0:08 As Ukraine struck Russia's oil ports and
0:10 refineries, all hell broke loose. On
0:13 November 11th, in a wave of strikes
0:15 stretching from St. Petersburg to Omsk,
0:18 the arteries financing Putin's war were
0:20 targeted. The Luga oil port, thought to
0:23 be the safest backyard, burned for
0:25 hours. Residents were told not to leave
0:28 their homes. Pulovo airport closed to
0:30 all flights and planes unable to land
0:33 diverted to Helsinki and state
0:35 propagandists now had a single piece of
0:38 advice for ordinary Russians. Stock up
0:40 on generators. Prepare for suffering.
0:43 Russian citizens now feeling the full
0:45 heat of the war more deeply are looking
0:47 to leave the country. Putin meanwhile is
0:50 simply watching it all happen. At the
0:53 center of that night Putin watched from
0:54 afar stood a single target Luga.
0:58 Long-range drones of the Alpha Special
1:00 Operations Center, part of Ukraine's
1:02 SBU, landed in the very heart of this
1:05 port, right on St. Petersburg's
1:07 doorstep. Russia's mobile air defense
1:10 groups could not even repel the attack
1:12 at the Novetch Uluga and Lluga oil
1:15 terminals. Five giant tanks totaling
1:19 150,000 cubic meters, a hydrocracking
1:21 unit, a pumping station, and an oil
1:24 loading pier were hit. The Factor
1:26 Terminal and Lushkaya Railway Station
1:28 also caught fire. The fire was so large
1:31 it could be seen from dozens of
1:33 kilometers away, even from the Estonian
1:35 border. Fuel tankers mored at the pier
1:37 were also caught in the flames.
1:39 Ukraine's general staff summed up the
1:41 target in a single sentence. Every
1:44 damaged tank, every pier reduces the oil
1:47 revenue flowing into the aggressor
1:49 state's budget. But it was not only fuel
1:51 that burned that night. In the same
1:53 operation, the SBU also hit the Naro
1:56 Faminsk, a Buouyan Mc-class small
1:59 missile ship of the Baltic Fleet. At
2:01 first glance, these ships look modest.
2:03 Corvettes of barely a thousand tons that
2:06 can operate even in shallow waters. But
2:08 their real value lies not in their size,
2:11 but in the weapons they carry in their
2:13 hulls. Each one is a floating missile
2:15 launcher equipped with vertical launch
2:17 cells for caliber cruise missiles.
2:20 Caliber is the very missile Russia has
2:22 used for 3 years to pound Ukrainian
2:24 cities and the energy grid from hundreds
2:26 of kilometers away. Onyx, meanwhile, is
2:29 a supersonic anti-ship and land attack
2:32 missile. In other words, the narrow fins
2:35 was one of the machines producing
2:36 Ukraine's darkened winter. What's more,
2:39 Russia has only a limited number of
2:41 ships in this class. The production line
2:43 has just closed and every ship it has
2:46 was being used to strike Ukraine from
2:48 protected waters from the Black Sea to
2:50 the Caspian. Losing one at its own
2:53 Baltic base right on St. Petersburg's
2:55 doorstep is therefore a double blow. It
2:58 both trims Moscow's capacity to rain
3:00 missiles from the sea and announces that
3:03 no Russian warship is any longer in safe
3:06 rear waters. And it didn't end there. In
3:09 the chaos, Russian channels reported the
3:11 loss of several aircraft to their own
3:13 air defenses. A KA52, a MI8, and a MiG
3:17 31. Losses that implied a form of
3:20 friendly fire. In other words, in a
3:23 single raid, the export infrastructure,
3:25 the Navy's strike arm, and even Russia's
3:28 own air defenses all worked against
3:30 Moscow. The reason for such a hard blow
3:32 lies in the port itself. Luga is
3:35 Russia's largest port after Novarosis
3:38 and the largest on the Baltic. About
3:40 700,000 barrels of oil a day and
3:43 together with Primosk, nearly 40% of
3:46 Russia's seaborn oil exports flow
3:48 through here. The bill is
3:50 correspondingly heavy. Ukrainian sources
3:53 speak of more than $50 million a day in
3:55 lost revenue, of loadings halted for
3:58 days after earlier attacks, and of
4:00 capacity cut in half. And all of this
4:03 happened right on NATO's doorstep. The
4:05 port is just 30 km from the Estonian
4:08 border. The attack triggered air alerts
4:10 in the Baltic States and Finland. NATO
4:13 jets were scrambled and Merman airport
4:15 closed completely for the first time
4:17 since 2022. In other words, with a
4:20 single target, Ukraine made Russia bleed
4:23 from three places at once. export
4:25 revenue, naval power, and an air defense
4:28 it is now forced to stretch all the way
4:30 to the NATO border. If Luga lies on
4:33 NATO's doorstep, the second major target
4:36 of that night was at the exact opposite
4:38 end, 2,500 km east of the Baltic coast
4:42 in the heart of Siberia. Hours after the
4:45 drones that hit Usluga, Ukraine's
4:48 defense forces reached the refinery ins.
