Tonight to ten. We're live in Ukraine, a country at war after a huge Russian military offensive by land, sea and air.
When Russia struck Ukraine four years ago, it kicked off the first full scale war in Europe since World War Two.
The onslaught began just before dawn with a barrage of missiles on multiple targets right across the country.
Against all odds and doom and gloom scenarios, Ukraine didn't fall.
Ukraine is alive and kigging.
You're and my cousin served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He was a combat medic and he went to serve since the very first days of Russia's full scale invasion.
Katarina Arjuru lives in Sydney, but she's originally from Ukraine.
He was targeted by an enemy drone and a Russian drone hit him and killed him on the spot, something that was completely unexpected and completely tore our parts apart and our family apart.
With no sign of a peace still coming, Ukrainian families are bracing for even more loss. They're also freezing through winter because Russia has knocked out large parts of the electricity grid.
The heavy borrowers have left Ukraine's grids and power stations in their worst states since the war begun. And it's a vicious cycle because as soon as CRUs restore hitting, Russia strikes again.
I'm Nicole Johnston and you're listening to seven AM today Katerina Arjaru, chair of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organizations, on traveling through a war torn country and is it time for Ukraine to cut a deal? It's Wednesday, February twenty five. Katerina. I know you as an advocate for your community here in Australia, but you're also deeply connected to your country back home, and your mom still lives there. You just returned from seeing her. How is she surviving the wall?
My mom is recovering from an injury that she sustained as a result of a Russian missile attack. The missile hit the building right next to hers. As a result, all the windows in her apartment blew out, her bedroom door blew out. She was thrown across the room. She hit her head on the wall. She had a major head injury, which resulted in her going to hospital. She was hospitalized number of brain scans later. She's still suffering and recovering from that injury. This happened back in August.
I received a photo from my mom and the photo was of her bedroom. All the windows shattered, and there was a photo on the ground of my sister and I when we were children, And right away I realized that that was my mom's apartment. I realized that was my mom's bedroom because I remember exactly where that photo stood. And I called her right away and I asked what happened, and she said, I still have ringing in my ears.
I have no idea how this happened. But there are no windows, there are no doors, but luckily she survived.
It is the middle of winter in Ukraine now, and for the last few months, Russia has been heavily targeting the country's infrastructure. It's electricity grid. There's big blackouts. Could you tell us about exactly what's happening, what they're hitting and how people are getting through the winter.
Yeah, Russia is systematically currently during winter targeting the energy grid. So every single power plant in Ukraine has been hit. There isn't a single power plant in Ukraine that hasn't been damaged. A lot of them have been completely destroyed. There's no heating, there's no light because there is no electricity, there's no pumps to pump water, so you are left with millions of people just in Kiva alone, completely without any source of power. And at the time that I
was there, it was minus thirteen. Since that time, the temperature has dropped even further. So sometimes there were nights where it was minus twenty minus twenty two outside, which means that in the apartment it's not as bad, but it's still negative temperatures.
There's been no heating here for more than two weeks, and power cuts mean the lifts rarely work.
Cool cool, cold, cold, It's very cold. I walk around shevering, especially in the mornings. I wake up and it's awful. Everything is I see. I turn on the oven and just tend their warming myself. What else can my mom had, you know, plants that were around the apartment, all of them frozen. Water and cups that was left in the sink completely frozen, even water in the toilet frozen. Luckily, my mom had a gas stove, so we tried to heat things on the gas stove, but many people don't
have that, they have electric stoves. So you're completely cut off from everything. You're literally in the dark ages. You're sitting there shivering, sleeping, and I was sleeping in a fur coat with three blankets over me, saying with my mom, and you still feel this bone chilling cold. The days are very short. We would get live probably in the morning at around eight o'clock. By the time four o'clock hit, it would already be pitch dark outside, so you're living
in this darkness constantly. You go outside, everything's covered in eyes. Everybody's slipping and falling down. I fell down several times myself. Then you have this smell of gasoline and diesel in the air because every single store, shop, cafe is running on a generator. You hear this incredible sound of just through the entire street and the entire city, because there's
generators operating literally every three steps that you take. So it's just this incredible feeling of people trying to do what they can to survive and live another day.
