Hungary on 27 October again refused to approve the screening results for clusters 4 and 5, the last two blocks of Ukraine’s EU accession talks that remain unopened, at a meeting of the EU Council’s enlargement working party in Brussels, European Pravda reported, citing several EU diplomats. It was Budapest’s second refusal in a week.

Ukraine is pursuing EU membership while fighting Russia’s full-scale invasion, and for years its path ran into vetoes from Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. Orbán lost power in April to Péter Magyar, who promised to bring Hungary back to Europe. His government is now the one blocking the last two clusters.

Brussels knew Budapest would say no

One of the diplomats said that “Hungary’s position has not changed.” Ireland, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council, knew in advance that Budapest would not move but put the item on the agenda anyway. Another diplomat described the repeat vote as a political move to raise pressure on Hungary rather than a real attempt to get a yes.

Hungary’s arguments were not disclosed on 20 October, when it first blocked the step. Cluster 4 covers transport, energy, trans-European networks, the environment, and climate. Cluster 5 covers agriculture, fisheries, regional policy, and budget rules.

Kyiv paid for two clusters, and the last two stay shut

Earlier this month, Ukraine’s parliament passed the minority-language schooling law Budapest had demanded, and the EU opened clusters 2 and 3 on 13 October. Magyar’s government has tied its support to Kyiv meeting 11 demands on the rights of the Hungarian minority.

On 16 October, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held his first one-on-one meeting with Magyar in Brussels and thanked him for opening the two clusters, adding that work was underway to open the remaining two by the end of the year, his office said. Ten days later, Zelenskyy set out why the timing matters.

“It is very important that the remaining two negotiating clusters for Ukraine are opened by the end of this year, and that during the Lithuanian presidency we could already close negotiating chapters,” he wrote.

Lithuania takes over the EU Council presidency in January.

Budapest’s next moves may also decide whether Ukraine and Moldova still advance together.

Moldova’s President Maia Sandu discussed the opening of her country’s last two clusters with Magyar during a visit to Budapest last week, and in July Hungary already offered to move Moldova ahead on its own.

An Indonesian taxi driver who went looking for work abroad ended up in Russia's army and died in his first battle in Ukraine, Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR) said. Russian recruiters found him through a job application, and he reached the front in Donetsk Oblast within weeks of signing. HUR calls him one more foreigner drawn into Russia's war through deception.

Russia's war against Ukraine consumes men faster than the Kremlin is ready to replace them through another mobilization at home, so it keeps hiring abroad. Ukraine has identified nearly 46,000 foreigners who signed with Russia's army since 2022. On 26 October, a UN commission found “compelling evidence” that Russia trafficked men from 29 countries into its forces.

A résumé that reached Russian recruiters

Taufiq Muhammad, born in 1978 in Sorong, Indonesia, drove a taxi in Jakarta and had once worked in the US. Russian recruiters found him through a résumé he had sent out while looking for work, the agency said. He probably believed promises of “easy money” and traveled to Moscow. HUR sees his case as part of a pattern.

“In fact, he became yet another victim of Russia's scheme of recruiting foreigners for the criminal war through deception,” HUR said.

A week and a half of training, then the front

Muhammad signed a one-year contract with Russia's army in Korolyov, near Moscow, on 19 April 2026. HUR called that term typical for foreigners Russia uses as “disposable” infantry. Russia made him a machine gunner and gave him only a week and a half at a training center near Voronezh, Army Inform reported, citing HUR.

Russia moved him to occupied Ukraine in early May. He died almost at once, in his first battle. Russian troops were trying to advance from the village of Zelena Dolyna toward Novoselivka and Drobysheve in Donetsk Oblast, Militarnyi reported.

Indonesia is the newest recruiting ground

Russia's recruiters have been working in Indonesia for months. In August, Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service said it held documents on at least eight Indonesians recruited into Russia's army.

Another Indonesian, Rendi Apriyanto, 30, was reportedly killed in September, his family learned from an Indonesian fighting for Russia. Rendi had told his family he was recruited for logistics work, The Jakarta Post reported.

HUR has traced the same fast track before. In January, it identified a Filipino recruit killed in a Donetsk Oblast assault after one week of training. A Nigerian, 34, died in Kharkiv Oblast after a similar week of training, HUR said in May.

Russia courts Africa ahead of a summit

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry has counted at least 2,982 Africans recruited into Russia's army, and 486 of them have died. Ahead of a Russia–Africa summit on 28–29 October, Moscow plans military and port-access deals with a string of African states, HUR said. The deals would help expand the campaign of Russia's Africa Corps, the Defense Ministry-controlled force on the continent, Army Inform reported, citing HUR.

Each recruit Ukraine identifies gives his home government a documented case to act on. Jakarta has said citizens shown to have been deceived will get its protection, while those who enlisted by choice could lose their citizenship.

Russian troops are trying to drag Radkivka, a village on the northern edge of Kupiansk in Kharkiv Oblast, into the gray zone so their infiltration groups can keep reaching the city, Viktor Trehubov, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Joint Forces Grouping, said on national television on 27 October, Ukrinform reported. Russian forces made three attempts to advance toward Radkivka on 26 October, Ukraine’s General Staff reported.

Russia has tried for more than a year to retake Kupiansk, a city on the Oskil River, largely by slipping small groups through a disused gas pipeline under the river. They kept using it even after Ukraine said in September 2025 that it had flooded three of the four pipe strings, until Ukrainian troops went into the pipes themselves in Operation Veles, announced on 22 October.

Russian groups now have to move above ground

The pipe Russian groups used to seep toward Kupiansk has been put out of action, so they now have to go through Radkivka or neighboring Holubivka, Trehubov said. They move along the bank of the Oskil and a nearby tree line, but the foliage will soon be gone, which will make that much harder.

When the battlefield became transparent, the war went underground.

Khartiia Corps, together with other Defense Forces units, is conducting the underground Operation VELES, and for the first time, we can show the work of our brothers-in-arms in this new dimension of warfare.

“We… pic.twitter.com/Af3RqgSIr8

— Khartiia Corps in English (@khartiia_eng) October 21, 2026

On the western bank of the Oskil, Russian forces took losses from Ukraine’s Khartiia Corps and in Operation Veles, and their logistics have “suffered noticeably,” Trehubov said. Advancing there is now harder for them than it was a month ago, he added.

Everything now depends on how the fights for Holubivka and Radkivka end, Trehubov said.

“If Ukrainian control can finally be established there, the Russians will have nowhere much to crawl through,” he said.

Several dozen Russian soldiers remain in low-rise buildings in northern Kupiansk, and Ukrainian forces are working to cut off their rotations, Trehubov said on 23 October.

Each side wants the other off its bank of the Oskil

On the eastern bank, Russian forces keep pushing toward the village of Podoly and Kupiansk-Vuzlovyi, a railway junction town southeast of Kupiansk, aiming to wipe out Ukraine’s foothold there, Trehubov said. Ukraine wants to destroy the Russian foothold on the western bank.

“For that, we will need to at least somehow throw them out of Dvorichna,” Trehubov said, referring to a town north of Kupiansk.

The US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessed that Russian forces conducted no offensive operations on the Kupiansk axis on 26 October, likely because Ukraine now controls the pipeline, a view at odds with the General Staff’s report for that day.

Ukraine reported confident control of Kupiansk as early as February, yet Russian groups kept slipping into the city for months afterward. Trehubov’s latest assessment stops short of declaring that threat over: Russia will still try to advance, he said.

Russia attacked Kyiv with ballistic missiles and drones in two waves, killing one person, injuring civilians, and damaging university dormitories and apartment blocks, the city military administration said. Russian strikes also killed two people in Kharkiv on the evening of 26 October and wounded civilians in four other oblasts overnight. Daytime attacks on 26 October killed people in Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kharkiv oblasts.

Russia's war against Ukraine grinds on along the front, where on 26 October alone Russian forces dropped 247 guided bombs and used 9,679 kamikaze drones, the General Staff reported. Behind the front, Russian missiles and drones keep hitting Ukrainian cities, while Washington presses Kyiv rather than Moscow. Ukraine was reportedly told to spare Russian refineries or lose US intelligence and arms. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused US President Donald Trump of trying to pressure Ukraine into capitulating, and a Ukrainian diplomat argues that Trump treats Ukraine as the weak link to be squeezed.

Two ballistic waves hit a Kyiv campus, the center, and the Southern Bridge

Shortly after 22:00 on 26 October, Russian missiles hit near a metro station in Kyiv's left-bank Desnianskyi district, Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported. An ambulance crew that had arrived at a call came under fire, and two medics were injured.

The missiles struck the grounds of one of Kyiv's universities, its campus, Kyoto Park, nearby homes, and the area beside a metro station, Zelenskyy wrote. “There is no military facility nearby,” he said.

In Dniprovskyi district, the blast wave blew out windows in a medical facility's intensive care unit, Klitschko said. A three-story non-residential building in the district partly collapsed.

The evening strike also damaged the metro between two left-bank stations and the exits of Lisova station, Klitschko said.

A second wave followed before dawn on 27 October. Missiles hit an administrative building in Podilskyi district, Klitschko reported, and at 05:04 he said Russia had hit the Southern (Pivdennyi) Bridge and the metro infrastructure on it.

