Aviation is one of the most effective ways to counter Russia’s jet-powered drones. Its effectiveness continues to grow due to pilots’ skill and better coordination, Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara says, Glavcom reports.

Russia’s jet-powered Gerans fly several times faster than the propeller Shaheds Ukraine learned to shoot down, and they remain the main challenge for its air defense. Ukraine downs more than 90% of the slow drones but only about 55% of the jet ones.

“Due to them, our aviation now uses fewer munitions per aerial target. We plan to improve this further,” Khmara states.

Air defense works as a layered system because no single type of weapon is enough, he explains. The layers run from surface-to-air and shoulder-fired missiles to turrets, electronic warfare, interceptor-drone crews, and small-scale air defense, topped by aircraft including Mirage and F-16 jets.

Scaling what works against jet drones

Ukraine already has combat results against the jet drones, Khmara notes. In one engagement, five Bars interceptors destroyed five aerial targets, a 100% hit rate in that case, and the task now is to raise the overall destruction rate and quickly scale the solutions that prove themselves.

Heavy-caliber turrets are adding to that. Their number in service already runs into the hundreds, he adds.

“This direction is being scaled, and systems with greater range are being worked on. In parallel, surface-to-air and shoulder-fired missile systems are also proving effective,” he says.

Preparing for the next generation

Ukraine is also looking past today’s threats, the minister stresses. The ministry is working to supply interceptor drones, aviation and its munitions, missile and artillery systems, turrets and electronic warfare gear, and to plan several steps ahead with enough stock in reserve.

“We also know what solutions Russia is developing, which concern jet drones with a speed of 800 kilometers per hour. We are working on finding countermeasures to the next generation of threats,” Khmara says.

Producers have been tasked with offering proposals and prototypes, he concludes.

Russia hit the CHP-5 thermal plant in Kharkiv on the evening of 11 October. It came hours after US President Donald Trump announced an energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address.

Trump had announced the energy truce earlier that day, though Kyiv reported no part in any such deal, as well as Moscow. Yet in this one week, Russia carried out more than 200 strikes on Ukraine’s power generation and transmission and 17 on its gas and oil sites, killing more than 150 people and wounding more than 700, according to Zelenskyy.

“All day today, there were Russian Shaheds in the sky. There are Shaheds in the sky now, too. There were strikes by aerial bombs. There were strikes on our energy. Just now there was a strike on CHP-5 in Kharkiv,” Zelenskyy states.

Ukraine welcomes the agreement Trump announced and is ready to stop striking Russian energy if Russia does the same. For that to mean anything, he stresses, it has to become part of reality.

A one-word answer from Moscow

Ukraine has offered many de-escalation steps, Zelenskyy notes, but Russian ruler Vladimir Putin met them all with the same refusal. He voices hope that the Russian leader would finally tell the US, Ukraine, and the world something other than killing and deception, something that leads to a real and dignified peace.

Ukraine wants peace, and the question is whether Russia does. The Armed Forces have received all the relevant orders to defend the country, he confirms.

Allies line up fresh support

Zelenskyy says he also spoke with members of the US Congress and, the day before with the UK prime minister, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Norway’s prime minister, all of whom offered help.

Ukraine is also working with the EU on financing for its defense and budget stability, and preparing new steps on European integration.

US President Donald Trump has announced an immediate energy ceasefire in the war between Russia and Ukraine, saying both sides agreed to stop striking each other’s energy facilities, in a post on Truth Social. Ukraine, however, knew nothing about the deal.

Russia has spent the war hitting Ukraine's power plants, refineries, and grids, while Ukraine answered with strikes on its refineries and plants that produce missiles. If confirmed, a halt before winter would be a major break. Yet about seven minutes before Trump’s announcement, Russia struck at Kyiv’s thermal plant, cutting power to several districts of the capital at once.

“Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE in the War between Russia and Ukraine. Both parties have agreed. Do not break it!” Trump wrote.

News for Zelenskyy

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Axios the announcement “was news" for him. But if Russians agree to an energy ceasefire, Ukraine will agree, he added. Moscow gave no immediate confirmation.

The announcement follows days of friction over energy. Washington has just eased sanctions on Russian diesel and pressed Kyiv to stop hitting Russian refineries, while Russian strikes killed more than 80 Ukrainian civilians in two days.

A truce no one in Kyiv confirmed

Zelenskyy had already signaled Ukraine’s terms. He said on Sunday that Kyiv was ready to stop striking Russian refineries if Moscow halted its attacks on Ukrainian energy, so the condition was on the table before Trump spoke, not settled by him.

If Trump negotiated it with Putin, then he should say when the ceasefire begins, Zelenskyy added, underlining that Ukraine had not been party to any such agreement.

Ukrainians greet it with doubt

The reaction in Kyiv was wary. Trump already declared an energy ceasefire once, and Putin broke it within five minutes, said Andrii Kovalenko, former head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, asking whether Trump was now “announcing it to himself.”

Meanwhile, lawmaker Yaroslav Zhelezniak called for an explanation, warning that Trump’s “energy ceasefire” might mean Ukraine stops hitting Russian refineries and tankers while Russia merely promises not to strike Ukrainian oil tankers it would struggle to find in the first place.

Ukraine, which long kept its weapons at home, is now clearing its arms makers to sell abroad. Its Commission on Export Control has granted 18 Ukrainian companies permission to send their finished weapons abroad and has processed more than 400 export applications, with over 90% approved, the National Security and Defense Council says, citing commission head Davyd Aloian.

Ukraine now produces far more weapons than it can afford, with defense production growing from about $1 billion a year at the start of the invasion to a projected $55 billion in 2026.

The exports are reportedly conducted under the Drone Deals framework that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy unveiled in April, which allows controlled sales of surplus weapons to partner countries while the Defense Ministry and General Staff retain first claim to everything the front needs. Some categories already run up to 50% beyond what Ukraine can use or finance.

From a stalled commission to 18 approvals

The commission’s work had been halting. It resumed in February after an eight-month freeze and issued the first permits then, and its updated membership has been working since, Aloian notes.

Building partnerships abroad

Aloian framed the goal as scaling Ukrainian technology rather than one-off deals. The state wants domestic producers to expand abroad while partners get working solutions, he says, and is open to dialogue with the defense industry to fix problems as they arise.

Earlier, an industry group that represents more than 400 companies warned in September that the mechanism was choking. A new 20-to-30% fee on export permits priced Ukrainian goods out of the market, it said, and a joint-production program had stalled with hundreds of foreign bids pending.

Euromaidan Press cannot verify whether the Commission on Export Control has taken the issue into consideration.

The council recently met a UK Defense Ministry delegation to discuss closer cooperation, including a Drone Deal, an anti-ballistic coalition, and joint production, Aloian adds. Reaching foreign markets enables producers to attract new orders and investment, scale up, and build long-term partnerships.

Estonia’s answer to the US-Russia diesel agreement: deals with dictators lead to hell. Prime Minister Kristen Michal wants the European Council to discuss giving Ukraine more aid so it can destroy Russia’s oil refineries, after sharply criticizing the US decision to strike a diesel deal with Russia, ERR reports.

Washington has eased sanctions on Russian diesel, a move Ukraine says funds a war that has killed more than 80 Ukrainian civilians in two days. Estonia’s answer is to go the opposite way and help Ukraine hit the source of that fuel, the refineries, harder.

"It is worth discussing in Estonia and at the European Council next week whether we can quickly contribute more to Ukraine so they can blast Russia's oil refineries to smithereens," Michal says.

He casts the US deal as a historic error. Innocent people are being killed for gas and fuel money, Michal warns, saying that the promised fuel may never arrive. For years, the US urged allies to drop Russian fuel, and Estonia did, so cutting Moscow’s revenue must continue, not reverse, he adds.

Mihkelson: Russia's strategic goals remain unchanged

Meanwhile, Marko Mihkelson, chair of the Riigikogu Foreign Affairs Committee, says that Russia's strategic objectives remain the same as they were before: to rebuild its empire, beginning with the subjugation of Ukraine, and to dismantle the Euro-Atlantic system of collective defense.

"That is why European allies still have only one way to prevent this war of aggression from spreading: to do everything possible to ensure that Russia’s strategic objectives fail and that the imperial wars launched by the Kremlin end in defeat," he says.

This clear strategic objective should also serve US interests, he continues, adding that "Russia’s long-standing ambition, pursued in concert with China and Iran, to undermine America’s global leadership is entering a decisive phase."

A Russian air strike with guided bombs on the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia has killed at least 17 people, including three children, according to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has tied the attack to a US decision to let Russian diesel reach world markets without demanding Moscow halt its strikes on Ukraine first.

On 9 October, President Donald Trump said that Russia would immediately supply more than 300,000 tonnes of diesel fuel to the US and global markets, a further 500,000 tonnes during November, and 1 million tonnes immediately thereafter. The move has already drawn criticism from US lawmakers in both parties.

“Today, Russia expressed its gratitude for the lifting of sanctions on diesel exports by dropping five guided aerial bombs on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram.

Zelenskyy vows to keep hitting refineries

These figures were accurate at the time the post was written. Later, the State Emergency Service reported that the death toll had risen by two. Meanwhile, Zelenskyy stated that Ukraine would not stop striking oil refineries that bring additional revenues for the Kremlin, which spends them on the war.

“There will be responses to Russian attacks. Thank you to everyone who is helping,” Zelenskyy concluded.

According to Zelenskyy, two of the injured are in critical condition, and doctors are fighting to save their lives. Information is also being verified regarding another 12 people who may have been at the strike site.

“Thirteen of our regions came under attack overnight. Residential buildings, infrastructure, and railway facilities have been damaged,” the Ukrainian leader said.

More pressure on Kremlin

Zelenskyy stressed that the latest Russian strikes further demonstrate the need to increase pressure on Russia. In his view, easing restrictions is interpreted by the aggressor as a signal that it can continue the war and attack Ukrainian cities.

“This night provided yet another confirmation that Russia interprets any easing of pressure as a signal that it can supposedly continue fighting and that it can supposedly drop bombs on cities,” he emphasized.

He also noted that Ukraine’s long-range strike capabilities are inflicting such losses on Russia and stressed that Ukraine would respond to Russian attacks.

US President Donald Trump announced a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin for Moscow to supply millions of tons of diesel fuel to American and global markets. 

The announcement would give Russia a major opportunity to sell fuel abroad at a time when Ukraine is targeting its oil industry to deprive Moscow of revenue and disrupt the resources sustaining its invasion. The US president has increasingly called for Ukraine to halt strikes on Russian oil infrastructure in recent weeks, blaming Ukraine for high fuel prices in the US.

Trump’s push for Kyiv to halt those attacks, alongside his effort to secure Russian fuel supplies, risks undermining Ukraine’s campaign to put economic pressure on the Kremlin while the US seeks to contain the fallout from its war with Iran.

Trump promises millions of tons of diesel from Russia

In a 9 October post on Truth Social, Trump said Russia would immediately supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel, followed by another 500,000 tons in November and 1 million tons shortly afterward. He also announced a possible additional delivery of 3 million tons, conditional on the state of Russian refineries.

“Diesel Prices for Americans and, indeed, the World, will be COMING DOWN, IN RECORD NUMBERS, AND FAST!” Trump wrote, describing lower fuel prices as a top priority for American farmers, ranchers, and truckers.

Trump's announcement did not explain how the promised volumes would be reconciled with the condition of Russian refineries amid ongoing Ukrainian strikes, which he cited as a factor determining the timing of later deliveries.

Trump has pressed Ukraine to stop targeting Russian refineries

The announcement comes after Trump repeatedly blamed Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil infrastructure for worsening global diesel shortages and driving up fuel prices.

Ukraine has continued targeting Russian oil facilities as part of its campaign to undermine Moscow's war economy. Ukrainian strikes have damaged refining capacity, contributed to fuel shortages inside Russia, and forced Moscow to restrict fuel exports. 

Kyiv has argued that the attacks put pressure on Russia's ability to finance and sustain its war against Ukraine.

Iran war drives fuel prices higher, not Ukraine

The rise in US fuel prices stems largely from the US-Israeli war with Iran and its disruption of global energy supplies, according to Reuters. The conflict has disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which roughly one-fifth of the world's oil supplies normally pass, pushing energy prices higher. 

Trump has nevertheless blamed Ukraine's refinery strikes for rising fuel costs while pressing Kyiv to halt them.

Ukraine's attacks on Russian oil infrastructure are intended to weaken Moscow's war economy. By contrast, the disruption to global energy shipments stems largely from the conflict with Iran. 

Zelenskyy warns Russian diesel deal would fund further attacks on Ukraine

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned later on 9 October that allowing Russia to sell petroleum products abroad without securing a lasting de-escalation agreement would help finance Moscow's war against Ukraine.

“Allowing Russia to sell petroleum products is an investment in a war that must be ended, not prolonged,” Zelenskyy said, responding to Trump's announcement of a proposed Russian diesel supply deal.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine's strikes on Russian oil refineries and other oil facilities were a response to Russia's years-long campaign against Ukrainian energy infrastructure. He offered a reciprocal arrangement under which Ukraine would stop striking Russian refineries if Russia stopped destroying Ukrainian energy facilities, saying the United States had sufficient leverage to secure such an agreement.

“Ukraine will not burn Russian oil refining facilities if Russia does not destroy our energy infrastructure,” Zelenskyy said.

He also urged Washington to maintain pressure on Moscow, including sanctions under the proposed Graham legislation, and to continue supporting Ukraine's defense. Zelenskyy argued that easing sanctions without a clear, sustained de-escalation agreement would signal weakness and give Russia more time and resources to continue the war.

“Gifts to Putin will not bring peace,” Zelenskyy said, warning that Russia would respond to diesel supplies with further terror and attacks. He called on the United States to pursue a reciprocal de-escalation agreement and press Russia to stop its attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

Ukrainian assault troops suffered more than 10 times fewer casualties than Russian forces during Operation Vivaldi, a Ukrainian military veteran said on 9 October, describing the ratio as unprecedented and highlighting Ukraine’s improved ability to protect its soldiers during offensive operations.

The counteroffensive has been a significant Ukrainian success, reclaiming territory in northern Donetsk Oblast and disrupting Russia’s plans to advance toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. The reported casualty ratio points shows Ukraine’s ability to make offensive gains while reducing the human cost of assaulting fortified positions.

Yevhen Dykyi made the remarks in an interview with Radio NV, saying the results showed how Ukrainian forces had learned to limit losses while attacking defended Russian positions.

Protecting troops during offensive operations

Dykyi said the casualty ratio was one of the operation’s most important outcomes.

He said that Ukrainian assault troops suffered more than 10 times fewer casualties than Russian forces during the counteroffensive.

“That speaks volumes. We have learned how to protect our people, and that is extraordinarily vital,” he added.

Operation Vivaldi disrupted Russia’s advance in Donetsk

The Third Army Corps launched Vivaldi in mid-September in northern Donetsk Oblast, near Lyman, where Russian forces had spent months trying to advance toward Ukraine’s fortified cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

The operation aimed to clear Russian troops from positions north of Lyman and disrupt Moscow’s plans to encircle the remaining Ukrainian-held parts of Donetsk Oblast. Ukraine’s Third Army Corps announced the counteroffensive on 15 September, initially reporting that its forces had cleared Russian infiltrators from several settlements and liberated Serednie.

By 30 September, Ukraine had regained 176 square kilometers of territory during the operation, according to figures cited by the Ukrainian presidential office. Ukrainian authorities also reported that their forces had captured around 250 Russian soldiers and inflicted more than 5,000 Russian casualties, including killed and wounded. 

The counteroffensive also disrupted Russia’s effort to advance behind Ukraine’s fortified defensive line. By threatening Russian positions north of Lyman, Ukrainian forces complicated Moscow’s plans to encircle the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk area rather than attack its defenses head-on.

Unmanned systems help limit casualties

A key feature of Vivaldi has been the use of unmanned systems to attack fortified Russian positions before Ukrainian infantry moves in. Ukrainian forces deployed ground robots carrying grenade launchers to fire into Russian shelters, while explosive ground vehicles were used to destroy bunkers and strongpoints.

In one reported tactic, heavy drones delivered kamikaze ground robots more than 10 kilometers behind Russian lines, allowing Ukrainian operators to attack positions without exposing infantry to direct fire.

Two Ukrainian defense-tech firms, The Fourth Law and Odd Systems, have joined forces to mass-produce thermal imaging sensors in Europe and the US, The Fourth Law told Militarnyi. The goal is to wean Western militaries off foreign suppliers, chiefly China, for the core part of every thermal camera.

Amid Russia's daily attacks, Ukrainian drone makers have been shifting production to allied countries. Linza and Zoom drones are now built in Germany, and another top manufacturer has taken its technology to Canada and Finland. Sensor plants would move a core component west, not just finished drones.

A Western answer to Chinese sensors

The project, called Project Foundation, will build long-wave infrared sensors, known as microbolometers. These chips register heat, so a camera can pick out a person or vehicle at night or through smoke. The aim, The Fourth Law said, is to "ensure the sovereignty of Western countries in the field of thermal imaging technology."

