Ukraine reels from Russia’s missile onslaught

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Today, news that a far-right party had come top in a state election in Germany

for the first time since the Second World War has caused alarm in Berlin.

We find out why people voted for them.

In China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases,

we hear about a new concept being pioneered.

Sponge cities.

Could this be the answer to catastrophic flooding?

In Tonga,

a regional summit with a difference,

with colour-themed events replacing ubiquitous dark suits,

global powers jostled for influence at the Pacific Islands Forum.

The 1943 Bengal famine killed more than 3 million in East India.

We hear from one of the survivors in the jungle heartland.

But first, it was the deadliest single attack on a Ukrainian town or city this year.

On Tuesday, a Russian missile struck.

A strike on the central city of Poltava killed 51 people and injured more than 300.

The missiles hit a military training academy.

Many living nearby were unable to scramble to bomb shelters in time

as the ballistic missiles descended on Poltava,

and the attack underscored the limits of Ukraine's air defence.

This and another in Lviv, killing seven,

has punctured the more buoyant mood in the country in recent weeks,

following Ukraine's incursion into the Russian border regions

and Independence Day celebrations.

And it served as a reminder that the threat is ever-present.

Nick Beek has been in Poltava.

We heard it before we saw it.

The throaty buzz of the military killer drone high above us,

hovering and taking a chilling interest in the exact part of town we'd arrived in.

We were seconds away from going on air for a TV report,

as this airborne shark,

began to circle.

Then, to our collective relief,

the drone turned and skulked away towards the horizon.

It had seen enough, for now at least.

We didn't hang around to find out if it would come back for a second look.

But overnight, while in our beds,

the familiar lawnmower-like clatter returned,

the din of this lethal eye in the sky even closer.

We all instinctively felt it was time to leave this town for good.

We picked the most remote rural of spots,

to sleep in the next night.

The occasional meowing of a litter of riverside kittens,

the loudest intrusion on the tranquillity.

Or so we thought.

It was my colleagues who heard the commotion first.

The breathless rattle of a machine gun desperately expelling its bullets

towards the aerial bomb that was ploughing through the sky.

Another drone destined for another Ukrainian target.

We may have sought a place that felt far from civilisation,

but it seemed we were never far from Moscow's air assault

in the whole week we were travelling through the north-eastern regions bordering Russia.

For Ukrainians, it's been like this the past two and a half years.

Deadly flying swords of Damocles hanging over their heads day and night.

Not just drones, but ballistic and cruise missiles.

And the current phase of this ongoing onslaught is particularly intense.

Because it's a time when President Putin

appears to be exacting revenge for the incursion into Russia.

It has generated a tumult

It has generated a tumultuous rollercoaster of emotions for Ukraine in the past few weeks.

First, there was the huge morale boost of the Kursk incursion, Kiev on the attack.

The cross-border operation turbocharged Independence Day across Ukraine

and stirred a common sentiment that Russia was getting a taste of its own medicine.

As 19-year-old Yulia told me at a rooftop concert celebrating Ukrainian music,

it's like a miracle for us.

We're so happy about it.

Then, she added quietly,

that most Ukrainians wanted to see Russians dead.

I know this sounds awful, she went on.

I understand that it's not okay for humans to say this,

but we do hate them and we can't think in any other way because they want to kill us.

This was already two and a half weeks after the incursion.

And apart from promising coldly there would be punishment for Ukraine,

President Putin had practically ignored, at least in public,

this gaping wound inflicted in Russia's side.

It may have been, geographically, a tiny paper cut on his vast country,

but the symbolism and significance cut deep.

The biggest military operation onto Russian land since the Second World War.

Then came the response.

An unprecedented hail of missiles and drones, more than 200 in one night,

striking targets across Ukraine.

More was on the way.

The military academy in the central city of Poltava

is one of those places that everyone living there knows about.

A reference point for directions, next to the grass-covered railway line,

and a beacon of pride that it housed one of the top training facilities in the country.

But when we arrived, dust clouds hung over it,

as firefighters began to clear thousands of tons of debris from the devastated site.

Two Russian ballistic missiles had torn into the complex just after nine in the morning,

as lessons for the cadets were getting underway.

I've seen the most horrific things today,

said a bewildered 26-year-old Makita,

when we met him at a makeshift tent set up to offer food and water to the emergency services.

He had enrolled at the academy only two weeks earlier.

Physically, I'm OK, he said,

pointing to the bandaged cuts on his arm and leg from all the flying glass.

But mentally, no.

I think lots of people will need help to cope with what happened today.