Police closed the bridge to traffic, and green-line trains stopped crossing it. Russian strikes had already damaged metro infrastructure on the same bridge on 22 October.

The overnight attack set two non-residential buildings on fire in Obolonskyi district, and two more people were injured.

By morning, a 46-year-old woman was dead and 15 people were injured, among them dormitory residents and two medics, the Kyiv City Prosecutor's Office said. Prosecutors counted at least 12 damaged apartment blocks, as well as a burns center, a shopping mall, and a tram.

Kyiv was the main target of the night, the Air Force said, as Russia launched Iskander-M/S-400 ballistic missiles and 280 drones. Air defenses downed two of the missiles and 255 drones.

Zelenskyy put the night's total at 16 ballistic missiles and called the attack “a serious escalation in the Russian operation against our logistics.” He blamed delays in deliveries of interceptors for Patriot and NASAMS air defense systems.

“Artificial and lengthy delays in the delivery of interceptor packages for Patriots and NASAMS, which unfortunately have been happening lately, directly help Russia achieve the goals of its terrorist campaign. Every such delay is a new Russian hit on one target or another.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Russian strikes kill two in Kharkiv and wound civilians across Ukraine

Russian strikes on Kharkiv's Novobavarskyi district on the evening of 26 October killed two men and injured four people, including a 17-year-old girl, oblast head Oleh Syniehubov said. On the morning of 27 October, a Russian missile hit Izium, damaging eight houses.

In Zaporizhzhia, a Russian strike on a gas station wounded two people, and a later strike on a car wounded a 17-year-old boy, the oblast administration said. In Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Russian drones and aerial bombs injured three women in Synelnykove district overnight.

In Chernihiv Oblast, Russian attacks set homes on fire and injured six people, including a child, the oblast administration said. In Chernivtsi Oblast, a drone attack damaged an energy facility, cutting power until 02:15 and injuring two security guards, oblast head Ruslan Osypenko said. Russian attacks have also critically damaged electrical equipment in northern Khmelnytskyi Oblast, the regional power company said.

Over the past day, Russian attacks killed civilians in Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kharkiv oblasts

On 26 October, Russian attacks killed three people in Donetsk Oblast and wounded 22, oblast head Vadym Filashkin said. His breakdown puts 16 of the wounded in Yasnohirka, where Russian aircraft dropped guided bombs. A Russian drone strike on Pavlohrad killed one person and wounded seven, and a drone killed a woman in Shevchenkove, Kharkiv Oblast. In Kherson, a Russian drone hit a health facility and wounded a nurse. Most of Konotop in Sumy Oblast has been without power since Russian strikes on 24 October, with no forecast for its return, the mayor said.

Patriot systems are the only ones in Ukraine that reliably stop Russia's Iskander-M ballistic missiles, and their missiles have waited almost a month for a US signature. Every week of that wait leaves cities like Kyiv facing waves like this one with fewer interceptors, which is why Kyiv is also asking Lockheed Martin directly for more.

Ukrainian drones blew up a Russian ammunition depot near Khrustalnyi in occupied Luhansk Oblast overnight on 27 October, Ukrainian Telegram channel Exilenova+ reported. Drones also hit the oblast’s capital, Luhansk, for hours, and part of the city lost power. Russia’s occupation authorities have not commented.

Russia keeps pushing toward the last big Ukrainian-held cities in Donetsk Oblast. Its artillery there runs on shells kept in rear depots across occupied territory, and those depots sit within reach of Ukraine’s mid-range drones. Each depot lost behind the front pushes Russia to store and move its shells from farther back. That lengthens the supply runs Ukraine’s drones already hunt on the roads of occupied Ukraine.

Secondary detonations near Khrustalnyi lasted over an hour

The drone attack on occupied Luhansk Oblast went on for several hours, Exilenova+ said. Ukraine’s Defense Forces hit the depot near Khrustalnyi, and secondary detonations continued for more than an hour, the channel added. It posted night footage of a large fire glowing on the horizon.

An attack by strike drones has been ongoing for several hours in the occupied Luhansk region.

The Defence Forces have blown up an ammunition depot near the village of Khrustalnyi. Secondary detonations have been ongoing for over an hour. pic.twitter.com/yEGTgrfsm7

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 26, 2026

Russia has occupied Khrustalnyi, formerly called Krasnyi Luch, since 2014. The city lies about 65 km southwest of Luhansk. It serves Russian troops as a rear and logistics hub.

Luhansk lost power as drones hit its former airfield

The attack on the city of Luhansk lasted more than four hours, Petro Andriushchenko, head of the Center for the Study of Occupation, said. Residents reported many explosions and fires in several districts, and the power went out. The main strike hit the city’s former airfield, he added. In October 2023, Ukraine’s ATACMS missiles destroyed Russian helicopters at air bases in occupied Luhansk and Berdiansk.

On Yandex Maps, the Russian online mapping service, the struck area near Luhansk airport is blurred, Andriushchenko noted. Yandex blurs military and critical infrastructure sites this way, he wrote.

Exilenova+ also reported a series of explosions in Luhansk. The oblast had been under a mass drone attack for an hour, with dozens of hits in different towns, Ukrainian Telegram channel DroneBomber wrote late on 26 October.

Neither side’s military has mentioned the attack on Luhansk Oblast. Ukraine’s General Staff left it out of its morning report. Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed it downed 222 drones over Russian regions, occupied Crimea, and the Black Sea, without listing Luhansk Oblast.

Pro-Russian local channels confirmed the attack from their side. A channel covering occupied Luhansk Oblast wrote that eyewitnesses saw a large fire and secondary detonations in Khrustalnyi. LIC, the news agency of Russia’s occupation administration in Luhansk Oblast, reported a series of powerful explosions over Luhansk and a visible glow.

The third drone night over occupied Luhansk Oblast in a week

Drones have now hit occupied Luhansk Oblast on three nights in seven days. On 21 October, they struck the seized telecom building in the city of Luhansk that houses the occupation’s mobile operator. Two nights later, strikes cut communications and power in part of the city.

Khrustalnyi itself burned on 12 October, when strikes hit a former motor depot housing Russian troops. Ukraine also hit an ammunition depot there in June 2022. Back then, the site supplied Russia’s offensive on Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk.

Blasts in Mariupol, Berdiansk, and Melitopol, and Russian claims from Bryansk

Occupied Mariupol heard two waves of explosions overnight, and the power went out after the attack, Andriushchenko also said. In occupied Berdiansk, several blasts near the Ekvator shopping center preceded a large fire, he added.

On the evening of 26 October, strike drones attacked occupied Melitopol in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Exilenova+ said. Locals also reported FPV drones hitting targets in the city.

In Russia’s city of Bryansk, Governor Yegor Kovalchuk claimed a night drone attack injured six people and damaged three apartment blocks. He said a man also died when a drone-dropped explosive went off. Yevhen Balytskyi, the Russian-installed head of occupied Zaporizhzhia Oblast, claimed a drone hit a Simferopol–Moscow bus near Prymorsk, killing one passenger.

As the attacks began, Russian monitoring resources tracked up to 350 Ukrainian drones in the air, DroneBomber said. Most flew over Bryansk and Oryol oblasts, with more groups near Crimea, Novorossiysk, and occupied Luhansk Oblast.

Ukraine’s drones also weigh on Russia’s road to occupied Crimea. Truck traffic on the R-280 highway from Rostov Oblast has halved to about 1,000 a day because of drone attacks. Anatolii Tsurkin, who heads a carriers’ association set up in occupied Crimea, said so.

Kyiv set aside $113 million for the first phase of a program of middle-strike drones aimed at Russia’s rear. That makes nights like this one likely to keep coming for depots, airfields, and roads across occupied Ukraine.

Ukraine has waited almost a month for US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to sign off on missiles for its Patriot and NASAMS air defense systems, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 26 October. He ordered his team to raise it with Washington again. Two other US holds on Ukraine, on Starlink speeds and intelligence sharing, have been lifted, leaving the interceptors as the last one.

Russia keeps firing ballistic missiles at Ukrainian cities and the power grid before winter, and Patriots are the only systems in Ukraine that reliably stop Iskander-M, Kinzhal, and Zircon missiles. Zelenskyy has told EU leaders Ukraine needs 300 interceptors to get through winter, diplomatic sources told Radio Svoboda. The holds came as Washington pressed Kyiv to stop striking Russian refineries, which Trump blames for high US fuel prices before the midterms.

Zelenskyy: almost a month waiting for Hegseth’s signature

Zelenskyy held a meeting on weapons supplies with Ukraine’s defense minister, foreign minister, and commander-in-chief. They reported on interceptors for air defense, above all for Patriot systems. Afterward, Zelenskyy wrote:

“We are working in several directions: with the United States, Europe, and other partners that have stocks of PAC-2 and PAC-3 missiles. In particular, for almost a month we have been waiting for Mr. Hegseth’s signature on missiles for Patriots and NASAMS. I have instructed the team to discuss this with the American side once again.”

Talks with other countries continue, he added. The meeting also covered preparations for November’s Ramstein meeting of Ukraine’s allies, where Zelenskyy wants decisions already on the table carried out faster.

Allies’ missiles need US approval

Some of the transfers come from friendly countries and need Hegseth’s approval, because the US must sign off on any re-transfer of its missiles, a US official and three people familiar with the matter said on 19 October. Hegseth has neither refused nor approved them.

