Ukraine chokes Crimea in devastating bridge attack as Konstantivkya frontline faces collapse

Ukraine is gaining a death grip on Russian routes into Crimea, and a head of Putin's missile directorate has been killed by a car bomb in Moscow.But Russia is slowly enveloping Konstantinivka at the southern edge of Ukraine's fortress belt.My name is Jerome Starkey.I'm the defence editor of The Sun newspaper.And this is Frontline, your weekly roundup of the most important news from the war in Ukraine.I'm back from a three week absence.

And thank you to Colonel Philip Ingram for standing in.And thank you to all of you for watching.And indeed, some of you for asking about my whereabouts while I've been away.I was just on holiday.But thank you for noticing.I hope the FSB doesn't pay quite so much attention.

We'll start with the bridges into Crimea.Russian and Ukrainian officials have confirmed a series of strikes over the course of the last week, hitting three groups of bridges that connect occupied Kherson to the Crimean Peninsula, occupied Crimea.I'm going to start east to west.There are three bridges over the North Crimea Canal.They are the Stavki, the Myrna and the Armyansk Bridge.These connect main and small roads across this canal.

a significantly important route between these two territories.Myrna, the most northern, Stavki in the middle and the Armyansk further south.Armyansk, the largest and most significant of those.Those were hit on the night of June 10th.Earlier in the week, around the 7th, the 8th and the 9th of June, the Chonhar Bridge.This is what, this goes over sort of flooded marshlands, estuarine marshlands, where the Black Sea comes into the top of the Crimean Peninsula.

that was hit this confirmed by a

Soldo, the governor of occupied Crimea, and then on June 10th the easternmost bridge, the Henichensk, was hit.Now that connects Kherson to a very thin spit that runs down the northeastern flank of Crimea.Combined, this is really significant.Some of those strikes actually hit Russian military convoys whilst they've been on the bridges.But it's holding those routes at risk.And those routes have become increasingly important to Russia because of the ongoing campaign that we've talked about choking the roads on the land bridge.

That's the strip of occupied Ukraine that runs from Mariupol in the east through to Berdyansk.And Russian forces have been using that to supply their forces in places like Orekhov and further west in Kherson on the southern edge of the Dnipro River.As a result of those earlier strikes hitting the land bridge, making that a dangerous route, Russian forces have diverted supplies.

They've tried to reach those troops by sending up weapons, men, material and fuel from the Crimean Peninsula into Haeson.And now those routes are at risk as well.

What does that mean for Russia?Well, reports this week that their troops are withdrawing from the Kinburn Spit.Kinburn is on the southern edge of the Dnipro River.where it flows into the Black Sea.This is an area that has been contested in the past.Ukraine has tried to land on the Spit.

They've hit Russian forces training on the Spit.It's quite an isolated position.So understandable, given these logistics concerns, that Russian forces might feel exposed there.The context of these strikes is that in October, in the summer, rather, of 2023, the main objectiveof Ukraine's summer counteroffensive was to push south through Zaporizhia to break the land bridge, either to break it to break through to the Sea of Azov, but failing that to get within rocket artillery range to hold that road at risk.Now, they were unable to do that with brute force.

They were unable to smash through those well -prepared defences of the Surovkin line.What's happened over the next next three years is that Ukraine has increased dramatically the range and capabilities of its medium range drone strike forces.And so they've been able to hit those same targets, those same roads using newer and more advanced weapons to have the same effect.And of course, Russia in this war has proven how effective it is to choke supply lines.

And nowhere was that more clear than in their Kursk counter offensive, when instead of confronting Ukrainian forces in Kursk head on, they focused instead on choking their supply lines from Sumy Oblast into Kursk.And fundamentally, that left those Ukrainian forces in occupied Kursk more vulnerable and eventually forced them to retreat.

All of this happening while Ukraine continues its long range strikes in one of the most dramatic.We've seen up to five Flamingo drones hitting an electronics plant in Cheboksary, some 600 miles inside Russian territory.And they've also been strikes on Russian oil refineries.Bipski in Krasnodar Krai, that's on the eastern edge of the Black Sea.Ukraine's SBU also reporting strikes on oil pumping stations and a combined operation Ukrainian special forces saying they've hit and effectively shut down the port in Mariupol, in occupied Mariupol.Is this having an effect?

