Ukraine war: Does Zelenskyy’s most trusted security adviser have a message for the UK’s new prime minister?
In the centre of Kyiv – protected by checkpoints, sandbags, soldiers and guns – stands the city’s military heart.
It is here that we meet Oleksiy Danilov, head of the country’s national security council – President Zelenskyy’s most trusted security adviser.
Mr Danilov is not a shrinking violet. We speak for 20 or 30 minutes, during which time his dark gaze never moves from me and his focus never dips. He is resolute the war will be won and Russia will suffer its consequences.
Determined, too, that we should know the respect and affection he holds for the United Kingdom. Does he, I wonder, have a message for the new prime minister?
Putin facing ‘inevitable defeat’ in southern Ukraine – follow live war updates
“Britain has been helping us since the first days of the war,” says Mr Danilov, intensely. “When Boris Johnson was the prime minister, he communicated a lot with our president. On the first day and in the most difficult days, he communicated constantly with him.
“I am more than sure that the next prime minister will do the same for our country, as Johnson and Truss did, and it will be a continuation of the great help that the people of Great Britain are doing.
“We have a great common cause, and we are aware that we are on the side of the light of the whole of Europe and the whole civilised world. In adding to military aid, training our soldiers and accepting our refugees, Britain has offered us the help of a joint family. And this moral help is very important. It is unsurpassed.”
His cheer fades, though. We talk about a succession of grim challenges. The missiles and drones, for instance, that have rained down on some cities and towns, destroying critical infrastructure and imperilling the nation’s power supply.
“These are the things on which people’s lives depend – the work of hospitals, schools, and the lives of the elderly. This is humanitarian terrorism,” he says.
Then there is the Kakhovka dam, which he says has been mined by the Russian army “with a huge amount of explosives”.
Oleksiy Danilov is President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s most trusted security adviser
Read more: What is a ‘dirty bomb’ and is Russia planning to blow up the Nova Kakhovka dam?
There are claims Russia could blow it up in order to stop Ukrainian troops advancing towards Kherson.
“We will have to wait and see but if they do blow it up then the idea of water supply in Crimea will be gone for 10 or 15 years, or maybe forever.
“Then the question arises as to why they want Crimea if they are going to leave it without water.”
As for Kherson itself, he says the situation is “not easy” but that he does not expect Russian troops “to retreat on their own… they have their own plan, which I think we understand”.
He is, I think, laying the ground for a potentially brutal battle.
He fears, too, that a new front could open in the north.
Russian troops are reportedly massing in Belarus (a country for whose leaders Mr Danilov reserves a particular disdain), raising the spectre of them crossing the border and heading south towards Kyiv. It is, he tells me, a subject he had discussed with Mr Zelenskyy just before we met.
“Belarus has been occupied by the Russian Federation for a long time,” he says, gaze still full-on. “Russia does everything it deems necessary there, especially when that concerns the military sphere and the work of the Russian special services. In fact, they are under occupation.”
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So could Belarus be the base for an attack?
“Yes, indeed, from that side, after a certain period of time, certain unpleasant events may occur for our country. They have worked out this question. And they can in a short period of time transfer a large number of their troops precisely by air and rail to Belarus.”
He tells me that Ukraine does not have a “dirty bomb”, despite the claims of the Kremlin, and doesn’t have the necessary material (“since 1994 when we gave everything [Soviet-era nuclear weapons previously stationed in Ukraine] to Russia free of charge”) and “we would not deal with this issue anyway – we are not North Korea, or Iran or Russia”.
And then we get to the awkward bit of the interview.
Before meeting Mr Danilov, I had canvassed the view of a few senior European diplomats. One topic kept cropping up – what could end the war? Would Ukraine accept a deal where, for instance, it gave up the land occupied by Russia since 2014 in exchange for, say, NATO membership?
Mr Danilov’s gaze turns to a glare.
“I don’t know who you talk to in Europe and what these people have to do with our independence,” he says, frowning.
