Ukraine strikes Russian oil refineries

0:04Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London. I'm James Menendez. And coming up a little later, we'll have a story about a vaccine that doesn't need to be stored in a fridge. Also, Afghanistan's women's soccer players get FIFA's approval to represent their country despite a ban from the Taliban. We want to prove that we are still here. We're still fighting for the rice that you took away from us. One, two, three, Afghanistan! More on that story coming up in about 40 minutes. But we are going to begin with the war in Ukraine. Russia's attacks continue unabated.

0:43It says it's targeting energy and transport facilities, but civilians continue to bear the brunt with 11 people killed today and one city, Kherson, suffering a complete electricity blackout. However, it's Ukraine's response we're going to focus on today and in particular its attacks on Russian oil refineries. Two were hit today, according to Kiev, including one of the largest in Russia, the Slavneft Janos refinery near Yaroslav, hundreds of kilometres from the Ukrainian border.

1:22That's footage posted by a resident of Yaroslav that the BBC has verified. Huge clouds of black smoke seen covering the city. No casualties were reported. But those fires are a highly visible reminder to Russians of the war, as is the knock-on impact on fuel supplies. There have been shortages reported in many regions of Russia over the past few weeks. Tatyana Mitrova is a leading expert on Russia's energy sector. She's now a fellow at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. She began by telling me how extensive the damage to Russia's oil infrastructure was. In the end of June, beginning of July, it was about 30 % or even slightly more of Russian refining capacity, which was out completely.

2:11It is incredible, and it resulted in the quite severe fuel crisis in Russia. Ukraine actually switched its attacks from refineries to the inventories of the marketplaces, wild berries and the others. And there was like a pause until beginning of August in these refinery attacks, which allowed Russian government to recover the situation. But right now, during the past couple of days, these attacks on refineries are restarted again. So it's yet to be seen what will be the next wave damage, but it's taking place again. I mean, is some of that capacity quick to repair or will some of it take several months to repair, do you think?

3:02It depends on specific refinery and specific unit damaged. During the last wave, Ukraine was actually targeting mainly most expensive and hot to recover assets, like secondary treatment installations, which take up to half a year to replace. In certain cases, they've missed the target and damaged just quite simple primary refining units, which can be replaced quite quickly. This is exactly what Russian oil companies were doing during the last month, and that allowed to reduce the shortage. But generally speaking, I think the full recovery is possible only by the end of the year, given that there are no new attacks, which is not the fact.

3:54Yeah. And what does that all mean in economic terms, given that the oil industry is the mainstay of the Russian economy? The economic damage is not that substantial because Russia has actually redirected crude oil, which was historically going to refineries and then sold, exported as refined petroleum products. Now Russia is just selling this crude at the market. And as you know, global prices for oil are still rather high due to the Ormus crisis. So in terms of budget revenues, the losses are not that substantial. Where the real damage is coming from is mainly domestic shortage of the refined products, which means, first of all, social dissatisfaction because of all these long queues at the pump stations.

4:51Even if you manage to get the fuel, you have to pay more. So it is speeding up inflation. It is really affecting tourism, all the deliveries, all the container shipments and so on. So it has much more profound effect on the domestic economy, but not really such a big impact on the budget revenues for the oil exports. But the impact on the refining capacity, as I understand it, has meant that Russia has started to import some of its gasoline from India, which seems extraordinary for a major producer. Yes, you are right. In the end of June, Russia began to import gasoline and even diesel from India, from the Rosneft refineries there, from Belarus increasingly, from Kazakhstan, from the other post-Soviet countries.

5:47There were even rumours about buying jet fuel in Japan. Finally, Japan banned those exports. But indeed, Russia turned out from net exporter to net importer of the petroleum products. And that was Dr. Tatyana Mitrova there. Well, in the latest attacks today, Ukraine said that it also struck two military patrol boats and two Shadow Fleet oil tankers in the Black Sea. Russia sedated it to cargo ships in the port of Odessa. Indeed, over the last month, there's been a dramatic increase in the number of attacks on shipping by both sides. Communities in the Odessa region around the port have also been struck by large numbers of Russian drones and missiles.

