00:00Indeed, Herman Hadoshchenko, the former energy minister, has been notified today by the anti-corruption
00:07agencies that he's a suspect in that case, just as other people that were close to power
00:15until the revelation of what is called here the Midas operation, the Midas tapes operation,
00:211,000 hours of tapes, which revealed a whole circle of corruption, of money laundering.
00:30And Hadoshchenko seems to have been one of the persons at the center of that scheme.
00:36Family members, including his ex-wife and four of his children, were beneficiaries of millions of dollars
00:43among the over $100 million of money that had been taken mostly from the energy sector in Ukraine.
00:54Of course, this is highly embarrassing for Kyiv at a time where it is being scrutinized,
01:01not just by civil society here, which is intent on defending its anti-corruption agencies,
01:07just like we saw last summer when people took to the streets when a law was passed that could have
01:13muzzled those agencies. But thanks to popular mobilization in the streets, the government
01:20and the parliament backpedaled on that. But also Ukraine is being scrutinized by its EU and
01:26international allies because its fight against corruption, in fact, is one of the conditions
01:33for Ukraine to continue receiving foreign aid, military, financial, humanitarian,
01:38but also one of the conditions for Ukraine to be on about its past who was joining the European Union.
01:49Emmanuel, let's talk about what's happening in Ukraine beyond this corruption story,
01:54although, as you say, clearly, this is very significant. You're talking to us from Kharkiv
01:59in the northeast of the country and there, like a number of other cities, have been increasingly
02:04targeted by Russian strikes. And there's a new report out that says that civilian casualties
02:12in Ukraine have soared in the past year, partly as a result of the targeting of cities like Kharkiv.
02:21Absolutely. Kharkiv, just like other places in Ukraine, have been intensely targeted, nearly daily targeted,
02:29by Russian strikes. So here in the city center, people are affected. For example, for the past few weeks,
02:36it has been without a city, without heating, without light. For the most part, the situation tends to get a
02:45little bit better here in the city. But in the region, all around the city, in Kharkiv region,
02:51this is a very dire situation when it comes to energy, but also when it comes to attacks on civilian
02:58buildings.
03:01Just to give you an example, just a few days ago, the settlement of Boroduriv, which is maybe 40 minutes
03:07drive from the center of Kharkiv, has been targeted twice. The first, the last Monday, a mother and her
03:14child died in their house overnight. And two days later, a father, a demobilized soldier,
03:22was also killed along his twin sons, who were two-year-old and his one-year-old daughter.
03:29The only survivors of that strike were 30 weeks pregnant women, the mother of those children,
03:36and the grandmother. This is just one. Those are just two cases I'm mentioning, just to give you an
03:43idea of the toll paid by the Ukrainian population with those strikes, which happen on a daily basis
03:49still, despite what is going on on the international stage when it comes to diplomatic talks. For Ukrainians
03:55on the ground, bombing continues daily.
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