Ukraine strikes wipe out seventh Wildberries warehouse, major oil refinery | Russia war news updates

I'm Francis Dernley, and this is Ukraine, The Latest.Today, after another night of Ukrainian drones setting ablaze a Russian warehouse belonging to the country's largest online retailer, we examine Kyiv's expanding campaign to disrupt Putin's logistics and wartime economy.We also look at encouraging developments in Washington, where President Zelensky and Trump met ahead of the funeral of Senator Lindsey Graham, before Graham's landmark bipartisan sanctions bill took a significant step forward in Congress.Then we turn to Moscow for our latest regular roundup from inside Russia, where rumours of fresh mobilisations continue to circulate, before exploring the dramatic downfall of the powerful head of Russia's International Chess Federation.It's Wednesday the 28th of July, four years and 155 days since the full -scale invasion began.Today I'm joined by our Russia analyst James Kilner and The Telegraph's chess correspondent Malcolm Payne.

But first, the updates.By far the most significant story of the day relates to events that unfolded yesterday in the US, which we'll give you a full breakdown of in a moment.But just a couple of Ukrainian strikes from overnight to bring you first.Dramatic footage is leaking through of the primary crude oil distillation complex near Perm, well over 1 ,500 kilometres from Kyiv, on fire.We don't know much more than that yet, but the damage appears to be considerable.It's a similar story in Ryazan, about 360 kilometres from the Ukrainian border, where, according to President Zelensky, an oil refinery and logistics centre were hit, along with a site where the Russian Black Sea Fleet's high -speed boats are based in our temporarily occupied Crimea.

his words.On Ryazan specifically, the refinery there produces upwards of 17 .1 million tonnes of oil per year and accounts for roughly 5 % of Moscow's total processing output.It's been a regular target in recent months.So too, in the past week or so, has been Russia's Amazon equivalent, Wildberries, and it's reported that the logistics hub Zelensky mentioned there in Ryazan also producesto them.The Kremlin has been forced to acknowledge what's happening to Wild Breeze after these drone attacks destroyed around 10 % of its warehousing capacity and large amounts of stock.

According to Reuters, a senior industry source said the company may need assistance, likely through state -controlled banks, to continue operating.Interestingly, it has been speculated that the retailer's ties to state -controlled bank VTB also made it a strategic target, not just their supplying drone parts and weaponry to soldiers.Those who argue this claim the collapse of Wildberries could cause the collapse of several Russian banks.Interesting.Already, Wildberries has to pay out 40 million rubles, that's about half a million dollars, to the families of those killed or injured in these attacks on the warehouses.And that's before the losses incurred due to the lost stock.

We'll be hearing much more on that and the picture inside Russia from James later on.But let's take you to Washington DC next.We left you yesterday just as President Zelensky was preparing to meet President Trump prior to attending Senator Lindsey Graham's funeral service and then meeting with a large group of senators in the hope they might have an update regarding the progress of the sanctions bill.All three took place, and all three are worthy of comment.The first event was the latest Trump -Zelensky encounter in the Oval Office.No need to get triggered.

Note the shift in tone from the White House, who put out a tweet showing the two leaders smiling and quoting President Trump as saying, great honour to meet with President Zelensky of Ukraine.Many things were discussed.The meeting went very well.It was a closed door meeting.Now, I won't repeat our discussions about the administration's pivot more positively towards Ukraine in recent weeks, but clearly a change in perception has occurred, almost certainly in part due to the perception that Kyiv has the upper hand.In that sense, the visit of US conservative influencer Laura Loomer to Ukraine this week is significant.

She said the visit had opened my eyes tothings I was blinded to before, and my time here has been life -changing.I see why Lindsey Graham loved Ukraine so much.In an exclusive interview with friend of the podcast Jimmy Rushton for The Keep Independent, she said she'd spoken with President Trump from Ukraine.