A Ukrainian official said in mid-October that only “a couple” of interceptors were left. Hegseth has said the US wants “our guys” to have “the most possible” interceptors, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted nothing was “being deliberately denied to Ukraine.”

Two of three US holds lifted

In an interview aired on 25 October, Zelenskyy listed three problems from his Oslo talks with the Americans: air defense, Starlink limits, and limits on US intelligence sharing. Full Starlink speeds returned on 24 October, and missile warnings resumed after his 20 October call with Rubio. Progress on Patriot missiles is “very slow,” he said, “slower than the flight of Russian missiles.”

Kyiv has also tried to trade for the missiles. Zelenskyy told US senators he had offered US envoys a 30-day pause in strikes on Russian refineries in return for Patriot interceptors. The envoys showed no openness to the idea.

Trump has called those refinery strikes a disgrace that only pushes oil prices higher. He said it days after striking a deal with Putin to bring Russian diesel back to the US ahead of the midterm elections on 3 November.

Trump treats Ukraine as the weak link to squeeze and wants a visible win partly with US domestic politics in mind, Ukrainian diplomat Oleksandr Khara has argued.

Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed Russia is trying to create “favorable conditions” for European companies that stayed in the country, The Moscow Times reported. He said it on state TV weeks after his decrees put several of the largest Western businesses in Russia under Kremlin-appointed managers. Meanwhile, Russia’s own government expects investment to fall at the fastest pace in over a decade.

To keep paying for its full-scale war against Ukraine, Russia has drained reserves, borrowed more, and raised taxes. Its war spending will still rise by 27% next year, as the EU moved this month to adopt its largest sanctions package against Russia’s war industry. Fresh foreign money could ease that squeeze, and the Kremlin keeps scaring it away.

Putin: Europe’s companies left Russia in tears

Putin made the claim in an interview with Kremlin propagandist Pavel Zarubin, which Russian state outlet Vesti published on 25 October. He claimed Russia has “many friends in Europe,” but European governments forced their businesses out:

“When some companies were leaving us under pressure from Western European governments, our friends from these countries nearly cried… Some of them, by the way, are working, and we are trying to create appropriate favorable conditions for them.”

He also attacked Western sanctions, calling it stupid to ban “everything that comes from Russia.”

The decrees came first

On 17 September, Putin’s decree handed the Russian assets of Nestlé, Auchan, and the former Leroy Merlin chain to a firm run by an Interior Ministry major general. US packaging maker Aptar and German wholesaler Metro followed. In mid-October, Russia seized French flooring maker Tarkett and four more foreign-owned firms.

The Kremlin claimed their home countries are “actively involved” in fighting Russia, and Putin cited his 2023 decree on retaliating for Western moves against Russian property. Since the full-scale war began, Russia has put 135 foreign-linked firms under such management. Asked which European companies could be next, a senior Russian official said: “Let them be scared.” Metro reportedly asked to be taken over itself, hoping to keep more control over its fate.

“We don’t steal,” Putin said three weeks earlier

In early October, Putin denied that the takeovers amounted to seizures. At the Valdai Discussion Club on 1 October, he claimed: “We take nothing from anyone, we don’t steal, and we don’t nationalize… Yes, we place some enterprises under external management.”

Russia’s investment drop is the worst since 2015

Putin has demanded an urgent new “investment cycle.” Instead, his economy ministry expects investment to shrink by 5.4% this year. Russian authorities have seized assets worth 7.6 trillion rubles (about $95 billion) from their owners during the war, law firm NSP estimates. More than half of large Russian companies ended 2025 with lower profits and cut or froze investment projects.

Ukrainian long-range strikes add to the risk of building anything in Russia. Overnight on 26 October, drones attacked a Voronezh aircraft plant that makes parts for Russia’s military transport planes. A day earlier, drones reportedly hit a titanium plant in Perm Krai, and Storm Shadow missiles reportedly struck a battery plant in Yelets supplying Russia’s missiles and glide bombs.

Ukrainian forces are making slow but tactically meaningful gains near Velyka Novosilka that could eventually threaten Russian supply lines in the south, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessed on 25 October. The push has already pulled Russian naval infantry and tank units away from offensives elsewhere, according to a Ukrainian military observer ISW cites. The same observer cautions that the advance has slowed.

Russia keeps grinding toward Donbas's last big free cities, yet Ukraine has liberated more land than Russia captured since the start of fall. Each elite unit Moscow sends to plug a gap in the south is one it cannot throw at those cities.

Three villages along the Mokri Yaly River

Ukrainian units apparently pushed Russian troops out of Perebudova, Komar, and Fedorivka, Ukrainian military observer Kostiantyn Mashovets reported. He described weeks of intense fighting in the villages. Russian infantry still holds several houses on Perebudova's northeastern edge, he said.

Southwest of Vesele, Ukrainian troops came within 3.1 km of Skudne. Between 12 and 24 October, they advanced 1.5–2 km on average and up to 3.3 km in places, Mashovets wrote. ISW assessed that Ukraine likely pushed Russian forces from a salient northwest of the Fedorivka–Burlatske line. Komar, north of Velyka Novosilka, has long anchored Russian defenses on the road south.

Russia's marines defend instead of attacking

Persistent Ukrainian counterattacks forced Russia to send elements of its 120th Naval Infantry Division (Baltic Fleet) and 40th Naval Infantry Brigade (Pacific Fleet) to defend near Oleksandrivka instead of attacking at Huliaipole, Mashovets wrote. The move "was clearly unplanned and caused precisely by the Ukrainian offensive," he said.

Russia's naval infantry is relatively elite, and Moscow usually sends it to priority sectors, ISW noted. These units fought near Dobropillia before moving south in March, ISW said at the time, when Ukraine's counterattacks were already burning Russian reserves.

Russia also moved part of its 90th Tank Division into the sector, though it was apparently meant to reinforce the push toward Druzhkivka. "Instead, only some of its units appeared there, and a larger part ended up" defending in the south, Mashovets said. ISW has tracked the division's elements in several directions, including near Sumy as recently as September.

A road junction behind Russia's push on Orikhiv

Velyka Novosilka sits at a road junction that supports Russia's drive west from Huliaipole to envelop Orikhiv from two sides. Further Ukrainian advances would threaten the rear of those Russian forces, ISW assessed. Mashovets called the Huliaipole–Velyka Novosilka road an important supply route for Russia's 36th and 5th armies as early as July, ISW reported. Ukraine has counterattacked in this direction since early February, contesting Russia's initiative across the front, ISW added.

Russian attacks near Oleksandrivka and Huliaipole on 24 and 25 October made no confirmed advances, ISW said. A Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger acknowledged that Russia's advance toward Orikhiv has slowed. Russia is preparing to resume mechanized assaults in the south, Ukrainian military officials warned last week.

Mashovets was cautious about what comes next. Ukraine's advance has slowed to a minimum, and its units will likely have to pause or regroup because their forces are limited, he wrote. He also noted Russian positions southwest of Filiia, near Novopavlivka, which ISW read as a recent Russian advance there.

If Ukrainian troops cross the Huliaipole–Velyka Novosilka road in force, Russia would have to turn part of its 5th Army from facing west to facing north, Mashovets wrote.

Drones attacked the VASO aircraft plant in Russia's Voronezh overnight on 26 October, Ukrainian Telegram channel Supernova+ reported. The plant builds Il-96 airliners and parts for Russia's military transport planes. A synthetic-rubber plant was also reportedly hit and fires broke out across Voronezh, while another rubber plant in Tolyatti, farther east, reportedly came under attack again.

Ukraine keeps hitting the plants behind Russia's weapons, from Voronezh's missile chips to Urals titanium for warplanes. Each supplier knocked out of rhythm slows how fast Russia replaces the hardware it loses and keeps using against Ukraine.

What the Voronezh plant builds

Supernova+ described VASO as part of Ilyushin, which belongs to Russia's state-owned United Aircraft Corporation (UAC). The channel published a photo of fire and smoke at the site. The plant lies about 190 km from the Ukrainian border.

VASO makes pylons, engine nacelles, and flap rails for the Il-76MD-90A, a modernized military transport plane, and sends them to Ulyanovsk, UAC's press service said in 2024. "We have reached the production pace of Il-76MD-90A aircraft kits that our Ulyanovsk colleagues need," Igor Butyrin, who runs the plant's Il-76 program, stated at the time. In 2016, the plant built an Il-96-300 that UAC handed over to the Rossiya special flight detachment of Russia's presidential property office.

A rubber plant and a bridge on the list too

Supernova+ also named Voronezhsintezkauchuk, a plant of Russian petrochemical group Sibur that makes synthetic rubbers. The channel later reported a hit on the plant's industrial zone and claimed an attack on the city's Northern Bridge. Ukrainian Telegram channel Exilenova+ published footage of a drone arriving, reportedly at the rubber plant.

The moment the UAV arrived this morning, reportedly at the Voronezhsintezkauchuk factory. pic.twitter.com/2PXyQ5P7sb

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 26, 2026

Voronezh Oblast Governor Aleksandr Gusev declared a missile alert at 04:47 Kyiv time, but no source has named a missile type. Kyiv has not commented. Ukraine's Air Force, which launches Storm Shadow cruise missiles, and its Navy, which fires Neptunes, have posted nothing on Voronezh.

