Ukraine strikes far inside Russia as Putin general assassinated & US warns Europe

Ukraine has been left naked to ballistic missile strikes as both sides throw some massive punches.Moscow is the prime suspect in a drone attack on a German airport.And horrific footage of a brazen Russian war crime shows that Kremlin troops still have the power to shock more than four and a half years into Vladimir Putin's full -scale conflict.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.

It's been a bruising week for Ukraine.I was in Kiev just a few days ago.There have been some massive strikes, but we're going to start with the good news from Ukraine's point of view.They continue their spectacular campaign of long range strikes.There have been at least three successful hits on Russian oil refineries, five on Russian wild berries, logistics plants, and one strike on a strategic airfield home to Russian nuclear capable bombers.Let's start with those strikes on the oil refineries.

Overnight on the 1st of the 2nd of August, the refinery, the Rosneft refinery in Saratov, some 400 miles inside Russian territory, was struck.That has a capacity to refine 4 .8 tonnes of crude oil per year.Then on the 5th and the 6th, those nights, two consecutive nights, the Slavneft Janos refinery in Yaroslavl, that's about 500 miles inside Russian territory, that was struck.Much bigger refinery, that can refine about 15 million tonnes of crude oil per year.And then on that second night, the 5th, the night of the 5th into the 6th, a smaller plant in Bashneft, the Bashneft plant in Ufa, that'sBakhortostan, was hit.

But that's staggering.That's over 850 miles inside Russian territory.This, as those of you who watch this regularly will know, is part of Ukraine's campaign to degrade the Kremlin's coffers, the war chest, the income, the money that Vladimir Putin needs to fuel his bloodbath conflict in Ukraine.The same night as one of those oil strikes, we also saw a hit on the Engels 2 airbase.That's also in Saratov.That is a base which is home to Russia's long range nuclear capable bombers.

But these bombers are also routinely used in this conflict to launch devastating conventional weapons at Ukraine.The two types of aircraft primarily are the TU -160 jets, Tupolev 160.They are jet powered.They have swept back wings, long range bombers, and then the iconic Tupolev Tu -95s.

They have four turboprops, long -range bombers, which is the same sort of aircraft we often see flying out of northern Russia and buzzing the NATO airspace or NATO area of responsibility north of Norway and the United Kingdom.

And the wild berries plants.This has been the focus of the last few weeks and the real sort of change of direction.Spectacular footage of these large logistics warehouses going up in flames.To remind you, wild berries is often described as Russia's answer to Amazon.Over the course of the last week, we've seen strikes in Samara, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Aleksin and Yekaterinburg.Yekaterinburg, a thousand miles from the closest Ukrainian held territory.

And that brings to more than 20 and possibly as many as 22.But not all the strikes are totally confirmed.More than 20 strikes on Wildberry sites.Why is Ukraine doing this?Well, there are three reasons.Primarily, President Zelensky has said that these sites are dual use.

They are supporting the Russian war effort by supplying Russia, Russian forces with military equipment.And we've looked into that ourselves.We've seen drone components, drone parts for sale.We've seen comments from Russian soldiers explaining how those parts have been used in what the Russians call a special military operation, the war in Ukraine.Second, reason, I think, for these strikes.It brings the war home to Russia.

Not only can ordinary Russians not ignore these vast plumes of black smoke, because these wild berries warehouses really burn, but it affects the sort of affluent middle class.It limits their ability, their convenient shopping, the online shopping, home deliveries, as so many of us have become used to from Amazon.That's being disrupted.But it also doesn't just hit Wild Berries itself, a massive nine billion dollar corporation.It hits all of those sort of entrepreneurs, small sellers, smaller businesses who sell their wares through the Wild Berries platforms.And so that means there's going to be a lot of unhappy and influential people.