He told me that he liked President Zelensky very much, but he also told me that he likes Vladimir Putin.He does, he gets along with both.And so I don't want to speak for Donald Trump, but yeah, I do have plans to go and have a meeting with the president when I get back.It was scheduled prior to my, prior to my... my trip to Ukraine.I do plan on sharing my experience with the president if he asks.

That will be pleasing news for Keeve, as will the meeting with Trump.Zelensky reiterated it was a good meeting.The president and I discussed licenses for Patriot Interceptor production and several other ideas that could help.We also spoke about diplomacy.It's important that the diplomatic process be reinvigorated.So no evidence of any shift of the U .

S.position on providing Patriot blueprints.Afterwards, Zelensky met with representatives of Lockheed Martin, the U .S.defense firm that produces Patriot missiles and other key weapons, including ATACMs, HIMARS, and F -16s.According to him, the discussion centered on specific solutions for closing Ukraine's air defense gap.

But then we come to the funeral service for Lindsey Graham.Zelensky and Trump joined Finland's Alexander Stubb, who also held a meeting with Zelensky that day, and Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu.The cameras caught an interesting moment where Zelensky was speaking candidly with the latter, ending with smiles and a warm handshake.Were they talking about the Ukrainian strike on the Iranian -linked vessel in the Caspian Sea?Interestingly, after a rare call between the countries,foreign ministers yesterday, Iran said Ukraine had described the strike as unintentional.

Afterwards, Zelensky met with senators as planned and after that, led by a group of them, had this to say in a moment caught by journalist Kateryna Lisanova.

Mr. President, what was your message to the Europeans?What were you asking them for?

big signal to Europe, big signal to Ukraine, big support of our people.So I'm very thankful.I hope that, God bless, we will have positive results.

Then Senator Jean Shaheen spoke.

So we are moving to this bill.It's going to pass.

Now, this was a surprise.We didn't actually expect for the Senate to vote afterwards on the sanctions bill renamed in honour of Senator Graham.But vote they did, and decisively, 86 to 12 in the end to advance it, setting up a final vote later this week.To be clear, this was a procedural vote, meaning that the bill will still need to pass the Senate and the House before becoming law.But the number of supporters is a good omen.As discussed in more detail yesterday, this bill has the power to instil a maximum 100 % tariff on the top five buyers of Russian energy, including China, India and Turkey.

The revised bill now also includes sanctions against Iran, per Trump's demand.Most of the 12 senators who voted against advancing the updated bill were Democrats, but according to journalists on the ground, many were swung after meeting Zelensky.Their concerns are that thewill grant Trump broad waiver authority, meaning he can opt out of imposing mandatory penalties, restrictions or secondary tariffs.Still, following the vote, senators from both parties praised the legislation and Senator Graham for putting additional pressure on Russia.

It is a tribute to Lindsey Graham, to Dick Blumenthal for the year and a half of work that they negotiated and to bring it across the finish line now with a very targeted piece of legislation that is designed to cut off the money that is fueling this war from Russia.And that's the goal of this bill.So it's not just sanctions, it's the tariffs to ensure that they can no longer benefit from selling their oil and gas through the shadow fleet The heaviness of the day is not lost on any of us.

Two weeks ago, we stood here in a bipartisan fashion.You had people from all cross sections of their conference standing shoulder to shoulder to say, We want this bill to move forward.We want Putin's war machine to end.We want accountability for the Kremlin, and we want to drive Putin to the table and ultimately have peace.Well, In typical Lindsay fashion, he found a way for us to vote on this bill right after we came back from celebrating his life.

But let's take you to Russia now with our analyst James Kilner, who submerged himself in Russian propaganda to spare you your sanity.James, good to have you.It's been a while.We were beginning to worry you'd set up your own cucumber farm somewhere.But you're not going to start with cucumbers.You're going to start with berries.

So where do you want to pick up on this story?

It's great to be back and I'm really looking forward to chatting with Malcolm about his chess stuff later.I'm a big chess fan.And there is also a Kazakh angle I'd like to bring out, if I may, to the story.Absolutely.My pet interest in Central Asia knows no bounds.Right, wild berries.

