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>> hell, i'm christian fraser. this is "the context." >> ukraine never committed any kind of terrorist attacks. what we are doing, we are defending our homeland, saving ukrainian people from the genocidal war that president putin waged against us. >> interrupting rugs military supplies and material is all part and parcel of the continuing war in ukraine and to stop those supplies coming across the bridge is a major blow for russian forces in crimea. >> another terrorist act was committed on the bridge tonight. civilians were killed. a child was wounded and left without parents.

♪ >> good evening, welcome to the program. if you were watching friday you'd have heard one of our guests talking about ukraine's engine utahity and stealth ability of its technology. that apparent in the early hours of this morning when a bridge was takenout by ukraine. also, reaction to the news that russia is restoring its grain blockade in the u.n.c. and a breakthrough on alzheimer's treatment. two new drugs coming to market that will slow the effects for the disease. all that to come. on sunday, vladimir putin told the russian people that thank

you cranian counter offensive had failed. in the early hours of this morning, an unmanned naval drone was sent and blew up the bridge that connects ukraine with plainland russia. for ukrainians, the bridge inaugurated by vlamir beautifullen in 2018 is a hated symbol of russian occupation -- occupation. for molls cow, it is a vital link in supplying russians. it shows thank you cranian counter offensive is very much alive and a major blow to putin's propaganda. reporter: it's been called russia's most important bridge and it's been attacked again. you can see the roads split and sloping. russian says ukrainian naval

drones struck at night. two people were killed in the explosion. the bridge links the russian mainland with annexed crime enthusiasm it's a vital supply route for russian troops fighting in ukraine. russian investigators called it a activity attack by thank you cranian security services. this was thecene here nine months ago. russia has accused ukraine then of attacking the bridge with sleeves hitten in a loree. ukraine callings this bridge illegal. the 12ile long road and rail bridge is not only strategically important to the kremlin, it's hugely symbolic. slat mere vladimir putin was first to cross when it opened in 2018 as if he wanted to show the world that russia and crimea were now joined forever. so for the second time in less than a year, the bridge that putin build, the symbol of the

annex occasionation with crimea has come under attack. putin says it will continue the war on ukraine. >> but brokered by the u.n., the agreement to keep food prices stable, ukraine was allowed to keep exporting griffin by the black sea. russia says it's not getting what it was propsed and -- promised and will no longer guarantee the shipping. russia says it has nothing to do with the attack on the bridge. christian: we're pleased to have with us mikey kay. he spent 20 years as an r.a.f. assault pilot.

good to have you back on the program. what kind of equipment do you think thank you cranians might have used to blow this bridge up? >> there are rules in rule but when someone is backed in a corner or you have a strategic asset like crimea, which very much is to putin. it gives putin a route to the medicine ontario. and it is hugely strategic for putin. when it comes to advantage, to the rule of law, so to speak, there are ways around that. if ukraine can see an advantage to go around the line of communications, in order to ruth whatever is going on from a russian war perspective, i

think ukraine will see that as fair game. as to your question. what was used to blow the bridge? anything could be as long as it's got explosive c-4 type qualities. i think the question is not necessarily what material was used but how it was done by thank you cranians. how much was used, what is the intent of thank you cranians in order to do this and you'll have to forgive me here. do we have empirical evidence to suggest that thank you cranians blew the bridge up? they admitted to that. that's the bit i'm a little bit hazy on at the moment. christian: as per usual, the ukrainians are maintaining their ambiguitiy yes. -- ambiguity about this. tit's shaped a little bit like

the isle of wite. not easy to supply by ship. >> , no when there are myriads of criticize missile attacks from russia and one of those areas where they were launched from was the black sea athlete, crimea and obviously as these missiles are going in they're going to have to be resupplied in some way and that critical resupply of communication will be across that bridge unless there's an alternate, potentially via sea. but when you start adding sea lines of communication to the mix, that's a difficult line and adds a lot of time. >> in the counter offensive, they've told us they've retaken about seven square miles in the

past week. that's in the east and south of the country and that means in total, they've reclaimed about 81 square miles. do you think an attack like this, taking out one lane of the bridge, will put further pressure on that and perhaps help them gain some further impetus in that counter attack offensive? >> 100%. i'm not zelensky and i'm not in zelensky's mind but if you look at it from a campaign planning, war-perspective, anything can be delay resupply, anything that can add tensions on the ability for russia to continue its objectives. what those objectives are is regaining some terrain but the numbers you're talking about in terms of how much terrain has been taken back by russia. you also have to look at how many lives is that costing, how long is it taking and how much