Influential, we'd imagine to be the oligarchy, the super rich, but also those entrepreneurs, those smaller businesses across Russia.And it pushes Moscow one step closer to an economic precipice as Ukraine continues its campaign, as I said at the beginning, against the Kremlin's war chest.We have also seen over the course of the last week two attempted assassinations.Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for either, although they do appear to fit a pattern of Ukrainian assassinations against high -profile Russian military and industrial targets, but they haven't claimed responsibility.

The first was on the evening of the1st of August, a bomb in a square in Moscow outside a ritzy, expensive restaurant, Baltsi Rossi, where the commander of Russia's aerospace forces was celebrating his birthday.Russian officials say five people were killed, more than 20 were injured.Although Alexander Chayko, the most senior general in the room, we understand survived unscathed.

However, another Russian general, Major General Valery Plokhtonyuk, deputy commander of the 49th Army, was, we understand, killed and has been buried.

Tchaikov's son -in -law, Danil Nikolayevich, Peredri has been named among the dead.Also suggestions that some of the general's family have been killed or maimed.Russian police have reported that the bomb arrived at the restaurant carried by a woman.She hasn't been identified yet.They haven't linked it specifically to Ukraine, but Ukraine is the prime suspect.

Worth pointing out, Alexander Chayko has been named as the most senior Russian military commander who was on Ukrainian territory in the first stage of Russia's full -scale invasion four and a half years ago.On the 5th of August there was a car bomb attack against Vladimir Takchuk.He is the boss of Russian drone maker Ural Drone Zavod.Now that is one of the largest drone manufacturers.They make a weapon, an FPV weapon called the Ghoul drone, which is being widely used across the front lines.We understand Takchuk survived.

He was in a critical condition.In the sort of closer battle, the old war as I sometimes call it, with weapons targeting

there was extraordinary footage of a drone Ukrainian drone dropping a grenade down a Drainpipe used to sort of demonstrate the real precision the potential for precision of these weapons it appeared to be a possibly a possibly a chimney I should say rather than a drainpipe possibly a bringing in air into a bunker underground, a drone hovering right over it and dropping a grenade down that pipe.

And also footage from Ukraine of a Russian fuel convoy being hit on the road into Crimea.And that's a reminder of the ongoing campaign that we haven't talked about so much recently, but it goes on to choke off Crimea, to starve the occupied peninsula of logistics.

That was the objective of the summer counteroffensive way back in 2023, was to cut that land bridge.Ukraine wasn't able to do it by seizing territory, but increasingly they're able to apply pressure on those same routes with what they call the mid -range strike drones.

Let's get on to Russia's response.It has been devastating.This week, there were 1066 missiles and drones fired at targets across Ukraine.That isn't an unusually high number, but the strikes have been, I think, unusually devastating and that's possibly because of the high ratio of ballistic and in some cases hypersonic missiles in the mix because those are the weapons that Ukraine finds most difficult to intercept.As I said I was in Kiev and I arrived in Kiev on Wednesday morning after a massive overnight strike that left 17 people dead and at least 44 injured and President Zelensky saying that none of the ballistic missiles fired in that blitz were shot down.

And that's why I was saying at the beginning about how Ukraine has been left naked to ballistic missiles.Zelensky's made it very clear they haven't.not got enough Patriot interceptors.

Those are their most advanced air defence missiles that can hit the ballistic weapons, ballistic weapons, ballistic missiles.are much faster than cruise missiles.They're much faster than jet or propeller powered drones.So they're much harder to intercept.

So they need those most advanced systems.Then on the night of Thursday into Friday, there were nine people killed, at least 89 injured in another wave of missile and drone attacks.

It seems a lot of that was focused on Dnipro in central Ukraine.It's possible Russia may be instead of hitting targets all over the country all at the time, focusing these strikes every night between about 120 and 180 missiles and drones, but focusing them on individual regions to try and overwhelm that area's air defences.

To put this in context, throughout the course of July, Ukraine's Ministry of Defence said there were 195 ballistic missiles fired by Russia, of which they were able to shoot down 29, just 29 out of 195.That's how hard it is.That's why they need more weapons.Ukraine hasn't said it's totally out of these weapons.We can only imagine that they are marshalling them to protect perhaps some of their most precious targets.But President Zelensky has said that the number one challenge for Ukraine is ballistic missiles.

