BBC reports on Ukraine's battle with Russia in the Black Sea

**Oliver Conway** (0:00)
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 15 Hours GMT on Thursday the 6th of August. Today, we have an exclusive report on Ukraine's battle with Russia in the Black Sea. Myanmar's military ruler emerges from diplomatic isolation with a visit to Thailand. And after a four-year break, Indonesia resumes exports of endangered monkeys to the US for lab testing.
Also in the podcast, why wildfires can give us migraines and...

**Betty Bromwich** (0:37)
I just get bored with life otherwise. When you get old, you can't go here. You can't do this. You can't drive. You can't see. I can't see very well.
And I get a bit frustrated. So I want to do the things that I can do.

**Oliver Conway** (0:51)
The 97-year-old wing walker who's just broken her own record.
For months, Ukraine has been hitting Russia's energy sites, warehouses and supply routes to try to drive home to people there the true cost of President Putin's invasion. In the latest attack, Ukraine struck two Russian oil refineries, sending plumes of black smoke into the atmosphere. But along with the air war, Russia and Ukraine have also been battling it out at sea. Ukrainian officials say a Russian strike on the Black Sea port of Odessa overnight damaged a Guinea-Bissau-flagged ship loaded with wheat. One crew member was killed. Our diplomatic correspondent, Paul Adams, has been given rare access to the Ukrainian Navy.

**Paul Adams** (1:39)
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. Those 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.

**Dmitro** (2:27)
Normally, all of them are crowd by vessels. Now you can see how many vessels.

**Paul Adams** (2:33)
All we can see moving are a couple of tugboats, nothing else.

**Dmitro** (2:36)
Tugboats, nothing else.

**Paul Adams** (2:40)
I'm being shown around 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, Dmitro. It's not his real name. He's worked here for 20 years. The port is virtually empty.
Dmitro's never seen it like this.

**Dmitro** (2:56)
Officially, ports are not closed, but vessels are not coming. They are scared of being hit like it was this morning in Addis Ababa. Starting July, they hit trade vessels as a primary target.

**Paul Adams** (3:12)
Why do you think this changed?

**Richard Kugoi** (3:14)
It's better to ask them.

**Dmitro** (3:15)
Because the main thing, they want to make a blockade of the Ukrainian ports because of the economy.

**Paul Adams** (3:24)
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.
At 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.

**Svetlana** (4:07)
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.

**Paul Adams** (4:28)
Back at Dmitro's port, the air raid siren sounds.
We 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. Yeah, okay.

**Dmitro** (4:59)
So, we can feel by yourself, how does it look working during the war?

**Paul Adams** (5:06)
Yes.

**Dmitro** (5:06)
On the port, unfortunately, it became typical for our life.

**Paul Adams** (5:15)
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. Somehow, he escaped without a scratch.