Ukraine blitz burns Putin’s factories and oil & US drops terrifying invasion warning on Poland

Ukraine has unleashed a three -pronged attack, hitting Russian oil refineries, weapons factories, road and rail bridges, as its 40 -day surge gains pace.But Russia has hit back with a devastating strike on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.And U .S.officials have reportedly warned Poland that Russia is planning a major provocation within the next few months.My name is Jerome Starkey, I'm the defence editor at The Sun newspaper and this is Frontline, your weekly roundup of the most important news from the war in Ukraine.

We're starting with Ukraine's long -range strikes and I'm going to break them down into three categories.Strikes on oil refineries, strikes on the military -industrial complex, the weapons factories, and strikes on Russia's logistics and infrastructure.We'll start with oil.On the 28th of June, just after our last update, the Slavyansk oil refinery, some 250 miles inside Russian territory, was hit in Krasnodar Krai.A couple of days later, the 30th of June, the Ufa oil refinery, some 800 miles inside Russian controlled territory, was hit.And then just days after that, the Kostovo refinery, or rather, And this is going to be a little bit hard to pronounce.

The Lukhoyl -Nizhe -Gorodneft -Iogametses refinery in Kostovo was hit.That's some 500 miles inside Russian territory.That's a trio of oil refineries.On the industrial side, weapons factories.On the 27th of June, the Titan barricade plant in Volgograd was hit, reportedly by a barrage of flamingo missiles.Three days after that, the Penza missile plant, or rather the Penza plant, the JSC Nifi research facility.

which produces components for missile launchers, was hit and days after that, on the 3rd of July, the Belgorod Energy Factory, known as Energomash, which makes equipment for Russian power plants, power stations was hit in Belgorod.That's just north of Kharkiv province.And whilst all of that was happening, reports of at least a dozen electricity substations hit in occupied Crimea.So that's slightly different targeting.We've had the weapons plants, two weapons plants or plants that make parts for weapons hit.a factory that makes parts for the energy infrastructure and, of course, in the substations themselves in Crimea.

That could come under logistics.If we move now on to logistics, the simply the roads and the railway bridges on the 30th of June, a bridge connecting the occupied cities of Donetsk to Mariupol, a bridge was hit, a road bridge was hit, and then later a rail bridge over the Teplar River in Luhansk, slightly further north.On the 2nd of July, Ukrainian drones struck a warehouse believed to be storing Russian drones in Kamyanka in occupied Zaporizhia province.And throughout this week, we've seen fuel trucks being hit in Crimea.Ukrainian forces also released a battle damage assessment on July 1st, which referred to a strike that took place earlier.That was against Russian space communications plant near Belumut in Moscow Oblast.

That assessment suggesting that that space space communications center suffered serious damage to antenna and indeed to the headquarters building.There are, of course, still strikes against the Russian military, sort of pure military targets on the front line, the SBU.Ukraine's domestic intelligence service, has reportedly hit a number of aircraft in two separate strikes in occupied Crimea.They initially said they'd hit two aircraft shelters and a fire had ignited in one of them, suggesting damage to a Sukhoi jet.But in their latest update today, they say they've hit at least seven aircraft damaged or destroyed.Some seven aircraft, not specific about which ones, but also likely to be Sukhoi jets and bombers.

Those seven at the Saki airfield in Crimea.They also say they've hit the guards airfield, which was being used to launch Russian drones.The impact of these strikes while on the oil refineries, we continue to see fuel shortages, evidence of fuel shortages and rationing inside Russia.as we see, we learn that in different ways.Dramatic drone footage I've seen today of just the scale of one of the queues outside a Russian gas station, also comedy footage appearing to show ingenious Russians coming up with ways to circumvent the fuel shortages by filling up multiple tanks inside a car.A report in The Economist has suggested that Ukraine has hit 70 air defence systems this year alone and has reduced traffic on that land bridge from Mariupol to the top of occupied Crimea by some 70 percent.

So that's indicative of the scale and the consistency of these strikes and how every strike, every day, every week has a cumulative effect.

Life is getting harder for ordinary people in Crimea.Crimea is not yet totally choked.But the logistics in and out of that occupied peninsula are getting significantly harder.And that's because the land bridge to the top is being cut.And that's because the ferries road and rail infrastructure both at the top and at theeast near the Kirchbridge have also been targeted.

But of course the Kirchbridge remains standing.In the other direction, this week Russia has fired some 1 ,371 missiles and drones back at Ukraine.It's been a big week of Russian attacks.You remember last week we talked about how there would only be 900 drone and missile strikes.It's a strange phrase, only 900.But based on the sort of patterns, that was a low number.

