That's basically the gist of this.

yeah totally and starlink as well for context is not just a part of the front line here it is the front line it's the main mode of communications right now and that's how all the soldiers all across the front that i've been spending time with in the last few weeks can communicate with each other command is how everything is launched that's how everything is done here it's all open source information as well so you know the united states knows this as well elon knows this this is a critical part of keeping everyone alive, keeping Ukraine functioning.

And a couple of days ago, I was actually on the road.

I was somewhere between Kharkiv and the north of Ukraine.

And I started getting messages from the commanders that we had interviewed saying, are you noticing this? Have you any of your contacts in politics? Do you know what's going on? And it looked like the speed had slowed down for these starlings to operate.

and no one knew why, right? Elon said it was Trump, Trump said it was Elon.

You know, everyone was passing this hot potato because no one wanted to take responsibility.

What's been the impact of all those attacks? What are people going through when it comes to the attacks on energy infrastructure?

What are the Russians? Do they feel that today is their renaissance? They're coming back to power?

Well, thanks for having me on your show.

It seems like the Russians are everywhere this year.

I've spent half of 2026 chasing, you know, oligarchs, diplomats around Europe, high society events at the Venice Biennale, at all sorts of different shows.

They've got their oil refineries in Ireland that are still pumping 14 ships every single month of raw materials for the war, very blatantly through our oceans.

And now we've seen this photo at the wedding, at Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding, showing that they're partying it up across the water as well.

So it actually feels like this story that's just broken about the Russians and the deep state in Russia's connection to the Trump family isn't actually that surprising.

When did you first get to Ukraine?

For Ukrainians, this is what every day feels like.

We were in downtown Pavlegrad five minutes ago, heard a massive explosion, saw the smoke cloud just over the rise, and we rushed over here to find the aftermath of a Shahed drone attack.

The first responders were already on the scene, just an extraordinary response time, literally minutes, and they're all kitted out with full body armor and helmets because it is a favorite tactic of the Russians to send a second drone, a double tap to kill the rescuers.

It appears we're not going to get any closer, but it appears as if the drone hit this open area and destroyed the cars.

They are still spraying water at the cars to put out the fires.

And the concern, of course, and the reason we're being pushed back is because of the threat of a double tap or unexploded ordnance.

But it was a pretty big boom.

Thanks.

How did this film come together and what possessed you to once again go straight into the mouth of the lion to deliver this kind of real on-the-ground reporting.

Well, thank you so much for what you said about that film.

I was a little nervous to put it out because so many frontline films focus just on war, you know, just on explosions.

And I really wanted to focus on the people that are still left, right? So I got a phone call a few months ago when I was filming the Ireland documentary, and it was from DTEK, the power station company in Ukraine.

And they said, would you like to come to the last power station powering There's only one left.

It's the last almost Prometheus.

It's being shelled every single day.

It's astonishing that the residents of Kramatorsk are able to live their lives with that menace, but they do.

But he, he basically said we-- they were gonna ignore it because of the, the potential impact on, on jobs.

Yeah.

Leo probably wouldn't really like me talking about this right now.

You know, he messaged me as a fan on Instagram recently, and I don't think he expected me to bring this subject up when I met him.

But he said that this was also brought up within twenty-four hours of the full-scale invasion actually happening.

He also went to Rusal, which is, you know, where this plant is located, in February 2022 because that's when production started to increase.

So it's a really, it's a really kinda shady situation.

You're gonna test that against battlefield debris.

[laughs]

...

both understand, like, the value of what the church represents.

But watching the beautiful sort of, like, gold dome buildings here on, under, under threat like they are now, on fire, is a scene that I never thought possible, is a scene that I never thought would, would, would be unfolding in front of my own eyes.

But this is b- this is what Russia represents now.

It represents desperation.

You know, Russia is not losing on the battlef- is not winning on the battlefield in this country right now, and so they are lashing out, and they are trying to, uh, terrify everyone here.

So s- talk to us about the reporting you were doing and what you saw in Ireland.

What is your assessment of the tactical and strategic reality in Ukraine when it comes to the war itself?

Well, it's cool that you said that.

Most journalists like to pride themselves on being pessimists all the time.

But actually, it's good to be optimistic because that's realistic in this situation.

After years in Ukraine, this feels like the first turning point where it really feels like something could happen.

A second war has been launched, you know this, which is when Ukraine started building and firing their own long-range missiles.

And that's a war on Russia's industrial complex and their economy.

especially after the winter that ukraine just endured it's almost poetic in a way that the turning point for me and it happened very recently was talking to ukrainians at the same time that our secretary of state was on the phone with sergey lavrov being told to evacuate all americans from kiev what ukrainians were saying to me and i felt terrible saying this out loud until more than one of them gave me permission their response has been astonishingly bring it on you want to launch the biggest raid on kiev that we've ever seen bring it on the idea that this is going to cow them or break their spirit when it is having absolutely the opposite effect is just another indication of the bubble that putin is living in he has no idea what the the resolve of the ukrainian people will lead to which will be the dissolution of russia i believe do you do you have thoughts on that where what does russia look like in 30 years

Yeah.

And that is what I found.

And it's, it's, there's basically, there's a refinery that's Russian-owned still, four and a half years into the full-scale invasion.

It's sending hundreds of millions of euros of a white powder called alumina, which is then made into aluminum, used in war, modern warfare in Russia.

