The Real Reason Ukraine Blew Up Wildberries Sites, plus F-16 gets first air-to-air kill | Frontline

Ukraine has opened a devastating new front, engulfing vast wild berries warehouses, Russia's answer to Amazon. America has confirmed the first F-16 air-to-air shootdown of a Sukhoi 35 and a Sukhoi 57 has crashed over Moscow, reportedly friendly fire. All of this, as President Zelensky warns, it's peace or escalation after sacking his chief of the My name is Jerome Stark, I'm the defence editor at The Sun newspaper and this is Frontline, your weekly round-up of the most important news from the war in Ukraine, the wild berries strikes. This appears to be a new tactic or an evolution of an existing tactic to crush Russian logistics. Over the course of the last seven days, Ukraine has hammered a number of large logistics warehouses, at least four, possibly more of them belonging to the wild berries online retail. I'm going to run through some of those strikes. Overnight on the 17th, the 18th of July in Kutovsk in Tambov, some 380 kilometres inside Russia, the first warehouse hit. Now some seven people killed, 62 injured inside that warehouse, according to Russian officials. The second, the same night in Elektrostal in Moscow Oblast, one person killed, 37 injured. Then on the 20th of July, more logistics warehouses hit in Kolodino, also in Moscow, around the Domodevo Industrial Park, that's near Moscow's second international airport serving the city. On the night of July 27th in Krasnodar, in Krasnodar Krai, another warehouse hit some 480 kilometres from Ukrainian territory. And then in Nevonomysk in Stavropol, that's the deepest inside Russian territory, at 700 kilometres. In Zelenodolsk, the most recent strikes overnight, news emerging this morning. And an unconfirmed strike in Voronezh, or rather a confirmed strike but unconfirmed, whether indeed it's wild berries or in fact another Russian retailer, another logistics hub belonging to the company Magnet. Now let's look at why. And to answer that, let's consider first of all, what is wild berries? It is Russia's answer to Amazon, that's often how it's referred to. It is the largest online home delivery retailer. It's worth about nine billion pounds. It's owned by Tatyana Kim, Russia's richest woman, a former English teacher, a mother of seven, who founded the company in 2004 when she was just 28 from her apartment in Moscow when she was on maternity leave. It has now at least 20 major distribution centres across the country. These are vast industrial warehouses, the sort of places you see from trains or motorways as you're driving past with enormous lorry bays so they can load and unload vast quantities of goods at speed. It sells everything, but crucially it sells a lot of military and dual-use equipment. We've been trawling through the wild berries website this morning. It sells body armour, it sells helmets, it sells rifle scopes and night vision optics, and it sells drones, a lot of drones, and not just your kind of DJI quadcopters, hobbyist drones or toys. It sells motors and spare parts. Those are for the real enthusiasts, but also potentially for people building drones as weapons. It sells signal amplifiers for drones. Now the civilian uses for that kind of equipment would be pretty limited. It sells jammers and drone detectors. There's almost no civilian use for that sort of equipment, perhaps civilian law enforcement, but that's the kit that soldiers are using on the front line. And it sells spools of fibre optic cable specifically marketed for FPV drones. Those are the tethers, the threads of wire of fibre optic cable that allow military drone controllers to fly FPV drones through electronic warfare defences connected at the speed of light with 4k high resolution controls. That is without doubt military equipment. And it sells the bomb droppers, the devices that fit beneath those drones so they can drop grenades and other munitions onto targets. It is absolutely undeniable that Wildberries is selling equipment that is useful to Russian forces. Not only that, we know that Russian forces are using it because we've read some of the reviews beneath these products. One user was talking about the jammers or the detectors saying it's effective in real world conditions against incoming FPV drones. Now you could argue that that's defensive equipment, it's saving lives, that is what that equipment is for, but nonetheless it's without doubt military. One soldier trying to buy something off Wildberries was asking whether he could get an SVO discount. That's the initials for the special military operation, so effectively asking for a military discount for fighting in Putin's conflict. Now President Zelensky has said very clearly that these attacks are on what he described as logistics hubs involved in supporting the Russian army with drone components, navigation equipment and other gear. Let's look at the effects that these strikes have had. Now the initial estimates are that they have caused in the space of the last week