Russia batters Ukraine with more than 700 drones in record attack

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Eastern European Policy expert Olga Oleinikova tells the ABC it's hard to see a peace agreement being reached anytime soon.

Transcript

00:00And in recent days, we've seen the escalation, large escalation of Russian attacks on Ukraine.

00:08They are, you know, firing basically a lot of drones, they increase the number of drones

00:13that are flying to Ukrainian cities across the whole Ukraine.

00:18And also there's a lot of, you know, missiles attacks and strikes that have been increased

00:22significantly across whole territory.

00:24How is Ukraine standing now?

00:26Have these recent attacks make it weaker?

00:29Look, I have my family as well in Ukraine, right?

00:33So I'm really, you know, I have a lot of friends who stayed in Ukraine who didn't leave, who

00:38didn't migrate, you know, outside.

00:40So I'm in constant chat with personal stories, you know, with personal connection to my granddad,

00:45who is reporting every day what's happening, how many, you know, strikes he heard, was it

00:49close to his apartment block in a Kyiv city center.

00:52Like, it's, it's really feels that, you know, Russia wants to create this unprecedented pressure

01:01on Ukraine saying, you know, here is, we're going to fire every day or every month, we're

01:06going to fire even more drones and missiles, see what you can, you know, get, give up, you

01:13know, and so on.

01:13So Russia tries to create more and more pressure on Ukraine, on Zelensky, on people and on the

01:20general, you know, climate to achieve its goals, basically, to, you know, get not just

01:27those territories that are already under Russian control in the eastern Ukraine, but they want

01:32to go further.

01:33So you mentioned there that you do have friends and family in Ukraine.

01:38It is obviously a very tough and emotional time.

01:41How has the country responded to news that the U.S. will resume sending weapons to help

01:47Ukraine?

01:48Look, I think there's positivity, definitely, you know, that U.S. and the West is still,

01:56you know, backing Ukrainians and there is, you know, we will get defence as well because

02:01the air defence systems in Ukraine are under huge pressure at the moment.

02:07And they're failing in some, you know, failing more and more faster and more often.

02:11So that's why we need more air defence too.

02:15So it's hard, right?

02:18So people are on people and, you know, basically their ship are happy that, you know, that there's

02:22this renewal of support.

02:25But Ukraine does not need just the military support.

02:28It needs, you know, the diplomacy and policies around making, you know, Putin make peace,

02:34right?

02:35That's what we want to achieve.

02:38Military aid is great, but we want and we need more unity diplomatically, you know, around

02:45making Russia sit on the peace table and discussing, you know, how the peace looks like and what

02:50the territory as well of Ukraine and Russia looks like in this, after this agreement.

02:55Zylensky is also calling on sanctions on oil.

03:00Will something like that help Russia back down?

03:05Look, I've read and I've heard a lot of different packages that are being prepared, you know, as

03:10well as US wants to introduce bigger, you know, tariffs on Russian, Russia, a country that

03:16import, you know, Russian products.

03:18And so there's many packages that are in work.

03:22But we see that they're being adopted in a kind of a soft way.

03:28You know, Russia always finds a way around it, like with, you know, first ever sanctions

03:33that were introduced back in 2022, how Russia found a way around it, you know, and the economy

03:38is still performing well.

03:40So, so it feels as there needs to be more structure and more consistency in introducing any type

03:47of sanctions and strong sanctions.

03:49Okay, Dr. Alina Carvo from the University of Technology, Sydney.

03:54Thanks for joining us today.

03:55Thank you so much.

Category

Transcript

Recommended