Earlier this month, Ukraine's Navy said it hit six Su-34 bombers in Voronezh Oblast with Neptunes. Storm Shadows reportedly struck an electronics plant in Oryol on 23 October and a battery plant in Yelets two days later.

Fires across the city

Gusev claimed air defenses downed 113 drones over the region, more than 70 of them over the city. He listed fires at several industrial enterprises, which he said caused no serious consequences, plus a business center, an apartment block, and a school stadium. Russian Telegram channel Astra published video of a drone hitting the Galereya Chizhova business center. Exilenova+ footage showed cars burning below apartment blocks.

Voronezh pic.twitter.com/I3WbnGLZhO

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 26, 2026

Damage in residential districts may have come from downed drones or from Russian air-defense missiles falling back on the city. During a 23 October attack on Gorodets, in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Exilenova+ claimed a Pantsir air-defense missile hit a house.

Gusev also claimed two men were killed and 17 people injured, many of them on a train struck by drone debris. Russian Railways said five passengers were hurt at Somovo station and traffic on the line stopped. Russia's Defense Ministry claimed its air defenses downed 290 drones over 15 regions and the Moscow area.

Tolyatti's rubber plant reportedly attacked again

Locals reported an attack on the Tolyattikauchuk chemical plant in Tolyatti, Samara Oblast, Exilenova+ said. The city lies about 890 km from the front line. Ukraine's General Staff confirmed a strike on the same plant on 24 October. Its synthetic rubbers go into solid fuel for Russia's tactical and ballistic missiles, among other uses.

Until Kyiv comments or satellite imagery shows the site, the damage at VASO stays unconfirmed, and so does any delay to Russia's Il-76 parts line.

Ukraine's military satellite links work at full speed again after a cap that hobbled its drones, Ukraine's Defense Ministry said on 24 October. Hours later, SpaceX owner Elon Musk, who earlier pointed at Washington, said his company had enforced its own rules. A Ukrainian presidential adviser and a drone volunteer replied that civilian Starlink could not fly such missions.

Ukraine holds off Russia with American tools it doesn't control, so any pause decided abroad, like stalled Patriot deliveries or the Starlink cap, opens gaps in its defense. With no stated rule on what Ukraine's forces may do, the next cutoff could again come unannounced and unexplained.

Kyiv records full speed again

The ministry recorded stable connections above 400 km/h (250 mph). Before, Kyiv said, links on Starlink and its military version, Starshield, cut out above 161 km/h (100 mph).

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the restoration began overnight. "The speeds are now where they need to be," he said, citing defense against jet-powered Shahed drones. He thanked US lawmakers, the media, the State Department, and the US President, but not Musk or SpaceX.

Musk: "That loophole was closed last week"

Musk replied "Correct" to an X user who called Starlink "not a weapons system." "Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week," he wrote.

Correct.

Using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be.

Starshield, a different system, is controlled by the US government. What they decide to do is up to them.

Ukraine military violated… https://t.co/ZXBB8bYfPn

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 24, 2026

He called Starshield "a different system" the US government controls, and warned: "Were Starlink to be turned off, the Ukrainian front line would collapse immediately. This is NOT a threat, it is simply a statement of fact."

Musk named no evidence, cases, or time frames. Overnight, he answered a headline on the US financial blog ZeroHedge saying he "admits" SpaceX throttled Starlink.

"We simply enforced our terms of service when they were bypassed. There has been no change to our terms of service," Musk wrote.

When the cap hit on 14 October, Musk wrote that the US government owns and controls Starshield and that the US military and "ultimately POTUS" decide any limits. US President Donald Trump, who credited Musk with the fix while Kyiv still saw the cap, said on 24 October he had spoken to Musk about Ukraine but gave no details.

Ukrainians note contradiction to reality

Ukrainian presidential adviser on defense technology Serhii Beskrestnov, known by the callsign Flash, wrote:

"It is very strange that Elon Musk doesn't know about the restrictions on Starlink operations in Ukraine."

Since winter 2026, every Starlink terminal over Ukraine, occupied areas included, has been limited to 70–90 km/h (43–56 mph), he said, and over Russia, Starlink does not work. "So we PHYSICALLY CANNOT USE COMMERCIAL STARLINK for deep strikes and mid-range strikes," Beskrestnov wrote. Deep strikes hit targets far inside Russia, mid-range ones targets closer to the front.

Ukrainian activist and drone fundraiser Serhii Sternenko called Musk's claim untrue. He said Ukraine introduced whitelists of terminals in February, and any terminal used on the move had to be listed and connected to Starshield.

"So using civilian Starlink for drone missions was technically impossible. All drone missions that needed satellite communication could be carried out only with Starshield," Sternenko added.

European governments help pay for Ukraine's Starlink service. Germany funds it under a contract that runs until April 2027. Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, whose country pays around $50 million a year for the service, said on 23 October: "Mixing business with politics usually ends badly, especially when we talk about Elon Musk."

Finland will donate diesel locomotives to Ukraine’s state railway, the Office of Ukraine’s President reported. Helsinki also pledged new winter aid, and the two countries signed deals on drones, housing, and satellite communications during Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s visit to Kyiv. One of them is a first step toward a satellite link Ukraine would control itself.

With Russia replacing its missiles as fast as it fires them, Ukraine heads into winter needing equipment that works without the grid. Russian strikes have damaged or destroyed almost 600 locomotives of Ukraine’s state railway since the full-scale invasion began, more than 300 of them diesels, the infrastructure minister said. The attacks have reached engines even near the Polish border, on the railway that carries Ukraine’s evacuations, grain, and cargo.

Diesels that keep moving when the grid goes down

Finland will hand 10 locomotives and their spare parts to Ukrzaliznytsia, Ukraine’s state railway, free of charge. Infrastructure Minister Mykola Kalashnyk announced the deal, signed on 22 October at a Ukrainian-Finnish business forum. The engines need no power from overhead lines, so trains can keep running during blackouts.

The engines are Dv12 diesels that VR, Finland’s state rail company, is taking out of service. A VR shareholders’ meeting moved them into state ownership, and the Finnish state is donating them, Yle reported. VR puts their value, spare parts included, at about €2.1 million. Finland’s government said the gift will not affect VR’s ability to run trains at home.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi and Orpo signed the donation certificate, one of seven documents signed that day. Two others plan Ukrainian-Finnish drone production in Finland, one for military and dual-use systems and one for heavy drones. Another covers a precast concrete plant for industrial housing construction.

The day’s agreements are worth around €300 million in total, Zelenskyy said. Projects worth €200 million are already under way within the two countries’ Drone Deal, he added. Under an earlier plan, most drones made in Finland would go to Ukraine.

Winter money now, a 36th military package by year’s end

Orpo announced a new €10 million package. Of it, €5 million goes to the Ukraine Energy Support Fund and €2 million to humanitarian aid for winter. The last €3 million goes to the Ukraine Recovery Program, for energy and water supply. Finland will also deliver mobile heating containers by December.

Finland has given Ukraine five defense packages this year, worth more than €500 million combined, Militarnyi reported. A 36th package is being prepared together with Ukraine’s military. “We plan to make a decision by the end of this year,” Orpo said. In September, Finland approved a package worth about €290 million.

A satellite link Ukraine would own

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry signed a letter of intent with Finnish satellite firm ICEYE and telecom company Nokia, Militarnyi reported, citing ICEYE. The parties will explore building a secure satellite communications system under Ukraine’s control. The aim is to reduce Ukraine’s dependence on foreign commercial operators.

In this model, the state customer owns the satellites, ground stations, and user terminals, RBC-Ukraine reported. The network could serve defense, border protection, emergency services, and disaster recovery. The letter sets out no timeline or funding.

“Modern warfare has proven that reliable communications are a matter of national security,” Zelenskyy said in the companies’ statement. ICEYE CEO Rafal Modrzewski said Ukraine needs “secure, sovereign and high-performance satellite communications systems that it controls.”

The deal comes after a speed cap on Starlink disrupted Ukrainian drone missions this month. The EU, meanwhile, is pushing three European firms to merge into one SpaceX rival. ICEYE has supplied Ukraine with radar satellite imagery for years.

Days before the signing, tracking firm LeoLabs said a Russian government-owned satellite, Cosmos 2612, had spent weeks shadowing an ICEYE radar satellite, coming within 500 meters. The ICEYE satellite is widely believed to provide imagery to Ukraine.

Neither fix is quick. Ukraine’s big locomotive order arrives from 2027, and the first satellites of the ICEYE-Nokia system are expected to launch only in 2028.

Russia's state-backed payment firm A7 took in at least 283 tons of cash rubles, worth more than $14 billion, between November 2024 and July 2025, and turned much of it into payments to China that hide where the money came from, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and Russian investigative outlet Proekt reported on 21 October, citing leaked internal records.

Cut off from Western banks over its war against Ukraine, Russia now moves money the way drug gangs launder theirs: cash goes in, and clean-looking wire transfers come out abroad. The overlap is literal.

