Global News Podcast - Massive Russian attack on Ukraine's energy infrastructure

Episode Date: November 28, 2024

Hundreds of thousands across Ukraine are without power after Russia launches a massive attack on its energy infrastructure. Also: The ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon appears to be holding.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. You are actually radioactive and everything alive is unexpected elements from the BBC World Service. Search for unexpected elements wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritzen and at 14 Hours GMT on Thursday, the 28th of November, these are our main stories. Hundreds of thousands of people across Ukraine are without power as Russia launches another massive attack on its energy infrastructure.

The ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon appears to be largely holding as it enters its second day. Also in this podcast, a rare glimpse into the suffering of the people of Sudan. When I was in Khartoum, even me and my mom and my aunts, we cannot get out because I was afraid to get attacked by those soldiers. Those people are very dangerous so we cannot even take the risk. Vladimir Putin says the huge bombardment of Ukraine's energy infrastructure overnight was in response to Russian territory being hit with western supplied missiles. Hundreds

of thousands of people in Ukraine are without electricity after the Russian attack. Many of the sites targeted are in the west of the country as well as in the capital Kiev. Speaking in Kazakhstan, the Russian president insisted more strikes might follow. Last night we carried out a comprehensive strike using 90 missiles and 100 drones. Seventeen targets in Ukraine were hit. These were military facilities, defense industry facilities and support systems. I repeat once again, these strikes on our part also took place in response to the ongoing

strikes on Russian territory by American attack on missiles. As I have said many times, there will always be a response from our side. Vitaly Shevchenko is the Russia editor of BBC Monitoring. I asked him if he was surprised by President Putin's reaction. That has always been his attitude to this special military operation. He presents Russia as the victim rather than an aggressor. But we have to remember that Russia had carried out similar strikes before, similar or maybe even worse.

In September this year, for example, more than 230 missiles and drones were used and in that case and in attacks before that, Ukraine was not using western weapons against targets in Russia. So Russia did not need that reason to carry out these attacks. So what this messaging from the Kremlin tells us is that it's really worried about such strikes maybe because they're so effective, maybe because the Kremlin feels it needs to respond somehow to maintain its credibility in the eyes of the Russian public and maybe internationally as well. But from the point of view of the Ukrainian public, it's more of the same.

They're used to it, daily and nightly attacks that cause havoc and devastation. This one is very bad. It seems likely that more than one and a half million people are left without power currently and in many cases this means no running water as well, no trolley buses, trams, lifts. So it's a grim moment in Ukraine at the moment. As you say, a huge attack with huge implications, but maybe incredibly, no deaths. Well, that's the latest we've heard from the Ukrainian emergency service, the SNS,

which is saying that despite the damage caused to Ukraine's electricity infrastructure, that seems to be the main target of the Russian attack. No deaths have been registered. So that's better than the outcome that was registered after previous such attacks. But looking forward, the message that's coming from the Ukrainian government is that Ukraine needs more air defences to protect its people from such attacks and make sure that nobody gets killed. So we heard the clip of President Putin very annoyed still with the Western weapons being

used on targets inside Russia. Is this going to stop? Is this response going to stop Ukraine using those Western weapons? Well, I think it's not unreasonable to expect the Ukrainian government to see this message from Vladimir Putin as a sign that these strikes are really working otherwise he would not be talking about them so much and also the Ukrainians they don't really have much choice they're trying the best they can to take out the launch sites and the infrastructure that Russia

has been using to attack Ukraine so I think these attacks will continue. Vitaly Shevchenko. As it enters its second day, the long-negotiated but fragile ceasefire in Lebanon appears to be holding despite some reports of minor violations. After Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters withdrew from southern Lebanon, thousands of Lebanese citizens nervously started to return to their homes with hopes the full 60-day ceasefire endures. These residents in Beirut described the mood on the streets of the capital. Happy, sad, worried about what's next, relieved, grieving, it's everything. Cars full of

people, you have like around 10 people in each car carrying mattresses, carrying chairs. You can just see them going up the road to the south and it's good to see, honestly. On one hand, there's this sense of relief knowing that for now the bombing has stopped. But on the other hand, it doesn't erase the trauma that we've been living for the past two months. Being in Beirut meant constant anxiety because of the evacuation warnings, because of the sound of the drones and the warplanes all night, and this feeling sort of helplessness. Barbara Platt-Asher is our correspondent in Beirut.

