Overnight on 7 August, a vessel was possibly sunk in the Black Sea near Novorossiysk, the Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ reports. The project, which spotted the ship in satellite imagery, suggests it may have been carrying military cargo.

Russia has a practice of concealing its fleet losses. Moscow tries to mask the scale of the problem in various ways: it classifies sinkings as accidents, downplays the number of casualties, or stays completely silent about vessel losses. Russia acknowledges fleet losses only when it happens accidentally or when concealing the sinking or damage is no longer possible. The 141-meter vessel, which had no foreign owner to demand explanations, has received none.

Russian officials have not commented on the sinking, Exilenova+ says.

"The news passed quite modestly, but there is a nuance. Russia's 'official' authorities have not reported about any sunken vessel. It just sank. It is not ruled out that the ship was carrying military cargo for Russia's armed forces. Otherwise, why pretend nothing happened?" Exilenova+ wrote.

The vessel was approximately 141 meters long, suggesting a displacement of roughly 10,000 tonnes, according to the Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi.

The strikes that may have caused the sinking

Over 48 hours on 6-7 August, the Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS) struck 102 enemy targets, SBS Commander Robert “Madyar” Brovdi reported. In the same post, he noted that the targets included six shadow fleet vessels in the Black and Azov Seas: two tankers and four dry cargo ships. The SBS also reported striking three units of Russia's fleet on 7 August alone.

"It is entirely possible that the vessel that sank near Novorossiysk is among those struck in those days”, Militarnyi suggests.

Novorossiysk under fire again on 12 August

Just hours after the news of the earlier reported sinking surfaced publicly, Novorossiysk came under attack. Overnight on 12 August, Ukraine's defense forces conducted what President Zelenskyy called a "unique operation" against the naval base, using Palianytsia jet drones, Neptune missiles, and unmanned naval systems.

Novorossiysk became Russia's primary Black Sea naval hub after Ukrainian strikes forced the fleet out of Sevastopol.

Ukraine's first-person-view (FPV) drones are not being displaced by newer unmanned systems, a Ukrainian officer told Ukrinform. They remain a central tool for precision strikes, while Ukrainian forces claim a separate advantage in larger bomber drones.

Unmanned systems have become a defining weapon of Russia's war against Ukraine, and both sides race to out-innovate each other, a contest in which a cheap UAV can down a platform costing dozens of times more.

FPVs remain central

"Since FPVs appeared in service, they have become a leading means of precision engagement. This trend will continue," said Captain Anton Bobrovskyi, who commands a company training unmanned-systems specialists at the 199th Training Center of the Air Assault Forces.

Bobrovskyi conceded that Russia also uses drones effectively and that Ukraine learns from it, but said Ukraine keeps a lead in one category: bomber drones.

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Ukraine's bomber-drone advantage

Russian forces fear Ukrainian bomber drones, according to Bobrovskyi. He said Ukraine outmatches Russia many times over in such systems, and that Russian troops who encounter one often do not know what to do with it.

The distinction matters because bomber drones work differently from single-use FPVs. Rather than flying into a target and exploding, larger bomber drones carry and release munitions, then fly on. Euromaidan Press has documented the growing role of these systems, including reusable platforms capable of returning to base after dropping their payloads. Developers have also adapted them to fly through Russian electronic warfare, with upgraded Vampire drones built to resist jamming.

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Bobrovskyi said Ukraine's advantage does not mean Russia lacks comparable technology. Instead, he argued that Ukrainian forces and society initiated many of the current battlefield drone trends and have kept the initiative in using them.

Each new drone class draws a countermeasure, so the side that keeps iterating fastest holds the battlefield initiative. How long Ukraine's bomber-drone edge lasts will depend on its ability to keep protecting and upgrading those platforms.

Newly analyzed airport camera footage shows a quadcopter drone loaded with Semtex explosive flew straight at a parked Ukrainian An-124 Ruslan cargo aircraft and struck its wing at Leipzig/Halle airport in Germany on the evening of 4 August, the media outlet Die Zeit reported on 10 August. The device bounced off the wing, fell to the ground, and failed to detonate. The drone attacked the aircraft at around 19:30 local time, the media outlet reports.

Russia's hybrid attacks are increasingly moving from the information domain into the physical one, including on the territory of other countries. This incident makes sabotage on NATO member states' territory potentially more dangerous if suspicion of Russian involvement is confirmed.

Footage contradicts the warning-shot theory

The drone struck the wing near the fuel tanks, then bounced off the aircraft's surface and fell to the ground. The explosive device also ended up on the ground and did not detonate. The device contained Semtex plastic explosive. Approximately four hours later, a tourist bus driver accidentally noticed it lying on the ground, put his foot on it, and reported the find to airport security.

Video analysis contradicts the earlier theory that the incident may have been intended only as a warning. The nature of the attack indicates an attempt to cause actual damage.

Investigators examining foreign state involvement

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt suggested that a state actor may have been behind the explosive-laden drone found at the airport. On 7 August, Germany's National Security Council convened under Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Earlier, the United States assessed that the drone discovered at Leipzig/Halle Airport in Germany overnight into 5 August belonged to Russian intelligence, a US Department of Defense official in Europe told CNN.

The cargo aboard the Ukrainian aircraft targeted in the sabotage attempt consisted of military equipment and ammunition that had arrived in Germany from France and was being prepared for further transportation, Süddeutsche Zeitung stated, citing a confidential German police report. However, Germany's Federal Ministry of the Interior denied this claim, according to dpa.

The An-124 Ruslan, struck by the drone, is operated by the Ukrainian company Antonov Airlines. After Russian forces destroyed its main base in Hostomel in 2022, the company has been using Leipzig/Halle airport as a temporary base for its aircraft.

Ukraine’s Agriculture Ministry has cut its forecast for agricultural exports in 2026–2027 by 54% as Russian attacks disrupt shipping through Odesa’s ports, Bloomberg reported.

The ministry now expects 29.6 million tons of agricultural exports, down from 64.4 million. Its wheat export forecast fell by 53%, from 17.6 million tons to 8.3 million tons.

Ukraine grows far more grain than it consumes, exporting 65%–70% of its agricultural output. Bloomberg said the sector generated more than half of Ukraine’s export revenue last year. But Russia’s summer attacks have stalled the sea corridor as the harvest arrives, driving some wheat prices below production costs. Land and river routes cannot match the Black Sea shipping capacity, while sales through neighboring EU states remain politically contested. That leaves farmers with less money for the next sowing and further reduces Ukraine’s export income.

Ukraine has about 59 million tons of grain storage. That storage could be full by early November, leaving the country 11 million tons short of space by the end of fall 2026. 

Wheat sells below cost as the silos fill up

Ukraine’s export bottleneck is already hitting its farmers. Port prices fell by another 12-15% in one week, while some farmers sold wheat below production cost. When ships stop, traders either stop buying or pass the higher cost of alternative routes on to producers. That leaves farmers with less cash for fall sowing.

To ease the pressure, the government has approved subsidized loans for agricultural producers. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv would expand storage. Ukraine's Agriculture Ministry has also asked the European Commission for €220 million to help cover interest for small and medium-sized farms.

Ukraine and Moldova are discussing a rail route to Romania’s Constanța port. According to the report, grain was already being redirected through Romania, Slovakia, and Hungary, but these routes cannot replace Odesa’s capacity.

Now the ports and the ships are Russia's targets

The export bottleneck is only part of the problem. Russia’s bombardment also threatens the ports, civilian ships, and crews needed to keep the corridor operating. 

The port of Odesa normally handles about 90% of Ukraine’s grain shipments. Russia intensified attacks on terminals and civilian ships in July 2026 as the harvest reached the coast.

On 19 July, three Russian missiles struck the foreign-flagged Golden Leo as it left Odesa carrying corn, killing 10 people, including a Ukrainian sea pilot. Three days later, no vessel passed through the corridor.

Alternative routes offer little relief, as record-low Danube levels were restricting river traffic. Poland continues to bar Ukrainian grain from its domestic market. Those constraints leave more of the harvest inside Ukraine and farmers with less money to plant the next crop.

Russia wants its tanks moving again after two years of Ukrainian drones freezing its armored assaults, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported. Its main bet is a tank-mounted system that fires interceptors at incoming drones. The system worked on at least one tank, but Russia lost it anyway.

Since 2022, cheap Ukrainian FPV drones have turned the open approach to any position into ground where armor rarely survives, forcing Russia into slow, infantry-led assaults and years of experiments to armor its tanks against drones.

The shield shot down some drones. Ukraine still killed the tank.

In early August, footage surfaced of Ukrainian drones destroying a Russian tank fitted with the Arena-M active protection system in the Dobropillia sector of Donetsk Oblast. Militarnyi identified the vehicle as a T-72B3A, side number 133, and Militarnyi reported that Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) released the clip. ISW geolocated the footage near occupied Volodymyrivka, east of Dobropillia.

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Dmytro Putiata, a Ukrainian combat drone specialist who posts as kriegsforscherD, spoke with the unit involved. On that tank, Arena-M shot down seven drones before its magazine ran dry, he said.

"Unfortunately, it works," Putiata wrote.

It still wasn't enough. Ukrainian crews finished the tank off with more drones. It took 15 to 20 first-person-view (FPV) drones to kill each vehicle, Putiata said. Footage shows the tank moving with its interceptor cells empty. It was the first time the Arena-M was credited with shooting drones down in combat.

Russia keeps sending tanks into that ground for a reason

Russian forces are experimenting with new technology to restore mechanized maneuver and break out of positional warfare—the static, trench-like fighting that has defined the front, ISW reported. They are fitting tanks with active protection systems to help armor survive in the "kill zone," the open ground where drones and other weapons destroy almost anything that moves.

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ISW judged that Arena-M alone cannot shield Russian assaults from the drones, let alone the rest of Ukraine's weapons. Russian commanders have largely kept tanks off the roads because drones kill them faster than factories rebuild them. In these assaults, the tank's job is less to fight than to survive long enough to drop infantry closer to Ukrainian lines. Russia will likely keep trying to restore maneuver even after its late-July mechanized assault in the Dobropillia sector failed, ISW added.

Why Russia wants the shield: the cages don't let tanks fight

The bolt-on armor carries a cost. Cope cages and "turtle" shells weigh tanks down and often jam the turret so the main gun can't aim. That trade-off is part of why Russia wants Arena-M: protection without the bulk, so a tank can still move and shoot. Russia recently sent tanks stripped of the welded cages, carrying the shield instead.

Arena-M is not new. Active protection systems like it were first built to stop anti-tank missiles, and Russia adapted this one to catch drones. The system's lineage dates back to the late Soviet era, and Russian industry has for years claimed mass deployment that never came. Designers worked on fitting it to T-72B3 and T-90M tanks since at least 2019, yet only single vehicles turned up by 2024—some used to shoot a propaganda film rather than fight.

Russia will introduce two editions of a new regional history textbook series in occupied Ukrainian schools on 1 September 2026. The books present the occupied Ukrainian regions as historically Russian, MOST, a Kherson-based outlet, reported on 10 August.

The new textbooks bring Russia's campaign to erase Ukrainian identity into occupied classrooms, where authorities remove Ukrainian from curricula and replace lessons with Russian ideology, military drills, and firing-range visits. Moscow's Russification campaign extends beyond schools to efforts to change the demographics of occupied Ukrainian territory and re-educate forcibly transferred Ukrainian children.

The new textbook series, entitled "History of Our Region: Donbas and Novorossiya," comprises one edition for grade 5 and another for grades 6–7. The course attached to the books will be compulsory throughout Russia's so-called "new regions," according to the Ukrainian human rights center ZMINA.

"Novorossiya" is an imperial term Moscow uses to claim southern and eastern Ukraine. 

Russia's Education Ministry calls the course "objective" and part of a "unified history of Russia," Meduza reports. Minister Sergei Kravtsov claimed it contains "objective information, rather than the lies that appeared in Ukrainian textbooks."

Replacing the curriculum, then the population

The "Novorossiya" textbook forms part of a broader Kremlin campaign to Russify occupied Ukraine's education, culture, and demographics. 

Since occupying Melitopol, Russian authorities have systematically replaced Ukrainian curricula and textbooks. Older Russian textbooks, issued after Moscow's full-scale war, already depicted occupied Melitopol as part of Russia. 

A 2025 Kremlin strategy requires occupied regions to enter Russia's educational, cultural, and information space. The policy also sets a nationwide target for “All-Russian civic identity” to reach at least 95% by 2036.

35,000 Ukrainian children still missing

Meanwhile, experts estimate that about 35,000 Ukrainian children remain missing and are likely held in Russia or Russian-occupied territory. Yale's Humanitarian Research Lab identified at least 210 facilities used to hold children from Ukraine. The lab found that at least 130 facilities subjected Ukrainian children to pro-Russian cultural, patriotic, or military programs. 

