Ukraine Just Shattered Putin’s Biggest Drone Advantage

I'm Dom Nicholls and this is Ukraine The Latest. Today, as the Danish Prime Minister condemns the latest reckless action by Moscow after a Russian frigate in the Baltic Sea fired flares at a military helicopter, NATO jets were also in action last night, shooting down a drone over Lithuania. The Ukrainian commander who masterminded the recent counter-attack in the Donbass region gives a little more detail about what happened before, much to Francis' delight, hinting at what may come next by referring to an Italian Baroque composer who's been dead for 300 years. And in news that will surprise possibly only one man on the planet, Donald Trump's claim to have got a deal over the line between Kiev and Moscow about halting strikes on energy facilities has, just like Russia's Cizran oil facility last night, gone up in smoke. And later, the story of a mother searching for her son who is missing in action in Ukraine and who lost her job for searching for him when she spoke to me. It's Tuesday the 15th of September, four years and 203 days since the full-scale invasion began and today I'm joined by my co-host Francis Durnley. Now breaking news now this morning, a Russian frigate has fired two emergency flares towards a Danish military helicopter operating in international waters. One flare passed within a short distance of the aircraft, the Danish Armed Forces said this morning. The Royal Danish Air Force's AS500 Fennec helicopter was conducting routine photographic surveillance of the Russian warship when the flares were launched directly towards it. Neither crew member were injured and the helicopter was undamaged. The incident happened near Gedser, that's on the southeastern tip of Denmark in the Baltic Sea. Danish officials condemned what they described as an unacceptable act and the Russian ambassador, Vladimir Barban, was summoned, no doubt to explain what the emergency was on the frigate such that it felt the need to fire flares. Don't hold your breath. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called the incident reckless action from Russia, adding Russian actions are meant to intimidate and divide, they will not succeed. The Danish Defence Minister, Jeppe Brus, condemned the incident as serious, calling it evidence that Russia is increasingly willing to take risks, something we've repeatedly said will likely end badly one day. Now that incident happened, I think, just before a NATO fighter jet shot down a drone over Lithuania. The weapon had entered Lithuania's airspace from neighbouring Belarus and headed west, prompting alerts around Vilnius. The Lithuanian military said Italian jets had neutralised the threat shortly after midnight. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda said the incident demonstrated the importance of regional readiness. Poland also scrambled fighter jets as precaution during Russian drone attacks on Ukraine last night. Now, those attacks continued into this morning around 6 a.m. local time, a petrol station in Kyiv's southeastern Donetsk district was hit, according to Mayor Vitaly Klitschko. One person was hospitalised in a critical condition and later died, according to the mayor. Kyiv City Military Administration said a second petrol station was hit by a drone at 8.39 a.m. local time in the Holosivsky district of the capital, that's in the south. In total, 11 people were killed and 64 injured across the country yesterday, three were killed and 15 injured when agricultural warehouses in Priluki, in Chernihiv Oblast, were hit. Other casualties were in an arc through Kharkiv Oblast, down through the Donbass region and into Zaporizhia and Odessa in the south. Next, Andrei Beletsky, the commander of the 3rd Army Corps, has officially confirmed the recent military action in the vicinity of Liman. He said Ukrainian army offensive in the north of the Donetsk region, operating under a media blackout, his units have eliminated pockets of enemy infiltration and cleared an area of 75 square kilometres. He said an additional 10 square kilometres had then later been de-occupied. Now that is interesting. So 85 square kilometres, we had previously heard from open source material and mill bloggers that around 200 square kilometres had been liberated. So Andrei Beletsky's comments there slightly less. However, he went on to say a devastating blow was dealt to the combat capabilities of the Russian 20th and 25th Armies. He said Russia had lost approximately 1,500 soldiers, over 12,000 drones and hundreds of units of armoured vehicles, artillery systems and other motor vehicles. He finished his social media announcement with a bit of a tease. He said there is currently a lot of information in open sources suggesting that the ultimate goal of our offensive actions is to reach the banks of the Chorni-Zerobets River. But our operation is called Vivaldi. Calm down, Francis. My favourite composer. And Vivaldi, Mr Beletsky said, as is well known, has four seasons, and this is just the first of them. So keep an eye on our official announcements and don't rush to post