6:31Our diplomatic correspondent, Paul Adams, has been granted rare access to the Ukrainian Navy on a mission through the dangerous waters off Odessa. And he sent us this report. We're going on patrol with the Ukrainian Navy out into waters made increasingly dangerous by Russian attacks in a part of the country where a drone or ballistic missile can arrive with little warning. Everyone is focused, on alert. They fire their guns every day. This morning it looks deceptively calm. With its guns, its netting and some of the other equipment on board, this vessel can look after itself more or less. But what it can't do is to stop Russia attacking civilian ships coming in and out of Ukraine's ports.

7:18Those attacks are increasing, and it's a major problem. There's a war out at sea. Russia and Ukraine hitting each other's ships, hundreds of them. Normally, all of them are crowded by vessels. Now you can see how many vessels. All we can see moving are a couple of tugboats, nothing else. No, it's not so. Nothing else. I'm being shown round one of Ukraine's biggest Black Sea ports. For security reasons, I'm not allowed to say which. And I'm going to call my guide, Dmitry. It's not his real name. He's worked here for 20 years. The port is virtually empty. Dmitry's never seen it like this. Officially, ports are not closed, but vessels are not coming.

8:04They are scared of being hit like it was this morning in a disabee. Starting July, they hit trade vessels as a primary target. Why do you think this changed? It's better to ask them, because the main thing, they want to make a blockade of the Ukrainian ports because of the economy. Yeah, this is a really quite strange experience, driving under these enormous gantries and cranes and the pipes and the buckets and everything that you need for a busy port, and none of it, none of it is working. There is a huge problem with people getting killed. Andrei Stavnica is the co-owner and CEO of TIS, one of Ukraine's private port operators.

8:55To my understanding, Paul, Russians are not targeting the vessels. They are targeting people. They're targeting crew. One question that keeps going through my head is, the Russians backed out of the grain deal, basically, what, three years ago? Why is it only now that they have decided to hit shipping? I think this is happening because we hit their oil supply and petrol supply vessels. And right now we're trying to cut off Crimea from any petrol supplies and we've hit quite a few vessels. So that's probably a return gesture. So you think it is revenge? Absolutely.

9:33At the offices of Ukraine's Transport Workers Union, I meet Svetlana, a warehouse shift manager at Odessa's main port. She's limping, fragments of a Russian ballistic missile still stuck in her leg and back following an explosion at the port a year ago. She fights back tears as she talks, and her hands shake as she describes what life is like now. Oh, it's very difficult. A lot of sirens, a lot of drones, a lot of hits. And for morale, it's even more difficult. People are very tense. What can I say? Look at my hands. Back at Dimitro's port, the air raid siren sounds.

10:24We head for the nearest bomb shelter, soon joined by port workers, all scanning their phones for updates. Is that the drone or is that a Ukrainian air force? That's the drone.

10:41Okay. Yeah, okay.

10:46So, you can feel by yourself how does it look working during the war? Yes. on the port. Unfortunately, it became typical for our wife. We're told that two jet-powered drones landed in the area, so we go looking for the scene of one of the explosions. Eventually, several miles from the port, we find 83-year-old Andrei Dudik surveying the shattered ruins of his house and garden. I am 83 years old and I have a habit around this time in the middle of the day after 12 to have a rest. So I went to have some rest on my bed. It's been just five hours since the drone interrupted his afternoon nap. Somehow he escaped without a scratch.

11:40And I was planning what I would do after my lunch, but now I understand what I will be doing. You seem to have a sense of humour about this whole incident.

11:57Yes, this is true. So you think that you are the accidental victim of Russia's attacks on the ports? Exactly. I will not forget this.

12:17That report by the BBC's diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams from Ukraine's Black Sea coast on that dramatic increase in the number of attacks on shipping along the coast and, as we heard just there, on communities around the ports. Incidentally, you can see more of Paul Adams' trip to Odessa if you search on the BBC News YouTube channel. You're listening to News Air from the BBC World Service.

12:57Still to come, why Amanda Knox, the American woman accused of murdering her British flatmate two decades ago, is taking to stand-up comedy to tell her story. I'm not the first person to invent using comedy to talk about traumatic and difficult material. and I think that again I would hope that people will honestly engage with my work and recognize like the deep heart and sensitivity that I bring to it as I tell a very personal story through a comedic lens. More from Amanda Knox in about half an hour. Our main headlines at the moment scientists in the U.S. say they've successfully used artificial intelligence to design completely new viruses and the U.S.

13:39State Department has announced further sanctions against Cuba targeting its armed supplies and high-ranking military officers.