4:50 And this is no ordinary facility, but
4:53 Russia's largest oil refinery. Gazprom
4:56 Neft's OMS refinery processes about 22
4:59 million tons of crude a year. In the
5:02 company's own words, one in every 6 L of
5:05 Russian gasoline and 1 in every 5 L of
5:07 diesel comes from here. Nearly a tenth
5:10 of Russia's refining capacity. To reach
5:13 this target, the drones traveled about
5:15 2,500 km. For years, what protected Omsk
5:19 was that very distance. For 3 years,
5:22 thanks to its distance from the front,
5:24 the refinery practically defied
5:26 Ukraine's reach. But that night, that
5:29 shield collapsed. The attack lasted more
5:32 than 2 hours. Sirens sounded over the
5:34 city. Authorities throttled mobile
5:37 communications and the internet. The
5:39 airport suspended flights, and even a
5:41 scheduled national figure skating Grand
5:43 Prix was postponed for security reasons.
5:46 The real weight of this blow, however,
5:48 lies in the cost equation. A longrange
5:51 drone [music] costing a few tens of
5:53 thousands of dollars can bring a billion
5:55 dollar refinery to a standstill. Russia,
5:58 in turn, would have to cover every
6:00 critical facility up to 2,500 km deep
6:03 inside its own territory with air
6:06 defense, a task no army can fully
6:08 accomplish. That was the dilemma Moscow
6:11 faced that night. It would either
6:13 protect the export ports in the Baltic
6:15 or the refineries in Siberia. It could
6:18 not do both at once, and that night it
6:21 protected neither. S had been hit before
6:24 on October 8th. But the real message
6:26 lies in the repetition because this
6:29 refinery feeds not only civilian
6:31 gasoline, but the Russian army directly,
6:33 and the latest blow effectively brought
6:35 production to a halt. In other words,
6:38 Ukraine proved it can strike even the
6:40 fuel source Putin considered the deepest
6:42 and most untouchable. And it did so as
6:45 just one corner of a much broader
6:48 picture packed into a single night.
6:51 Lluga and s were in fact just two
6:53 corners of a much bigger picture. That
6:55 same night, Ukraine pressed 22 separate
6:58 regions at once from Moscow to occupied
7:01 Crimea. Russia's defense ministry
7:03 announced that it had shot down or
7:05 neutralized more than 627 drones. This
7:09 was one of the largest single night
7:11 attacks of the war. Not a pinpoint raid,
7:13 but a saturation wave covering an entire
7:16 country at once. The most visible result
7:19 of the blow was the collapse of Russia's
7:21 civilian air traffic. St. Petersburg's
7:24 Pulovo airport closed to all flights
7:26 from the night of November 10th. 18
7:29 flights were delayed or cancelled and
7:31 two planes were diverted to Helsinki.
