ZVEZDA — broadcast
20260920 080000 UTC
419 transcript segments
Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking
Data courtesy of The GDELT Project (https://www.gdeltproject.org/), from the Internet Archive TV News Archive.
Machine transcription. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a verbatim quotation record.

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[00:04:19] like a relative, Koshchey treats not only a
[00:04:22] tank, but also every combat
[00:04:25] comrade. I managed to visit where
[00:04:28] the tankmen from his...
[00:04:31] Together with friends, circus artists and cinema, we even gave
[00:04:34] the guys a concert. When they brought us into a rather
[00:04:38] cozy, beautiful hall, we were, to put it mildly, shocked, because this is not
[00:04:42] a rear military unit club, but the front, and
[00:04:46] the auditorium and stage were underground. But what about the
[00:04:49] stage? The tankmen of Koshchey even have their own dental
[00:04:53] office, also underground, and they also have their own
[00:04:57] bathhouse, and such that many...
[00:05:12] to the bathhouse, the bathhouse, by the way, is one of the most
[00:05:15] visited places for the fighters to relax.
[00:05:30] We arrived at the
[00:05:32] battalion bathhouse.
[00:05:36] Well, just a little, yes, well, we had to
[00:05:39] build it, and there was a room, that is, for the personnel,
[00:05:42] uh, washing facilities, as they called them, their
[00:05:46] bathhouse. Four poles, covered with
[00:05:49] film, a stove in the middle. They called it a bathhouse.
[00:05:53] Ага, I come, guys, well, this is a washing room, I say, well,
[00:05:56] are you kidding me? There's a forest, everything is there, permission is there, I say, let's
[00:06:00] build a bathhouse, and how? We talked,
[00:06:03] communicated, found a couple of people in the battalion who were engaged
[00:06:06] in logging, engaged in timber. We went, selected, received
[00:06:10] permission, took out the timber. We processed everything, permission from
[00:06:14] the authorities - well, it's from the forestry,
[00:06:17] everything is done officially, that is, you can't do it any other way, well, we
[00:06:21] are no longer marauders, as they say, uh-huh, uh-huh, we received everything,
[00:06:25] brought everything, processed it, first assembled the frame outside,
[00:06:27] numbered it as
[00:06:30] it should be, disassembled it, assembled it already
[00:06:33] here, slowly built a bathhouse, well, with
[00:06:37] our tank helmets, friends, friends,
[00:06:40] look what a hat. tankmen
[00:06:44] should have, tankmen in the bathhouse,
[00:06:47] everything according to Feng Shui, do you have one like that? I
[00:06:51] don't, but I will
[00:06:53] soon.
[00:06:57] Cool, there's a hint. Well, the bathhouse is working, I
[00:07:00] feel, yes, they are drying it today,
[00:07:04] uh-huh, that is, the guys washed in the evening,
[00:07:07] a little dampness remained, this is all underground, there is the biggest
[00:07:11] problem, that is, this whole square we are standing on is underground,
[00:07:14] like, you know, like in a shower
[00:07:18] cabin, the frame is completely welded from iron, two
[00:07:22] pipes, it goes down there behind the bathhouse, there
[00:07:26] is even a lower pit, that is, all the water went away, then we throw it
[00:07:30] outside with a pump, that is, only in this way
[00:07:32] can I do it myself, well, I go about every 3 days, and so
[00:07:36] the schedule, each company goes every day, once a week the bathhouse is
[00:07:40] dried, that is...
[00:07:42] maintenance is going on, it's not working, that's it, it's been standing for a year,
[00:07:46] probably, yes, I won't say
[00:07:50] how deep we went down, this
[00:07:53] is unnecessary information for you, but I caught myself thinking
[00:07:56] that for the first time in a bathhouse deep underground,
[00:07:59] there is romance in it.
[00:08:14] Tell me, driving through a minefield, is it a special
[00:08:17] feeling? Driving through a minefield, especially when you
[00:08:21] understand it, it's a special feeling, I think I don't
[00:08:25] wish anyone to understand this, but you did it. It happened
[00:08:29] once. Tell me. Berdychiv, a settlement.