“Let me remind you. At one time, a French figure [he refers to former President Nicolas Sarkozy] tried to negotiate with Russia regarding Georgia, Georgia lost part of its territories. After figures from France and Germany forced us to sign the Minsk agreements [in 2014], we lost part of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. But we didn’t stop fighting for them, and we didn’t stop defending it, because it’s ours.
“This is our constitution, this is our laws, this is our land. Let them [European leaders] give their land to Putin. I want to see how their community, their constituents, and their children will react.
“Look, you can’t incite terrorists. Because in the future, their desire to capture, capture and capture once more will only increase. This is a dangerous practice. They made an example of Fascist Germany. So we have a very good memory. Now Putin is not much different from Hitler – he is just a modern Hitler.
“From 1941 to 1945, Germany was at war with almost the whole world. In May 1945, it was left in ruins. The same will happen with Russia. They are doomed to it.”
So how, I wonder, can Ukraine and Russia ever be reconciled. After all, even when the war is over the geography won’t change – they will still share a long border.
“Firstly, I do not see that Putin will be in power for long,” Mr Danilov says. “He is doing everything in his power to make Russia fall apart. It is Putin who is destroying Russia with his actions.
“Secondly, other countries co-exist with their neighbours, and it is not necessary to fight. It is not necessary to clarify relations by military means. And where will the borders be? I have repeatedly said that Ichkeria [Chechnya] will be free, Tatarstan will be free, and many countries will be free. Whether it will happen this year, or next year, or in the near future – let’s see.”
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Lavrov: ‘Dirty bomb’ claims ‘not unfounded’
And this is the view that intoxicates and inspires so many people in Ukraine – a story of total victory: that Ukraine will prevail, Russia will be vanquished and Mr Putin will fall.
The truth is that there are many across Europe who do hope for a deal to end the war but I suspect they will have a hard time convincing Mr Danilov.
For the past eight months, Ukraine has been telling its people that they are fighting to save all of their country.
To move the goalposts now would be hard.
“Our society,” he says, “demands the liberation of all our lands from the Russian invaders.”
He neither looks nor sounds like a man ready to change his mind.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced his resignation.
The 53-year-old said he will step down as leader of the country’s ruling Liberal Party, which he has led since 2013.
He says it will allow his party to choose a new leader as he suspends parliament until March due to political deadlock.
Chrystia Freeland, seen on the day she quit as finance minister and deputy prime minister in December. Pic: Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press via AP
Follow live: Justin Trudeau announces resignation
Speaking to reporters in front of his residence at Rideau Cottage, in the country’s capital, Ottawa, he said “internal battles” mean that he “cannot be the best option” in the next election.
“I don’t easily back down faced with a fight, especially a very important one for our party and the country. But I do this job because the interests of Canadians and the well-being of democracy is something that I hold dear.
“A new prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party will carry its values and ideals into that next election. I am excited to see that process unfold in the months ahead.”
Mr Trudeau, who has been prime minister since 2015, faced calls to quit from a chorus of his MPs amid poor showings in opinion polls.
He came under further pressure after his finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, resigned in December over clashes on policy.
The disagreements included how to handle possible US tariffs imposed by Donald Trump‘s incoming administration.
Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump in Italy in 2017. Pic: AP
Mr Trudeau’s resignation comes as the polls show his party is likely to suffer a heavy defeat to the official opposition Conservatives in an election that must be held by late October.
The Liberals must now name an interim leader to take over as prime minister ahead of a special leadership convention.
Mr Trudeau came to power 10 years ago following a decade of Conservative Party rule and was initially praised for returning the country to its liberal past.
But he has become deeply unpopular with voters in recent years over a range of issues, including the soaring cost of food and housing and surging immigration.
He is the eldest son of Pierre Trudeau, one of Canada’s most famous prime ministers, who led the country from 1968 to 1979 and from 1980 to 1984.
The political upheaval comes at a difficult moment for Canada internationally.
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US President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to impose 25% tariffs on all Canadian goods if Ottawa does not stem what Mr Trump calls a flow of migrants and drugs into the US.
Many fewer of each cross into the US from Canada than from Mexico, which Mr Trump has also threatened.