And we warned that when there are Fewer strikes, that normally means that Russia is saving, marshalling its resources for a big strike.And we saw that big strike come overnight from the 1st to the 2nd of July, where Russia fired 496 long -range drones, 74 missiles.They hit 28 sites in the capital Kiev.At least 30 people have been killed and more than 90 injured.President Zelensky's first takeaway was that if Ukraine's allies had met their commitments to supply the Patriot missiles they have promised, then fewer people would have been killed, more sites would have been saved.If we look at the breakdown of those strikes, it's quite interesting.

Of the 496 drones, Ukraine says it shot down 476.So just 20 of those got through.Four Zircon missiles, these are hypersonic anti -ship missiles, were fired.All four got through.Those are some of the hardest to shoot down.Those are the missiles that Ukraine would most need patriots for.

24 Iskander or S -400 missiles, repurposed S -400s, fired.Only four of those were shot down.So again, those missiles proving particularly difficult for Ukraine.There were also 34 KH -101s.32 of those were shot down.That's a much better strike rate.

Eight calibers.These are shot down.submarine launch cruise missiles, all 8 of those were shot down.And 4 Kh -59 or Kh -69 missiles, all 4 of those shot down.

So from that, the takeaway is that overall, all those weapons together are designed to try and overwhelm Ukraine's air defense.It's just 20 of almost 500 drones got through, but all of the Zircon hypersonic missiles got through and 20 out of 24 of those Iskanders.That's why Ukraine needs those most sophisticated air defense missiles that America and American allies can supply.Interestingly, Interestingly, the head of Ukraine's air force has been talking about changes to Russia's drone tactics, suggesting that Moscow is using increasing numbers of jet powered drones.This makes them fly faster, makes them harder to shoot down.It's likely a response to the proliferation of Ukrainian interceptor drones.

Ukraine developed these interceptor drones to shoot down the low, slow flying Shahids.Originally, Shahid drones were propeller powered.They were noisy.They were slow.cheap interceptors that could launch vertically and autonomously could shoot them down and they've been very successful.Russia has responded by... flying drones faster and higher out of that range.

And as those drones get faster, they behave more like cruise missiles.In fact, there's a very blurred line between where a fast jet -powered drone becomes a cruise missile.And that requires Ukraine to field more sophisticated, expensive, and scarcer air defence systems to shoot them down.We've also seen hit this week at the port in Odessa, a shopping centre and a swimming pool in Zaporizhia.CCTV from inside that sports centre showing people swimming in the water as the building was struck.In the close battle, Russia continues to try and advance.

There have been advances in, or they've been rather attacking, but not advancing in Sumy.

Ukrainian forces have been reportedly doing clearing operations in Kozache, Lapan, that's north of Kharkiv, very close to the border with Belgorod, after reports that Russian soldiers had infiltrated, some claims that the soldiers had infiltrated that village, disguising themselves as civilians.They've also been attacking north of Kupyansk and around Slovyansk at the top of the fortress belt.

However, An analysis by Roshan Consulting have been watching this conflict very closely over the course of since the start of the full -scale invasion, suggesting that Russia has actually lost more territory than it gained during June, lost some 40 square kilometers.And their analysis puts that largely down to territorial losses in the sort of Liman -Sloviansk axis.They have, however, made gains in Konstantinovka.That's the town at the southern end of the fortress belt where Russian forces are fighting their way through the urban built up area, but facing fierce resistance and paying a huge price in lives.There are three stories I want to look at today on the political front on what's been happening outside Ukraine.The first is that warning I mentioned in the introduction that U .

S.officials have reportedly warned the Polish government that Russia is planning a major provocation that could take place in the next weeks or months.

Now, this was originally reported in a Polish news website Onet by a journalist called Witold Jurasz.Now, he is a former Polish diplomat, author of a number of books, widely seen as a very credible, serious journalist.

Multiple sources suggesting that these warnings and thatwarnings have been delivered to Polish authorities by their US counterparts, suggesting that this provocation could take various forms.It could be a drone attack.It could be a drone strike against critical infrastructure.It could be troops crossing the border, for example, soldiers coming to try and secure the site of something like a helicopter crash.It could be Russian forces out of Kaliningrad.

It could be Belarusian forces or even Russian forces out of Belarus, which shares a neighbour with Poland.The suggestion is the objective of this provocation would be twofold.One, to escalate tensions, but secondly to deter allies, Ukraine's allies, from continuing their support to Ukraine and likely to try and seed fractures or divisions within NATO over how to respond.Reports in the Polish newspaper Anet and the Daily Telegraph, its sister newspaper with the same owner here in the UK, suggesting that Russia would then try and negotiate an end to this crisis rather than face a hot conflict with Poland.And if they could, end it with a negotiation, they would see that as a victory.Donald Tusk, Poland's prime minister, has responded to these reports, suggesting that the next few months are going to be critical.