Last year, UK investigators found that a network laundering British drug gangs' cash had bought a Kyrgyz bank that was handling payments for Promsvyazbank, Russia's state defense bank. That same bank co-owns A7, which "is also likely to facilitate cash-based money laundering," anti-money-laundering expert George Voloshin told ICIJ. On 1 October, the US Treasury named A7 a "significant transnational criminal organization." Most of the market cash pays Chinese suppliers, and China supplies about 90% of the high-priority Western-restricted items Russia imports for its weapons. Drone makers working for the Russian army are among A7's clients, Proekt found in April.

From market stalls to a defense bank vault

Much of the cash came from Moscow's giant Sadovod market, where broker teams known as "departments" collect bags of rubles from traders, the records show. Vans take the numbered bags to an A7 office, where about 50 cashiers count the money before it is trucked to Promsvyazbank. The bank vaults it and credits A7. At its peak, A7 handled at least 58 tons of cash a month.

Russia's central bank has flagged the problem itself. Money of unknown origin comes "primarily" from Moscow's wholesale and retail markets and from illegal crypto exchanges, a senior Central Bank official said in September, as quoted by ICIJ.

Clean money for Chinese factories

A7 then orders shell companies outside Russia to pay its clients' suppliers, mostly Chinese exporters. The money moves through Kyrgyzstan, largely via the state-owned Trading Company of the Kyrgyz Republic, and the wire transfers carry no trace of cash or of Russia. The records list accounts at ICBC, Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, and China Construction Bank. One $287,000 transfer went through Standard Chartered's Hong Kong branch with "Sadovod" recorded as the client.

Chinese banks began refusing Russia-linked payments in December 2023 under the threat of US secondary sanctions. Stripping the funds of their origin makes them easier for Chinese banks to accept, illicit-finance expert Zachary Tvarozna told ICIJ. "The only company that sees everything is A7 itself," Voloshin said.

A7, Promsvyazbank, the Chinese banks, and Kyrgyzstan's economy ministry did not answer ICIJ's questions. A7 has publicly rejected the US accusations, saying it runs "a modern, multi-tiered compliance system."

Sanctioned, but still moving

A7 launched in late 2024, co-owned by Promsvyazbank and led by Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor, a "sanctioned and convicted criminal fraudster," according to the US Treasury. Ukraine sanctioned its network in February, and the UK followed in May. A7 claimed to have moved more than 7.5 trillion rubles, about 13% of Russia's 2025 foreign trade transactions, and its network also helped Iran sell oil and buy weapons, the Treasury said.

Sanctions did hit A7's crypto side. Daily volume of its ruble token A7A5 fell 96% from its peak by June 2026, blockchain analytics firm Elliptic found. The cash channel is harder to touch: Western banks can see where A7's money lands, but not where it starts.

Drones attacked a Russian tax-service data center overnight on 23 October, Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ reported. A chemical plant in the Urals was also attacked, and a fire broke out near a Russian bomber base by late morning. Russian officials admitted injuries and damage but blamed falling debris. Ukraine has not commented.

Ukraine's long-range drones have widened their target list from Russian refineries to the servers and chemicals that keep Russia's state and war industry running.

The tax service's data center in Gorodets

The target in Gorodets, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, is one of the Federal Tax Service's two key data centers, which work as a geographically distributed pair. It stores and processes state registers, including tax databases, Exilenova+ said. The extent of the damage is unconfirmed. The site lies about 785 km from Ukraine's northern border in a straight line.

The moment of impact at Russia’s Federal Tax Service data center in Gorodets last night. pic.twitter.com/PftC6keRpY

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 23, 2026

Eyewitness footage shows a blast and fire in the area of the data center, which serves both the tax service and the Finance Ministry, Russian Telegram channel Astra found. The center opened in 2015. Mikhail Mishustin, then head of the tax service and now Russia's prime minister, attended the launch.

Nizhny Novgorod Governor Gleb Nikitin claimed air defenses repelled 19 drones. Falling debris injured three people in the Gorodets district and damaged several homes, an educational facility, and an infrastructure facility, he said, and local schools switched to remote learning. A Pantsir air defense missile hit a house, Exilenova+ claimed, though officials recorded it as a drone hit.

This month, drones already hit three Yandex data centers and a VK data center near St. Petersburg.

A chemical plant behind Russia's gunpowder

In Berezniki, Perm Krai, smoke rose over Uralchem's Azot plant as air defenses fired, Astra reported. The regional security ministry announced a drone attack at about 06:00, and authorities closed the airspace within 50 km of the city. Ukraine's long-range Liutyi drones visited Berezniki, Exilenova+ wrote.

Our old friends, the Liutyi drones, paid Berezniki a visit today. Haven’t seen them in a while. pic.twitter.com/NXuhIJ3xpm

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 23, 2026

The attack on Azot was continuing in the morning, the channel wrote, adding that the plant covers about 140 hectares with some 90 production buildings. It makes ammonia, nitric acid, ammonium and potassium nitrate, and urea. Russian defense plants use its nitric acid to make explosives and gunpowder, including the Perm gunpowder plant, Astra said. Berezniki lies 1,500–1,600 km from Ukraine's border and the war zone.

Drones attacked Azot before, on 11 September. Earlier this year, Ukraine's Security Service hit Lukoil's refinery in the same region.

Fire near a Su-34 base in Voronezh

Late in the morning, Voronezh Governor Aleksandr Gusev declared a missile alert, and explosions followed in the city. Gusev later claimed air defenses downed several "jet-powered aerial targets." Debris set dry grass on fire in a suburb and damaged outbuildings and several cars, he said, adding that no one was hurt.

Missile alert in several regions of the Russian Federation.

Explosions have been heard in Voronezh. We are assessing the situation. pic.twitter.com/GY0NRZTo4x

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 23, 2026

Eyewitness footage shows fire and smoke near Baltimor military airfield, Astra found. The strike preliminarily hit the grounds of a former military aviation engineering university and a nearby parking area for military aircraft, Exilenova+ said.

Baltimor hosts the 47th Guards Bomber Aviation Regiment, whose Su-34s Russia uses to strike Ukraine, Militarnyi reported, saying Ukraine attacked the airfield with missiles. Voronezh lies about 185 km from Ukraine's border. Smoke rose over the base after an attack on 27 May, and a fire broke out near it on 2 September.

Moscow counts drones, Kyiv stays silent

Russia's Defense Ministry claimed it downed 443 drones overnight over 20 Russian regions, including Nizhny Novgorod Oblast and Perm Krai, as well as Russian-occupied Crimea and two seas. Ukraine's General Staff has not reported on the strikes. A night earlier, drones reportedly hit a sanctioned weapons plant near Moscow.

Russia's air defenses now have to cover state servers and Ural chemical plants as well as the airfields its bombers fly from.

Drone strikes disrupted communications and power in part of Russian-occupied Luhansk overnight on 23 October, Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ reported. It was the third night in four that drones went after communications in occupied eastern Ukraine. A pro-Russian local channel also showed a damaged factory, and the occupation authorities have stayed silent.

Ukraine's drones have spent months hitting what keeps Russia's occupation running, from fuel depots to supply lines and now communications.

Blasts before dawn, then outages

Explosions hit Luhansk before dawn, and the strikes probably targeted communications facilities, Exilenova+ said. Another Ukrainian monitoring channel, Supernova+, wrote that the city's TV tower came under attack. Exilenova+ posted night footage of the strikes.

The moment of arrival in Luhansk. Following the explosions, we are experiencing disruptions to communications and the electricity supply. pic.twitter.com/rNHXRJcVNt

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 23, 2026

A drone attack damaged the building of the local telecom company, pro-Russian local channel Ogonyok Luhanska wrote on 23 October. It listed switches and servers among the damaged equipment and said the damage could explain landline outages and possible internet problems. The channel did not say whether the damage came from this attack or the one two nights earlier.

Strikes on local communications facilities in occupied Luhansk. pic.twitter.com/4Jz7aK7tKs

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 23, 2026

By morning, water stopped flowing in parts of Luhansk and nearby villages, including Metalist and Tsvitni Pisky. A notice posted by local Telegram channel Luhansk Online cited unstable voltage at water facilities. The city's water utility later switched to backup phone numbers after its dispatch lines failed.

Third night in four

Overnight on 20 October, drones struck Ugletelecom, the occupation's telecom operator in Donetsk. A night later, they hit the seized Ukrtelecom building in Luhansk, which houses the occupation's mobile operator Lugacom. That strike disrupted the internet so badly that service centers across occupied Luhansk Oblast stopped accepting documents.

Silence from the occupation

The occupation authorities have not commented. Leonid Pasechnik, the Russian-installed head of occupied Luhansk Oblast, posted nothing about the attack. On 21 October, he claimed Kyiv was carrying out "terrorist strikes" on civilians. Russia's Defense Ministry claimed it downed 443 drones overnight over Russian regions, Crimea, and two seas, without mentioning Luhansk. The same night, Russia launched 176 drones at Ukraine, some from occupied Donetsk and from Hvardiiske in occupied Crimea, Krym.Realii reported, citing Ukraine's Air Force.

Ukraine's General Staff has not reported on the attack yet. After the previous strike on Luhansk, it said Ukrainian forces hit command posts of Russian units in the Luhansk area.

A pipeline-valve plant hit, too

Ogonyok Luhanska also posted daylight photos of the Marshal plant after what it called a "night arrival." They show a damaged workshop roof, and the channel wrote it had information that the drone hit inside the plant. The Luhansk Pipeline Valve Plant Marshal, registered in Ukraine in 1994, makes taps and valves at 13 Montazhna Street, according to Ukrainian state registry data published by VB.ua.