In a social media post on Christmas Day, Mr Trump even suggested the US could take control of Canada, as well as Greenland and the Panama Canal.
Canada is a major exporter of oil and natural gas to the US, which also relies on its northern neighbour for steel, aluminium and autos.
Few one-time golden boys manage to retain their lustre long into political office.
Barack Obama just about held on to his, leaving the US presidency with his approval rating high despite his party’s 2016 loss to Donald Trump.
But Emmanuel Macron is faltering in France and Justin Trudeau steps down as head of Canada’s liberal party with his popularity in shreds. So much for Western liberal values.
In the high tides of inflation and immigration, those who were their supposed flag-bearers are no longer what electorates want.
Follow live: Justin Trudeau announces resignation
For Mr Trudeau, it is a dramatic reckoning. His approval ratings have dropped from 65% at their highest in September 2016 to 22% now, according to the “Trudeau Tracker” from Canada’s non-profit Angus Reid Institute.
The sudden departure of his finance minister and key political ally Chrystia Freeland last month dealt his leadership a body blow, just as Canada readies itself for a potential trade war with the US which, she argued in a bracing resignation letter, his government was not taking seriously enough.
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“Parliament has been paralysed for months,” Trudeau says
The man Mr Trump recently trolled as “Governor of the ‘Great State of Canada’ or ’51st (US) state'”, Mr Trudeau was as close to Canadian political royalty as it gets.
The son of the country’s 15th prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, he was famously toasted by US president Richard Nixon as “the future prime minister of Canada” when he joined his father on a state visit as a toddler.
Aged five, he met the late Queen for the first time. “Thank you for making me feel so old”, she remarked drily at a re-meet in Malta almost 40 years later.
He has led Canada’s liberal party since 2013 and served as the country’s 23rd prime minister for almost a decade.
Mr Trudeau won a resounding electoral victory in 2015 and secured the premiership through two subsequent elections, though as head of a minority government.
Mr Trudeau, his wife and children celebrate after he won the Federal Liberal leadership in 2013 in Ottawa. Pic: AP/The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld
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He made significant inroads against poverty in Canada, worked hard on nation to nation reconciliation with Canada’s indigenous communities, secured an effective trade deal with the US and Mexico in 2016 and managed to keep the public mostly on-side through the COVID-19 pandemic.
But he was a polarising figure. Holidays in exotic climes like a trip to the Bahamas in 2016 to an island belonging to the Aga Khan made him seem elitist and out of touch.
There was embarrassment when blackface images surfaced from his early years as a teacher, for which he apologised profusely.
His supposed liberal credentials smacked of double standards when he invoked emergency powers to crush truckers’ protests in 2022.
But it was the economic aftermath of the pandemic, with Canada suffering an acute housing shortage, immigration leaping under his premiership and the cost of living hitting households across the board which really piled on the pressure.
In those, Canada is not unique. But the opposition conservatives and the public at large clearly want change, and Mr Trudeau has responded.
He has announced his intention to resign as party leader and prime minister after the Liberals selects their next leader.
Mr Trudeau’s legacy may shine brighter with a little hindsight. But now is not that moment.
The question is whether his conservative opposition will fare any better in an increasingly combative geopolitical environment if, as seems likely, a candidate of their choosing wins a federal election due at some point this year.
Donkey karts loaded with wrapped parcels of unknown goods weave around the large puddles of water left in the dried riverbed.
Young men quickly hop over laid bricks to bridge the puddles followed by women treading carefully with babies on their backs.
The Limpopo River’s seasonal dryness is a natural pathway for those moving into South Africa from Zimbabwe illegally.
A sandy narrow beach undisturbed by border patrols with crossers chatting peacefully under trees on both banks as men furiously load and unload smuggled goods on the roadside.
Against the anti-immigration rage and xenophobia boiling over in South Africa’s urban centres, the tranquillity and ease of the border jumping is astonishingly calm.
People crossing the dried Limpopo River to get from Zimbabwe to South Africa
“You can’t stop someone who is suffering. They have to find any means to come find food,” one man tells us anonymously as he crosses illegally.