between 500 million dollars and 1.3 billion dollars worth of damage. Now if that upper estimate is correct then it's by far the largest single economic shock to Russia in terms of a series of strikes. The ongoing drone strikes on Russia's oil infrastructure will have cost Russia far more over the long term, but in terms of a set of strikes in one week this is extraordinary. Other effects, we've seen Yandex and Ozon, rivals similar companies to Wildberries in the same retail space, update their seller agreements to exempt themselves from liability, financial liability, if their warehouses are struck. We've also seen this is going to have an impact on ordinary Russians, the real life impact, this effect on their lifestyle if they can't get the service they're used to from an everyday household brand. That brings the war home, it disrupts everyday life, it makes what's happening far away on the bloody battlefields of Ukraine a reality, particularly to the affluent middle-class Russians who are turning a blind eye. And also, and perhaps even more importantly, it upsets the Russian oligarchy. Tatyana Kim is Russia's richest woman, she moves in wealthy circles. If Russia's richest are feeling the pain, that man is more likely to increase the pressure on Putin than if Russia's poorest are feeling the pain. And that's significant because this week we've heard several times from President Zelensky this message that the people around President Putin want an end to the war. Now that's a clever message from Zelensky. He has suggested that those people have signalled to Ukraine that they want a war to end, but in fact it's Putin who is driving it forward. Now that may have been clear to some of us or to many Russia watchers and Ukraine watchers for some time, but saying it like that has a number of effects. It isolates Putin, it will spread doubt and paranoia within his inner circle and perhaps within Putin's head as well as he begins to question, if indeed he becomes aware of these comments, becomes to question who within his inner circle may have signalled Kiev. And that will fuel the manoeuvring within the Kremlin and without the Kremlin over potential succession plans. Now that could still be a very long way off but worth watching. Meanwhile of course this hasn't been at the expense of all the other campaigns and fronts that Ukraine continues to mount against Russia. The long-range strikes continue over the course of the last week. We've seen oil depots and infrastructure hit in Novopaskoye, that's some 700 kilometres inside Russia. The Aramvir depot in Krasnodar Krai, about 600 kilometres inside or rather from Ukrainian-held territory. And the Trasneft site in Bashkortostan, that is 1300 kilometres inside Russia. So Ukraine continuing to demonstrate that extraordinary capability and closer to home we've seen four more tankers at least hit in the Black and Azov seas. That brings to 183 vessels, the number of tankers that Ukraine claims to have hit. And then if you like in the close battle, what I refer to as the old war weapons hitting weapons, we've seen footage of AI drones, AI-powered drones, locking on to a Russian artillery piece and then guiding itself onto target. The CEO, Lawrence Mayer of who manufactured that drone, boasting about it on Twitter. We've seen Shahed and Gerber drone warehouses in Fardiske hit. FSB and FSB base in Kherson hit. Khilino airbase in Kursk hit. A heat and power plant in Lipetsk in western Russia destroyed. That next to a major metal factory, so may also be part of that kind of campaign against Russian military-industrial complex. And the SBU, Ukraine's domestic intelligence service, claiming to have destroyed a Tu-95 nuclear capable long-range strategic bomber at the Engels airfield in Russia. Also in what I would call old war weapons hitting other weapons, we've heard from the US chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Cain, confirming in his words the first air-to-air kill by a US-made F-16 destroying a Sukhoi 35. Now this was first reported earlier this month. Details which Cain didn't go into suggesting that it was two F-16s involved and possibly a US Patriot battery connected under sort of link 16 data connections, so somehow all communicating together, that managed to destroy an Su-35S. That the Su-35 is a Russian air superiority fighter. It is designed to be fast and super maneuverable to avoid this kind of shoot down. We understand it happened around 40 kilometers inside Luhansk, occupied Luhansk. A significant moment for the Ukrainian air force. A bad time for the Russian air force and that has only got worse today with reports that an Su-57, a stealth fighter, one of Russia's most advanced fighter jets that only entered service six years ago, has crashed in Moscow Oblast. Now details unclear in both incidents I should have said in the Sukhoi-35 and this most recent one of the Sukhoi-57 suggestions that the pilots did manage to eject. The Sukhoi-57 over Moscow reportedly shot down by Russian air defenses. So that is