This is obviously the big story of the last week or so.Major attacks on its warehouses across Russia, as you say.I think about 10%, as you were saying earlier, of the wild berries capacity has been hit.The economic impact of this is clear.It's a clear hit, and it ripples across a lower strata of Russian society.A bit like hitting the fuel capacity impacts people buying petrol at the petrol pumps.

Wild berries impact ordinary people buying clothes and other items.When people say wild berries is like the Amazon of Russia, It's more freewheeling in that there's very much an eBay element to it as well.It's very accessible.It's not as controlled as Amazon is.That is an important point because its impact is wider.I think, I mean, you made a very important point earlier about VTB, the Russian bank, and the links it has to Wildberries, making Wildberries a much more strategic target than just an economic target.

Initial reporting focused very much on the economic impact.I personally think this was also targeted because it was linked to the Kremlin, Putin and VTB.Wildberries Russian competitor, Ozon, was not targeted at all, or as far as I'm aware, it hasn't been targeted.It's slightly smaller than Wildberries, it's a slightly smaller target.But nonetheless, it is an Amazon, eBay equivalent, and does rival Wildberries.That doesn't seem to have been targeted, only Wildberries targeted.

If you remember in 2024, there was a gun fight or a fight in central Moscow at theWildberries HQ involving Chechens and a bit of a shootout and two security guards were killed in that drama.That was basically the battle for control of Wildberries at boardroom level spilling out over on the street.The battle was between Tatyana Kim, who's linked to Putin, and her ex -husband.flows back to a merger between a pro -Russian advertising company called Roos, R -U -S -S, and Wildberries to create some sort of economic platform that the Kremlin it's been well -reported, in well -sourced reports, was going to use to skip around sanctions.So much so that this whole merger was given almost the blessing of Putin personally.

It came from his presidential administration, but that, in essence, is his blessing.So for me, the attacks on Walbury's is also a direct attack on Putin.And this is important, once again, Francis, in my opinion, because it means that when Putin is personally involved, it creates more danger, it creates more friction, it creates more negative dynamics, and this is playing to people's minds.One sort of result of this is the impact that Central Asian traders have experience from taxing wildberries.They use wildberries to store their stuff in Russia to sell to Russian customers.They have lost a lot of stock.

Wildberries also hires a lot of Russian Central Asian migrants.A handful of those were killed, etc.Governments in Central Asia have been warning migrants about working in wildberries warehouses.Traders, garment traders, other product line traders in Central Asia have been complaining about lotsObviously, this isn't direct impact on the Russian economy, but it's a direct impact on the Russian prestige in Central Asia once again.It once again undermines the Kremlin's credibility, and particularly Putin.

Walgreens is known for being connected to Putin.And I think that's a really important part of the story.

Well, thank you for that fascinating context, James.Let's go to another major story of the moment, which of course relates to mobilisation.And in some ways, this is the biggest story relating to Russia.What is going to happen in regards to the troop losses that it is suffering at the front?We've been speculating about this for weeks.The Ukrainian intelligence has said that they believe that a mobilisation is coming.

James, where do you want to start in unpacking this?

So I think it's really important to recognize that Russia's ability to recruit volunteers, which has been relying on mainly to feed into its war in Ukraine, is slowing down.The market price was getting very high and the Kremlin and its agents in the regions were paying a very high price for this.And in any case, it's getting too dangerous.The battle lines are sort of so attritional that people just don't want to go anymore.So we've got to recognize that there is a recruitment problem or increasing recruitment problem in Russia as there is in Ukraine, as far as I've been able to read up on.And we also know that Putin wants to increase the size of the army.

Yesterday or day before yesterday, he said he was going to bring back the construction battalion Soviet Relic, which were phased out about 20 years ago.So he's also trying to increase the size of the army at the same time.We know that in Penza there are very well -sourced reports that there's press ganging going on.So Russian military officersare going to be grabbing men, bundling them in vans and driving them off to the mobilization station or recruitment station, getting them to sign documents and putting them in the army.There have been other sources, reports sourced, mainly through Ukrainian sources saying that there are vigilante groups which are trying to protect this as well.