One case shows where such indoctrination can lead. Once listed as missing under occupation, Ukrainian boy Oleksandr Mustiatse later appeared online in a Russian uniform bearing the “Z” invasion symbol, Save Ukraine reported.

Ukraine is testing a new electronic-warfare solution to protect heavy bomber drones and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) from cheaper FPV drones. The project has reached field testing, with several prototypes sent to military units, RBC-Ukraine reports.

Ukraine's war has become a laboratory for the economics of unmanned combat, where a mass-produced quadcopter can take down platforms that cost dozens of times more, forcing both volunteer foundations and defense firms to look for asymmetric answers on the electronic side of the front.

$20,000 bomber vs. $300 drone

The gap runs more than 60-to-1. Liuba Shypovych, head of the Dignitas foundation, told RBC-Ukraine that a heavy bomber can cost around $20,000, while an FPV drone capable of damaging or destroying it can cost about $300. Shypovych said the bombers are particularly vulnerable because they are relatively slow and less maneuverable than smaller FPVs, and that shootdowns are becoming increasingly frequent.

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Yet Ukraine cannot simply stop using the larger drones. According to Shypovych, they are used to deliver water, food, and ammunition to positions that are difficult or impossible to reach by ground. The military therefore approached Dignitas with a request to protect the platforms, and the team is working on the task together with the company Aura.

The jammer has a problem of its own

Equipping a heavy bomber with electronic warfare creates an unusual technical problem. The bomber needs a communications link with its operator, but the same EW system designed to disrupt an incoming enemy FPV could also interfere with that control channel. The problem extends to UGVs, including platforms used to evacuate wounded soldiers. Shypovych said the goal is to develop EW that can counter hostile drones without cutting the Ukrainian platform's own communications.

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From the test range to the first units

Dignitas and Aura are testing the systems at training grounds and have already sent several samples to military units. Shypovych expects the solution to be ready in roughly two months.

The effort comes as Ukraine rapidly expands its use of unmanned ground systems. Kyiv has set a target to contract at least 50,000 UGVs, with robots already taking on logistics and evacuation tasks in high-risk zones. Ukrainian forces have already received 1,028 UGVs through the DOT-Chain Defense marketplace, with the systems handling logistics, evacuation, mine-laying, and combat. Ukrainian Vampire bombers have also been upgraded to shrug off Russian jamming and even hunt the jammers themselves.

South Korea is keeping lethal aid to Ukraine off the table while continuing humanitarian and reconstruction support, Yonhap reported on 10 August. The outlet cited a senior South Korean Foreign Ministry official.

South Korea’s response maintains its established policy of providing humanitarian and nonlethal support to Ukraine, but not direct weapons. Seoul previously helped move artillery shells to Ukraine through the United States. While South Korea arms NATO members with K2 tanks and K9 howitzers to free up older kit for the Ukrainian front, it still draws the line at any direct transfer to Kyiv. Seoul rejects Ukraine’s purchase requests as North Korea sends Russia ammunition and troops in exchange for money and military technology.

South Korean law bars direct exports of lethal weapons to countries in active conflict, a rule rooted in constitutional principles and Seoul's wariness of antagonizing Moscow and Beijing while managing the threat from the North.

Ukraine is seeking South Korean interceptor missiles for its air defenses. The official neither addressed the request specifically nor formally rejected it:

“South Korea’s supply of defense materials to any country has always been carried out in accordance with domestic law,” the official said. Seoul will continue to support Ukraine’s recovery through assistance in energy, infrastructure, healthcare, and education. 

The official also declined to confirm whether Seoul and Kyiv were discussing military support. However, he said Moscow-Pyongyang military cooperation “is directly related to our security and violates the United Nations resolutions” and should stop immediately.

Seoul’s indirect aid stopped short of direct arms transfers

In 2023, Seoul transferred hundreds of thousands of 155 mm shells to the United States under a confidential arrangement. Washington then arranged for them to reach Ukraine, The Wall Street Journal reported.

South Korean exports have also helped NATO members replace weapons sent to Kyiv. Poland bought South Korean K2 tanks and K9 howitzers while transferring older tanks and Polish-built Krab artillery systems to Ukraine.

Yet Seoul rejected Ukraine’s request to buy air-defense systems, radars, and artillery propellant in November 2024. In February 2026, it still limited support to humanitarian and nonlethal aid while considering NATO’s request to help purchase US weapons for Ukraine.

North Korean deployments bring the war closer to Seoul

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a decision had been made to deploy 30,000–50,000 more North Koreans to Russia. He warned that they would gain modern combat experience and Russian technology that could later threaten Asian countries. Kyiv wants South Korean air defenses and has offered cooperation on drones.

The South Korean official cited by Yonhap declined to confirm either the reported deployment or Zelenskyy’s statement that Ukrainian and South Korean diplomats were discussing possible cooperation.

North Korea is already believed to have sent approximately 20,000 combat troops and military engineers to Russia’s Kursk region, according to Yonhap. Pyongyang has earned as much as $22 billion from arming Russia, helping it finance conventional and nuclear forces.

The Japanese outlet Kyodo News reported in November 2025 that North Korea had transferred about 6.5 million rocket and artillery munitions in exchange for Russian air-defense, space, and nuclear technologies.  Moscow and Pyongyang’s 2024 mutual defense pact formalized the expanding military relationship.

Seoul says no again to Ukraine’s weapons request as Pyongyang gets ready to send Russia more troops

The US Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) forecasts that Ukraine's grain exports will fall steeply in the 2026-27 season, with corn shipments dropping 39% to 14 million tonnes and wheat 26% to 10.8 million, World Grain reported. The agency tied the decline to Russia's summer campaign against the Odesa ports, which handle roughly 90% of the country's grain.

The forecast puts Washington's own numbers behind what Kyiv has warned for weeks. Ukraine's agriculture ministry projects farm exports could fall by almost half this season, and the FAS estimate — from a body with no stake in Ukraine's budget — points the same way. The difference is where the FAS looks: not at the ships that cannot sail, but at the grain that cannot follow them out.

Grain with nowhere to go

The clearest sign of the blockage is in ending stocks — grain left sitting in the country when the season closes. The FAS expects Ukraine's corn stocks to jump more than tenfold, to 13.5 million tonnes from 1.3 million, and wheat stocks to more than double to 8.2 million. That is grain the harvest produced and the ports could not move.

Ukraine has more than 74 million tonnes of storage for grain and oilseeds, the FAS noted, including about 23 million tonnes of certified warehouse space. Even so, the agriculture ministry has said the country may need another 10 to 12 million tonnes of temporary storage to get through the corn harvest if the Black Sea disruptions continue — most acutely in regions near the front line.

Why Odesa decides the harvest

Almost everything moves through Odesa. Three deepwater ports in Odesa Oblast carry more than 90% of Ukraine's farm exports, and Russia spent the summer hitting them and the ships that call there. Missiles struck the Turkish-owned bulk carrier Golden Leo as it left Odesa loaded with grain on 19 July, killing 10. Days earlier, a Russian drone hit a Palau-flagged corn ship twice as it sailed for Greece.

The land routes that remain — rail, road, and the Danube — cannot take up the slack, and traders have pulled back from buying grain they have no way to ship.

Farming is Ukraine's biggest export earner, bringing in more than half of what the country made selling goods abroad last year. Ukraine is also among the world's largest corn suppliers, which is why a cut of this size registers well beyond its own budget. For the farmers holding this year's crop, the FAS forecast describes a harvest they may not be able to sell.

Ukraine and Moldova are discussing transporting Ukrainian grain by rail through Moldovan territory to the Romanian port of Constanta, an option driven by intensified Russian attacks on shipping in the Black Sea, according to unnamed sources in both countries cited by Reuters.

The talks come as Russian strikes on vessels using the Black Sea corridor have disrupted traffic during the harvest season and forced Ukraine to cut its export forecast. On 22 July, no ship passed through the corridor at all, and the country's agriculture ministry has already lowered its projection for the 2026–2027 season by up to five million tons.

Discount sought, volume guarantees demanded

Kyiv is asking for a discount of 50 percent off the nominal rate to transport its grain, according to the agency's sources. A source at Moldovan Railway said Moldova responded with a counterproposal: guarantees from Ukraine on the volumes of grain it would transport through the route.

"We are currently collecting information on potential volumes from interested shippers. The information-gathering process has not yet been completed," a senior Ukrainian industry official told Reuters.

Ukraine expects corridor to cover 10 percent of exports

Ukraine estimates the Moldovan corridor could handle 10 percent of its grain exports. Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi said earlier that his ministry had lowered its grain export forecast for the 2026–2027 season from 43 million tons to 38–40 million tons because of Russian attacks on ports.

Ministers discuss rail links

A day before the Reuters report, Moldova's Minister of Infrastructure and Regional Development, Vladimir Bolea, visited Ukraine's Odesa region and met with his Ukrainian counterpart, Mykola Kalashnyk, to discuss improving rail connections and expanding the transit network between the two countries.

Moldova's premier defends transit revenue

Moldovan Prime Minister Vasile Tofan said his country should not pass up the opportunity to earn millions of euros from transiting Ukrainian grain cargo. He dismissed suggestions by Moldovan farming groups that Ukrainian grain prices would depress the value of their own produce.

"Let's not look for enemies where there are none," he said on Moldovan television.

Russian attacks on shipping

Russia intensified strikes on vessels using the Ukrainian Black Sea corridor in July. On 13 July, Russian forces struck a civilian ship flying the flag of Togo while it was unloading mineral fertilizer off the coast of Odesa region, killing five crew members and injuring five others.

The following day, 14 July, Russia attacked two civilian vessels in the Black Sea — cargo ships flying the flags of Tanzania and Liberia. The captain of one of the ships was killed. On the evening of 17 July, a vessel flying the flag of the Marshall Islands was struck. Attacks continued afterward.

On 22 July, no vessel passed through the sea corridor. The Ukrainian government called the disruption "deliberate economic and humanitarian terror," coming at the height of the harvest season.

Ukraine convened an urgent session of the UN Security Council over the attacks, calling on all states — particularly those "which this directly concerns" — to demand that Russia stop striking shipping. Separately, the Southern Mining and Processing Plant (Pivdennyi HZK) announced it was suspending extraction and temporarily scaling back operations.

A bipartisan group of US House members introduced the House version of the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 on 10 August, advancing the sweeping sanctions package during the chamber's summer recess just days after the Senate passed it.

The move puts the bill one chamber from becoming law. If the House passes it, it would hand the president authority to impose tariffs of up to 100% on the biggest buyers of Russian crude and gas—China and India chief among them—and to blacklist the aging tankers of Russia's shadow fleet, the vessels that move sanctioned oil around Western restrictions. The target is the oil revenue that pays for Russia's war on Ukraine, at a moment when Ukrainian deep strikes have already knocked a large share of Russian refining capacity offline.

What the bill would do

The package imposes primary and secondary sanctions on Russian officials, oligarchs, entities propping up Russia's defense-industrial base, and foreign actors that materially aid Moscow's military operations. It targets major Russian banks and the foreign financial institutions that do significant business with them, and it goes after the shadow fleet and sanctions-evasion networks—ships, owners, operators, insurers, and ports that knowingly move Russian oil. The tariff framework, up to 100% on the top five buyers of Russian oil and the top five buyers of its gas, replaces an earlier plan for a blanket 500% tariff, with the US trade representative setting the specific rate for each country. The bill also folds in Iran, extending the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996.

Sanctions could be lifted only if the president certifies to Congress that Russia has signed a peace deal accepted by a free and independent Ukrainian government and has halted hostilities and efforts to subvert Kyiv.

A bill born from a stall—and a death

Graham and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal introduced the measure in 2025 with 500% tariffs. It drew more than 80 Senate cosponsors and went nowhere for over a year, as the White House kept it off the floor while betting on negotiations that never delivered. Graham secured President Trump's sign-off, then died on 11 July of an aortic dissection, a day after his last visit to Kyiv. The Senate renamed the bill in his honor and passed it 86-11 on 7 August.

The House is not a rubber stamp

The House text is identical to the Senate-passed version, so the companion functions largely as a whip count—a way for members to signal support before a floor vote expected this fall, once the chamber returns from recess on 31 August. Passage is not guaranteed: some House members have voiced fundamental concerns about handing the president broad tariff powers that could raise costs for US importers and consumers.

Russia has rebuilt its missile industry around the weapons most likely to pierce Ukraine's thinning air defenses. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) made that case on 10 August. Kyiv's Patriot interceptor shortage, it assessed, now hands Moscow no reason to negotiate. Because Kyiv can no longer reliably stop ballistic missiles, the Kremlin sees a clear military path to its maximalist aims.