[00:08:32] There was an assault on the settlement. A tank entered,
[00:08:36] two IFVs. They worked as planned, the
[00:08:39] landing force disembarked. At the beginning of the operation,
[00:08:42] an ATGM hit this tank,
[00:08:44] птур,
[00:08:47] by God's grace, we were lucky, it hit the side, the
[00:08:50] reactive armor worked, so the tank remained
[00:08:53] intact. In this confusion, we just got a little lost,
[00:08:55] probably. We turned the wrong way.
[00:08:59] There were two main roads, one of them was a minefield,
[00:09:02] which no one could
[00:09:05] pass, but as a backup route, it was studied. When
[00:09:08] we reached the turn, I saw a burnt
[00:09:12] BREM. I realized that we were on this road, there was no other
[00:09:15] way. There was a way to go back, where
[00:09:19] the birds are trying to reach us anyway, and turn around
[00:09:23] and go to them again. Without telling the crew, I made
[00:09:27] the decision that we would go through the minefield myself.
[00:09:30] We went, turned right, went
[00:09:32] along,
[00:09:35] carefully passing, we met a FAB-3000,
[00:09:39] which did not reach this settlement.
[00:09:43] FAB is a shell almost the length of a tank,
[00:09:46] yes, along the entire width, how the track
[00:09:49] went, that's how the FAB lay, uh-huh, maybe
[00:09:52] they worked on it, well, the fact that it was lying there,
[00:09:56] to the right of it, about half a meter away, neatly lay a line of
[00:09:59] TM-62 mines, on the left -
[00:10:01] these are tank mines, TM-62
[00:10:05] tank mine, uh-huh,
[00:10:07] on the left was a rare forest belt, and it was unknown what
[00:10:11] was there. We decided to go through this forest belt, with
[00:10:15] God's help, we didn't fly to Mars.
[00:10:19] All the crews came back very pale.
[00:10:22] The next... when they were analyzing the whole
[00:10:26] situation, my commanders couldn't believe me, how could
[00:10:29] a BREM be burnt? I said we drove along the inner
[00:10:33] side, because there were TM-62 mines on the outer side. Then I said,
[00:10:37] four vehicles that we then just started to get, we called them
[00:10:41] golf carts, some burnt, some not. Then
[00:10:45] a Chupa Chups, I say, from the tank, from the turret, and what is a Chupa Chups? It's a very rare
[00:10:49] example, when the side of the tank
[00:10:52] is blown up and the turret is torn off.
[00:11:25] not do it the way it should have been done, so
[00:11:29] I made a decision, we worked, and with God's help
[00:11:32] we got there.
[00:11:41] Well, such events, do they temper you
[00:11:45] or make you more cautious? I'm just trying
[00:11:48] to understand, when you very quickly got into a difficult situation and
[00:11:52] almost died, why then... do you make
[00:11:56] a decision to go through a minefield? It's impossible
[00:12:00] to get used to it. That is, there's no such thing as fighting for a year,
[00:12:03] getting used to it intensively, and you're
[00:12:06] Rambo. You still need to overcome yourself every time, every sortie,
[00:12:10] every decision, every hit on you, every FPV flying
[00:12:14] by. You need to overcome
[00:12:17] yourself every time. I mean, FPV is our everything, as
[00:12:21] they say, lately. And after Berdyansk,
[00:12:27] I probably couldn't get myself
[00:12:31] to walk calmly for two months.
[00:12:33] I heard the sound,
[00:12:37] that's it, I froze. Only after several months did I overcome this
[00:12:41] fear, started walking calmly, when
[00:12:44] in the twenty-fifth year, it specifically attacked
[00:12:47] me, in the summer, I went
[00:12:49] hunting.
[00:12:52] I could already, I even surprised myself, that... at that moment
[00:12:55] I realized, I'm running away from it, that is, I'm not standing, not
[00:12:59] scared. I have a rifle, an M-4,
[00:13:02] I shoot, I don't penetrate it,
[00:13:05] a cartridge jam occurs, the shell did not
[00:13:08] fly out,
[00:13:11] in a second you won't fix it on an M-4. I understand that's it,
[00:13:15] I'm one-on-one with it, I dropped it and started yelling
[00:13:19] at it, I'm not going anywhere, leave me alone.