I've not seen that on any Russian channels, but it's worth pointing out.As far as the mobilization element, comes, we know that Russia now is in a much, or the Kremlin now is in a much better position to enact an effective mobilisation.If you remember the last one it tried it sort of partial mobilisation September 22 was It raised, obviously, a few hundred thousand men, but a few hundred thousand more escaped overseas.Now there are electronic summons, there's bans on travel, there's financial fines.It's much harder for people to dodge immobilisation.But we also have balanced that with other streams of recruitment that the Kremlin has developed since September 22.

And I'm talking about, you know, recruiting from prisons.That is a huge stream of soldiers to the Russian front line.The knack of, you know, getting people who are actually about to be prosecuted for a criminal charge, making a plea bargain, which involves going down to the front line and doing six months down that.sweeping up drunks and vagabonds off the streets of Russia, taking to Kul and saying, you know, if you go sign this, I'm going to spend six months in the trenches and we'll forgive this sort of thing.So there are other avenues.We also know that these mobilisation rumours have been flying around every six months or so, every three, six months or so.

We seem to be discussing them.I wouldof caution whether we're going to see another mobilisation in September and October, as Ukrainian intelligence services, Ukrainian propaganda suggests.I would approach it with caution.

Well, thanks very much, James, for talking us through that.This is a key issue, as you say, and we will return to it.As we've talked about before, there would be major consequences for Russia if they do go down the mobilisation route.So we shall see.But next up, James, CPC, where do you want to start on this?

So CPC, this is this huge oil pipeline running from northwest Kazakhstan around the northern coast of the Caspian Sea through Russia.It comes out of the Russian Black Sea port, Novorossiysk, where we know that the Kremlin keeps its submarines.Some of the submarines are in a pen around that.Tankers loading up oil were attacked as they were loading up oil from the CPC terminals last week.This caused outrage in Astana, the Kazakh capital.There was a point where the Kazakh oil producing companies, of which Western oil companies are major shareholders, had to stop outflows through CPC.

CPC is a very significant global pipeline.It pumps roughly one, one and a half percent of all global oil supplies.So CPC stops, oil prices rise, the Kazakh economy, the Kazakh economic, economy ministers, government get very stressed out.is triggered a row.I mean, Ukraine, as we said, Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the drone attacks.But it was assumed in Astana that these were Ukrainian drones attacking oil tankers loading up at this Russian port.

Russia is a shareholder, the largest shareholder of CPC.It does earn money out of this whole process.Nonetheless, the Kazakhs said that, and it described the attack asthese tankers as an attack on its own national economic interests.This was code for don't do this Ukraine.Previously, in the same week, last week, Chevron CEO had asked the Trump administration to make sure that certain Chevron assets in the Black Sea were protected.

So this is a very geopolitical issue.The reason this is important is partly because of the comments which were widely reported later.that Kasim Jormat Tokayev, the Kazakh president, made while sitting on a stage next to Vladimir Putin, in which he said the war in Ukraine should end and they should go back to Istanbul negotiating process 2 .0, whatever it was.It was reported widely that these comments were sort of a signifier of a strong Russian ally leaving the Russian camp, leaving the Kremlin camp, and then swinging round behind the West.I think the context here is really, really important.He made, Tukayev made these comments, you know, 24 hours or shortly after the attack on CPC and the ripple effect that that had on the Kazakh economy.

Also, he, you know, this has been the Kazakh line about the war in Ukraine since the beginning.Tukayev is on stage at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum.in 2022 saying very similar things.He didn't say that the war needs to stop but he said that Kazakhstan would not recognize the occupied territories of Donbass as Russian and Vladimir Putin was sitting next to him at the time.So I think we have to be very careful conflating what has been Kazakh policy for four years into something it's not.The context around CPC is really important here and the context around

Kazakh foreign policy is also extremely important.There has been reporting that maybe the word has changed, it's got a bit more angular, all that sort of thing.Possibly, but these are thin slices of a much more sort of broader picture.

