Ukraine given ‘green light’ to blitz targets in Russia with long-range Brit weapons amid WW3 fears

Ukraine has been given a green light from allies to Blitz Russian targets with long range Western weapons stoking fears the conflict could still spiral into World War III the Kremlin called the move a direct escalation par again in 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 today with the developments political developments announced or at least made clear today about the rules surrounding the use of Western weapons not just on the battlefield per se the battlefield in Ukraine but at the battlefield further east deep inside Russian soil because we know that America has been urging keev not to use its weapons on targets inside the Russian motherland but today Britain's foreign secretary who's visiting keev has made it clear that Britain will allow its weapons to be used for those strikes Lord Cameron was very clear he said Ukraine absolutely has the right to carry out those missions uh he said it must in some cases carry out those sorts of attacks and this comes hot on the heels of comments from our defense secretary Grant shaps who said the American policy of urging keev not to carry out those attacks was ridiculous now this is really interesting because it's clearly showing a difference in the positions between Ukraine's allies and it gives us a little glimpse into some of the difficulties that Ukraine has to navigate the complex web of the different sets of rules of one Ally giving weapons which they can use to do that another Ally providing ammunition which they can't use to do something else now we know that weapons like storm Shadows the British supplied bunker busting cruise missiles have been used to hit targets to devastating effect in Crimea we suspect that allies have provided lots of support to Ukraine's successful Naval Maritime drone operations those are the sort of surface drones which have attacked and sunk Russian warships it's unclear whether Western weapons have already been used in the successful campaign of Revenge strikes which Ukraine has been mounting for months against targets inside Russia we recap what they've hit they've hit airfields uh they've hit TR lines they've hit oil refineries now it's the oil refineries that have been perhaps the most high-profile recently it's the oil refineries that have sparked warnings from us officials to Reign back us officials fear two things they fear the attacks on Russian soil are an escalation that's what the Kremlin have called them and what they are trying to avoid is that direct State on state confrontation between Russia and a NATO country even though NATO is so fully invested in helping Ukraine to fight back Vladimir Putin's Invasion the other concern voiced by Americans is that these attacks on refineries are going to drive up prices indeed they already have an estimate by the Reuters news agency suggested that uh Russia's refining capability was knocked down by about 14% they think it may have Russia may have made repairs that's got it up to about 90% of where it was originally but still that is hundreds of thousands of barrels of o a day that it that it can't produce and there's been a COR corresponding increase in oil prices fuel prices inside Russia so clearly that campaign by Ukraine is having an effect the other uh comment on this worth noting we heard from Latvia's foreign minister who said who confirmed that Western weapons were being delivered to Ukraine without the caveats weapons that could be used uh theoretically for these strikes inside Russia and also heard at the back end of last week from Britain's chief of Defense staff Admiral saton Rakin in an interview with the financial times he predicted these longrange strikes on Russian soil would increase so that's an area of the war that we're going to keep clo a close eye on and it comes as the situation on the front lines remains really Bleak inside Ukraine Russia is advancing I don't want to try and paint a Rosy picture of that Russia is grinding its way forward particularly in the Eastern Don as there's been some speculation about whether or not Russia is moving units from the south from Kon to the east perhaps to try and reinforce that or capitalize on that we've heard from France's uh president Emanuel macron repeating his threat that he would be prepared to send French troops into Ukraine specifically to try and uh stop a Russian breakthrough his concern appears to be that you know it were Russian forces were Russia to Vanquish Ukraine then Vladimir Putin would not stop there and the neighboring countries would be less and he's painting this you know as an absolute Security emergency to uphold the Safety and Security the order of Europe Britain once again has officially distanced itself from that position Lord Cameron and keev uh suggesting that he thought that was going too far worth noting though while we're on this subject that a former British Armed Forces Minister James heape served in the ministry of defense for a number of years he's left that role and in one of his first interviews after leaving the ministry of Defense he suggested he supported sending Western forces into Ukraine British forces most likely