Ukraine fires home-grown ballistic missile in combat for first time

Ukraine: The Latest

This episode covers Ukraine's first combat deployment of its domestically produced FP-7 ballistic missile, alongside Russia's escalating winter energy campaign targeting major cities

Key takeaways

• Ukraine successfully used its domestically produced FP-7 ballistic missile for the first time in combat, featuring a 200km range and 150kg warhead manufactured by Firepoint.
• Russian plans aim to isolate Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa, and Lviv from power grids this winter using up to 1,000 missiles and drones, including new Shahed variants fitted with metal whiskers to sever high-voltage lines.

Main topics

• FP-7 ballistic missile deployment
• Russian winter energy warfare strategy

Notable quotes

"Putin said there are no rules now."

Conclusion

The episode provides a comprehensive update on Ukraine's expanding ind

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) you Speaker 2 (0:03) The Telegraph. Speaker 3 (0:09) U.S. voters abroad, have you got your ballot yet? All states are now sending ballots to overseas voters. So if you want to vote this year, you should request your ballot right away. Go to votefromabroad.org and click request my ballot. Ask to receive it by email. Questions? Ask our support team directly. Don't miss this chance to shape the future. Don't delay. Votefromabroad.org. Speaker 8 (0:31) In 2018, a billionaire diamond tycoon accused of one of the world's biggest ever bank frauds went missing. This is the story of the rise and fall of Nirav Modi. And of how we caught him. Speaker 2 (0:46) He was in the news all the time. Where is Nirav Modi? Why can we not find him? Speaker 8 (0:50) He's one of the most sought-after criminals in India. You owe a lot of people a lot of money, Mr Modi. Speaker 3 (0:55) Who would very much like to know where you are. Speaker 8 (0:57) Sorry, no comment. The Diamond King. A new podcast from The Telegraph. Speaker 7 (1:07) I'm Adélie Pojman-Ponté, and this is Ukraine, the latest. Today, Ukraine successfully used its FP-7 ballistic missile for the first time, though they will not disclose on what. Meanwhile, reports point to Russia's sinister plans for the winter, which include isolating Ukraine's largest cities from the power grid and hitting the country's three nuclear power plants. Russia also vowed to use all the weapons at its disposal in case of a war against NATO. We bring you a scoop on the Leipzig drone incident and Dr. Jade McGlynn analyzes the situation in Oleshki. Finally, we have exclusive footage from a former drone pilot. Speaker 8 (1:49) Bravery takes you through the most unimaginable hardships to finally reward you with victory. The Russians Speaker 6 (2:00) do not want peace. Speaker 8 (2:01) First of all, we defend our freedom with our help for Ukraine. Speaker 8 (2:06) and our Speaker 7 (2:07) European values. If Speaker 4 (2:10) I'm president, I will have that war settled in Speaker 8 (2:12) one day, 24 hours. I will be steadfast in my support for Ukraine and stand up to threats wherever they come from. Speaker 5 (2:20) We cannot, as Europeans, Speaker 8 (2:22) let Russia win in Ukraine. Nobody is going to break us. Speaker 3 (2:27) We Speaker 8 (2:27) are strong. We are Ukrainians. Speaker 7 (2:31) It's Friday, the 2nd of October. Four years and 220 days since the full-scale invasion began. Today, I'm joined by Dr. Jade McGlynn of King's College London and friend of the podcast, Dimko Zluktenko, from the 413th Regiment of Ukraine's Unmanned System Forces. So let's start with the FP-7 ballistic missile, which is domestically produced in Ukraine and which has been used in combat for the very first time. It's a major milestone for Kiev's push to build its own strike weapons. President Zelensky announced the breakthrough in a social media post, although he didn't reveal the exact target, location or outcome of the strike. An advisor confirmed to our friends at the Kiev Independent, we won't tell. The president said FP-7, first combat use. Thank you for the result. Next up, production. The missile is made by Ukrainian defence company Firepoint, has a 200km range and carries a 150kg warhead. The same firm is also working on the FP-9 ballistic missile, which, with its range of up to 855km, could be used to strike Moscow. Marking Ukraine's Defenders Day on Thursday, Zelensky thanked all of our defenders who are working to return Russia's sick war to where it came from. Let's move to updates on the frontline. Ukraine's defence forces reported 207 combat engagements on Thursday. On the south Slobozhansky axis, Ukrainian units repelled 11 enemy attacks. Russia launched one assault in the Kupyansk direction, seven near Slovyansk, 27 near Konstantinivka and 30 in the Pokrovsk direction. There were also another three attacks near Leman, which were repelled. Let's look at Russian overnight strikes now, which killed one person and injured two more in the capital. Officials said in a telegram post that a fire broke out on the upper floors of an apartment building as a result of the attack. The southern bridge in central Kiev was hit again late on Thursday and into the early hours of Friday. Just as we were walking into the studio, Kiev was still completely paralysed with traffic jams. As we reported yesterday, a strike on the bridge Wednesday night into Thursday seemingly caused no structural damage, allowing it to reopen shortly after. But as a result of these later strikes, all traffic on the bridge, including the metro, has been suspended. Eyewitness footage from residents shows flames on the bridge and smoke. An FPV attack on a civilian bus this morning in Kramatorsk wounded two people. Onto the energy war. President Zelensky has said that Ukrainian spy agencies had obtained information suggesting Russian president had scrapped the constraints that governed earlier air campaigns. Zelensky told the Financial Times, Putin said there are no rules now. The shift apparently came in September as Russia was intensifying its strikes campaign against Ukraine. Russia would aim to isolate its largest cities, namely Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa and Lviv, from the rest of the country as winter sets in. Meanwhile, the New York Times has gained access to a presentation from Foreign Affairs Minister Andrei Sibir to European partners, showing that Russia wanted to, I quote, freeze Ukrainians into submission. The intelligence came