Factories retooled around the missiles that get through

Since April 2026, Russian plants have prioritized ballistic and cruise missiles built to evade interception. HUR Deputy Head Major General Vadym Skibitskyi reported the shift. Monthly ballistic launches have more than tripled between April and July, he said. Meanwhile, output of key missile types runs 10 to 20% above plan. Moscow also met its full-year Zircon and Onyx targets by 3 August. To free capacity, it suspended the less accurate Kinzhal and Kh-32 lines. Skibitskyi flagged a newer twist, too: S-400 launchers now fire specially developed RM-48U rounds along a ballistic path. Russia is also striking Ukraine's defense plants, he warned, to choke off Kyiv's own ballistic-missile program.

Fired fresh, not from the stockpile

Crucially, these strikes draw on newly built missiles rather than war reserves. That approach lets Moscow sustain larger, more frequent salvos. Its stockpile stays intact for the occasional very large barrage. Unmanned Systems Forces commander Major Robert "Magyar" Brovdi put numbers on the trend. Russia can already loose a simultaneous salvo of 77 missiles, and it is pushing toward 200. He stressed that he meant weapons of all types, not ballistics alone. Kalibr cruise missiles, by contrast, are piling up unused. Moscow is shipping them to fleets beyond the Black Sea as Ukrainian crews down nearly all of them. Repeated strikes have meanwhile driven the Black Sea Fleet back to the port of Novorossiysk.

"The Patriot shortage hands Russia an opening to do serious damage over the winter — and a reason to keep meaningful talks at bay," - Institute for the Study of War assessed

Why the Patriot interceptor shortage stalls negotiations

This reprioritization feeds a winter strategy meant to break Ukraine's will to fight, ISW assessed. The Patriot is still the only system Kyiv fields that can down Russian ballistic missiles. And Kyiv has warned partners it cannot close the interceptor gap before the cold months. As a result, the Kremlin thinks it can hammer cities without paying a battlefield price. That calculation could drag the war into 2027, ISW noted. Putin's theory of victory still rests on outlasting Ukraine's defenses and Western resolve. On 9 August, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin restated Moscow's line. Any "freeze" that ignores the war's "root causes" is unacceptable, he said — shorthand for the Kremlin's original demands.

Russia struck the capital with ballistic missiles early on 11 August. One of them came down on the grounds of a Kyiv children's hospital in the Shevchenkivskyi district. Rescuers also fought a warehouse fire nearby that left one man injured.

The Kyiv children's hospital strike

Two craters opened on the hospital grounds, while the impact shattered windows and ruptured a gas line, rescuers reported. Utility crews sealed the leak within the hour. Staff at the Kyiv children's hospital had moved patients into the shelter before the strike, so it hurt no one there.

"Luckily, the children and medics were in the shelter — there were no casualties," - State Emergency Service reported

A warehouse ablaze and one man hurt

At a second address in the same district, a strike ignited a fire across 1,200 square meters of warehouse space. Crews first contained the flames, then put them out. Medics soon treated the lone casualty, a 28-year-old man. Earlier, the Air Force had warned of the ballistic threat before the missiles arrived.

Kyiv Oblast also under fire

The wider Kyiv Oblast took damage as well. In the Bucha district, the strike wrecked warehouse buildings and three trucks, although it caused no casualties. Officials said the enemy had again hit the region with ballistic missiles and attack drones.

A far deadlier night beyond Kyiv

Elsewhere, the toll climbed sharply. In Zaporizhzhia, a combined missile and guided-bomb strike killed six people and injured 19, regional authorities reported. Across the oblast, meanwhile, Russian forces launched 938 strikes on 58 settlements in a single day, injuring 52 residents in total. Officials also logged 341 reports of damage to homes, vehicles, and infrastructure.

In central Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, drones and artillery hit five districts more than 20 times. The strikes killed three people, among them a 15-year-old boy, and hurt five others, including a 7-year-old girl. To the northeast, an attack on Zlatopil in Kharkiv Oblast damaged civilian infrastructure and injured a resident.

Meanwhile, in Mykolaiv, drones hurt a 75-year-old woman and damaged homes and an industrial site, and officials described her condition as satisfactory. In nearby Snihurivka, six more drone strikes damaged houses, a shop, and a car, though they caused no injuries.

The strikes add to a wave of Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities this summer. The capital had already endured ballistic missiles days earlier, on the night of 8 August. That evening, explosions also echoed through Kyiv and Dnipro during a mass drone assault.

A plan presented to the UK's new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, would extend Britain's nuclear umbrella to Ukraine and other non-NATO European states. In exchange, Britain would regain access to the EU single market for goods, The Telegraph reported on 9 August.

The proposal comes as European governments question whether they can rely on US protection and struggle to turn moral support for Ukraine into troops and weapons. Russia's invasions, despite the assurances Kyiv received from the US and the UK when it surrendered its nuclear arsenal under the Budapest memorandum, have also revived calls for nuclear-backed guarantees.

Former Conservative MP Nick Boles drafted the plan. He proposes a "European Confederation" that combines single-market access with NATO-style mutual defense commitments. 

For Ukraine, it would provide protection modeled on NATO Articles 4 and 5 while Kyiv pursued full EU membership.

Ukraine would maintain a large army as Europe's bulwark against Russia and share defense technology with other members of the Confederation. Britain would raise defense spending to 3.5% of GDP, while both countries would gain full access to the EU's single market for goods.

Boles said Europe needed a new security model because neither US President Donald Trump nor a future US president could be guaranteed to "defend Europe as if it were Kansas." 

Boles's plan is not Burnham government policy. Nevertheless, it has circulated among officials, including National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell, as London considers deeper cooperation with the EU.

Britain's support bumps against Europe's political limits

Prime Minister Burnham entered Downing Street as a firm supporter of Ukraine. He assured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that British support remained unchanged and pledged to preserve aid levels.

Britain also co-leads with France the Coalition of the Willing, which plans to deploy forces in Ukraine after a ceasefire to deter another Russian attack.

The Coalition has brought together representatives of 40 countries. Still, members remain divided over how far to support Ukraine.

Britain and France have formally declared their intention to deploy forces after a potential ceasefire in Ukraine. Yet Poland offered logistical support but ruled out troop deployment, while Bulgaria has withdrawn from the Coalition. Europe has promised deterrence, but key deep-strike missiles may not arrive until 2029.

Boles's plan would pair Britain's nuclear deterrent with Ukraine's conventional military strength. Unlike the Coalition’s voluntary plans, Boles's proposed European Confederation would place its defense guarantees in a treaty. NATO would initially be responsible for carrying them out.

From surrendered weapons to a nuclear shield

Ukraine inherited the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal after the Soviet collapse, including about 1,900 strategic warheads. 

Kyiv relinquished them under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum after receiving security assurances from Russia, Britain, and the US. Despite these promises, Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and launched its full-scale war in 2022.

Russia's invasions have revived calls among Ukrainian lawmakers for nuclear-backed security guarantees. Politician Roman Kostenko has called for guarantees that could include British and French nuclear retaliation in the event of another Russian attack. 

Under Boles's proposal, Ukraine would not regain its own warheads. It would instead come under Britain's nuclear shield.

On 9 August, Peru's foreign ministry officially reported that 459 Peruvians had been recruited into the Russian army. Of these soldiers, 11 have been killed, 114 are missing, and three have been captured by the Ukrainian army. Another 31 Peruvians were evacuated: three of them chose to stay in Europe, and the rest returned home.

As of 29 April 2026, Russia had drawn in at least 27,000 foreign nationals from more than 130 countries to take part in its war against Ukraine, the International Federation of Human Rights reports. The Peru case is part of Russia's systematic recruitment of foreigners into its military, often through deception. Some men were offered civilian jobs or roles far from the front, only to end up in the thick of the fighting.

Relatives of the recruited men held demonstrations in Peru

On 29 April 2026, relatives of men recruited into the Russian army demonstrated outside Peru's foreign ministry in Lima, urging the authorities to help bring their family members home, according to SwissInfo.

On 30 April, the Russian embassy in Peru responded that it agreed some Peruvian men were taking part in the war on Russia's side, but said this was their own voluntary choice. La República, however, reports that before leaving for Russia, the men were made to sign papers in Russian.

On arrival, their documents were taken, after which they underwent brief military training and were ultimately sent to the front. According to media reports, most were former military and police personnel lured by promises of jobs as security guards or civilian specialists, with salaries of $2,600–4,000 a month and bonuses of up to $20,000.

A “rear position” — until it isn’t

First, recruiters promise foreigners high salaries, signing bonuses, and “rear” or civilian positions. Debt traps and threats of deportation are also used. They lure people even through video games and chats. Once in Russia, recruits are forced to sign contracts, after which their documents are confiscated to keep them at the front. The contracts are often written in Russian, a language the foreign recruit does not understand.

Instead of the promised “rear positions,” recruits are thrown into infantry “meat assaults” after just a few days or a week of training. Mercenaries are killed while carrying out missions, while the wounded are often left on the battlefield without evacuation. Some men go missing or flee. Russia treats foreign mercenaries as “expendable labor,” according to leaked recordings cited by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

This is not an isolated case

Facing losses that now outpace its own mobilization, Russia has turned to citizens of other countries to keep its ranks filled in its war against Ukraine.

Kenya has become one of the largest sources of people recruited through deception. At first, Nairobi believed the number was only a few hundred, but the scale proved much larger. Nairobi thought Russia had recruited around 200 Kenyan citizens, but a new report says the figure is over 1,000. The scheme relied on fake job and education offers, after which recruits had their documents confiscated to keep them on the front line. The European Parliament found that Russia confiscates African recruits' documents and sends them to the front line in Ukraine.

In Cuba, recruiters promised people lucrative jobs, only to lure them into a trap. A Cuban captured near Kupiansk said he joined Russia's war effort under threat of deportation. The scale of the recruitment has been enormous. Ukrainian intelligence estimates that around 20,000 Cuban mercenaries have fought on Russia's side against Ukraine.

The Philippines case shows what awaits the recruited at the end of this pipeline. Ukrainian military intelligence identified a Filipino named John Patrick among Russian soldiers killed in Donetsk Oblast. He was sent into a "meat assault" after just one week of training. He did not speak Russian and carried only a piece of paper with his unit number and his commander's name. After he was wounded, he was left to die in a tree line without evacuation, and Ukrainian intelligence warned that any work in Russia now carries a real risk of forced deployment into an assault unit. The deception relied on promises of high salaries, non-combat positions in the rear, and fast-tracked Russian citizenship, after which recruits were sent into infantry assaults.

Ukraine has agreed to buy a batch of American-made ballistic missiles and rocket launchers from Türkiye, according to Militarnyi. The weapons sit in Turkish stockpiles and still need to clear a routine US review before they ship.

Ukraine's deep strikes run on a scarce, politically gated supply of Western missiles, which it burns through faster than allies' resupply.

What Ukraine is buying

US government paperwork lists 70 M39 ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) missiles and 12 M270 rocket launchers, plus tens of thousands of cluster munitions. The M270 is a tracked launcher that fires guided rockets and ATACMS, the heavier sibling of the wheeled HIMARS.

The cluster load adds 2,524 M26 rockets for the M270 launchers and 47,000 M509A1 shells for Ukraine's 2S7 Pion and M110 guns. Both scatter bomblets over a wide area. The deal surfaced in US State Department notifications in the US Congressional Record for 6 August 2026. Türkiye wants to shed older weapons and fund newer systems, the filings say. The shipment moves through Turkish, Bulgarian, and American exporters.

How the sale clears Washington

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Because these are US-origin weapons, Washington must sign off first. The filings note that US law forces the State Department to notify Congress once major equipment tops $14 million, or other articles and services top $50 million. There is no approval vote: if neither chamber blocks the sale within 15 days, US consent takes effect automatically. Both chambers sit in recess past that deadline — the House until 31 August 2026, the Senate until 14 September 2026.

What the M39 ATACMS is

The M39 is the original production model of ATACMS, flying about 165 kilometers, or roughly 103 miles—shorter than later versions Ukraine has fired. It steers by laser gyroscopes with no GPS correction, which makes it less precise. Instead, it carries a 560-kilogram cluster warhead of 950 M74 submunitions built to hit troops, unarmored vehicles, and air defenses.

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How Ukraine uses ATACMS

Ukraine has fired ATACMS at Russian command posts, ammunition depots, and air defenses across occupied land and inside Russia. Even occasional launches force Russia to shift air defenses back from the front, easing pressure on Ukrainian troops. That firepower had gone quiet. Ukraine ran through its US-supplied ATACMS months ago, and US approvals came slowly. Buying 70 more through Türkiye lets Ukraine rebuild without waiting on fresh US aid.

Ukraine's Crimea campaign aims to make the occupied peninsula unusable to Russian forces, its drone-forces commander told The Associated Press. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. The campaign is only the first phase, said Maj. Robert "Madyar" Brovdi. His units could strike seven times more military targets with faster Western funding, he said.

