395. Kinetic Sanctions
Battleground
Goalhanger
4.5 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 30 April 2026
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode of Battleground Ukraine, Roger Moorhouse and Saul David explore how Ukraine’s "kinetic sanctions" are successfully targeting the heart of the Russian economy where Western diplomacy has stalled. With 55% of Russia’s refining capacity now in the crosshairs, the strategic impact of long-range drone strikes is becoming impossible for the Kremlin to ignore.
We also discuss:
The Vanishing Victory Parade: Why Moscow has stripped its iconic Red Square celebration of vehicles and cadets, citing "terrorist threats."
The Cyber Front: From the "Tehran-style" internet clampdown in Russia to a daring Ukrainian hack of a military recruitment event at a Russian university.
Robot Wars: The implications of the first-ever capture of a military position using exclusively unmanned systems and the mounting Russian personnel losses.
- Domestic Discontent: How the "Special Military Operation" is finally coming home to the Russian people through "black rain," internet restrictions, and VPN cat-and-mouse games.
Join the Conversation: If you have a question about the war in Ukraine or any of the conflicts we cover, email us at podbattleground@gmail.com
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Producer: James Hodgson
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Battleground Ukraine with me, Roger Morehouse and Saul David. |
| 0:17.2 | After all, the domestic excitement of Mandelson Gate and the latest of Trump's adventures in |
| 0:22.5 | war, diplomacy and assassination attempts, one might have imagined that the conflict in Ukraine |
| 0:27.2 | had taken a back seat this last couple of weeks, but of course that's not the case. Conflict is |
| 0:31.7 | still raging and is as pivotal to world events as ever. So buckle up and let's dive in and see what the biggest |
| 0:38.6 | stories of the last week or so have been. First to mention, of course, is that the Ukrainian |
| 0:43.1 | long-range attacks on Russian energy infrastructure, amusingly named kinetic sanctions in some |
| 0:48.7 | quarters, have continued this week. You will recall that we mentioned a couple of weeks ago how |
| 0:53.3 | Ukraine had been systematically hitting the port facilities at Primorsk and Ustluga on the Baltic, in an effort to nullify |
| 1:00.1 | the monetary advantage that Russia would accrue from the rise in the oil price, itself a result |
| 1:05.4 | of President Trump's adventure in the Persian Gulf. Well, this week, another of Russia's energy |
| 1:09.7 | sites was in the crosshairs, |
| 1:11.6 | and it was Tuapsa on the Black Sea coast, which has already been hit twice over the last two weeks. |
| 1:17.1 | The Tuapsa refinery, offrated by Rosneft, ordinarily has an annual production capacity of about |
| 1:23.1 | 12 million tonnes, which accounts for around 12% of Russia's annual production of refined fuel oils. |
| 1:29.4 | So halting production there, as previous attacks have done, deals a significant blow to Russia's |
| 1:35.5 | oil exports. After the refiner was hit by long-range drones on Tuesday of this week, |
| 1:41.3 | President Putin, of course, claimed that Ukraine was targeting civilian |
| 1:45.0 | infrastructure, a claim which Kiev, of course, denied. The result was a huge fire, which burned |
| 1:51.1 | out of control overnight and forced the evacuation of local residents as a huge plume of black |
| 1:56.9 | smoke rose into the air. Local cleanup operations, which had been ongoing since the earlier |
| 2:01.7 | attack on the 20th of April, were also suspended, meaning that the black rain that had contaminated much |
... |
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