Also, on this trip that you just had, you visited the really strategically important city of Odessa. Why did you decide to go there, what's happening there and why is it so important for Ukraine? To hold onto it.
Odessa, first of all, is a very key strategic city in Ukraine. It's on It's located on the Black Sea, it is a major port. It is a city where a lot of trade goes through. Russia has been targeting not only the energy grid and Odessa and Odessa oblist, but it's been targeting the port specifically, and that's to cripple Ukraine's ability to trade and ability to sustain itself in any possible way. But also it's a huge cultural
center of Ukraine. There is a lot of historically significant buildings there that Russia is also destroying, so they are attacking on multiple fronts.
Firefighters battle another night of Russian bombardment in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa in the south.
Toll from Friday's late attack on Odessa has risen it to a Some of the twenty seven reported injured. What any bus when the attack happened.
As I was driving to Odessa, I had to cross over a bridge that connected Moldova to Ukraine, and it was that bridge a week before that was hit by Russian drowns. So as I was driving, there was only one lane that was open, and there was a lady that was driving me, and the lady was saying, if you look to the right, you can see where the first drone hit and there was a massive hole in this bridge. Then if you look further to the right, you can see where the second drone hit, again a
massive hole in the bridge. So Russia was systematically trying to cut off that point of transport. And as we crossed the bridge, I saw a massive flash of light. We were driving at about nine pm, so it was pitch black, a massive flash of light on the horizon, and that was a missile strike that hit Odessa as
we were driving in. And because we had the head of the Odessa Date Emergency Services here, Colonel Fitkalov, he was my point of contact in Odessa, so I called him right away and I asked, you know what happened and is it safe to go? And he said, look, they've just hit an industrial site. It should be okay for you to cross, and we will meet you as you get to Odessa. But this is just literally minutes
of what I experienced as I drove into Ukraine. But that is what Ukrainians live with on a daily basis. There are, you know, just so many buildings as I during the day, as I was driving around, that are
absolutely in rumble, just residential buildings. So not only is Russia striking critical infrastructure and striking the power grid, they're targeting regular civilians, regular residential buildings that have absolutely no military significance or strategic value, just to terrorize the local population.
Coming up, is it time for Ukraine to cut a deal, Katerina, We know that since Trump became president, he says that he wants to end the war in Ukraine. The Ukraine War has to end, and it's a ridiculous war and it has to end.
We had a good time.
Now he humiliated Zelenski in the White House. You're gambling with the lives or millions of people.
See, you're gambling with World War three.
And then we had the summit between Putin and Trump that doesn't seem to have gotten anywhere there. We didn't get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there. I would like to thank President Putin as his entire team. Could you tell us what is happening on the front line four years on and how the nature of the war has also changed.
So we will be marking four years of a full scale invasion that Russia has been waging against Ukraine. If we look at the losses that the Russian Federation has sustained, it's over one point two million people that they have lost or are injured in some shipwere or form one point two million casualties. That is the largest number that we have seen since World War Two. Despite the fact that they have such high casualties and their accomplishments on
the battlefield are minimal, they still keep pressing. They still keep sending their people to die. It's an absolute meat grinder. They're considering the Russian Federation's advantage in terms of people power and the fact that Ukrainians are not only outnumbered, they are also outgunned. Ukraine has managed to show incredible resilience, not only as a country but specifically on the battlefield.
And if we look at what has happened last week, Ukraine had regained over two hundred square kilometers of Ukrainian land in just five days. That is the biggest amount of land that Ukraine has managed to take back since the beginning of the full scale invasion in terms of territory.
Could you tell us about that change on the battlefield though, how it has really completely switched over to a type of drone warfare.
Yes, so if we would look at the front line, before, there would be a clear front line where military activity would be taking place, battles would be taking place. Now, because of the evolution of drone warfare and the extensive use of drones and different types of drones, that battlefield has stretched out to anywhere from thirty to forty kilometers from that line dividing the Russian occupied territory from Ukrainian territory.