The constraint is financing, not factory output. Brovdi put his forces at 14 percent of the strength a full-capacity operation would require. He traced the gap to the timing of allied money, not to Ukraine's drone production. "It's not that the production capacity of Ukrainian manufacturers doesn't allow us to make the necessary quantities" of drones, he said. He added: "It's the banal problem of untimely financing, which our partners do allocate, but which moves significantly slower than our plans."

Even so, Brovdi framed the peninsula as decisive. "Crimea falls within the key conceptual pillars on the path to ending the war," he said.

What the Crimea campaign has hit

The summer strikes have hit rail bridges, oil depots, and power infrastructure. These aim to cut supply lines and blind Russian air defenses as drones approach. To pry open a "window" for those drones, the force destroyed more than 300 air defense assets in recent months. Those included surface-to-air systems, radar stations, and electronic-warfare equipment.

Where Starlink connectivity reaches, an average of three drones can now destroy even a heavily defended target, Brovdi said. In turn, his crews match the munitions to each aim. One mix suits a bridge pier; another fits a fuel truck or a moving train. Even so, his forces avoid civilian infrastructure, he added. Still, strikes on the power grid have cut electricity for residents. Brovdi said he has twice publicly apologized to Ukrainians living in Crimea.

He also pointed to one measure of progress. Across four recent large-scale Russian barrages from the peninsula, launch sites fired only five missiles in total. He credited that drop, however, to the destruction of Russian air defenses. The AP could not independently verify the claim.

Forcing Russia off the peninsula

Much of Russia's Soviet-era air defense runs on the power grid. That is one reason Crimea's electricity network keeps drawing fire. As a result, losing power leaves Russian soldiers "blind," Brovdi said, with only machine guns and rifles.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is working to dismantle Crimea's role as a naval base. "Creating conditions that make it impossible for any kind of military capability … to remain there will make Crimea uninteresting … as a military staging ground," he said.

The offensive began in late June. Two weeks in, Ukrainian intelligence indicated Russia had ordered its military commands and security services off the peninsula, Brovdi said. In addition, a covert order called for removing secret archives and artworks. The AP could not independently verify the account.

Russian countermeasures and the missile threat

Russia is pushing back against the Crimea campaign. It is installing jamming systems that will degrade Starlink to some degree, Brovdi said. Russia is also building its own satellite network to rival the service. "This is a risk for the entire planet," he said, "because a dictatorship will gain access to information across the whole globe."

Other threats are mounting as well. Jet-powered Shahed drones are harder for Ukraine to shoot down. Their concentration has risen two and a half times in recent weeks, he said. Moreover, Russia can now fire a simultaneous salvo of 77 ballistic missiles and plans to raise that to 200. As a result, the danger is pressing. Ukraine is short of interceptors for the US-made Patriot, its only defense against ballistic missiles.

"Even if they only manage half of that, it will all be flying at us," Brovdi said. The only way to bring the number down is to hit every facility that builds the missiles, he added. That, he said, is why Ukraine's long-range strikes inside Russia matter.

Wildberries in the crosshairs

One civilian-facing target Brovdi named was Wildberries, Russia's largest online marketplace. Many call it the country's answer to Amazon. "Wildberries is, first of all, a supply platform—it's the war's quartermaster," he said. The company also runs a dedicated section selling goods for Russia's military, he noted.

For now, these strikes aim to make ordinary Russians feel the war directly. He declined to give a timeline. Instead, the strikes will continue "until it becomes impossible for it to recover quickly," he said.

Finally, he cast the retailer as a pressure point on morale. "Ultimately, Wildberries is, forgive the expression, a consumer gambling addiction," he said, comparing lost access to restrictions on social media. "It turned out to be a sensitive sensor of the comfort of Russia's massive population—people who consider themselves completely untouched by the actions of the aggressor country."

The pace at which Russian forces are occupying Ukrainian territory has fallen sharply since the start of 2026, while the scale of Russian losses has not, Radio Svoboda's Russian Service reports, citing data from the Ukrainian project DeepState, which tracks the front line.

DeepState's figures show Russia seized 450 to 550 square kilometers a month at the 2025 peak. The rate then declined steadily from December 2025 through July 2026: 445 square kilometers in December, 160 in April, and 27 in July. A comparable Russian project, Slivochny Kapriz, which by contrast credits the Russian army with any area where its personnel have been spotted—even without confirmed control—recorded a similar slowdown, from 550–600 square kilometers a month last year to 112 in June.

A shrinking prize in northern Donbas

At the end of last year, roughly 5,000 square kilometers remained under Ukrainian control in northern Donbas, including three "fortress" cities larger than Pokrovsk: Kostiantynivka, Kramatorsk, and Sloviansk. Even using Slivochny Kapriz's more generous estimate of the current pace, capturing that territory would take a year and a half.

Losses hold steady as gains shrink

Despite the slowdown, Ukrainian military estimates of Russian losses have not fallen and remain at roughly the level recorded in the second half of 2025. Both Ukraine's General Staff and its Ministry of Defense now publish official loss estimates. According to the General Staff, Russia lost nearly 164,000 people from February through June 2026—five months—an average of 32,800 a month. The Ministry of Defense's verified count for the same period was 157,000 killed and wounded, or 31,500 a month on average. The General Staff puts Russia's total losses since the start of the full-scale invasion at 1.4 million, a figure that includes killed, missing, wounded, and other losses, not only irrecoverable ones.

Western officials have offered comparable figures. UK intelligence chief Anne Keast-Butler said in May 2026 that the Russian army had lost 500,000 servicemen killed alone; at a ratio of two to three wounded per fatality, that implies total Russian losses of 1.5 to 2 million, according to British intelligence. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio estimated Russian losses at 7,000 soldiers a week roughly six months ago, a figure that broadly matches Ukrainian military estimates.

The cost of a square kilometer has tripled

The American Institute for the Study of War calculated in 2024 that Russia lost 125,800 people while capturing 2,356 square kilometers between September and November—53 losses per square kilometer. Radio Svoboda's own calculations, based on General Staff and DeepState data, put the 2025 figure at 85 losses per square kilometer. By the latest 2026 estimates, that figure has risen to 290—3.5 times the 2025 rate.

Drones make breakthroughs impossible, officials say

The slowdown is now widely attributed to Ukraine's growing advantage in drone warfare. CIA Director John Ratcliffe, citing US intelligence, said the average lifespan of a Russian recruit arriving at the front in Ukraine is 20 to 30 minutes. He said the Russian advance has slowed because Ukraine has made major gains in the use of drones and asymmetric warfare methods that are leveling the battlefield: "AI drones have become specialized and inexpensive killing machines."

Current Time, the Russian-language network run by Radio Svoboda, reports that the slow pace of both armies' advances today stems from the specific nature of this war: drones have made rapid breakthroughs impossible.

A Ukrainian drone operator, whose name Radio Svoboda withheld for security reasons, said the decline in the Russian advance stems from a collapse in the training level of Russian troops: "He's worse than he was a year ago. Actually, he's simply not there. They grabbed men from the garage, gave them a rifle, and said: 'Run!'"

The operator said Russian commanders now resort to any means necessary to force some forward movement: "In Kostiantynivka, they now drop supplies for the [infiltrated] soldiers a block away from where they're sitting, just so there's some kind of advance. It's absurd, but unfortunately, that's the reality." That tactic helps Russian forces advance, he said, but at a catastrophic cost: only one soldier in 15 survives.

Russian infiltration groups of two to six fighters cover 15 to 20 kilometers on foot to reach positions, carrying "everything that will help them survive," which makes them, in the operator's words, "the easiest possible target for us." He acknowledged that some Russian soldiers still slip through: "Recently, while we were destroying Russian equipment near one settlement, we missed some motorcyclists who are now hiding somewhere in the tree lines." Stopping the Russian advance entirely, he said, is simply not possible: "We're constantly adjusting our tactics, but so are they—though technology helps us, while for them, as usual, everything is done with an axe."

Kremlin prepares for a new mobilization wave

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said recently that Russian leader Vladimir Putin is preparing to announce a new mobilization wave after Russia's State Duma elections in September, aiming to recruit 300,000 to 500,000 people. The Kremlin denies planning a mobilization, but the Institute for the Study of War says Russian authorities are taking steps consistent with preparations for a large-scale draft.

Analysts point to a law Putin signed in November 2025 allowing reservists to be sent into combat zones without a formal mobilization declaration. On 22 July, the State Duma passed in three readings a law expanding the pool of people with criminal records or under investigation who may sign military service contracts during mobilization and martial law. The day before, a draft amendment was published under which Russia's National Guard would revise its civil defense rules to explicitly reference mobilization and martial law, requiring advance protective measures for its employees, civilian staff, and their families "from dangers arising during mobilization, during martial law, in wartime," according to Meduza.

The Ukrainian drone operator said mobilization could increase the pace of the Russian advance: "You can't keep track of everyone."

Russian forces struck the Mayaki bridge on the M-15 highway on 9 August, the Institute for the Study of War reported. The strike severed a road link that ties southern Ukraine to Moldova and Romania. That Odesa–Reni route crosses the Dniester and feeds the Danube ports. Those ports have become Kyiv's main export outlet since Russian strikes crippled its Black Sea shipping.

Conflicting claims over the Mayaki bridge

Russian milbloggers reported the attack, though their accounts diverged sharply. One claimed that Russian forces had destroyed the span. Others published footage purporting to show that it still stands. A local outlet serving nearby Izmail reported on 9 August that the strike damaged the crossing. Ukraine's State Border Guard Service separately confirmed that authorities briefly restricted traffic on the route. Moscow had already targeted the same structure in December 2025.

Why the land corridor matters

Russia likely hit the Mayaki bridge to choke Ukrainian grain exports, ISW assessed. Those exports now move through a land corridor that Kyiv has leaned on since strikes disrupted its maritime routes. Moscow has steadily intensified this campaign since July 2026. Navy Spokesperson Captain Third Rank Dmytro Pletenchuk offered one measure on 31 July. He said Russian strikes had damaged more than 20 ships near the Black Sea and sharply slowed cargo flows. Meanwhile, the country's main farmers union weighed in on 15 July. The Ukrainian Agri Council estimated that Russian attacks had cut about a third of Ukraine's grain-export capacity.

Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food Taras Vysotskyi has described the fallout. He said the strikes are forcing Kyiv to reroute grain and cargo through the Danube River. Russia used the same playbook in July 2023. Back then, then-Minister Mykola Solskyi reported that strikes destroyed 60,000 tons of grain at Chornomorsk port overnight on 19 July. Therefore, ISW concluded, Russia is likely shifting its strikes from the sea corridor to the land corridor. The aim, analysts wrote, is to block grain exports and weaken Ukraine's wider economy.

Russian forces are likely shifting their strikes from Ukraine's sea corridor to its land corridor to block grain exports and degrade the economy. — Institute for the Study of War

Türkiye floats a Black Sea moratorium

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan raised a separate track on 9 August. He said Ankara had proposed a Russian–Ukrainian moratorium on strikes against merchant ships in the Black Sea. Both Moscow and Kyiv have received the offer, Fidan added, and Türkiye now awaits their response.

A World Health Organization humanitarian warehouse in Dnipro was destroyed in a strike on 7 August, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reported on 9 August, without naming those responsible.

Ghebreyesus's account added to a pattern the organization has tracked since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion: 3,148 strikes on Ukrainian healthcare facilities, which have killed 240 people and injured 1,055 more, according to World Health Organization Ukraine data.

The warehouse held humanitarian medical supplies intended for medical facilities at the front line, Ghebreyesus said.

Evacuation before the strike

A WHO staff member and drivers helping evacuate cargo were working at the site before the strike that destroyed it. Before the attack began, they managed to remove 130 of approximately 300 pallets of medical supplies. Preliminarily, no one was injured.

Ghebreyesus withholds blame

Ghebreyesus said he had no data on who struck the warehouse and did not name a culprit. Similar caution from international organizations in describing attacks in Ukraine has occurred before, including after the strike on the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra.

"Attacks on healthcare facilities MUST STOP. Otherwise people are left without life-saving medical care. Even wars have their rules. One of them—health must be protected!" Ghebreyesus added.

Other recent strikes on healthcare infrastructure

On 6 August, five people were killed in Dnipropetrovsk oblast—three in Kamianske district and two in Pavlohrad, where an Ukrposhta depot was also destroyed. On the night of 1 August, Russia struck the territory of Kyivmedspetstrans twice, burning five ambulances. On 2 June, five medical facilities in the capital were damaged by Russian strikes.

Demonstrators gathered in 22 Polish cities on Sunday, 9 August, to protest a rise in violence against Ukrainians, with most rallies beginning after 17:00, RMF24 reported.

The Sunday rallies followed a demonstration two days earlier, on Friday, 7 August, under the slogan "My Poland doesn't hit, insult, or incite," when organizers submitted a petition signed by more than 11,000 people to the prime minister's office and the Ministry of Interior and Administration, demanding decisive measures against violent attacks on Ukrainian citizens.