President Zelenskyy says the recent bombardment of Ukraine shows yet again

why his Western allies need to do more to help Ukraine.

He says they need to do so much more to protect his country,

to help strike Russia harder,

and ultimately to bring the Russian president to the negotiating table.

But these Western allies remain nervous of sparking a wider conflict.

And President Putin says there's nothing to talk about.

And so the sirens keep sounding,

the drones keep flying,

and the missiles keep hitting.

And Ukrainians run to the nearest shelter,

praying they'll make it in time.

Nick Beek.

Last weekend, the far-right party Alternative for Germany, AFD,

won the most votes in a state election in the East German state of Thuringia,

and came a close second in the state of Saxony.

The AFD leader in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, is a highly controversial figure.

He's notorious for what are seen as inflammatory comments,

and has twice been fined for using a Nazi slogan.

He's so hard-lined, some in his own party have even,

tried to expel him.

With federal elections only a year away,

the outcome has prompted much soul-searching in Germany.

According to a survey for the public broadcaster ZDF,

36% of under-30s in Thuringia voted for the AFD,

far more than any other party,

with the biggest issue for all voters there being immigration.

Jessica Parker has spent most of the week in Thuringia,

and she spoke to some of the people,

who voted for them.

A band strikes up in a square in Jena,

Thuringia's second city.

The music is upbeat, but the mood is pretty flat.

It's a rally for Chancellor Olaf Scholz's struggling Social Democratic Party

in the week before polling day.

A young SPD activist, Levi, mans a campaign stand.

Is part of the problem, I ask him,

that Chancellor Scholz just isn't a good communicator?

Levi doesn't see it that way.

You don't become leader of Germany if you can't communicate,

says the 27-year-old before he adds that

when Olaf Scholz was elected,

there was a sense that people wanted a calm leader,

an anti-populist,

a successor in that sense to the long-serving Angela Merkel.

But things have changed since then,

and with a more polarised politics,

perhaps Olaf Scholz, Levi fears,

is out of step with the times.

The Chancellor takes to the stage.

There's polite applause,

from a seated audience,

and fierce boos from the fringes.

A small group shout things like

traitor and warmonger,

a reference to German weapons aid to Ukraine.

On to the town of Schmalkhalden,

about an hour and a half's drive away from Jena.

Church bells chime in the market square.

People are sipping beers in the shade.

Two female sausage sellers echo something I've heard a lot recently.

They tell me people from the former Communist East

have long felt looked down on by the rest,

that they're fed up with wage inequalities,

a lack of industry,

and they'll be voting for Alternative für Deutschland.

Just across the square,

AFD activists are wrapping things up for the day.

One of them, Birgit,

also talks about how East German society

was pushed aside when the Berlin Wall fell,

and that while there were bad things about the Communist East,

there are also things worth keeping, she says,

like the standard of education.

You can constantly see where the East begins,

and where the West begins,

declares 16-year-old Konstantin.

I meet him in the town of Meiningen.

Konstantin, a trainee car mechanic,

is firm that once he can actually vote,

the AFD will get his backing,

as other tried and tested parties have failed the East, he says.

He's particularly concerned about the levels of immigration,

a signature issue for the AFD.

Numerous people have told me they no longer feel safe

after the recent knife attack

in the western city of Zollingen.

The man arrested was a Syrian asylum seeker

with suspected ties to the Islamic State group.

The horrific attack has fuelled

an already fraught migration debate in Germany.

Other passers-by mill around the AFD stand in Meiningen.

A small group of young men,

who tell me they came to Germany from Syria,

stroll past a couple of times.

At one point, they casually look at the literature.

I ask them if they're thinking about supporting the party.

No, they say no.

They'd deport us.

The AFD remains a very controversial force in Germany,

as it has over the years moved further and further to the right.

The Thuringia branch of the party is classed

as a right-wing extremist by domestic intelligence.

Its leader here is Björn Hooker,

a former history teacher who has criticised

the Holocaust memorial in Berlin as a memorial of shame

and called for a 180-degree turn

in the country's politics of remembrance.

I ask almost every AFD supporter I meet

about persistent allegations of extremism,

and the answer is almost always exactly the same.

It's a smear, they say,

concocted by the mainstream media,

the establishment, even the state itself.

As the results last Sunday rippled through a crowd

at an anti-AFD rally in Erfurt, Thuringia's capital,

I saw some people cry.

For those vehemently opposed to the AFD,

its success in coming first in Thuringia,

and second in Saxony, is devastating.

Yet this must all be put in perspective.