Earlier that morning, Luhansk Online reported restricted traffic on Montazhna Street between Brestska and Sukhodilska streets.

Ukraine has hit industrial sites in occupied Luhansk Oblast before. For example, in March, drones struck a plant in Alchevsk that made artillery shell casings.

The Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is short of cooling water, diesel, and qualified staff, Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence (HUR) said on 20 October, warning of rising risks to nuclear safety. The water level in the plant’s cooling pond fell to 12.27 meters on 12 October, down from 12.86 meters in July, while the plant needs at least 15 meters to fully meet its needs, according to HUR. Russian managers are also considering cutting the number of backup generators kept on automatic standby, which would inevitably raise the risk of emergencies, the intelligence agency said.

Europe’s largest nuclear plant has been under Russian control since March 2022. Its six reactors have been in cold shutdown since April 2024, but they and their spent fuel still need constant cooling, which depends on water, on a single remaining external power line, and on diesel generators as the last resort. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warned on 16 October that depleted diesel reserves increase the risk that nuclear safety is challenged if the plant loses power again, and that the situation may become acute in winter.

A pond with no source to refill it

The cooling pond has been sinking since Russia destroyed the Kakhovka dam in June 2023, cutting off the reservoir that fed it. Energoatom, Ukraine’s state nuclear operator, recorded 15.70 meters in October 2023. By June 2025, the level had fallen below 14 meters against a norm of above 16, Oleh Korikov, head of Ukraine’s State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate, said.

HUR’s figures show the decline continuing this year, from 12.86 meters in July to 12.63 in early August, 12.55 at the end of August, and 12.34 at the start of October. In 2025, the IAEA said groundwater wells on site were supplying cooling water for the safety systems. Its team had not been allowed to inspect a new dam in the cooling channel, access IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi called essential to assess the cooling water situation.

Diesel for a blackout that Russia cannot supply

If the plant loses external power, its diesel generators would burn about 150 metric tons of fuel a day in a prolonged blackout, HUR said. The occupation administration cannot deliver enough, so reserves stay minimal. Russian managers are also looking for covert fuel supplies, including low-quality fuel, without informing the IAEA mission, according to HUR.

The IAEA has already reported fewer generators on automatic standby. Since late September, only four of the plant’s 20 emergency generators would start automatically in a blackout, with the rest needing manual connection, which Grossi said deviates from normal practice. No diesel deliveries have reached the plant since March, the agency said on 16 October.

The plant spent nearly three weeks on generators after losing its last external line on 20 August, EP reported, until the Ferosplavna-1 line was restored under an IAEA-brokered ceasefire. The main 750 kV Dniprovska line remains out. HUR said the Kremlin rejected Ukraine’s proposal to supply power through it, which raises the nuclear safety risks.

A plant short of the people who know it

About 5,000 people now work at the plant, against roughly 11,000 before the full-scale invasion, and only 1,450 were on site, HUR said. The plant lacks specialists who know its equipment, as well as the experts needed for repairs and for reconnecting it to external power. Russian managers plan training courses for applicants from Russian regions to replace Ukrainian staff, according to HUR.

In Enerhodar, the city where the plant’s staff live, mobile, internet, electricity, and water supplies keep failing, HUR said.

Drones struck the seized Ukrtelecom building in occupied Luhansk overnight on 21 October, hitting the mobile operator Russia’s occupation authorities run there under the name “Lugacom,” Russian Telegram channel Astra and Ukrainian monitoring channels reported. The strike came a night after drones hit “Ugletelecom,” the occupation’s telecom operator in Donetsk, which reportedly runs on equipment seized from Ukrainian companies. Footage posted by Ukrainian monitors shows heavy fire damage inside the Luhansk building. Ukraine has not officially commented.

Ukraine has spent months hitting the supply lines, depots, and infrastructure that sustain Russia’s occupation of southern and eastern Ukraine, with mid-range drones striking trucks, trains, and communications towers well behind the front. This spring the commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, Robert “Madyar” Brovdi, promised Russian troops in occupied territory a “stone age.” This time the targets were the networks the occupation runs on.

A burned-out Ukrtelecom building in Luhansk

Residents reported explosions in Luhansk overnight, and the former Ukrtelecom building was attacked by a drone, Astra reported, citing its readers. The occupation runs its mobile operator, “Lugacom,” from the seized building, and built its network on equipment taken from Ukraine’s Kyivstar, according to dev.ua. The building also houses an occupation-run telecom services center. Luhansk is situated in the easternmost Ukrainian region and has been occupied since 2014.

Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ said Ukraine’s Defense Forces struck the building, which also hosts an information technology and technical support center. A video it posted shows extensive burning inside. Petro Andriushchenko, head of the Center for the Study of Occupation, said the drones hit a data center in the building.

Occupation officials had not commented, according to NV. In September, drones hit a hardware store in Luhansk, sparking a large fire. Earlier this month, fires broke out at a Russian supply base in Khrustalnyi, also in occupied Luhansk Oblast.

Donetsk’s occupation telecom operator hit the night before

The night before, drones struck “Ugletelecom,” one of the key communications operators in occupied Donetsk Oblast, Exilenova+ reported. It operates from an office building at 60 Postysheva Street, where Ukraine’s state holding company Donbasugleobespechenie was registered before the occupation, according to RBC-Ukraine. Astra found about 27 organizations registered at the address, including internet provider Fticom, and damage on four floors.

Ugletelecom runs on equipment seized from Ukrainian companies, Donetsk-focused outlet Kochegarka reported, citing local sources. The occupation also moved local businesses that had used Ukrtelecom over to it, according to dev.ua. Residents had reported powerful explosions in the city.

Power cuts across the occupied territories

In occupied Donetsk Oblast, drones attacked the 330 kV Pivdenna substation in Chystiakove, and locals reported outages, Telegram channel DroneBomber said, calling the report preliminary. Occupied Donetsk went into a blackout on the evening of 20 October after strikes on its power supply, Andriushchenko said. He also reported air defense activity and hits in the Mariupol area.

In occupied Crimea, residents of Krasnoperekopsk reported explosions and hits near the railway station, then partial power cuts, monitoring channel Crimean Wind said. In occupied Melitopol, drones tried to attack the city’s power facilities at around 03:30 but missed, Russian senator Dmitry Rogozin claimed.

French mapper Clément Molin counted 770 confirmed Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian trucks in the logistics zone 10 km behind the front line in September, up from 630 in August.

Russian drones struck a 24-story apartment building in Kyiv, a university building in Kremenchuk, warehouses, and hypermarkets overnight on 21 October, killing two people in the capital and an elderly couple near Kharkiv, Ukrainian officials said. The attack went well beyond Ukraine’s power grid, hitting places where people live, study, and shop. Over the past day, Russian strikes also killed three more civilians and injured dozens across several oblasts.

Russia has kept up nightly drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities through the autumn, mostly aimed at the energy system. It struck Ukraine’s energy 76 times during a US-declared truce, and fired 39 ballistic missiles at the grid three days after Washington announced it. This time the targets also included homes, a university, warehouses, and shops.

Overnight, Russia launched 186 Shahed-type and other attack drones, 88 of them jet-powered, along with Iskander-K cruise missiles, Ukraine’s Air Force said. Air defenses downed or jammed 150 drones. Hits were recorded at 27 locations, and debris fell at 13 more.

Two killed on the 20th floor in Kyiv

A drone hit a 24-story residential building in Kyiv’s Sviatoshynskyi district at the level of the 20th floor, starting a fire, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. The fire spread over about 70 square meters, and rescuers found the bodies of two people while clearing debris, the State Emergency Service said. Two people were injured and hospitalized, Klitschko said, including a 46-year-old man who was walking past the building, according to the police.

In the Desnianskyi district, seven parked cars caught fire, the State Emergency Service said; police put the number at about 10. The evening before, drones hit a warehouse building in Desnianskyi and a transport facility in Solomianskyi district.

An elderly couple killed near Kharkiv

In the village of Korotych near Kharkiv, Russian drones killed an 81-year-old woman and an 83-year-old man, Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleh Syniehubov said. Rescuers recovered their bodies from the rubble of their house, the State Emergency Service said. Eleven people, including a two-month-old boy and an eight-year-old girl, were treated for acute stress, and 13 houses were damaged.

A university, warehouses, and hypermarkets

In Kremenchuk, a drone hit a building of the Mykhailo Ostrohradskyi National University, setting it on fire, the State Emergency Service said. Three people were injured, including a 16-year-old who was hospitalized with a concussion, Poltava Oblast Governor Vitalii Diakivnych said. In the Poltava community, drones damaged an administrative building and warehouses.

In Lviv Oblast, an attack set fire to an enterprise in a village in Lviv district and injured two people, while a house was damaged in a neighboring village, the State Emergency Service said. In Uman, drones hit a hypermarket and damaged a hotel, injuring one person, Cherkasy Oblast Governor Ihor Taburets said.

On the evening of 20 October, a drone hit an Epicentr hypermarket in Pervomaisk, Mykolaiv Oblast, injuring eight people, acting Governor Heorhii Reshetilov said. Russia also struck a hypermarket in Rivne Oblast several times that day, injuring four and forcing rescuers to pull back while they fought the fire, the State Emergency Service said.