into Western Ukraine perhaps to enable training perhaps to take over roles to allow Ukrainian forces uh to move further east onto the front lines both sides are now fighting with what is called a second Echelon Force after two plus years of conflict the professional armies that started this war are largely no longer there those soldiers have been killed or wounded or exhausted and so the people fighting each other across the front lines in Ukraine are those who've been mobilized since the conflict started and in one in one sense one of the defining uh or at least one of the major tests for both sides will be to see which side can train these new uh volunteer armies into to enable them to conduct complicated uh combined maneuver Warfare faster than the other now some statistics came out recently from the in the British Parliament suggesting that the UK estimates some 450,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or injured since the start of Vladimir Putin's fullscale Invasion now that is about a 100,000 more uh than the most recent estimate just a few months ago the these estimates are notorious iously uh difficult to make accurately throughout conflicts uh parties in Wars have exaggerated their enemies losses and tried to play down their own nonetheless the same estimate from ministers suggesting that Russia lost about 3,000 tanks I mean that would be its entire stock of pre-war tanks we know that over the course of the last two years Russia has been drawing many uh tanks out of storage out of long-term storage it's been forced to rely increasingly on on sort of vintage military equipment but it is also and it has also ramped up its production lines in order to replace some of the equipment that it is losing one Russian capability that we've seen perhaps growing in recent days in weeks has been its uh its long range strikes inside Ukraine so there I'm talking about the use of either air strikes or long range ground launch missiles to hit high value targets this week we've seen footage released by both sides showing successful strikes uh from the Russian side uh it appears they've been using missiles including their uh escanda missiles including their smch missiles loaded with cluster Warheads or cluster bodies cluster fuselages if you like uh to hit uh we think bases high value targets but some very very deep up to 100 kilometers behind the front line similarly very dramatic footage coming out from Ukrainian drones appearing to show a cluster a group of dozens if not hundreds of Russian soldiers out in the open uh in lugans District they were hit with a volley of what is believed to be four American atacam missiles now one of those atacam didn't explode but the other three did suggest of you suggestions of very very high Russian casualties what this indicates on both sides is that perhaps there's been a leap frogging of the capability of surveillance drones to resist jamming or evade detection cuz both of these strikes would require realtime fast surveillance in order to spot mobile targets or fleeting targets targets of opportunity targets that don't sit there forever both sides have to be able to spot those targets and then react quickly bring the artillery within range or the Rockets within range and fire onto Target before it moves and both sides appear to have done that as we move forward a couple of analysts suggesting this is also something worth keeping an eye on because we know that America signed off that $61 billion Aid package uh large quantities of weapons and ammunition are arriving in Ukraine have been arriving in Ukraine since our last update the UK pledged under 500 million uh towards that cause as well and so that is likely to include high value military assets which the Russians will uh be at pains to try and Destroy before they can be uh brought to be on the battlefield couple of other things worth noting since our last update there been really disturbing reports from the US state department accusing Russia of using chemical weapons to clear Ukrainian uh positions particularly a chemical called chlorop piclin excuse me chloropicrin also known as PS gas this is primarily an Agricultural Product used to fumigate soil sort of insecticide Fung side it can also be used uh potentially s there is a legitimate use of it it's been used in riot control in some scenarios but used as a weapon of War it is categorically banned it is a chemical weapon it is covered by the chemical weapons the ban on chemical weapons at that convention um in the same week just I think the same day uh the investigations investigators from Human Rights Watch Rights group uh put out a report on the execution of at least 15 Ukrainian uh prisoners of War soldiers who had surrendered or in the process of trying to surrender now a lot of this evidence was actually based on footage captured by Russian drones so the Russians were filming themselves as they captured these Ukrainian positions in one instance it describes footage where the ukrainians are emerging from a trench uh they REM sorry from a bunker they remove their body armor one removes his helmet there made to lie down uh and then they are all shot one of these drones capturing uh what appears to be a Russian