There's people who are relieved that the fighting has stopped. They have been celebrating, some of them, heading back to areas from which they fled, but they have been celebrating some of them heading back to areas from which they fled but they have been through several months of trauma in particular the last couple of months when Israel stepped up its campaign and bombed Beirut as well as the the south and the east and they are wondering about the future they're wondering if the ceasefire will hold will they ever actually be able to feel that things have gone back to normal. Barbara, both sides have said that they will respond as they put it to any violations. What do they mean by that and what are the biggest causes for concern?

Well Hezbollah put out a statement, its first statement since the ceasefire was announced, that said it had fighters at the ready who would monitor the withdrawal of Israeli forces with their hands on the trigger. So presumably that means attacks, although the ammunition, the military infrastructure, the military leadership of the group has taken a severe hit and it has been significantly weakened. It is signaling that it is still ready to fight if it feels the Israelis are not pulling out as they should. The Israelis, they are supposed to withdraw gradually in phases over a period of 60 days. And they have been warning Lebanese civilians and residents that they should really stay out of these areas until that happens. So in the last little while they've issued a list of 10 border villages where civilians should not return

until further notice. These are located in a strip of territory right along the border, still occupied by Israeli troops. They've imposed an overnight curfew on parts of southern Lebanon and they have taken some action. Most recently both media and both Lebanon and Israel were saying that a drone had fired at a car that was nearing a restricted area to warn that car to turn around. So I think we're looking at that sort of thing in terms of keeping people out of restricted areas but the Israelis have been very clear that if they see Hezbollah either rearming or actually carrying out attacks then they will respond very forcefully.

Barbara Platt Arshah in Beirut. If the ceasefire holds the next job is for the Lebanese to rebuild their country. One of those in charge of that daunting reconstruction project is Amin Salam, Lebanon's Minister for Economy and Trade. Victoria Uwankunda asked him how extensive the damage from the conflict had been. As Minister of Economy and Trade, few months ago,

I was having a big assessment on the damages on the economy, direct and indirect damages damages on the economy, direct and indirect damages on the infrastructure on the villages on the areas in the south. And we have shared a number between 15 to $20 billion worth of losses, estimated losses until today between 15 and 20 billion because it's so hard now to have very specific numbers, the ceasefire period will give us more clarity to be able to do a better survey, a better assessment. But today we are looking at an estimate between 15 to 20 billion direct and indirect losses to the Lebanese economy. Where are you seeing the biggest damage coming from?

The biggest damage actually that hit the economy directly are the complete basically collapse of the major sectors in the economy that are the major generating revenue to the government. That is the tourism sector, the agricultural sector, transfers of the diaspora all across the world to their families in Lebanon, and all the services in Lebanon. Those alone have been assessed about $8 to $10 billion to the major sectors and the major financial transaction to Lebanon.

The rest was mostly destruction of major, all the villages across the borderline, all the destruction on the southern of Beirut city, all the buildings, all the institutions, all the businesses. On top of that, we factored into the equation, the unemployment rate that has went over 55% for the first time in the history of this nation, keeping hundreds of thousands of people without jobs. And we looked as well into the growth and to the GDP for the next two years. Such a high number of unemployed people in your country at the moment. You talk about

billions of dollars in damages as is. This was already a struggling economy. I wonder then, Minister, how do you plan on going forward to help recover from this? What are you seeking outside help? Well, there is no doubt. I mean, I've just returned from a big visit to multiple countries, including the United United States where we had time spent with the World Bank, IMF, US government, European Union, many different international community institutions really looking into the day after because as you mentioned the biggest challenge now will be if we maintained and successfully passed through this ceasefire phase into a

peace process, our next project will be the economy and this would require major, major international intervention. Lebanon's Minister for Economy and Trade, Amin Salam. So if peace persists in Lebanon, what is the likelihood of a ceasefire being negotiated in Gaza? Yolande Nel is our Middle East correspondent in Jerusalem. Well, we know that the U.S. President Joe Biden urging regional powers, Qatar, Egypt, Turkey, to try to restart talks to get momentum behind another deal

that would end the fighting in Gaza as well. And certainly when it comes to what the Israeli defence minister has been saying, you know, he has talked very much about the need. He said that most ethical objective before us at present, this is our goal to get the hostages released by Hamas in Gaza. And Hamas itself has also been saying that it is ready for new rounds of talks. But when you kind of go below the surface of that, it doesn't seem that either side has significantly changed their position. And indeed, that is why, you know, months of negotiations have recently frozen to come up with a ceasefire and hostage release deal