spoilers. Good news is coming. Here we go. Winter's coming. Not just winter and Vivaldi. OK. Yeah. Carry on. Now, we spoke yesterday about a strike on a Russian headquarters in occupied Donetsk on a blast that we think happened around August the 26th that was said to have killed Russian Lieutenant General Sergei Milchakhev. He was commander of Russia's 51st Combined Arms Army. It's now thought that that strike may also have killed Major General Anton Grunis. He's commander of Russia's 4th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade, which is said to have been fighting in the Bakhmut and Konstantinovka areas. He's presumed dead after an obituary has been published by some Russian sites. No further details are known, but the timing of that obituary seems to fit with that strike in occupied Donetsk. Now, into Russia, and Cisra, an oil refinery that's in Samara Oblast, was hit last night. It's part of Russia's state-owned oil giant, Rosneft. The AVT-6 primary oil refining unit and the facility's tank farm were hit, according to Ukraine's general staff. Russia's Samara Oblast governor, Vasilislav Fedoryshev, said that over 40 Ukrainian drones were shot down. So that's all right then. Now, also hit by Ukraine last night was the city of Taganrog. The strikes were thought to be on the Beriev Aerospace Manufacturing Complex. That's a drone production facility. NASA's FIRMS system detected a major fire burning at that location in the early hours of this morning. And finally for me, a serving member of the British Armed Forces has died in a road traffic accident in Ukraine, the Ministry of Defence in London has said, adding that the incident was not caused by hostile action. Now, Britain has acknowledged that a small number of military personnel are in Ukraine supporting Ukrainian forces and protecting diplomatic staff. Now that's it for the military update, but Frances, diplomatic, and there were promises, no promises on the bus, off the bus last night. It was over before it even started, really. Do you want to take us through what happened? Yeah, sure. So after our broadcast yesterday, President Trump claimed that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to halt strikes on energy targets. Now don't get too excited. We've been here before. Here's what he posted. Ukraine has agreed not to hit Russian energy targets. Russia has agreed to do likewise. Now we briefly considered following that news whether we'd need to record an update. This would be momentous. But we held on because we thought, well, let's just see if Moscow, if Kiev, actually confirmed this officially or unofficially. And I think we were right to do so, Dom, because almost 24 hours later, and frankly, neither side has confirmed that this is in place, that any deal has been struck. Roughly an hour after Trump's post, Zelensky said he wasn't sure of Russia's desire to adhere to any such agreement. Now, again, that's been the idea for almost a year now, whenever there's been some concept of an energy ceasefire brought up. So no indication of a shift. That continues to be, as I say, where we stand. Moscow is delivering the usual platitude celebrating Trump trying to mediate. That's what Peskov said this morning, our old friend. But no indication of a change there. Friend of the podcast, Christopher Miller of the Financial Times, says Trump jumped the gun. Who would have thought it? Sources in Kiev say that something is in the works, but they warn that there is no finalised agreement. But I think we know what's really going on here, right? Trump has been blaming diesel shortages worldwide on not what's happening in Iran and the Middle East, but on what is now happening on Ukraine and Russia. He's saying the world's diesel price rise is mostly caused by the Russia-Ukraine war, he says. This is very interesting because it's clearly, if Donald Trump does believe that, it's clearly in his interest for Ukraine to still keep striking Russian oil facilities. Because if they stop, if they said, I'll tell you what, we don't want to make old Donny angry, let's lay off the oil refineries, the price is still going to go up because it's about Iran. In which case, his card of saying it's all down to Zelensky hitting the Russian stuff is shown to be a load of old nonsense. So he said something like this, and he's a hostage to fortune, because either Ukraine just ignores him and keeps hitting Russian oil refineries, in which case they're basically saying, look, we don't, you don't have any leverage anymore. You don't hold the cards, Donald. Or they do stop and it's shown to be a complete sham. So again, it's almost as if he said this thing without really thinking it through. Can't say that about the President of the United States, don't, crikey. I'll say it again then. I think he said it without thinking these things through. Well, we have been looking at the data for you. You can see that there was a huge peak in diesel prices in early 2022 when the full scale invasion began that did more or less level off, although not quite ever back to normal in the following years. Then there was