Nationwide campaign led by pro-democracy group

The Committee for the Defense of Democracy organized the nationwide campaign. Organizers said the demonstrations respond to increasingly frequent verbal and physical attacks on people targeted because of their origin, language, or appearance. The rallies were also meant to show solidarity with those experiencing violence and discrimination.

A slogan from Auschwitz

The phrase that became the demonstrations' slogan, "Don't be indifferent," was spoken by Marian Turski on 27 January 2020, during commemorations of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Turski, a former prisoner of the camp, used the speech to urge people not to accept cruel treatment of minorities, violations of human rights, and historical falsehoods.

Recent incidents

The number of attacks on Ukrainians in Poland has sharply increased in recent weeks. In Kraków, a 39-year-old man who had verbally insulted two people of Ukrainian nationality turned himself in at a police station on 8 August and was detained, according to reporting cited a day before the Sunday protests.

Separately, Tobiasz Bocheński, a member of the European Parliament and former candidate for mayor of Warsaw, said that if the Law and Justice party came to power, it would ensure the deportation of Ukrainian men of conscription age who are not legally employed in Poland. Poland's Ministry of Interior and Administration said such statements amount to populism.

A Russian overnight strike heavily damaged a German-owned car-parts plant in Zhytomyr Oblast, forcing it to halt production, the company said. No workers were hurt, but the destruction was extensive. One of the region's major employers now has no restart date.

A German plant knocked offline

Russia struck Zhytomyr Oblast overnight into 9 August and hit the Kromberg & Schubert plant, which reported the attack on Facebook. Its production lines and infrastructure took heavy damage. 

"The most important thing for us is that no employees were hurt in the attack," the statement said. 

With the damage so severe, the plant suspended operations for an indefinite period. A restart depends on a technical assessment and the full scope of repairs, the company added.

Kromberg & Schubert is a civilian manufacturer with 100% German investment. It has run in the Zhytomyr region for 11 years and employs about 3,500 people. The plant makes the wiring harnesses that thread through cars, supplying European automakers.

Vitalii Bunechko, head of the Zhytomyr Oblast Military Administration, called it one of the region's budget-forming enterprises. He said the administration and local authorities are working to help the strategic investor and keep the plant running.

Part of a wider overnight assault

Bunechko reported that Russia had launched a massive strike on the oblast overnight. The attack also damaged civilian infrastructure, he said. State Emergency Service crews contained the fires, and investigators began work at the site. 

Russia has repeatedly struck Zhytomyr Oblast during the war, stepping up its drone strikes on northwestern Ukraine, often exploiting Belarusian territory.

Russian forces struck a residential high-rise in Kharkiv's Saltivka district on the morning of 9 August 2026, killing two people and injuring more than 20 others, according to city and oblast officials. The strike collapsed several upper floors and trapped residents inside. Firefighters carried people down from the top stories while a second strike hit a neighboring building.

A missile through the upper floors

Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov reported the strike on Saltivka shortly after 07:00. He said Russia had hit a multi-apartment residential building. Minutes later he confirmed the blast destroyed floors 7 through 10, with wounded people inside.

Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv Oblast Military Administration, first described a Russian drone strike that killed two. His administration later clarified that a missile hit the high-rise, and that Russia also struck an office building nearby.

Residents were trapped behind the collapse, and crews began a rescue operation. Firefighters brought seven people down from the upper floors, the State Emergency Service reported. The destroyed ceilings sat between the seventh and tenth floors.

As the rescue got underway, Russia struck again. Terekhov said a neighboring high-rise was hit, writing that Russia "is deliberately striking residential buildings" and urging people to shelter. A third impact followed in one of the district's parks.

Russia regularly employs the double-tap tactic — striking a site, then hitting it again once rescuers arrive — to maximize casualties among first responders.

Two dead, 21 wounded, a boy of five among them

Terekhov counted a dozen wounded at first, then confirmed two people killed at the site. Syniehubov gave the fuller account: two men, aged 50 and 66, killed, and at least 21 people injured.

Among the wounded was a five-year-old boy. 11 people suffered blast injuries and two had carbon monoxide poisoning. Another eight, including a child, had acute stress reactions, and medics hospitalized four.

By late morning, Syniehubov said crews were still clearing the collapsed floors to be sure no one remained underneath. Specialists would then judge whether the building could still be used.

A day of strikes across the oblast

Over the past 24 hours, Russia struck Kharkiv and 12 settlements across the oblast, killing three people and wounding or shocking 25, the regional administration said.

In Izium, shelling injured eight people. Russia killed a 68-year-old man in Kivsharivka, near Kupiansk, and wounded a 47-year-old woman in Mykhailivka. In Lozova, a 60-year-old woman was hurt, and a transit evacuation point there took in 227 more people.

Ukrainian forces struck two Russian oil refineries and a surveillance post mounted on a Black Sea drilling rig on the night of 8 August, Ukraine's General Staff said.

The strikes extend a months-long Ukrainian campaign against Russia's refining sector. Ukrainian forces attacked Russian refineries about 50 times between mid-April and 13 July, hitting at least 24 of the country's 34 large plants and cutting refining volumes to their lowest level in more than two decades, Bloomberg estimated.

A fire at the Ilsky plant

The strike on the Ilsky refinery in Krasnodar Krai touched off a fire on the plant's grounds, the General Staff said. It put the site's capacity at six process units and about 6.6 million tons of oil a year.

The plant "receives, stores and processes hydrocarbon feedstock, produces and ships petroleum products," the General Staff said, adding that its output serves the needs of the Russian armed forces, among other users.

Syzran plant tied to Rosneft

Ukrainian forces also hit the Syzran refinery in Samara oblast, which is part of Rosneft's oil complex, the General Staff said. It described the plant as having a design capacity of about 8.5 million tons of oil a year and producing more than 20 types of petroleum products, including motor fuels and road bitumen, and named it one of the region's key refining facilities supplying fuel to the Russian armed forces.

A surveillance post on the Syvash rig

The third target was a technical observation post on the Syvash jack-up drilling rig in the Black Sea, the General Staff said. Russia uses the rig to house surveillance equipment and keep it operating in those waters, the statement said.

Russian officials confirm the attacks

Overnight, Russian Telegram channels reported drone attacks on Krasnodar Krai and Samara oblast. Samara governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev confirmed the shelling. Local channels said the Syzran strike landed near an AVT distillation unit and oil storage tanks.

In Krasnodar Krai, the regional operational headquarters confirmed the Ilsky refinery had been damaged and said "debris fell on the plant's territory."

Neither the strikes nor their extent could be verified through independent sources, Radio Svoboda said. The General Staff has said Ukrainian forces "systematically implement measures aimed at reducing the combat potential of the Russian occupation forces" and pressing Russia to end its aggression against Ukraine.

The European Union has transferred an additional €30 million to the Ukraine Energy Support Fund, raising its total contribution to the mechanism to €279 million, First Deputy Prime Minister and Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal wrote on Telegram.

The transfer is the latest in a series of contributions to the fund from Ukraine's partners. Luxembourg also added funds to the same mechanism recently, and Denmark contributed more than €10 million, European Pravda reported.

What the funding supports

In his Telegram post, Shmyhal described how the fund is used:

"The funds coming in through this financial instrument help us restore the energy infrastructure damaged by Russian attacks, purchase critically needed equipment for our energy companies, and ensure a reliable energy supply, above all for critical infrastructure," Shmyhal wrote.

Ukraine has reached concrete agreements with the United States for monthly deliveries of interceptor missiles for its Patriot air defense systems, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at a joint press conference with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić in Belgrade on 8 August.

The commitment does not close Ukraine's gap. Zelenskyy said the monthly volume remains insufficient and laid out a parallel effort to secure interceptors from Europe, the Middle East and further afield, as US shipments have thinned this year.

The US as the primary supplier

Repelling ballistic missiles has been a problem since the start of the full-scale war, and the search for a solution begins with the country that builds the systems, Zelenskyy said.

"From the first days of the war in Ukraine there was nothing to repel ballistic missiles. This is very difficult work. In which directions can this problem be solved? Well, first of all, who has anti-ballistic missiles and systems? The manufacturer. That is the United States of America, first of all. Can they help? We are working. Will they allocate us missiles every month? Yes. We have agreements," he said.

Asked whether that supply met Ukraine's needs, he answered: "Are these missiles enough? No." He added that the monthly volumes of American missiles had decreased this year compared with 2025.

Where else Kyiv is looking

Patriot missiles are also held by European countries, Zelenskyy said, naming Germany and Poland as able to substantially strengthen Ukraine's air defense. Kyiv is also in talks with Norway, the Netherlands and Middle Eastern states.

South Korea and Japan could potentially help but do not currently hand over such systems, which Zelenskyy attributed to restrictions in their domestic legislation and constitutions. Ukraine is separately discussing air defense with Israel; the president said Ukraine is ready to buy but that no such option exists at present.

"Every day I speak with one European state or another and with Middle Eastern states so that Ukraine receives additional missiles outside the American package. We are simply at the level where all our institutions must work on this, not only the president. Everyone must work, otherwise there will not be enough missiles," he said.

The Belgrade remarks came a day after Zelenskyy arrived on his first official visit to Serbia.

Zelenskyy had bilateral meeting with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić. Vucic voiced support for Ukraine's territorial integrity and its path to the European Union.

What esle Zelenskyy and Vučić discussed

The two presidents held talks that ran across the countries' European integration, trade and energy cooperation, a prospective free-trade zone, and diplomatic paths to ending Russia's war on Ukraine. Vučić had said ahead of the meeting that he would discuss both countries' route to EU membership, along with economic and energy cooperation and other opportunities

On the economy, Vučić said the sides had reviewed infrastructure projects and the involvement of Ukrainian companies in Serbia. On peace efforts, Zelenskyy said the leaders had discussed diplomatic instruments capable of bringing the war closer to an end.

Before the press conference, the sides held a ceremony to sign a memorandum on cooperation in animal health and food safety. The document was signed by Serbia's Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management Dragan Glamočić and Ukraine's ambassador to Serbia Oleksandr Lytvynenko.

Territorial integrity

Vučić framed Serbia's position as a matter of UN principle and tied it to Ukraine's reciprocal stance on Serbia.

"We support the UN Charter, UN resolutions, and this means the territorial integrity of all UN members, which means the territorial integrity of Ukraine as well. Likewise we are very grateful to Ukraine for supporting the territorial integrity of the Republic of Serbia. And as far as we are concerned, we will continue this principled policy. There are no 'buts' on this question. This is being said very clearly and resolutely now," Vučić said.

Support on the road to the EU

Vučić said Ukraine could always count on Belgrade's support in EU accession, and the two discussed both countries' European path during the meeting.

"We wish for Ukraine to open all negotiating clusters as quickly as possible, to close them as quickly as possible, because this is the wish of the Ukrainian people, of the Ukrainian leadership. And speaking of ourselves, we have not had and will not have any problems regarding this in the future. On the contrary, everything we can do to help Ukraine on its European path, we will do," Vučić said.

Trade at $321 million in six months

Vučić said trade between the two countries is growing rapidly: while it stood at $450 million for all of last year, it had already reached $321 million in the first six months of this year.

"The most important import item is iron ore from Ukraine. And I believe that cooperation in the sphere of agriculture, but also in other spheres of energy, everywhere trade turnover can be greater. We discussed projects in the sphere of infrastructure, involving Ukrainian companies on the territory of Serbia. I believe we can have serious and good results in the future," the Serbian president said.

Vučić said he hoped cooperation between the countries would become "significantly stronger and larger-scale" after the war ends. In future, he said, Serbia and Ukraine could jointly export certain goods and enter third-country markets, in particular in Africa and Asia.

"I think we will yet see agreements on such cooperation. Yesterday we had long discussions, today the discussions were really good. I am grateful to President Zelenskyy for the visit to Serbia. I hope we received you properly. And I want to believe that our meetings in the future will be incomparably more frequent than they were before," Vučić added.

A free-trade zone by the end of 2026

Zelenskyy said negotiations on creating a free-trade zone between Ukraine and Serbia are under way, and expressed hope the agreement could be concluded by the end of 2026.

"Our teams must work well to speed up the agreement on a free trade zone between Ukraine and Serbia. These negotiations are progressing, this is positive. And it would be good to prepare everything by the end of this year for concluding the agreement on free trade between Ukraine and Serbia," the Ukrainian president said.

Damaged energy grid and a Serbian humanitarian package

Zelenskyy described the state of Ukraine's infrastructure under Russian strikes.

"For the fifth year now we in Ukraine are forced to go through all these strikes. Russian strikes are aimed mostly at facilities that work precisely for the life of the people. We have virtually no undamaged power plants left. Many railway stations are destroyed, hospitals, universities, ordinary civilian enterprises. In a time of such a war we appreciate and are very grateful for all the support that Ukraine receives from other countries, from other peoples," Zelenskyy said.