Plants in Europe and the US from 2027

The project will run two sites, First Foundation in Europe and Second Foundation in the US, from a headquarters in Eindhoven, a Dutch semiconductor hub. Mass production is due to start in 2027. Within three years, the partners want to quadruple Europe's output of these sensors and double America's.

Why Europe's supply isn't enough

Ukraine's front line burns through sensors faster than Europe can make them. "Europe currently produces less than 500,000 such sensors per year, while Ukraine consumes this amount in about five months," Odd Systems co-founder Yaroslav Azhniuk said in February, when he first announced plans for a plant able to make one million sensors a year. European sensors cost about five times as much as Chinese ones and are hard to buy at all, because Europeans need them too, he added.

Factories working for Ukraine abroad have already become sabotage targets. In March, an arson attack in Pardubice, Czechia, destroyed nearly all the production capacity of a plant making drones and thermal sights for Ukraine's army. Czech investigators are looking into a possible Russian trail behind the attack.

Russia is planning a winter strike campaign involving up to 1,000 missiles, drones, and bombs targeting, among other facilities, electrical substations, hydroelectric and thermal power plants, and boiler houses. The information is contained in a document that, according to sources cited by The New York Times, Ukraine's Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal presented as an intercepted Russian plan to destroy energy infrastructure systematically. The newspaper reported on 2 October.

Russia has been striking critical infrastructure across Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion. Such attacks have become particularly frequent ahead of and during winter. Ukraine's recent battlefield gains may have prompted Putin to reconsider his strategy and attempt to force Ukraine to surrender through winter strikes, analysts at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) suggest. Russia's reported plans to attack Ukraine's energy, water supply, and sewage systems could threaten the basic living conditions of millions of people. Such strikes could increase pressure on civilians and the Ukrainian economy while forcing the state to divert more resources to emergency infrastructure repairs instead of defense needs.

The New York Times was unable to verify the document's authenticity independently, but noted that it was written in Russian and dated August.

A representative of Ukraine's defense-industrial sector who has reviewed the document believes it is more of a calculation than a finalized Russian military operations plan, according to Schemes, an investigative journalism project by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), in a report published on 8 October.

60 targets: how Russia could attack Ukraine's critical infrastructure

The document outlines how many missiles, drones, and bombs Russia would need to deprive Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa of electricity, heating, water, and sewage services, Radio Liberty reported on 9 October. The document's full list of priority cities also includes Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Poltava, Chernihiv, Kryvyi Rih, Cherkasy, Kropyvnytskyi, Lviv, Vinnytsia, and Ivano-Frankivsk.

According to the document, Russia plans to begin by attacking substations near Ukraine's western border, through which the country receives electricity from Europe. Hydroelectric power plants could be targeted next, followed by facilities intended to shut down Ukraine's three operational nuclear power plants, Radio Liberty reports. The document lists a total of 60 key targets.

According to Schemes, the document states that Russia would need up to 770 Molniya and Geran drones, Dan-T/Banderol missile-drones, 170 FAB guided aerial bombs, and 75 Kinzhal and Iskander-M ballistic missiles to carry out the attacks.

Sewage systems could become Russia's next target

The document devotes particular attention to water supply and wastewater systems. These include pumping stations, treatment facilities, and other infrastructure essential for cities to provide residents with water and dispose of wastewater.

Russia has not previously attacked such facilities on a similar scale, The New York Times notes.

Preparing for possible attacks on water supply and sewage systems is significantly more difficult than protecting energy infrastructure, Oleh Popenko, head of the Ukrainian Union of Utility Services Consumers, told Current Time, RFE/RL's Russian-language network.

“Sewage is a very complex system. There are specific challenges: where to discharge wastewater, how to organize treatment facilities, and so on. Some work is also underway in this sector, but it will be much more difficult here than with district heating utilities,” Popenko says.

Creating alternative routes in case sewage pumping stations are destroyed is an expensive and technically challenging task, he adds. Such construction could cost billions of hryvnias.

The priority is to equip water utilities with backup power sources so they can continue operating during power outages. However, if Russian strikes damage the sewage system itself, resolving the problem quickly will be much more difficult, Popenko believes. Specific solutions, including wastewater disposal and the operation of treatment facilities, will have to be determined according to the extent of the damage.

Sewage pumping stations play a particularly important role. They pump wastewater onward for disposal and treatment. If such a station is put out of operation by a strike, the city needs an alternative way to divert wastewater while the damaged facility is being repaired, Popenko says. Bypass pipes or channels could be installed for this purpose, but setting up such a system during wartime is far from easy.

Air defenses remain crucial to Ukraine's winter preparations

Preparations for winter are underway, but protection for energy infrastructure remains inadequate, Popenko believes. The main concern is large substations that transmit electricity from nuclear power plants and distribute electricity imported from Europe.

At the same time, some protective measures are already proving effective. Despite drone attacks over two days, one of Kyiv's substations withstood the strikes, and the city did not lose power, although scheduled outages were in effect, the expert says.

Popenko considers a repeat of last winter's scenario, when parts of Kyiv went without heating for weeks, entirely possible. Russian forces continue to attack energy facilities, and in his assessment, strengthening air defenses in Kyiv is the only way to protect its combined heat and power (CHP) plants from large-scale attacks.

“There are no other ways — for example, building some sarcophagi around CHPs or constructing shelters — because Russia can destroy these facilities again through massive strikes. And then the city risks being left 50–60% without heat,” Popenko believes.

Residents are also preparing for winter, but their options vary, he says. Some homeowners' associations participate in government programs to insulate apartment buildings and purchase backup power supplies for elevators and pumping stations. Owners of private houses are buying generators, among other measures. However, such equipment and preparations require substantial funds, meaning not everyone can afford them, he notes.

Ukraine has already experienced prolonged power outages during previous winters, particularly in 2022 and 2023. At the time, some regions went without electricity for 18–20 hours a day, the expert says. This experience may help people prepare for possible disruptions, but it does not eliminate the risk of further attacks and infrastructure damage.

Drones struck a plant making fuel components for Russia's Kh-101 cruise missiles and a second Yandex data center overnight on 9 October, Russian officials and monitoring channels reported. The same night, fires were reported at a refinery in Russia's far north and an oil depot near Belgorod. Russia claimed it downed more than 500 drones, and Ukraine has not claimed any of the strikes.

Ukraine has spent months hitting refineries and arms suppliers deep inside Russia. Russia, meanwhile, keeps firing Kh-101 cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities, including the one that killed 22 people in Pryluky on 7 October.

The plant behind the Kh-101's fuel

The Redkino Experimental Plant in Tver Oblast came under attack overnight, Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ reported. It said the plant makes components of Decilin-M, a fuel for Kh-55 and Kh-101 cruise missiles, as well as additives for diesel and aviation kerosene.

Tver Oblast Governor Vitaly Korolev claimed a plant in Redkino caught fire as a drone attack was being repelled. He did not name the plant. No workers were hurt, he said.

The plant also makes ferrocene derivatives, which serve as burn catalysts in solid-fuel rocket motors, Militarnyi reported. The UK sanctioned it in September 2025. Drones attacked it in September 2023 and twice in one night in June 2024, the outlet said.

In February, drones of the Security Service of Ukraine's (SBU) Alpha unit struck the plant, sparking a large fire, SBU sources told Kyiv Post. The Kh-101 is the missile Russia used against Pryluky on 7 October, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

Yandex loses a second data center

Part of Yandex's data center in Kaluga was damaged in the drone attack, and several modules were completely knocked out, the company's press service told Interfax, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported. Some Yandex services may run with interruptions, no one was hurt, and the company is still assessing the damage, Yandex said.

Kaluga Oblast Governor Vladislav Shapsha claimed nine people were injured in the overnight attack on the region. A day earlier, a drone attack forced Yandex to fully shut its data center in Sasovo, Ryazan Oblast.

A refinery in the north, a depot near Belgorod

Locals reported an attack on the Ukhta refinery in the Komi Republic, followed by a fire, Exilenova+ said. The Lukoil-owned plant can process about 4.2 million metric tons of oil a year, making gasoline, diesel, fuel oil, and vacuum gasoil. The extent of the damage is unclear.

An oil depot north of Belgorod was also burning after the night's attack, the channel posted. Belgorod's regional headquarters claimed two people were killed and four injured, including a child, in the Belgorod district.

A large fire also broke out in Pushkino near Moscow, likely at a truck parking lot, Astra reported. The cause is unknown.

Repeated strikes on Redkino target a specialty fuel that Russia's cruise missiles depend on, while two Yandex data centers hit in two nights bring the war to services ordinary Russians use every day.

Ukrainian forces are advancing east of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, and even Russian milbloggers now acknowledge it, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said on 8 October. The gains may follow months of groundwork like the one that preceded Operation Vivaldi near Lyman, which Ukraine says returned 176 km² to its control. Russian commentators are already doubting that Moscow can reach the two cities.

Russia's years-long push on the Fortress Belt, the chain of cities anchoring Ukraine's defense in Donetsk Oblast, has been stalling since Vivaldi began. Unable to take those cities, Russia keeps hitting them from the air. On 8 October, a Russian bomb killed 30 people on two buses in Kramatorsk.

Across the Siverskyi Donets

Russian milbloggers said Ukrainian forces liberated Ozerne and advanced east of Pyskunivka toward Kryva Luka, ISW reported. They also acknowledged that Ukrainian troops drove Russian forces out of Pyskunivka. Ukrainians are now counterattacking toward Kryva Luka from the west and northwest, from across the river.

ISW called the repeated Russian claims of a river crossing notable, because the Siverskyi Donets is a significant natural obstacle. Kryva Luka is a dominant height just south of the river. From there, Ukraine could launch further counterattacks. Ukrainian forces appear to have pushed Russian troops off both banks in this area, ISW assessed.

The heights Russia wanted

After Vivaldi cleared ground near Lyman in September, Russia shifted its push south toward Mykolaivka and Sloviansk. Russian forces likely see Mykolaivka, just east of Sloviansk, as a primary objective, ISW said. Its heights would favor an offensive on the city. Ukrainian pushes northeast and southeast of the town now deny Russia that terrain.

East of Kramatorsk, milbloggers claimed Ukrainians liberated Malynivka and advanced between Fedorivka Druha and Holubivka. They also reported gains into southern Minkivka and near Fedorivka. The lines remain tangled. Geolocated footage shows Ukrainian forces striking a Russian position in central Tykhonivka after what ISW assesses was a Russian infiltration.

ISW said the counterattacks may point to a broader Ukrainian goal: pushing Russian forces east, away from the Sloviansk–Kramatorsk area and toward the Siverskyi Donets–Donbas Canal.

The Vivaldi playbook

The counterattacks have run for weeks. On 29 September, Ukrainian military observer Kostiantyn Mashovets reported them in the same areas, saying Russia's 3rd Combined Arms Army had failed to make significant gains. ISW assesses that the attacks build on months of shaping meant to wear down Russia's offensive capacity.

Before Vivaldi, Ukrainian forces targeted Russian drone operators, gaining drone superiority before the counteroffensive. They used the same approach ahead of their Oleksandrivka counterattacks in early 2026.

Moscow appears to see the pattern. A Ukrainian military official said on 7 October that Russia is moving drone units and Spetsnaz from quieter sectors to the Sloviansk–Kramatorsk direction. Ukraine also reorganized its command in and around Donetsk Oblast in early September, which may be blunting Russian attacks from the east, ISW said.

"Distant" and "doomed"

One Russian milblogger called an advance toward the Sloviansk–Kramatorsk area a "distant" prospect, ISW reported. A Russian offensive from Siversk toward Sloviansk may be "doomed" to failure or heavy losses unless Russia retakes the forests south of Lyman, he said.

The counterattacks east of the two cities appear to support Vivaldi, ISW assessed. Together with Russia's defeat north of the river, they could disrupt Russia's offensive toward Sloviansk from the east entirely.

If Ukraine holds Kryva Luka and keeps Russia off the Mykolaivka heights, Moscow's pincer on Sloviansk and Kramatorsk loses the ground it was built on.

Power outages have returned to Kyiv after Russian attacks damaged the energy infrastructure supplying the capital, with authorities warning that the situation could worsen as Russia intensifies its campaign against Ukraine’s energy system ahead of winter.

Russia has repeatedly targeted Ukraine’s power, heating, and other critical infrastructure to disrupt the systems civilians depend on and create a humanitarian crisis during winter. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly warned that this winter will be especially severe, as Russia has expanded its strike capabilities since the summer and Ukraine continues to face shortages of air-defense systems needed to protect its energy infrastructure.

Ukrenergo said on 8 October that emergency outages were being imposed in parts of Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast because of falling voltage in the high-voltage network. Previously announced hourly schedules were suspended, with predictable schedules to resume once the system stabilizes.

In the evening, further disruption came after a Russian attack on an energy facility important to Kyiv. Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said that energy workers were working to restore power.

Kyiv has been under Russian attack throughout the day, with four people killed and 19 injured.

The attack continues into the evening of 8 October, with air raid alerts active across most of the country.

Kyiv loses power, water, and public transport

The damage throughout the day quickly spread beyond electricity.

The Kyiv City Military Administration said power disruptions temporarily halted metro trains and escalators. Part of the capital’s public transport system was also suspended because of the lack of electricity.

Reduced power to water infrastructure caused lower pressure on the right bank of the Dnipro, particularly in the Holosiivskyi, Sviatoshynskyi, Solomianskyi, and Shevchenkivskyi districts. Some buildings could temporarily lose water, the administration warned.

Russia is hitting the energy system as winter approaches

The outages come as Russia has stepped up attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure ahead of the heating season.

Ukrenergo said Russian attacks had caused new power outages in Donetsk, Kharkiv, Sumy, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. The company said damaged equipment was already limiting the grid’s ability to supply consumers and warned that further Russian strikes could rapidly change the situation.

For 9 October, Ukrenergo announced all-day power restrictions in affected regions, including hourly outages for some consumers. Industrial and business consumers will also face restrictions. The company urged Ukrainians to conserve electricity, particularly during the evening peak from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Ukraine’s energy authorities have been warning about the consequences of repeated Russian attacks for months. In late September, Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi said attacks on energy facilities had been occurring almost daily since the summer, with the September 29–30 attack marking the first massive combined strike on the energy system since the previous heating season.

The renewed strikes mark the beginning of Russia’s winter campaign against the energy system, with Russian missiles and drones increasingly targeting power-generation and transmission infrastructure in Kyiv and surrounding regions.

Russia has openly threatened another winter of blackouts

The campaign follows years of Russian attacks aimed at disrupting the infrastructure that keeps Ukrainian homes heated and supplied with electricity and water during the winter.

In August, Russia’s Defense Ministry openly taunted Ukrainians over its attacks on energy-related infrastructure, posting images of attack drones with the message that Ukrainians would “get a freeze” in winter. 

Russia’s strategy has repeatedly linked attacks on electricity infrastructure to disruptions in heating and water supplies. This makes damage to the power grid particularly consequential as temperatures fall: a strike on an electrical facility can leave not only homes without lights, but also affect water pumps, heating systems, transportation, and other essential services.

The return of blackouts to Kyiv before the heating season is fully underway is an early indication of the pressure Russia’s renewed energy campaign is putting on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure.

https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/2108182631217074459/

A drone attack overnight on 8 October caused a fire that hit part of Yandex's data center in Sasovo, Ryazan Oblast, about 580 km from Ukraine, and the site is fully stopped, the Russian tech company told Russian media. The data center sits on the grounds of Sasta, a sanctioned machine-tool plant, Russian outlet Astra said, citing Wikimapia data. Astra's OSINT analyst found from eyewitness footage that the fire hit the plant.

Since late September, Russia has been striking data centers in Kyiv that keep Ukraine's internet and online services running. Now a drone attack has stopped one of the data centers that Russia's largest tech company relies on.

Yandex counts the damage

Yandex warned that some services may be unavailable, while its core services kept running and no one was hurt. Ryazan Oblast Governor Pavel Malkov claimed two drones were downed, a roof caught fire at an enterprise in the Sasovo district, and windows were blown out in several homes.

The power failure took down a wide range of Yandex Cloud infrastructure, including computing capacity, networks, data storage, databases, Kubernetes, cloud services, AI, and security and monitoring systems, Ukrainian outlet ZN.ua reported, citing Exilenova+.

Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ reported that the plant was hit, without naming an attacker. The channel said Sasta, which claims a place on Russia's register of defense-industry companies, makes computer-controlled machine tools, including five-axis machining centers, and previously supplied the Tactical Missiles Corporation (KTRV) and Roscosmos. The plant's value to the arms industry lies in machines that cut precision parts, not in finished weapons, the channel said.

Citing Exilenova+, Militarnyi reported that Ukraine's Defense Forces hit the plant. It also linked Sasta to Iskander missile supply chains. No source has said whether the plant or the data center was the target, and no Ukrainian official has claimed the Sasovo strike. Sasta has been under US sanctions since November 2023, UK sanctions since February 2024, and Ukrainian sanctions since April 2025, a sanctions database shows.

Salavat: Kyiv reports a hit

Ukrainian forces hit the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat complex in Bashkortostan, about 1,380 km from the front line, causing a fire, Ukraine's General Staff said. It said the complex processes up to 10 million metric tons of hydrocarbons a year and serves Russia's armed forces. Its key unit, the ELOU-AVT-6 primary oil refining unit launched in 2012, can process 6 million metric tons a year, Militarnyi reported. Astra's analyst placed the fire a few kilometers outside Salavat, possibly near the refinery.