friendly fire. It's a blue on blue or perhaps a red on red if you prefer, but there's no way of escaping the fact that this is a forced error. Ukraine has forced that error, if indeed it's friendly fire, because of the threat it's put Moscow under from its constant and successful drone attacks, which has got those air defenses on high alert, created a confusing air picture of what is friendly and what is hostile. And it appears, it's early days, news still emerging, but it appears that Russia shot down one of its most advanced fighter jets. In terms of what's been coming the other way, in terms of what else Russia has been shooting, well 949 missiles and drones fired at targets across Ukraine this week. That's according to Ukraine's air force. Today at least three dead in a strike on a food processing plant in Pavlograd, 19 injured. That's interesting because there has also been suggestions, I didn't go into detail, but of Russian food processing plants possibly being hit inside Russia by Ukraine. That may be indicative of a tactic both sides may or may not be adopting to try and hit another element of logistics, food manufacture or food processing, perhaps food that's being destined for military soldiers. I'm speculating there, I don't know that at the moment. There's also reports that Russian forces are launching several small but new assaults in Kharkiv Oblast over the border, trying to probe Ukrainian lines, trying to gain territory. They've been doing that for some time. They've also been making some gains east of Kramatorsk, along that front which is sort of north of Chazev Yar, north of Bakhmut, where they've been fighting for years at huge cost. On to the political front. There are three things we're going to look at today. Firstly, the decision to sack the commander of Ukraine's armed forces, General Serskiy. Secondly, the EU's latest package of sanctions. And finally, the prospect that peace talks could be revived. President Zelensky has sacked General Oleksandr Serskiy and replaced him with a much younger commander, General Mikhail Drapaty. The decision to sack Serskiy is a response to widespread protests in Ukraine, and those protests were triggered as a result of Zelensky's decision to sack the defence minister, Mikhail Fedorov. Fedorov had fallen out with Serskiy. As a result, their arguments were being elevated to the president. The president decided to solve this by sacking Fedorov. That was wildly unpopular, because Fedorov was quite rightly seen as this extraordinarily dynamic, modernising minister behind a lot of Ukraine's successes over the last six months. And Serskiy, conversely, was criticised in some quarters for his old-school Soviet style of top-down command. He'd resisted Fedorov's attempts at reform. Those reforms included trying to change the way Ukraine recruits, contracts and rotates soldiers in and out of the front line to try and make the whole recruitment process more successful. Fedorov had tried to deploy units or have units deployed in more coherent ways and contiguous ways, so that, for example, a brigade commander would have his brigade units in one area to make that command easier and more logical. And he'd also tried to reward units, the best units, with more of the best weapons. He introduced this brave one system where military units got points for successful strikes on Russian forces. They could then trade those points for drones. According to an analysis by Jack Watling of the Russi Think Tank, and I recommend you follow what Jack does, Serskiy hadn't just obstructed some of these initiatives. He'd actively moved in an opposite direction. And while Serskiy may have argued that he was resisting civilian meddling in matters that were clearly military command, the counter-argument is, in fact, that he was ignoring and defying the commands of his civilian masters. And that is fundamental to democracy, that the military obeys the civilian government. Serskiy's out, Drapati's in. Drapati, very different sort of background. He graduated as a cavalry officer from the Kharkiv Tank Institute in 2004. And we've seen a lot of footage since he was appointed of the moment he shot to fame in 2014 in Ukraine's anti-terrorist operations, which is what it called its response to the Russian-fermented uprising and unrest in and separatism in the Donbas and indeed the capture of Crimea. Drapati charged through a barricade put up by pro-Russian separatists in Mariupol in his infantry fighting vehicle, a fairly dramatic moment. And we've seen a lot of that this week. A final footnote to this saga, because it has been a sort of extraordinary self-inflicted goal by President Zelensky, he has suggested that he's offered Mikhail Fedorov, who remains out of government, a number of positions, including deputy prime minister for military innovation. But it remains to be seen whether Fedorov will accept that invitation to come back into Zelensky's government. The latest round of EU sanctions, the 21st round of sanctions against 100 banks and crypto