He said Ukraine continues to expand all formats of cooperation with partners to give communities and people "more resilience, more capacity to hold out despite all the challenges of the war."

Zelenskyy said Serbia would provide Ukraine with a humanitarian aid package. "We are grateful that there will be a new package of humanitarian support from Serbia for Ukraine, in particular in the sphere of medicine, in the sphere of energy. This is very important for us," he said.

Diplomacy to end the war

Zelenskyy said the leaders had discussed diplomatic instruments that could bring the war closer to an end, and pointed to capitals with influence over the process.

"It is important that everywhere in the world they know what we want, and this is true, and this is a fact, we want a dignified peace, that every opportunity be used for the sake of peace, for the sake of guaranteed security. All available opportunities that exist in Washington, and in Beijing, in the capitals of Europe, our partners in the Middle East, in the Gulf, in all the capitals of the world that have influence over the relevant processes," Zelenskyy said.

A Russian strike on the village of Pukhivka in Kyiv Oblast's Brovary raion overnight into 8 August killed three members of one family: a three-year-old boy, his grandmother, and his grandfather. Four other people were wounded, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

The boy's parents and his 15-year-old brother were among the injured, along with a neighbor who came to help the family and was hit in a second, follow-up strike. The attack came as Russia leans on the ballistic missiles Ukraine can least often intercept, and as Zelenskyy again pressed partners for the interceptors his air defenses are running short of.

A family killed in their home

Zelenskyy said the strike hit an ordinary residential building. Those wounded, among them the dead child's parents, were treated for thermal burns and shrapnel injuries.

The neighbor was hurt after coming to help the family, when a second Russian strike hit the same place — the double-tap tactic of following an initial strike with another timed to catch rescuers and responders. Russia used it in Kyiv a week earlier, when a follow-up strike killed a 20-year-old volunteer medic.

Six ballistic missiles on Kyiv

Overnight, Russia also struck civilian infrastructure in Kyiv with six ballistic missiles. One person was killed, their body found by rescuers during the cleanup, the Kyiv City Military Administration reported.

A widening gap, and a renewed appeal

Zelenskyy called on Ukraine's partners to tighten sanctions on Russia's ballistic-missile production and to supply more air defense systems and interceptors. The appeal lands against a defense Russia has spent the year outpacing: in July, a third of the missiles it fired — 126 — were ballistic, the type that gives the shortest warning and that Ukraine's systems, save for the Patriot, cannot reliably stop. In the last two large attacks, Ukraine downed two of 36 ballistic missiles, roughly one in twenty, for lack of Patriot interceptors. Russia builds around three ballistic missiles a day, by Ukrainian analysts' estimates, while Ukraine's interceptor stocks stay severely limited.

The same night, Russia also attacked Donetsk, Kharkiv, Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv, and Poltava oblasts.

North Korea has pulled in as much as $22 billion in foreign earnings since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022—nearly four times what it earned in the previous four years, and the most cash Kim Jong Un has commanded in his 15 years in power, Bloomberg Economics estimates.

That money is the bill for Russia's war, paid to the other side of the world. In exchange for the shells and soldiers keeping Moscow's offensive alive, Pyongyang has been handed the cash, food, and military technology to turn itself from an isolated pariah into a nuclear power that no longer needs to negotiate with anyone. The war draining Russia has quietly built a second, stronger adversary.

Half of Russia's shells, and thousands of soldiers

By the end of 2025, North Korea was covering up to half of Russia's need for 122mm and 152mm artillery ammunition, Ukrainian intelligence estimates—a share Euromaidan Press has tracked since the shipments began in 2023. Pyongyang backed the shells with men: some 16,000 soldiers, for whom Russia paid roughly $2,000 a month each, plus extra for the dead, by Bloomberg's accounting.

The turning point came in 2022. Kim had spent the previous years humiliated—a failed summit with Donald Trump, a harvest failure that triggered hunger, a self-imposed Covid border closure that severed trade with China. In a 2020 national address, he wept while apologizing for the economy. Then Putin's stockpiles ran low, and North Korea's warehouses became a resource Kim could turn into hard currency.

Cash, food, and the technology to build better weapons

The dangerous part is what came back the other way. Russia handed over advanced military technology alongside the payments, and US Forces Korea has said the transfers let Pyongyang compress its weapons-development timelines. Moscow supplied air defenses including at least one Pantsir-class system—a transfer Euromaidan Press reported last year—and a Pantsir-M worth about $20 million now sits on one of North Korea's two new 5,000-tonne destroyers, the largest warships it has ever built. The two countries have also begun jointly producing attack drones.

Kim poured the windfall into a nuclear buildup that, Bloomberg reports, puts North Korea on a path to rival France's arsenal. The country's economy grew 3.5% in 2025, its third straight year of expansion, according to the Bank of Korea.

A windfall that outlasts the war

The boom does not depend on the war continuing. Over the past decade Kim assembled the world's most prolific army of crypto thieves: hacking groups tied to Pyongyang now account for more than 70% of global cryptocurrency thefts, up from about 30% in 2017, according to blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs. The stolen funds are laundered mostly through Chinese organized-crime networks that take a cut in exchange for clean offshore accounts. "It's absurd to think North Korea now has access to that much money," said Nick Carlsen, a senior TRM investigator.

Kim is spreading his bets diplomatically, too, hosting officials from Singapore, Indonesia, Belarus, and Vietnam over the past year to loosen his reliance on Moscow.

The Kim once written off as an erratic recluse is emerging as the durable leader of a growing nuclear power—one with little reason left to bargain. "Pyongyang has proven its ability to adapt to persistent sanctions," said Jenny Town of the Stimson Center. "And as international law and norms are eroding, it has found camaraderie in its resistance."

Polish President Karol Nawrocki used a speech marking his first year in office to restate that Poland will keep backing Ukraine's war against Russia—and to frame that backing as cold strategic interest rather than solidarity, warning in the same speech that continued help does not extend to tolerating Ukrainian nationalist symbols" on Polish soil. He spoke on 6 August at a ceremony in the courtyard of the Presidential Palace in Warsaw, reported by RMF FM.

The remarks land at the hottest point yet in a Polish-Ukrainian memory row that has stripped Kyiv of much goodwill from its most important frontline ally. Poland's interest, Nawrocki said, is that Ukrainians fight "as long as possible and as effectively as possible" against Russia, keeping it far from Poland—help offered not out of shared cause but because a Ukraine that bleeds Russia serves Warsaw. Coming from the country most vital to Ukraine's supply lines, it is a statement of support recast as conditional self-interest.

Support as strategy, not solidarity

"Poland's interest is that Ukraine and Ukrainian soldiers cope as well as possible with the post-Soviet Russian Federation and keep it as far from Poland as possible. That is obvious; that is the Polish state's strategy," Nawrocki said. "Let them kill the Soviets who attacked them—it does not hurt us Poles at all. In this they can always count on our help, because where a Muscovite is beaten, Poland helps, even if it does not take part directly in this war."

The register was deliberate. Nawrocki, a historian who ran the Institute of National Remembrance before winning the presidency, used the pejoratives "Soviets" and "Muscovites" for Russians throughout, casting Polish aid as a matter of keeping the fight on the far side of the border.

The red line: no Bandera flags

The support came fenced. "It is also Poland's strategic interest that Bandera flags do not fly in Warsaw or anywhere in Poland," Nawrocki said, promising to help "but always saying: Poland first, Poles first"—not, he added, "thoughtlessly sending fleet after fleet without analysis, on phone calls and smiles."

The condition points straight at the dispute that has consumed the relationship since May, when Zelenskyy signed a decree granting a special-forces unit the honorary title "Heroes of the UPA," the insurgent army Poland's parliament holds responsible for the Volhynia killings of tens of thousands of Poles and has declared a genocide. Nawrocki stripped Zelenskyy of the Order of the White Eagle in response; in July he pressed parliament to ban the UPA's red-and-black flag by law.

Moscow moves to widen the gap

Russia moved to pry the crack open within hours. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova derided Nawrocki as a former Gdansk war-museum director whose "clinical Russophobia," she claimed, was affecting his judgment, and reminded him that Russia and Poland share a border "with no Ukraine and no Ukrainians between us"—the erasure of Ukraine stated plainly, from Moscow's own podium.

That is the move Warsaw itself has warned about. Polish officials have cautioned that Russia would seek to exploit the Ukraine tensions, and Polish services recently detained a group accused of recruiting Ukrainians for paid anti-Ukrainian rallies on Russian instructions. The memory feud, as one Polish advocate for Ukraine told Euromaidan Press in June, is theater that serves only one audience—the one in the Kremlin.

Luxembourg contributed an additional €8 million ($8.7 million) to the Ukraine Energy Support Fund, raising its total donations to €30 million ($32.7 million), Ukraine's Ministry of Energy reported.

The contribution arrives as the fund—which crossed €2 billion ($2.18 billion) in total lifetime contributions in July—races to close a €650 million ($709 million) gap in unfunded needs ahead of the 2026/2027 winter season. Russia has destroyed more than 9 gigawatts of generation capacity since the start of the most recent heating season alone, and all previously available fund resources have been fully contracted.

Luxembourg's steady commitment

This marks Luxembourg's fourth donation to the fund since 2024. The country initially transferred €2 million in 2024, followed by €10 million in June 2025 and another €10 million in December 2025. The latest €8 million brings the total to €30 million—a notable sum from a country with a population of roughly 660,000.

Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal thanked Luxembourg and its Agency for Development Cooperation for what he called systematic support for Ukrainian energy, adding that the contribution would help provide energy companies with essential equipment and strengthen the resilience of Ukraine's power grid, European Pravda reported.

A fund preparing for its fifth wartime winter

The Energy Support Fund was established in April 2022 and is managed by the Energy Community Secretariat. It has become the primary international mechanism for channeling emergency energy assistance to Ukraine, with contributions from 37 donors across 26 countries and three international organizations.

In a June 2026 joint statement, the G7+ Energy Ramstein Group identified €650 million in priority needs for winter preparation and called for swift mobilization of additional funding.

Luxembourg's contribution is part of a broader wave of European support. Ireland announced €25 million ($29 million) for energy and critical infrastructure protection during its prime minister's visit to Kyiv on 23 July. Sweden's €123 million contribution on 8 July pushed the fund past the €2 billion milestone. Denmark has also recently added over €10 million.

The United States and Ukraine are working together to put fresh missiles into Ukraine's aging Soviet-era S-300 air defenses, retired US Army colonel Robert Hamilton told PBS NewsHour. These long-range systems shoot down aircraft, but the missiles that feed them have been depleted. The effort—retrofitting old rounds or building a newer variant—would revive launchers Ukraine already owns.

Ukraine's air defense runs on a shrinking supply of interceptors, with Russian ballistic and drone strikes outpacing what allies can ship. The chokepoint is production capacity, not willingness—and Hamilton frames the S-300 rebuild as one of the slower-burn fixes that ease the strain on scarce Western systems rather than replace them.

A working system near the end of 2026

Hamilton, who heads the Delphi Global Research Center, said the joint effort should come online near the end of 2026 and could turn out "100 or a couple of hundred" anti-aircraft missiles a year. He described the work as an effort to "essentially retrofit or upgrade the old S-300 missiles or a newer variant of the S-300" and give the system better capabilities.

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In September 2024, then-US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced at the Ramstein contact group that Washington, in partnership with several European companies, was working with Ukraine to "design and build a substitute" for the Soviet S-300 and the R-27 air-to-air missile used by fighter jets. He never spelled out what that substitute would be.

Why Ukraine's S-300s ran law

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine held roughly 25-30 S-300PT/PS battalions in varying states of readiness. As the missiles ran out, Kyiv came to lean on Western air defense systems and interceptors while Russia keeps launching mass strikes.

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Anything Ukraine can build or rebuild on its own soil is a supply that no foreign stockpile or political fight can cut off.

That same logic is pushing Kyiv toward co-producing Patriots with US firms and fielding its own ballistic interceptor—a race to turn air defense into a domestic industry before the next winter of strikes.

Since the evening of 6 August, Russia has attacked Ukraine with various types of drones, including decoys, the Ukrainian Air Force Command said. Although 114 of those 147 were shot down, some hit their targets, killing at least 2 people and injuring more than 10.

The Russian military has repeatedly used drone decoys to distract Ukrainian air defenses from real targets. By overloading Ukrainian air defenses, more drones reach their targets, which often include Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. In particular, attacks on post offices have become increasingly targeted.

Strike on Sumy Oblast

A Russian drone struck a market in Bilopillia community, Sumy Oblast, on the morning of 7 August, injuring 10 people. Two of them are in serious condition, head of Sumy Oblast Oleh Hryhorov said.