Salavat oil refinery moment of attack pic.twitter.com/bUxuRshSK1

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 8, 2026

Salavat Mayor Marat Zagidullin claimed that debris from several drones fell in the industrial zone that morning and started a fire.

"The enterprise continues to work," he said.

Astra noted earlier hits on the complex on 24 September 2025, on 14 July 2026, when refining fully stopped, and on 13 August 2026.

Russia's strikes on Ukraine's data centers

Russia has repeatedly hit data centers in Kyiv since 23 September. Strikes hit the COSMONOVA data center twice, the second time knocking it out, and the Parkovyi data center stopped working completely on 1 October after a series of strikes. In early October, Russia destroyed the dline.ua data center in Kyiv.

Russia is concentrating missiles on a smaller, more specific set of targets, and its jet-powered attack drones are part of the reason, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessed. Its combined attack overnight on 7 October killed 22 people in Pryluky, the State Emergency Service (SES) said as of the morning of 8 October. Russian milbloggers noted the shift the same day.

Russia often uses concentrated drone and missile strikes to overwhelm localized Ukrainian air defenses and destroy urban centers, ISW noted. Pryluky, where the strike killed children, was one of the areas a Russian channel says drew a significant share of the Kh-101s that night. With winter close, ISW expects the same pattern against Ukraine's energy grid, with jet drones partly letting Russia keep its missiles for priority targets without firing many more.

Missile waves on a few areas, Russian channels claim

Russia launched 48 Kh-101, Iskander-K, and Kalibr cruise missiles overnight on 7 October, Ukraine's Air Force reported. It also fired ballistic missiles, Zircon and Oniks anti-ship missiles, and 130 strike and decoy drones, 46 of them jet-powered Shahed-type models.

Russian milbloggers claimed the same day that Moscow had grouped a large part of its missile salvo into repeated waves on a few areas, while other weapons kept stretching Ukraine's air defenses elsewhere. The pro-war Russian Telegram channel Dva Mayora described the change as a switch from striking with splayed fingers to a series of hits with missile "fists." Defenders must then absorb a sharply rising load around one chosen site as one wave follows another, the channel claimed.

Citing Ukrainian monitoring channels, it claimed that roughly 30 or more Kh-101 cruise missiles flew toward Pryluky, Kremenchuk, Svitlovodsk, and Oleksandriia in Chernihiv, Poltava, and Kirovohrad oblasts. It put the Kremenchuk group at up to 15 missiles, Kh-101s and Kalibrs among them, aimed at the area of Kremenchuk and its hydroelectric plant.

Jet drones take some of the load off Russia's missiles

ISW said the jet-powered versions penetrate Ukrainian air defenses deeper and more reliably than propeller models. In ISW's assessment, that partly lets Russia concentrate cruise and ballistic missiles on priority targets without significantly raising missile use. Russia builds about 3,000 Geran-4 and Geran-5 jet drones a month, Ukraine's military intelligence agency (HUR) told Militarnyi in August.

ISW expects Russia to apply the pattern in a likely brutal winter campaign against energy infrastructure. Russia likely intends to make city life untenable and force Ukraine to capitulate to its demands, ISW assessed. Such tactics have not worked before and are unlikely to work now, analysts added.

They called cheap countermeasures to jet drones and small cruise missiles vital, alongside Western air defense aid such as US-made Patriots, which can stop ballistic missiles. Ukraine has already paired a Soviet-era Kub launcher with American RIM-7 interceptors to catch jet drones.

A Ukrainian Sargan-3000 sea drone shot down a Russian Shahed flying on a mesh radio network, Ukraine's Navy reported on 7 October. Ukrainian sea drones have downed Russian aircraft before, but with missiles. This one used a machine gun.

Russia has been hitting Odesa with air attacks that come in waves with short gaps between them. Guarding the sky over water is harder than over land. Since fall 2025, Russia has also used mesh radio networks to reroute Shaheds mid-flight and dodge Ukrainian air defenses. That leaves Ukraine needing more ways to meet these drones out at sea, before they reach its ports and coast.

A Shahed steered by radio

A mesh-network drone passes its control signals along a chain of radio relays, drone to drone and on to ground antennas. That lets a Russian operator steer it in flight.

In May, Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov, then a Defense Ministry adviser, said only about 5% of Shaheds had got through in a recent Russian strike, and predicted that Russia would answer with jet-powered versions and strikes near the border. By July, Ukraine was testing jamming against mesh-controlled jet Shaheds, he said.

The Sargan-3000 fired its Protector remote weapon station, Militarnyi reported. The station is a remotely operated 12.7-mm (50-caliber) machine gun with electro-optical sights. The outlet added that the Sargan-3000 is designed for combat missions far from Ukraine's coast.

Built for the open sea

Ukraine's Navy took the Sargan-3000 into service in April 2026, according to Militarnyi. The drone boat has a combat radius of up to 1,600 km. It moves at 40–55 knots and carries up to 450 kg of payload.

In September, a Sargan-3000 sank a Russian uncrewed boat with machine-gun fire. Militarnyi called it the first battle between uncrewed sea platforms in history. Analyst H.I. Sutton wrote that the boat carried a Protector made by Norway's Kongsberg. That is the same weapon station named in the October shootdown. Sutton added that Russian attack sea drones work closely with Shaheds, which can relay the boats' mesh radio signals.

Ukraine plans 135 basic mobile shelters for civilians at 28 of its border crossings, the State Agency for Restoration and Infrastructure Development said on 7 October.

Since the start of September, Russian drones have repeatedly struck crossings on Ukraine's borders with Moldova and Romania. Since mid-September, strikes have also reached the Polish border near the Yahodyn crossing in Volyn Oblast. On 13 September, a Russian drone strike set a gas station near the crossing on fire. On 28 September, the blast wave from another strike damaged the checkpoint building. On 25 September, First Deputy Minister for Restoration, Infrastructure and Transport Serhii Derkach said Ukraine is exploring with its neighbors whether some checkpoints could move onto their territory. No agreement has been reported. On 2 October, Moldovan Interior Minister Daniella Misail-Nichitin said Moldova had set up shelters next to its crossings with Ukraine and started relocating staff from joint checkpoints.

135 shelters for travelers and border staff

The shelters will stand at the crossings and on the roads leading to them. Regional recovery services in Vinnytsia, Odesa, Chernivtsi, Zakarpattia, and Volyn oblasts are running the purchases. The agency said the shelters will make the border safer for people crossing it and for checkpoint staff.

In Chernivtsi Oblast, one of the 10 tenders the agency lists on Prozorro, Ukraine's public procurement system, covers eight shelters for 50 people each and three for 20 each, Ukrinform reported. They will stand on the approach road to the Porubne–Siret international crossing on the Romanian border. The work is expected to cost UAH 38.5 million (about $855,000), excluding VAT.

Russian strikes on crossings

On 5 October, at about 09:38, a projectile fell near the Palanca–Maiaky–Udobne crossing on the Moldovan border. It ricocheted off the ground into a shuttle bus parked by the barrier and also damaged a control booth. One Moldovan border officer suffered light injuries, and the crossing was suspended, Moldova's Border Police said, linking the incident to Russia's attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure. Moldovan authorities did not specify the projectile's type or origin.

Overnight on 9 September, Russian drones struck the Starokozache crossing with Moldova, killing two people and injuring three. On 1 September, Russian Shahed drones hit the Orlivka ferry crossing on the Danube, opposite Romania's Isaccea, and temporarily shut it down. Another Russian strike on 6 September halted the crossing again.

Russian forces appear to use AI to plan air attacks and recognize targets amid raids on Ukrainian cities. This may include recent air attacks on Odesa that have come in waves with short gaps, Deputy Air Force Commander for Air Defense Colonel Yurii Cherevashenko says, Ukrinform reports.

Russia has already equipped its jet-powered Geran-4 drones with machine vision, allowing them to recognize and track targets on their own in the final seconds of flight. Recently, a single jet drone hit a locomotive in Odesa Oblast in late September and killed two railway workers.

The scale of Russia's AI use is hard to measure, Cherevashenko continues, but Ukrainian specialists already see its elements in how attacks are organized. The long, wave-by-wave strikes on Odesa would be far harder to plan and coordinate without it, he believes.

"Russian forces use AI to lay out attack routes and to recognize targets," Cherevashenko says, framing it as his own assessment rather than a confirmed fact.

The sea is harder to defend than land

Odesa Oblast is home to the biggest port in Ukraine, "Southern". Protecting it is a challenging task as guarding the airspace over water is tougher than over land, Cherevashenko says. Some air defense assets do not perform as well at sea, and in some cases, crews can intercept a target only as it approaches.

Weather adds to the problem, with storms and fog, while the open sea gives Russia more freedom to choose drone routes and launch points. To protect ports and the coast, Ukraine uses drone motherships, platforms that carry other drones aloft to extend their flight time and keep watch over set areas.

Ukraine answers AI with AI

Ukraine is also building its own AI for air defense. Automated turrets using machine vision now help counter Russian drones. According to Army Media, the Air Force says such turrets have scored their first shoot-downs, including of Geran-5 jet drones, with one soldier saying 50 rounds were enough to bring down a Geran.

Ukraine's Defense Ministry is going further. In late September, it unveiled an AI system called SPECTR, built by its A1 Artificial Intelligence Center and already in testing with several combat units, to analyze battlefield data, predict Russian moves, and suggest options to commanders.

"Skipper", an FPV company commander in Ukraine's 413th Raid Unmanned Systems Regiment, has described destroying a Russian UR-77 mine-clearing vehicle with drones during the 2023 counteroffensive as the strike he is proudest of, according to Army TV.

The UR-77, nicknamed "Zmiy Horynych" after a fire-breathing serpent of Slavic folklore, carries a rocket-fired line charge to blow paths through minefields, as per Militarnyi. Each charge carries more than two tons of explosives, which is why a cheap FPV hit can trigger a blast far larger than the drone itself.

"It exploded so hard that I thought it was a small nuclear blast. There are more than two tons of plastic explosive inside, and when it went off after the second hit, it was something unbelievable," Skipper says.

Skipper joined the army at the start of the full-scale invasion and moved from infantry and aerial reconnaissance to commanding an FPV unit. His regiment now operates on the Zaporizhzhia front, where FPV drones conduct combat missions.

From sailing yachts to FPV drones

In civilian life, Skipper was a sailing instructor, and he says the sport partly helps in military work, especially his knowledge of navigation and radio communication. He is convinced that a technological edge can be one of the keys to victory.

He counts the UR-77 strike among his unit's early work, from a time when few Ukrainian units were using FPV drones at all, he says. The hit came during hard fighting in the counteroffensive, when his crews were among the first to work the FPV niche.

Russia turns a mine-clearer into a wrecking tool

The UR-77 was built in the 1970s for a different war, one of fast tank thrusts that needed enemy minefields cleared quickly. Its base rides on the chassis of the 2S1 Gvozdika self-propelled howitzer, and its charge can cut a lane six meters wide, with some anti-personnel mines detonated across a band up to 15 meters wide.

Modern combat changed that role. The classic mine-clearing use remains, but Russia now more often turns these machines on Ukrainian fortifications, using the line charge to flatten defenses rather than open a path.

Russia is spending more on the war than at any point since it began. Russia's military funding is on track to hit a record this year after President Vladimir Putin added almost $60 billion to the outlays set in the budget, Bloomberg reports, citing people close to the government.

Defense spending is expected to approach about $199 billion by the end of 2026, roughly 40% above the plan Moscow announced in late 2025. That reverses the course of a year ago, when the Kremlin meant to slow military growth, narrow its deficit, and rebuild reserves drained by the war.

Alaska was the turning point

Putin ordered the shift late last year, after concluding that talks with the US in Alaska would not produce an acceptable deal to end the fighting, the report says.

By January, the Kremlin judged an agreement with Ukraine to be out of reach, and the government began accelerating advance payments to defense firms and raising other war-related spending.

"The government is finally budgeting for a prolonged war in Ukraine, but still understates its cost," Bloomberg Economics economist Ekaterina Vlasova said.

The deficit nearly doubles

Paying for the war has blown out the budget. The projected 2026 deficit has climbed to more than $81 billion, up from about $44 billion as first planned, and the government covered the extra spending through increased domestic borrowing and gold sales.

The budget plans years of war

The spending is not set to fall soon. Under the budget plans, Russia's military outlays reach about $200 billion in 2027, then ease to $194 billion in 2028 and about $191 billion in 2029, a signal that Moscow is planning for a long war.

Earlier, Euromaidan Press reported that Russia was raising 2027 defense spending by 27% to a record, even as its deficit widens and oil and gas revenues fall.

More than 50 Russian companies could default on their bonds this year, the most since 2009, a rating-agency analyst told Russian newspaper Izvestia, which reported it on 6 October.

Russia's wartime economy is straining under high interest rates, and the budget is too: the 2026 deficit has nearly doubled from the earlier forecast to a record $88 billion, with more deficits planned for the next three years as Moscow raises taxes to fund the war and plans its biggest defense budget since the full-scale invasion began.

A default is a situation in which a company cannot make promised interest payments to investors on time or repay borrowed money. If a payment is not made by the agreed deadline, the company becomes delinquent, which under certain conditions is recognized as a default.

So far this year, 20 companies have defaulted for the first time, compared with 24 in all of 2025, said Mikhail Nikonov of the Expert RA rating agency. Most of the companies that missed payments are small issuers of high-yield bonds, Izvestia reported.

In 2026, Russian companies have missed payments totaling 41 billion rubles (about $490 million), compared with 34 billion rubles (about $410 million) the previous year, according to investment bank Sinara.

Russia faces a new wave of corporate defaults

By the end of 2026, the number of Russian companies unable to service their ruble-denominated debt on time could reach 40–50, the highest level since 2010, said Pavel Zholobov, junior managing director at the NRA rating agency.

The number of bond defaults in 2026 has already reached its highest level in a decade, Zholobov said. Similar figures were recorded in the mid-2010s: in 2014, 35 companies missed payments; in 2015, 52 did so; and in 2016, there were 44 issuers. This occurred in part after Western sanctions were imposed on Russia over its annexation of Crimea and its war in Donbas, as well as amid a halving of oil prices and a sharp weakening of the ruble.

There were more defaults only in 2009. At the time, amid the fallout from the global financial crisis, more than 100 issuers faced payment problems, while the volume of distressed debt reached nearly 200 billion rubles, Zholobov noted.

High interest rates put pressure on companies

This time, the main reason for companies' difficulties in making bond payments has been the prolonged period of high interest rates, which has continued since 2023. Companies are raising financing at high interest rates but are unable to refinance their debt on more favorable terms, explained Ekaterina Sidorova, head of the Foreign Exchange, Commodities and Debt Markets Department at SberCIB Investment Research.

At the same time, the situation does not yet resemble a systemic debt crisis: defaults are primarily being recorded among companies with low credit ratings and high debt burdens, Sidorova said.

If a company fails to repay bond debt, it is given 10 business days to meet its obligations. If it fails to do so, the company may offer investors a restructuring—for example, by postponing payments in exchange for a higher interest rate.

The number of defaults will remain high in 2027, Sidorova believes.

High interest rates were a response to accelerating inflation in Russia. Domestic demand was outpacing production, Russia's Central Bank said in October 2023. Sanctions over the war and rising defense spending had also hit the economy and the ruble, which had lost about 25% against the dollar that year. The bank raised its key rate from 7.5% in the first half of 2023 to 15% by the fall.

Ukraine targets Russia's oil industry to weaken its war economy

Ukraine is also seeking to weaken Russia's economy as part of efforts to reduce its ability to finance the war. In particular, Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara said strikes on oil refineries are aimed at "bleeding the Russian war machine" and destroying its military and economic potential. According to the ministry, the attacks have knocked out more than 51% of Russia's oil refining capacity.

In the first half of July, Russian oil refineries processed about 3.9 million barrels of oil per day—the lowest level since March 2005. Due to the production cuts, Moscow was also forced to restrict fuel exports.

Natalia is 25 years old and from Odesa. She has served in two armies—the Israeli and Ukrainian militaries. In the Armed Forces of Ukraine, she has, among other things, carried out missions as part of a UAV, FPV drone, and strike-wing crew on the Zaporizhzhia and Kupiansk fronts, NV reported on 5 October.

During the Russo-Ukrainian war, women in Ukraine have the right to voluntarily enlist in the military. As of March, more than 75,000 women were serving in the armed forces, more than 55,000 of them as service members, the commander-in-chief said, and their number has been growing every year. Recently, discussion around the mandatory mobilization of women has intensified. Keith Kellogg, former US Special Presidential Envoy for Ukraine under President Donald Trump, said that he considered mobilizing women in Ukraine appropriate. In response, Iryna Vereshchuk, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said she would rather see more missiles and more will from the United States than advice to mobilize women.

In Israel, Natalia served in a search-and-rescue brigade as a rescue soldier and in the engineering corps during a deployment along the northern border.

Natalia was born in Russia’s Saint Petersburg but does not remember her life there

The young woman was born in St. Petersburg, where her family lived at the time. When she was a year and a half old, her mother returned to Odesa with her and her older son. Natalia says she remembers her life exclusively in Ukraine.