[00:13:22] Well, no one hears you there, you just see
[00:13:26] some fool screaming from below,
[00:13:29] that's it, it sped up and flew at me, I jumped under it,
[00:13:33] again, we constantly watch these videos where
[00:13:36] soldiers constantly try to dodge, do something
[00:13:40] else, I had a choice, I was standing near an apple tree, either jump
[00:13:44] under the apple tree or under it, from where it's flying. I
[00:13:47] chose to jump under it, and it thought I would jump under the apple tree,
[00:13:51] it flew exactly there, I flew in the opposite direction.
[00:13:56] Outsmarted, yes, yes, well, it turns out, yes,
[00:13:59] outsmarted once, well, I managed
[00:14:03] to fly away, but my leg didn't quite make it, a through
[00:14:06] fracture, but I only realized that when they evacuated me
[00:14:09] to Selidovo, that is, first I still walked 3 km
[00:14:12] back. The soldiers wanted
[00:14:14] to escort me, I yelled at them, nothing, I walked, sat
[00:14:18] down, drank some water, turned on a movie on my
[00:14:21] phone, lay in the clearing, waited until...
[00:14:45] The commander can apologize, yes, absolutely, not just
[00:14:48] can, this is probably one of the components, a bad
[00:14:52] commander, a boss who cannot.
[00:15:25] This is not just equipment, it is first and foremost people, every
[00:15:29] human life, therefore, well, I think everyone should live at
[00:15:33] least in a brigade, if at the brigade level, it should be one
[00:15:36] big family. Which we always strive for together
[00:15:40] with our commanders, superiors,
[00:15:42] deputies, everyone should help each other at
[00:15:46] their own level, only by joint efforts can we
[00:15:50] overcome all our obstacles. If everyone works,
[00:15:54] as they say, "my house is on the edge," then
[00:15:57] there will be no work. Thank you,
[00:16:00] thank you.
[00:16:12] I will not reveal military secrets if I say that large-scale
[00:16:16] tank battles and even tank duels remained
[00:16:19] in the history of the Great Patriotic War. However, the work of
[00:16:23] a modern tankman today is no less dangerous,
[00:16:26] in fact, perhaps even more so. In
[00:16:29] the era of drones, the tank and its crew are more
[00:16:33] vulnerable than ever. Guys,
[00:16:36] tankmen, we... are rooting for you and
[00:16:40] believe that soon you will return home safe and
[00:16:43] sound, but before that, friends, smash
[00:16:47] this entire neo-Nazi armada to smithereens, we
[00:16:50] know you can do it.
[00:17:52] On air is a unique project, I'm looking for my loved ones, you search, we
[00:17:55] find. Today we will recall the events that took place in
[00:17:59] the city of Volchansk, Kharkov region. To present us with a general
[00:18:03] picture of what is happening in this sector of the front, I will ask military
[00:18:06] correspondent for Krasnaya Zvezda and Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Amir
[00:18:10] Mengaliev, whom I invite to the studio.
[00:18:12] Let's welcome him. Hello
[00:18:16] Amir, in November 2025, in
[00:18:20] besieged Volchansk, almost no buildings remained
[00:18:23] intact. Ukrainian Armed Forces militants did not think about the civilians
[00:18:26] who did not have time to leave
[00:18:28] the city.
[00:18:32] Oksana Mikryukova, her husband, parents, and young
[00:18:35] daughter huddled in a half-ruined...
[00:18:54] Hold on, we'll get you out.
[00:18:58] How the family eventually managed to leave Volchansk, we will find
[00:19:01] out now. In the studio, Anatoly, Oksana and Kira Mekryukovy.
[00:19:05] Let's welcome them.
[00:19:12] Hello, hello, good afternoon, please, who
[00:19:15] do you want to meet in this studio today and
[00:19:19] why? Please, our saviors, those who
[00:19:22] pulled us out, these are our guys
[00:19:25] Tur, well Balu, well many
[00:19:29] others also participated, Al, yes,
[00:19:31] the guy who was specifically on the drone, well,
[00:19:34] he communicated with us, these are those very guys.
[00:19:38] who controlled the UAV, yes, yes, tell us, why
[00:19:42] did you find yourself in a trap?
[00:19:44] When the forced evacuation of families with children began, this
[00:19:48] was, well, still the beginning of twenty-three, like
[00:19:52] that. We did not leave the territory under
[00:19:55] Ukraine. We stayed in our
[00:19:58] house. Why did you make such a decision? Because
[00:20:01] there was no future in Ukraine for our family as such. My husband went
[00:20:05] to serve in the Ukrainian Armed Forces...