Well, a month ago Russia's energy ministry waspetrol shortages.We know that in Crimea they've introduced fuel rationing.We've started to see an increase of those long queues at the petrol stations once again.And according to the Moscow Times, there isn't just concern for people living in Crimea about fuel, but people are also starting to panic by essentials because of that feeling that Crimea is under siege.A lot of you've asked over the course of the war, why hasn't Ukraine managed to down the Kerch Bridge?

That's that road and rail link from the eastern tip of Crimea to mainland Russia.They have tried.

They've tried repeatedly.They have threatened it.They've hit it.They've also hit ferries that sail across the Kerch Strait.

But in the absence of being to close that completely, if they can shut the route between Crimea and mainland Ukraine, those occupied territories just north of Crimea, then effectively they achieve almost the same thing.

They might not hold Crimea itself at as much risk, but they certainly put those Russian soldiers in Kherson, in occupied Kherson, at risk.This week we've also seen dramatic footage and photographs of a car bomb in Moscow.

CCTV captured the moment that explosion hit a BMW 4x4 which exploded in flames.

Vladimir Putin's spokesman has pointedly refused to confirm the identity of the any passengers or drivers inside that vehicle.But it's been widely reported by sources both inside Russia and inside Ukraine that it was the car of Colonel Damir Davidov, who was head of the main missile and artillery directorate at Russia's Ministry of Defense.

not responsible for firing missiles, but certainly responsible for the production and supply.

Again, it's part of damaging Russia's logistics chain.Now, I should say there's been no claim of responsibility for this strike.It may yet emerge that there were different people, a different victim, but certainly that appears to have been the consensus.Davidov's role was the production and supply of missiles to Russia.Russian forces who are behind the nightly, devastating nightly attacks on targets right across Ukraine.If this is indeed the work of Ukrainian special forces, it would come after at least four Russian generals have been killed on Russian soil since the start of the war, and a fifth is fighting for his life.

As ever, though, it's not one way, not at all.Over the course of the last week, there have been almost 1400 missiles and drones, long range missiles and drones, fired at targets across Ukraine.That's reported by Ukraine's air force.and Russian forces are slowly beginning to envelop or rather advance their attempt to envelop Konstantinovka, which is at the southern end of Ukraine's fortress belt.The fortress belt is that very well -prepared dug -in set of defences in the territory that Ukraine controls on the eastern edge of Donetsk.It runs from Slovyansk in the north down to Konstantinovka in the south.

The Institute for the Study of War has documented Russia's advances through Konstantinovka, but they do not hold the city entirely by any stretch of the imagination.And Ukrainian forces still holding out in Chaziv Yar, to the north and east of Konstantinovka.Chaziv Yar, the town just behind Bakhmut.So when Ukrainian forces eventually ceded Bakhmut, they fell back.to Chasov Yar.That has become highly contested as well.

Interestingly, the Institute for the Study of War notes that the beginning of Russia's summer offensive really focused on Slovyansk to the north.There's been speculation that instead of confronting the fortress belt head on, I say an analysis rather than speculation, that instead of hitting the fortress belt head on, Russia might sensibly try to go round it so from the south and from the north that would certainly make military sense but they've been unable they didn't have the success they were hoping for in the north and appear to have diverted resources to the south to Konstantinivka.These reports also particularly troubling for me because I remember spending a lot of time in Konstantinivka in the in previous years when the war was still raging.But as ever, these towns that I was able to visit in 2022 and 2023, and later than that, indeed, becoming so much more dangerous or indeed falling into Russian hands.

One other story to talk about today, very uncomfortable reading, reported by Real Gazeta, a Ukrainian news source about a strike by Ukrainians on occupied Luhansk that reportedly killed around 20 university students.

Now, this has been reported very, very widely, as you'd expect, by Russian sources trying to amplify it as an example of Ukrainian war crimes.Real Gazeta looking into exactly what happened and also how it has been amplified, but not shying away from the really uncomfortable truth that it does appear that students have been killed in this strike.It was in a place called Starobilsk in Luhansk.