These are regional, not national elections,

and the AFD likely won't take power

because no-one will work with them.

Clunky coalition building is a necessary step to power

in the nation's electoral system.

It is also here, in the east, where the party is strongest.

Nationally, they've slipped in the polls

since a high point in January,

although they do consistently sit second,

some way behind the conservative CDU.

Nonetheless, a year out from the federal elections,

the AFD has momentum.

Germany's traditional parties of power

are casting a nervous eye to the east,

and the country's reputation

for relatively calm consensus politics is under strain.

Jessica Parker.

Over recent years, several cities across China

have been devastated by heavy rainfall.

And a super typhoon there this weekend

is yet another warning

for China's leaders

that the country is vulnerable

to extreme weather events.

More than 600 cities in China

are liable to flooding and waterlogging

because the infrastructure cannot cope

with such heavy storms.

Laura Bicker went to visit a pioneering architect

who may have come up with a solution

in the form of sponge cities,

which use nature-based solutions

to better distribute water

and improve drainage and soil.

But bringing these designs into fruition

is proving to be rather more complicated.

Professor Yu Conglian believes

he was hand-picked by God

to save lives from flash floods in China.

In his office in Beijing,

he tells me how he first came up with the idea

for so-called sponge cities

as he walks me through a corridor

of his landscape and architect firm,

which has become one of the largest in the world.

Every step of the way,

there are glossy photos

of newly planted wetlands

edged with acres of bamboo

and native grasses

above ponds full of fish.

These are his successes, he says.

Most are in the southern

and coastal areas of the country.

This is his way of returning China

to its ancient roots,

a time when he believes

the country did not fight with water,

it adapted to it.

The professor grew up in a rural province

in the East China Sea,

his hometown had layers

of ancient rice terraces

that would flood in the monsoon season.

He went on to study landscape

and design in Beijing and the US.

When he finally returned to China,

he was horrified by what he found.

His hometown, like many others across the country,

was covered in concrete.

This was China's period

of mass movement and urbanisation,

a time when tens of millions

left the countryside for work in cities.

China needed homes and factories

and it needed them quickly.

So it paved over green spaces

and rice paddies

with streets full of towering skyscrapers

around hastily built factories.

Few thought about what would happen

when the annual monsoon rains

would hit this concrete,

flooding subway systems

and turning streets into rivers.

Around 70% of Chinese people,

that's more than 800 million people,

are now living in the city.

Water will always win,

says Professor Yu.

You need to give water space

or it will destroy you overnight.

He responded with a new concept.

The sponge city was inspired

by ancient rice farming techniques

he watched growing up.

Usually floodwater is managed

by building pipes or drains

to take the water away

and reinforcing riverbanks with concrete

to prevent them from overflowing.

But in the case of the monsoon,

in the case of sponge cities,

wetland parks built into them

soak up the rainfall.

So instead of building a wall

to keep water out,

water comes into the city

and is absorbed,

becoming a park feature.

His idea became a reality

after he wrote to the Chinese premier in 2006.

President Xi has also endorsed the concept

and pledged that by 2030,

80% of China's municipal areas

must have sponge city elements.

We went to see one for ourselves

and headed to one of the country's

first ever sponge cities,

the city of Zhengzhou,

southwest of Beijing.

Ten million people live in what seems

like a typical Chinese city.

And yet when you travel to the outskirts,

there is a huge wetland park

that looks very similar to the photos

I'd seen in Professor Yu's office.

But three years ago,

this city also suffered a horrendous flood.

More than 300 people died,

when flash floods turned rivers into rapids.

The water flowed into a metro station,

trapping commuters as water rose up to their necks.

Flooding has become an annual event here.

In July, flash floods overwhelmed

dozens of local businesses.

Elsewhere, we find a river

which overflowed in July,

reinforced with concrete,

exactly the kind of measure

Professor Yu believes will not work.

So what went wrong in Zhengzhou?

It appears there is a gap

between the city and the city.

It appears there is a gap

between the city and the city.

Between Yu's design

and the implementation.

Professor Yu admits many projects across China

could have been done better.

But he says change has to come

from the grassroots, city planners

and designers, not just

from top government officials.

He's worked in more than 200

cities in China and now he's helping

flood-prone cities around the world.

One study of the city of Wuhan

found its projects had not only

reduced flooding, but having

green space rather than concrete

lowered temperatures significantly.

Later in his office, over tea,

the professor told us he believes

many contractors are just out

to make money.

It's rare for Chinese professors

to admit something is going wrong.

But he was also clear that his company

was working to prevent more flooding

in Zhengzhou and that more improvements

were on the way.