commander on the ground capturing the audio saying take no prisoners Kill Them All I mean and that is a you know perhaps a Salient And Timely reminder of just how horrific conflict is we can you know when we see the Drone footage when we're seeing the death and Devastation being uh enacted from a great distance explosions in Landscapes it's easy perhaps to forget what this really means on the ground it is men and women being maimed and killed in pretty horrific uh circumstances and that is you know The Madness of the conflict and that is what is you know driving the pressure to end to find a resolution to this conflict indeed all conflicts curiously while we're there uh we've heard from a Ukrainian General recently Deputy head of Ukraine's intelligence service saying he did not think peace talks were even a realistic possibility until Midway through next year and that's because both sides sort of bling for position on the front line trying to get into the best position for those talks to take place but neither side hurting enough at the moment neither side exhausted enough at the moment uh to to stop and feel pressured to the table as ever if you're watching on YouTube and you'd like to ask us a question um please do answer your ask your questions in the comments below and I'll do my best to answer some of them uh next time one of the questions uh this week is is about f-16s we get this uh regularly any update on the f-16s um yes is a short answer suggestions in the New York Times that the first of those fighting fulcon us made Jets could be operational in Ukraine by July unlikely to be all of them there's a couple a few dozen have been uh pledged across from different countries different allies that use them suggestions from The New York Times the first ones could reach there in July another update is that when we spoke spoke to uh Britain's defense secretary Grant shaps on our new world war show he revealed that Britain would be arming those American jets uh with what he called Glide bombs but I understand that is actually a reference to the Paveway for uh guided missiles those are both laser guided missiles and GPS guided missiles they've really been the go-to weapon for the RAF since they were first used in Afghanistan they've been used in Libya most recently against houthi Rebel targets in Yemen fired off RAF typhoon Jets but they'll be uh fitted onto f-16s we understand when they finally make their way into Ukraine uh the second question was you how many Russian oil refineries does Ukraine have to hit before it makes a difference I think we might have already answered that a little bit earlier on they have already made a difference that estimate from Reuters that production went down by 14% now back up to uh 90% of where it was production was about almost 124,000 metric tons a day they think it's come down to about 9,500 metric tons a day it was lower it has recovered slightly that has in turn led to a surge in prices at the pumps in Russia so it is making a difference and in one way perhaps that is bringing the effects of the war home to people in Russia who might otherwise be shielded from it in their daytoday lives of course public opinion does matter in Russia uh Vladimir Putin you know there's no suggestion at all that he might be voted out of office it remains an autocracy the elections are uh pretty much just theater but we did see in previous conflicts we did see in Afghanistan when Russia was in Afghanistan for a decade that actually it was the mothers committees it was the mothers of the soldiers who were coming back in coffins who ultimately managed to move the needle of public opinion across Russia so far that hasn't happened and that is something that many people looking at quite closely not least Ukraine and of course our allies working out you know is it possible to change opinion in Russia thank you very very much for watching as I say if you do have questions please ask them in the comments below and if you got a chance do check out our new world at war show where we sat down with Britain's defense secretary Grant shaps we discussed the war in Ukraine Britain's support for Ukraine and of course the conflict in Israel and what steps he has TR been trying to take to revamp the United Kingdom's armed forces in the face of what he calls the shift from living in a post-war world to a pre-war World concerns that with events in Russia and Ukraine the threats from China North Korea and Iran uh that state on state conflict has now become a much much more real threat in the near and medium term [Music]

Channel: The Sun

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Keywords: The Sun, news, breaking news, Jerome Starkey, Frontline, World at War, The Sun's World at War, Putin, drone attack, russia, russian, ukraine, airbase bombed, moscow, putin, russian bombers, nato, Su-34, Su-34 bombers, Tu-160, Russian Tu-160, Russian Tu-160 bomber, warplanes, warplane, ww3, ukraine war, russian airfield, Engels, massive explosion, luhansk, donetsk, ukrainian drone strike, kamikaze drones, avdiivka, ukraine news, ukraine latest, ukraine frontline, long-ranged missiles, drones

Id: QclM2KsvYJE

Length: 16min 30sec (990 seconds)

Published: Fri May 03 2024