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Apply with £100,000 annual income or £100,000 savings or investments with HSBC UK or Premier status abroad. Welcome back to the Battlegrounds Ukraine podcast with me, Saul David and Patrick Fisher.

Every week we try to give you a mix of historical context, expert analysis and the latest news.

And in part two of this episode, we'll discuss the week's developments on the military, political and diplomatic fronts.

But first, we're going to hear from a very experienced Anglo-Ukrainian journalist, Ascal Khrusholnitsky, an old friend of mine as it happens,

who in 2006 published an Orange Revolution, a personal journey through Ukrainian history. Highly recommended. Askell's just returned

from Ukraine, where he's been for the last six months. He's been in the big cities and on the

front lines. And we asked him to bring us up to date with what's currently going on in terms of

the geographical location of a fighting. There are two main bodies of fighting in eastern Ukraine, in the area which is called

Donbass, which comprises of two Ukrainian provinces, Luhansk, most of which is now in Russian hands,

and Donetsk. And the other major area of fighting is in southern Ukraine,

in areas around the city of Kerson, which is the capital of the Kerson region, and also in parts of

Zaporizia province and Mikulayev province.

But these are all in the south,

and the battle there is for control of the Black Sea coast

and the vital ports that lay along that coast.

So has the tempo changed much in the last couple of weeks, or is it, are we into a kind

of de facto stalemate, at least for the time being?

No, it has changed.

...