Kyiv attacked by Russian ballistic missiles

**Charlotte Gallagher** (0:00)
This is The Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.
I'm Charlotte Gallagher, and in the early hours of Wednesday, the 5th of August, these are our main stories. How a Russian drone chased a man down a Ukrainian street in what's been called a human safari. We'll also get the latest on heavy attacks in Kiev overnight. Washington claims the Strait of Hormuz could soon be fully reopened. But we've heard this multiple times throughout the conflict. So what's really going on and?

**Paula Kahumbu** (0:31)
I've been working with elephants for more than 30 years. I have never seen elephants dying in numbers like this. And some information has been released to the public, but it's not adding up.

**Charlotte Gallagher** (0:41)
Why are elephants dying in Kenya?
Also in this podcast, a growing diplomatic spat as the US State Department revokes the visa of Brazil's ambassador to Washington and why Atari games have gone from bust to boom. We start in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, which was bombarded by Russian ballistic missiles early on Wednesday. As we record this podcast, the city authorities are saying at least one person was killed and more than 20 wounded. Vitaly Shevchenko from BBC Monitoring gave me this update.

**Vitaly Shevchenko** (1:21)
Immediately after midnight local time, there were about 20 explosions and they were followed by reports of numerous fires across the Ukrainian capital. The mayor Vitaly Shevchenko says that an office building was hit, a number of warehouses, one private house, which means it's a smallish kind of building, collapsed because of the attack and there were fears that people were buried under the rubble. The local authorities also say that two people were pulled out alive from a collapsed warehouse and there are also reports of a DIY building, supermarket completely destroyed in the Ukrainian capital. Now, importantly, just like several previous attacks on the Ukrainian capital, this one also came without warning, which means that residents of the Ukrainian capital had no time to take cover in proper shelters or in the Ukrainian capital's metro system.

**Charlotte Gallagher** (2:26)
Vitaly Shevchenko with the situation in Kiev, but we're going to talk now about another attack that's highlighted the use of drones in the war.
President Zelensky shared a video on social media, which showed a Russian drone chasing a street vendor in the Kherson region of Ukraine. Our diplomatic correspondent, Paul Adams, who's in Kiev now, told me more about what happened.

**Paul Adams** (2:48)
This is one of the most graphic examples that we've seen so far of what the Ukrainians call Russia's human safari. Now, that's when civilians, not soldiers, but civilians are hunted down and attacked by drones being piloted from nearby Russian positions. And it really is pretty disturbing. You see a man called Yuri. He's a vegetable seller in Kherson. He's setting up his stall when a drone arrives and starts pursuing him. It literally chases him around his van.
He tries to get away. The drone won't let him go. And eventually it drops onto him and explodes. Now, amazingly, he survived with shrapnel wounds and concussion. His car is damaged as well. So he's pretty lucky to escape with his life.

**Charlotte Gallagher** (3:33)
And it sounds like these drones are so sophisticated if they can literally chase someone on a residential street.

**Paul Adams** (3:39)
Actually, in a funny kind of way, they're not that sophisticated because anyone who's ever flown a recreational drone will know that you can pilot the thing. You've got a little camera, you can see where it's going. And that's essentially what happens. Someone sitting across the river from Kherson in Russian positions is flying this thing. He's seeing where he's going. The drone has a small explosive device attached to the bottom of it, and he can release that at any point. And I should say that this is by far, you know, not the first time we have seen this tactic, particularly in Kherson. Ever since the Russians were forced to withdraw from the city at the end of 2022, the people of that city have faced this threat throughout the subsequent years. And in fact, last year, the UN documented the tactic, saying that Russian forces, quote, recurrently killed and injured civilians using drones. President Zelensky, not surprisingly, has chosen to highlight this particular video. And he says that the world needs to see that, in his words, Russian soldiers enjoy killing and tormenting people.

**Charlotte Gallagher** (4:38)
How much of an impact have drones had on this war?

**Paul Adams** (4:42)
An absolutely colossal impact. Everything from these small first-person drones, as they're called, with crude explosives attached to them, to the kind of long-range drones that Ukraine is using now every day to attack targets inside Russia. And of course, Russia is also using drones, but these are much bigger. The Russians used the Shahed drones, which were originally supplied by Iran. Some of them now are jet-powered. They can travel for hundreds of kilometers.