from an intercepted Russian plan to methodically attack Ukraine's energy system until its collapse, using up to 1,000 missiles, drones and bombs. The document says that Russia intends to shut down Ukraine's three operating nuclear plants. And one of the ways they could be planning to snag Ukraine's power lines and blow them up would be with a new Shahed drone fitted with metal whiskies. It's believed that Russia has already deployed two of these drones. The new modification means the drones have thin rods protruding from the nose, seemingly to detect and strike high voltage power lines that would be difficult to hit with a conventional warhead. At the same time, as DUM reported earlier in the week, Russia is now deploying a jet-powered drone armed with a specialised warhead capable of slicing through steel structures, including electricity substations. And now over to Ukraine's hits on Russia overnight. Ukraine hit oil infrastructure, including the Volgograd Lukoil refinery, which is one of the country's largest processing facilities. That's according to Ukraine's general staff. Another target was one of Russia's largest gas processing and petrochemical plants, as well as a major oil transport station facility in the Samara Oblast. Ukraine's defence forces said the plant produces raw materials for explosives used in artillery shells. Zelensky confirmed the strikes in a post on X this morning and added that successful operations were also carried out in the Black Sea and in the Voronezh, Nizhny Novgorod and Krasnodar regions. These strikes included airfields, industrial facilities, a missile and space centre and an ammunition depot belonging to the Russian forces. Next, we have an exclusive from The Telegraph and our colleagues at Welt Amsontag, both part of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network. A Russian biker has been revealed as the suspected mastermind of the failed bomb plot at Germany's Leipzig Halle airport in August. This is, of course, the incident which saw a drone carrying a tin of explosive fly into the wing of a Ukrainian airliner. Germany later accused Russia directly of being behind the plot. Our colleagues have revealed through classified intelligence documents and interviews with senior Western intelligence officials that Russian national and biker Oleg Levushkin planned the attack. It was then carried out by a Belarusian proxy. Levushkin has reportedly maintained contact for years with Denis Smolianinov, an alleged chief planner of Russian bomb attacks across Europe. A report by Lithuanian intelligence seen by The Telegraph said Smolianinov led the Ukraine department at the GRU, Russia's foreign military intelligence service. The Leipzig attack has been linked to a unit within the GRU which German intelligence officials say is the main driving force behind these Kremlin-ordered operations. Those Lithuanian files also revealed links between the Leipzig attack and a wider network of sabotage plots across Europe, all allegedly orchestrated by a hardline unit in the GRU. There's a lot more detail to this story, and it's a fantastic bit of work by our colleagues at The Telegraph and Veltam Sontag. So make sure to read it in full after you finish listening to this podcast, of course. We'll link to it in the show notes. Let's move on to the diplomatic realm now. Vladimir Putin has vowed that Russia would use all weapons at our disposal in the event of a conflict with NATO. Speaking at his annual Valdai Forum, the Russian president echoed warnings from Moscow earlier this week that it would be ready to use nuclear weapons if NATO tried to isolate the Kaliningrad exclave. As Sophie reported yesterday, we think that statement was in response to a series by Sky News, which traced how the UK might respond to a hypothetical Russian attack, including by isolating Kaliningrad, which sits between Lithuania and Poland. But no need to worry, apparently, because Putin told the conference in Moscow that Russia has no intention of attacking anyone. He insisted Moscow is not threatening anyone and was merely responding to warnings by Western leaders that Russia could attack a NATO country by the end of this decade. Going back to Ukraine, the country has rebuffed claims made in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week that Kyiv is facing an F-16 emergency. An editorial in the newspaper claimed that half of Ukraine's fleet of the fighter jets was out of commission due to maintenance limbo. But a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Heorhi Tichy, denied this. In a post on X, he admitted conditions are demanding and that sustaining the aircrafts is challenging. But he also said, recent reports alleging catastrophically low aircraft availability rates and excessive long maintenance turnaround times are simply false. Contrary to these claims, our industrial sustainment partners are not only continuing to deliver overhauled aircraft, but are doing so at an increasing pace. Turnaround times are decreasing, not increasing. After the European Union controversially removed two Russian oligarchs from its sanctions, Kiev is responding by bolstering its own list. Ukraine is planning to sanction 20 additional Russian oligarchs, Foreign Minister Andriy Sibir said, who described the move as an asymmetric response to the EU decision. Sibir added that Canada had confirmed it would not lift its own sanctions against Alisha Usmanov and Mikhail Friedman, who were both delisted by Europe after pressure from France, Slovakia and Luxembourg. Ukraine is working with other allies, including the UK, Japan and Australia, to make sure the men remain sanctioned elsewhere. Let's turn now to the Occupy Territories with our regular update from Dr. Jade McGlynn, Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Ukraine and Russia Programme at King's College London. I caught up with Jade earlier about her recent polling inside the Occupy Territories, the situation in Oleshki and the latest resistance activity. Here is our conversation. Speaker 6 (11:48) Hi Jade, good to have you back. We have a lot to talk about today, so where do you want to start? Speaker 5 (11:54) If it's okay with you, Adelie, I thought we would start with some fresh polling from internally displaced people from the occupied territories that we've just received back. The polling was carried out by Operativna Sociologia. Speaker 1 (12:05) So Speaker 5 (12:06) essentially, we polled over a thousand people who are originally from the