Ukraine DESTROYS 4 of Russia's top air defences & warns world 'careering towards WW3': The Frontline

[Music] Ukraine says it has destroyed four of Russia's most sophisticated air defense systems with a blitz on occupied Crimea but warned that the world is careering towards World War III unless key gets more weapons to defeat Russia my name is Jerome starky I'm the defense editor at the Sun newspaper and this is Frontline your weekly Roundup of the most important news from the war in Ukraine we're going to start with Ukraine's successful strike on the janoi airbase in occupied Crimea where today Ukraine's Military Intelligence unit said that they destroyed four S400 air defense systems as well as three supporting radar stations and two command and control units now this is significant because the S400 is Russia's most advanced air defense system it is what protects its military its headquarters its assets from Ukrainian air assaults and the S400 is formidable it's a system that many uh NATO countries military experts consider Ed to be on par with any of the best air defense systems in the world now this one in janoi was destroyed in northeastern uh occupied Crimea apparently by a barrage of us supplied a tachs missiles those are the Army tactical missile systems which can be fired from high Mars or gmlrs multiple launch rocket system supplied both by the UK and by the United States these have a range of about 190 miles and that is well beyond the front line so effectively this could have been fired almost from a far as far away as Deno well inside Ukrainian controlled territory exactly how uh Ukraine managed to hit an this air defense system is unclear of course the very nature of air defense batteries means that they should be able to defend themselves because those Radars should detect the incoming threat and then launch missiles to intercept it and that's why it's valuable and important uh victory for Ukraine because it could potentially leave other Targets in occupied Crimea vulnerable to further attacks worth noting while we're on this subject that Ukraine's gu Military Intelligence unit has also claimed a number of strikes deep inside Russia many hundreds of kilometers inside Russian territory including one on what is known as an s 9 B6 uh container uh Over the Horizon radar effectively radar early warning system now the word container is perhaps misleading this isn't contained within what we might think of a shipping container actually it's made up of dozens almost 150 uh antennas spread uh over a field up to five stories high that can detect uh aircraft and missiles more than 3,000 kilm away clear if that uh attack has been successful but nonetheless there does appear to be uh a trend in these attacks that Ukraine is targeting Russia's Radars early warning system trying to degrade its air defenses in both cases that would leave Russia vulnerable uh to further attacks the GU are also suggesting that they try to attack a Shahed drone Factory inside Uh Russian territory despite uh the grinding nature of the conflict in Ukraine uh Ukraine has maintained indeed grown this extraordinary capacity to launch strikes deep behind Russian lines are significant because they are trying to degrade Russia's uh defenses and also degrade as we've seen in this latest strike uh Russia's manufacturing capability uh in this instance the Shahid Factory those are the Iranian drones but which are now being made under licensed by Russia in Russia of course it comes after many weeks of strikes on Russian oil refining capabilities Again part of that same Ukrainian strategy of trying to degrade Russian resources sap its ability sap moscow's ability to fight it hasn't been one way though what we've seen in Ukraine is a continuing barrage of Russian air strikes uh most recently a particularly deadly attack on the northern city of chiv northeast of near the Russian border a city that was uh came under ferocious attack in the first few weeks of the war and because of its proximity to Russia has never really been spared the violence over the last two plus years at least 17 people killed in that missile barrage dozen scores I think up to 60 wounded at the last count and uh comment from president zalinski saying that you know had Ukraine had the air defense weapons that he has asked for the air defense weapons that so many in Ukraine are so adamant that they need then those 17 people would still be alive those 60 people would not have been injured this sort of attack would have been uh defeated that message of Ukraine needing more weapons has been repeated today by Ukraine's prime minister Dennis shyal now his warning was Stark without the resources that Ukraine needs to defend itself against Russia to defeat Russia he he said the world is facing World War II and this is the logic is that it if Russia is victorious in Ukraine if an emboldened Russia captures Ukraine it will continue uh to threaten other countries in Europe shal said that the uh global system of Security will crumble we will see a proliferation of conflicts in Europe and around the world that will ultimately plunge the world into an almost unimaginable conflict on the scale of which uh the world has never seen before because whilst there have been world wars in the past they have never been fought with the sort of weapons available uh to the major Powers today there is however a glimmer of hope for Ukraine on the prospect of receiving the weapons and resources that it needs and of course that all hangs on the plans or hangs on the Republicans in the the house of Congress in America passing a White House bill to supply $60 billion Worth or about 50 billion pounds worth of weapons and military aid that has been stalled since December we've talked about that a lot on these Frontline uh updates the bill is once again uh before Congress and there they expect to have a vote within the next couple of days possibly on April 20th now there's been a lot of wrangling uh we've seen President Joe Biden writing an oped in an American newspaper stressing the importance of why this is needed last week we talked about the diplomacy of Ukraine and America's International allies Japan Poland the United Kingdom all stressing how important it is for America to step up uh and Supply that money to keep Ukraine in the fight so it can uh defend itself of that 60 billion uh dollars it's sort of broadly broken down about 24 billion of it would go to replenishing US military uh stocks which may have been gifted to Ukraine already or it enable uh America to gift existing uh Hardware to Ukraine and then replace it about 14 uh billion would go on new military equipment uh for Ukraine and about 11 billion would go to supporting ongoing uh American military operations which are supporting uh Ukraine those aren't specified by understanding for example that could include the uh re the global hawk drone flights over the Black Sea over International airspace over international waters in the Black Sea which are gathering uh intelligence and other forms of intelligence gathering for example from satellites that sort of intelligence has been key to Ukraine in the past particularly uh finding and allowing