Ukraine has been demonstrating deeper targeting reach inside Russia, as several key oil sites have come under direct drone attack this week, resulting in significant destruction.
This as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday announced "a new stage in the use of Ukrainian weapons to limit the potential of Russia's war."
Satellite image of Perm attack aftermath, via Reuters.The massive Tuapse complex on Russia's Black Sea coast has been hit no less than three times in under a month, sparking a series of massive fires that in some cases took days for emergency crews to extinguish.
In some cases, targets in the Urals - nearly 1,000 miles away from the Ukraine border - have been hit.
Transneft’s oil pumping and distribution facility in the city of Perm was struck this week, which lies very far into Russian territory.
The Ukraine Security Service (SBU) owned up to it, boasting that the targeted facility is "a strategically important hub of the main oil transportation system." It further declared that "almost all oil storage tanks are on fire."
Amid the fresh Perm attack, Russia had said it downed nearly 100 Ukrainian drones across various regions, while Russia’s presidential envoy to the region, Artem Zhoga, conceded that "The Urals are now within reach, be vigilant."
Putin's office has also denounced these fresh assaults on oil facilities as "terrorist attacks". As for the prior Black Sea export and refining hub attacks of the last month, CNN reviews:
For the third time in 12 days, the Russian Black Sea town of Tuapse woke up Tuesday to apocalyptic scenes.
Thick toxic fumes, and flames rising up from the latest Ukrainian drone attack on the Rosneft-owned Tuapse oil refinery, almost reached the heights of the surrounding Caucasus mountains.
By Thursday morning, authorities said the fire had been extinguished. Fires from the two previous attacks, on April 16 and 20, also took days to put out, with toxic substances pouring down in black rain and blanketing cars and streets in oily grime, leading to what experts are dubbing the worst environmental disaster in the region in years.
Huge fireball at Perm oil site...
Ukrainian drone attacks have struck Perm (about 1,500 km from Ukraine), targeting oil infrastructure. pic.twitter.com/lCXo8Pb1tb
— Clash Report (@clashreport) April 30, 2026Currently, the globe's attention is largely focused on the Iran war and the Hormuz Strait blockade, and with that efforts to reach a political and peace settlement in Ukraine have faded as well. Earlier in the Ukraine war, these major refinery attacks would dominate world headlines, but at the moment they have remained in the background given the constant Iran-related news flow. President Putin has lately communicated to Trump that he's open to a 'Victory Day' ceasefire, a proposal the Kremlin said Washington has backed.
Tyler Durden Sun, 05/03/2026 - 07:35A new poll from the presitigous ifop polling firm shows that a large majority of French citizens believe in a core tenent of the Great Replacement.
Specifically, 60 percent of French people told ifop they believe we are witnessing “a replacement of the French population by non-European populations, mainly from the African continent.”
The poll also found that 66 percent see it as a bad development, compared to 9 percent who see it as a good thing.
Two weeks ago, Marion Maréchal, leader of Identité Libertés, posted to X: “60% of French people think that we are witnessing ‘a replacement of the French population by non-European populations mainly from Africa’ according to @IfopOpinion. To our greatest misfortune, our rulers are among the 40%.”
Analyst Paul Cébille, from the Hexagone Observatory, posted the same line.
💥📊 Chiffre choc passé inaperçu⤵️
🔸60% des Français pensent que l'on assiste à "un remplacement de la population française par des populations non-européennes principalement issues du continent africain."
🔸Et 66% y voient une mauvaise chose, contre 9% une bonne.
IFOP, 2026 pic.twitter.com/61AZT0XfUS
According to the data from IFOP, 7 percent are undecided.
According to the French Directorate General for Foreigners (DGEF), valid French residence permits in 2025 hit an unprecedented level of 4.5 million, an increase of approximately 3 percent, driven primarily by multi-year permits and long-term resident cards, writes Le Journal du Dimanche.
For 2025, one in three permits was issued for family reasons (1.5 million), while one in five was an automatic renewal. New permits also increased to 384,000, a jump of 11 percent, which was partly driven by a 65 percent increase in admissions for humanitarian reasons.
Foreigners with legal status now represent 8.1 percent of France’s adult population, with a high concentration of nationalities from the Maghreb. At the same time, regularizations have declined (-10%, to 28,610), while deportations have increased sharply (+15.7%, to 24,985), reaching their highest level in a decade, notes JDD.
Maréchal more recently posted a telling video of the number of illegals coming to the EU, blasting French leaders for their continuous stance of “above all, let’s do nothing!”
L’immigration illégale dans l’UE de 2008 à 2024. Chaque point représente 100 clandestins.
Réaction des gouvernements français successifs en voyant cela : « surtout ne faisons rien ! ». pic.twitter.com/0G78rKLeIy
Maréchal has also been a vocal critic of Spain’s Socialist PM Pedro Sánchez for his “irresponsible regularization of 500,000 undocumented immigrants,” a figure that some say is likely to skyrocket to over 1.5 million.
“Closing Schengen at the Spanish border is a vital act to deter and protect the French and Europeans,” she wrote. The National Rally’s Jordan Bardella has also sounded the alarm over what many consider an immediate threat to France. Bardella has made it clear that he feels the EU must alter current rules to disallow free movement within Schengen for those holding a resident permit.
Tyler Durden Sun, 05/03/2026 - 07:00