More dead and injured over the past day

The overnight strikes followed a day of attacks. In Kyiv, Russian strikes on 20 October killed one person and injured 21, three of them seriously, Klitschko said. An administrative building caught fire, rescuers freed four people trapped on its upper floors, and a healthcare facility was damaged, the State Emergency Service said. In Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, two men were killed and seven people injured that day, regional officials said.

In Kharkiv Oblast, Russian attacks over the past day injured 11 more people in Kharkiv, Derhachi, and Shestakove, Syniehubov said. In Kherson Oblast, 13 people were injured, three of them children, the regional administration reported. In the Chernihiv region, an 89-year-old woman and a young woman were hurt in strikes on villages and on Novhorod-Siverskyi, Governor Viacheslav Chaus said, and a 21-year-old woman was injured in the Sumy community, according to the Sumy regional administration.

More than 5,000 subscribers lost power in Volyn Oblast’s Lutsk district, Governor Roman Romaniuk said. In Ternopil Oblast’s Kremenets district, 7,949 subscribers remained without power after earlier Russian strikes on energy facilities, the regional administration reported.

European Parliament Vice President Pina Picierno has announced a hunger strike to draw international attention to the humanitarian disaster in Russian-occupied Oleshky in Ukraine’s Kherson Oblast, she wrote on X on 20 October. The Italian lawmaker called on associations, citizens, and institutions to join her and demand a humanitarian truce, food and medicine for residents, and safe evacuation for those who want to leave.

Russia has occupied the left bank of the Dnipro in Kherson Oblast since 2022. Its forces have cut Oleshky off, leaving its remaining residents short of food and medicine, Ukrainian officials and UN monitors say. Oleshky had about 24,000 residents before the full-scale invasion. About 1,700 remain, including 47 children, Danielle Bell, head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said. Picierno’s protest adds to growing international pressure after Pope Leo XIV asked Russian leader Vladimir Putin for a truce to help the town.

“This battle cannot be mine alone”

In Oleshky, thousands of people are trapped in territory occupied by the Russian army, without regular access to food and medicine, Picierno wrote. Mined areas make escape extremely dangerous, she added.

“Those who stay risk dying of hunger, those who try to leave risk their lives,” she wrote. “To draw international attention to this emergency, I have announced a hunger strike. But this battle cannot be mine alone.”

She said the campaign is meant to support the efforts of Pope Leo XIV and others trying to avert a humanitarian tragedy. By the morning of 21 October, 277 people had joined the initiative, Liga reported.

Picierno, who left Italy’s Democratic Party in June and joined the Renew Europe group, has backed military aid to Ukraine, tougher sanctions on Russia, and Ukraine’s bid to join the EU, according to Liga.

A town Kyiv calls a “death trap”

On 16 October, Pope Leo XIV expressed deep concern to Putin about the situation in Oleshky. He asked for a truce so that food and medical aid could be delivered and civilians could leave voluntarily and safely.

A day later, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha urged the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross to help evacuate residents.

“Russians are trying to turn the Ukrainian town of Oleshky into a death trap,” Sybiha wrote. “Dozens of bodies lie in the streets or in homes, as Russians forbid residents from burying them.”

Ukraine has flown tons of food into the town by drone. Russian troops seize some of the parcels and accuse the people who receive them of cooperating with Ukraine, local officials say. A resident said eggs there cost nearly 20 times the US price.

Evacuation talks “moved forward”

Talks with Russia on a ceasefire and evacuation are at the stage of “agreeing the final details,” Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said on 18 October. He estimated that about 6,000 civilians, including up to 200 children, remain in Oleshky and six nearby settlements. He gave no timeline.

On 20 October, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine was doing everything it could to help people in Oleshky, calling the situation there “simply terrible.”

Drones attacked an oil and fuel pumping station of Russia’s Druzhba pipeline system in Tambov Oblast overnight on 20 October, setting a diesel tank on fire, Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ reported, citing locals. Druzhba, Russian for “friendship,” is a Soviet-era oil pipeline, about 4,000 km long, that carries Russian crude west to Europe, including through a branch that crosses Ukraine. The struck station is on its Russian section. Tambov Oblast Governor Yevgeny Pervyshov confirmed a fire at an unnamed enterprise in Michurinsk district after what he called a Ukrainian drone attack. The station lies about 400 km from the front line.

Ukraine has spent months striking the refineries, terminals, and pipelines that fund Russia’s war, and its Defense Ministry says the strikes have knocked out more than half of Russia’s refining capacity. Washington wants them stopped. US officials reportedly tied intelligence sharing to a halt in refinery strikes, and US President Donald Trump called their resumption “a disgrace.”

Hours of attack before dawn

Russia’s regional alert system declared a drone threat at 03:38, Ukrainian military outlet Militarnyi reported. By 06:25, Exilenova+ said the Nikolskoye station was under attack, after Michurinsk had been under attack for several hours.

The Nikolskoye fuel pumping station in Russia’s Tambov region is under attack. pic.twitter.com/cA64vMgjsM

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 20, 2026

Pervyshov said four Ukrainian drones were shot down over the region and no one was hurt. He did not name the site.

More footage from the Nikolskaya oil pumping station. Locals report that a tank containing diesel is on fire. pic.twitter.com/1jvbxSuGHo

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 20, 2026

Ukraine has not commented. The General Staff’s 20 October list of overnight strikes does not mention Tambov Oblast.

A Druzhba fuel hub hit before

The Nikolskoye station belongs to Transneft, Russia’s state pipeline operator. It stores and pumps crude oil and refined fuels, including diesel, gasoline, and jet fuel. The complex has three tank farms and two pumping stations, and it can move up to 300,000 tonnes a day, according to Current Time.

Ukrainian drones hit a station of the same hub in August 2025, and Ukraine’s General Staff said then that pumping on the pipeline had stopped completely.

Strikes resume despite US pressure

Ukraine paused refinery strikes for three days after Trump announced an “energy ceasefire” on 11 October, while Russia fired 39 ballistic missiles at Ukraine’s grid. Since Kyiv resumed the strikes, drones have also hit an oil terminal and a fuel depot in St. Petersburg.

Kyiv reads other US moves as pressure too, from missed warnings of Russian ballistic launches to a Starlink cap that slows Ukrainian drones. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy told US senators he had offered a 30-day halt on refinery strikes in exchange for Patriot interceptors, but Trump’s envoys showed no openness.

Russia’s Rubicon drone unit, which is sent to hunt Ukrainian drone pilots, was not used to being hunted itself, Brigadier General Andrii Biletskyi told journalists on 19 October. He was summing up Operation Vivaldi, which his Third Army Corps fought in northern Donetsk Oblast from May to mid-October. Once its pilots realized they were being killed, Rubicon’s morale dropped sharply, he said.

Russia has fought for 12 years to take all of Donetsk Oblast, and Sloviansk and Kramatorsk anchor the fortress belt of cities Ukraine still holds there. Vivaldi retook 277 km² in northern Donetsk Oblast. Biletskyi says it destroyed Russia’s bridgehead on the Chornyi Zherebets River and forced Moscow to drop its plan to bypass Lyman from the north and encircle the two cities. On that front, the Third Corps had flagged Rubicon, Russia’s elite drone unit, as a threat.

Hunting the hunters

Once a Rubicon position was found, the Third Assault Brigade and the KRAKEN drone regiment committed any number of FPV and bomber drones to destroy its crews, Biletskyi said.

The brigade’s commander, Yaroslav Levenets, said his troops prepared for Rubicon’s arrival and concentrated on killing its pilots. He gave no details.

“Not stable in defense,” Levenets said of Rubicon’s troops.

They dislike sitting in trenches, he said, and under pressure they grow nervous and change positions.

Named for four seasons

Biletskyi said the name was chosen at the very start of planning, in winter 2025–2026, many months before the operation began. The original plan had four stages, one for each season, and later grew to slightly more, ArmyInform reported.

When he first unveiled the operation in September, he put it this way:

“Vivaldi, as is known, has four seasons. And this is only the first one.”

He credited two planners, known by the call signs Yurist and Leshyi. Leshyi, an assault soldier wounded seven times who later moved to staff work, was killed. Yurist was seriously wounded.

A new hand at the Third Corps

Major Dmytro Rohoziuk is now acting commander of the Third Army Corps, the corps press service said on 20 October. The press service said the move is not a transfer, and Biletskyi keeps his formal post as corps commander while he leads the “Center” grouping of the Third, 11th, and 19th corps.

Rohoziuk took over the 60th Mechanized Brigade in October 2025. Its previous commander was arrested in January after the State Bureau of Investigation accused him of embezzling about $1 million in weapons procurement. The brigade fought in all four phases of Vivaldi and retook Kolodiazi without street fighting.

Biletskyi also declined command of the Ground Forces, which oversee mobilization.

“There’s no point taking on something you don’t truly believe you can improve,” he said.

Biletskyi’s count

Russian losses in Vivaldi topped 8,000 troops, and about 270 Russian soldiers were taken prisoner, Biletskyi said. More than 20 officers surrendered, including a chief of staff and three company commanders.