And these ships leave 14 times a month full of it down the Shannon in the s-sleepy west coast of Ireland directly to St. Petersburg, and I watch those ships sail every couple of days.

And this has been going on and on and on with minimal outrage, and I wanted to investigate it.

So I arrived in the town and started showing that there were signs in Russian everywhere.

Maybe that's not your problem, but surely you think about it.

What's your take?

I mean, it's really unusual for an interview like this to be conducted here.

Like, this is the second time that Zelensky has done an independent interview like this with independent, you know, journalists.

Normally it's with mainstream media, it's with CNN, it's some of the biggest networks.

I think the only other person he's done an interview with this like this was Lex Friedman.

And that was mainly because Lex was putting out lots of kind of Russian nonsense.

He was interviewing Putin.

I have never seen that before.

Is this something you've consciously done? Or is this something you've been evolving, innovating? And how does it fit here in Ukraine?

I don't really think I planned any of this.

Honestly, I moved to this country after leaving a newspaper for five years with a backpack with my only belongings and with almost no money.

And I didn't really know what to do.

But after I made a documentary here in 2023, I knew that I needed to tell stories here because there's a huge lack of coverage.

And there's basically no one here properly full-time documenting what's happening.

Well, I wouldn't say no one, but like, it's, it's, it's not enough.

Anyone going through this, it would be.

Like, what, what's happening on the ground, uh, in Ukraine?

Well, I only left a few days ago, but this is the coldest winter in years.

It's the coldest winter I've ever seen in Ukraine.

The temperature has gone down to minus 20 Celsius, which is absolutely below freezing.

It's the first time the Dnipro River has frozen over, probably in decades.

People are walking to the other side, and it's the time that Russians have been hitting the city more intensely, specifically with energy and thermal, than they ever have since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.

So as of today, from last night's missile attacks, um, 6,000 buildings, not, not just houses, but high-rise buildings, are now without water, without power.

Is that plausible? Are they getting the support they need, you know? Do they have the, the military capacity for that? Like, what is the- what's the thinking on the Ukrainian side?

Of course, of course. Tell people who have not been following you, just give them a sense for, like, why are you in Ukraine? Like, what have you been doing? Uh, give us a, a brief life story.

Um, well, I ran a, a news outlet, liberal news outlet called Byline TV for about four years in London. We covered Russian disinformation, far-right disinformation, a lot of the stuff that led to Brexit. I interviewed a lot of people that voted for Brexit and regretted it, fishermen, farmers, people just across the UK who felt lied to by politicians. And when the, uh, full-scale invasion happened here, John Sweeney, which is a, uh, presenter that worked with us, came out here as soon as it happened and he, uh, he basically said, "Calen, what's happening in this country is the peak manifestation of what Russian disinformation has been leading up to for so long. Not enough people really understand the war crimes that are happening here. Russia's trying to cover up so much of it. You should get out here and make a film." And I made a documentary with him. It was my first time ever going on the front lines. We went all the way to, you know, Donbas, to Chasiv Yar. We were documenting use of white phosphorus against civilians. I went to Kherson with him and we, uh, we documented, uh, victims of torture who were civilians during the occupation. This was just after Kherson was liberated. And that film came out, it won 12 awards, uh, and I went back to London and I couldn't, I couldn't go back to doing what I was doing before. I thought this was so meaningful. It was, it was probably the most meaningful work I've ever done. You know, the results were, were submitted to the ICC and it felt like something I was doing was really making a change as a filmmaker. And so I made the decision to move out here, uh, about nine months ago, moved to Odesa, now live in Kyiv. And since then, I've been going back to Kherson, I've been traveling across the front lines. And obviously, as you know, went to Sudzha, went to Kursk recently, got sanctioned on the international arrest warrant for Russia. But it's been an absolute crazy, crazy time here in Ukraine. But God, it's been, yeah, a whirlwind of, uh, of reports.

Yeah.

... has done is he's cut off US intelligence sharing with this country. And he did it straightaway. He flicked the switch. And Russia, emboldened by this, uh, thought they'd try it out. They put 35 ballistic missiles into this country last night, the air raid alerts were going off here constantly, um, and hundreds of drones. And unfortunately, a lot of those drones got through, more than normal, and a lot of those munitions were launched from the Black Sea fleet, which is now surfacing itself because it, uh, it knows that it can hide more easily because the US intelligence was helping this country find out where things were launched from. Also, the early warning systems which tell Ukrainians where things are being launched from isn't gonna be as successful now because a lot of that relied on US intel. And what Trump has dust- just done by flicking that switch has killed Ukrainians in the last 24 hours. It is already killing people in this country. Um, and it is absolutely outrageous. Never mind unnecessary, never mind cruel, but despicable. Um, and this is just from shutting off intel. Putin also put, uh, missions, uh, Putin also put missiles into this country last night because he can. Because America has given Putin the green light to do whatever he wants in this country. There's not gonna be any repercussions. He's emboldened Putin and sided with Putin. And so Putin thinks, "All right, if I want to bomb Ukrainian cities and civilians and hospitals and any civilian targets, there won't be any consequences because Donald Trump is on my side." And we saw that happen last night and we're gonna be seeing more of it in future. Cutting off US aid, turning around and saying, "Actually, Ukraine should cede land that's been stolen by Russia." All this is embolden- is emboldening, uh, um, uh, allowing Russia to do whatever it wants right now. Uh, and thi- thi- this, this, I'm shocked at how fast...... how fast Russia, uh, reacted to it. It's been almost an instant cause and effect.