He said he didn't want to scare anyone, but the next few months are going to be critical.And he also talks about not just the risk to Poland, but a risk to the Baltic states.And all of this comes in the build up to the next NATO summit.The second thing on the political front, a report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, based here in London, and published this week has said that the Kremlin, it was highly likely that drone incidents across Europe were part of a Kremlin campaign that saw shadow fleet vessels launching and recovering military grade drones which were surveillingnuclear sites, military bases, and critical national infrastructure across 12 NATO countries and Ireland, including the United Kingdom.Drones were sighted over RF Lakenheath, Mildenhall, Feltwell, and Fairford.

Lakenheath and Fairford in Gloucestershire both host US aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons.They also flew over the, I think it was the Klein -Brogel base in Belgium, which hosts US nuclear weapons, Ylang in France, the French nuclear base, and of course, over the French and British flagship aircraft carriers, the French nuclear -powered Charles de Gaulle and the British HMS Belfast.Queen Elizabeth.The third political story has been the shift in policy in Finland and Lithuania.a willingness, their willingness to host nuclear weapons.Finland voted last month to change the law, to allow it to host nuclear weapons, and Lithuania appears to be going in that direction.

This is a reflection of the fears, the concerns these nations face on Russia's frontier over possible incursions.Dmitry Medvedev, president of Russia's Security Council, a former stand -in president for Putin and indeed a very pro -Putin blowhard, has said that all this changes is it now puts Finland because that's the only country that's confirmed it so far.It puts Finland on Russia's nuclear targeting list.So that has been his response, escalating that nuclear rhetoric.Thank you as ever for your questions.If you've got any questions, please do ask them in the comments below.

As I always say, they make me think they make me laugh.We love to see them.We do try and respond and we answer as many as we can.There's three I'm going to get through today.Question number one, lasers.There was lots of talk about lasers some months ago.

Where are they?It's really good.question.We haven't seen confirmed examples of lasers on the Ukrainian battlefield.There had been great hopes that directed energy weapons, concentrated beams of light might be a magic bullet to defeat the drone threat.Lasers can be very quick, and they never run out of ammunition.

They are being developed by a number of countries.And if you're interested, we've done an arms race episode specifically on lasers.We haven't seen them in Ukraine.That's likely a combination of a couple of things.The technological difficulties of fielding them, of manufacturing them, and indeed the risk, the vulnerabilities that they may face if they are fielded.These weapons, as far as we know, are largely still in trials.

Question number two, what happened to the North Koreans?It's a good question.In 2024, in August 2024, some 10 or 11 ,000 North Korean soldiers deployed from North Korea to Russia's Kursk Oblast to help Russia repel an incursion by Ukrainian forces.We understand that the last of those forces went home back to North Korea around December 2025.So about 16 months later and some 2300 of them were killed.There had also been reports of some North Koreans appearing in Donetsk, possibly as part of a liaison or training mission to try and understand the conflict and the context that their soldiers were deploying into.

The deployment came after two key elements to it.Russia and Pyongyang, Moscow and Pyongyang had signed an agreement, a mutual defense pact.And so the justification for sending those forces to sovereign Russia was that Ukraine had advanced into sovereign Russian soil and those North Koreans were defending sovereign Russian soil.Once Ukrainian forces were pushed back, that threat no longer existed.The reason for thatNorth Korean soldiers to be there no longer existed.

Third question.Why doesn't Ukraine target Russia's Roskvodia?That's the National Guard.The question is saying because that would panic Putin.It's a good question.The National Guard in Russia is really the successor to the Soviet era internal armed forces.

They play a role in suppressing riots, dissent, protest.They're more than the you might think of as a national guard.Why isn't Ukraine targeting them?Well, the other thing I should mention, of course, they're run by one of President Putin's former bodyguards, Viktor Zolotov, 72, so a similar sort of age to Putin as well.Why isn't Ukraine targeting them?If I were to speculate, I would say it's because Ukraine has limited resources and there are more important targets.

It doesn't necessarily want to instill panic in President Putin.He wants to understand a sort of cold, hard realization that Russia is collapsing from the rear.That is the objective of these deep, long -range strikes, hitting the oil industry, hitting the industrial base, hitting Russia's logistics, choking the military logistics lines.in this sort of ancient art of war fashion.Ukraine is not fighting Russia where it's strongest, which might be on the front lines, where it's so willing to sacrifice its soldiers' lives.It is fighting Russia where Ukraine has the advantage.

And at the moment, that seems to be in the deep.As ever, thank you very much for your questions.If you do have any, please do ask them in the comments below.I have a quick plug for Arms Race.We've just released a new episode of Arms Race, which is our defence technology show where I got the chance to drive a CV90.That's a BAE Hagland Swedish made infantry fighting vehicle.

It's the mostpopular, widely used IFV across NATO nations at the moment.It's the vehicle that would be defending Europe in the event of a Russian incursion.Thank you very much for watching.I look forward to seeing you next time.