capability is it requiring russia in order to make these what i would call very lited gains. because at some point, the logistical resupply issue is the key but there was a famous russian general who once said if you don't have a logistics supply the war effort will run dry very, very quickly and that is what we're seeing and this is always been the problem in russia's problem to allow a prolonged counter offensive. in military parlance we call that central gravity analysis and you look at the critical requirements and capabilities and you look at what can you touch, what can you put a bomb on. doesn't have to be necessarily a bomb. it can be an ideology or anything but what is the thing you have to attack in order to bring the enemy to its kne and

i think the bridge would have been high up from on the list to try to preve russia from reclaiming territory and counter offensive. christian: so an outside advantage, blowing up one line of the bridge but also hugely important to morale. vladimir putin saying last week the counter offensive is floundering but then taking out the bridge. that is russian problem grande. it is hugely important to the morale not just to the soldiers but to the ukrainian people. >> one of the things we look at is critical vulnerabilities and i would be flabbergasted if, in the russian campaign planning strategic process they wouldn't have identified the bridge as one of their critical vulnerabilities and therefore what that would then lead to you do is how do you defend that

bridge at all costs from being compromised because of the significant compromise it will have if the ukrainians manage to do something to the lines of communication. this is all about getting ahead of the game, understanding what your vulnerability all and how you defend those at all costs and understanding the contingency plans if that critical vulnerability is compromised and now it's happened. i think it will be interesting to see howe russia deals with that. you mentioned using the sea line of communication, which is one contingency plan but there are only so many contingency plans you can have until there's a culminating point. and if there is a culminating point, why were russia leaving that bridge open to

vulnerability and how could they have prevented ukraine from taking such an action? >> in the long term it may prove to be a crucially important moment. good to have you on the program. thank you forcoming on. that attack on the bridge may have influenced russian breaking on the u.n. broken grain deal. on friday, the turkish president said he was optimistic the deal would be renewed again. today, though, a spokesperson for the russian foreign mini city said the deal has de facto ended hours before it was due to expire. which has imp my occasions for all of us. that deal has enabled ukraine to export more than 32 millions on the of -- tons of grain. maze, cheat, and barley are all crucially important to the ukrainian economy. and since then when the blockade was lifted world prices were dropped 20%.

u.n. sectary guterres strongly criticized russian's decision. >> it will strike a blow to people in need everywhere but if of it will not stop our efforts to facilitate unimpeded access to global markets from both ukraine and the russian federation. i particularly want to recognize the efforts of the government of turkey in these regards. looking ahead, our goal must be to advancing global food security and global food price stability. this will remain the focus of my effort, taking into account the rise in human suffering that will inevitably result from today's decision. christian: dr. peter alexander is a professor in global fheoo d

bury. thank you for -- ed inburgh. could the deal be saved had this bridge not been blown up? >> it's hard to say. their request to have the russian agricultural bank recommitted to the swiss banking system so the russian exports of food and fertilizers can be less impeded. obviously the sanctions, e.u. and u.s. don't include food and fertilizer but russia claims those exports have been still curtailed in someoeenen to reestablish fertilizer exports through a pipeline which goes across thank you crane.

that seems highly unlikely. christian: we have talked on the program before about the drag on the russian economy. the fact that they can't get the swiss payments through the banks. in a way we need that russian fertilizer. the world does because without it we can't replace the grain that is now blockaded. >> both fertilizer and food exports from russia and ukraine are important. you're right to putt the emphasis a little bit on fertilizer. we quite often hear a statistic like 29%f wheat export come from rauscha and ukraine combined or did in 2021. on the other hand, most wheat,

for example, is produced and consumed in the same country domestically. so a fairer representation of the expansion of russia and ukraine in this food markets for wheat would be looking at the sort of supply for the rest of the world and in those terms it's about 7.5% from russia/ukraine combined in terms of white. something on the order of a bit less than 3% from ukraine. still we're talking tense of millions of tons. it's still significant but i think it does sometimes get overstated in terms of the significance if we look at it purely in terms of the percentages in terms of internally traded commodities. christian: the futures prices were up today. that had big implications.