Overnight into 7 August, Russia attacked Sumy Oblast with aerial bombs and various types of drones, Hryhorov said. The attacks damaged infrastructure, non-residential buildings, vehicles, and private homes. Two civilians were injured, but their condition is not serious. One was a 57-year-old man wounded after one of two aerial bombs struck near his home, Sumy City Military Administration Head Serhii Kryvosheienko said. A drone also struck a post office in the Hlukhiv community.

Over the past 24 hours, Russian forces struck 34 settlements across Sumy Oblast in 48 attacks, injuring 13 people, including a child, Sumy Oblast police reported.

Strike on Dnipropetrovsk Oblast

At the same time, Russia attacked five districts of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast with artillery and various types of drones, with no casualties reported initially, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Head Oleksandr Hanzha said. He added that the strikes damaged private homes, an administrative building, vehicles, and infrastructure. In Nikopol district, a post office and a gymnasium were damaged in the Russian attack.

Russia continues to strike civilian infrastructure

On the night of 7 August, Russian forces also struck Zaporizhzhia. A drone damaged an office building, causing a fire.

On 6 August, a Russian Banderol cruise missile struck a Ukrposhta sorting depot and a base for mobile post offices. Two Ukrposhta employees were killed, and a mechanic was injured in the strike, Ukrposhta CEO Ihor Smilianskyi said.

“The enemy wanted to stop our movement here, but we will not let them do it. All backup schemes are already working. Pensions, medicines, parcels and letters are being delivered on schedule,” Smilianskyi said.

The United States has rebuilt intelligence sharing with Ukraine—the flow of satellite data, targeting, and attack warnings—to its pre-freeze peak, according to Politico. That restored flow now sharpens Kyiv's long-range strikes inside Russia, and senators from both parties say it has strengthened Ukraine. The White House says President Donald Trump stays focused on ending the war.

Russia funds its invasion largely with oil money, and Ukraine has spent the past year burning that revenue at the source, sending drones against refineries far behind the front. Foreign backing has wavered across the war, and every US pledge now carries the question of whether it will hold.

The freeze that started with a White House blowup

The cutoff came after Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy clashed in the Oval Office on 28 February 2025. Days later, the White House froze weapons and intelligence to push Kyiv toward talks. It did not last. Washington restored the flow within about a week, after US-Ukraine talks in Saudi Arabia.

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What changed on the battlefield

Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the renewed sharing has improved Ukraine's position.

"Everybody loves a winner and looks like Ukraine has turned the tide," said Republican Senator John Cornyn.

Better data, deadlier strikes

"Those strikes were supercharged," and became "significantly more effective when imbued with intelligence from the Americans," said George Barros of the Institute for the Study of War.

He tied the drone strikes on Russian energy sites to a plan to raise the war's cost for Moscow.

Stephen Sestanovich of the Council on Foreign Relations said Ukrainian officials give Washington confident reads on what is happening in Moscow, not just inside the Kremlin. Warner said no one in the US defense establishment, himself included, expected Ukraine to reach this point a year ago.

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What the 2025 blackout cost

Euromaidan Press reported that losing the feed let Russian troops claw back territory in Russia's Kursk Oblast and left thousands of Ukrainians at risk of encirclement.

"As a result of this pause, there are hundreds of dead Ukrainians," one Ukrainian officer told.

Why the renewed backing is hard to unwind

The restored flow binds Washington to Ukraine's deep-strike campaign, making the tie harder for any ceasefire to sever. Agreement across party lines suggests the backing could outlast the next swing in American politics.

Estonia will use part of a new European Union loan to arm Ukraine with drones, drawing on a loan worth up to €2.34 billion, according to ERR. The loan will also rebuild its own air defense and ammunition stocks, and all of it must be spent by 2030.

As Moscow continues its all-out war in Ukraine, the EU's northeast is rearming fast, bracing for a Russia that regional military chiefs expect to be combat-ready again within two years.

What the loan buys

Estonia signed the financing deal with the European Commission under SAFE (Security Action for Europe), a €150 billion EU program that raises money jointly on the markets and lends it to member states on cheap terms to fast-track defense spending, its finance ministry said.

A share of Estonia's up-to-€2.34 billion will go to Ukraine as drones. The rest strengthens air defense, buys military vehicles, and refills artillery shells and other ammunition. The credit runs 45 years, and every purchase and delivery must be finished by 2030. Estonia filed its final application in November 2025.

Why the loan helps

Borrowing through SAFE lets Estonia raise money on better terms than it could alone, because the EU issues debt at lower rates. The bloc raises the money jointly and splits it among members. Estonia will hold defense spending above 5% of GDP, and the loan eases the strain that puts on its budget.

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Estonia, a NATO and EU state of about 1.3 million people, shares a 294-kilometer border with Russia and treats Moscow's war on Ukraine as a direct threat to its own security. It has studied that war closely for years and is now racing to rebuild its air defenses and ammunition stocks.

Kadri Peters, a deputy secretary general at Estonia's Defense Ministry, said the fast-changing security situation in Europe demands stronger, quicker defense from the whole alliance. She said large-scale purchases ahead will directly affect Estonia's security and the wider region.

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In July, Estonia and the United States agreed to resume weapons deliveries in the coming months, after a pause tied to the war in Iran, with long-range ATACMS ballistic missiles the exception. In May, Washington had warned European allies of long delays as it drained its own stocks, mainly of HIMARS rocket ammunition and NASAMS air-defense missiles. The same shortages hit Ukraine the hardest: it currently struggles to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles for lack of US-made PAC-3 interceptors.

Estonia has been backing Kyiv since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. It co-leads an IT coalition that has funneled over €1.4 billion into Ukraine's drone programs, and has moved to tap Kyiv's battlefield-tested drone technology for its own forces.

Two weeks ago, Russian strikes drove the ships out of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, and Euromaidan Press reported that grain was piling up with nowhere to go. Now the bill is coming in.

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First to the farms. With no ships to load, traders have stopped buying, and the price they offer has dropped so far that Ukrainian farmers are, in places, selling wheat for less than it costs to grow. Port prices fell another 12–15% this week.

Grain buyers pay the world price, and when it suddenly costs far more to move Ukrainian grain out by rail than by sea, they hand that extra cost back to the farmer as a lower offer. That is how the head of Ukraine’s main association of agricultural producers, Oleh Khomenko, explained it.

When the ships stop, the mines stop too

Ukraine mines iron ore and exports it by ship, just as it exports grain. The blockade has now spread into heavy industry. Ferrexpo, one of the country’s large ore producers, has suspended operations at its plant in central Ukraine—no point in digging ore that cannot leave the country.

After a Russian drone hit a vessel carrying its cargo, the company warned it will run out of cash by mid-September without fresh money. Metinvest, the steel group owned by Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, has idled one of its own mines.

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Together, that is a country losing its two biggest foreign-currency earners. Ukraine’s central bank has now measured the loss: $2.5 billion in export income gone in the second half of this year, and almost a full percentage point—0.9%—knocked off the whole economy for 2026.

It could have been worse. An economist at the Kyiv School of Economics who tracked the 2022 blockade found that one cost Ukraine six times as much of its output. The sea lanes are not completely shut this time.

Abroad, the price moves the other way

For the rest of the world, the strikes cut the other way. As grain gets cheaper inside Ukraine, it gets dearer everywhere else, because buyers can no longer be sure the wheat will arrive. The UN’s political affairs office told the Security Council that world wheat prices have climbed 20% since the start of July.

Ukraine ships about 7% of the wheat sold across the world’s borders, USDA figures show, most of it bound for the Middle East and North Africa, where buyers have few other places to turn.

The real danger is that everything converges on one month. The corn harvest arrives in mid-September, with nowhere to store it. Ferrexpo’s cash runs out in mid-September. And the Danube—the shallow river route carrying what little the ports cannot—drops too low to help the month after. None of those alternatives replaces a deepwater port.

Ukraine has publicly shown off a homemade air-defense weapon that turns American anti-tank missiles into a drone-killer, The Defence Blog reported. The launcher stacks spare parts from three countries onto an ordinary military truck. It hands Ukraine a cheaper way to knock down the Russian attack drones that hit its cities.

Ukraine has become a proving ground for cheap air defense, forced there by a Russian bombing campaign that leans on mass and low cost. Then what works over Ukrainian cities is increasingly getting copied abroad.

Three countries' parts, one Ukrainian drone-killer

Ukraine's 302nd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade released an official video of the weapon, called STASH. Clips had leaked online for months, but this is the first time the military has shown it openly.

The build is a patchwork. The missile is American. The radar comes from RADA, an Israeli maker of defense electronics. The truck is a Dutch DAF, a type that the Netherlands has long supplied to Ukraine. Crews bolted them together into a single launcher.

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The missile at the core is the Hellfire, built to punch through tanks and armored vehicles when fired from helicopters. Ukraine repurposed it to shoot things out of the sky instead.

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Not just any Hellfire, though. This is the radar-guided Longbow version (AGM-114L), not the common laser-guided one. After launch, the missile picks out its target and stays on it without further help from the crew. The crew does not have to keep pointing anything at the drone. They can fire without staying locked in place to guide the missile. The Israeli radar spots small, low-flying drones that slip past standard air-defense sets.

What it can and can't do

The weapon reaches about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). That makes it a short-range system, built to guard one specific site rather than cover wide stretches of sky the way Patriot batteries do.

It is built to stop Russia's Shahed and Geran attack drones—including the newer jet-powered versions that now fly too fast for Ukraine's cheap interceptor drones to chase down. What it cannot reach are Russia's cruise and ballistic missiles, which travel much faster still.

The cost math behind the welding

A single Patriot interceptor runs into the millions of dollars. A Shahed-type drone sets Russia back just a few tens of thousands of dollars, and it launches them in swarms of hundreds during a single night. Trading costly missiles for cheap drones is a losing exchange, and it drains Ukraine's limited stock of interceptors.

STASH is how Ukraine tries to rebalance those numbers. It leans on anti-tank missiles that are cheaper and more available than purpose-built interceptors, carried on plain trucks rather than the permanent emplacements a full battery demands. Ukraine has been chasing cheaper ways to stop drones for a while now.

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Not the first improvisation

STASH is not brand-new. It draws its missile and radar from a prior system, Tempest, built by the American contractor V2X and reportedly already flying with Ukraine's Air Force. Footage of Tempest downing drones at night surfaced in January 2026. STASH appears to strip that idea down, swapping the buggy-style chassis for a simpler truck or trailer launcher—less mobile, but cheaper to run and better for guarding fixed sites.

Ukraine has welded mismatched gear together like this before, pairing donated missiles with whatever launchers and trucks it can find.

Russia's overnight missile-and-drone barrage on Kyiv and its surrounding region on 5 August destroyed the warehouses and production sites of several of Ukraine's largest retail and logistics companies, killed 17 people and wounded 44 more, and laid bare the country's dwindling ability to intercept ballistic missiles, according to Ukrainian officials.

Russia's main target on 5 August: Ukraine's warehouses

Russia has spent this year pushing its air war toward the ballistic missiles that Ukrainian defenses struggle most to stop, launching more of them than Ukraine can shoot down while its Patriot interceptor stocks run dry, and pairing them with drone waves that keep reaching homes, transit and the warehouses that feed the country.

Three Russian ballistic missiles destroyed the largest distribution center operated by Rozetka, Ukraine’s biggest online retailer, near Kyiv overnight on 5 August. Rozetka co-founder Iryna Chechotkina said the warehouse had processed more than 100,000 online orders each day and was beyond repair.

By dawn, the attack had torn through the civilian logistics network moving parcels, groceries, household goods and construction materials across the capital and its suburbs. At least 17 people were killed and 44 injured in the broader barrage, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

In its 5 August 2026 strikes, Russia destroyed a sorting center owned by Nova Poshta, Ukraine’s largest private parcel carrier, as well as major facilities operated by Epicentr, the country’s largest home-improvement retailer. Sites belonging to Novus and Fozzy Group, two major Ukrainian grocery retailers, were also damaged.

Nova Poshta said cluster munitions—bombs that scatter smaller explosives across a wide area—destroyed its Kyiv sorting center. Three people were killed and eight injured. Two of those killed were drivers for a partner carrier, while the third worked for a contractor.

Epicentr lost two major warehouse complexes and much of its ceramic-tile production. One employee was killed, and three were hospitalized at the company’s complex in Kalynivka. Its logistics center on Kyiv’s Viskozna Street burned completely, while another Russian missile destroyed the factory's kilns.

During a separate overnight attack on 3-4 August, a Russian drone destroyed a Biosphere warehouse storing household and personal-care products in Dnipro, although all employees reached shelter and no one was injured.

The Kyiv attack extended beyond commercial facilities. Russia's attack killed eight people waiting for a delayed train at Kvitneva station, a commuter stop near Brovary, east of Kyiv. Missiles also hit homes and offices, damaged an ambulance and caused an ammonia leak at a non-residential site.