13:54This is James Menendez with NewsHour live from the BBC. During the pandemic in the United States, one man's face, name and voice became very well known. What we really need is to get the test available in venues that people could easily access, it is very likely we will have that within the next week or so. That's Anthony Fauci speaking in 2020, the country's leading expert on infectious diseases who became President Biden's chief medical advisor during COVID. Well, today, a Senate committee voted to hold him in contempt after he refused to answer questions last month about his handling of the pandemic and whether he tried to cover up its origins.

14:36Dr. Fauci invoked his constitutional right to silence. More than 100 times, in fact, arguing that his principal accuser, the Republican Senator Rand Paul, was trying to put him behind bars. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. We have issued letters to a number of former FDA officials to come in for transcribed interviews. You will be getting a letter today asking for a volunteer transcribed interview. So I'd be asking, will you comply or will I have to subpoena you? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

15:17Expecting subpoena. Thank you. And on it went. Well, the BBC's Bernd de Boosman is in Washington, D.C. So what does today's vote mean for Dr. Fauci? Could he be prosecuted? Well, in theory, yes. In normal times, This would then go to a full Senate vote in which 60 votes would be required to refer this to the Justice Department. But at the moment, there's only 53 Republican senators out of the 100. So the man leading this effort, Rand Paul, has said he plans to refer it directly to the Justice Department. Now, it's up to them whether they then pursue prosecution against Dr. Fauci. This would be a misdemeanor crime with fines and potentially jail time if convicted.

16:02But that's extremely rare. And of course, a grand jury would have to be gathered to make that determination. And it's been extremely rare in the past. In the previous administration, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, who's now in the administration, they both were convicted of this same crime. and went to prison for several months. But before that, it had been since the 1980s since that had happened. So that just gives an idea of how rare that would be. It's quite an intriguing case, isn't it? Because I mean, doesn't Dr. Fauci have a right to silence? And also, wasn't he given a preemptive pardon by Joe Biden?

16:47He was. On Joe Biden's very last day in office in January of last year, he gave him a preemptive pardon for anything that took place between 2014 and that date in 2025. So including all the pandemic. Now, what it doesn't cover would be anything that happened after that. So in theory, if he were to be charged with contempt of Congress, that happened after that period. He could also still face state and local charges. And Florida, for one, has already announced that it's doing its own separate investigation into his handling of the pandemic. What about the bigger picture in all this? I mean, how much of a live issue is the pandemic, the way it was handled, and in particular, Dr.

17:27Fauci's handling? I mean, how much of an issue is that for Americans right now? It's still very much an emotive issue for Americans. And I think the way people feel about Dr. Fauci broadly falls along kind of very partisan lines. Now, the initial hearing that took place last week in which he declined to answer questions more than 100 times, that was really looking into the origins of the pandemic. Rand Paul believes that the pandemic originated from a lab leak in Wuhan that he says was funded by the U.S. But also many of the other lawmakers on Capitol Hill, they still very much feel aggrieved by the social distancing, by the closure of businesses and schools, thinking that that has ultimately had a much larger impact than the disease itself.

18:16So it's still something that's very much in the public eye. And President Trump himself has criticized Fauci many times since returning to the White House, even though Fauci no longer has any sort of role in the U.S. public health system. And that was the BBC's Bernda Boosman in Washington, D.C., on that decision by that Senate committee to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of their committee.

18:45while staying with medical matters given how vastly important and beneficial vaccines are and the huge difference that they've made to billions around the world it is remarkable that about half of all vaccines are actually wasted each year either after they become too cold freezing in other words or after becoming too hot now though british scientists say that for the first time they've successfully trialled vaccines that don't need to be refrigerated. Professor Saul Faust is director of the NIHR clinical research facility in the UK, which has been testing this new fridge-free approach. And he's been speaking to NewsHouse Tim Franks.

19:24The small British company that have developed this, the guy who invented it, Bruce Roser, was originally a researcher in Cambridge, and then he moved universities. But he discovered that you could use sugar called trehalose that is the same sugar found in plants in the desert in the southern United States. And the plant used the sugar to completely dehydrate themselves in times of drought, and then when it rains, rehydrate themselves. And what Bruce and his colleague discovered was that they're able to do that for vaccines and medicines. And it's obviously a long time then to develop a process that can be commercialised and convince funding agencies to give you the money to do the trials and so on, because it's such a change in the way of thinking, how to manufacture.

