00:00 senior correspondent Catherine Norristrand, who's just back from another trip to
00:04 Ukraine where she traveled along the vast front line along the east and south
00:08 of the country. Good to have you with us in studio this morning Catherine. Firstly
00:13 talk to us about Bakhmut. You spoke to soldiers there and they had an awful lot
00:17 to say as you would expect about the bloody battle that had waged there for
00:21 months. Yeah for ten months the bloodiest battle of the war and we filmed with
00:25 soldiers from the 57th Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces who were just
00:30 back. They'd spent months inside the city, holed up underground. You can
00:34 only imagine how bad it was being and now they were fighting on the outskirts.
00:37 We weren't allowed to reveal the exact location for obvious reasons but they
00:41 were trying to push back and they were pretty much exhausted and still
00:46 determined but you know they were feeling that they were still coming
00:50 under heavy fire and indeed we heard it ourselves when we were interviewing them
00:54 just how unstable at the time that front line remains. They told us now the
00:59 Russian troops are using extensive drone technology as they are but in the
01:03 beginning of the war the Ukrainians were making much better use of surveillance
01:06 drones. Now the Russians basically can see everything that they can see so it's
01:10 extremely dangerous when it's a clear day. They come under a lot of fire. They
01:14 say the Russians are firing their artillery precisely and that they also
01:18 had heavy losses. So I just want you to watch this extract of one of our reports
01:22 with these guys just back from the Bakhmut area and just you can see in
01:27 their eyes how tired and how tough that battle was.
01:32 [Russian]
01:34 [Russian]
01:36 [Russian]
01:38 [Russian]
01:40 We took their positions.
01:42 Now when we left,
01:45 returned back
01:47 the soldiers were shooting.
01:49 Many of our vehicles
01:53 are coming here to us.
01:58 - Gashi, will you return Bakhmud?
02:02 - I can't say that.
02:06 I don't know if I'll survive tomorrow.
02:08 I don't know if I'll survive tomorrow.
02:10 - We have to leave or what?
02:18 - We'll see.
02:20 - We'll see.
02:23 - We had to end that interview there.
02:25 We were due to go with that brigade
02:27 to an artillery firing position
02:29 but they said it was just too dangerous.
02:31 They'd been hit in previous days.
02:33 We later found out that they were hit again later that afternoon.
02:36 So very, very unstable there on the edges.
02:39 Bakhmud has been the centre of the fighting
02:41 but there's a whole range of places
02:43 where it's just been pretty intense in recent months.
02:47 The front line is some 900km there
02:50 going right from the northern border
02:52 up near Kharkiv, down the east and in the south as well, of course.
02:55 - Very difficult situation, obviously,
02:57 for the civilians who remain in and around those areas.
02:59 They've been caught up in near constant bombing,
03:02 particularly in the town of Avdivka,
03:04 further south in the Donbass.
03:06 We saw that you were reporting from there as well.
03:08 - Yeah, this is this town which is basically
03:10 becoming more and more surrounded.
03:12 Avdivka has been on the front lines since 2014.
03:16 It was actually occupied by Russian forces
03:18 for three months in 2014.
03:20 Because obviously the war in Ukraine
03:22 has been going on for nine years now.
03:24 It's just the full-scale invasion since February 22.
03:27 And now the Russians are again closing in
03:30 and they're bombarding it day and night.
03:32 Barely a minute went past when we were in that town
03:35 without us hearing incoming fire.
03:38 There are some people who stay there.
03:40 Before February 2022,
03:43 there were around 32,000 people in this town, we were told.
03:47 Now there are less than 2,000.
03:49 Some of those who stay there are elderly people, isolated.
03:53 Some of them are believing the Russian propaganda that they hear.
03:56 And when we asked them,
03:57 "But the Russians are firing on the city,"
03:59 and they just simply don't believe it,
04:01 they've kind of swallowed this parallel reality.
04:03 And we met with people there,
04:05 so not only members of the security forces,
04:08 as you're seeing in our report,
04:09 but also at the local hospital, which was the central hospital,
04:12 so you can imagine would have had quite a big staff.
04:14 Now there were two doctors, six nurses and some support staff
04:18 who were staying there under daily fire
04:20 at a risk to their own lives to try and help the remaining population,
04:24 even if their beliefs are fundamentally opposed to their own.
04:29 I want you to listen now to the doctor, one of the doctors,
04:31 in that hospital, which has been hit multiple times by shelling.
04:35 And this is what he told us.
04:38 [speaking Russian]
04:41 [speaking Russian]
04:43 [speaking Russian]
04:46 [speaking Russian]
05:14 And so you can see the sacrifice that's been made in Avdiivka,
05:17 but in many other places along the front lines,
05:20 that report, those are all the reports filmed with my colleagues,
05:22 I should add, Ioan Bodan and Dmytro Kovalchuk as well.
05:25 Now, Catherine, you've been over and back to Ukraine
05:27 several times since the start of the war,
05:29 so you're well-placed to tell us about the situation for people
05:33 right across the country, outside Bakhmut,
05:35 and outside some of those regions in the Donbas,
05:37 from where you were more recently reporting.
05:40 That's right, because we concentrated a lot of our reporting
05:43 on the front lines, but travelling through Ukraine in other cities,
05:46 of course the war is impacting them too.
05:49 We've seen the recent strikes on Kiev, but in fact that's been
05:53 a daily or rather nightly reality for cities hundreds of kilometres
05:57 from the front line, well, for more than a year now.
05:59 Perhaps there'd been a little bit of a pause in the attacks to some extent,
06:05 but for example, in the south-western city of Odessa,
06:09 a port city which used to be known for its partying,
06:12 its nightlife, used to be kind of a holiday destination
06:15 for lots of Ukrainians and people from around the region.
06:17 There are still young people there going out to bars and restaurants,
06:21 although there is a curfew and there are far fewer of them.
06:23 I want you to take a look at this little snippet,
06:25 which was filmed by my colleague, Yoram Budan,
06:28 in the night when we just got back from the front line.
06:31 And look, you know, there are people there dancing in the streets.
06:34 There's a bit of music, if we can hear that.
06:37 And you have got these young people, so it feels rather strange
06:39 when you're coming back from the front line.
06:42 And yet, you know, they do want to keep on living.
06:44 You know, this is one of the things people say, you know,
06:46 we want Ukraine to keep on existing,
06:48 and these young people are kind of what people are fighting for.
06:51 It feels quite surreal in a country at war in the east,
06:55 there are very few people in the towns and cities,
06:57 and in other places you've got people trying to carry on
07:01 and live as best they can, although clearly still very marked by the war.
07:05 A sense of normality in some places then, Catherine.
07:07 Thank you so much for that.
07:09 That is our senior correspondent, Catherine Arstrendt,
07:11 who is just back from another trip to Ukraine.
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