it to find and destroy high value Russian targets perhaps uh I'm speculating here but perhaps including Russian warships in the Black Sea where Ukraine has had some of its most spectacular successes as ever if you do have questions any questions you'd like uh me to try and answer please write them in the comments if you're watching uh on YouTube and we will uh do our best to answer them next time loads of questions from last week I'm going to pick out uh three the first one is where is Europe we talked a lot last time about the importance of this American Aid a lot of you asking understandably well if America is not providing the aid well um where is Europe and it's a fair question Europe has actually uh donated significantly more to Ukraine over the last two years than America according to a tally produced by the KE Institute Europe has committed 144 billion dollars worth of Aid compared to America's 6768 uh billion other countries have contributed about uh 40 billion now in terms of military aid alone uh America has committed the most some 42 billion uh Germany second with about just shy of 18 billion and the United Kingdom third with about 9 billion worth of military aid but what's also really interesting is when you start to look at this in terms of percentage of GDP now we've also talked about the uh pressure within NATO for NATO members to spend a certain amount of their GDP on defense and that is seen uh within the alliance as a sort of Fair Way of splitting the costs sharing the burden of collective defense now when you look at Aid to Ukraine relative to GDP then actually uh you get a very different story America is in fact 32nd down the league table in terms of how much it it has spent on Ukraine relative to its GD GP that analysis by the KE Institute saying America has committed 32% of its GDP uh to supporting Ukraine since Russia's fullscale Invasion uh that's compared to Estonia top of the table which has spent 4% Denmark uh second has spent uh 3% United Kingdom uh United Kingdom 26th on that list having spent about 05% of its own uh GDP on Ukraine so there are many ways of you know slicing this uh particular salami many ways of looking at the statistics but the money the the key Point here is that the money uh from America the 60 um billion dollars from America is vital it is a huge tranch of money it's effectively doubling what America has all already uh committed um it will sit alongside uh huge quantities from America even bigger quantities uh from Europe and of course money uh from countries that are outside the European Union second question uh from last week was quite a technical one it was talking about the ground launched small diameter uh Glide bombs and whether or not these would be effective or would be welled trying to hit uh particularly Rail lines but Russian supply routes from Uh Russian soil across Southern Ukraine to uh occupied Crimea that is a a patch of territory off referred to as the land bridge to Crimea the short answer is yes these weapons have these bombs have a range of about 94 miles that would uh Place uh much of that territory that land bridge within their range uh and indeed when Ukraine launched its counter offensive last summer that much vaunted counter offensive where it pushed south from zapia one of the key objectives as I was led to believe uh by both Western and Ukrainian off offals was to try and get its artillery within the range of those key supply routes across the landbridge effectively to try and choke to cut those supply routes to choke Russian forces in occupied Crimea um what I can't tell you uh with certainty is whether or not those weapons are being used for that purpose and if uh why perhaps they're not being used more it may well may well be to do with the defenses that Russia has in that territory and the opportunities Russia may have to strike the launch sites we know um the launch sites can be uh mobile and quickly mobile but nonetheless um it again speculating it could be linked to the strikes we've seen on the air defenses those air defenses May well leave aircraft including helicopters uh more vulnerable we know that Russian helicopters in uh Southern and Central Ukraine but sort of around Kon and zapia have played a really important role in sort of hampering uh Ukraine's attempts to push forward um causing problems for Ukrainian forces good question um I will try and keep an eye on that uh and and keep you updated on those bombs the final question today is why doesn't Britain Supply Ukraine with more air defense systems a constant refrain we've touched on it today we've touched on it before is that Ukraine needs more air defense systems Point number one is that Britain doesn't actually have a lot of groundbased air defense systems uh the UK armed forces have supplied star streak missiles now these are short range they can be uh shoulder launched missiles uh and they can be fired from we we supplied a vehicle known as the hvm a small sort of light tank if you like uh they're really designed for shooting down uh low flying or close in helicopters uh the British army relies on on a um giraffe radar system for its groundbased air defenses that is perhaps broadly equivalent to the US Patriot missile system but actually uh the UK for its longer range air defense uh relies on its Fleet of type 45 destroyers which are armed with um sea Viper septer missiles and a Samson radar which Towers above the ship I mean that has a range of some uh two 150 miles uh that it can see what we've noticed in the United Kingdom is when there are major events happening here in the capital London uh often one of those ships is brought into uh the temps to provide air defense cover normally done quite quietly and quite discreetly the UK has sent its giraffe Raiders to Poland where they're where they're bolstering uh Poland's air defense and early warning radar capabilities so the short answer is that Britain doesn't necessarily have enough or the right kit to give Ukraine and the other point I would add the final point I will make today is that Ukraine has been pretty clear that actually what it really needs and wants are the us-made Patriot systems now those systems have so far as I understand being the only ones that can shoot down Russia's kinz out Hypersonic missiles now these are the missiles that Vladimir Putin boasted were Unstoppable they have been stopped they've been stopped by the Patriot systems and those are the ones that Ukraine so desperately needs thank you very much for listening I'll say it again if you do have questions and you're watching on YouTube please write them in the comments below and I will uh I'll have a go at answering some of them uh next time if you're watching on YouTube don't forget to like And subscribe to the Sun and if you're listening to this as a podcast then don't forget to like And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts thank you

Channel: The Sun

Views: 275,008

Keywords: The Sun, news, breaking news, crimea, crimea news, WW3, S-400, russia, ukriane news, russia news, pution news, ukriane latest

Id: 5-3ffiwp8qA

Length: 16min 57sec (1017 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 18 2024