7:33 Restrictions were imposed at Moscow's
7:35 Vukovo and Domovo airports. A single
7:39 night paralyzed Russian airspace across
7:41 thousands of kilome. The geographic
7:43 breadth of the attack was a message in
7:45 itself. That same night, drones reached
7:48 from the Moscow region to occupied
7:50 Crimea, from the shores of the Sea of
7:52 Azov to Adija in the Caucuses. Russia's
7:55 air defense had to work not along a
7:57 single axis but over a continent-sized
8:00 area at the same time. This is the very
8:03 logic of the attack. When tens of
8:05 thousands of square kilm are pressed at
8:07 once, whatever the number of drones shot
8:10 down, even the falling debris scatters
8:12 across enough points to start fires. The
8:15 wave was not limited to ports and
8:17 refineries either. In Smolinsk, debris
8:19 from a downed drone fell on an apartment
8:22 building and started a fire. Explosions
8:24 were heard in Belgarod, Tv and even as
8:27 far as Adija in the Caucuses. Across the
8:30 border, the Baltic states and Finland
8:32 issued air and shelter alerts. For
8:34 Moscow, all of this pointed to one
8:36 thing. By striking everywhere at once,
8:39 Ukraine both overwhelmed Russian air
8:41 defense and exposed how thin it has
8:43 become. And for the first time, this
8:46 pressure made not the soldier at the
8:47 front, but the ordinary Russian in his
8:50 own city feel directly in the
8:52 crosshairs. For a society that had
8:54 watched the war from afar through the
8:56 news for years, that night changed the
8:59 atmosphere. So much so that even
9:01 Russia's own war propagandists are no
9:03 longer delivering victory speeches. The
9:06 well-known Z blogger fighter bomber
9:08 openly advised citizens to stock up on
9:10 generators, mini power plants, firewood
9:13 for stoves, water, food, and basic
9:16 medicines. In his view, these hardships
9:19 are inevitable and the only thing to be
9:21 done is to prepare for suffering. In
9:23 occupied Crimea, even pro-Russian
9:26 patriots were complaining about being
9:28 left without electricity and about
9:30 freezing radiators. But what truly
9:33 unsettled Russians was not the dark
9:35 nights, but another possibility,
9:37 mobilization. Between July and
9:40 September, a record number of Russian
9:42 citizens, nearly 1 and a half million in
9:44 3 months, flocked to Georgia, Armenia,
9:47 and Serbia. This is the highest figure
9:50 in 17 years and exceeds even the 2022
9:53 partial mobilization exodus by 43%.
9:57 The trigger was clear. reports that
9:59 Moscow could covertly mobilize up to
10:02 300,000 new troops and the digital
10:04 military registration system that
10:06 restricts travel abroad the moment a
10:09 summons is issued. Many Russians
10:11 thinking about their future are already
10:13 sending their children abroad to study.
10:15 The direction of the exodus also says a
10:17 lot. Georgia alone took the largest
10:20 share over the 3 months and the number
10:22 of Russians entering that country
10:24 surpassed even the figure recorded
10:26 during the 2022 mobilization wave. And
10:29 this is not an exodus after a
10:31 mobilization has been declared, but a
10:33 preemptive one because Russia's digital
10:36 military registration system can block a
10:38 person from leaving the country the
10:40 moment an electronic summons arrives. In
10:43 other words, many Russians are trying to
10:45 get out before the door closes. Zalinski
10:47 summed up this picture in a single
10:49 sentence. Russia keeps demanding
10:52 security guarantees. Yet, no one is
10:54 attacking it. Since World War II, Moscow
10:57 has not gone a single decade without
10:59 starting a war. This was the real cost
11:02 for Putin of that night, stretching from
11:04 Luga to Omsk. The cost of the war
11:07 finally left the front and entered
11:09 Russia's living rooms, and ordinary
11:11 Russians are voting with their feet.
11:13 That night was not a single explosion,
11:15 but the loudest moment of a campaign
11:17 that has been going on for months.
11:19 According to a November 10th Reuters
11:21 report citing two industry sources, the
11:24 attacks Ukraine has carried out since
11:26 late October have affected about 30% of
11:29 Russia's total refining capacity. In the
11:32 past week alone, nine of 35 major
11:35 refineries experienced operational
11:37 disruptions and emergencies, including
11:39 facilities in Riyazan, Yaroslav, and the
11:42 Vular region. Nominal capacity is not
11:45 the same as actual output. Refineries
11:48 never run at full capacity anyway, but
11:50 the impact is still heavy. The latest
11:53 disruptions could pull actual processing
11:55 volumes at the facilities hit well below
11:57 the 5 million barrel a day band. This
12:00 means that both Russia's domestic fuel
12:03 supply and its international diesel
12:05 export obligations are being squeezed at
12:07 the same time. In other words, the fuel
12:10 that finances and drives the war is
12:12 drying up right where it is produced.