It was a strike on what appears to have been a halls of residence.Real Gazeta, their analysis suggests that there were two colleges with the same address, both of whichwere hit.One of which was a headquarter for Russia's Rubicon drone force.

That's one of Russia's most sophisticated advanced drone forces.Both of these sides being hit.Conflicts like this, it's inevitable.that civilians are killed and this is an absolute tragedy.But I think when we reflect on it, it's important to remember that fundamentally there is only one side that is responsible for horrors like that and that is the side that started the war and that is a side that launched a full -scale invasion, the side that leaves Ukraine with no choice but to fight for its very existence.

In this country, it's worth mentioning that the country has been sort of plunged into some chaos in the defense space by the resignation of both of our Defence Secretary John Healey and then hours later our Armed Forces Minister Al Khans.both resigning on principle in protest at the Prime Minister and the Chancellor's failure to honour their promises to resource our armed forces.Keir Starmer has talked the talk on defence.He says it's his first thought in the morning, the first responsibility of government.He's even had the brass neck to cajole other world leaders at the Munich Security Conference to spend more on defence faster.

And when it comes down to it.He's proven unable to do that himself.The resignations come as this government's supposed to be publishing what's called its defence investment plan.That's a 10 year spending plan to underpin the direction and the future of the UK's armed forces.The criticisms are this plan itself is almost a year late.That's despite the war raging in Ukraine, a war in Iraq, in Iran and all the other security threats.

The criticism of this plan is that it's late.It's not ambitious enough.and it's not sufficiently resourced.We wait to see how the new Defence Secretary, Dan Jarvis, former parachute officer, reconciles that.gap and finally questions if you've got any questions please ask them in the comments below and i will do my best to answer as many as i can next time can i say can i reveal any more about weather balloons carrying winged drones into russia it's a really good question it's something i heard about actually really early on in the war and it was told to me as an example of Ukraine's extraordinary innovation and actually the way what I was told was that these weather balloons that were carrying drones were designed so that were they detected on Russian radars they might either they would look like sort of flocks of birds they would be unsuspicious.I'm certainly aware it has happened I don't know if it's continuing to happen but Ukraine has clearly shown itself willing and able to innovate extraordinarily well.

The account that I heard was that these drones would be, sorry, these weather balloons or these devices would be blown across Russia by prevailing winds.The GPS or satellite enabled drones would know when they were at the right locations within range of their targets, detach and then fly to their targets.And of course that would increase their range because the battery or power life needed to be much smaller for them to fly from the point where they were effectively launched to their targets.Question number two, will the Russian retreat from the Kinburn Spit give Ukraine a landing point?Well, the answer, potentially, yes.Will Ukraine take advantage of that?

We'll have to wait and see.These landings across the Dnipro River have taken place.There have been special forces operations, there have been commando operations and conventional force operations.But it does become very hard both to make an amphibious assault.And then once that has been made to holdthat beachhead and resource those forces.

So we've seen that in Kherson, but they haven't ultimately been successful in the long run.They are risky and resource intensive.And so be a real question for Ukraine, given the ubiquity of drones, whether that is a good use of resources at this point in a conflict.And question number three, Why have an aluminium, why has aluminium not been sanctioned by the EU?This may, you may be speaking to what's going on in Ireland at the moment.My understanding is that European Union did sanction Russian aluminium, certainly the beginning of 2025, if not before, and that was welcomed by the sort of European aluminium industry group, European Aluminium, not least because, of course, it would strengthen their position in the market selling their aluminium to European customers.

But what hasn't been sanctioned and what has been topical recently, particularly because Kaya Callas, the European foreign policy chief, was in Dublin, is that there is an Irish producer of aluminium oxide, that's the organish alumina plant in Limerick which is selling the raw materials for aluminium to Russia and that raw material being refined into aluminium in Russia and then being put in Russian weapons and she has called for that trade to be sanctioned and I would say well it should.There's no European country that should be helping to arm Russia or support in any way its war effort.

If you have any questions, please do ask them in the comments below.Thank you again for all your comments while I've been away.And thank you, Philip Ingram, for filling in while I was on holiday.