As the war enters its 2020 second month,
Ukraine is seeing its funds dwindling,
but it's also facing a recruitment issue.
Tell us more.
Absolutely. There is a huge societal debate here which is
about mobilization.
The army is trying to
find out how just how much equipment,
how many men more they will need for the coming
year,
and this has been subject to debate.
A few days ago, the president,
Vladimir Zelensky, said that the army had asked him to
organize the recruitment of an additional half a million men
to be sent to the frontline,
which is something the commander,
Valerie Zelushny, actually said he was not in a place
to request from the president.
Actually, he explained that as a commander in chief he
participates to
to work in groups with the
defence minister, where he states regularly
how many, how much equipment,
how much ammunition, how many men his army
might need, without giving necessarily
a number for a specific year.
This is a very moving situation,
very moving, very frontline that is evolving constantly.
So he says his needs.
And then the defence minister then places
a request to the cabinet,
the ministerial cabinet, which then asks the Ukrainian parliament to
to approve or or not a draft law.
And such a draft law on mobilization has been submitted
to the Ukrainian parliament on Christmas Day on the 25th
of December.
It proposes, among other measures,
to lower the mobilization aid from 27 to 25 year,
which is of course something that
is subject to debate here in society.
Those of the men who wanted to join,
they've already done so 22 months ago,
so it's more difficult now for the government to entice
more men to join the army.
But the need is there in front of an aggressive
country,
Russia, which keeps on mobilising its men and seems to
be using its army and its men as dependable on
the front line.
Emilia, can you also give us an an update on
the situation on the ground?
Well as we are in the middle of the winter
here we see that the the front line is not
moving a lot.
There's been this claim, this Russian claim that Russia is
now in total control of Marinka.
But Marinka is is just
is just rebels now after years,
two years almost of constant shelling.
And that's what we we see on the frontline when
there's a Russian advance,
it advances on rebels, rebels that have been has been
created by those fights and
and
there was a there was a shelling yesterday on the
region,
on the city of her son,
her son heavily shelled because it's just on one side
of the Nipro,
opposite to where Russian troops still
are. So we see that there's several hotspots that are
still being constantly shelled.
There's no advance from Ukrainian troops but
even if they are in inferiority in terms of manpower,
in terms of equipment, they still hold on.
They don't manage to breakthrough the Russian defences as of
now,
but they still hold on to the territories that they
are defending,
defending. Sorry, Thank you, Emmanuel.
Emmanuel.