another spike in February, but that wasn't because of what's happening in Russia and Ukraine. That is, of course, when there was the attack on Iran. So whatever claims are coming out of the White House as they prepare for the midterms, the data just simply does not support it. And that spike in 2022, I presume, was not caused by Ukraine hitting Russian oil facilities because they weren't doing so at the time. Exactly. It took years for that to happen. And I remember when that was considered a red line, any attack on Russian soil. Remember that? That was considered escalatory. The escalatory line just shows how far we've come. Anyway, that development comes following two remarkable investigations published in the past 24 hours into two members of Trump's family. The first is from ProPublica uncovering that allegedly a member of Putin's inner circle heavily financed Trump Jr.'s wedding or his after party on May 24th on private islands in the Bahamas. It apparently featured scantily clad dancers in stilettos and sailor caps. Sounds like a good weekend. And a five tier funfetti cake airlifted in from Florida. I don't quite know what a funfetti cake is anyway. But also in attendance was an imposing man with a shaved head who speaks limited English along with a large group of other Russian guests. That man, according to ProPublica, was Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Putin who heavily funded the event. As ProPublica writes, in the days leading up to Trump Jr.'s wedding, Kremlev was in China as part of the delegation accompanying Putin. The month before, Putin had bestowed him with a state honour, the Order of Friendship. The Ukrainian government has imposed sanctions on Kremlev personally, citing his closeness to Putin and Russian security services. It's not clear why Kremlev helped pay for Trump Jr.'s wedding. The men appear to have met only recently. Public reporting suggests Trump Jr. could have afforded it himself. A spokesperson for Trump Jr. told ProPublica that Umar is a personal friend of Don, not someone he has a business relationship with, having met through a mutual friend in the hunting world and bonding over their love of boxing and the outdoors. But who is he really? So in 2009, as ProPublica looks into, Umar Kremlev did not yet exist. He was in his late 20s, with a criminal record for extortion and battery, still going by his old birth name. He's now, though, head of the International Boxing Association, the sports group that's been financed by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. Now Bettina Trump, wife of Trump Jr., posted a lengthy Instagram caption responding to this report that Kremlev had paid over $170,000 for her wedding. She didn't deny those figures or his involvement, but said that it wasn't actually the wedding, that it was a sort of after party. Actually, our dear friend Umar, she said, very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us after our wedding. It was an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend and something for which we were and remain incredibly grateful. It's unfortunate that something so personal and happy can be recast as something political or sinister simply because of who someone is or where they come from. Friendship doesn't require a political motive. Generosity doesn't automatically come with an agenda. And sometimes a wedding gift is simply a wedding gift. Well, as others have commented, if it turned out that Russia had funded the wedding of an American president's son during the Cold War, that president would have undoubtedly resigned within hours. This is, I think, quite an extraordinary story, but all the more extraordinary because of how un-extraordinary it really seems. This is not causing the waves that one would have expected only a handful of years ago. Indeed, it seems that only those who are really focusing at the moment, at least at the time of this recording on Russia, are zooming in on this and saying, my goodness, what does this actually show you about Trump's inner circle? So an extraordinary piece. Is that because it's not causing ripples? Is that because we're so used to it now with Donald Trump and his family and this administration? Or is it because we're actually coming towards the end of Trump's era? He's about to probably, by all likelihood, get a bit of a kicking in the midterms. And then he may well be into a lame duck last 18 months or so of his presidency. Now, that's not to say that what comes after him isn't a continuation. But I just wonder if people are kind of now going, yeah, Donald, whatever, you and your family, fine, grift away. It's possible. And hold that thought, because on the other investigation in a moment, there's a line that I think speaks to that. But I do think personally that it's more that we've just become numbed to it. That it's the, again, to use the bawling frog analogy, I think that it's just get to the point where it's happened so gradually and over such a sustained period of time that our moral architecture, to use that phrase that I always come up with, it's just changed over time. But this