So that's the first point. The second point is that technology that's used on the battlefield has also evolved and evolved at lightning speed. We have a military aid fun called the Defend Ukraine Appeal and we get different requests from different brigades. We currently support over fifty one different
brigades across the entire frontline. And whereas before we were getting requests for evacuation vehicles and drones, now we're getting a lot of requests for SYSTEMATREB, which are anti drone jammers. So they have these jammers that would stop FPV drones from hitting them, whether it's in the trenches or as they conduct their military operations.
On the political front. It's been reported by the Financial Times that Ukraine is preparing to hold a presidential election and a referendum on a piece deal because of all this pressure that is coming from President Trump to have a vote by May. What can you tell us about that? What are people saying in Ukraine?
People definitely see the headlines and see the external pressure. I go to Ukraine quite often. I obviously have my whole family there. I hear their feedback, but I also speak to a lot of different Ukrainians and the feedback is unanimous that Ukraine must decide when to hold elections on Ukraine's terms. It cannot be date that's set by an external party, and Ukraine shouldn't be forced into it.
But the biggest problem that we have about holding elections, it's not the fact that we don't want to, it's how to physically do it. We have hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens that are currently on the front line as part of the armed forces of Ukraine. How do they take part in elections? We currently have almost twenty percent of the country that's under occupied forces. How do we make sure that those people can participate in the elections?
And on top of that, we have daily missile and drone strikes that strike any area of where people congregate. You have Ukrainians that are displaced not only outside of the country, but there are millions of people that are internally displaced. So how do you make sure that they can vote properly? So a combination of all of that makes it extremely difficult to hold fair and open and safe elections in Ukraine.
Right now, Katarina, we're now entering the fifth year of this war, and it doesn't really look like either side is making huge progress.
It feels as though it could.
Just drag on or remain in a stalemate like this for another five years. Do you think it's time for Ukraine to cut a deal, even if it has to give up some territory that it can't beat Russia? And it's enough.
I can start with the last point that you made. It's certainly enough. Ukrainians feel the pressure physically, psychologically, They're exhausted, they are tormented every day. They are under immense amount of stress. But from what I hear from my family, every single person that I've spoken in Ukraine, they will never give up. This is not a matter of cutting a deal. This is not a matter of you know, give Russia whatever they want at this stage and make
it go away and make it stop. The only way we can make it stop is if Russia is brought to account, is if Russia is defeated on the battlefield. Every single negotiation, every single truce, every single ceasefire that has been agreed to by Russia, all of that has been violated. So you give twenty percent of Ukraine to Russia today, tomorrow they will come back to try and
take more. It's very difficult to cut a deal with a terrorist when you know that they will just come back and try to kill you again the next day.
So that's why Ukrainians are absolutely confident and know that there is absolutely no other way than to defeat Russia on the battlefield, make sure that Russians go home, have some sort of security guarantees and protection from partner countries and those that value democracy, that value freedom, and for us to not only be in this together, but win this together.
Katerina, thank you so much for coming and talking to me today.
Thank you Nicole for the opportunity.
Also in the news, police suspect human remains found near a golf club in Sydney's Northwest belonged to kidnapped grandfather Chris Bagsarian. The eighty five year old was taken hostage from his Sydney home almost a fortnight ago in what
police says a suspected case of mistaken identity. Detectives have said that mister Bagsarian's family never received any demand for ransom or communication from his captors, and The Royal Commission on Anti Semitism and Social Cohesion has started with state and federal government agencies issued with notices to produce documents as part of the inquiry, called a month after the
deadly Bondai terror attack. The inquiry will look at anti Semitism in Australian society and institutions, as well as the circumstances around the mass shooting. In her opening address, Commission of Virginia Bell said she's interested in hearing from Jewish Australians who vi ex experienced anti Semitism. The Commission had been directed to make recommendations on how to strengthen social cohesion encounter the spread of ideological and religiously motivated extremism,
and will deliver its final report by December fourteenth. I'm Nicole Johnston. This is seven am catch you tomorrow.