She spent the first nearly two years studying at Lviv University, but later decided to leave the university and look for other educational opportunities. Natalia studied, among other places, in Denmark through a scholarship program. After completing it, she planned to enroll at a European university to study sound engineering, but the coronavirus pandemic began at that time.

She moved to Israel under a program for Jewish youth at the end of 2020. After the program ended, due to quarantine restrictions and closed airports, Natalia faced a choice: obtain a work visa or acquire citizenship under the Law of Return. She chose the latter—and with it, she also became obligated to perform military service.

In May 2022, Natalia joined the Israeli military and chose a combat unit.

“When the war started in Israel itself, I still had six months of mandatory service left. I was discharged and immediately transferred to reserve service. Once I managed to resolve all the bureaucratic issues so that this would not be considered desertion, I returned to Ukraine,” the young woman says.

Natalia returned to Ukraine in March 2025, and in August signed a contract with the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

“The army—both Israeli and Ukrainian—gives you a deeper understanding of what society is made of”

Among the advantages of the Ukrainian army, she highlights its ability to quickly adapt to circumstances. In particular, she mentions the use of drones, OSINT, and solving complex technological tasks with minimal resources.

“The West could learn from this situational agility. They often spend huge budgets on developments that should be cheap and mass-produced,” the veteran says.

However, such Ukrainian ingenuity is largely a consequence of a lack of funding, Natalia notes.

In the Israeli military, Natalia highlights society’s readiness for the constant threat of war and more systematic planning of military service.

“There, preparation for and perception of the army begin at school: by the age of 14–15, teenagers already understand where they want to go, what skills they need, and undergo selection for special or intelligence units,” the young woman says.

She then gives the opposite example of the situation in Ukraine.

“In Ukraine, with very rare exceptions, people hide until they are mobilized, and suddenly face the reality of conscription without having any understanding of the system,” the veteran says.

Asked how adapted the Ukrainian army is to women, she answered: “In no way,” adding that the Israeli army is “also largely not fully adapted.”

In Ukraine, this is reflected, in particular, in the provision of clothing and equipment that often does not correspond to women’s sizes and physiology. She says she had to purchase her own anatomically fitted body armor. She cited the example of veteran Natalia Lishchyshyna, who had her breasts amputated due to prolonged wearing of body armor that was not adapted to the female anatomy.

In Israel, by contrast, there is a practice of reimbursing expenses for equipment that service members purchase at their own expense.

Serving in the military in both countries provides an opportunity to better understand what society is actually made of, the young woman says.

“The army—both Israeli and Ukrainian—gives you a deeper understanding of what society is made of. You encounter people you would never have crossed paths with in your civilian bubble because of differences in views or socioeconomic circumstances,” Natalia says.

She believes this makes it easier to accept mistakes, difficulties, and new challenges.

The Ukrainian army is not adapted to women in any way, Natalia says

In Natalia’s view, the problem is not only the living and working conditions but, above all, the lack of mechanisms necessary for the systematic mandatory mobilization of women. At the same time, she believes voluntary recruitment should be encouraged and expanded.

One of the problems is the lack of a legal procedure for temporary childcare in cases when both parents are simultaneously carrying out combat missions, Natalia says, stressing that she means the period of their service, rather than situations involving the death of one of the parents.

Another shortcoming is insufficient protection against sexual violence and harassment in the Ukrainian military.

“Here, any complaint goes through the direct chain of command. If the commander is not interested in resolving the problem or is involved in it themselves, the woman is left defenseless,” the veteran says.

In Israel, by contrast, there is a separate hotline and mechanisms for documenting such cases without directly approaching a commander.

Women in combat positions can also still be taken insufficiently seriously, denied participation in combat missions, or transferred to staff positions without their consent.

Natalia also emphasizes the lack of systematic military training for civilian women “at any level” and gives school education as an example.

“Even with the weak level of the school curriculum for the subject ‘Defense of Ukraine,’ boys had at least some basic knowledge. Girls were not involved in it at all,” the veteran says.

For now, Natalia believes that women’s military service should remain voluntary, as society as a whole is still not ready to fully accept women in the military.

Russia attacked Kyiv and 12 oblasts overnight on 7 October with about 70 missiles, many of them ballistic, as well as Shahed drones, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. The strikes killed at least 20 people, with the deadliest hit on an apartment block in Pryluky in Chernihiv Oblast. Russia also hit Kremenchuk, Oleksandriia, Dnipro, and Zaporizhzhia, while Poland scrambled its jets.

Moscow has likely begun its winter strike campaign earlier than usual, aiming to make civilian life in Ukraine unbearable, and UN figures already show civilian casualties running 55% above last year's.

Update: Pryluky death toll rises to 14, including four children

The death toll from the Russian strike on Pryluky has risen to 14, including four children, Ukraine's State Emergency Service said on the afternoon of 7 October. Fifty people were injured, seven of them children, and rescuers pulled 15 people from the rubble, including a child.

Russia attacked Pryluky with cruise missiles, and one scored a direct hit on the five-story apartment building, Chernihiv Oblast head Viacheslav Chaus said. Earlier in the day, he reported that 27 of the injured had been hospitalized, three in serious condition. The search-and-rescue operation was still under way.

Morning repoting: five dead in Pryluky

A Russian missile struck a five-story apartment building in Pryluky early in the morning, while residents were still asleep, Chernihiv Oblast head Viacheslav Chaus said. The strike completely destroyed one sectkion of the building, killing five people and injuring 26, including five children, Ukraine's National Police reported. Rescuers pulled three people from the rubble, including a child, and more people may still be trapped, Chaus said.

"Today, for Putin's birthday, the Russian army 'gave' him the destruction of an apartment building in Pryluky in Chernihiv Oblast. It was an ordinary five-story building," Zelenskyy said.

Kyiv, Kremenchuk, and Oleksandriia

In Kyiv, Russian missiles hit non-residential buildings and warehouses in the Obolonskyi and Podilskyi districts, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Strikes also hit the Shevchenkivskyi district, and debris burned in the Darnytskyi district, he added. In the Darnytskyi district, a missile set fire to a garage cooperative, where firefighters rescued two people and found two men dead, Klitschko wrote. Police and rescuers worked to defuse an unexploded ballistic missile that fell among apartment blocks in the same district, the National Police said.

In Kremenchuk, Russian missiles hit a densely populated residential area, killing two people and injuring seven, Poltava Oblast head Vitalii Diakivnych said. Zelenskyy later put the number of injured at eight and said four high-rises were damaged.

In Oleksandriia in Kirovohrad Oblast, Russia hit an enterprise. One person was killed, three injured, and two were out of contact, Kirovohrad Oblast head Andrii Raikovych said. Zelenskyy later put the death toll there at two.

Drones and other targets

In Dnipro, Russian strikes damaged an industrial enterprise, apartment buildings, and a sports club, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast head Oleksandr Hanzha said. In Nikopol district, the attacks injured a 65-year-old woman and a 64-year-old man. Russia also struck Lozova in Kharkiv Oblast with a missile, and a drone hit an apartment building in Zaporizhzhia, police said.

In Zaporizhzhia, Russia attacked a transport infrastructure facility, acting oblast head Mykhailo Semikin said, a day after a strike on one of the city's bridges over the Dnipro halted traffic. In Kyiv Oblast, three production and warehouse buildings were damaged in Obukhiv district, with no casualties, the Kyiv Oblast Military Administration said.

Air defense downed five ballistic missiles, 39 cruise missiles, and 117 drones, while missiles and drones hit 18 locations, the Air Force said. Polish military aircraft took off and Poland put its ground-based air defense on alert during the attack, Poland's Operational Command said.

Russian ballistic missiles remain the biggest challenge, Zelenskyy said, adding that Ukraine is searching daily for Patriot missiles.

Strikes across the front over the past day

Russian attacks killed one person and injured 11 in Kherson Oblast over the past day, the Kherson Oblast Military Administration reported. Russia injured 12 people in Donetsk Oblast on 6 October, Donetsk Oblast head Vadym Filashkin said. Two people were injured in Kharkiv Oblast, Kharkiv Oblast head Oleh Syniehubov said.

Bridges and a maternity hospital in Russia's sights

Russia has stepped up strikes on Kyiv's bridges and has now extended them to Zaporizhzhia. In September, a Russian ballistic and hypersonic missile attack on Kyiv damaged a maternity hospital.

Ukraine has found the US component in a Russian jet-powered drone targeting civilians, supermarkets, medical warehouses, and bridges. According to its Defense Intelligence, the new weapon contains a PNI5GA magneto-inductive sensor made by the US company PNI Sensor.

The US-made navigation component adds to evidence that Western technology continues to appear in Russia's strike drones. HUR had already identified US-made chips in the Geran-4 in May, but the newly reported PNI5GA is a navigation sensor in a modified version of the drone that Institute for the Study of War (ISW) says Russia may seek to field ahead of winter.

A Russian engine replaces the Chinese one

Russia has also replaced the drone's Chinese-made Telefly turbojet engine with a Russian-made equivalent produced in Alabuga. Russia is using the Alabuga zone to bring more of its drone production home rather than importing Iranian or Chinese parts, according to the ISW.

"The remaining electronic units and components are unchanged and identical to those used in previous Geran UAVs," HUR said.

What the warhead is built to cut

The modified drone also carries a specialized KRSN warhead designed to cut through bridge structures and power-line supports. Presidential adviser Serhii Beskrestnov described the warhead on 30 September, saying it consists of a 40-kilogram main charge and four strike modules. Its warhead is meant to destroy hardened targets made of steel and concrete and to damage cable-stayed bridges.

Russia has stepped up strikes on Kyiv's Northern and Southern bridges across the Dnipro in recent days with such drones.

However, Russia may try to field more resilient and more dangerous versions of its strike drones before Ukraine has effective countermeasures in place. Russia could use them to degrade Ukraine's energy infrastructure and logistics ahead of a winter strike campaign that it said will very likely be brutal.

Ukraine is thinning its state bureaucracy. Central government bodies will cut more than 4,000 vacant positions in the first stage of a civil service reform, Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi says, with the number of deputy ministers to fall by about 20% and deputy heads of other central bodies by nearly 18%.

The reform aims to build a professional state apparatus that can carry out tasks quickly and effectively, Koretskyi said. It comes as Ukraine faces an economic crunch, and about $20 billion in EU aid is on hold, blocked by reforms Kyiv has not completed.

The cuts are only the visible first step, and the final headcount is not set yet. The number of deputies will be tied to the volume of tasks each office carries, Koretskyi states.

"The most important thing is that we are running a functional diagnostic of the state apparatus," he continues.

The Ukrainian government will assess which functions the bodies have and whether they align with the state's realities and priorities, and only then will it define the structure and final headcount.

Training is tied to the job

Another track reshapes how officials learn. Training will be linked to the tasks of each specific post, with outreach and internships for young people and a separate program for veterans, Koretskyi says.

The Public Administration Council, which brings together officials, members of parliament, and experts, has resumed work, presenting a detailed plan on the task and assigning responsibility for each area.

The squeeze that forces the cuts

The reform lands in a tight budget. The war is costing Ukraine about $155 billion a year, and with Western aid running late, Kyiv has frozen almost everything except the army, pensions, and public wages.

On 1 October, the state suspended a veterans' gym subsidy that had cost about $13 million and drawn more than 800,000 users, for lack of funds.

Drones sank two merchant ships and set a third on fire in the Black Sea economic zones of NATO members Romania and Bulgaria on 5 and 6 October, killing at least two seafarers, Romanian and Bulgarian authorities reported. Ukraine blamed Russia for the first attack. Neither Bucharest nor Sofia has said who launched the drones.

Russia has spent months striking ships bound to and from Ukrainian ports while denying responsibility or staying silent. Now merchant vessels are sinking inside NATO members' economic zones without either government naming the attacker, so Moscow pays no political price for hitting allied waters.

Grain ship sinks off Romania

The Royad Mammadov, a Turkish-owned ship carrying grain from Ukraine's port of Izmail to Italy, sank on 5 October near Romania's Pescăruș offshore platform, 20 nautical miles from the Romanian coast, Digi24 reported. The Romanian Naval Authority described the incident as a fire on board. Romania's Interior Ministry said 11 crew members were rescued and two people died.

Three injured sailors aged 22 to 50 were taken to the Constanța county hospital, conscious and stable, with multiple injuries. Adrian Mihălcioiu, the leader of Romania's Free Seafarers' Union, said the ship was attacked by Russian sea and aerial drones in waters Romanians consider safe.

"It is a commercial ship, a ship that is not part of the war… people who have nothing to do with the war, it is not their war," he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blamed the attack on "two Russian drones" and said the ship was in neutral waters carrying corn. Citizens of Azerbaijan and India were on board, and the captain was killed, he said. Romanian authorities have not attributed the sinking to Russia.

Two more ships hit in Bulgaria's zone

A day later, drones struck two merchant ships in Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone east of the town of Byala, the first known attack on ships there, Maritime.bg reported. The Togo-flagged Alfa Watan, sailing from Al-Arish, Egypt, to Sulina, Romania, suffered critical hull damage and sank, Militarnyi said. The Bulgarian ferry Dioscuria found only an overturned lifeboat and life jackets at the scene, and the search for the crew continues, Euronews reported.

The Palau-flagged Able, sailing from Galați, Romania, to Istanbul, caught fire, and the Dioscuria rescued its 18 crew members. Both ships are Turkish-owned, Türkiye Today reported. Two sailors with severe injuries were flown to a hospital in Varna, Prime Minister Rumen Radev said, according to AP. Sea and aerial drones hit the ships at about 3 a.m., he said, calling the attack "a blatant violation of international law and maritime law."

Radev called an emergency meeting of four ministries, the presidency, and the security services. No one from the Alfa Watan has been found, he said, warning that if the war is not ended in time, it "will continue to expand its spatial scope." The origin of the drones is still being clarified, Maritime.bg said. Several Bulgarian media outlets cited sources as saying the drones were Russian, Sofia Globe reported.

Russia's war on Black Sea shipping

Russia had already killed the captain of a Tanzanian-flagged ship in September, and days later it struck another civilian vessel, killing its captain too. Ukraine says that route carries 90% of its farm exports.

Romania has destroyed a sea drone near its Neptun Deep gas project and found Russian drones floating in its economic zone. In September, ISW linked drone crashes in Romania and Moldova to a wider Russian pattern of pressure on NATO.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas called for a moratorium on Black Sea attacks. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Ankara was stepping up diplomacy to restore grain exports. Türkiye and the UN are organizing new Black Sea truce talks between Russia and Ukraine, Bloomberg reported, citing a diplomat. Russia earlier dismissed Kyiv's offer of a Black Sea ceasefire.

Ukraine has reportedly purchased Korkut self-propelled anti-aircraft guns (SPAAGs) from Türkiye. Effectively a Turkish take on the classic German-made Gepard SPAAG, a mainstay of Ukraine's defense against Russian one-way attack (OWA) drones, the Korkuts could help stiffen Ukrainian air defenses as winter looms and Russia intensifies its terror attacks on Ukrainian cities and power plants.

The problem for Ukrainian air defenders is that the latest jet-propelled Russian drones, the Geran-4 and Geran-5, are getting through. They fly at around 500 km/h, nearly three times as fast as an older, propeller-driven Geran-2, and in September Ukraine shot down just 55% of them, by Zelenskyy's count, against at least 90% of the slow ones, one analyst calculated. The Korkuts arrive in that gap. Ground-based guns are arguably Ukraine's most cost-effective anti-drone weapons, but they may not work so well against the fastest drones.

That means more Russian munitions are getting through. More Ukrainian homes are burning. More power plants are going dark. It's a crisis now. It'll be an even greater crisis when winter arrives and the temperature drops.

All that is to say, the handful of Korkut systems Ukraine has received from Turkish firm Aselsan are welcome, but they're not silver bullets against Russian drones.

A Korkut battery includes a command vehicle plus three tracked or wheeled vehicles armed with pairs of fast-firing, radar-cued 35-mm autocannons. The exact variant Ukraine received hasn't been disclosed; Middle East Eye's mention of 25-mm ammunition suggests it may be the smaller Korkut 100/25, built mainly to stop frontline drones. The Ukrainian Korkuts join a sizeable fleet of SPAAGs in Ukrainian service, most notably including potentially 90 or more 1960s-vintage Gepards with twin radar-cued 35-mm guns.

The tracked Gepards are old but effective. They, like all SPAAGs, can only engage incoming drones and other targets at fairly short range: just a few kilometers. But they're cheap. A SPAAG might fire a few hundred dollars' worth of shells to bring down a $50,000 Geran. A surface-to-air missile can hit a Geran from much farther away, but even the cheapest missiles cost tens of thousands of dollars apiece—and the supply is limited.

Gepards and other gun-based air defenses, along with wide-area strategic radio jamming, were the twin keys to Ukraine's temporary victory over Russian Gerans as recently as late last year. That's when the Russians were still mostly launching propeller-driven Gerans, and the Ukrainians were shooting down most of them.

