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00:00For more on this story, France 24 International Affairs, that editor Philip Turrell joins me here
00:04on the set. Philip, this continued Ukrainian push into Kursk, is it a wise move considering
00:10the difficulty that Ukraine's army is having in Donbass? Well, there are many who are beginning
00:14to doubt whether or not this was a good decision by the Iranian military to send so many of its
00:21soldiers into Russian territory because they are needed on the front line. They are needed to help
00:27fight against Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, just as you mentioned, that town there, which
00:33is under threat. This is a map showing the advance into Russian territory by Ukrainian forces.
00:38They're more or less pushed to the limit right now. Russia is beginning to push back a little
00:42bit, but they still say they're advancing. So the Russians haven't sent as many troops there
00:47as they could do to try to push back the Ukrainian forces. The problem is that the Russians want to
00:54take control of Pokrovsk, which is a city in the Donetsk region, that they see as the next key step
01:01in their advance further westward in Ukraine, capturing more territory. This is on a key road,
01:08it's a key supply city to other Ukrainian outposts. If it falls, it will be bad news for the Ukrainians.
01:14As far as the Russians are concerned, they want it because it's the next step in trying to annex
01:19the whole of the Donetsk region. So that is what they have their eyes on. Many are saying, well,
01:23you should pull the troops out of Russia and send them into eastern Ukraine. I think what the
01:28Ukrainians are looking at here is trying to twist the arm of Vladimir Putin, trying to put him in a
01:33difficult position, not only with his generals and his advisors in Moscow, because he's seen as the
01:39strong man of Russia, the only one able to defend Russia. This is the largest incursion into Russian
01:44territory since the Second World War. And it's going to fragilize the position of Vladimir Putin.
01:50So it's sort of like, we'll try this, and we won't try that. And we'll try and push Vladimir
01:56Putin to do this for the number of who he's not moving. But I think it's a sort of push and pull
02:00me game between the Russians and the Ukrainians to see who's going to come out on top of this
02:06as a winner. And for the moment, we don't know. Ukraine trying to draw
02:09common forces out of the Donbass without much success so far. Well, Kiev has also been pushing
02:15for more long-range missiles from the West to strike deeper into Russia, not getting it so far.
02:23Meanwhile, it says it's introduced a domestically developed longer-range weapon designed so that it
02:28can hit Russia without needing the approval of the West. What can you tell us about this?
02:31Right. Well, we've been talking about this a lot on France 24 over the last few weeks,
02:35about the fact that Ukraine is trying to get the West, the United States, France, Germany,
02:40Britain, to send more weapons to Ukraine to help them fight off the Russian advance. They haven't
02:46had much luck in doing that. Weapons are going in, but not enough in their eyes to stop the Russian
02:51advance, particularly long-range missiles. So they've developed their own. They've just said,
02:55OK, we've had enough of this. We're going to develop our own missiles. And they've just
02:58announced the development of what they call the Paliantia, which is a missile sort of drone
03:04combination, which is capable of being fired about 700 kilometres, which is a pretty long
03:09distance into Russian territory, which could hit Russian missile bases. And it's going to cost
03:16about a million dollars or a little bit less per missile. No official figures have been given right
03:21now. What the Ukrainians want to do is to bring on the private sector to help finance this.
03:26And at the same time, they're developing a ballistic missile, which is also being tried
03:31out. This has been announced by Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, which will
03:35also be capable of flying up to about 1,000 kilometres, could even get as far as Moscow.
03:39So they're saying, OK, we don't want to provide weapons to us because you're scared of this
03:43becoming a much wider conflict, dragging NATO into it. If their weapons are used in Russian
03:50territory, we'll develop our own. And that gets around this problem of nagging the international
03:54community to give us more weapons. I think that is what Ukraine is now putting its sights on.
03:59War is a formidable way of trying to push technology further. And this is something
04:04that the Ukrainians are determined to do, just like the Houthis are doing,
04:08the North Koreans have been doing. They've all been developing ballistic missiles.
04:12This is what Ukrainian society is going to have to do as well itself.