is now where the snake's eating itself. So back to Trump's comments about Zelensky hitting the oil refineries. I mean, the man and woman on Main Street, they don't care what's causing their fuel prices to go up. If Trump says it's Ukraine, they might think it's Iran. They don't care. They just want it to be sorted. And if they buy into this idea that it's actually Ukraine because they've been hitting Russian oil facilities, they're then going to turn around and say, yeah, but you said you'd have it sorted in 24 hours. I mean, none of it stacks up. And I think people are just looking beyond him now. Yeah, maybe. Well, just holding that thought, as I said, there's another investigation in The New Yorker looking into Trump's envoy and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. This is a really detailed account of his role as an envoy, both in the Middle East and in Europe. It doesn't necessarily contain that many revelations, but it nonetheless highlights and summarises the alleged connections between business dealings that have benefited the Trump family and the US government agreements in the Middle East, as well as those proposed deals in Ukraine and relating to Russia. Amid all of the digits and dollars, it's I think the details that are perhaps the most revealing. As The New Yorker writes, in Moscow, Kushner and Whitkoff greeted Putin like an old friend and allowed their hosts to transport them in a Russian limousine rather than a US embassy vehicle, a security risk that few of their predecessors would ever have allowed. Now, the piece also looks into the impact of the sweeping legal immunity granted by the Supreme Court to President Trump, who has vowed to issue pardons for members of his team who face investigation. Indeed, the article ends by quoting a senior ethics lawyer. If Kushner wasn't the son-in-law of the president, he would be under investigation by the FBI. No one else could have got away with this. And it then talks, to your point, Dom, about what the Democrats might try and do here. They might try and bring him before Congress in order to have to testify on some of these things. But how significant is that if, at the end of the day, he knows he's got a pardon coming down the line? I mean, this is just unprecedented and really quite extraordinary. But two really detailed pieces, they might seem a little bit away from our core focus, but I think they are so relevant to the broader picture of what's going on beneath the surface of some of the platitudes that we've seen over the last few weeks and months. But it seems scandal is the order of the day. Turning to Ukraine, the country's prosecutor general, Ruslan Kravchenko, has resigned and fled Ukraine after becoming embroiled in a corruption scandal of his own. Now, you'll recall his appointment formed part of Zelensky's ultimately ill-fated attempt to bring Ukraine's independent anti-corruption bodies, Nabu and Sapo, under firmer presidential control. That strategy collapsed spectacularly last summer, provoking the largest public demonstration since Russia's full-scale invasion. Now, Kravchenko is under scrutiny from the same agencies which have charged several of his subordinates in the prosecutor general's office over an alleged fraud scheme. Before resigning and fleeing, he'd authorised charges against their directors. Zelensky has since urged Parliament today to approve his dismissal without delay. He's also just sanctioned his former press secretary from 2019 to 2021, Iulia Mendel, for allegedly spreading disinformation and Russian propaganda and supporting Russia's aggressive policy against Ukraine. That follows her announcing she had planned to speak on the sidelines of an event hosted by the AfD party, the hard-right party in Germany, for which its candidates have sworn to end financial and military support to Kiev and seek closer ties with Moscow. You'll recall that the party's success in Saxony-Anhalt means that they are now going to try to return Russian language to the school curriculum there. As Antonia Langford writes in her Telegraph piece looking into this, Ukrainian officials have also accused Mendel of echoing Kremlin propaganda after she claimed, without evidence, that Kiev had been willing to surrender the Donbass in 2022 in a May interview with Tucker Carlson, having previously described Zelensky as a dictator addicted to drugs, with the former head of his office, Andrei Yermak, performing black magic and collecting water from corpses. The measures against Mendel, which will last for a decade, will strip the former spokesman of her state awards, freeze her assets and forbid her from moving capital out of her home country. But just one final quick one, since I mentioned it yesterday, the European Union has agreed to postpone its deadline for extending sanctions against Russia, giving officials another seven days to reach an agreement. That came from a spokesperson for the presidency of the Council of the EU speaking to the Kiev independent. So they're still basically trying to reach an agreement which all countries can get behind. As we mentioned