Slipping interception rates

Vanquishing the slow Gerans didn't solve a separate air defense problem—how to shoot down supersonic ballistic missiles—but it did minimize Ukrainian casualties and mitigate the overall damage to Ukrainian infrastructure. Only the best, priciest, and rarest Ukrainian air defenses such as the Patriot and SAMP/T can hit incoming ballistic missiles. As missiles have run out for those batteries, more Russian ballistic missiles have gotten through.

But now more Gerans are getting through, too. On 26 September, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia had launched more than 2,730 jet-powered Gerans at Ukraine that month and that Ukrainian air defenses were shooting down 55% of them. Analyst and mapper Clément Molin set that against Air Force totals: of 5,437 drones launched between 1 and 26 September, the remaining 2,707 were slow Geran-2s and Gerbera decoys, and at least 90% of those were downed. The overall interception rate, he calculated, has fallen to close to 70%, from 86% to 90% earlier this year.

Ukrainian forces are scrambling to acquire more inexpensive surface-to-air missiles as well as faster interceptor drones. But they're racing against time and the growing preponderance of jet-propelled OWA drones. The Ukrainians' air defense problem may get worse before it gets better.

This statement from V. Zelensky is very interesting

Based on UA air-force numbers, Russia already launched 5 437 drones this month, including 2 730 Geran-4/5 based on Zelensky's claim, 50%.
Based on UA air-force numbers, 4 524 drones were downed this month, while Zelensky… https://t.co/F2JhDm7qEV pic.twitter.com/vVtpQQH5wz

— Clément Molin (@clement_molin) September 26, 2026

"Ballistic missile defense is a serious problem, but the increasing production of Geran-4, Geran-5, Banderol, and Filin jet-powered OWA drones/cheap cruise missiles will also be a growing challenge this fall and winter," Rob Lee, an analyst with the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, warned in August.

Winter weather reduces the effectiveness of interceptor drones and helicopters, Lee noted, and Ukraine will need more high-speed interceptors to counter the jet drones. "The interception rate for OWA drones will likely decrease."

But that doesn't mean the Korkut isn't helping forestall an even worse dip in the overall interception rate for incoming Russian drones. Ukrainian officials are reportedly pleased with the Turkish gun. "Korkut has been pretty much successful in countering the Russian attacks," a Ukrainian official told Middle East Eye. "There were of course some problems but nothing that couldn't be overcome through some small adjustments."

According to Middle East Eye, the Ukrainians are considering acquiring more Korkuts.

Drones attacked Moscow and Moscow Oblast overnight on 6 October, and a fire broke out at the Volodarskaya pipeline station, the region's largest oil depot, monitoring Telegram channels reported. The station supplies jet fuel to Moscow's main airports. Local authorities did not mention the fire, while claiming to have downed hundreds of drones.

Ukraine's long-range drones have spent years working through Russia's oil industry, and Kyiv says its strikes have now disabled more than half of Russia's refining capacity. The storage and pipeline hubs that move the remaining fuel are what keep the army, the capital, and the export flows supplied.

Fire at the Moscow region's largest fuel depot

Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ wrote that the Volodarskaya station was burning after the attack, and Ukrainian monitoring channel Supernova+ reported the strike on the depot. Exilenova+ then posted the site's coordinates near the village of Konstantinovo. Supernova+ said a storage tank was on fire, and Exilenova+, citing locals, later wrote that two tanks were burning.

Russian news Telegram channel Astra geolocated a Supernova+ video to Konstantinovo in Ramensky district. The station had not been reported attacked before, Astra said.

The station lies 40 km from central Moscow, Militarnyi reported. Drone alerts in the area began at 23:43 on 5 October. From 03:24, reports came in of Ukrainian Peklo drones flying through Oryol Oblast toward Moscow Oblast, the outlet said. Ukraine's military has not commented on the strike.

Konstantinovo: the Volodarskaya oil products pumping and dispatch station continues to burn. According to local residents, two storage tanks are on fire.

The station, a branch of Transneft–Upper Volga, is directly linked to the Moscow aviation hub’s largest airports. pic.twitter.com/KooKJnV1X6

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 6, 2026

Early in the night, Exilenova+ claimed a strike on the Moscow refinery in Kapotnya. It later said the footage circulating from there was most likely archival.

Jet fuel for Vnukovo, Domodedovo, and Sheremetyevo

The station has 27 tanks with a combined capacity of about 250,000 m³, according to Militarnyi. It connects to the ring pipeline for petroleum products around Moscow, which carries aviation fuel to Vnukovo, Domodedovo, and Sheremetyevo airports. Russia's state pipeline operator Transneft has said the station can move up to 3 million tonnes of jet fuel, 2.8 million tonnes of diesel, and 1.6 million tonnes of gasoline a year.

Astra gave a lower figure: about 3 million tonnes of petroleum products a year in total, arriving from the Moscow and Ryazan refineries. Supernova+ described Volodarskaya as a branch of Transneft–Upper Volga, as did Militarnyi, while Astra named Transnefteprodukt.

Russia claims hundreds of drones downed

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin claimed that 650 drones flew toward the Moscow region from the evening of 5 October to the morning of 6 October. Most were downed far from the city, and 105 near Moscow, he claimed, without mentioning any damage. Adding up his later posts, Astra counted at least 718 drones aimed at Moscow. Moscow Oblast Governor Andrei Vorobyov claimed that 185 drones were downed over 16 municipalities. He later called it one of the largest drone attacks and put the toll at two killed and nine injured, with 47 detached houses damaged in seven municipalities.

Not the first Transneft site or Moscow fuel target

Ukraine has targeted Russia's pipeline network before. On 2 October, drones set Transneft's Samara station on fire. During Russia's Duma elections on 20 September, a strike reached Moscow's fuel supply. The Moscow refinery fully stopped processing oil after that attack. Days later, Kyiv offered to halt refinery strikes if Russia stopped hitting Ukraine's power grid. Russia has not taken the deal.

It is rare to hear a European say "I'm sorry" to the Ukrainians. Dag Øistein Endsjø, who nominated the Ukrainian people and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the Nobel Peace Prize 2026, shared it several times during our interview.  

Mr. Endsjø is a professor of religious studies at the University of Oslo in Norway. He comes across as courteous and reserved. But when he talks about Europe not helping Ukraine as much as it could, his eyes give away deep personal emotion. 

"Just thank you for keeping us safe. Thank you for the extreme sacrifice you've been making for all of us. And I'm sorry that my government and the other governments haven't done enough," he said, speaking to me not as a journalist but as one of the Ukrainians.

These words cut through because tens of millions of us live under daily psychological and physical terror, feeling forgotten and betrayed.

At the same time, Professor Endsjø names things as they are, even when it is uncomfortable. When the full-scale invasion began, he says, he doubted Ukraine would hold. And he admits that Norway has profited from the war: by its own Finance Department's calculation, about €106 billion in additional revenue from higher oil and gas prices.

He was honest with us. Our questions were sharp too, even those about US President Donald Trump's chances to win this year's award, and he answered them the way he answers everything: straight.

Do you think people who fight the war can be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize?

People who defend themselves, yes! Who defends a free and democratic state against unprovoked aggression, yes, I think so. 

Many say Ukraine should stop fighting and negotiate. Wouldn't a peace prize reward the war?

It's not a reward for the war, because the war could stop tomorrow if Russia just realized they didn't want to break international rules and pulled out. This is not about continuing the war. On the other hand, the war would stop the moment Ukraine threw out Russia. That, regrettably, seems to take more time.

This is not, in any way, about rewarding or promoting war as such. This is about standing up against war, because not standing up against war has only provoked more war and aggression from Russia.

Russia is attacking free and democratic countries unprovoked. They started in 2008 with Georgia, and then moved on to Ukraine, and as so many others point out, they have their plans.

"Moldova, if Ukraine hadn't been able to resist this invasion, would also have been under Russian rule now for sure. Poland and the Baltics would have been under extreme pressure, maybe also invaded," Mr. Endsjø says.

If there was a moment when you thought that Ukraine might lose the war?

Yes, in the beginning, when I saw those lines of tanks heading for Kyiv, I was afraid that everything was lost. Also noting the lackluster reaction from the free world and how they only came with condemnations and no ammunition, just a flight out.

If Ukraine is defending peace, why is the war getting closer to Europe's borders? 

That is because of Russia. If Ukraine hadn't defended itself and just given up, the war would have been even closer to Europe. We would be even more under threat with probably even more degrees of sabotage and terrorist attacks around in Europe.

Does Ukrainian resistance escalate the risk of direct war between NATO and Russia?

No. The other way around. If Ukraine had given up, it would have been a more direct threat to NATO countries.

But some politicians say that in this case, Russia will just negotiate and sell energy as it did in the past

Yes, while sabotaging and even murdering people around in Europe, and acting like a state of terrorism. So, no, it would remain aggressive. You can listen to various prominent Russians on Russian TV. You know, you're not allowed to say anything on Russian TV unless the government approves it...

People are again and again threatening Finland, Poland, Britain, and the Baltic. Just as they made up these fake republics in Luhansk and Donetsk in 2014, they have tried to do the same in Estonia and Latvia already.

So if it hadn't been for Ukraine and Ukraine's resistance, the risk of direct war between NATO and Russia would have been even greater. Because Ukraine keeps Russia at bay.

If Ukraine agrees to a ceasefire, will you consider this a failure or a victory?

I, as a non-Ukrainian but fellow European, like any other European, have no right whatsoever to tell the Ukrainians what to do.

If the Ukrainians themselves find that this most horrible war is too much, and you want a ceasefire and you want to stop, and it's not for me to criticize. It's not for any European to criticize. We cannot tell the Ukrainians what to do after that horrible sacrifice you've made already.

I only hope that Europe and the rest of the free world will assist Ukraine even more, so that you will be even more successful in throwing out the Russian occupation army of the entire of Ukraine, including Crimea.

What if Russia uses nuclear weapons? Can we say that Ukraine brought the world to peace?

They will not use nuclear weapons. If they wanted to do it, they would have done that already. China and India are completely clear that they will not accept any use of nuclear weapons, so that would mean that Russia would be completely isolated and completely devastated economically in weeks. So that's not going to happen.

Putin says the war ends if Ukraine gives up Donbas. Why give a Nobel Peace Prize to a country that refuses?

This is just a proposal from Putin and American so-called negotiators. They're supposed to be negotiating, but this is not a negotiation. This is just about trying to make Ukraine give up without even a fight, which Russia is unable to do, and, incredibly, in some way, try to force Ukraine to give up its rightful ownership of its occupied territories.

This is just appeasement, just as what Chamberlain did in 1938 and what Europe has done again and again in 2008 and 2014. This would be a completely terrible mistake.

"Ukraine deserves the Nobel Prize, no matter how long they keep on fighting against this horrible aggression by this dreadful kleptocracy," Mr. Endsjø says.

Europe says Ukraine keeps the peace for everyone. Can it then demand that Ukrainian refugees go back and fight?

I, as a European, think that other Europeans cannot demand anything of the Ukrainians, whoever they are. This must be up to the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian government.

Do people in Norway still genuinely believe that Ukraine can win this war, dragging on for so long? 

I think so. Very many do believe that. But this depends on whether the West keeps on, and the free world continues to support Ukraine. Here in Norway, we are in a particular situation because, as our own Finance Department calculated last year, we have earned an extra 106 billion euros from the war (additional government revenues generated by high energy prices — ed.) due to higher oil and gas prices. 

We don't support you as much as we should. We should have given you those 106 billion euros. 

Why should someone in Europe care whether Ukraine wins or loses? 

That is the point: that this is a war against the free world from a horrible dictatorship. More or less, you can call it a kleptocracy — that's the most, I guess, the most precise definition of Russia today. It's not a democracy whatsoever. It's most of all a kleptocracy where the top leaders just steal whatever they can get their hands on.

If Ukraine had fallen, it's not just that that would be horrible for Ukraine as such, but that would mean also that Russia would have had its hands on all the immense resources Ukraine has. Also, all the million men and women who probably would have been forced into the Russian army, and made it an even more dangerous enemy to the West.

So this is about the survival of all of us. Ukraine is the free world. We belong together. Ukraine should have been in NATO and the EU a long time ago.

If Russia says it only wants Donbas, why not just give it to them and let the war end?

This is like World War II all over again. They say: "If we only get Donbas, we're going to at least have proper negotiations."

Donbas, that is the Ukrainian Sudetenland. That's just what the West forced Czechoslovakia to do in 1938 and 1939. The Sudetenland wasn't just a nice little border region. It was the defense line of Czechoslovakia. So the moment the Germans got that, they were defenseless against the full-scale invasion that followed in the months afterward.

"Donbas, it's not just a small border region. It's the most important line of defense," Mr. Endsjø says.

Forcing Ukraine to give up anything whatsoever is rewarding the Russian aggression.

But I have to give Putin right in one thing when he says: "We are, you know, continuing World War II." That's true, because you have to remember what Russia did in World War II. They started it together with Nazi Germany in 1939. They occupied the Baltic countries, they occupied Moldova, they occupied half of Poland, they split Poland with Nazi Germany, and they tried to occupy Finland.

When Norway was invaded by Nazi Germany, Russia congratulated Germany. They were on Germany's side. The only thing that made Russia shift sides in World War II was the German invasion. What did they do after World War II? They didn't liberate any country - they occupied. They just changed one occupation for another.

"Eastern Europe wasn't liberated before 1990 and 1991. That's the actual end of World War II, when the Russian occupation of Eastern Europe ended," he stresses.

They even talk about the northern parts of Northern Norway. In 1945, they did have designs. They wanted Svalbard and the northern islands. They had plans to take the regions closest to Norway, which were also part of the Soviet Union. They want everything they have ever had, and they want it back.

Trump has made no secret of his desire for the Nobel Peace Prize. Could the Committee deny Ukraine the award simply to avoid provoking him?

Trump has been nominated for the Peace Prize several times, but I don't think he really has a chance. What I did note is that last year's recipient, Mrs. Machado from Venezuela, was probably chosen partly due to it. I don't criticize the prize, as she is a democratically elected leader, a good candidate, and a good recipient.

"But I believe part of the reason she got it was that the Nobel Committee wanted a recipient who would not provoke President Trump," he says.

I consider that they are going to worry about that again, about whether the recipient is going to provoke Trump or not. You never know what his reaction will be anyway. I don't think they really see him as a serious candidate — someone who just started an immense war in Iran, drawing the whole world economy down.

My nomination has gone viral — there are thousands of posts online. I usually don't get 750,000 views on my Facebook posts, but I did with my post about Ukraine. I really do believe that Zelenskyy and Ukraine are the most worthy recipients at this point in time.

If continuing the war means more Ukrainians will die, why not negotiate to stop the killing? Zelenskyy says Ukraine plans to fight further. Does it bring peace, really?

It does. Look at Norway in 1940. It was peace, but it wasn't peace. It was an occupation. It was killing, it was murder, and even worse in other parts of Europe. What happened in Norway was nothing compared to what happened in Poland, the Baltics, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Thank God the current Western leaders understand this: they are not going to force Ukraine to give up, to let millions of people live under horrible occupation, and give up more land. They stand by Ukraine now, and I hope they will support it even more, especially Norway.

Ukraine is working on a satellite system of its own, something similar to SpaceX's Starlink, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 4 October, Interfax-Ukraine reported. He argued Kyiv should be free to turn Starlink on Russian military targets, warning that China and other states will share comparable satellite technology with Moscow within months. Ukraine's battlefield communications still ride on a network owned by Elon Musk, who has clashed with Kyiv and once limited its wartime use.

Low-orbit satellite internet has turned into a frontline utility that a single company or government can switch on or off, and both armies are now racing to own that link instead of renting it. Control of the network decides whose drones can see the battlefield and fly through the jamming to strike it—leverage Kyiv has gone without while its connection rode on hardware it does not run.

Working on a Starlink of its own

Zelenskyy said there was groundwork in place and that Ukraine was working on a system similar to Starlink. He called it fair for Ukraine to aim Starlink at military sites inside Russia. The timing is the reason, he said: some states will share the technology with Russia late this year or early next, and the Chinese are among them. Moscow is already fielding its own Starlink-style constellation, Rassvet, though for now it reaches Ukraine only in brief passes.

Ukraine's troops and drones lean heavily on Starlink, a network Kyiv neither owns nor controls. Musk has used that control against Kyiv before: in 2022 SpaceX refused a Ukrainian request to extend Starlink over occupied Crimea for a drone strike on Russia's warships, and it has since restricted the network's use for drone operations.

Sanctions, and satellites of its own

Zelenskyy has asked US President Donald Trump several times to sanction the Russian and Chinese companies building Russia's Rassvet network, most recently at the UN General Assembly in New York, he said in a recent Financial Times interview.

Denys Shtilerman, co-founder and chief designer at Ukrainian defense company Fire Point, told the Financial Times in May that the firm had launched two satellites this year and planned dozens more in 2027, aiming to reduce reliance on the US government and Western tech companies. To strike deep inside Russia and gather intelligence, he has said, Ukraine needs its own constellation covering all of Russia.

Ukraine has developed a new missile to knock down Russia's fast, jet-powered Shahed drones, the ones its air defenses catch far less often than older models, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 4 October, Suspilne reported. The weapon, called Nika, has not yet been tested. He announced it during a visit to Kyiv by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

Russia's plants turn out an estimated 3,000 jet-powered Geran-4 and Geran-5 drones a month, Ukraine's military intelligence estimates, and the jets fly fast enough to outrun the cheap interceptors built for slower, propeller-driven Shaheds. Ukraine plans about 400 units of just one of five interceptor models it is testing by the end of October, as it scrambles to close the gap before winter.

