What’s life like in Kursk, following Ukraine’s cross-border offensive? We hear from Zhenya, a Kursk resident, who gives us a rare glimpse into life in the region since the Ukrainian incursion began. And the defence expert Matthew Savill from the Royal United Services Institute is in the studio to answer your listener questions. What’s Kursk like? How long can Ukraine feasibly hold it? And is a Russian nuclear response on the cards? Today’s episode is presented by Lucy Hockings and Vitaly Shevchenko. The producers were Arsenii Sokolov, Cordelia Hemming, Elliot Ryder and Hatty Nash. The technical producer was Mike Regaard. The series producer is Tim Walklate. The senior news editor is Richard Fenton-Smith. Email Ukrainecast@bbc.co.uk with your questions and comments. You can also send us a message or voice note via WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram to +44 330 1239480 You can join the Ukrainecast discussion on Newscast’s Discord server here: tinyurl.com/ukrainecastdiscord
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It's 905 days since Russia began its full scale invasion of Ukraine and we are now into our 11th day of Ukraine's incursion into Russia.
And Vitaly, as you and Jamie came off air on Tuesday, the production team received a voice note from this woman in Kursk.
I guess you can never be really ready for the war coming to your home city.
This is just not the thing you can be prepared for.
It's such a shock.
But on the other side, it has never been unexpected for me because I have a lot of Ukrainian friends and every time I've heard from them for this two and a half years, I've been thinking, what if this was my home city, Kursk?
And yeah, now it is two and a half years later.
So on this point of view, this was not unexpected.
I knew this would come back to us as a boomerang.
We're going to hear more from this woman who we've been in touch with over the last few days, hearing her reflections on Ukraine's cross border offensive into Russia and and to protect her, we're calling her Zhenia in today's episode.
It's been a hugely significant week in the conflict.
Thank you to all of you who have listened to UkraineCast, including those of you who have joined us for the very first time.
We really do appreciate it.
Please like subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Many of you have also been in touch with your questions.
We're going to try and answer some of those today in the pod.
This is UkraineCast.