for Gaza. And there are a lot of, you know, domestic political reasons in Israel that come into play here. It's a different situation from with Lebanon where Israel's goals were really more limited. And you have got those far-right ministers who are part of the coalition government who have threatened to collapse it if the government in their view goes for a reckless deal to stop the fighting in Gaza, there are some ministers who have aspirations to recreate Israeli settlements in Gaza, for example. Basically, the political survival of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is all caught

up with this. Yoland Nel in Jerusalem. Asthma is a common lung condition affecting more than a quarter of a billion people all over the world. But despite its prevalence, treatments have not seen significant innovation in the past few decades. Now, scientists from King's College in London say they've discovered a game changer drug that could revolutionise the way we treat asthma. James Gallagher, our health and science correspondent, told us how it worked. This is taking advantage of kind of like what is a relatively recent understanding of what's happening in asthma because if you go back 20, 30 years people thought that every single asthma attack was basically the same biologically, the same things were happening

inside the airways and the lungs of everybody having an asthma attack. But what's become apparent is actually there are different things going wrong in different people's overactive immune systems in each time someone's having an asthma attack. And so this drug targets one specific thing that's going wrong. So eosinophils are a type of white blood cell and they're responsible for about half of asthma attacks.

When they go into overdrive, that's when you get the difficulty breathing, the gulping and gasping for air. Those symptoms are being caused by these eosinophils and this drug, Benerilizumab, exclusively targets those white blood cells, suppresses them massively and can bring down an asthma attack quite quickly. Because this drug has been used to treat severe cases of asthma in the past, what's different now? The way that it's used at the moment is for people who are not really having any success with the current medication. So

they're having this drug every couple of months just routinely, they're taking it every eight weeks in order to try to keep inflammation down inside the body. This is thinking about it in those less extreme cases and actually moving it to the more familiar symptoms of an asthma attack. So it's very much moving it from something that is relatively few people to pretty much the whole of asthma. Because something like 450,000 people die as a result of asthma every year. Could this make a big difference to that number?

The thing about many of the deaths from asthma is that a proportion of those are preventable with appropriate and good treatment. So absolutely, if you can get into that position where you can have better control over people's asthma, then absolutely it has that potential to reduce the number of people dying from this condition. James Galaher. Still to come in this podcast. My commander came to me and asked me, are you willing to press the button? I said I don't want to. Everyone else wanted to.

I was the only one that didn't. In the end they drew lots and the commander said, it's an order. The lot fell on you. You'll do it. The Israeli hangman who executed the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann has died. What are people around the world doing to help tackle the climate emergency? Climate shocks that we are experiencing. Trouts, floods, decimated agriculture and so on.

The climate question from the BBC World Service looks for answers to those challenges posed by climate change. How can we solve this? It's all being discussed. We only hear the bad stuff in the news, don't we? And there's loads of quiet progress. Reasons to be hopeful. Solutions exist.

We just need to be able to implement them at scale. The climate question. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. It's a crisis of staggering proportions which demands the world's urgent attention. Those words were used by the new United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator not to describe Gaza, Lebanon or Ukraine, but Sudan, a country ravaged by famine, violence and sexual abuse, as the National Army and the militia, known as the Rapid Support Forces or RSF, wrestle for control of the country. Half the population of 50 million need life-saving aid and it's

not getting enough attention, in part because it's very hard and dangerous for journalists to operate there. Our chief international correspondent, Lise Doucet, is travelling to Sudan with the UN's new relief chief, Tom Fletcher. That's the sound of toy blocks on a bare floor in this crumbling school. It's a shelter now for orphans. More children are on the run in Sudan than anywhere else in the world. Nearly five million. One of them

13-year-old Mahmoud. What do you miss about your home in Khakfoum? Basketball, bicycle, pizza. Pizza? I'm a consultant for alternative family care. Tell us about Mahmoud's story. He was adopted when he was 10 months old. In Khartoum, the capital. In Khartoum, the capital.

And then when the war broke in Khartoum, he was evacuated with other children to Medeni. Then from Medeni, transferred here to Kassel. Mamoud, what is your dream now? I want to be a state governor. I will fix the situation of the country, then I will build houses. Dozens of women sitting on plastic chairs under a canopy in the baking heat, all of them displaced by this war. My name is Romaisa Abdelmuneh Moussa, I'm 23 years old.