A new missile heads into testing

Both the Ukrainian and German sides have reacted positively to the missile, Zelenskyy said, though he stayed cautious on the result: for now, he said, it only "could be positive." In the same remarks, he announced a successful test of a separate system, the German-Ukrainian interceptor Spys.

Ukraine shoots down 85-92% of propeller-driven Shaheds, Zelenskyy said. Against the jet-powered variants, interception falls to roughly 50-60%, he noted at the press conference with Merz. F-16 fighter jets help close the gap, he said.

From interceptor drones to a new missile

Over the past month, Ukraine tested a new generation of drone interceptors built for the jet-Shahed threat. On 15 September, one struck a Shahed in trials, though Zelenskyy said developers still needed to refine its control system. On 19 September, he said the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) had created its own interceptor drone and used it to down a jet Shahed in combat. Nika adds a purpose-built missile to that mix.

The EU Delegation and all EU embassies will keep working in Kyiv despite Russia's warning that foreign diplomats should leave or risk their lives, EU Ambassador to Ukraine Katarína Mathernová said on 4 October. Poland and Estonia also said their embassies would stay, calling the threats an attempt to intimidate Europe.

Russia attacks Kyiv daily as Moscow tries to make the city unlivable. Alongside the strikes, it now threatens the foreign missions that anchor Ukraine's support in the capital.

"We are staying"

Russia's Foreign Ministry singled out the embassies still working in Kyiv and the foreign officials who keep visiting Ukraine, Mathernová wrote. Moscow claimed that if something happened to them, the responsibility would be theirs.

"The responsibility for russian attacks belongs to russia! Not to anybody else," Mathernová wrote, adding: "Moscow wants to scare Europe into reducing its support for Ukraine. That will not happen."

The EU Delegation continues its work while taking the security of its team seriously, she added.

She pointed to the morning's strike on the Northern Bridge, saying the repeated attacks disrupt the connections between the two banks of the Dnipro. People worry about getting to work, reaching their families, and getting home safely, she wrote.

Poland and Estonia keep their embassies open

Poland's Foreign Ministry said it had no intention of changing how its Kyiv embassy works. The Kremlin's threats and calls for diplomats to leave show it is trying to intimidate Europe and undermine support for Ukraine, the ministry said. Such threats contradict international law and will not work, it added.

Estonia's Foreign Ministry said its embassy stays in Kyiv and its support for Ukraine remains firm. Russia's threats only strengthen Estonia's resolve to stand with Ukraine, the ministry said.

The European Commission also responded. Russia's threats show the Kremlin is losing the war and losing its self-control, Commission spokesperson Christian Wigand said, Suspilne reported.

More aid, more sanctions

This year alone, the EU has approved €28.3 billion ($32.3 billion) in defense procurement plans for Ukraine and is releasing another €6.6 billion ($7.5 billion) linked to military aid, Mathernová wrote. It is also moving forward with its biggest-ever sanctions listings against Russia, and this week imposed new sanctions over the deportation of Ukrainian children.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz came to Kyiv on the same day, as Russian attacks on the city continued. He and Zelenskyy visited the National Academy of Sciences building, hit by a Russian drone in September, and Zelenskyy thanked him for coming despite the air raid alert, calling it "a needed and brave signal," in a post on Telegram. Germany remains a reliable partner at Ukraine's side even in difficult times, Merz wrote.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz arrived in Kyiv on an unannounced visit on 4 October and announced more than €1.3 billion ($1.5 billion) in new German support for Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at a joint press conference. Part of the money will fund interceptors against Russia's jet-powered drones, as Russian drones struck Kyiv again during Merz's visit. Merz also pledged to speed up Ukraine's EU accession and announced a Coalition of the Willing meeting in Berlin this winter.

Russia now attacks Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities daily, increasingly with jet-powered drones that outrun the cheap interceptors built for slower Shaheds. That leaves Ukraine dependent on scarce air defense missiles and on partners willing to pay for new weapons fast.

A package aimed at Russia's jet drones

The €1 billion ($1.13 billion) military part of the package includes funding for joint production of interceptor drones against jet-powered drones, Merz said. Recent technological progress means the new interceptors can quickly enter serial production, he added.

"This will quickly and noticeably strengthen Ukraine's air defense," Merz said.

The package also includes long-range weapons, combat drones, and satellite equipment, which Merz said should help Ukraine destroy Russian launchers more effectively. A separate €350 million ($394 million) will go to Ukraine's energy sector before winter, covering generators, transformer substations, and repair kits, Liga reported.

The two countries also signed an agreement on counter-drone cooperation, Merz said. He stressed that the help runs both ways, with German defense companies learning from Ukraine's war experience. The broader deal also covers joint development of weapons with a range of more than 1,000 km, Reuters reported.

Among interceptor drones, the Bars has so far shown the best results, downing up to 30% of its targets, Zelenskyy said. He expects the first results from small missiles designed to counter jet drones in the second half of October.

"We will not be intimidated"

Before the visit, Russia's Foreign Ministry warned foreign nationals and diplomats against staying in Ukraine and threatened new massive strikes on Kyiv. Merz arrived by train with Economy Minister Katherina Reiche and a delegation of German business executives.

"Despite the threats that have reached us from Moscow in recent days, I came today... This shows: we will not let ourselves be intimidated," Merz said.

Merz and Zelenskyy visited the National Academy of Sciences, where a Russian drone killed two people and injured seven on 28 September, the State Emergency Service and the Office of the President said. An air-raid alert sounded while they spoke with rescuers, and emergency service chief Andrii Danyk showed Merz the movement of Russian drones in real time. The same day, a Russian drone hit Kyiv's Northern Bridge again.

"I can only repeat it once again from this point: Mr Putin, put an end to this senseless war," Merz said during the visit. "We are ready for talks, we are ready to discuss bringing this war to an end, but these barbaric attacks on the civilian population of Ukraine must stop," he added, Reuters reported.

Zelenskyy called the chancellor's presence despite the alert "a needed and brave signal" from Merz personally and from all of Germany.

EU path and a Berlin meeting

Germany wants to speed up Ukraine's EU accession and is working toward that in Brussels, Merz said. He welcomed Zelenskyy's assurances on rule-of-law and anti-corruption reforms, which he said matter for further financial aid. Together with France and the UK, Germany plans to host a Coalition of the Willing meeting in Berlin this winter to coordinate further support, he added.

The trip was Merz's second to Ukraine as chancellor and his fourth since the full-scale invasion. He arrived just as his standing at home is slipping: the far-right AfD reached 30% for the first time in an INSA poll for Bild, while Merz's CDU/CSU fell to a record low of 18%. Days earlier, Merz had directly accused the AfD of having "Russian backers."

Russia struck Kyiv's Northern Bridge with a drone again on 4 October, the second hit on the crossing in two days, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. The attack damaged a heating main and rerouted public transport, as overnight and morning strikes also hit Kyiv Oblast, Dnipro, and Sumy, where one person was killed.

Russia's air attacks on Ukrainian cities are daily, and in recent days they have hit a Kyiv school sheltering children and turned supermarkets into targets. Strikes on the crossings between the capital's two banks add another layer: they disrupt how millions of people move through the city every day.

A crater on the Northern Bridge, no hot water across the river

The drone hit the bridge's roadway, and videos posted by local channels showed a crater, Liga reported. The strike also damaged a heating main, cutting hot water in Kyiv's Desnianskyi district on the left bank, Klitschko wrote. Repair crews are working to restore it, he added.

Kyiv's transport operator Kyivpastrans cut trolleybus routes short of the river. Routes 29, 30, 31, and 47 now run from the left bank only to Darnytsia Square, and routes 29, 30, and 31 run from the right bank only to Pochaina metro station. Buses 21, 73, 101, and 114 run only to Darnytsia Square because the bridge is closed to traffic.

Russia first hit the Northern Bridge on 3 October, damaging its roadway and trolleybus lines. Two people were injured, and one of them was hospitalized, Klitschko said. A day earlier, repeated drone strikes hit the Southern Bridge and forced its closure. Overnight on 4 October, drone debris also fell on two locations in Kyiv's Dniprovskyi district, Klitschko reported.

Ukraine's government has already begun work on earth dams and pontoon crossings in case the city's Dnipro bridges are knocked out, Restoration Minister Mykola Kalashnyk told Suspilne.

The strike came as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz visited Kyiv. Ukraine and Germany would reach important agreements during the visit, Zelenskyy said. This week alone, Russia launched more than 1,900 attack drones, 1,700 guided bombs, and 25 missiles at Ukraine, more than 800 of the drones jet-powered, he added.

135 drones overnight

Russia launched 135 attack drones at Ukraine overnight, 52 of them jet-powered Shaheds, Ukraine's Air Force reported. By 08:30, air defenses had downed or suppressed 123 drones and two Banderol or Dan-T missiles. Strikes hit five locations, and debris fell on five more.

In Kyiv Oblast, Russian drones damaged six detached houses, a car, a church, a primary school, a café, and a medical facility in Boryspil Raion, the Kyiv Oblast Military Administration said. No one was killed or injured.

Dnipro and Sumy

Russia attacked a communications company's building in central Dnipro, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast head Oleksandr Hanzha reported.

"The whole street there is covered in broken glass, debris, and branches," Dnipro Mayor Borys Filatov wrote, adding that nearby homes and schools escaped damage.

In Sumy, Russian drones struck an ordinary medical supplies warehouse and killed one person, Zelenskyy said. Strikes across the city injured seven people, two of them seriously, the Sumy city council said. The attack also damaged gas networks and left 70 apartments without gas.

Drones attacked Russia's Khanskaya military airfield in the Republic of Adygea overnight on 4 October, Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi reported. Local reports, footage, and satellite fire data point to a blaze near the base, which trains Russian military pilots and also serves combat aviation. Neither side has reported the extent of the damage.

Ukraine is pressing its long-range campaign against the bases, refineries, and depots that keep Russia's war going, and Kyiv is vowing to hit harder as Russia escalates its strikes on Ukrainian cities. Airfields are part of that target list: in August, Ukraine struck one in Krasnodar Krai in the same overnight wave that hit Russia's second-largest refinery.

Hours of drone alerts, then a fire

Locals reported an attack and a fire at the airfield, Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ wrote, sharing footage of the blaze. Drone warnings for the area began at 01:42 and lasted until 05:34, Militarnyi said. Over that time, Russian monitoring channels reported drones and active air defenses in the region and around the airfield.

NASA's FIRMS fire-detection data from geostationary orbit also showed a fire in the airfield's area, Militarnyi noted. It also published a video of a Ukrainian drone flying toward the base.

A pilot school that also serves combat aviation

The airfield lies 6 km northwest of Maykop and 3 km east of the village of Khanskaya, about 500 km from Ukrainian-controlled territory, according to Militarnyi. Before the war, it was used mainly for training flights and hosted L-39 trainer jets.

The 761st Training Aviation Regiment was based there until it was disbanded in 2009, when the 272nd Training Aviation Base was formed in its place. The base, military unit 55661, belongs to the Krasnodar Higher Military Aviation School of Pilots. Ukraine's General Staff said in October 2024 that Su-34, Su-27, and Su-35 jets, which Russia uses in its war against Ukraine, were based at the airfield, Militarnyi wrote. In March 2026, the General Staff said Russian forces actively use it for operational-tactical aviation.

Ukraine has struck the base before

Ukrainian drones attacked the airfield as early as October 2024. On 25 December 2025, Ukraine's General Staff said its forces had hit the Maykop airfield and started a fire. That was the same night Ukraine hit the port of Temryuk. Drones attacked the base again on 29 December, when Russian authorities claimed to have repelled the attack. Ukraine struck the airfield once more in March 2026.

A Ukrainian firm is testing a jammer light enough to ride on a heavy bomber drone and shield it from the enemy FPVs that hunt it. Aura-Ukraine has begun final tests of the system, called Aura 3K mini, the Dignitas Fund, a charity developing it with the manufacturer, Oboronka reports.

The bombers it is built to protect have become some of Ukraine's most valued drones. In the Donetsk operation last month, heavy bombers dropped kamikaze ground robots more than 10 kilometers behind Russian lines. The same weapon has been fitted with guided bombs that strike at long range with high precision.

At the same time, heavy bombers are large, making them prime targets for Russia. Keeping them in the air, and out of enemy hands, is the point of the new shield.

Two jammers cover 360 degrees

Aura 3K mini wraps the drone in a spherical, 360-degree cover using two broadband jammers, the fund says. Two emitters, not one, close the blind angles a single jammer would leave.

They work across the 2.1 to 2.8 GHz band, enough to disrupt FPV drones without cutting the bomber's own Starlink link. The whole device weighs about 2.4 kilograms.

"Radiation-pattern tests start on the front line in the coming days," the fund's press service says, and if they succeed, the system is set for serial production.

The fund moves to automate it

The next step is to make the jammer smarter, the fund says. It wants an auto-on function that fires only when a threat is detected, so the bomber does not give away its position with constant emission.

The team also plans to adapt Aura 3K mini to Vampire-type bombers, the heavy night drones that Russian troops nickname "Baba Yaga". That would widen the shield's reach across more of Ukraine's bomber fleet.

Russia hunts the Baba Yaga

The nickname points to a fairytale Slavic witch who flies by night. The real thing has been hard for Russia to counter: in 2024, a Ukrainian night bomber was often impossible to jam and, by one account, could be destroyed only with a flamethrower. By 2025, Russia was offering its soldiers 10 days' leave for capturing a Baba Yaga it could not build itself.

Ukraine will intensify strikes on Russian oil refineries in response to Moscow’s expanded campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview with Reuters on 3 October.

Russia has increased attacks on Kyiv in recent weeks, hitting energy and telecommunications infrastructure, roads, railways, and bridges across the Dnipro. Zelenskyy said Ukraine would respond by targeting the Russian energy infrastructure that helps finance the war.

Russia expands attacks on Kyiv

Russian forces have broadened their strikes on infrastructure in and around Kyiv in recent weeks, with attacks increasingly affecting systems that support civilian life.

Zelenskyy said Ukrainian intelligence obtained documents indicating that Russian authorities had approved a broader policy for targeting infrastructure, including logistics, roads, schools, and hospitals. He said the goal is to put pressure on residents to leave Kyiv and other major cities.

Russia has also begun targeting bridges across the Dnipro, which connect the eastern and western parts of the capital.

Ukraine targets Russia’s war economy

Ukraine plans to keep striking Russian oil refineries because they generate revenue that supports Moscow’s war effort, Zelenskyy said.

The policy puts Kyiv at odds with US President Donald Trump, who has urged Ukraine not to attack Russian oil facilities, arguing that such strikes contribute to higher global diesel prices.

Zelenskyy said he sees no indication that Moscow is prepared for either peace talks or an agreement to halt attacks on energy infrastructure.

Ukraine’s “long-range sanctions” hit targets supporting Russia’s war machine in Samara and Bryansk oblasts, including positions of Iskander missile crews, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. He also reported new “results” in the Black Sea.

Zelenskyy said the strikes came in… pic.twitter.com/4OFHaJ2bH7

— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) October 3, 2026

Ukraine prepares for a new wave of air attacks

Ukraine is also preparing for intensified Russian attacks on its energy system over the winter. Ukrainian officials say Russia has stockpiled hundreds of ballistic missiles for a new campaign against electricity and other critical infrastructure.

Russia has also expanded its use of fast jet-powered Geran drones, launching dozens each day since the summer.

Ukrainian F-16s and MiG aircraft are intercepting around 60% of these drones, according to Zelenskyy, but ammunition for their 20 mm cannons is running low. Ukraine is increasing the use of electronic warfare and expects a first shipment of small, inexpensive air defense missiles designed to counter the jet-powered drones later in October.

Ukraine is developing five interceptor drone models to counter Russian Shaheds. Two have already undergone testing, with Zelenskyy putting their current interception rate at around 30%.

Ukraine expands its strike capabilities

Ukraine is also expanding its long-range strike capabilities. It has used its domestically produced FP-7 ballistic missile in combat for the first time, with a range of about 250 kilometers, while work continues on the longer-range FP-9.

At the same time, Kyiv is working with European partners to secure additional funding for its defense needs. Ukraine has found financing to order drones for early 2027 and is working to close a $27 billion gap in this year’s defense budget through its own resources, bilateral assistance, and financing linked to the EU’s €90 billion loan package.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s ability to sustain its defense and expand its strike capabilities will remain central as Russia prepares for another winter campaign.

Ukraine has stopped paying veterans to go to the gym because of the economic crisis looming in the country, the war, Russian strikes, and the lack of reforms needed to receive extra funds from the EU. The Veteran Sports program, which provided veterans and combat participants with about $33 per quarter toward a nearly monthly gym membership, was suspended on 1 October after the state found no funds for it, the Ministry of Veterans Affairs said.

The suspension is a telling sign of Ukraine's budget squeeze, and the ministry puts it plainly: defense comes first, so the money for everything else runs short. It fits a wider government decision to freeze non-essential spending and fund only the army, pensions, and public wages.