yesterday, some want to take certain Russian figures off the sanctions list, but other countries are pushing up against that. But that, Dom, brings us up to date. We'll link to all of those major pieces in the show notes. Thanks, Francis. Now to finish off with a story I've been working on for some months, quite an extraordinary story here. A mum searching for her son who is missing in action in Ukraine. Two caveats here that might elevate this story slightly. Her son is fighting for Russia. She didn't know that at the time. She knew he'd gone to Russia, but she didn't know he joined the army or was fighting in Ukraine or had gone missing. And the second most extraordinary thing is that when she came to me asking for help because of our contacts in Ukraine and our extensive reporting from the country, she was then sacked by her employer, the Home Office, for speaking to a journalist. Have a look at this. Nathan Stobart is a Briton fighting for Russia. His mother approached the Telegraph after he went missing in action in Ukraine. With no help from the British government, she contacted us in a desperate attempt to find him but was sacked by the Home Office as a result of that communication. Nathan has been missing since December 2025. It would have been about 27 when he met Ksenia on some game, I think, because he loves his Xbox and he was playing on the Xbox. Nothing else mattered and he was going to be with Ksenia. Because Ksenia had children, it was going to be a whole lot harder for her to sort of bring three children and herself over here. So I think they thought about it and it was going to be easier for Nathan to go over there. He entered Russia sort of permanently for the first time to live there on Christmas Day 24. The first time he did go into Russia when he was visiting, I do remember him saying that there were soldiers with guns and they sort of had him up against the wall asking him what he was doing there. They lived in a little village about two hours outside of St Petersburg. So he applied for a visa to begin with and they were going to just a visit visa to begin with and then once they got married they were going to apply for a visa for him to stay and work there. Nathan was an electrical contractor and he was doing really well. I asked him how he coped with the language, how he was managing and he just said it was fine, his workmates were really okay with him. Yeah, everything was just fine up to that point. The next thing is she sent me a message saying could I please speak to Nathan again because she was in labour and I messaged him and I said congratulations and he started sending me pictures of the baby. I did message him a couple of times after that and he sent me a couple of photographs that Ksenia had already sent me which I thought was a little bit odd because I thought if I'm going to ask you for some more photographs of the baby why are you not sending me photographs of the baby now you've just sent me photographs of the baby sort of two weeks ago or something again red flag that he didn't have them because he wasn't there and then I learned later that he had he was sent home for a few days leave when Ksenia was in labour. A week before Christmas last year Valerie received a message that changed everything. It was quite late I think it was about half past seven at night my partner and I had been playing Mr and Mrs Claus at a local charity. I went to my daughter's to drop off some Christmas presents and while I was there Ksenia messaged me and said that she needed to tell me something and that she had been sworn to secrecy by Nathan and they had changed the legislation and refused his visa when he applied for a visa to stay after they got married then said he could stay in Russia but only if he signed a year's contract for the army and that had happened in April and at that point he had been missing in action since the 10th. He was last heard on the radio on the 10th of December and they declared him missing in action on the 12th of December. I wish he had said because I would have I would have done anything to bring them all back then it was trying to work out where he was because when every time I asked and Ksenia had applied to find out where he was they said it was classified. The foreign office contact me every two three months to ask if I've got any information. They were asking you? Yeah they've literally emailed me this morning asking if I've heard anything and obviously I just emailed back and said no no information yet. Ksenia says the Russian authorities want to declare Nathan dead so they can replace him on the front line. We'll watch the body exchanges they have his DNA from the baby so that they can if there was any matches there is no matches and there's no body. I don't know whether that means it's good that he could still be captured. When her son went missing Valerie was working for a branch of the home office. Came across the videos of Russian prisoners of war in Ukraine and I just thought there was maybe a chance or an outside chance that you'd heard something you'd seen him you'd been in the background