using a third party country to guarantee the evackwuation whic is something we heard no progress about so far. thanks for bringing us the latest there. turning now to the southwest of ukraine where russian missile strikes have hit the port city of odesa. it s ukraine third biggest city. people fear it s about to become a primary target. we have the latest. reporter: strikes have been intermittent since the war began targeting military structure and the one we just seen no exception hitting the airport. it s runway and it s unclear whether it originated from images of russia putting submarines and launching missiles in the black sea. we have seen russian ships off the coast. a will the of russian activity to try to pressure odesa. the broad issue in that russian speaking city will be asking themselves is this the prelude
ukrainians, this is not unusual. this is the latest in just eight years of war in which 14,000 ukrainians have been killed, so they see these incidents even the up tick in the tempo as i mentioned is not necessarily threatening in themselves, but again, the tensions are so high that all it could take is one spark and this could have been that one today to set the whole thing off. i don t think we ve gotten there quite yet but it is very very tense here. can you tell me how far away you are from the border? we re a little less than 30 miles, here in the city of kartiv, the second largest city in ukraine. you always hear of kyiv, but this is the second largest city, the unofficial capital of the eastern part of the country. this is a russian speaking city, and i have been here for weeks and weeks chatting with people. one woman a couple of weeks ago, she said, i was born in russia,
this is bbc world news. the latest headlines. the russian and french presidents say their talks in moscow on defusing the military crisis surrounding ukraine have been constructive. as the prospect of a potential russian invasion looms, many ukranians are re assessing their cultural and linguistic ties to their neighbours. the bbc s eastern europe correspondent sarah rainsford went to the eastern city of dnipro to meet veterans who fought against the russian backed forces in 2015 despite coming from a predominantly russian speaking city. this is dnipro. it s 200 kilometres from ukraine s front line. it is a region sent more people to fight in the east than any outside kyiv and it s also treated thousands
to the eastern city of dnipro to meet veterans who fought against the russian backed forces despite coming from a predominantly from a russian speaking city. it is 200 kilometres from the uk and front line. it is a region sent more people to fight in the east than any outside kyiv and it has also treated thousands of casualties.
this is the city s defenses. so this was, this is about 25 miles from the russian border. and there is a strategic significance and that s the strategic significance. it s the second largest city in ukraine. it s kind of the unofficial capital of the east of the country. and it s a russian speaking city. so like when you talk about the strategic significance, in many way,ra the ideological significance of it, the cultural significance of it,si kind of exceeds the strategic significance, because when we talk, when we heard from vladimir putin time and time again, heir talked about strate, he talked about security, he talkedal about issues east of t country, and the nato expansion that he sees that is threatening russia, but he also unusually, and just theia last couple of he days, really hit upon those ideological historical points, and that seemed toeo be what wa really motivating him, it wasn t,g he only really more recently brought that up in the speech that preceded the attacks wher