operators, some 40 shadow fleet vessels, 218 individuals named on those sanctions and 50 military industrial entities. Kalakalas saying that this is going to target Russia where it hurts. You might argue that why hasn't it done all of this earlier? It's a step in the right direction. And sanctions do have to evolve and respond to the way that the Russian economy and industry responds and evolves to previous rounds of sanctions. And finally, on the political front, peace talks. They've rather stalled ever since the United States launched its war with Israel on Iran. But we've heard President Zelensky saying in a joint press conference today with the Irish TSEC that there is an option. Either there is peace or there is significant escalation by the winter. And he's suggesting that President Putin may have to mobilise. He's also made that hint that I talked about before, that people around Putin want peace. And he has said, Zelensky signalled that he is ready to go to America to discuss American ideas for peace. We've also heard from Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, claiming that Russia, claiming again that Russia wants peace. He called for America to stop arming Ukraine, claiming that was unacceptable. Russia continues to maintain its maximalist goals and objectives to conquer at the very least all of the four oblasts. That's Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson. Ukraine, on the other hand, appears to have the upper hand or at least to have momentum, certainly in the deep. But winter is coming. And for example, residents in Chernihiv, which is north of Kyiv, have been warned to expect the worst. The attacks on power and heating and energy infrastructure have taken their toll and it's tolerable during the summer. But it's going to become much, much harder for Ukraine in winter. Now, as ever, if you have any questions, please ask them in the comments below. We love them. They make us laugh. They really make us think. We do go through them. We try to answer as many as we can in the comments. I'm going to get through three today. Number one, will Putin mobilise after elections in September? So there aren't presidential elections, but there are various federal elections and local elections taking place in Russia this autumn. The prospect of mobilisation hangs over the Kremlin a bit like a sword of Damocles. Russia is losing troops faster than it can replace them. That is all to do with the Ukrainian tempo of operation. So it's not just that Ukraine is having success, it's that Ukraine is achieving that success at such a rate Russia is struggling to reconstitute. So mobilisation continues to be a real risk. And I say it's a risk. It's a risk for both Russia and Ukraine, because for Ukraine, the risk is that suddenly Russia has a bigger pool of people to send to the front. The risk for Russia, the risk for Putin, is that it will be wildly unpopular. If he's going to do it, perhaps after those elections might be a more likely time because the political risk of losing out in those elections may have decreased. But fundamentally, Russia is not a free and functioning democracy. So I don't think we should attach too much import to the scheduling of ballots. Question number two, could Ukraine attack Russia's oil fields instead of just the refineries? Yes, they could. But as ever, the answer to these questions is how Ukraine chooses to allocate its limited attack resources. Ukraine is producing far more of its own weapons, but it has a limited number. It's deliberately targeting what it considers to be the most precious assets of Russia, where it can achieve the greatest difference. Now it has targeted oil platforms in the Caspian Sea, but its focus has been on oil depots and oil refineries. Put simply, Russia has over 150 oil fields. These are vast areas from which the oil is sucked up from under the ground. It has fewer refineries and even fewer large, really large, significant refineries. So those are the choke points. Those are the vulnerable points that Ukraine is focusing on. And finally, for a bit of a change of pace, one of you asking, is there any news about the lions in Crimea? I'm afraid the short answer is no. I haven't read much about them for anything about them for over a year. These are the lions that live in the Taigan Safari Park in Belogorsk in Crimea. Now, a year ago, they mauled Oleg Zubkov, who was a Ukrainian businessman who's renounced his nationality, widely seen, quite rightly, I think, as a traitor by Ukrainians. He was mauled by a lion. Quite seriously, it got hold of his throat and his windpipe, although he did recover. Two years ago, in 2024, a group of three lions killed one of the safari park's workers. But we haven't heard about them, haven't heard much about them since then. So as far as we know, the lions remain fit and well and have not wounded any more collaborators. Thank you very much for your questions. If you've got any more, please ask them in the comments below, and I look forward to seeing you next time.