12:15 The most visible face of this crisis
12:16 [music] is ordinary Russians at gas
12:19 stations. Fuel shortages are now felt
12:21 not only in remote regions, but even in
12:24 Moscow and St. Petersburg. In some
12:26 places, kilome long lines and rationed
12:29 sales have begun. To keep the domestic
12:31 market afloat, Moscow [music] was forced
12:33 to restrict exports of gasoline and jet
12:36 fuel, a humiliating step back for an
12:38 energy giant. There is also a reason for
12:41 this intensification. The wave of
12:43 attacks came after the collapse of the
12:45 ceasefire Trump proposed, which aimed to
12:48 keep energy infrastructure off the
12:49 target list. When Russia struck three of
12:52 Kiev's co-generation plants and energy
12:54 facilities around Kharkiv on October
12:57 14th, Ukraine in turn accelerated its
13:00 own refinery operations at the end of
13:02 October. European Commission President
13:04 Vondaan stance is clear. She said they
13:07 support the energy ceasefire, but that
13:09 Russia has not respected it for a single
13:12 minute, and reiterated that a new 202
13:15 sanctions package is on the way and that
13:17 no sanctions will be lifted unless
13:20 Russia ends the war. Yet, the real blow
13:23 of this campaign is not only economic.
13:25 The same fuel crisis is also reaching
13:28 the front directly because that oil
13:30 money is not an abstract figure. It
13:33 directly finances the production of the
13:35 drones, missiles, and artillery
13:37 ammunition Russia rains down on Ukraine.
13:40 Every tank burning at Luga, every
13:43 refinery brought to a halt is therefore
13:46 squeezing the budget that feeds the war
13:48 machine. Lost revenue directly hampers
13:50 weapons production. The production lines
13:53 for the Geran drones, cruise missiles,
13:55 and artillery shells that strike Ukraine
13:58 every night are fed by precisely the
14:00 budget this oil revenue keeps turning.
14:03 The revenue burning at the port today
14:05 shrinks tomorrow's attack wave. What's
14:07 more, the army itself runs on this fuel.
14:10 The refinery campaign has brought Russia
14:12 to the point of rationing military fuel
14:15 and even in a humiliating step for an
14:17 energy superpower, resorting to
14:19 emergency fuel imports from Bellarus. At
14:22 the front, the meaning of this is clear.
14:25 Less diesel, slower logistics, and
14:27 harder offensives. Some blows don't wait
14:30 for the money at all and take out the
14:32 weapon itself. Putting a caliber
14:34 carrying missile ship out of action cuts
14:36 Russia's capacity to rain missiles on
14:39 Ukrainian cities from the sea right at
14:41 its source. There is also a third
14:43 quieter cost. To protect ports and
14:46 refineries spread from the [music]
14:47 Baltic to Siberia, Russia is forced to
14:50 pull air defense batteries to every
14:52 corner of its own territory. And every
14:54 battery protecting a refinery is a
14:56 battery not over the front line. It has
14:59 reached the point where Putin cleared
15:01 the way for calling up reserveists to
15:03 protect energy facilities against
15:05 drones. In other words, even manpower
15:07 that could be used at the front is being
15:09 posted beside the tanks in the rear. In
15:12 other words, Ukraine's deep strikes do
15:14 double duty. They dry up the war's money
15:17 and fuel, and they thin out the air
15:19 defense over the battlefield. In short,
15:22 that night's damage does not stay at the
15:24 port. It travels all the way to the
15:26 trenches. Still, there is one release
15:29 valve Moscow is trying to keep open. The
15:31 route that despite all this [music]
15:33 pressure still allows it to sell this
15:35 oil. The name of that release valve is a
15:38 ghost fleet. To circumvent Western
15:40 sanctions, Russia moves its oil through
15:43 what is called the shadow fleet.