He believes China could show the world

how to deal with one of the biggest

problems facing this planet.

Laura Baker,

America.

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Last week, leaders

from around the Pacific gathered

in the small island nation of Tonga

to discuss key issues they're

facing, from security to the

environment.

The Pacific Islands Forum is the

region's biggest meeting of the year

and topping the list of concerns was

climate change. But on the

agenda, there were plenty of other topics

and controversies, as Katie

Watson found.

Tonga's capital, Nuku'alofa,

doesn't exactly feel like a city.

It's got some small guest houses

and cafes. The international

port looks more like a fishing harbour

with boats bobbing in the water.

Along the seafront,

there's an understated royal palace,

a large wooden residence painted

white with a bright red roof.

And while it's very pretty,

it's not particularly grand.

But sleepy Nuku'alofa

was transformed last week,

as it filled up with politicians and

diplomats, community organisations

and business people.

Global leaders donned matching tropical

island shirts, giving more of

a package holiday destination vibe

than a diplomatic tête-à-tête.

But then, the flashy police

escorts gave the game away.

A convoy would speed through the streets,

police sirens blaring.

On the bonnets of the cars,

small flags identified the foreign

delegations driving by.

I saw the Chinese and the Taiwanese,

as well as the Union Jack.

The US was in town too.

None of these powers

is actually a member of the Pacific

Islands Forum, but still,

they wanted to be a part of the summit.

The Pacific is gaining a lot

of global attention. Diplomats,

kept telling me there's no better time

to be in the region.

There are big topics to be discussed.

Sea levels are rising faster than ever.

And these small island nations need help

and need big emitters to stop burning

fossil fuels.

Security is probably the biggest talking

point. While Australia is still the

largest regional donor to the Pacific

Islands, China is increasing its footprint.

The auditorium that was housing the

forum was built by the Chinese.

There were also lots of Chinese,

shop and business owners.

Tonga is now hugely indebted to China

and is finding it impossible to pay them back.

It's the same story across the region.

China's also negotiated a policing pact

in Solomon Islands and its push into the

Pacific is stressing out rivals like

Australia and the US.

The growing geopolitical rivalry was all too clear

when last week, Australia announced a Pacific

led policing initiative.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was filmed afterwards,

calling it a cracker of a deal in a conversation

with the US Deputy Secretary of State,

sounding matey with the US and shutting out

China, which was seen as a win for Australia

and its allies.

But Mr Albanese's comments weren't the only

controversy last week.

In the final communique issued by leaders,

there was a reference to allowing Taiwan to

play a role in forum leaders meetings.

The Chinese ambassador to the Pacific was

apparently furious.

The communique was duly updated.

Removing the Taiwan reference, prompting

accusations that leaders had given in to pressure

from China.

The forum made out it was an administrative error.

What all these arguments show is a very real

international competition that's hotting up in

the Pacific.

But while superpowers battle for influence,

it's more of an existential matter for the

Pacific Island nations.

And leaders here are pragmatic.

They want help from the countries or

organisations that offer them the best deals,

or better yet, the best deals.

But what's the point?

What's the point?

Or the quickest support.

One community in Tonga has been waiting seven

years for a much needed seawall to protect it

from rising sea levels.

International funding institutions have held up

the process.

So it's understandable that nations look to

countries that will help them access funds more easily.

Last week it was announced that Tonga would be

the headquarters of the Pacific Resilience

Facility, the first regionally-led climate

and disaster resilience financing fund.

There's great pride in this fund.

and big expectations that this will improve the livelihoods of many.

They aim to raise $1.5 billion,

but so far donors, including Australia, have contributed just $137 million.

I think it's harder to get funding for climate change, Paulson Panappa told me.

He's Tuvalu's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Labour and Trade.

I'd asked him if he felt money was more forthcoming,

if it was about security and warding off China.

He was being diplomatic. I'd even suggest cautious.

We want all donors to treat both as very important,

just like it's important to us, he replied.

These nations sit in an ocean that accounts for a third of the world's surface area.

What happens in their waters, politically, economically and diplomatically,

will shape the future of the world.

Katie Watson.

And finally, the famine in Bengal in the 1940s

led to one of the worst losses of civilization,

and the death of a civilian life on the Allied side during the Second World War.

The causes of the famine are still widely debated today.

Hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers were based in Bengal during the war.

British fears that the Japanese would attempt to invade East India

prompted a denial policy,

where surplus rice and boats were confiscated from towns and villages in the delta,

so advancing forces would have no food.