somewhere. The Telegraph searched for Nathan on the Ukrainian government's I want to find app but this produced no results. Through other channels the Telegraph discovered Nathan's unit the 33rd Guards Motor Rifle Regiment had been fighting in the Pokrovsk area of Ukraine. We contacted Ukrainian units fighting in the area but they were similarly unable to identify Mr Stobart. Sorry I've tried so hard I'm so sorry I've tried so hard just to stay outside of it. A very sad story this Dom I mean I'm interested in a few more further details on it if I may. So they've met online they're both fans of games on Xbox they were playing obviously in games you have on some games you have sort of in-game messaging. Now I'm interviewing Valerie obviously and the story here is her search for her son and as I go on to say she was actually an immigration officer for the British Home Office and she was sacked for speaking to a journalist and she said there's nothing to do with a job she was speaking to me to try and find her son. So she's the story here if I was ever if I ever got the chance to speak to Nathan her son I would at this point ask him lots of questions about how he met Ksenia how he was able to communicate with her through Xbox when he at this point couldn't speak Russian she couldn't speak English. So you know there's a huge number of questions here and I just ask people as they watch this and read it if they so wish just bear in mind that the story here is Valerie and she didn't know a lot of the detail so I would ask Nathan many many more questions but yes they they met online they formed a relationship they went on holiday to Turkey this is 2024 Nathan decides she's the one decides he's going to going to move to Russia he's an electrician in Newcastle in the northeast of England he's going to move to Russia be with her marry her as he does marries her they have a child together and that's it his life is going to be a couple of hours outside of St Petersburg he's going to do up the derelict bungalow that they've moved into with the help of her father and other people in the village and that's it that's the that's the story. And so he is following the pattern that we've seen and reported on over the years an example of a foreigner who has moved to Russia and is very quickly compelled to enter the Russian military do we know anything more about the circumstances of that the threats that were made to him? So February 25 they were married this all comes out later Valerie discovers that in April 2025 he was threatened with deportation and was told he would not get a visa to stay and live live in Russia with his now wife and child unless he signed up for a year a year-long contract with the army so he decides he doesn't want to leave his family in Russia so he signed a contract and in April 2025 started 12-month service with the Russian army and all this came out because on December the 17th 2025 Ksenia texted Valerie in Newcastle and said I've got something to tell you and of course her English is is not great Valerie's Russian is virtually non-existent so they're using using the translate tool on their on their phone so imagine as this news is coming through you're copying and pasting each of these messages into the translate function to see what's going on and what's going on as Ksenia says on December the 17th 2025 is that Nathan has been coerced into joining the Russian army that he has gone missing in action he was last heard on the radio on December the 10th 2025 and was formally posted missing in action on December the 12th so a week before a few days before Ksenia messaged Valerie to tell her all this so just before Christmas 2025 in fact Valerie said she and her partner had just been out to a local charity they're dressed up as father Christmas and handing out presents all this kind of thing just before Christmas her world is turned upside down and what do we know about where he was sent who he was serving with how long he was on the front line before he went missing we don't know any of that so Ksenia says that she's trying to get information out of the Russian authorities they've said absolutely nothing they've not given her not given her any information Valerie asked anybody and everybody to help she she went immediately to the foreign office here in Britain she was assigned a liaison officer from the foreign office she spoke to the Red Cross spoke to the Ukrainian embassy here the Russian embassy trying to get any information has got it's got nothing no information at all in fact the the foreign office that to be fair like there's not an awful lot they could do really relations between Britain and Russia pretty pretty poor so how much effort the foreign office were able to put into it we don't know but they they got nothing and it's now the case that this the foreign office caseworker gets in touch with Valerie every few weeks to say have you heard anything not here's an update is have you heard anything to tell us in fact on the day I was interviewing her she got another another message from the foreign office so no so she tried all the