15:45 Hundreds of tankers, mostly old,
15:47 frequently under false flags or foreign
15:49 registration that hide their ownership
15:51 and roots. Luga is one of the main
15:54 gateways where this fleet loads. Indeed,
15:57 the European Union itself describes Luga
16:00 as one of the ports from which Russian
16:02 crude is shipped via the shadow fleet
16:04 and other irregular high-risk transport
16:07 practices. That is precisely why the EU,
16:10 the United Kingdom, the US, Canada, and
16:13 Switzerland have placed the port on
16:14 their sanctions lists. When sanctions
16:17 closed off the European market, this oil
16:19 flowed east to India, China, and other
16:22 Asian buyers. Luga became a safe
16:25 corridor for Russia's sanctions busting
16:28 exports. At the start of last winter,
16:30 [music] the Baltic ports broke export
16:32 records in succession. That is why
16:34 striking the port is not just about
16:36 burning tanks. [music] It means directly
16:38 targeting this escape architecture.
16:41 Every attack lengthens tanker routes,
16:43 what mariners call the tmile multiplier,
16:46 pushes buyers toward alternatives, and
16:48 undermines the perception that this
16:50 corridor is reliable. Nor is the
16:52 pressure on one directional. As Europe
16:54 tightens sanctions, even India has begun
16:57 to slow its purchases of Russian oil.
16:59 For a country dependent on this single
17:02 safe valve to finance the war, the
17:04 meaning of the picture is heavy. Because
17:06 every fire at Luga does something
17:08 sanctions alone cannot. It unsettles
17:11 the buyer himself. Every disruption
17:14 raises costs, insurance, [music] and
17:16 uncertainty, quietly whittling away the
17:18 profit margin that feeds the budget. And
17:21 all of this was happening at the very
17:23 moment Russia was sitting down at a
17:24 table in Abu Dhabi. The timing of all
17:27 this pressure was no coincidence. As
17:30 Luga and Omsk burned, the Russian,
17:32 Ukrainian, and US delegations were
17:34 holding the second day of US mediated
17:37 talks in Abu Dhabi. The message was
17:39 clear. While the diplomats were at the
17:41 table, Ukraine was simultaneously
17:43 showing on the ground that it can reach
17:45 everywhere from the Baltic [music] to
17:47 Siberia. The process was a US-led
17:50 trilateral round of talks and it made
17:52 progress, however modest. Zalinski said
17:55 he found the round constructive and that
17:57 new talks could come next week. Yet at
18:00 the table, [music] Russia did not take a
18:02 single step back. Foreign Minister
18:04 Lavrov said the line Moscow will follow
18:07 will be determined by what Putin hears
18:09 from the US envoys, but that in any
18:12 case, it will be set so as to achieve
18:14 the goals of the special military
18:16 operation. In other words, with the same
18:18 unchanging maximalist demands, the
18:21 pressure was escalating. The Kremlin's
18:24 bargaining position, however, stayed
18:25 where it was. In Europe, meanwhile, the
18:28 political ground was hardening in
18:30 exactly the opposite direction. In the
18:32 Danish Parliament, Zalinski likened
18:34 Russia's decision [music] to seize
18:36 territory to one of history's gravest
18:38 miscalculations, like [music] the
18:40 mistakes of the leaders who ignited the
18:42 World Wars, and reminded listeners how
18:44 hard such wars are to end once they
18:47 begin. The most important caveat is
18:49 hidden within those striking numbers
18:51 themselves. Headlines like 30% of
18:54 capacity describe nominal capacity, that
18:57 is capacity knocked out on paper. Actual
19:00 output often falls much less. By some
19:03 assessments, attacks that halted about a
19:05 fifth of refining on paper reduced
19:08 actual output by only singledigit
19:10 percentages because Russia brings spare
19:12 capacity online and repairs damage
19:15 quickly, and the oil keeps flowing.
19:17 Loadings at Luga resumed days after the
19:20 fire. The analyst's summary is clear.
19:23 Russia's oil sector has been bruised,
19:25 but not broken. The shadow fleet is
19:28 changing course. Refineries are coming
19:30 back online and Putin continues to
19:32 absorb the domestic hardship without
19:34 making a single concession at the table.
19:37 What's more, this is a two-way war. In
19:40 the same weeks, Russia was also pounding
19:42 Ukraine's energy grid. Kiev Mayor
19:44 Klitschko warned that Moscow was trying
19:46 to bring down the city's huge heating
19:48 system and freeze millions, and it is
19:51 Ukrainians who will have the hardest
19:53 time in the winter ahead. At the front,
19:55 Russian units are still slowly
19:57 advancing. The deep strikes have stopped
20:00 neither the war nor the line. The honest
20:02 reading, therefore, is this. This is not
20:05 a knockout, but [music] attrition.