The program proved far more popular than planned, drawing more than 800,000 users and costing over double its budget.

Defense takes the money

"The main priority of state spending remains the country's defense. Under these conditions, the state budget's ability to finance other areas is limited," the ministry said.

Launched in 2026 with about $13 million for an expected 100,000 recipients per quarter, and roughly 300,000 applications over three, the program instead saw more than 800,000 uses. Payments passed $27 million, more than twice what was set aside.

The crisis runs deeper

The squeeze has two main drivers. Russia's intensifying strikes on Ukraine's energy and infrastructure are pushing the war's cost higher and battering the economy.

War is costing Ukraine $155 billion per year. With Western aid running late, Kyiv is freezing everything but army, pensions, and public wages

And billions in Western money sit on hold: Kyiv has struggled to complete the reforms the EU set out before releasing roughly $20 billion in aid, and the prime minister has admitted that part of it is late because Ukraine missed commitments to its partners.

The ministry plans a 2027 restart

Ukraine intends to bring the program back in 2027, this time for good, said Deputy Veterans Minister Ruslan Prykhodko.

"We have to account for real demand, fix the shortcomings we saw this year, and make the use of funds more targeted," he said.

In next year's budget, Ukraine would provide significantly more funds, he added. In the meantime, the ministry says it is talking to the sports community and businesses about covering the gap for veterans, with concrete proposals to come.

Russia struck Kyiv’s Northern Bridge with a drone on 3 October, damaging the roadway and overhead trolleybus lines, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Two people were injured, one of whom was hospitalized.

The strike came one day after repeated Russian drone attacks on the Southern Bridge, which damaged its support structures, road surface and subway infrastructure and forced its closure. The attacks caused severe traffic disruption across Kyiv, with major roads gridlocked and some people reportedly walking across bridges.

Another key bridge targeted

The Northern Bridge connects Kyiv’s Obolon and Troieshchyna districts and is one of the capital’s major routes across the Dnipro.

Damage to its roadway and trolleybus network adds another disruption to Kyiv’s transport system after the attacks on the Southern Bridge. The Northern and Southern bridges are among the capital’s key crossings between its eastern and western banks.

Kyiv changes bridge restrictions

Kyiv authorities announced temporary changes to bridge traffic rules following the attacks.

During air raids, traffic on the Southern Bridge will be restricted for 15 minutes in the direction from the right bank to the left bank, while traffic in the opposite direction will remain open. On the Podilskyi-Voskresenskyi Bridge, traffic in both directions will stop for 15 minutes when an air-raid alert is announced or lifted.

The Northern, Darnytskyi, Paton and Metro bridges will operate without restrictions during air raids, according to the Kyiv City Military Administration.

Russia’s repeated strikes on Kyiv’s Southern Bridge are now severely disrupting traffic across the capital.

Major roads are gridlocked, with some people reportedly walking across bridges as traffic comes to a standstill. Photos from Suspilne show the resulting congestion on… pic.twitter.com/7SyYG0WOCO

— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) October 2, 2026

Russia intensifies attacks on Kyiv

The bridge strikes come amid an intensifying Russian aerial campaign against Kyiv. Russian drones and missiles have increasingly targeted the capital in recent weeks, damaging residential buildings, schools and infrastructure and disrupting daily life.

The attacks on the bridges add a different dimension to that campaign, directly disrupting movement between Kyiv’s two banks. With multiple crossings affected within days, the strikes have already translated into major traffic disruptions for the city’s residents.

Three Russian missiles and two drones crossed Moldova’s airspace and exploded on Saturday morning, Moldovan Defense Minister Anatolie Nosatîi told TVR Moldova.

Moldova has seen a dramatic increase in Russian drone incursions in recent weeks as Russia ramps up near-constant drone attacks across Ukraine.

The five incidents occurred between 7:45 and 8:00 a.m., with explosions and debris reported across several districts. Moldova’s Foreign Ministry condemned the airspace violation.

Explosions and debris reported across Moldova

The Moldovan authorities initially said that five drones had crossed the country’s airspace before Nosatîi clarified that the five incidents involved three missiles and two drones. President Maia Sandu said the missiles were Banderol-type missiles, according to NewsMaker.

Nosatîi said the incidents had been documented and that evidence recovered at the sites could be presented to Russia’s ambassador.

Moldova’s Foreign Ministry said Russia’s war against Ukraine continues to create concrete threats for the country and condemned the violation of its airspace.

According to NewsMaker, fragments were found outside Căușeni, near Dubovca in Hîncești District, between Delacău and Puhăceni in Anenii Noi District, and near Crocmaz in Ștefan Vodă District.

Near Crocmaz, an explosion in a vineyard field caused a vegetation fire and damaged windows at a nearby agricultural facility. Fragments were also found near Constantinovca in Căușeni District, where an explosion caused another vegetation fire.

Moldova’s Defense Ministry later reported a sixth unauthorized flight over the country that did not result in an explosion. The object entered Moldovan airspace at 8:04 a.m. from the direction of Udobne, Ukraine, and exited a minute later toward Biliaivka, Ukraine. 

Moldova seeks stronger air defenses

Asked why the weapons were not intercepted, Nosatîi said Moldova was taking measures to strengthen its air-defense capabilities and acquire interception systems.

He said the drones are sophisticated and fast, adding that Moldova, like Ukraine, is learning how to defend against them. He also said Moldova needs additional resources to protect its 1,212-kilometer border with Ukraine and monitor its airspace.

Moldovan authorities urged residents not to approach or touch any fragments they find, but to mark the location and notify police or the military so the area can be secured and the debris neutralized.

Ukraine has lost another Mikoyan MiG-29 fighter and its pilot. The Thursday shoot-down extends the steady attrition of the Ukrainian air force MiG fleet, potentially drawing down the fleet to its pre-war strength.

That means Ukraine may have lost as many of the twin-engine, supersonic MiG-29s as it has received from its allies or restored from surplus stocks since February 2022.

It's an ominous milestone. The Soviet-vintage MiG-29 is no longer the Ukrainian air force's most important fighter. That honorific belongs to the air force's ex-European Lockheed Martin F-16s.

But the MiG-29 is still the air force's second most important fighter—and will remain so through 2027 as Ukraine awaits its first ex-Swedish Saab Gripens, due early next year, and French-made Dassault Rafales, due from 2028. Ukraine sorties MiG-29s for ground attack missions targeting Russian troop concentrations, strikes on Russian air defense systems, and air defense sorties over Ukrainian cities and ports.

Today, October 1, 2026, another Ukrainian defender fell in combat.

Flying a MiG-29 fighter jet, he carried out missile and bomb strikes against Russian occupiers along one of the front-line directions.

During the mission, his aircraft was hit by an enemy missile. The pilot… pic.twitter.com/3DC1VJAiWm

— Ukrainian Air Force (@KpsZSU) October 1, 2026

The air force announced the loss of the MiG-29 and its pilot, Capt. Marat Mambetov, shortly after it occurred on Thursday. Mambetov, 25, was a flight commander in the 40th Tactical Aviation Brigade, known as the "Ghost of Kyiv" brigade. "Flying a MiG-29 fighter jet, [Mambetov] carried out missile and bomb strikes against Russian occupiers along one of the front-line directions," the air force stated. "During the mission, his aircraft was hit by an enemy missile. The pilot ejected, but tragically did not survive."

It's the 37th confirmed combat loss of a Ukrainian MiG-29 since Russia widened its war on Ukraine in February 2022, according to a tally by the Oryx open-source intelligence collective. Oryx has also registered damage to an additional three Ukrainian MiG-29s.

Thirty-seven write-offs, plus the likely grounding of several previously flyable MiG-29s owing to intensive wear and tear since 2022, may have reduced the Ukrainian air force's MiG-29 fleet to around three dozen active jets.

Ukrainian Air Force MiG 29 of the 204th tactical aviation brigade making a low pass. Note the absence of 4 R-73 air to air missiles. And only a pair of R-27 missiles. pic.twitter.com/I07qKxO3Yw

— capt. Wild Bill Kelso (@_wild_billkelso) May 26, 2026

Fighter subtraction

The math is simple. The air force probably had between 30 and 35 MiG-29s in service when Russia attacked in February 2022. As losses cut into the fleet, Poland donated 14 surplus MiGs, Slovakia donated 10, and Azerbaijan reportedly donated three. Meanwhile, Ukrainian engineers tapped a global pipeline of spare parts to reactivate an estimated 20 grounded MiG-29s moldering in hangars at various Ukrainian airfields.

That's as many as 82 MiGs in and, as of Thursday, 37 out owing to Russian action—plus additional jets grounded due to airframe fatigue. The resulting active fleet should number around three dozen planes, around as many as Ukraine had on the eve of the wider war.

There aren't many more old MiGs that Ukraine could obtain to bolster the fleet. Poland still has as many as nine very tired airframes, but Kyiv and Warsaw have consistently failed to negotiate a transfer. There may yet be a few ex-Soviet MiG-29s, grounded for years or even decades, that Ukrainian engineers can restore to flightworthy status. Other than that, options are scarce.

The three dozen MiGs still in the inventory may have to last a little while alongside the few survivors of Ukraine's other Soviet-vintage warplanes, including Sukhoi Su-27s, Sukhoi Su-24s, and Sukhoi Su-25s.

Older Western types—the 80 or so F-16s European allies have pledged, about half delivered, as well as potentially a dozen or so ex-French Dassault Mirage 2000s—are steadily replacing the ex-Soviet jets. (So far, Ukraine has lost five F-16s and one Mirage.) Next year, the transformation of the Ukrainian air force from a largely Soviet-equipped force to a largely Western-equipped force will accelerate when the first of 32 Gripens arrive. Sixteen Rafales are to follow from 2028.

Barring catastrophic combat losses among Western types and assuming Ukraine can maintain and arm these new warplanes, by the end of 2027, the air force may not need its remaining MiGs and Sukhois, which by then could be very tired.

Russian missiles are steadily reducing the MiG and Sukhoi fleets, effectively forcing Ukraine to switch to new types.

Russian forces have repeatedly struck Kyiv’s Southern Bridge with drones since 1 October, disrupting one of the capital’s main routes between the left and right banks of the Dnipro.

The strikes are part of a broader intensification of Russian drone attacks on the capital. In recent weeks, Russia has begun launching daily attacks involving jet-powered Geran drones, increasingly disrupting everyday life in Kyiv.

The Southern Bridge is an important road and rail crossing over the Dnipro. It carries road traffic between Kyiv's left and right banks and also forms part of the city's metro network.

The bridge was fully closed to traffic following the latest attacks, while restrictions were also introduced on the Metro and Paton bridges, according to Suspilne. Public transport has been diverted to alternative routes, while the disruptions have caused major traffic congestion across Kyiv.

Update 17:50: Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Russian forces have struck the Southern Bridge again on the evening of 2 October. The bridge remains closed to road traffic and metro services following several previous attacks. Emergency services are heading to the site.

Bridge targeted repeatedly

The Southern Bridge came under attack multiple times on 1 October and was targeted again during the overnight attack into 2 October.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces struck the bridge several times with drones during the night. He said the attacks were part of a larger Russian barrage involving more than 100 attack drones, nearly 50 of them jet-powered Gerans.

The bridge has not been destroyed, but the repeated strikes have forced authorities to limit its use and reorganize traffic across the Dnipro.

Ukrainian analyst Andrii Kovalenko said the Southern Bridge is difficult to destroy with the weapons Russia is using. However, he said such strikes can damage the bridge enough to disrupt its normal operation, while the resulting disruption can also be used to spread panic.

Russia’s repeated strikes on Kyiv’s Southern Bridge are now severely disrupting traffic across the capital.

Major roads are gridlocked, with some people reportedly walking across bridges as traffic comes to a standstill. Photos from Suspilne show the resulting congestion on… pic.twitter.com/7SyYG0WOCO

— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) October 2, 2026

Zelenskyy: Russia is targeting bridges and critical infrastructure

Zelenskyy said Russia's intensified attacks are part of a broader effort to disrupt life in Ukrainian cities and damage infrastructure beyond individual military targets.

Citing Ukrainian intelligence and people he said are close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Zelenskyy claimed Putin said in early September: “Now, there are no rules.” Zelenskyy said Russia had failed to occupy Ukraine and was therefore turning to mass attacks and killings.

“They want to destroy our bridges and, as we understand it, our data centers, internet, mobile networks, hospitals, kindergartens, schools, universities – everything,” Zelenskyy said.

He added that Russia wants to force Ukrainians to leave their cities. “They want people to flee their cities, and we need to do everything to save our people and our cities,” he said.

A key crossing for Kyiv disrupted

The bridge’s closure puts additional pressure on the capital's other bridges. On 2 October, traffic on the Metro Bridge was restricted to one lane toward the right bank, while traffic from the right bank toward the left was restricted on the Paton Bridge.

Several bus routes were diverted to other bridges. Kyiv authorities reported major traffic jams on the city's main roads as the restrictions disrupted normal movement between the two sides of the capital.

Metro service across the Southern Bridge also remains tied to an assessment of the structure. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Friday the metro can resume crossing the bridge during yellow-level air alerts after experts provide an assessment confirming its condition.

Part of a wider campaign against Kyiv

The bridge strikes came alongside attacks on civilian areas of Kyiv. A Russian drone hit the upper floors of a 25-story residential building in the Darnytskyi district on 2 October, causing a fire on the 24th and 25th floors.

One person was killed and two were injured. The attack also damaged buildings and vehicles in the Holosiivskyi district.

A Russian drone struck a 25-story residential building in Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district this morning.

According to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Russia launched more than 100 attack drones at Ukraine overnight, including nearly 50 jet-powered drones.

In Kyiv, the strike caused a… pic.twitter.com/jiGjJeUgVf

— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) October 2, 2026

The growing frequency of jet-powered Geran attacks is making the impact of Russian strikes increasingly visible beyond individual damage sites. Repeated attacks on infrastructure such as the Southern Bridge can disrupt transportation and daily routines across the capital even when the targeted structures are not destroyed.

Drones attacked Russia's Volgograd and Samara oblasts overnight on 2 October, sparking fires near an oil refinery, a chemical plant, and likely a major oil-transport hub, Ukrainian and Russian monitoring channels reported. Regional officials acknowledged the attack but not the fires, and the extent of any damage remains unconfirmed.

Explosions and a glow over Volgograd's refinery district

Explosions sounded for a long time in Volgograd itself and around the refinery's industrial zone, Ukrainian Telegram channel Exilenova+ wrote.

Residents reported drones flying over and blasts "in all districts of the city," and complained that no air raid alert sounded, Russian news Telegram channel Astra reported. Its OSINT analysis of eyewitness footage placed the glow near the Lukoil refinery and the neighboring Kaustik chemical plant, though the available videos do not show which facility caught fire.

Volgograd Oblast Governor Andrei Bocharov claimed a "massive drone attack" on the region's industrial infrastructure. He mentioned a fire in an apartment building and one person hospitalized, but no fires at plants.

Lukoil-Volgogradneftepererabotka is one of Russia's largest refineries. It processes 14.8–15.7 million tons of crude a year, about 5% of Russia's refining, and makes gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, fuel oil, and bitumen, according to Astra.

Drones have hit the plant repeatedly. In May 2025, strikes damaged its ELOU-AVT-1 and ELOU-AVT-6 primary processing units. A 29 May 2026 strike halted production at the plant, about 500 km east of the war zone, Ukraine's General Staff said. On 31 July, drones set the refinery ablaze again, and Astra reported the AVT-1 and AVT-6 units stopped.

Kaustik sits in Volgograd's southern Krasnoarmeysky district. It is one of the region's leading plants and makes basic chemicals with dual civilian and military use, Astra wrote. The outlet called that output critical to Russia's military industry. The plant runs chlor-alkali production built on salt electrolysis. It makes hydrochloric acid, plastics, synthetic resins, and industrial gases, according to OSINT-Varta. Such products can serve military industry too, including polymer parts and protective coatings for hardware, Militarnyi noted.

Europe's largest tank farm likely on fire near Samara

Explosions also rocked Samara, with an especially strong one around 06:30, Astra reported. Its OSINT expert linked reader photos to a fire at the Samara linear production dispatch station in the settlement of Prosvet.

Ukrainian monitoring channel Supernova+ shared video of thick black smoke on the horizon and reported a fire at the station. Exilenova+ reported explosions in Samara followed by a fire.

The station belongs to Transneft, Russia's state pipeline operator. It covers more than 216 hectares and holds 71 tanks with a combined capacity of over 1.6 million m³ of crude. Astra called it Europe's largest tank farm.

Four trunk pipelines converge there, carrying oil from Western Siberia, Tatarstan, Orenburg Oblast, and Kazakhstan. The station blends high- and low-sulfur crude into Urals, Russia's flagship export grade, according to Militarnyi.

Samara authorities did not comment on the fire. Mayor Ivan Noskov stated only that ground public transport was suspended. Samara Oblast Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev did not report an attack at all.

The station has been hit before. Operators of the 14th Regiment of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces struck it again overnight on 23 September 2025. On 21 April 2026, drones of the Security Service of Ukraine's Alfa special operations center hit it, reportedly damaging five crude tanks of about 20,000 m³ each.

