Speaker 1: I think this year we have witnessed the fundamental failure
Speaker 1: of the Russian state to insulate its people from the
Speaker 1: war that it euphemistically calls the Special Military Operation. It's
Speaker 1: hitting people's lives in all kinds of different ways, from
Speaker 1: e commerce warehouses, we've seen fuel shortages, internet outages. Now
Speaker 1: obviously Ukraine its gloves are very much off when it
Speaker 1: comes to these deep strikes, and we're seeing mounting casualties
Speaker 1: as a result of that. And this is now playing
Speaker 1: out politically this year. We're seeing anti war sentiment rising.
Speaker 1: Putin's approval ratings are dropping, albeit from a very high level,
Speaker 1: and with parliamentary elections coming up in September, the Kremlin
Speaker 1: is now moving to stamp out the last vestiges of
Speaker 1: political opposition. And one of those last vestiges is a
Speaker 1: man called Boris Nadyezhdin. He has spent forty years in
Speaker 1: Soviet and Russian politics and is now Russia's newest political exile.
Speaker 1: This has happened so suddenly for you, one minute you're
Speaker 1: running for parliament and now you're here.
Speaker 2: It's all my life, is all my life. I have
Speaker 2: a lot of adventures.
Speaker 1: Boris Nadiagen Soviet bureaucrat, Russian opposition figure and former presidential
Speaker 1: hopeful can now add exile to his list. We meet
Speaker 1: in Paris a couple of weeks after he was forced
Speaker 1: to flee Russia amid a mounting pressure campaign to bar
Speaker 1: him from running in upcoming parliamentary elections.
Speaker 2: When I was announced that for an agent in tenth
Speaker 2: of July, I declared, for all of the world, I
Speaker 2: will not stop my campaign. In Monday, I was arrested
Speaker 2: by police, taking police department, etc. Etc.
Speaker 1: He was convicted of displaying extremist symbols and given a
Speaker 1: small fine. Then came the summons from Russia's powerful investigative committee.
Speaker 2: Normally, after you go to this please you will receive
Speaker 2: the criminal paper and go to the court, and after
Speaker 2: court go to the jail. Leforto. When I have received
Speaker 2: this paper about criminal investigation, I have understood that the
Speaker 2: question of three d's.
Speaker 1: Yes, I am alive and I am free, he announced
Speaker 1: on telegram on arriving in France. Previous Russian opposition figures
Speaker 1: were not so lucky. I mean there was namedsof who
Speaker 1: you worked with Navali. But you try to do opposition
Speaker 1: within the system, then the system can be.
Speaker 2: I didn't cross the red lines for forty years of
Speaker 2: my political biography. The red line number one is not
Speaker 2: the critique is put in like a person, and cross
Speaker 2: line number two to have no support from foreign governments.
Speaker 2: I never crossed these lines. But these lines have changed.
Speaker 1: Behind Putain's facade of stability, Russia is cracking down harder,
Speaker 1: and Adjestion says, because it's the war drags on, descent
Speaker 1: is rising. In early twenty twenty four, his campaign to
Speaker 1: run for president on an anti war platform exposed an
Speaker 1: undercurrent of despair and society. Long lines of his support
Speaker 1: has formed across the country. A quiet legal protest that undercurrent,
Speaker 1: he says, is now bubbling up. Just this week, demonstrators
Speaker 1: gathered as Russia's highest court blocked Yablica, the only remaining
Speaker 1: anti war party, from the parliamentary elections.
Speaker 2: The understanding of that everybody wants to stop the war.
Speaker 2: It's in the society, is in the elite and in
Speaker 2: the nearest people around Putain, and of course the understanding
Speaker 2: of what this war is really means for Russian economy.
Speaker 1: It's putting understandings.
Speaker 2: Yes, you have to put people around here. It's quite
Speaker 2: possible or freeze as the mutual strikes and the But
Speaker 2: the question of how to be in peace with West,
Speaker 2: be in peace with Ukraine is a question of next generations.
Speaker 1: Nadegten himself is now in Limberg. His family is still
Speaker 1: in Russia. On the day we met, he missed his
Speaker 1: daughter's wedding, married his political project, one of the last
Speaker 1: vestiges of Russian political opposition. For now, on hold, do
Speaker 1: you worry that you've left Russia for good?
Speaker 2: I think I could return to my country only when
Speaker 2: the political situation will change.
Speaker 1: So Nadegen believes Sma that if Russia were to stop now,
Speaker 1: somehow pause or strikes, they would be able to fire
Speaker 1: up the propaganda machine and successfully paint this as some
Speaker 1: kind of victory at home. But look, Russian actions, Russian rhetoric,
Speaker 1: none of that suggests that that is the intention. It
Speaker 1: may be that they even plan to escalate at this point.