20:07 Ukraine's long arm is real. It imposes
20:10 accumulating costs and strips away
20:12 Russia's sense of untouchability. But
20:15 Russia is adapting faster than it is
20:17 collapsing. That night's fires matter
20:19 not because they ended anything, but
20:21 because they added to a slow
20:24 Indeed, this slow accumulation is no
20:27 longer confined to oil ports and
20:29 refineries. When Ukraine's long-range
20:31 missiles and drones strike Russia's
20:33 prized war plananes, air bases, and
20:35 rocket fuel plants all at once, the war
20:38 comes roaring straight back home.
20:53 All hell is literally breaking loose in
20:56 Russia. [music] Putin's crown jewel
20:58 warplanes, the plants that produce jet
21:00 fuel, the refineries that finance the
21:03 war, and the capital's air bridges are
21:05 all burning at once. Behind it all is a
21:08 single signature. The fire of Ukraine's
21:11 Neptune missiles and drones. The chaos
21:14 spread across the country. The nightmare
21:16 of fuel lines at gas stations began
21:18 again. Thousands of passengers were
21:20 stranded at airports. Millions watched
21:23 the war helplessly from their own homes.
21:26 This picture was the bitter revenge of
21:28 Putin's senseless war, coming home to
21:30 his own country. The clearest blow came
21:33 on October 29th. The Ukrainian Navy sent
21:36 Long Neptune missiles some 450 km away
21:40 to Marininovka air base in Vulgrad. It
21:43 was home to the Russian Aerospace Forc's
21:45 11th composite aviation regiment and one
21:47 of the most critical launch points for
21:49 the SU34 and SU24M jets that rain guided
21:54 bombs on Ukrainian cities. The SU34 is
21:58 the most valuable card of Russian
21:59 tactical aviation. A platform that can
22:02 release guided bombs from high altitude
22:04 beyond the range of Ukrainian air
22:06 defenses. That is why Kiev chose its
22:09 targets so carefully. Two SU34s parked
22:13 and most likely waiting for their bomb
22:15 loads were destroyed. Satellite images
22:18 and NASA's FIRMS thermal satellites
22:21 recorded massive fires directly over the
22:24 aircraft parking area. After the attack,
22:27 Russian military sources were forced to
22:29 admit that not only aircraft but also
22:31 regiment personnel had been hit at the
22:33 base. What made this strike possible was
22:36 the method. Just before the attack, a
22:39 drone threat alert had been issued in
22:40 the area. In other words, Ukraine first
22:43 [music] tied up Russian air defense
22:45 radars with drones, then delivered the
22:47 real lethal blow with cruise missiles
22:49 right afterward. The real breakthrough,
22:52 however, was the weapon itself. At the
22:54 Luch Design Bureau, Ukrainian engineers
22:57 completely recreated the anti-ship
22:59 Neptune to strike ground targets. with
23:02 an extended body. Its range rose to
23:04 1,000 km and the missile was equipped
23:07 with inertial navigation that is
23:09 unaffected by GPS jamming from Russian
23:12 electronic warfare. Flying at about 900
23:15 km per hour, this missile reaches a base
23:18 like Marinovka within minutes. Russian
23:20 defenses only noticed it once the SU34s
23:23 were already in flames. A day later, the
23:27 blow came from the front itself. In
23:29 occupied Luhansk, the SkyFomb team of
23:31 Ukraine's third assault brigade caught a
23:33 Russian MI8 transport helicopter near
23:36 Teraska with Hornet Kamicazi drones.
23:39 That platform, which carries personnel,
23:41 cargo, and fire support, was taken out
23:44 of action with two drone strikes right
23:46 after it landed. 2 days, two different
23:49 classes of aircraft, a single pattern.
23:52 Ukraine was no longer trying to hunt
23:54 Russian jets in the air. It was burning
23:56 them in their own nests on the ground.
23:59 And these two days were only the final
24:01 link in a 5-week hunt. 2 weeks before
24:04 Marininovka, the most devastating base
24:06 strike of the war had taken place. On
24:08 the night of October 14th to 15th, the
24:11 Ukrainian Navy aimed its long Neptunes.