Ukraine's long-range drones have already pushed Russia's fuel shortages into Central Asia, and Washington has pressed Kyiv to stop, so every hit on processing or export logistics tests how long oil can fund Moscow's war.

The robots Ukraine wants to throw into its deadliest fights should cost as little as $10,000 each, Mykhailo Fedorov says. The former defense minister has set out the first stage of his Army of Robots: cheap, simple humanoid-like machines that would take over an infantry's most dangerous jobs, with tens of thousands needed, he said on Telegram, citing his own interview with Forbes.

On 26 September, Fedorov, who continues to work on military tech reforms despite his sudden and unexpected dismissal, announced the creation of the Army of Robots.

Humanoid robots would carry ammunition and pull out the wounded, lay and clear minefields, scout, hold positions, and strike, taking the roles that today cost soldiers their lives.

Potential need amounts to thousands

"Our main goal is to save lives. A human should not take risks where a machine can do the job," Fedorov says.

At the first stage, it will not be a classic humanoid but a simpler humanoid-like robot that can be produced quickly and scaled up, he adds.

Such a machine should perform some of an infantryman's tasks directly on the battlefield.

Today, such platforms cost $40–70 thousand on average. For mass use in war, Ukraine needs something much cheaper: the target is $10–20 thousand per unit, he believes.

"The potential need is tens of thousands of such machines," Fedorov continues.

Next come prototypes

The former defense minister adds that he and his team are already working with teams that have ready-made MVPs and are designing solutions.

"Next come prototypes, simulations, model training, and finding the right combination of hardware and software," he explains.

The Army of Robots is not a single product but an ecosystem that will unite companies, startups, engineers, R&D, and capital around the robotization of the front.

"Our task is to get from prototype to mass product as quickly as possible," he adds.

Ukraine has cracked the riddle of strange metal "whiskers" that appeared on Russian jet-powered drones striking Kyiv, and they don't appear to be some clever new sensor. They are a simple mechanical detonator, a metal tube, and a rod that, on impact, closes a circuit to set off the warhead, Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov, presidential adviser, says, ending online guessing about the strange devices.

Photos of Russian drones with long metal prongs jutting from the nose had set off speculation about what they were for. The answer, Flash explains, is low-tech: when the prong hits something, the contact closes, and the charge goes off, with no sensors or electronics.

That simplicity sits against a more worrying trend: Russia is steadily upgrading what its drones carry, from the mix of warheads on the jet-powered Geran-4 and Geran-5 to a new charge designed to sever power pylons.

A contact closes the circuit

"It's all mechanically simple, no sensors or complex detectors," Flash says, commenting on the "whiskers".

It is the kind of crude, cheap fuze that suits a weapon meant to be built and spent in the thousands, where cost matters more than finesse.

Russia upgrades the warheads

Russia's jet drones, now built at roughly 3,000 a month, have become the dominant threat in its nightly campaign. The day when Flash published his "whiskers" post, Russia hit Kyiv with another round of drone strikes, hitting a school, a café, and warehouse buildings across the capital. The children inside the school were in its shelter. Fires broke out across two districts, and one person in the city was wounded.

On 28 September, Russia struck Kyiv's Academy of Sciences, which has a century-old history.

After Russia hits Kyiv’s Academy of Sciences with jet-powered drone, the Kremlin says Ukraine must “pay a price”

On the same day, Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesperson, said Ukraine must "pay a price" for its actions in recent months and calls Russia's intensified strikes "part of this price."

Russia hit Kyiv with another round of drone strikes from the evening of 30 September into the morning of 1 October, striking a school, a café, and warehouse buildings across the capital, the city's mayor and emergency services said. The children inside the school were in its shelter and came through unharmed. Fires broke out across two districts, and one person in the city was wounded.

Children across Ukraine now start the school year in bomb shelters, as Russian drones, missiles, and glide bombs keep hitting schools, homes, and hospitals far from the front—part of a civilian toll the UN says has already outrun all of last year's.

A school full of children, all in the shelter

A Russian drone hit a school in Kyiv's Solomianskyi district on the morning of 1 October and started a fire, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said, adding that the children were in the shelter. More than 100 students and about 60 staff were sheltering inside, and none were hurt, police said. The jet-powered drone damaged the building's facade at third-floor level, RBC-Ukraine reported.

A café and warehouses among the sites hit

On the evening of 30 September, a Russian strike started a fire at a café on the ground floor of a residential building in Solomianskyi, while warehouse buildings burned in the northern Obolonskyi district. One person was injured in the warehouse fire and handed to medics, RBC-Ukraine reported.

42 sites damaged across Kyiv Oblast

Across Kyiv Oblast, Russian attacks over the previous 24 hours damaged 42 sites and injured six people, regional authorities reported.

Kyiv is now under Russian air attack daily. On 28 September, Russian drones hit the city center in daylight, including the National Academy of Sciences, and earlier waves struck filling stations and other everyday sites across the capital.

Russian glide bombs that struck central Sumy on 29 September damaged a 19th-century church, the city cemetery around it, and a bronze statue of Christ, NV reported, citing the diocesan outlet Pravoslavna Sumshchyna. The same strike hit a school and nearby homes. Russia kept up its attacks across Ukraine over the following night and day.

Russia continues its terror campaign against Ukrainian civilians, and churches are among its routine targets, from a church its incendiary drone burned to the ground in Donetsk Oblast to one its drone damaged in western Ukraine's Lviv. Its strikes keep landing in city centers where people live, study, and pray, as when a drone hit Kyiv's Academy of Sciences in broad daylight.

The church near the epicenter

Russia struck Sumy with four guided aerial bombs. The blast damaged the Church of Saints Peter and Paul, a national-level architectural monument that stood near the epicenter. The church belongs to the Sumy Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate).

Almost the entire building was damaged, said the rector, Archpriest Mykola Holyk. The blast wave knocked out windows and broke nearly every pane.

Plaster fell and the ceiling collapsed in several places. It tore out doors and wooden fittings, knocked some icons from their places, and holed the roof in many spots. Large and small fragments of the bomb pitted the walls.

Local patrons paid to build the church between 1843 and 1851, in the late classicist style.

A cut across Christ's chest

In front of the church stands a bronze statue of Christ, placed in the late 19th century on the grave of Dmytro Sukhanov, a merchant and former mayor of Sumy. Bomb fragments left a cut across the statue's chest. The statue is a local landmark of monumental art, the outlet Tsukr noted. The strike also damaged about 50 graves in the Central City Cemetery beside the church.

"The godless enemy continues to kill civilians, endanger children, and destroy schools, homes, hospitals, churches, and cemeteries," the diocese said.

The same attack hit a school where students were sheltering, and a residential area where two people were killed and six injured, three of them children. In September, Russian strikes on Kyiv also damaged two churches belonging to the same Moscow-linked church, the Exaltation of the Cross on Podil and the Pokrova Church on Priorka.

Another day of Russian strikes

Overnight on 1 October, Russia launched 107 Shahed-type drones at Ukraine, 63 of them jet-powered, the Air Force said. Air defenses downed or suppressed 87, and drones hit 11 locations. In Sumy, a guided bomb hit private homes, injuring two women and damaging about six houses, city military administration head Serhii Kryvosheienko reported. On the morning of 30 September, a Russian strike set a shopping center in Sumy Oblast's Romny district on fire, and crews fought the blaze until late that night, the State Emergency Service said. In Kyiv on the morning of 1 October, a drone hit a school in the Solomianskyi district while children sheltered inside, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. More than 100 students and about 60 staff were in the shelter, and no one was hurt, police said. A warehouse fire in Kyiv's Obolon district injured one person.

Over the past 24 hours, Russian mortar fire killed two men in Sumy Oblast's Seredyna-Buda hromada, and 15 people were injured across the oblast, the regional administration reported. A morning drone attack killed a 50-year-old man in Mykolaiv Oblast, and drones killed a 44-year-old man in Nikopol district, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. In Kherson Oblast, Russian attacks killed one person and injured four. Eight people were hurt in Kharkiv Oblast, six in Kyiv Oblast, five in Donetsk Oblast, and three in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, according to regional authorities.

A Russian air force Tupolev Tu-95 Bear bomber crashed on takeoff, apparently from Ukrainka air base in Amur Oblast in Russia's Far East. The Russian defense ministry said the plane was on a training flight without munitions and blamed a technical fault. The crash, while reportedly accidental, is still a win of sorts for Ukraine. Every bomber the Russians lose is a bomber they can't immediately replace—and sortie for missile strikes on Ukrainian cities.

The problem for Ukraine is that Russia still has bombers to spare. It'll take more than a few crashes or drone raids on Russian bomber bases to cut into Russia's capacity to bombard Ukraine.

That's why Ukraine needs missile-armed fighters, ground-based self-propelled guns, speedy interceptor drones, and long-range surface-to-air missiles such as American-made Patriots, among other air defenses. The Ukrainians can't prevent missile attacks by destroying bombers or waiting for bombers to crash; they need to shoot down missiles as they near their targets.

A Russian Tu-95MS Bear heavy bomber crashed on takeoff in Amur this evening during a training flight.

The airframe is a total loss, with no survivors reported. pic.twitter.com/tbujV6RVP5

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) September 29, 2026

A security camera on the ground recorded a large aircraft plunging toward the ground in Amur Oblast on Tuesday night. Video from the crash site confirmed it was one of the Russians' four-engine, propeller-driven Tu-95s, aging workhorses in Russia's escalating campaign of missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities.

The crash killed six crew and left one survivor injured, according to Russian state media. It is the first Tu-95 to go down in 11 years, Defense Express notes, and the first known non-combat loss of the type since the full-scale invasion.

It's potentially the 11th Tu-95 Russia has lost since widening its war on Ukraine in February 2022. Ukrainian drones caught two Bears on the ground at Engels-2 air base in Saratov Oblast in July and August. On 1 June 2025, Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb—coordinated strikes on Russian bomber bases by more than 100 small drones smuggled across Russia in trucks—destroyed as many as four Bears at Olenya air base on the Kola Peninsula and another four at Belaya air base in Irkutsk Oblast.

Now the Russian air force may be down to somewhere between 36 and 44 working Tu-95s, depending on the count, the youngest of which rolled out of the factory in the 1990s. That matters because the Tu-95 is, like the jet-propelled Tupolev Tu-22M bomber, out of production. Vendors have gone out of business. The skilled workers who assembled the types retired decades ago.

While the Russians can still build one or two Tupolev Tu-160 jet bombers every year, slowly growing a fleet that currently stands at around 18 active planes, that's far too few new bombers to replace combat losses as the wider war grinds through its 56th month.

On September 8, four Tu-95MS from Olenya Air Base and two Tu-160M from Ukrainka Air Base conducted a combat mission against Ukraine.

The Tu-95MSs and Tu-160Ms launched Kh-101 cruise missiles from the airspace over the Leningrad and Smolensk oblasts. pic.twitter.com/xAZRc8EDO5

— AviVector (@avivector) September 8, 2026

Slow attrition

The Russians have also lost at least nine Tu-22Ms, and possibly far more: Defense Express estimates losses at up to 70% of the combat-ready fleet since 2022. All told, Russia's bomber force has shrunk to around 105 planes since the wider war began, or fewer.

Equally problematically for the Russians, the old Tu-95s and Tu-22Ms that carry out the majority of air-launched cruise missile strikes on Ukraine are wearing out from heavy use; not all are available for front-line use as more airframes spend more time in deep maintenance.

But a Tu-95 carries as many as eight Kh-101 cruise missiles at a time; a Tu-22M carries up to three Kh-22s or Kh-32s. A Russian drone and missile strike might include just a dozen or so air-launched cruise missiles launched by a handful of bombers. A raid on 8 September involved just four Tu-95s and two Tu-160s.

The Russians don't need 105 bombers to sustain six-bomber raids once or twice a week, even as those bombers suffer more and more wear and tear. Ukraine would have to take out a lot more Russian bombers, and fast, to put a dent in Russian strikes.

Unless and until that unlikelihood happens, Ukraine will still need to defeat Russian raids inside Ukraine—by shooting down hundreds of incoming drones and missiles at a time. But that's getting harder as the Russians deploy faster jet-propelled Geran drones and more ground-launched Iskander missiles, combining them with the bomber-launched missiles in complex packages that routinely overwhelm ammunition-starved Ukrainian air defenses.

Residents who have recently escaped Russian-occupied Oleshky describe being subjected to threats, intimidation, and exploitation by Russian soldiers, according to the head of the Oleshky City Military Administration.

Oleshky is facing severe shortages of food, water, and medicine, with around 1,500 civilians, including up to 50 children, still trapped in the Russian-occupied city with no safe way out.

Tetiana Hasanenko told Ukrinform on September 29 that people escaping the city on foot were severely weakened and had lost up to 15 kilograms. She said those who managed to leave described not only hunger, but also abuse by Russian troops.

“They were really fleeing from hunger and from abuse,” Hasanenko told Ukrinform.

Russian troops threaten residents for food and alcohol

According to Hasanenko, Russian soldiers are entering residents’ homes, taking them over, and forcing the civilians living there to feed them despite having little food themselves.

“They move in and demand that people feed them and give them alcohol,” she said, adding that some of the soldiers appeared to be drug or alcohol users.

She described one family’s account in which a Russian soldier allegedly locked them in a shower while in an apparently intoxicated state and threatened to throw a grenade at them.

Another woman reportedly told Ukrainian officials that a Russian soldier threatened to kill her because the homemade wine she gave him was sour.

“They move in and demand to eat and drink,” Hasanenko said.

Residents face hunger and mines

The accounts come as Oleshky in Ukraine’s Kherson Oblast faces a severe humanitarian crisis. Ukrainian authorities say around 1,500 people remain in the occupied city, including up to 50 children, with residents lacking reliable access to food and water.

Those trying to escape face minefields around the city. Hasanenko said some residents have attempted to leave on foot and that there are people who have failed to return after entering mined areas.

She said one family tried to return because children had been left behind at home but never made it back.

Recent escapees have reportedly lost 10–15 kilograms, with some leaving only after becoming severely weakened by hunger.

Russian troops accused of using civilians as cover

Hasanenko also said Russian soldiers are deliberately living in civilian homes to protect themselves.

By occupying homes and remaining among local residents, she said, Russian troops are effectively using civilians as a “human shield” because they fear for their own safety.

Ukraine has been seeking an organized evacuation of civilians from Oleshky and has said the International Committee of the Red Cross is prepared to participate if Russia agrees to the necessary arrangements. Russia has not confirmed its readiness to allow such an evacuation.

A former Wagner fighter captured by Ukraine has described alleged training sessions in Mali where Russian mercenaries used African prisoners as live subjects, deliberately inflicting severe injuries so recruits could practice battlefield medicine and killing.

Training built around real victims

The fighter told Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Karpenko that Wagner instructors brought captured Africans to training sessions and turned them into human practice targets.

“We gathered for medical training, and they brought in a captured terrorist. They tied a block of TNT to his leg. They set it off, everyone moved away, and of course his leg was blown off,” he said.

The recruits then practiced stopping the resulting bleeding. According to the fighter, the prisoner was later shot in the artery near his armpit so they could practice the same procedure on his arm.

The prisoner died after the training.

In another session, he said, instructors had a prisoner's leg chopped off with an ax so recruits could practice applying a tourniquet under realistic conditions.

“They cut off his leg. Then they put on the tourniquet – everything as if it were an extreme situation, so everything would be realistic,” he said.

‘Here, strike the heart’

The alleged exercises also included training in how to kill.

The fighter said another prisoner was drugged before recruits were taught how to kill someone with a knife.

“They showed us how to kill with a knife to the heart. They chose two people who were willing and said: ‘Here, strike the heart,’” he said.

The fighter said all three prisoners died during the exercises.

From Mali to Ukraine

The testimony comes from a Russian mercenary who joined Wagner in 2023 and was sent to Mali that September via Syria. He said around 120–130 recruits traveled with him and that Wagner paid them $3,000 a month.

Wagner was a Russian paramilitary formation that operated as a deniable arm of the Kremlin in Ukraine, Syria, and Africa. After Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin's death in 2023, the group's independent role was largely dismantled, with many of its fighters and operations brought under Russian state control. Its African operations were increasingly taken over by Russia's state-run Africa Corps.

The mercenary remained in Mali until April 2024. After returning to Russia, he signed a contract with the Russian Defense Ministry in August 2025 and was assigned to the 14th Separate Special Forces Brigade, which is subordinate to Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU.

He was subsequently captured by Ukrainian forces.

A record of alleged abuses

The account has not been independently verified, but it adds to years of allegations of serious abuses by Wagner and other Russian personnel in Africa.

Wagner fighters have long faced allegations of abuses in Africa, including killings and violence against civilians. In Mali, the group became a key part of Russia’s military presence after the country’s military junta turned to Moscow for support, with Wagner fighters operating alongside Malian forces. Ukrainian intelligence has also documented and targeted Wagner’s activities in Africa.

The pattern of alleged abuses has continued under Russia’s Africa Corps, the Kremlin-controlled force that replaced Wagner in Mali. Human Rights Watch reported in August 2026 that Africa Corps fighters summarily killed nine civilians, including four children, beat dozens of others, and burned and looted homes in central Mali. In June, the group also carried out airstrikes that killed eight civilians, including three children.