avenues she she could think of to try and find find her son and this was I say December 2025 and was was getting nowhere so May 26 so five months later she she has reached the end of her tether she's desperate no one's able to help in April 26 you may remember I went to when she story um well Valerie saw that she saw that that film and she she got in touch with me just thinking maybe we knew something maybe we'd heard something had we heard about Brits in in captivity had we met someone yeah she's trying everything so in May 26 she sent me sent me an email um and and just and just said she said hello Mr Nichols I've recently watched your videos and wanted to ask your help my son is a British citizen fighting for the Russian army and is missing in action let me give you some background before you write us off so she knows that this is this is not this is not good her son fighting for Russia but and then I thought well I've been it's a number of stories I've tried to track down about Brits fighting in Ukraine fighting for Ukraine fighting in Ukraine for for Russia so I I was interested but also above and beyond that I thought that we might be able to help there's we've got contacts we we know some of the systems so I tried to do what I could and working with our Ukrainian colleague here at the Telegraph I went to the I want to find app this has been set up by Ukraine um they say as a gesture of goodwill maybe I mean it's there to help Russian families find missing uh taken prisoner or dead confirmed dead Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine they've done this out of the goodness of their hearts you may say or to court international opinion probably a bit of both I guess anyway there's this app that you can search for if you've got enough details search for people fighting for Russia in Ukraine anyway got in touch with them gave as many details as we could um that came back that came back nothing nothing um we were able to confirm his unit 33rd Guards Motor Rifle Regiment so we think they were he was fighting somewhere in Pokrovsk down in the Donbass um but we don't we don't know exactly nothing came back from that app reached out through our contacts in the well in the Ukrainian military and elsewhere who are fighting in that area they they had no had no news and obviously the Red Cross through which a lot of the prisoner exchanges and repatriation of bodies takes place they they had nothing either so the trail's kind of gone gone cold and this is now some some months this is about five months since he went missing um this is now it's a month or two after he should have left his service so you know it all in all likelihood Nathan Stobart is dead um and we yeah so we can't we can't find him so Valor is left in in limbo now just not not having any news at all and having nobody other than the Telegraph trying to help now I should say at this point that my only interest my overriding interest was to try and help a woman in clear distress um I had a side uh interest of how do Brits get to fight for for Russia and a case study of how Russia uses foreign fighters yeah so if we were able to find Nathan and if he if he was alive and if he finished his service and all those kind of if I ever got to meet him and interview him that that I thought would be a worthwhile piece of journalistic endeavor I in no way sought to exploit Valerie uh for a story because at the moment the the story is distraught mother looking for a son I mean that's you know that's that's not a side of journalism that I I subscribe to um I didn't know because it would be it was it was irrelevant what Valerie did for a living I did not know that she worked for the Home Office she was an immigration officer uh in in Newcastle I didn't know that never come up never asked her why why would I oh by the way what do you do for a living you know it's just not just not part of our conversation anyway after a number of months Nathan's friends were getting in touch with her saying you know where is he we know he's overseas but you know he's not on Facebook he's not playing on the game anymore can't get hold of him he's not returning my messages what's going on so she realizes she's got to say something she's got to got to come clean at the time only the immediate family knew what the real story was so she then she then put out put out an announcement on social media and told her line manager at work bear in mind that she'd already told the foreign office okay another part of the British British state but told her line manager at the in the Home Office she was immediately sent home that day the next day she was told she was suspended pending a disciplinary hearing which happened just a few days after that one had all her laptops seized everything seized which she was quite relaxed about because she said well you'll be able to see if you look at that I've not I've not been emailing Don with thanks for helping try to look for my son who's missing in Ukraine oh and by the way here's a load of immigration statistics you might be interested it's just you know it's a it's ridiculous so