Well, thank you for that important context there, James.Now, we've been talking about Telegram and MaxApp for ages, and I know it'll all be a bit Greek to some of our listeners and viewers, but it is important.These are the main communication channels for many Russians, and we're hearing an update very recently from the FSB.

So the FSB today has charged Pavel Dudov, the owner of Telegram, with terrorism, effectively, and put out an arrest warrant.Dudov lives in Dubai.So he's a Russian, an ethnic Russian.He lives in Dubai.His relations with the Kremlin has obviously been incredibly strained this year.The Kremlin has been trying to take more control or Telegram this year.

Telegram is by far the most widely used Russian language social messaging system.It's been very important for communication throughout the world.It's fairly free flowing.It's quite a wild ride when you get on it.And the Kremlin is worried that there is a propensity in Telegram to push anti -Kremlin narratives.And it has tried, it's basically been fairly unsuccessful to close Telegram down.

At the same time, there has been accusations in pro -Russian media through the year that Dudov and his cohort, the guys who run Telegram, have been involved in criminal activity, funding terrorism, promoting terrorism, all this sort of thing.Now the FSB has played the card.I think this is a particular surprise for us.I think it was coming.Durov, as I was saying, is based in Dubai.He's responded by giving a one -fingered salute on X. So we'll see where it goes.

Thank you for that.Well, one final story before we go to Malcolm and the chess world.And this is news that's only just filtered through.We've been speaking for weeks now about the failure of the U .S.-Russia -Ukraine trilateral talks, but there have been some secret ones going on in Baku.

That's correct.So this came out a week or so ago.It was confirmed by Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan.at a joint press conference with his German counterpart in Berlin, that German officials and Russian officials had been meeting in Baku.This was first, this was coming out in the German media and had been in some parts of the British press earlier as well.The significance of these talks is not very clear, except that it does show there is, there have been unofficial channels operating and that the Russians have been playing into them, if you like.

They've been sending sort of second tier officials down to these meetings.The Germans are sort of former senior officials.It's not really clear who's behind it and what's going on.Importantly, the reporting is that this was the fourth such meeting since 2024 between former senior German officials and some tier two Russian officials.They've also been in Abu Dhabi at least once.And also importantly, the Azerbaijanis don't even seem to be aware of the of the meeting, which is incredible.

They said they're only mainly aware of it when the media reports came out, and then they check the flight data.And then like, lo and behold,you know, these meetings have been kept going on.Whether or not that's true or not is another matter.But that's the line they're putting out.We know that Aliyev has been trying to promote Baku as a place for negotiations, but we also know that Azerbaijan -Russian relations are incredibly strained.

So I think this is a curious story.I'm not about to say that there's going to be a peace deal done by these unofficial German -Russian communications, but it is indicative that although the main peace negotiation process has dried up, there are fragments of talks going on around the fringes.

Yeah, absolutely.And it does seem that the Europeans may be trying to apply some of their own leverage in some of these talks, whether official or unofficial.And that was one of the ongoing themes at the NATO summit, which we covered, of course, a few weeks ago.Well, Malcolm, thank you very much for your patience.Really great to have you back on the podcast, our chess correspondent.And well, it's been quite a tumultuous few days in the chess world.

We've been talking with you for some time about the important role that chess has with Russia, and you were talking about some of the initiatives within the chess world to try and sort of force away some of the power that they have on the chess world.Give us the latest on this.I think it was touched on very briefly on Friday's episode, but keen to hear the more details.

Sure.Well, back in 2015, I remember saying that chess had the dubious distinction of having the president of its global federation sanctioned by the US Treasury.Well, we now have The even more dubious distinction of having two presidents of the World Chess Federation sanctioned only, we're heading for the full set.We have Ukraine, the US Treasury, and now the European Commission have sanctioned the president of the global body of World Chess, FIDE Fédération d 'Internationale Echec.His name is Arkady Dvorkovich.He was a former deputy prime minister of Russia and in

when Russia took over Crimea and these sanctions have been long in the making.They were originally blocked by the Hungarians when Viktor Orban was still in power.It was interesting that during the Chess Olympiad, the annual gathering of all the chess teams around the world, about 200 of them in Budapest in 2024, that Dvorkovic disappeared one afternoon for a meeting with the Hungarian foreign minister.He of great leak fame with his telephone conversations with Lavrov were spread all over the internet.And the Hungarians managed to succeed in blocking these sanctions once.And then during the period when Orban was still in power, or sort of, should I say, not in office, but not in power, they blocked them again.