An earlier Euromaidan Press report detailed the destruction across Kyiv and the surrounding region.

Why Ukraine intercepted none of the missiles

Russia launched 24 ballistic missiles and four Zircon and Oniks anti-ship missiles, high-speed weapons designed primarily to strike naval targets but also used against Ukrainian cities.

Ukraine intercepted none of the 28, the Ukrainian Air Force said. Air defenses shot down or electronically disabled 98 of the 115 accompanying drones.

Missiles and 17 drones struck 26 locations, while debris fell at another six.

Zelenskyy said ballistic-missile interceptors could have saved those killed. Ukraine’s stocks of Patriot missiles, its only reliable defense against Russian ballistic weapons, are critically depleted. 

A global interceptor shortage means manufacturers cannot produce advanced air-defense missiles fast enough to meet demand.

Russia exploited the same gap on 1 August 2026, when it fired 27 ballistic missiles at Kyiv and Ukraine intercepted only one.

Moscow may point to recent Ukrainian strikes on Wildberries logistics centers to frame its attacks as retaliation. Ukrainian officials say the Russian retailer transports military goods, including drone components and navigation equipment. The Kremlin denies that Wildberries carries military cargo.

Ukraine’s acting Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha rejected any comparison between the attacks. "Russian attacks cannot be justified by anything, including any actions by Ukraine," he said.

A European Union rule requiring newly arrived Ukrainians of military age to prove they have met their military obligations before receiving temporary protection took effect on 5 August, according to the Council of the EU and Czechia's Interior Ministry. The rule, Council Implementing Decision (EU) 2026/1912, was published in the EU's Official Journal on 4 August and applies only to new applicants — not to Ukrainians already holding protected status.

The measure closes a gap Czech and other EU officials have raised for months: hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men of conscription age have used temporary protection to remain in the EU while Ukraine's own martial law bars most men aged 23 to 60 from leaving the country. Applicants must now show they left Ukraine legally — typically via a passport exit stamp — or produce paper or electronic proof of an exemption or completed service, drawn from Ukraine's Reserve+ registration app, among other documents.

What the rule requires

The decision extends the EU's temporary protection mechanism for displaced Ukrainians to 4 March 2028, one year beyond its prior expiration. That extension applies broadly. The new documentation requirement is narrower: it targets people with military obligations under Ukrainian law who are applying for temporary protection for the first time, not renewals.

Czech Interior Minister Lubomír Metnar said the change would cut new arrivals "by tens of percent," according to a statement carried by the Interior Ministry and Radio Prague International. He said the restriction would ease pressure on the Czech healthcare and social welfare systems, which he said are close to capacity — Czechia hosts roughly 395,000 Ukrainians under temporary protection, the largest share relative to population of any EU state.

The EU has framed the change as balancing humanitarian protection against Ukraine's manpower needs. "Recognising both the need to protect displaced persons and Ukraine's need to defend itself against Russia's illegal war of aggression, EU countries agreed that temporary protection should be granted only to those complying with their military obligations in Ukraine," the Council of the EU said.

A narrow carve-out, a broader debate

The rule does not close off asylum entirely — Ukrainians can still apply for international protection under standard EU asylum law, evaluated case by case, regardless of military status.

The change follows years of friction over Ukraine's own registration system. EP has previously reported that the Reserve+ app, heavily promoted by Ukraine's Ministry of Defense as a fix for a paper-heavy, post-Soviet mobilization bureaucracy, "delivered far less than hoped," part of a broader draft-evasion problem officials have linked to gaps in the system rather than to the app itself.

The EU's move also lands against a backdrop of Ukrainians increasingly settling in for the long term. In Poland, which hosts the largest Ukrainian population in the EU, 73% of surveyed Ukrainians say they plan to stay long-term and 44% for at least several more years, according to a University of Warsaw Center of Migration Research study cited in the source reporting; employment among that group has risen from 69% in 2022 to nearly 83% in 2026, though 45% work outside their qualifications.

The US military has used up nearly 80% of its THAAD interceptors and roughly half of its Patriot stock during the five-month war with Iran, according to two sources familiar with the latest Pentagon inventory report, CNN reported.

Senior US military commanders are warning the Pentagon's munitions stockpile is "dangerously low," according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. The disclosure on THAAD levels has not been previously reported. Before the war began, the US had around 2,200 Patriot interceptors of the platform's two most modern variants and 452 THAAD missiles, according to Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimates. CSIS has assessed the war with Iran drained over half the global Patriot stockpile within its first 39 days.

The Patriot and THAAD systems are the same interceptor families that arm Ukraine's own air defense against Russian ballistic strikes - Kyiv depends on to stop Russian ballistic missiles. Thus a stockpile "dangerously low" for Washington is one that's already left Ukrainian Patriot launchers running empty during Russian barrages.

Commanders call stockpiles dangerously low

The US Army has fired "virtually all" of its long-range, surface-to-air precision weapons during the war, one source told CNN, referring to Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM). Close to half of the US Tomahawk cruise missile stockpile has also been used, a source said, up from nearly 30% reported by CNN in April.

Gulf allies have raised concerns that the shortage could limit their own ability to intercept Iranian retaliation, particularly if Washington resumes strikes. Replenishment is slow: the Pentagon is currently receiving about 15 new Tomahawks and 20 new Patriot missiles a month, and CSIS estimates rebuilding THAAD stocks to prewar levels will take three years or more.

Weekend strikes called off over stockpile concerns

The munitions warnings, combined with intelligence on the risks of striking Iranian energy infrastructure and concerns raised by Gulf states, were factors in President Donald Trump's decision to call off planned strikes over the weekend, according to CNN's sources. Trump had authorized the operation Friday, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth receiving the final order to proceed, a senior Trump official said. Trump reversed course Saturday after Middle East allies told him they feared Iranian retaliation against their energy infrastructure, the official said. He told Hegseth to stand down for now but has not ruled out strikes at a later date.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement that the US military "has everything it needs to execute at the time and place of the President's choosing." White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said the military has "more than enough munitions, ammo, and stockpiles to serve all of President Trump's strategic goals and beyond."

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine raised the stockpile issue in a separate White House meeting last month, CNN previously reported, where officials also discussed the risk of mass civilian casualties from a resumed US campaign inside Iran.

The shortage extends beyond Iran

CNN's sources said the depleted stockpile could affect the US military's ability to fight a future war involving China, Russia, or North Korea. "The lack of interceptors means that conventional attacks can backfire if the suicide drones start making it through in-masse," one source said. "Tit-for-tat will never end this."

Euromaidan Press has reported that the same Patriot shortage has already strained deliveries to Ukraine, which depends on PAC-3 interceptors as its only defense against Russian ballistic missiles. A senior Ukrainian official has told the Financial Times that deliveries to Kyiv faced delays since the war with Iran began, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said late arrivals have left Patriot launchers empty during Russian missile barrages.

Analysts expect a slow recovery. The Precision Strike Missile and Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile inventories should return to prewar levels by mid-to-late 2027, according to CSIS. The Defense Department has signed two deals this week to expand Patriot and THAAD rocket motor production, though a Pentagon spokesperson declined to say when the expansion would show results.

Trump on Monday called Iranian leadership "unbelievably duplicitous" after Tehran denied that negotiations would resume, and said Tehran had one "last chance" to sign a deal.

A Ukrainian drone strike set fire to a Wildberries logistics center in Oleksin, Russia's Tula Oblast, overnight into 5 August, according to the monitoring Telegram channel Exilenova+ and Russian outlet ASTRA. Tula Oblast Governor Dmitry Milyaev confirmed one person was injured and said a drone came down on the sorting center's territory before the fire broke out.

The strike extends a Ukrainian campaign against Russia's largest online retailer that has hit 15 Wildberries logistics sites in 18 days, Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert "Madyar" Brovdi said on 4 August, before the Oleksin strike. Thirteen of those 15 were knocked out of action or seriously damaged, he said. Ukraine's deep-strike drones have turned Wildberries hubs — repeatedly described by Ukrainian officials as Russia's answer to Amazon — into a recurring target as they widen a campaign against the fuel and freight networks that keep Russia's war economy running.

Wildberries confirmed the fire at its Oleksin site, saying it evacuated staff in advance and temporarily redirected new deliveries to other warehouses. Milyaev also reported damage to two apartment buildings in Venyov district and two industrial sites in Novomoskovsk and Uzlovaya district from the same overnight barrage.

The Oleksin center covers about 194,500 square meters, according to Exilenova+, and opened in 2022. It supplies Tula, Kaluga, Oryol, Bryansk, Kursk, Lipetsk, Ryazan, and other central Russian oblasts, and partly relieves logistics centers in the Moscow region.

The strike follows fires at two other Wildberries sites — in Krasny Bor, Leningrad Oblast, and Chekhov, Moscow Oblast — overnight into 4 August, and comes as Wildberries has begun restricting employees to camera-free phones after staff filmed and shared footage of the strikes.

Russia launched a massed combined missile and drone attack on Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast overnight into 5 August, killing 14 people and injuring 26, Ukraine's State Emergency Service (DSNS) reported. Rescuers were still working seven locations across three raions as of the latest update, with fires, a residential building collapse, and an ammonia leak among the damage reported in the capital and its surrounding region.

The strike is the second massed barrage on Kyiv in five days. Russia killed nine people in the capital on 1 August with 27 ballistic missiles, damaging the Lithuanian embassy and destroying part of the city's ambulance fleet in a double-tap strike on a medical-transport depot.

The renewed attack this week points to a pattern of sustained pressure on the capital even as Russia continues to reject a full ceasefire in ongoing talks.

Kyiv Oblast bore the heaviest toll. Most of the deaths came in Brovarskyi raion, where nine people were killed, according to Kyiv Oblast Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko. Four more people died in Bucha raion and one in Fastiv raion. Warehouse fires broke out in Brovary, Velyka Dymerka, Kvitneve, and Peremoha in Brovarskyi raion; rescuers were also fighting a warehouse fire in Chaiky, Bucha raion, and had extinguished a logistics-facility fire in Sofiivska Borshchahivka.

In Kyiv city, ballistic missiles and drones struck four districts — Obolonskyi, Sviatoshynskyi, Holosiivskyi, and Desnianskyi — starting shortly after midnight. A woman was killed in Obolonskyi, where a non-residential building caught fire. In Holosiivskyi, a strike destroyed a private residential building, with rescuers searching for people under the rubble, and damaged a tank holding roughly 300 liters of ammonia at a nearby industrial site. Emergency crews contained the leak and confirmed no threat to residents. Repeated explosions at one strike site also damaged an ambulance, injuring its driver.

The overnight fires pushed air quality across Kyiv to hazardous levels by morning, with monitoring stations in Obolonskyi and Sviatoshynskyi districts recording index readings of 140–174 against a healthy baseline of under 50, according to SaveEcoBot and AQICN data.

DSNS said the death and injury toll could still rise as search-and-rescue operations continue in Brovarskyi and Bucha raions.

The United States is reorganizing its Security Assistance Group-Ukraine (SAG-U), shifting greater responsibility for coordinating military assistance to European allies while maintaining support for Kyiv, US European Command (USEUCOM) announced on 3 August.

The changes affect the division of responsibilities between SAG-U, US military components, and NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine (NSATU). According to USEUCOM, the reorganization is intended to improve the efficiency of military assistance while transferring leadership of key elements of the mission to allied countries.

Established in November 2022 following Russia's full-scale invasion, the headquarters oversees long-term security assistance for Ukraine, including coordinating equipment deliveries, training Ukrainian forces, and sharing battlefield lessons learned with US and NATO militaries.

Pentagon says support for Ukraine will continue

USEUCOM said the reorganization "will not impact US support for Ukraine" and would free US resources for other global priorities while recognizing Europe's growing role in supporting Ukraine's defense.

"Allies have shown that they can take the lead in support of Ukraine's defense," USEUCOM commander Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich said.

"SAG-U was always meant to be a temporary command. Its transition builds on the progress that we have already seen, helping to set conditions for lasting peace in Ukraine."

US Army Europe and Africa spokesperson Col. Michael Weisman similarly said the reorganization "does not diminish our support or commitment to Ukraine" and that Washington would continue coordinating assistance through USEUCOM and NSATU in line with US policy.

Shift follows broader push for Europe to take the lead

The announcement follows reports that the Pentagon plans to hand leadership of SAG-U to another NATO member over the coming year while retaining a US deputy commander, a move reported by Politico.

According to the outlet, the transition forms part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to shift more responsibility for European security onto NATO allies. The administration has previously reduced US leadership roles within NATO's command structure and has repeatedly called on European countries to assume a greater share of the burden for Ukraine's defense and the alliance's collective security.

USEUCOM likewise said the realignment reflects Europe's leading role in supporting Ukraine over the past year.

USEUCOM said SAG-U has distributed more than $2 billion in security assistance over the past three and a half years while coordinating military aid from allied and partner nations.