do you think the global grain market will be the same as it was back in 2022? >> i don't think so. prices are up in the very short period of time. prices that come today are more akin to the levels of the beginning of 2021 and as you mentioned in the introduction, well off the peaks they were kind of a year ago in the middle of last year when they were at their highest. and i think one of the reasons for that is that the energy and fertilizer markets have largely stabilized so inner begannic nitrogen fertilizer has been using natural gas and we know about the dramatic increases in natural grass prices and that fed through to fertilizer prices and that's come back to much more normal levels now and if

farmers are then able to use fertilizers in the way they had done previously, we wouldn't expect to see any sort of reduction from harvests and productivity and manufacture with the -- therefore with the supply in that market, don't think we're going to see anything like the resumption of the food prices we saw last year. christian: good to have you to come on. thank you very much. ouhear u.k., this is "bbc news." some other stories making headlines here in the u.k. the train drivers union has announced a third ban on working overtime. drivers will refuse to work overtime from six days from monday, july 31st. as the union begins its secon overtime ban in three weeks in a execute about paid jobs and the conditions. people have con determined the

government's compensation scheme. survivors against terror support groups, more than half of those who responded says the process was unen fair. t unfair. universities in england will be forced to limit the news of students they recruit. the prime minister says he wants to crank down on what he calls rip-off degrees that don't lead to graduate jobs. labor has described the plan as an attack on young people's aspirations. you are watching "bbc news." a period of intense heat is sweeping southern europe with extreme conditions expected to continue well into the week. local records are likely to be broken in italy, greece, turkey and the balkans. in fact, the italian authorities

have issued red alerts for 16 cities. the highest temperatures was 48.degrees in august in sicily in august 2021. we could be somewhere near that this week in sardinea where they're forecasting 47 degrees sell -- celsius. in sprain, a wildfire on the island of la palma has forced the evacuation of 4,000 people. there are also heat waves from north america, china, and japan, which we'll talk about in the next hour. but we're going to focus on europe. reporter: gale force winds flamed the fires of why would fiers just south of athens. several seaside villages were cleared as planes battled to

contain the flames. and a second why would fire -- wildfire threatennened to engulf a resort in southern france. temperatures in southern -- temps in southern spain are up to 10 degrees celsius hotter than normal. it means it is almost impossible to work outside. >> it's been extremely hot outside. i'm waking up at 5:00 just to get things done by 9:00. it's just harsh. olroin csawnnc bary iunnland. r hot animals mean more work for colin. they need to be hosed down to keep them cool. >> you have sweat all over you. >> and it's too hot for the tourists, too, his main source of donations so colin has had to close the place. meanwhile, the local river has run dry and a trible harvest

thanks tot heath and lack of rain means he's finding it hard to get hay for the horses. at the same time the cash is running out. a high pressure system held in place by the rapidly moved -- moving air high in the atmosphere known as the jet stream is funneling heat up from the deserts of north africa and across southern europe. the climate of southern europe is changing. it's becoming more and more like theahara desert. it's slope creeping into europe, one man told me. >> humans are 100% to blame for the global trend in high temperatures that we are seeing so all of the observed global warming is because of our burning of fossil fuels. >> we're seeing record-breaking temperatures in asia this summer too.

china recorded itself highest temperatures ever yesterday. 52.2 degrees celsius in the northwest. in the u.s., a heat dome over the southwest has left defense of millions of people under extreme heat warnings. death valley in california hit 53.celsius on sunday, not far off the all time global temperature record of 56.7 degrees recorded in july 1913. climate change means southern spain, like the rest of the world, is only going to get hotter. christian: let's go to fred rico, a meteorologist from the environmental protection agency. thank you very much for being with us. give us a quick impression of what the situation is in italy

and how high these temperatures have gone. >> yeah, the situation is quite bad in terms of temperatures. we have -- we are experiencing now what we call an extreme heat wave. again, with close to breaking many records and tomorrow already kind of the worst day in which probably many records including probably rome will be beaten. >> it's interesting, isn't it? i've just come back from italy and people were telling me that june was a bit cooler and more temperate but when i got back here i read that it was the second hottest june since records began in the 19th century. we're breaking records everywhere. >> june was the warmest month globally. of course, there have been

diskses in different parts of the globe. in rain. this is the other side of global warping. you have extremes and more heavy, intense precipitation but also at the same time long periods of droughts and very high temperature. so from july, the situation changes radically in italy and the eye pressure from the subtropical belt set up and this is producing higher and higher temperatures and not only this year but basically since the beginning of this century. since the beginning of 2000. >> we're out o time. thank you very

narrator: funding for this presentation of this program is provided by... narrator: financial services firm, raymond james. narrator: funding s also provided by, the freeman foundation. and by judy and peter blum kovler foundation; pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ narrator: funding for this presentation of this program is provided by... woman: architect. bee keeper. mentor. a raymond james financial advisor tailors advice to help you live your life. life well planned. narrator: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation. and by judy and peter blum kovler fodation; pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. announcer: and now, "bbc news".