But then a few days ago, obviously, the government of Petro Magyar feels somewhat differently, should we say, on this matter.And he was duly sanctioned for a variety of things.So he then decided to resign.his post in order to protect the organization.However, when I saw him in Addis Ababa over the weekend, he was still fully functioning as the FIDE President, making speeches, taking meetings and campaigning for the person who's replacing him.We're in the middle of elections for a new FIDE Presidency and Deputy Presidency.

And I should declare an interest, I'm standing for Deputy President.I would say the only non -Russian linked slate.And Mr. Dorkovich has been replaced by the man who was going to be his deputy, a guy called Timur Turlov, who conveniently became Kazakh instead of Russian not so long ago, and runs a big finance company listed on the NASDAQ called Freedom Finance that's also under investigation for alleged ties with Russian finance.Mr. Turlov has now taken over the campaign, and the two of them wereseen at various meetings in Addis Ababa that I attended as well, where all the African delegates had conveniently been brought together.So that is the situation.

So we're doing our best to wrest Russian control away from world chess.But unfortunately, two of the three candidates, I'm standing with a German entrepreneur called Jan Henrik Bütner.And the other candidate is someone who originates from Ukraine and is now German, whose name is Vadim Rosenstein.And the Ukrainians just revealed, well, Ukrainian website just revealed that although he claims his business is a German, they are in fact mainly Russian.And amazingly, since the war started, their turnover has gone up tenfold.And on one of the websites, this logistics company which delivers goods from abroad into Russia says, one of the things we do is we bring in the parts and you can assemble it together, which means that we can therefore hide the origin.

And so this is all over the Ukrainian website that I was just looking at this morning.And of course, Mr. Rosenstein denies these allegations, says he's mainly a German businessman.Most of his business interests are in Germany.However, the public record in Germany shows that his business, WR Holding, is registered as a German micro enterprise.So that means that it gets reduced rates of tax because it has a very small amount of money flowing through it.So this one's got some way to run, I think.

We'll have to see.

Well, thank you, Malcolm, for that very succinct update on this really interesting story.And I know that you've been very involved in, as you say, many aspects of it.James, you've been listening to this.I know you're also a keen chess fan.You've told us before on the podcast about when you were last in Russia, an FSB officer approached you for a game.Did you have any questions for Malcolm?

Hi, Malcolm.Nice to see you again.Yeah, I did beat this.Yeah, I did win that game.I'm delighted to hear it.Less said the better, I think, on podcast.

Turov, I'm interested in Turov, Timur Turov, the Russian -Kazakh guy he's pushing.to become the head of FIDA.He is now a Kazakh citizen, and his companies are domiciled in Kazakhstan.

Yes.

Is he not a genuine non...I know that he's an ethnic Russian, he started off his business in Moscow, etc.Do you not think he's now more Kazakh slash Western than he is Russian, and that gives him a chance?Plus, his deputy is the Indian, is one of the Indian grandmasters.I mean, surely this is an anti -Kremlin ticket.

No, it's not.They were hand in glove, Mr. Dvorakovich and Mr. Tolov, campaigning together, literally taking the stage together.And my eagle eyes spotted, after some of the meetings, the Russian ambassador to Ethiopia turned up to see them.So Russian fingerprints are all over this ticket.And they're putting considerable resources behind it.They seem desperate actually to stop Mr. Rosenstein, which is quite interesting.

And there was a further complication when the first chap who was sanctioned, Kursan Elimzinov, who ran World Chess for decades, he wanted to stand, but the word that we got was that the Kremlin told him not to.So there is definitely a Kremlin push behind this ticket.No doubt about it.

