Ukraine War: Drone strikes hit Russian oil refineries

Joining me now is our defense and security analyst, Professor Michael Clark, welcome back to you, Michael, and you're obviously concerned about the Zaparita nuclear power plant, but in the meantime, there's a lot of other things going on, including a Apparent

drone

attack inside Russia again, yes. I know the pace of events increases all the time, so overnight it seems as if there was a

drone

attack on Krasnadar. The Russians say I think it was a drone. I'm pretty sure it probably was. The largest fire has not been lit. Have you ever seen a refinery, there are many, but it is a huge set of

refineries

, but it still makes the point and interestingly, Nadar is not that far from Nova Rosisk and that is where all of Russia's oil exports go. a before the Black Sea and four ports in the Mediterranean and further afield, so it's a really important port and also in Nova Resisk, the Russians now have most of the Black Sea Fleet base there because it was too dangerous leave them in Sevastopol, which is in that kind of southwestern tip of Crimea, so they moved most of the fleet to Nova Rosie, so this has become a very important port in the heart of Russia and even to hit , a few miles away, the

refineries

are attacking.

Russia's infrastructure and it's making the point clear to the Russians and at least, although, as I say, it's not a major fight, it was resolved fairly quickly, but it does cause the Russians to have to bring in some resources to defend these facilities in the future. That's interesting and of course it's not the only drone attack we've seen in recent days. So how do these attacks influence the overall conflict? Yeah, we're starting to build up a good record of them now, so this is May 3rd. A few weeks ago, it was the attack of two drones on the Kremlin, it was a dome of the Senate Palace inside the Kremlin Fortress, inside the walls, two drones 16 minutes apart, both from different directions, did not cause any damage to unless they could They wounded two boys who were climbing the stairs to the Dome after the first attack to assess how bad the damage was.

They may have been killed or injured in the second attack, we don't know, but that was on May 3rd and then on Yesterday, May 30th, there was a series of attacks, some said there were over 20 drones involved , about 30, about 13, but the Russians have confirmed this number, so we have eight confirmed drone shootdowns, they were almost certainly aimed at central Moscow. and they did not succeed, although some of them reached the elite district in the northwest of Moscow, where all the elite live, the oligarchs, including Putin, that is his night residence, that is where he sleeps, does not sleep, in the Kremlin, sleep. there, so it's possible that it was a symbolic target, but all of these are attacking residential areas, which is not a good idea, they're not legitimate military targets, and of course, meanwhile, the Russians have been attacking Dro, hitting Kiev and other cities in Ukraine with drones repeatedly, so after October 10 last year they started a series of 16 big biweekly attacks, 15 of them, then the 16th iteration started in early May and then they attacked pretty well all 48 hours And recently, apart from today, they had three attacks in 24 hours in all of these cities in Ukraine, so the Russians are really stepping up their drone

strikes

and their missile

strikes

, partly to test the Ukrainian defenses. , I suspect, and also to see if they can. deplete their ammunition to deplete the amount of ammunition that the Ukrainians have and we know that in certain respects they may be running out of some things and they will need more supplies pretty quickly, so that's a tax in the air, what's up? what's happening on the ground what's happening in the back debatable, for example, yes everyone is waiting on the ground to see what will happen next, a very good example.

The Russians took over the bank from the Wagner group a little over a week ago and the answer is nothing. is happening in his rear mode and that in itself is very interesting, there are some artillery gems to the west, but the Russians are carrying out what is known as a rotation in place, so Wagner is moving and It's moving from now until June 5th, according to them. They are being replaced by someone who, you know, is going to take their places in the Bank mode and what we know is that the places are being taken in part by a group called the Savesky Battalion, which is a volunteer group that I'm sorry, the group of the Nevsky Battalion of volunteers, another group called the first wolves and they are a group of sabotage specialists and then some militias of the Donetsk People's Republic who are not recognized for their military capacity, so when we see the units that seem to be entering to take from Wagner they are not very good, they are not really great front line units and that tells me or indicates to me that the Russians do not expect to be attacked from behind because there is no strategic value, they never had strategic value, they fought for a year symbolically , but they don't believe that the Ukrainians will attack them and I also don't think that Ukraine will attack them there because it won't do them any good.

All strategic areas are north and south of Bakmut. and that's where we might expect to see some movement, so what we're seeing now in these days before this offensive starts I don't know how long it will take, but we're in the last few days before the event, so I'm pretty convinced. We're watching the Russian commanders make their decisions, they're putting their forces where they think they'll be needed and getting their reserves into the areas where they think they'll need to be and I keep saying it's a bit like it's a bit like a roulette wheel. , the wheel has been spinning, now someone spun the wheel and the p is bouncing, so now is the time to place your bets, place your units where you think they will do the most good and when the wheel stops spinning we will find out that we will and you think that will stay away.

I'm going to wait and see Michael. Thank you very much really.