Speaker 1: And so his message is that the longer this goes on,
Speaker 1: the weaker Prutin's grip on power.
Speaker 3: Russia and Ukraine continued to attack one another, with civilians
Speaker 3: caught in the crossflower. Ukrainian officials say Russian strikes killed
Speaker 3: six people and wounded nineteen overnight in the southern city
Speaker 3: of Zaparisha in Kiev. Officials in Ukraine say a Russian
Speaker 3: missile strike damage to children, leaving craters outside the facility.
Speaker 3: Patients and medical staff were taking shelter at the time
Speaker 3: and survived the attack uninjured. The Russian assault came as
Speaker 3: Ukraine continues its drone attacks on warehouses belonging to Russia's
Speaker 3: largest online retailer, Knows. Nick Painton Walsh is following the
Speaker 3: story for US from Kiev. So niked is civilians obviously
Speaker 3: caught in the crossfire as Russia and Ukraine continue to
Speaker 3: exchange aerial attacks. What more are you learning about this
Speaker 3: latest attack overnight?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean hearing Kiev, as you pointed out, the
Speaker 4: children's hospital hit, some damage done there, some quidramatic images
Speaker 4: in fact of the impact on the building, but as
Speaker 4: you pointed out, the children inside, the patients in the
Speaker 4: shelter at that particular time. But in Zaparijia, the city
Speaker 4: in the south that took the brunt of the Russian
Speaker 4: assault last night, six dead, nineteen injured, apartment buildings hit there. Interestingly,
Speaker 4: Ukraine pointing towards North Korean missiles predominantly being used in
Speaker 4: this attack the kN twenty three suggesting further help from
Speaker 4: Pyongyang and possibly also to limits maybe in the Russian
Speaker 4: supply of their missiles, but does seem as though Moscow
Speaker 4: increasingly has more ballistics to use on a nightly basis,
Speaker 4: going from about sixty a couple of months ago to
Speaker 4: close to possibly edging towards two hundred maybe at some
Speaker 4: point in the months to come. But they're able to
Speaker 4: fire over a month long period. So startling rise here
Speaker 4: and aimed clearly to exploit the massive gaps in Ukraine's
Speaker 4: air defenses now a huge lack of patriot interceptors that
Speaker 4: Ukraine has made public the results of so many of
Speaker 4: them being used during the Gulf conflict that there's very
Speaker 4: few left for the United States or European nations to
Speaker 4: potentially provide. It a real crisis there one the President
Speaker 4: Trump suggested he might potentially fix when he during the
Speaker 4: NATO meeting in Anchora suggested Ukraine might get a license
Speaker 4: to produce them themselves. That simply hasn't happened. In fact,
Speaker 4: his latest comment suggest that maybe indeed be very far off. Indeed,
Speaker 4: if not entirely impossible. But at the same time, Christina
Speaker 4: Ukraine is responding to this Russian nightly barrage that's been
Speaker 4: going on for years a result of Russia's invasion. Ukraine
Speaker 4: now able to take some of that fight back, and
Speaker 4: it's the wild Berries distribution network kind of like a
Speaker 4: Russian Amazon, so to speak, that's taken a lot of
Speaker 4: the strikes over the past.
Speaker 2: Weeks, one near Vorignage one hundred and.
Speaker 4: Eighty kilometers inside Russia's borders being hit sixteen thousand square
Speaker 4: meters indeed, officials they're saying had a fire on its
Speaker 4: potentially while Bury seeing over ten percent of its capacity reduced.
Speaker 4: Ukraine says it's a legitimate target as it's involved in
Speaker 4: the logistics of the Russian military use essentially to deliver
Speaker 4: the things indeed that they need, and also to overnight
Speaker 4: in Orsk an oil refinery fifteen hundred kilometers inside Russia
Speaker 4: also hit, so Ukraine continuing the exact a toll. We
Speaker 4: have seen Russian civilians killed as part of these strikes
Speaker 4: in the past week or so, and indeed in Ukraine
Speaker 4: we've seen now the deadliest month last month in July
Speaker 4: since April twenty twenty two for civilians. So these nightly
Speaker 4: barrages suggesting the war is becoming less about the tiny
Speaker 4: territorial gains that Russia hasn't made much of, frankly over
Speaker 4: its past summer offensive, and more about the damage each
Speaker 4: side is inflicting on the other in these nightly assaults.
Speaker 3: Nick Bate and Walsh their reporting from that Kiev.
Speaker 1: Thanks, Nick, appreciate it.