At 55 years old, he remembers the 3,500-volt electric fence called the “snake of fire” installed here by the Apartheid regime.
Hundreds of women and children escaping conflict in the late 1980s and early 1990s were electrocuted.
A woman near the border
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Today, people fleeing drought and economic strife are smuggled across or walking through border blindspots like this one.
“Now, it’s easy,” he says. “There is no border authority here.”
He crosses regularly and always illegally. While he laughs at the lack of border agents, he says he has been stopped by soldiers in the past.
“They send us back but then the next day you try to come back and it is fine.”
Part of the dilapidated border fence that separates South Africa with Zimbabwe
We find a few soldiers on our way back to the main road. They look confused by our presence but unphased. It is hard to believe they are unaware of the streams of people and goods moving across the dried riverbed just a few hundred metres away.
Border ‘fence’ trampled and full of holes
We drive along the border fence to get to the official border post into Zimbabwe, Beitbridge.
“Fence” is a generous term for the knee-height barbed wire laid across 25 miles of South Africa’s northern edges in 2020. Some sections are completely trampled, and others are gaping with holes.
The concrete fortress is a drastic change to the soft, sandy riverbed. Queues dismantle and reassemble as eager crowds rush from one building to another as instructions change.
Zimbabweans can live, work and study in South Africa on a Zimbabwean exemption permit, but many like Precious, a mother-of-three, cannot even afford a passport.
Precious, a mother-of-three, staying at a shelter in Musina, South Africa
Shelters for women and trafficked children in Musina
When we meet her at a women’s shelter in the border town of Musina, she says she only has $30 (£23.90) to find work in South Africa and that a passport costs $50 (£39.80).
“My husband is disabled and can’t work or do anything. I’m the only one doing everything – school, food, everything. I’m the one who has to take care of the kids and that situation makes me come here to find something,” she says tearfully before breaking down.
The shelter next door is home to trafficked children that were rescued. Other shelters are full of men looking for work.
Musina is a stagnant sanctuary for Zimbabweans searching for a better life who become paralysed here – a sign of the declining state of Zimbabwe and the growing hostility deeper in South Africa.
In Johannesburg, South Africa’s economic centre, illegal immigrants are facing raids and deportations organised by the Ministry of Home Affairs at the behest of popular discontent.
The heavy-handed escalation in the interior sits in stark contrast to the lax border control.
Derelict buildings in Johannesburg where migrants are living
“I wonder how serious our government is about dealing with immigration,” says Nomzamo Zondo, human rights attorney and executive director of the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI), as we walk through Johannesburg’s derelict inner city.
“I think part of it is that the South Africa we want to build is one that wants to welcome its neighbours and doesn’t forget the people that welcomed us when we didn’t have a home – and that is why I think they are so poor at maintaining the borders.”
She adds: “But then the call has to be one that says once you are here, how do we make sure you are regularised here, that you know who you are, and contribute to the economy at this point in time.”
More makeshift migrant accommodation in Johannesburg
Climate of anti-migrant hate
In 1994 as South Africa’s first democratically elected president, Nelson Mandela ordered that all electric fences be taken down.
His dream for South Africa to become a pan-African haven for civilians of neighbouring countries that provided sanctuary for fighters in the anti-Apartheid movement was criticised by local constituents back then.
Sky correspondent Yousra Elbagir speaks to migrants inside a government van
Now in a climate of increasing anti-migrant hate, that vision is rejected outright.
“I think that is the highest level of sell-out. When South Africans were in exile, they were in camps and they were restricted to go to other parts of those countries,” says Bungani Thusi, a member of anti-immigrant movement Operation Dudula, at a protest in Soweto.
Anti-immigrant protesters from the group Operation Dudula at a demonstration in Soweto
He is wearing faux military fatigues and has the upright position of an officer heading into battle.
“Why do you allow foreigners to go all over South Africa and run businesses and make girlfriends?” he adds, with all the seriousness of protest.
“South Africans can’t even have their own girlfriends because the foreigners have taken over the girlfriend space.”
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