And he's also signalled a change of tactics that destroying Russia's ballistic missile launching capability is going to be his number one target, Ukraine's number one target.And Russia should take heed of that because when Ukraine has shifted its focus, for example, from the close fight to the deep fight, from oil refineries to logistics, to medium range logistics, for example, across that land bridge to Crimea, they have done so withremarkable speed and remarkable effect.Zelensky's appealed to his allies for more Patriot batteries and specifically, of course, he's asked President Donald Trump and Trump said he was going to let Ukraine manufacture Patriot missiles under licence.Trump's gone wobbly on that.He's Checking out, he's backed down.

However, when you look at it and when he was asked about it just recently, his response was we need missiles.America needs missiles.And I mean, that's true.Of course, America needs some of its own missiles.But the reason that need has become so acute.is because Donald Trump has absolutely burned through American stocks in his war on Iran, both attack weapons that he's used to strike Iran and the Patriot stocks, which he's had to deploy to the Gulf to defend US interests and US allies.

What that means for Ukraine is it's going to have to look elsewhere.There are 15 nations other than the United States that use Patriot missile defences.They're Germany, Greece, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Kuwait, the Netherlands, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates.Now, Some of these are going to be feeling that their stocks are very, very low, but others might be open to send more to Ukraine.

And when I was in Kyiv with Wes Streeting this week, the UK's new defence secretary, he made very clear that where the UK hasn't got the weapons that Ukraine needs, and patriots are a fine example of that, the UK does not have ground -based ballistic air defence weapons, where the UK hasn't got those systems, he'll be getting on the phone.And that's one of the reasons affected what the Ukraine contact group, that's the group of nations coming together to work out how best to support Ukraine, he said he'll be using that to try and persuadeallies to hand over some of their Patriot missiles.Now, according to the Oryx blog, which tracks weapons given to Ukraine, it's been Germany, the Netherlands and Romania which have supplied Ukraine with around six Patriot batteries and supporting missiles.But those countries that has been financed by a wider group of allies have sort of repaid or replenished some of those stocks for those countries.

Quick look at what Russia has been hitting.We know they've been targeting or trying to target industrial sites, power and heating plants to try and break the will of civilians, freeze them out in the coming winter, power stations for the same reasons, and logistics.After these most recent strikes, there were reports of warehouses on fire in Brovary, in Velik, Dmerka, Kivit, Nevk.I think I'm saying that right.And Peremoha.Over the course of this year, there have been dozens of Novoposhta sites here.

That's the Ukrainian Postal Service's big sorting warehouses.

Their largest sorting house was hit in Kiev earlier this summer.An epicentre, that shop I mentioned last week, kind of usually in large commercial parks on the edges of cities, which is a sort of DIY come clothing, camping and outdoor gear store.They've had 13 sites hit and damaged across Ukraine.Russia has also hit this week a bridge in Odessa, a bridge in Slovyansk, an industrial park in Kharkiv, a port in Mykolaiv and Chornomorsk, warehouses on fire in Pavlograd.

So they are trying to target what may be legitimate military targets.We can't fool ourselves that Russia is all the time hitting civilian targets.

But when I was in Kiev this week, for example, I saw an enormous block of flats have been totally destroyed because it was adjacent to a military base.And Russia has workedthis war of choice and absolutely must be held accountable for those strikes which kill civilians, damage civilian homes, what might have been called collateral damage.That's collateral because of a decision to wage an unnecessary war of choice.Vladimir Putin's.

Ukraine has also claimed that a North Korean missile battery or missile forces are deploying to Western Russia with around 120 ballistic missiles and six launchers.

So given what we've said earlier about the difficulty Ukraine is having shooting down ballistic missiles, that is worth watching and of serious concern to Ukraine.

