Moscow hit by record losses as Ukrainian drones target Russian military site

If President Trump and the US administration were wholeheartedly to support Ukraine, the war would be over pretty quickly because even without the US supporting Ukraine, Russia's finding the going extremely difficult. Incredible scenes, really moving scenes from Oleshky in Ukraine. It's occupied by the Russians at the moment. It's in the south of the country. And you remember it was subject to that. Cease fire brokered apparently by Melania Trump to allow the remaining citizens of Oleshky to get into Ukrainian occupied territory just over into the next towns where they met family members they hadn't seen for years because this war has dragged on. They're incredibly moving scenes and you could see the ravages of the war in the faces and the bodies of the people leaving Oleshky. Let me put it that way. They looked so thin. And ill and tired and, you know, really elderly people on stretchers. The youngest was a one-year-old being evacuated out. Just hideous scenes. Added to all of that, both Ukraine and Russia have both said overnight that air alert apps, so particularly directed at civilians, were hacked on Sunday night after fake warning messages. ...were sent of attacks, including nuclear attacks, were sent to users. So the kind of thing that citizens would rely heavily on. Similar thing seems to have happened in Russia. Not clear who's behind those cyber attacks. But Moscow itself has been hit by record losses, or Russia has, as Ukrainian drones have been targeting more Russian military sites. Lee Turner joins me, former British ambassador to Ukraine. Each day, it seems, or certainly each week, we see new and different methods of... ...of fighting a war in this particular war, don't we? This is a very difficult situation now, Sheila. These developments are coming at a tough time for Ukraine. It's on the eve of the midterm elections in the US, which you mentioned, which have clearly been preoccupying President Trump, which led to that crisis back in October. What does he do? He goes and hits the diesel fuel. He can do whatever he wants. But you can't do that. He'd better damn well stop. By the way, today, Russia agreed to send us millions and millions of barrels of oil. And it's diesel. That's what we really need. So there was all that crisis going on. And then we have the war raging on the front line. We tend only to turn to Ukraine, perhaps with some... Some honourable exemptions such as LBC, but the news cycle tends to focus on Ukraine, particularly when President Trump says something unexpected, as he likes to do. But this war is raging all the time. We saw over a thousand Russian casualties every day throughout October. Some people put the figure as high as 45,000 Russian soldiers killed and injured. Then Number of Ukrainian civilians being killed by Russian long-range strikes on Kyiv and other cities has been exceptionally high in the last few months, perhaps helped by what seems to have been the US cutting off intelligence for a period over the last month you. or two. And then we have this cyber warfare going on, which appears to have emanated possibly from Russia. Making it very difficult for people in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities to know if there is an air raid happening or not. And that, of course, is. Cyber warfare, which risks causing real deaths by discouraging people from going to shelters, for example, when there is a real air raid incoming. So it's a very, very difficult and dangerous situation. And war must be, you know, from every perspective, but certainly civilian perspective, it must be disorienting enough without. Looking at something that says, go to a shelter, I'm wondering, do I need to? Do I need to bother to? Or, oh my God, there's a nuclear attack. And actually there isn't. It's just so disorienting, isn't it? It's enormously disorientating. And as you said, Sheila, it's a reminder of the dangers of cyber warfare, which it's a kind of branch of undeclared hybrid warfare that Russia is Waging with enormous ferocity against Ukraine, but also against the UK and other European countries in the hope of making support for Ukraine less popular. We've seen these drone attacks on Leipzig airports. We've seen people being paid, it seems, by Russia to attack Sir Keir Starmer's personal vehicle sitting on the street in London. And these freezers, I mean, in three more European Cities have had supermarket freezers hacked so that they go up or down, no, they go up to very high temperatures to make the food useless. I mean, very petty in comparison with what the Ukrainian people are facing, obviously. But again, it's all about, or it could be, we don't know who's done that yet, but it's very easy now or increasingly easy for foreign states to send a message right in front of your nose, isn't it? Yes, whatever that message may be, you're right that these attacks on freezers in shops across Europe are not attributed yet to anybody. It's in the way of cyber warfare that it's very hard to see who's actually doing it. But it does show that disinformation and these These hybrid attacks are as much a part of war now as actual missiles and bombs and I was going to say, is it your sense that, it's a hard one to read from this distance, isn't it, but is it your sense that with the right continuing support from NATO, Ukraine can win this war? Well, I've always... felt over the last several years that this isn't a war that Russia must inevitably win, because Russia has, from the beginning of the war, from 2022, the full-scale war, had enormous difficulty in making progress against the Ukrainian armed forces. It seems that the Ukrainian armed forces are much more motivated than the Russian army. The Russian soldiers really don't know why they're in Ukraine and what they're fighting for, whereas the Ukrainians are extremely motivated because they're defending their own country. And in the last few months, we've seen that Russia has hardly made any progress on the front, while Ukraine has actually recovered some land and... They've been launching these very effective long-range and medium-range strikes for Ukrainians against Russian oil refineries, against Russian military targets, against Russian logistical targets. There was one over the weekend, wasn't there, on Kostovo, I think it's called. That's right, Kostovo, these new names that we find. It's a place near Nizhny Novgorod, apparently. I looked it up, about 500 kilometers east of Moscow, so a long way from Ukraine. These attacks are very effective. Now, Very easy for Russia to end the war. It's very easy for President Trump to end the war. All they have to do is for the Russians to withdraw their forces that are illegally occupying eastern Ukraine. All that President Trump needs to do is to stop being so... pro-Russian in his entire approach. Nobody knows why he is being so pro-Russian, but he's been consistently pro-Putin throughout and consistently making life difficult for Ukraine. Whereas if President Trump and the US administration were wholeheartedly to support Ukraine, the war would be over pretty quickly because even without the US supporting Ukraine, Russia's finding the going extremely difficult.