[00:20:37] the liberation of the city, waiting for ours, yes,
[00:20:41] and the other side demanded an explanation from you, why you didn't
[00:20:44] leave, those who were specifically military personnel of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,
[00:20:48] they absolutely didn't care who, what, where,
[00:20:51] where to go, it didn't
[00:20:57] they came repeatedly, well, let's take a specific example, they
[00:21:01] arrived, what do you do at that moment? I came out,
[00:21:05] I came out, said that my husband was not
[00:21:08] there, of course, they said to write an explanation,
[00:21:11] an explanation, where is my husband, where is my daughter? Since
[00:21:15] she is a minor, I said that they left for
[00:21:18] another address. Who is in the house? Me, well,
[00:21:22] it turns out that what saved us was that at that time
[00:21:26] we had cameras on the house, there was video surveillance, the house was
[00:21:29] completely, and I said that the cameras record
[00:21:32] with sound, if you want problems, please,
[00:21:35] let's go. Immediately,
[00:21:38] there was a policeman who
[00:21:42] put me in the car, and he whispered to me, "Write an explanation, they won't
[00:21:45] touch you." And I wrote an explanation, indicating a stranger's
[00:21:50] address, where no one was there.
[00:21:53] Then they came repeatedly, but
[00:21:57] we tracked them on cameras, they're coming to us,
[00:22:00] accordingly, we didn't go out, right up to the point that it was
[00:22:04] already winter, we didn't even go outside,
[00:22:06] that is, for groceries, I went out for
[00:22:10] groceries through a neighbor.
[00:22:12] Well, I understand why they were interested in my husband, but why were they
[00:22:16] interested in Kira? There was a forced evacuation of minors. Kira,
[00:22:32] tell me about your house. You had your own room,
[00:22:35] uh-huh, what was in your room,
[00:22:38] what was there, tell me, drawings probably hung on the wall, posters
[00:22:41] of some kind, well, there were no
[00:22:44] posters, but what was there, a whole bunch of
[00:22:47] them were, which one is your favorite? Toothless
[00:22:50] toy,
[00:22:52] Toothless the dragon, did he stay there or is he with you there? We
[00:22:56] have a photo, let's see. This is your house, yes, this is before, this
[00:23:06] a big one, inside the house there was an entrance from the inside, well, in my
[00:23:09] time I expanded it a little, made an exit also from the outside,
[00:23:13] it turns out that we had three compartments, in
[00:23:17] one so to speak, where else
[00:23:20] do you keep your mother-in-law and father-in-law? Here in the basement, in the second
[00:23:24] compartment were we, well, and the third was such
[00:23:27] a shed, yes, so this is where we
[00:23:30] lived, uh-huh, it turns out, where Oksana is sitting, this
[00:23:34] is just an exit to another type of room, well, behind my
[00:23:38] back photographing, that is, the composition is like this, there are
[00:23:42] five of you, yes, with your whole family, mother and father, they came from
[00:23:45] the center, it turns out, when the Ukrainian Armed Forces
[00:23:49] settled near them. they, well,
[00:23:52] there was nowhere to
[00:23:58] accordingly, only to us, uh-huh, so we lived in
[00:24:02] Peter. And in your opinion, were there many other people in Volchansk in
[00:24:06] the same situation at that time? When we were
[00:24:09] there, there were many people, very many, very many, well, it's
[00:24:12] hundreds, thousands, many disappeared, you said, yes, we lived,
[00:24:16] well, roughly speaking, across the meadow from the aggregate plant. And
[00:24:20] there, well, it was more or less the periphery and quieter.
[00:24:23] They also told stories about people
[00:24:27] disappearing. They would go out for provisions and never return. They
[00:24:30] would come, one day no, second no, third no. They would come
[00:24:34] home, no home, the house burned down completely, no
[00:24:37] people. Amir, let's talk about Volchansk, the Kharkov direction,
[00:24:41] a difficult city in terms of combat operations. How
[00:24:45] did the situation develop, what is the importance of the city itself, what
[00:24:48] are the possibilities of its liberation from...
