the town. we ll be taking a look at why it s become central to this conflict. but first, here s president zelensky. translation: and what did russia want to win there? i everything is completely destroyed. there was almost no life left. thousands of their people are gone, the whole land in soledar is covered with the corpses of the invaders and scarred from the strikes. this is what madness loo
in moldova, in the future. the russians are already struggling to field enough force to make gains in the donbas in ukraine that they are pushing for, so if we are going to see further destabilisation, it is going to come from low level or covert things rather than a full out military assault. and there are various layers here. there is crimea, which russia annexed in 2014. it s fighting over areas like mariupol, fighting for what is calls the liberation of donetsk of donetsk and luhansk. how does moldova play into that for ukraine? moldova is one of these post soviet republics which is in the in between area, the area between the nato members, the eu members that have made it into those western alliances, and russia. there are about six states which fall into that category. moldova, georgia, ukraine.