Then a cyclone in 1942

destroyed many rice crops.

The resulting scarcity and cost of the grain led to mass starvation.

Many Indians see this famine as one of the enduring legacies of empire.

Anta Dean visited one of the survivors of that period.

At the end of a long track,

winding through the Bengali jungle,

is a house with a roof like a mushroom,

a dome of mud and straw.

It's a hot, still morning,

and we're in a district of West Bengal called South 24 Parganas,

sandwiched between the urban sprawl of Kolkata

and the riverlands of the Sundarbans.

As I approach the house in Namkhana village,

with my colleague Kavita,

a small entourage of men grows around us.

On either side of the track are innocuous green paddy fields.

Rice grows here, long and lush,

the staple food in West Bengal today,

just as it was 80 years ago.

For the past year and a half,

we had been looking for survivors of the Bengal famine of 1943,

which devastated this region.

At least three million Indians died

when they were British subjects.

There is not a memorial to them anywhere in the world,

which is why we've come to this house in the jungle.

As I take my shoes off at the threshold,

I can hear the high, clear call of baby goats.

We enter a room.

Around a dozen people from the village

find places to stand and listen.

At the end of a long divan

is a 99-year-old man named Parashandra Paul.

He's sitting cross-legged,

his long limbs drawn up around him.

He's bare-chested and wears a dhoti,

a long white cloth wrapped around his waist.

Old electric fans wheeze overhead,

and we have to lean in closer to hear him,

his voice as thin and high-pitched as a boy's.

When Parashandra was young,

the long winding track to this house didn't exist.

The jungle was impenetrable,

and many people lived in shelters high up in the trees.

Sometimes their cows would be snatched by wild animals.

He remembers that when he crossed

from one riverbank to another with his family,

they would listen out for tigers.

He cries when he talks about a snakebite

that nearly killed his mother.

It was in October 1942 that the cyclone hit.

Not all areas of Bengal that experienced famine

were affected by the cyclone, but this area was.

He remembers that the sky was fierce,

how the dark rain beat all night

against the tin roof of his home.

By daybreak, the nearby banks of the Hooghly River

had been overrun.

Dead cows were floating in the floodwater,

and people's homes too.

The paddy fields were submerged.

Food was already in short supply across the region,

but in the months after the cyclone,

famine took hold.

Many people from rural areas, like Namkhana,

went to nearby villages in search of food.

Parashandra remembers how hunger

forced his neighbours to beg.

Relief was in short supply,

although some local landlords tried to help,

pouring rice from their stores

straight out onto the floor.

There were too many desperate people needing food,

for it to be doled out one by one.

Parashandra and his family were fortunate, he tells us.

They didn't need to beg.

They were wealthier than most people in the village,

and they had their own stores of rice at home.

They managed to survive.

Suddenly, someone pipes up behind us.

It's one of the neighbours

who came with us along the track,

a younger man in his fifties.

His face is sheened with perspiration.

The neighbour says that Parashandra

was one of the lucky ones.

His survival is testament to that.

He had money and land,

but this man's family were much poorer.

They were among those in the village who suffered more.

There are murmurs from the audience.

Many of them have their own stories to tell.

Descendants of survivors,

who always keep a handful of food in the pot

so that it doesn't go bare,

or who never leave a grain of rice in their bowl after a meal.

Eighty years on,

these memories about who had rice and who didn't,

who suffered and who survived,

have not gone away.

These are recollections that have been passed down,

generation to generation.

Survivors of the famine and their stories

may not be well remembered in Britain,

but in this small room, in a house,

at the end of a track,

it's clear that the famine was never forgotten.

Anta Deen.

And you can hear more about the Bengal famine

in the series Three Million on BBC Sounds.

And that's all for today.

We'll be back again next Saturday morning.

Do join us.

Humanity's journey to understanding the body

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In The Human Subject from BBC Radio 4,

we investigate the stories of the discoveries

that came at great human cost,

but ones that also saved countless lives.

I'm Dr Julia Shaw.

And I'm Dr Adam Rutherford.

And in this series, we're going to investigate

the threads connecting modern-day medicine

to its often brutal origins.

And reveal the untold stories of the people who endured them.

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I'm Katrina Perry

from the Global Story podcast

where we're looking at relations between China and Africa.

Nearly a decade ago, China promised to provide

10,000 remote villages in Africa with free TV access.

It was a sign of warm relations,

as well as a chance for Beijing

to expand its influence in the continent.

But did it work?

The Global Story brings you fresh takes

and smart perspectives from BBC journalists around the world.

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