In the close battle, Russia continues to grind on.One open source conflict tracker, suggesting that Russia captured around 270 square kilometres over the course of July, a significant increase on June.270 square kilometres, that's about one tenth of the size of the English county.of Dorset.The town of Dobropillia, which was once a relatively safe logistics hub for Ukraine, supplying towns further east, now appears to be in peril.

Reports from soldiers in Kramatorsk that it's constantly under drone attack and really feeling the pressure.You remember we talked about last week how Russian forces have finally captured Chasov Yar.They are moving slowly westwards through Donetsk.

But Ukraine continues for now to hold its fortress belt.

I mentioned at the very beginning, this week we have seen some absolutely horrific footage of a brazen Russian war crime in the southern city of Kherson, where an FPV drone stalked and attacked a civilian fruit and vegetable seller.Now, to put this in context, Kherson was the only provincial capital that Russia captured at the beginning of the war.But they were forced to make a pretty humiliating retreat in that first week.in October and November, largely because Ukraine got its hands on GMLRS and HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems, which allowed it to strike targets with precision 60 to 80 kilometres from the launch site.Since then though, since Russia left that city, they have been bombing civilians with drones, stalking civilians with drones, and it's been referred to as human safaris.That was really clear when you see this footage.

The video released by Ukrainian police shows a man, a civilian, an overweight civilian who they said is 52 years old, clasping his hands in prayer as he begs the drone for mercy.

He sidesteps around his vehicle one way.He's chased by the drone.He goes around the other way.He's chased by the drone until he's standing behind the van and it suddenly dive bombs towards him and explodes.Now, the miracle is and the good news is this man survives.But what's most haunting about that is that when you watch the way that that drone flies, it's well piloted, it follows him in real time and that tells us that whoever was flying it must have been able to see what we can see in that video as well, which is that there is an unarmed civilian and instead of calling off the strike, the attack, the pilot decides to try and kill him.

Now perhaps the most shocking story of this week is in fact what's happened in Germany, where in Leipzig Halle Airport security has revealed, police have revealed, they found an explosive laden drone next to the runway and a second aircraft, a DHL cargo plane, reported a collision in midair believed to have been with another drone.Now German officials, the Ministry of Interior has described this as a sort of complex sophisticated hybrid attack which takes the threat to the next level.they said they haven't named Russia as the culprit but Moscow is without doubt the prime suspect because this fits a pattern of behavior of targeting logistics cargo infrastructure in both Poland, Germany and the United Kingdom in 2024.And the area where this drone was found is used by Ukrainian Antonov aircraft.Those Antonovs often have often been a symbol of Ukraine's engineering and manufacturing might.The largest plane in the world is an Antonov, and it was hanged close to Kiev and destroyed in the first weeks of Russia's full scale invasion.

expect a lot more about this in the coming days and weeks as German police investigate.But it comes also, of course, amid repeated warnings from Poland, from the Baltic states, and most recently reported in the Wall Street Journal about US intelligence predicting Russian provocations and the Wall Street Journal suggesting that the US now sees the prospect of an invasion, a small Russian incursion into NATO territory as more likely in the next few years.And when I was in Ukraine with Wes Streeting, the UK defence secretary, he said to me that Russia provokes the UK every single day.Only the tip of the iceberg, only some of those provocations are known to the general public, and they include aircraft buzzing NATO airspace.They include submarines and ships.We had a frigate opening fire in the Channel.

We've had spy ships lurking over undersea cables, submarines trying to do the same.And of course, many, many cyber attacks.The Ministry of Defence here in London is saying it battles about 90 ,000 a year, many of them from Russian speaking hackers.But all of this building a picture of Russian provocation, Russian aggression, not justagainst Ukraine, but against Ukraine's allies as well.

I mean, finally, on the political front, before we get to questions, I think the main politics that we've seen this week is Zelensky saying we need more patriots.We're streating from the UK saying he will try and help Ukraine find them.

Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Korstore saying the same thing, or at least Zelensky saying that he's made that promise after they met in Kyiv this week.And an interesting article in the Moscow Times, an anonymous opinion piece, we understand, written by somebody inside Russia, arguing that Ukraine will not be able to bomb Russia.

into turning against Putin.

It's an interesting concept, but the idea being that when a country is being bombed, actually, those attacks often galvanise the civilian population into sort of patriotic rallying around the flag and rallying around the leader.It's certainly worth Ukraine being alive to that risk that their campaign, for example, against wild berries, for example, against fuel infrastructure, could actually lead to a surge in Russian patriotism and potentially a surge for Russian support.Russian support for Putin.But we don't see evidence of that at the moment.And you could cite counterexamples.For example, Germany in World War One, how the Allied blockade of Germany collapsed morale and made it impossible for the Kaiser to continue the war.

As ever, if you do have any questions, please ask them in the comments below.We love to hear your feedback as well.If there's more of anything you'd like us to focus on this show, please let us know.And if you do like Frontline, please like and subscribe.We love to read your comments.

We answer as many as we can.They make us think, they make us laugh.Thank you for those of you who've been commenting on my lack of an iron shirt last week.I hope you're impressed to see I've got a slightly crisper shirt.on today.

Question number one, what happens to dead soldiers?

I think it's a really good question and the answer is there are different outcomes for the fallen.Some remain buried under the rubble, without doubt.In towns like Bakhmut, Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, they are in the rubble.Some are buried in mass graves in places like Mariupol, captured in the first weeks of the war.Some are buried in marked graves.I've seen that in the countryside outside Kharkiv, buried where they fell by the Ukrainians once they liberated those areas.

Some are buried in the trenches.Others I've seen have been left out to rot, not deliberately, but simply because the opportunity to bury them hasn't yet arrived, or hadn't when I was there.But in a slight sort of more positive outcome, The exchange of dead bodies is one of the few areas where Russia and Ukraine are managing to maintain some level of cooperation.So just a few weeks ago, there was an exchange of about 530 bodies.Last year, one of the biggest exchanges, nearly a thousand bodies.

So different outcomes for the fallen.Question number two.Why has Ukraine not tried to blockade Russia's oil ports?

It's interesting because that would further tighten its grip on Russia's oil infrastructure and trying to choke off the money supply to the Kremlin.

I'd have to speculate slightly but we know for example that when Ukraine has targeted certain parts of of Russian infrastructure.

There are actually protests from America, the fact that American businesses are being hurt or American interests are being hurt.There's also a risk that perhaps if you choke off the oil ports, you then might also find yourselfchoking off legitimate supplies such as food or things that are required purely civilian purposes.And it may also be that it's simply harder for Ukraine to stop ships going in because fundamentally to create a blockade, Ukraine would may have to be willing to sink either more ships than they want to or endanger more civilian merchant sailors than they want to.And it might also simply be that it's more effective for them to target the oil infrastructure, the fixed oil infrastructure, where it's where it exists at those ports, because they know where it is.They know what the most precise and precious parts of that infrastructure are.

And that's what they are targeting.The final question today is, have Ukraine strikes on the so -called highway to hell continued?Because we haven't heard very much about them.The highway to hell is that the name that's been given to the road on the land bridge linking sovereign Russia through Mariupol and occupied Ukraine across the top of the Sea of Azov to the top of Crimea, the land bridge linking occupied Crimea to sovereign Russia.

Have the attacks continued?Absolutely.Yes, they have.We talked about one of them on that fuel convoy earlier.Why have we heard less about them?

Well, simply because the focus for the last two weeks has really been Ukraine strikes on the Wild Berries infrastructure.Thank you so much for watching Frontline.If you've got any questions, please do ask them in the comments below.Remember, you can like and subscribe to The Sun's channel.And if you'd like to follow more about what I do on defence and travels to and from Ukraine and other stories, then you can follow me at Jerome Starkey on Twitter and Instagram.

Look forward to seeing you next time.