My name is Rumi Saab Abdel Muneim Moussa. I'm 23 years old. This event today was about sexual violence as a weapon in war. Is that something the women here worry about, fear? Has it happened to women that you know? Yes, definitely. It's a very, it's something that we feel a lot fear of it. When I was, my personal experience, when I was in Khartoum, even me and my mom and my aunts, we cannot get out because I was afraid to get attacked by those soldiers. You were afraid you would be kidnapped, taken away? Those people are, were very dangerous, so we cannot even take the risk to get any contact

with them. They don't respect women, they they harrass women, not just women, women and men. In a war-torn country of so much suffering, listen to these labourers sweating in the heat trying to keep their spirits up. We're in a vast warehouse of the United Nations World Food Programme and you can hear the men carting boxes one after the other on their shoulders to the trucks waiting outside to take them to the worst affected areas of this crisis. Hi my name is Alex Marinelli, I'm the head of operations at the World Food

Programme here in Port Sudan. We're currently in the warehouse watching specialized nutritious food being loaded by a very lively gang of labourers. We're trying to drive thousands of kilometres across a conflict. So the journey of moving trucks full of food across Sudan is fraught with danger, is fraught with physical difficulties and a lot of negotiations, engagements at all levels are needed to make sure that this vital humanitarian aid finds free passage to the people that need it. Alex, you've worked in so many places around the world confronting a crisis of hunger.

How does this compare? By far this is the worst humanitarian situation I've ever seen or had to face. I've been working for the World Food Programme for more than 25 years. I've served in so many countries in emergencies I have never seen anything like it. That report compiled by our Chief International Correspondent, Lise Doucet. We know that the world has heated up, but can we say with any certainty where the heating is most intense? Well, a new study by scientists at Columbia University in the United States has identified areas where temperatures are

spiking far beyond what is expected as the planet warms, and with some of the most striking examples occurring in the Pacific Northwest, Dr Liz Bentley, Chief Executive of the Royal Meteorological Society, has been looking at the data. We've known for a while that as our global temperatures rise due to human-induced climate change that we see more frequent and intense heat waves but this report looks at the distribution of those heat waves and highlights that there are specific areas of the world that are seeing more intense and more persistent heat waves than other parts of the world. It's linked to the position

of the jet stream. Now the jet stream is a band of strong winds at the top of the atmosphere. It's quite straight and strong and powerful and develops storms and brings them to our shores. But as our climate changes, we know that the Arctic is warming about four times faster than the tropics. And so we're seeing a decrease in the temperature difference from tropics to pole, and that's actually weakening that jet stream. So instead of it being kind of straight and zonal, it becomes quite wavy. And we know that when the peak of the wave is pushed further north, it brings more heat to certain areas. So we get static waves that sit quite persistent for weeks on end.

And we tend to find this four or five areas around the northern hemisphere, in particular, North America. So that brings heat right up into Canada. And we saw that a few years ago with some extreme heat in the western side of Canada. Again, we have another one in Europe, another one as you move around towards Asia as well. So we get these patterns where the heat wave is persistent, it can stay there for weeks on end and it drives intense heat waves. Dr Liz Bentley from the Royal Meteorological Society.

The Israeli hangman who executed the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in 1962 has died at the age of 88. Shalom Nagar was specially selected for the job, but as David Lewis reports, he was a reluctant executioner. Shalom Nagar arrived in Israel aged 12 in the year of its creation, 1948. A Jewish orphan from Yemen, he served as a paratrooper before joining the country's prison service. He was 26 when he carried out the only execution in Israel's history. Years later, in a film about him, The Hangman,

he explained how he was chosen. him, the hangman, he explained how he was chosen. My commander came to me, his name was Mahavi, and asked me, Shalom, are you willing to press the button? It's the greatest commandment there is. Wipe out the memory of the evil Amalek. I said I don't want to. Everyone else wanted to. I was the only one that didn't. In the end they drew lots and the commander said, it's an order. The lot fell on you. You'll do it. Übersturmbahnführer Adolf Eichmann was a key architect of the Holocaust and the final solution. After the war he fled to Argentina. Living under a false name in the suburbs of