she's quite relaxed that if they search through her her media they'll see that she's done nothing wrong and this is clearly a case of her reaching out to a journalist who might be able to help find her son rather than anything else so she's she's reasonably relaxed that this is all just going to blow over it's a mistake she knows as I mean she's a very intelligent woman she knows that that as a Home Office as a civil servant you can't go speaking to journalists about your work but she was thinking if you were if she was thinking straight and I asked you to put yourself in the shoes of a mother who's heard her son has just gone missing in action in Ukraine so she's probably not thinking totally straight but she was saying well yeah I'm not speaking to you as a journalist looking for a story about immigration or the the deep state secrets or anything like that so she was quite relaxed anyway at the disciplinary hearing she said one of the first questions they asked her was how much did the telegraph paid you for the story and she said well I'm paid as anything and we have not paid her anything there's no no question about that anyway she was sacked they found a gross misconduct cited a whole load of policy about speaking to journalists which she says yeah I accept I spoke to a journalist and the policies yet but can you not see the reason she said there was no empathy no sympathy whatsoever for her position nobody tried to understand why she had done it it was just immediately you spoke to a journalist you've got a connection to Russia you're out and that's that's where she is now and she said at the end because we weren't going to there wasn't I say there wasn't going to be an article about it it was a non-article at the at the time it would have been and maybe it will one day still be a great article if Nathan if I ever get to interview Nathan but she was so angry at the way she was treated she said she enjoyed her job she liked her colleagues had no no you know nothing against the home office or her work but the way she was treated was so frustrating and so callous and and cold that she then said she then said she didn't care about this and she says she hopes I mean she hope I asked her what do you hope to come out of out of our chat now and she said what she hopes if somebody what does she say she said she hopes that somebody somewhere will say I've seen him I know where he is and somebody will tell her something so that she can she can find him so she's still a desperate mother searching for her son and now she's lost her job because she reached out to the one person and she said actually she said we've been more helpful than anybody that she she had spoken to in fact she's now she's now lost her job I have to say I obviously approached the the home office and a home office spokesman said we do not comment on individual employment cases nothing to do I said what about the the treatment how do you think she you got any comment about why she feels so frustrated the way they didn't even reply to that it's a it's a tragic tragic story and I know and I would have I would have a lot of questions for Nathan about his judgment about his motivation about his reasons for going and fighting and all I'd have a huge amount of questions for Nathan okay I would I would ask listeners and viewers and readers just put those to one side for a moment and think about Valerie mum who's lost her son and has now lost her job for trying to trying to do whatever she can do to find her missing child so please focus on Valerie when you're when you're consuming this journalism and and separate your thoughts about Nathan's motivation and judgment well thanks for talking us through that story Don we'll have the full written version of this the full video version in the show notes if you wish to pursue it and of course if you've got any further information about this story do please reach out via the usual channels let's go to our final thoughts then just a very brief one from me something a little bit brighter hopefully to lift the episode at the end for anyone in London Thursday to Saturday it is this year's Ukrainian Film Festival hosted by the Ukrainian Institute in London the theme is healing exploring what holds people together through a prolonged war and features Ukrainian films of all genres exploring those topics we will add a link in the show notes to anybody interested in attending that and thank you very much to the Ukrainian Institute for reaching out about it Dom anything else you'd like to leave this with today no thanks there's no final thoughts from me I'm done for the day folks but thank you for your company Francis thank you for being here we'll be back again tomorrow same time same place do hope you can join us but from all of us here at the Telegraph Newsroom I wish you a very good afternoon for more in-depth reporting like this do consider subscribing to the Telegraph you'll unlock full access to our journalism from rigorous coverage of the war in Ukraine to free-thinking opinion on today's biggest talking points simply click the button now to join us