24:14 This time at Boris Gleblesk Air Base in
24:16 Vorones, 350 to 400 km behind the front,
24:21 one of the strongholds of the 105th
24:23 Composite Aviation Division. And since
24:25 the summer of 2026, a forward fuel and
24:28 weapons station for the bombers striking
24:30 Ukraine. That night, six modernized
24:35 with guided glide bombs loaded under
24:37 their wings were parked wingto-wing on
24:39 the runway, ready for takeoff. The
24:42 missiles came down at exactly that
24:44 moment. The fully loaded jets set off
24:46 massive secondary explosions. The
24:49 governor of Vores tried to hide the
24:51 disaster by saying, "We shot down dozens
24:53 of drones." But satellite images from AV
24:56 vector and Cyber Boros documented that
25:01 had been reduced to ashes and two had
25:03 suffered heavy damage. To understand why
25:06 this was unprecedented, you need to know
25:08 what the SU34 is. the backbone of
25:11 Russian frontline aviation, the
25:13 workhorse that carries tons of glide
25:15 bombs to Ukrainian cities every day, and
25:18 an expensive, slowtobuild platform that
25:20 [music] Russia can produce only a few
25:22 dozen of per year. Six of them in a
25:25 single night meant wiping out a
25:27 significant slice of a year's production
25:29 in one stroke. The hunt reached even
25:32 deeper throughout October. On October
25:34 4th, the target was the Kanskaya base in
25:37 Adajia, about 500 km from Ukrainian
25:40 controlled territory. On paper, a
25:42 training base. In reality, a key forward
25:45 staging hub feeding the southern front.
25:48 The longrange drones of the SBU's elite
25:50 alpha unit showed that this time the job
25:53 belonged not to missiles, but to drones.
25:56 In addition to a SU34 worth about $50
25:59 million, a SU35 was also destroyed. The
26:03 SU35 is no ordinary aircraft. It is
26:06 Russia's most advanced air superiority
26:09 fighter. The prize card with an export
26:11 value of up to $100 million, normally
26:14 expected to protect the bombers and
26:16 dominate the sky. Catching it not in an
26:19 air battle, but on its own runway, was a
26:21 humiliation all its own. The base's main
26:24 ammunition depot was also blown up, and
26:27 chain explosions went on for hours. Yet,
26:29 not every loss required a Ukrainian
26:31 missile. The fleet was also burning,
26:34 crashing, and vanishing on its own. On
26:37 October 29th, at the Actubinsk test base
26:39 in Astrachan, a Su57, Russia's only
26:43 fifth generation radar evading fighter,
26:46 [music] caught fire during an engine
26:47 run. This aircraft is the Kremlin's
26:50 Pride project, a platform produced only
26:52 by the handful each year, with every one
26:55 of them counted as a badge of prestige.
26:57 This time it was brought down not by a
27:00 Ukrainian missile but by a fire in its
27:02 own hanger. And it was the fourth SU57
27:05 damaged or lost in 2026. On October 21st
27:10 during a training flight in Kiningrad, a
27:12 SU30SM went down. The heavy multi-roll
27:16 fighter that alongside the Su35 is the
27:19 second main pillar of Russian air
27:21 superiority. A second one was lost the
27:24 same day and there was talk that the two
27:26 may have collided in midair. And on
27:29 September 29th, a giant TU95MS
27:32 strategic bomber crashed on takeoff from
27:35 the Ukrainer base in the Far East. Only
27:37 one member of the sevenman crew
27:39 survived. The TU95 is the Cold War era
27:43 giant bomber that reigns KH101 cruise
27:45 missiles on Ukrainian cities. because
27:48 its production line closed decades ago.
27:51 Every aircraft lost is a loss Russia
27:53 will never be able to replace. In 5
27:56 weeks, roughly 13 aircraft were gone.
