Inside Ukraine's 3,000km drone strike that blew apart Putin's Arctic gas hub

As we film this episode, details are emerging of a double drone strike on two chemical plants in the city of Berezники in Perm Krai.

That is 1,000 miles inside Russian territory.

These are plants that Ukraine says both make ingredients that support Russia's military industrial complex: nitrogen and ammonia, things used for fertilizer, also used for explosives.

The two plants are the Metafrax Chemicals Plant and an Azot branch of Uralchem.

Now, what's interesting is who owns these.

It appears that the strikes have hit a water purification system.

The owners of these plants both have very close links to President Putin.

Metafrax is controlled by a company, Russchem.

Russchem is controlled by a man called Arkady Rotenberg, sanctioned by the United Kingdom.

Uh, his brother, Boris, also sanctioned, but Arkady, interesting because he, for many years, was Vladimir Putin's judo partner, who simultaneously made a fortune in petrochemicals.

Uralchem, owned by Dmitry Mazepin.

He is, according to Swiss and European sanctions, in the closest circle of Vladimir Putin, and those sanctions came to that conclusion, I'm sure, based on various, uh, perhaps secret intelligence reports, but also because, uh, Mazepin was at a meeting that took place in the Kremlin on the 24th of February 2022, the day of the invasion, in which President Putin discussed how these companies were going to cope and respond to sanctions.

Details are also emerging as we film this episode of another strike on the Saratov Oil Refinery.

That's 400 miles inside Russian territory.

That refines about seven million tons of gas per year, about 2% of the Russian total.

And 300 miles inside Russia, a chemical plant in Volgograd, uh, which Ukraine says makes, um, combustion catalysts.

Again, ingredients for explosives.

But let's talk about the big one, the really big one.

Ukraine claims to have set a record for the longest ever drone strike, some 2,000 miles inside Russian territory.

It's certainly the longest drone strike since Russia's full-scale invasion.

It may well be the longest drone strike in the history of conflict.

They targeted gas plants in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous region in northwestern Siberia.

This is right in the middle at the top of Russia, sort of on the edge of the Arctic.

The first plant they targeted was the Novy Urengoy gas plant and also the Purovsky gas plant targeted in the same strike.

Together, according to Ukraine and indeed open source reporting, these plants combined can produce or process 23 million tons of gas condensate.