Interesting.Well, thank you, Malcolm, as I say, for your update on that.And we'll continue to monitor this.And if there are any updates, we'll have you on the podcast again.But let's go to our final thoughts now.And you'll have an opportunity to relay any others that you may have, Malcolm, on this or another subject in a moment.

But James, where do you want to start?

I want to update you very quickly on the Lyft slash Cucumber slash bike.index that we're developing.We dumped in the bicycle element I think the last time I was on the pod with Dom because of the fuel price crisis in Russia and we decided that we better look at the consumption of bicycles.The story is that people in Russia were buying more bicycles so they didn't have to spend more money at the petrol pump.And this seems to be proved by the data.There's official data saying that in June, the number of bicycles sold in Russia rose compared to the previous month, compared to May by 131%.

So we're going to chunk that into our index first.Now we're going to come to lifts.The story around the Lyfts is that the Kremlin can't afford to repair the Lyfts in their high -rise blocks across the country because they're spending all their money on the war in Ukraine.This again seems to be proved.The latest news is they're coming out with a mechanic.whereby residents of these apartment blocks are going to have to spend more of their own money repairing the lifts.

So that's also shoved into our bucket, our index bucket.And the last, the famous Cucumber Index, which is so important to Russia that Rostec, the Kremlin's statistics agency, does publish data on cucumber prices every month.

So it's not just us.

It's not just us.This is important stuff.And we know that the Kremlin propaganda has been very interested in cucumber prices and does publish stories about the longest cucumber in the world has been, you know, grown in outside Yekaterinburg or something.Anyway, the latest data is that there was a dearth of cucumbers earlier this year, prices spiked.But now, thankfully, it's been such a bounteous summer.There's a glut in cucumbers and prices have halved basically.

So we're going to shove that into our index as well.

Well, thanks very much.A much requested update from the Kilner Index.So that's brilliant.Malcolm, where would you like to leave us?

Well, only with a little story that connects with James's game of chess with an FSB officer, which is that in one of the Slow Horses episodes, I manufactured a chess game in one of the scenes where one of the agents plays the aging Russian emigre in a CD Russian nightclub.Look out for that one and see if you can spot what the actual game really is.

It reminds me of when they did the Queen's Gambit, that amazing series from Netflix, one of my absolute favorites from a few years ago.All the games there were real as well, weren't they?

They were.They were actually enhanced a little by Garry Kasparov.So some of the games were real and a couple of the games in the final battles in that huge hall in Moscow were real games just slightly enhanced by Garry.

Well, my final thought, since we're focused on Russia today, there are concerns for a man we've spoken about on the podcast before, Andrei Trofimov, who's serving a 13 year sentence in Russia for speaking out against the war in Ukraine.He's basically disappeared from view since April and his friends are said to be extremely concerned.According to Memorial, the organisation, his lawyer has gone to prison that he's being held in three times and attempted to arrange a meeting with him without success.His trial was closed to the public.He delivered this closing statement.in an empty courtroom but managed to have it published outside.

Honourable court, everything the prosecution says I wrote online against the war, I did indeed write.I did the right thing.I admit no guilt and I have no regrets.I publicly justify, strongly approve of and support the explosion on the Crimean bridge in autumn 2022 and the Ukrainian drone strikes on the Kremlin and other targets in Moscow and the Moscow region in May 2023.Because Ukraine is a victim of Russian aggression and has the right to carry out retaliatory strikes against military targets in the agreement.state.

And for myself, I demand the maximum sentence, because I despise you.I will not walk the same ground as you or live in the same state as you.Since I cannot now go to Ukraine, lock me up in prison forever.Victory will belong to those who are destroying Putin's scum with weapons.Glory to Ukraine.We will have more information in the show notes about his case.

Thank you all very much for your time today.Thank you, Malcolm.Thank you, James.And thank you, all of you.We'll be back same time, same place tomorrow.Goodbye for now.