we hear dire warnings, but we also see internal divisions. well, my guest is ukraine s defence minister oleksii reznikov. is ukraine ready for war and how will it respond? defence minister oleksii reznikov in kyiv, welcome to hardtalk. hello, mr steve. minister, do you believe that war is imminent? i would say that. i would like to emphasise that war was started in 2014, then the kremlin occupied our peninsula, crimea, and sevastopol and after part of lugansk and donetsk. so, the war is going on eight years in ukraine. i guess what i m talking about is the possibility that there may be a major military offensive launched by moscow involving the 100,000 and more troops, and the massive arsenal that vladimir putin has put on the border next to your country. do you believe that is coming soon? i believe that in kremlin, they didn t make their decision yet. and i hope they will continue the diplomatic and political negotiations with nato ally, and i hope they will not come throug
hello and welcome. we start here in london where another difficult day lies ahead for borisjohnson as speculation grows about a plot to remove him by members of his own party. it could be a decisive day. a group of the most recently elected conservative mps are believed to be preparing to submit letters of no confidence in the prime minister having met to discuss the issue on tuesday. one conservative mp told the bbc he believed the threshold needed to trigger a confidence vote would be reached. here s our political correspondentjonathan blake. late night talks in a private members club. a small group of conservative mps met here last night with talk of removing borisjohnson from office on the agenda. after a day of intense speculation, theirs was confidence among some backbenchers that enough to submit a letter of no confidence on the prime minister could be achieved. the prime minister again denied that a drinks party at the downing street party was against lockdown restric
and they expect to face far weaker russian defences ahead. ukraine says its forces are making gains in the south of the country, and has recently expanded its units towards the strategic town of tokmak which is a logistical centre for russian forces. last week, ukraine s military said it had captured the village of robotyne in the zaporizhzhia region, amid a counteroffensive that is yielding incremental gains. sources in the ukrainian army have confirmed the breakthrough to the bbc. an adviser to president zelensky, aleksander rudnyansky, explained the significance for kyiv s forces. we ve been waiting for this moment for quite some time. we ve been hoping that we would pierce through the russian defence line, the first defence line, which was the hardest to pierce through, if you believe military experts when they talk about it. so hopefully now, when we reach the second and the third lines of defence that the russians have established, those will be easier to essentially ov
russian defences ahead. ukraine says its forces are making gains in the south of the country and has recently expanded its units towards the strategic town of tokmak, which is a logistical centre for russian forces. last week, ukraine s military said it had captured the village of robotyne in the zaporizhzhia region amid a counteroffensive that is yielding incremental gains. sources in the ukrainian army have confirmed the breakthrough to the bbc. an adviser to president zelensky, alexander rodnyansky, explained the significance for kyiv s forces. we ve been waiting for this moment for quite some time. we ve been hoping that we would pierce through the russian defence line, the first defence line, which was the hardest to pierce through, if you believe military experts when they talk about it. so hopefully now, when we reach the second and the third lines of defence that the russians have established, those will be easier to essentially overcome. and perhaps hopefully this is
amid a counteroffensive that is yielding incremental gains. sources in the ukrainian army have confirmed the breakthrough to the bbc. an adviser to president zelensky, aleksander rodnyansky, explained the significance for kyiv s forces. we ve been waiting for this moment for quite some time. we ve been hoping that we would pierce through the russian defence line, the first defence line, which was the hardest to pierce through, if you believe military experts when they talk about it. so hopefully now, when we reach the second and the third lines of defence that the russians have established, those will be easier to essentially overcome. and perhaps hopefully this is the spot, this is the place where we can now actually put all the modern nato technology, the tanks that we ve been getting and the training that we ve been receiving, put all of that to use, to our advantage. hopefully, it s the key moment. again, we ll see what happens. it s hard to predict at any point, includin