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Matt Frei reacts to the moment a roof of a Russian oil refinery was blown off in Ukraine's biggest drone attack since the start of the war. Images shared from the scene showed huge plumes of black smoke rising from the Kapotnya refinery, one of Moscow’s most important energy facilities, supplying up to 40% of the capital’s petrol and 50% of its diesel fuel. 16 people were injured in the blistering assault on Wednesday night, which saw 555 drones shot down and over 200 intercepted, according to Russia’s Defence Ministry. The Ukrainian president, Volodomyr Zelenskky, described the attack on social media as their response to Russia’s striking of a 1,000-year-old mediaeval monastery complex earlier this week. Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #mattfrei #ukraine #russia #putin #zelenskyy #LBC LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
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0:00
The Ukrainians launched this unprecedented attack of hundreds of drones aimed at the Russian capital
0:08
And this took out a couple of oil refineries. There was a very dramatic image of the lid of one of the refinery containers being blown off, a massive thing
0:17
And it turned the sky over Moscow black. And it does raise these questions whether the Russians are finally losing their grip on this war
0:26
which they had been fighting for longer than the First World War lasted
0:30
I mean, they've been at it for four and a half years. The front line has barely moved. The cost in terms of lives is enormous
0:37
I mean, over a million casualties, either dead or with life-changing injuries on the Russian side
0:43
perhaps half as many on the Ukrainian side. I mean, when you compare that to the Soviet losses
0:48
after 10 years of Afghan occupation, that was 14,000 dead soldiers. This is 100 times as many almost
0:57
I mean, that is a terrible, terrible number for the Russians. And because the war is now being brought to Russia itself
1:02
and again, they're not really targeting civilian targets in the way that the Russians have been targeting in Ukraine
1:07
They're going for infrastructure, for military targets, for naval installations, for airports, that kind of stuff
1:14
The Russians are beginning to realize that there is a cost to all this
1:19
And the question is whether they will take this out against Vladimir Putin
1:22
and in what form i mean he's barely spending any time in moscow at all he seems to be hiding
1:27
uh either in sochi or various other places far away from the capital um again gone into a bit
1:33
of a witness protection program perhaps because he's feeling the heat let's find out let's talk
1:38
to tom much i think we finally managed to establish a line to uh ukraine he is the author of the dogs
1:43
of mariupol and he's a freelance conflict reporter based in kiev tom good morning good morning matt
1:49
Thank you very, very much for having me. So this war has changed, hasn't it
1:54
I mean, to Ukraine's benefit in recent weeks. Have I got that right
1:58
And can you explain why, if that's the case? Sure, more or less
2:02
Yes, really, in 2026, we've seen a substantial improvement in a number of elements of Ukraine's
2:09
both battlefield capabilities and its kind of larger strategic aims. So really what Ukraine has been able to do is one its own military industrial complex its kind of drone production complex is now so elaborate and so established and so widespread that they have effectively been able to stop Russian advancements on the battlefield almost completely Now the Russians are still pushing forward in some areas but the amount that they are paying in terms of manpower and equipment has steadily increased
2:45
while the amount of territory they're able to take has steadily decreased. Now the second factor
2:50
and it's one of the reasons that Putin seems like he's MIA, is that Ukrainian long-range strike
2:56
capacity has dramatically improved. Now for a long time, Ukraine was expecting to get that kind
3:02
long-range strike capacity from its partners. So, you know, it kept on asking for Tomahawk missiles from the US
3:07
or those Taurus missiles from Germany. And when those weren't forthcoming, Ukraine was able to design its own
3:13
both its own cruise missile, which is the Flamingo variant, and a whole series of long-range strike drones
3:20
that can effectively go anywhere inside Russia. Now, just to wrap up, it's really interesting
3:26
because Russia's huge size has always, and its kind of strategic dip
3:31
has always been considered one of its greatest advantages. Ukraine, however, is turning that into a massive disadvantage for the Kremlin
3:38
because what it's showing is that it means that Russia's air defence
3:43
has to be so spread out across the country because it's so wide and vast
3:47
that Ukraine can effectively pick and choose targets almost at its will now
3:52
At the same time, the Russians have continued with their relentless drone attacks
3:56
and missile attacks against targets inside Ukraine. I mean, I think just the other day, a week ago or so
4:04
Kiev was subjected to an unprecedented attack. I think something like 16 people died that night
4:10
I mean, they're doing it to you as well, aren't they? Oh, yes. There's basically one major missile barrage people have learned to expect
4:19
Normally about once a week or so. There are some minor ones in the meantime
4:24
But, yes, there was a huge one out, just to try and kind of give your viewers a sense of what it feels
4:30
and looks like is that you kind of feel as if there is some kind of war going on in the air
4:36
you hear a constant sort of thrack and thunder crack thunder the whistle of sort of drones as
4:43
they come near you that kind of like horrible whirring sound kind of sounds a bit like a
4:47
lawnmower engine yes i know i've heard it so what is that all this done to morale in ukraine assuming
4:52