20:09Essentially, it's turning what is initially developed as a liquid into, what, a powder that is then rehydrated? Yeah, exactly. So it takes an existing liquid vaccine that would otherwise have to go in the fridge and simply dehydrates it with a sugar, a naturally occurring sugar, and then it turns into a powder. And then when it gets to the patient or the member of the public who's having their vaccine, wherever they are, simply has to be rehydrated with water for injections that people will see on the sides in their GP or in a hospital. Right, and the vaccine that's been trialled so far, and I realise it's early days, but it's against which disease?

20:43So the vaccine that they've tested so far is against diphtheria and tetanus. So it's an existing vaccine that's used in different places around the world. We did a trial of 60 people, gave 20 people the fridge-free version, 20 people the original vaccine, and 20 people a different tetanus and diphtheria vaccine. and the results were almost identical. The side effect profile and the immune responses for the vaccine and its own version, if you like, the original version that was in the fridge, were almost identical. And then what we call the positive control, the other tetanus diphtheria one, performed the same way.

21:19I'm sure the next step is to expand the trial for this particular vaccine. You've shown that, at least tentatively, that it's safe and effective. Is there a possibility, do you think, of expanding this to vaccines against other diseases or even other types of medicine? Very much so. So it should work against most of the protein vaccine, the adjuvanted vaccines, not yet mRNA, because that's a bit more complicated, and not yet some of the live vaccines. But for the majority of vaccines we use globally, the process would work. And the company is already working with other companies to try and thermostabilise small medicines for oncology, so for cancer and other anti-infective products as well as other vaccines.

22:02So the answer is yes. The potential is, I suppose, limitless. That will help us not just in the UK where we could maybe give people medicines at home or in care homes, but also globally. That was Professor Saul Faust on those vaccines that only need to be kept in a fridge. Just a story that's just happened in the past 10 or 15 minutes. It's my screens above me filled with President Trump in the White House because he's just signed an executive order curbing what's known as birthright tourism. The practice of foreign nationals traveling to the U.S. to give birth on American soil in order to get citizenship.

22:42As I say, President Trump just signed that order in the past few minutes. You're listening to NewsHour. Do stay with us. Lots more coming.

22:53Welcome back to NewsHour. Myanmar's military ruler Ming-ong Hlai has been an international pariah because of the coup that brought him to power five years ago in the civil war that followed. But earlier today, the red carpet was rolled out for him in neighbouring Thailand.

23:16Human rights groups have criticised the visit as legitimising a brutal military regime. However, Thailand says it needs to re-engage with its neighbour to address problems along the border. And that will be regarded by Myanmar as a major diplomatic victory, says our South East Asia correspondent Jonathan Het. This man's been an international pariah. And while he puts up a very defiant front in insisting that Myanmar will go its own way, he craves international respectability. Thailand's not the world's biggest country, but it is a core founder member of ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which Myanmar is a member and which has barred him from any meetings ever since the coup because he made a promise five years ago that he would scale down conflict to negotiate with the opposition and reneged on it immediately.

24:07And other Southeast Asian countries have held the line saying, we cannot fully engage with this guy. They have some relations. We cannot bring him in from the cold until we see significant moves to ease the repression, end the civil war, talk to the opposition. But Thailand has cracked, and there's no doubt about it. The Thais say they're doing what they call calibrated re-engagement, but looking at that ceremony this morning, it didn't look very calibrated to me. He got full honours, and there was a big military ban, there was an honour guard, lots of meetings with top Thai officials, and a speech at the end basically saying full cooperation, business as usual, lots of security cooperation.

24:43They say, look, unlike other ASEAN members, they have a two and a half thousand kilometer border. We've got scam centers. We've got wars going on. We've got refugees coming across transnational crime of all kinds. We have to talk to Myanmar in a way that other Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia, which are a long way away, don't. That's a little disingenuous because most of those problems are happening in areas controlled by warlords or ethnic insurgent armies where the Myanmar government doesn't have much control. So it's not going to be able to do much to solve the problems that Thailand is getting coming over its border.

25:16I think more of it is about the second point they won't acknowledge, but I think it's there. The fact is that Min Hong Line's recovery from near defeat two years ago, when his soldiers were in retreat and insurgent groups were moving forward, that recovery is down to the full support from China. China made a decision two years ago that it did not want to see a collapse of the military regime. It feared chaos and it threw its full weight behind Min Hong Line. And his military has recovered largely as a result of that support. Well, if you've got China backing governments, you know it's not going anywhere.