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00:00 Well, fighting, of course, has not stopped despite the bad weather.
00:04 At the moment, Russian forces are concentrating their efforts on the town of Avdiivka, which
00:10 is still Ukrainian-held, but just north of Donetsk, which has been Russian-controlled
00:15 since 2014.
00:17 The official Ukrainian line is that they are fighting back against that Russian onslaught,
00:23 and both the Ukrainians and also British intelligence have been saying that the Russians have been
00:27 suffering very, very heavy losses there, perhaps their heaviest losses in terms of metre of
00:33 territory gained per man lost in the whole of this invasion.
00:39 But at least one Ukrainian commander admitted on Ukrainian TV this morning that the Russians
00:45 have made some quite significant gains in the industrial zone just to the southeast
00:50 of Avdiivka, that's between Avdiivka and Donetsk, and it's a sort of Ukrainian fortress, has
00:55 been since 2014 a heavily militarised area.
00:59 This Ukrainian commander said that it was too early to say that the Russians had claimed
01:04 control of that industrial zone.
01:06 Clearly the Ukrainians still control at least part of it, but it does seem that there is
01:11 danger there for the Ukrainians of the Russians, despite these very heavy losses, or perhaps
01:16 thanks to their willingness to endure these extraordinarily heavy losses, are making some
01:21 progress towards capturing Avdiivka, which is clearly their aim at the moment.
01:26 Meanwhile the Ukrainians are still attacking south and east of Kherson city on the other
01:31 side of the Dnipro river, but although they've established some kind of a base camp there,
01:37 they don't seem to be making any significant further incursions.
01:41 Really there hasn't been a significant major change to the layout of the front line in
01:46 more than a year since Kherson city was recaptured by the Ukrainians, with perhaps the exception
01:50 of the capture of Bakhmut of course by the Russians this summer after that very, very
01:54 long battle there.
01:55 Goliver, in the meantime of course the world's attention has been focused so much on the
02:01 Israel-Hamas war.
02:02 What's the feeling like there?
02:03 Are people worried that the international community is losing interest in Ukraine?
02:10 I think that is a worry.
02:11 It's not just about the loss of interest, it's also about the impact that the situation
02:15 in the Middle East has on international attitudes towards Ukraine.
02:19 Josep Borrell, the European Union's foreign policy chief, was warning this week that in
02:25 the United Nations the European Union's attempts to maintain support for Ukraine were floundering
02:33 on a perceived hypocrisy of the international community and its attitudes towards Ukraine
02:38 and towards the Palestinians.
02:40 He said that these conflicts are really not comparable for all kinds of reasons, but the
02:44 comparison is nevertheless inevitably made when you see Palestinian cities being destroyed,
02:51 Palestinian civilians suffering, just as Ukrainian civilians have suffered and Ukrainian cities
02:55 have been destroyed.
02:57 And yet the international community's response is of course very, very different.
03:01 There isn't a wholehearted support for the Palestinians on the part of the international
03:05 community and some countries, particularly in the global south, that's affecting their
03:11 willingness to sign up to international support for Ukraine.
03:17 So there's that worry.
03:19 The line from the European Union is still, of course, though, that it will continue to
03:23 support Ukraine for as long and as much as necessary.
03:27 Vera Jourova, vice president of the European Commission, is in Kiev today repeating that
03:33 position.