i'm assuming that morale is a lot better than it was let's say six months ago or so
4:56
Better might be yes but it qualified better because I think one of the problems is that
5:05
sometimes people can get the idea that Ukraine is oh things are going well therefore we can
5:11
kind of turn away from Ukraine and sort of oh if things are getting better we don need to worry about it as much People are more optimistic that the Russians and to be fair frank the Americans are no longer going to be able to force Ukraine
5:25
into a sort of surrender posture where it's forced to give up large amounts
5:30
of territory, where it's forced to accept conditions that effectively veto its sovereignty
5:36
And so there's more sense that Ukraine will hold firm and hold together
5:40
especially on the battlefield. That said, people are still absolutely exhausted. I think it's worth pointing out that people are still coming off
5:49
what was probably the worst winter in Ukraine's history, you know, minor zero freezing temperatures
5:55
while there were periods where people had an hour of electricity a day at the best
6:00
And the fact that worth also mentioning, you know, May was the deadliest, I believe, the deadliest month
6:06
for Ukrainian civilians since 2022 too when cities were then actively being encircled and bombarded like Mariupol
6:14
So in terms of the civilian, the air war against civilians by Russia, that is getting deadlier
6:20
and harder than ever. So yes, morale is a bit better, but at the same time, in many ways, the experience for
6:26
ordinary civilians continues to get worse. Just to get back to the front line, which I know you have experience of
6:32
I mean, there were these battles in the past, you know, a couple of years ago where the Russians would literally throw thousands of men
6:37
into the channel house of these small towns that were strategic on the front line
6:42
The Ukrainians would do something similar, although not in such great numbers. And then, you know, tens of thousands of people died
6:48
and the front line moved maybe by a couple of hundred meters. Because of the prevalence of drones in the sky
6:54
does that mean that actually the casualties on the front line have been reduced
6:58
because no one is getting out of their trenches or their bunkers? They're just, it's just drones overhead
7:02
and no movement on the ground. So that's slightly true for Ukrainian casualties
7:09
So one of the advantages for Ukraine this year is, as I always said, the gulf between Ukrainian casualties and Russian casualties
7:16
it's difficult to measure, looks like it's continuing to grow. Actually, near the start of the war, it was fairly actually similar
7:22
because the Russians had a huge advantage in munitions. But now the further you would go on
7:27
but because it's the Russians who are assaulting most of the time
7:31
they are basically, when troops move forward, they're moving into what they call the kill zone
7:35
The kill zone gets much more intense the closer you go to the very, very front line. And so Russian troops who are being pushed into the front parts of the kill zone
7:43
for assault missions, they're nearly all getting wiped out. And this is what you actually seeing is that Ukraine reckons that it either killing or incapacitating more than 30 Russian soldiers a month which is more than the Russians are actually able to recruit So for the first time in the war trajectory the amount of people that Russia can actually bring onto the battlefield
8:03
is decreasing, and it's decreasing relatively significantly. So that in turn means that their assaults get weaker
8:10
and Ukraine's defences get stronger. So the overall trajectory of the war for Ukraine
8:15
does look more promising than it has done probably since 2022, but it's still very far from being out of the woods yet
8:22
There's still a lot more bloodshed to come. Which is such a depressing thing to say, but probably true
8:27
I mean, just finally, there is a, you know, in Russian history, regimes have changed, czars have been toppled
8:33
general secretaries of the Communist Party have been removed when they have lost the war
8:38
Famously in 1917, Tsar Nicholas II, that led, you know, his bad performance or Russia's bad performance
8:46
in the First World War led to the Russian Revolution. Again, Khrushchev was removed after the Cuban missile crisis went badly wrong for the Soviet Union
8:55
Do you get the sense that something similar might be about to happen in Russia today
8:59
Yes, and the loss of the war in Afghanistan was a blow to Khao Gordeshoff
9:03
Yeah, I forgot that one. I think that's an optimistic but potentially realistic scenario
9:13
So the biggest problem for Putin really would be if Russia's grip on Crimea is genuinely threatened
9:23
And one of the things, the Ukrainian basically strategic vision at the moment is that they would really like to be able to isolate Crimea
9:29
They tried to do that in 2023 with a counter offensive that was supposed to sort of cut off by land Crimea from the rest of Russian occupied territories
9:37
That failed fairly badly, as we know. Now they're trying to do it effectively with long range strike
9:43
capabilities and drone capabilities. They want to be able to cut off that land bridge
9:47
and basically stop supplies or reinforcements being able to get to Crimea so that effectively
9:53
Crimea becomes somewhat non-functional and that the Russians can't maintain their grip on it
9:59
I think if it ever got to the stage where the Russians weren't able to support military
10:05
operations or even a civilian population inside the Crimea itself. That's bad news for them
10:10
That would be a real blow that because Crimea has been sort of so far the crown jewel of Putin's entire reign in office, he hasn't even captured anything anywhere near as valuable in 2022
10:24
That would be the scenario where I could see it becoming a real threat to his regime and his possible survival
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