27:59 Some to Ukrainian fire, some to Russia's
28:01 own decay, and the jets were only part
28:04 of that week's reckoning. The same fire
28:06 was spreading to the factories and
28:08 refineries that keep them flying. On the
28:10 night of October 31st into November 1st,
28:13 long-range Ukrainian drones hit the Luko
28:16 oil ninjagarod Nefior Cintesz refinery
28:19 in Nijni Nogarod. This was no ordinary
28:22 facility. Operating since 1958,
28:25 processing 340,000 barrels of crude oil
28:28 a day, about 17 million tons a year. It
28:32 was Russia's fourth largest refinery by
28:34 processing capacity and second largest
28:37 in gasoline production. It had also been
28:39 modernized in 2021 with American
28:42 Honeywell UOP technology. This giant 800
28:46 km from the Ukrainian border became the
28:49 third Russian refinery hit in just 3
28:51 days. Explosions and thick black smoke
28:54 rose throughout the night and the fire
28:56 lasted until the morning of November
28:58 1st. Regional Governor Gleb Nikitin was
29:01 forced to confirm serious damage at an
29:04 industrial facility while Moscow brushed
29:06 the incident off as a massive drone
29:09 attack on an industrial facility and
29:11 opened a terrorism investigation.
29:13 According to Ukrainian sources,
29:15 precision hits on key processing units
29:18 knocked the refinery entirely out of
29:20 action. The result of the blow reached
29:22 the street within hours. In Nijni
29:24 Nogarod, people rushed to gas stations
29:27 to grab the last remaining fuel. Lines
29:30 stretched for kilometers. To reign in
29:32 the panic, officials limited gasoline to
29:34 40 L per vehicle, banned buying fuel in
29:37 jerry cans, tightened odd even license
29:40 plate checks, restricted vehicles coming
29:42 from outside the region, and put fuel
29:45 distribution under the watch of Rosvia,
29:47 the police, and volunteers. The campaign
29:50 striking Putin's refineries had reached
29:52 all the way down to the ordinary Russian
29:54 citizens tank. The nightmare of fuel
29:57 lines was back. Kustovo was not an
30:00 isolated incident. By the Russian
30:02 military blogger's own admission, the
30:04 country was under the weakest air
30:05 defense in its history. Panic grew in
30:08 the ZBlog world, and a writer called
30:10 Gleman reacted to the midnight refinery
30:12 attacks with, "Enough of these lies.
30:15 Enough of these pretty reports." The
30:17 timing itself carried a message. Just a
30:20 few days earlier, the Wall Street
30:22 Journal had written that Ukraine, under
30:24 Trump's pressure, had quietly frozen
30:26 deep strikes on refineries until the
30:28 American midterm elections. The flames
30:31 at Novaku Bishevk punched straight
30:33 through that quiet arrangement within
30:35 hours. But the most meaningful blow of
30:37 that week was not actually a refinery.
30:40 On October 31st, Neptune missiles and
30:43 drones hit the Kmenky Combinat in
30:45 Kamemen Shaktinsky, Rostov, just 190 km
30:49 from the front line, a facility
30:51 producing solid rocket fuel and
30:53 explosives for multiple launch rocket
30:55 systems and air defense missiles. At
30:58 least four production workshops, and a
31:00 finished goods depot were hit. Given
31:02 what the facility contains, the overall
31:04 damage is expected to be very heavy.
31:07 This was a strike on the place where
31:09 Russia's rockets are born, on the very
31:11 chain that feeds the missiles and guided
31:13 bombs raining down on Ukraine. Zalinski
31:16 announced that the same long-range
31:18 campaign did not stop there. A Pancia S2
31:21 system and an S400 command vehicle,
31:24 about $70 million worth of air defense
31:27 in total, along with an Iscander M
31:29 launcher in the Kursk region, had also
31:32 been destroyed. Ukraine was not only
31:34 burning the fuel, it was also blinding
31:37 the defenses tasked with protecting that
31:39 fuel. While refineries and the war
31:41 industry burned deep inside Russia, the
31:44 capital was living through the same
31:46 nights under alarm. And this time, the
31:48 drones were right over Moscow and its
31:50 airports. If you enjoyed this episode,
31:53 don't forget to hit the like button,
31:55 subscribe to our channel, and turn on
31:57 notifications. In your view, which side
32:00 will tire first in this race of
32:02 attrition? Russia unable to replace its
32:04 losses or [music] Ukraine enduring
32:07 bombardment every night? We'd love to
32:09 hear your thoughts.