[00:24:52] Please, at that time I was just in the "North" group of forces,
[00:24:54] the troops that participated
[00:24:58] in the liberation of this city. I remember
[00:25:01] that all the talk was about Volchansk, that it needed
[00:25:04] to be liberated, it was very important, including
[00:25:06] the fact that what hindered
[00:25:09] the advance of our units was that there were many,
[00:25:12] well, a fairly large number of civilians in the city.
[00:25:15] We knew that, firstly, the Ukrainian Armed Forces
[00:25:19] did not care about them, and secondly, there were cases
[00:25:22] of using civilians as human
[00:25:25] shields, that is, they placed their positions directly in close
[00:25:28] proximity to living people, to ordinary
[00:25:31] civilians, and it was difficult to advance,
[00:25:34] the task was not to harm civilians, to liberate the city
[00:25:38] so that civilians would not be harmed, because of this,
[00:25:41] of course, the pace of advance was not
[00:25:44] that high, that is, the specificity of combat in
[00:25:48] urban areas, that is, this is until...
[00:26:02] was located, well, firstly, the territorial defense forces, uh-huh, well, and
[00:26:06] secondly, the national battalions, they were directly told, "This is our territory, the people are not
[00:26:09] ours, that's it, we dig in, we take it, if necessary, we'll cover
[00:26:13] ourselves with civilians," well, if we talk about neo-Nazism, well, these
[00:26:16] are real neo-Nazis, they were there, by the way, how far
[00:26:20] away were the Ukrainians from you? In the next house, here they are,
[00:26:24] just a clear example, that an attempt to hide, well, on our
[00:26:27] street, specifically on our street,
[00:26:30] initially, well...
[00:26:53] well, she might have done her homework at home, but yes, I just don't like English. What are your favorite subjects?
[00:26:55] Math,
[00:27:00] natural science.
[00:27:06] club as well.
[00:27:09] How did you, why did you decide to lay out "people"? And we
[00:27:13] initially, from the very first days, probably, laid out "people",
[00:27:16] wrote on the gate, also with paint, "people", but this
[00:27:20] is a photo, yes, this
[00:27:23] is, well, the plastic that flew off
[00:27:25] the canopy, yes,
[00:27:31] places. Peaceful people and so on, peace, that
[00:27:35] is, there were different inscriptions to
[00:27:38] indicate that people are still here,
[00:27:41] that they haven't gone anywhere. Our forces are just
[00:27:44] coming, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are in the city,
[00:27:48] Ukrainian birds are also in the air and they see the inscription "people",
[00:27:51] they understand that this inscription is not addressed to them, it's
[00:27:55] a risk, this is how we thought, how we
[00:27:59] understood that this inscription was addressed to everyone, and
[00:28:02] well, like... if you decide to drop something, keep in mind that there are people here,
[00:28:05] yes, yes, we hoped for
[00:28:15] the inscription "people". Those who periodically ran in to us, they
[00:28:19] had one answer, "There are no civilians here,"
[00:28:22] uh-huh, "the city is cleared of civilians,"
[00:28:25] "there are no civilians here," "we don't know
[00:28:28] anything." Well, when does this story feature that very drone?
[00:28:33] Well, the first drone appeared on June 1,
[00:28:36] 2025, on Children's Protection Day.
[00:28:40] My husband and my mother were outside, and in
[00:28:43] the garden, and I remember Tolya shouting such a
[00:28:47] "Ksyukha!" "Our guys
[00:28:50] flew to us," he says, "sweets!" We
[00:28:53] had sweets. We were in the garden, heard the sound
[00:28:56] of a drone, hid, well, hid
[00:29:00] under the awning, as usual everything and...
[00:30:03] Well, it's important to understand here that there were contacts with different
[00:30:05] units and different UAV groups.
[00:30:09] Ah, that is, it was not possible to establish a close
[00:30:12] correspondence with this group, we already corresponded with Pomor, with Tur.
[00:30:15] We actually have fragments of this very
[00:30:19] correspondence, let's show them, and you tell us,
[00:30:22] especially the TV viewers and audience, what
[00:30:34] You make it clear how many of you there are. So
[00:30:37] we wanted to pass a note, just wrote who
[00:30:40] we are, uh, well, that we are civilians, surnames,
[00:30:44] names, this is already a note being dropped to us, and
[00:30:48] this is what, as it turns out, uh, they wrote in the note
[00:30:52] to us that our godparents, our godmother,
[00:30:55] send their greetings. Connection, connection
[00:30:58] restored. What's