Ukraine war: What's the significance of Moscow blast?

um it's not being called an attack definitely a blast though we've seen the evidence of that Michael what's the significance of that yeah and as you can see here it's a pretty big blast um it probably isn't caused by a drone or a missile maybe a missile but I think a missile would would have been more obvious maybe sabotage might be an industrial accident but it was a pretty big blast and the fact that it's a military Optics facility is really kind of important to the ukrainians because military Optics are critical to the production of aircraft and particularly tanks for the sighting system the ability of Tanks to operate at night and whatever caused this if you said to uh the military in Kiev what will be your top three targets around Moscow this would probably have been one of them they you can see the the extent of the damage there if it is some way inhibited the production of military Optics I think the ukrainians would be very happy about that whatever has caused it and can we talk about what is happening in Ukraine and the Ukrainian offensive and we haven't heard much over the last couple of days what kind of update have you got for us yeah it's a good time really to look at the whole of the Battlefront I mean the ukrainians in the last 24 hours have crossed the danipa river again Norfolk person they crossed that person um on the antonovsky bridge some weeks ago and now at uh kazachi Lahiri about 15 kilometers North they've crossed again and established another Bridgehead and there's also something going on at novakovka which is where the dam was blown a little bit further Upstream from that so there's quite a lot of fighting around that area possibly the ukrainians are using that as a distraction maybe it's going to be another front most of their activity is in this area in the south south from Oregon south from valika novasilka this heavy fighting going on around robertin and Storer maisk and the ukrainians are clearly trying to break through there whether that be the main effort we don't know but they're certainly putting a lot of effort into that south of bakmut again and they've picked up quite a lot of The High Ground which gives them the opportunity to move away from back mutton maybe turn South that's another possibility but the Russians have put troops together around kubians or in a way to threaten cupians and they've got quite a lot of forces gathered there and they've tried some local counter-attacks which haven't yet been effective but the Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Defense uh and a Malia said last night she said that there's a big concentration of troops there which is a problem because that is a very least it's pinning ukrainians in place they can't afford to ignore it so they have to have some troops there in order to do something about that so it's possible that while the ukrainians are thinking about a double offensive in the southwest the Russians are thinking about a counter-offensive in the Northeast there's a sort of a symmetry to this um but the ukrainians at the moment have the advantage they have the agenda uh they're making the calling the shots but they've got a long way to go if this is the main point of the attack which I suspect it is they've got 125 miles to go to get to the Sea um you're keeping across what's happening on land but also what's happening at say the Black Sea just near Crimea what activities happening there similar thing in the sense that what we're looking at that southern front which built there on the map in Crimea the ukrainians are trying to pressurize Military Support in Crimea because the Russians use Crimea of course as their great Supply base for all of their troops and Equipment going north and the chonha bridge and the uh the hennigast bridge here in this very sort of narrow line of communication into uh Mainland Ukraine has been hit and the Russians are having to re-route all of their stuff down this this North West Corridor which is longer and more vulnerable and meanwhile the ukrainians are also hitting at Nova racist the the Russian naval base they've used their drone ships these sort of small Kamikaze ships to attack both some Russian oil tankers but also in one case they've damaged the Russian raputure landing craft which is one of the big ones and so what the the ukrainians are trying to do is to make Crimea non-viable to the Russians as a military support and this all tells me again that they're serious about this attack in the South they're trying to prepare the battlefield as much as possible for a breakthrough I think they'll try to make there I might be wrong this might all be strategic deception but we're going to find out soon because the ukrainians are burning summer and they can't afford to wait too much longer before they bring all of their forces they've brought quite a few of them forward they're not all fighting yet but soon they'll all be fighting and then we'll see where they really do intend to try to break through

Channel: Sky News

Views: 801,959

Keywords: russia ukraine war, ukraine war, russia ukraine, russia ukraine war russian, ukraine russia war, war in ukraine, russia ukraine war live, russia vs ukraine war update, ukraine, ukraine russia, russia war ukraine, ukraine russia news, russia ukraine news, russia ukraine war news, russia, ukraine war news, russian ukraine war, russia ukraine war update, russia ukraine conflict, russia war, russia vs ukraine, ukraine news, sky news, michael clarke, moscow

Id: Xkbk8X5pYUU

Length: 4min 30sec (270 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 09 2023