Buenos Aires, he worked for Mercedes- Benz, so secure in his new life and identity that his wife and children even joined him from Europe. He was snatched near his home by Mossad agents in 1960 and secretly flown back to Israel to be put on trial for his role in the murder of six million Jews. Eichmann was kept in prison throughout. Deeply concerned the inmate would try and kill himself, Israeli authorities hand-picked guards to keep him alive. Nagar was one. In interviews he explained that it was perhaps because of his non-European heritage that he was chosen for the job. Prison

officers who were Holocaust survivors, some with tattoos on their arms, were not even allowed on the same floor as the former Nazi. There were concerns about poisonings, too. Nagar claimed he would sample the Germans' meals to make sure they were not spiked. After the verdict and sentence was passed, Nagar said he didn't want to be the one to put Eichmann to death. He was convinced to do it after being shown photos of atrocities against Jewish children in World War Two. At the moment of execution, the Israeli and his commander put a noose around the captive's neck. He went behind a screen, pressed the button and the trap door opened.

An hour later he helped to take the body down. I felt the angel of death had come to take me too, he admitted. The hanging had a deep impact. He said he had nightmares for a year and even felt at times Eichmann was following him. In later life he returned to religion. After being approached for an interview by a German media outlet in 2004, he insisted it be done in a busy, noisy Israeli religious institute. He told the interviewer that Jews not only survived the Holocaust but were now thriving on the very culture, books, traditions

and language that the Nazis had tried to destroy. That report from David Lewis. Deer sightings are pretty common in the Canadian province of British Columbia but the creatures are not usually wearing clothes. However, a deer has been spotted in the small town of McBride wearing a high-vis jacket. It was seen and photographed by Andrea Arnold, a reporter with the Rocky Mountain Goat News.

She spoke to Oliver Conway. I was just driving home and the vehicle in front of me slowed right down and I thought, OK, whatever, there are de is going across the highway, no big deal. But then I saw the deer and it was wearing a black jacket with the kind of green and yellow high-vis reflectors on it. And I definitely did a double take before I thought, I'm not actually seeing things, this is actually what I'm seeing. And then my second thought was, I need a picture of this because nobody's going to believe it. So I got off the highway

and drove up onto the little side road where the deer was walking towards and managed to get the two pictures. You say it was wearing a jacket. I mean, how exactly was it wearing a jacket? Well, at the time I didn't, couldn't figure that out exactly. But now looking at the pictures and having talked to the other individual in town who also saw it. It looked like the deer's legs had been in the sleeves, but possibly they'd ripped out because in the photo it actually looks like the deer has three front legs because the jacket arms are dangling like legs next to the deer's legs. And the other individual was close enough that he was able to see that it is actually a zipped

up jacket that is on this deer. And any idea how the jacket got on the deer? I mean, sometimes you see dogs with a kind of a coat in cold weather. Might it be someone's pet? It's a small town. We would probably know if somebody had a pet. There's lots of deer in town and people feed the deer and the deer are a little too comfortable with people. But I haven't heard of anybody actually domesticating one. I don't think that's the case. So what theories are there? That it was possibly a drunken dare or a practical joke or a bunch of people got together and

tackle it and got it dressed. It's really hard to say what happened. Sure. But how has the town reacted to this? On Facebook with the post, there's humorous comments like seeing a deer on his way to work and the deer finally got smart and this one won't get hit on the highway and stuff like that. And then there's also the concerns that the jacket gets stuck on a fence or a branch and the deer panicking and gets injured or becomes food for prey because it can't get away or if the jacket stays on for too long, then the natural fur loss that happens

in animals can't happen. So there may be some kind of infection. So there's humour and concern all kind of rolled into one. And I understand the authorities are trying to track it down to try and help it. Yeah, they've asked the community to report when it's seen and where so that they can track the best place to find it. My little cousin's actually reported yesterday that it looked like it's possible that the jacket's falling off on its own already. That would be the ideal situation. And that was Andrea Arnold, a reporter with the Rocky Mountain Goat News. And you can

see a picture of the deer with the high vis jacket on their website, therockymountaingoat.com. And that's all from us for now. But there'll be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Holly Palmer and the producer was Richard Hamilton. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritz and until next time, goodbye. What are people around the world doing to help tackle the climate emergency? Climate shocks that we are experiencing.

Trouts, floods, decimated agriculture and so on. The climate question from the BBC World Service looks for answers to those challenges posed by climate change. How can we solve this? It's all being discussed. We only hear the bad stuff in the news, don't we? And there's loads of quiet progress. Reasons to be hopeful. Solutions exist.

We just need to be able to implement them at scale. The climate question. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.