The territory matters less than disrupting Russia’s strategic plan, he said. Russian forces still press toward Dobropillia, where Ukraine is counterattacking.

The European Commission is checking whether laws Ukraine’s parliament passed last week earn it a €3.7 billion ($4.3 billion) EU payment, spokesperson Balázs Ujvári told reporters in Brussels on 19 October. He also said Ukraine’s 2027 funding gap stands at about €70 billion, and that the EU “cannot do this all alone.” How Ukraine pays for Russia’s war next year now depends on reforms in Kyiv and on money from Europe and beyond.

Russia keeps striking Ukraine’s power grid and cities, and Kyiv already faces a hole in next year’s war budget before any new military spending. Foreign money keeps salaries, pensions, and repairs flowing while Ukraine spends its own revenue on defense. So each delayed payment is felt at home while Russia hits the energy system again.

Brussels reads Kyiv’s new laws before paying

The payment is the second tranche of the EU’s macro-financial assistance to Ukraine, and each one depends on reforms, Ujvári said at the Commission’s midday briefing.

“We saw that last week some important laws were adopted in the Rada, and we are in the process of analyzing these laws and we will formulate our assessment thereafter,” he said.

On its third attempt, parliament passed a law on 15 October ending the VAT exemption for foreign parcels worth up to €150 from 1 July 2027, and making online marketplaces collect the tax. The Commission had warned the law was one of 12 conditions for the tranche. Fewer than 1% of the 75 million parcels Ukrainians receive each year were taxed, and lawmakers had rejected the measure twice despite IMF pressure.

About €30 billion is in the pipeline for Ukraine this year, mostly under the EU’s €90 billion support loan, if reforms continue, Ujvári said.

A €70 billion gap for 2027

Current pledges leave a gap of about €70 billion for 2027, Ujvári said, even counting the €45 billion ($52 billion) the EU has set aside for next year and some partners’ commitments.

“We cannot do this all alone. Therefore, our partners in general must step up,” he said. “They have to come forward with pledges, and they have to deliver on those commitments.”

On 16 October, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked EU leaders for at least €70 billion more for 2027. They tasked the Commission with a proposal but set no deadline. Asked whether it would revisit using frozen Russian assets, Ujvári said it was “a little bit early” to discuss options in that detail. New EU borrowing has also grown costlier: 10-year rates rose from 3.2% to just above 4% in six months, he said.

The €90 billion loan was designed on the assumption that the war would end in 2026. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said Slovakia and Hungary would opt out of new aid but would not block others.

A Sofia court has cleared European arrest warrants for two 19-year-old Germans charged with setting fire to Starlink antennas south of the Bulgarian capital, a court spokeswoman told dpa. Prosecutors named the pair in court, but both had already left Bulgaria. The case adds Bulgaria to a run of attacks on Starlink sites in Europe, which Poland and Lithuania have linked to Russia.

While Russia presses its assault along the front and strikes Ukraine’s cities, Starlink keeps Ukraine’s drone units and front-line troops connected, and Poland pays about $50 million a year for its terminals. The network’s ground links in Europe are now a target in their own right, and ISW has linked the Polish fire to a wider Russian pattern of sabotage. Each attack on a ground station hits a network whose speed caps already disrupted Ukraine’s drone missions this month.

Two names, a few hours in Bulgaria

Prosecutors identified the suspects as Zeka Islam and Tirpan Beytullah, Bulgaria’s state news agency BTA reported, noting the names may be misspelled. Their whereabouts are unknown, according to German authorities cited by the agency. They were charged in absentia on 14 October and face three to 12 years in prison if convicted.

According to the indictment, the two crossed from Serbia at the Kalotina checkpoint at 17:37 on 9 October and told border officers they were tourists. At about 22:25, wearing gloves and masks, they allegedly set fire to antennas at the Plana teleport, a satellite ground station near the village of Plana. They drove back into Serbia through the same checkpoint at 23:55.

Three antennas burned completely, two were partly damaged, and three more were affected, prosecutors say. The pair traveled in a Volkswagen with German plates, and a national warrant followed two days after the charges, ZDF reported.

The court-appointed lawyers argued that investigators had pinned down the vehicle, not the men in it. The court rejected those objections, finding reasonable grounds to suspect the pair. The lawyers said they would appeal. The ruling can be challenged within three days.

An opposition MP made the fire public three days later

The fire became public only on 12 October, when opposition MP Ivaylo Mirchev of Democratic Bulgaria posted about it on Facebook. He said 11 antennas had been set on fire, more than prosecutors later counted.

In parliament two days later, Prime Minister Rumen Radev asked the head of the State Agency for National Security (DANS) not to reveal details, saying disclosure could harm the investigation. DANS head Plamen Tonchev told lawmakers he believes the fire was sabotage and that more such attacks cannot be ruled out, dpa reported.

After the ruling, Mirchev wrote that Radev personally owes the public an explanation of what has been achieved, BTA reported.

Bulgaria’s case joins attacks Poland and Lithuania tie to Russia

Bulgaria has not said who might be behind the fire. Authorities in Poland and Lithuania have linked similar recent arsons on Starlink equipment to Russia.

In September, fire hit a Starlink ground station south of Warsaw, and Germany later detained two suspects. On 18 October, Lithuania’s prime minister said intruders had tried to burn a company’s Starlink antennas used by Ukraine, calling it part of Russia’s hybrid war. Moscow claims such accusations are baseless, Reuters reported.

The US has resumed sharing intelligence on Russian ballistic missile launches with Ukraine after a pause of several days, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told NBC News on 18 October. The blackout fell on days when Russia was firing ballistic missiles at Ukraine. Limits on the Starlink satellite service that Ukraine’s forces rely on remain in place, he said.

Russia has leaned on ballistic missiles in this month’s strikes on Ukraine’s grid, firing 39 in a single attack, and Ukraine is short of interceptors to stop them. Washington has used its support as leverage, reportedly telling Kyiv to spare Russian refineries or lose US intelligence and arms.

Three days without warnings

The sharing had been blocked for some period of time before it was restored, Zelenskyy said on Meet the Press.

“We are very thankful for this. Now it works,” he said.

Ukraine gets other intelligence from Europeans and dozens of other partners, he explained. But only the United States has the data that tells Kyiv when Russia launches ballistic missiles.

“We didn’t get it during ballistic attacks during three days,” Zelenskyy said.

A timely warning gives Ukraine’s air defenses extra minutes to prepare and lets authorities alert civilians, Liga noted. Late on 12 October, Russian ballistic missiles hit Kyiv before the air-raid alert reached people, with no advance data on launches from Russian territory. The next day, US President Donald Trump said Washington was still sharing intelligence. Two days later, Zelenskyy said Kyiv had received no US warnings of incoming ballistic missiles while it paused its strikes on Russian refineries at Washington’s request. That pause followed the energy ceasefire Trump declared on 11 October, which Russia never confirmed.

Starlink still capped, Kyiv says

Starshield, the military version of Starlink, still cuts out above 161 km/h, Zelenskyy said, too slow for Ukraine’s interceptor drones to catch Russia’s jet-powered Shahed-type drones. NBC News, which aired the interview, separately reported that Starlink services had resumed at normal speed. He said Ukraine’s generals and government believe the order came from the US government and SpaceX carried it out, though he did not know who exactly made the call. Ukraine had instead asked SpaceX and Trump to open Starlink over Russia so it could hit ballistic missile launchers, he said.

“If [Trump] will personally decide to lift this decision, it will immediately work as it was before,” he said.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who appeared on the same show, called Zelenskyy’s charge “very reckless” and said Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had denied any administration role. Asked about the break in intelligence sharing, he said he did not know anything about it but that Zelenskyy should be “very careful about making statements like this that aren’t true.” Reuters had reported, citing three officials, that White House officials ordered the Pentagon to limit the service.

Asked whether Ukraine could win without the United States, Zelenskyy said it would be very difficult.

“But if the United States will support Putin, I mean, it’s unbelievable, it’s tragedy. It’s historic mistake and big tragedy,” he said.

He also said his team had received word that US negotiators wanted to meet, and that he had offered to meet in Brussels or London, hoping the US team would be ready this week.

The warnings are back, but they stopped once without explanation. Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s missiles still runs through decisions made in the US.

Ukrainian company Nodrics has developed MAT1LDA, an eight-wheeled amphibious ground robot that can carry supplies across water, swamps, and rough terrain, robot-maker Tencore said, Ukrainian military outlet Militarnyi reported on 17 October. The machine joins Tencore’s new family of ground robots, which the company has also shown in the US.

Ukraine’s ground robots now haul supplies and evacuate wounded soldiers through zones where drones make every move deadly, and the Defense Ministry has launched its first competitive tender for them.

500 kg on land, 400 kg afloat

A petrol engine drives MAT1LDA’s eight wheels, and side pontoons keep it afloat, so it can cross water, marshland, and rough ground without preparation, Militarnyi said. Its makers claim it carries up to 500 kg on land and 400 kg on water, with a range of up to 160 km on land and 50 km on water.

Its open frame lets crews swap equipment quickly to suit the task, fitting cargo containers or evacuation stretchers.

Four robots, one system

MAT1LDA is part of the Tencore Ecosystem, which brings together four classes of ground robots for military and civilian work, Militarnyi reported earlier. Besides the amphibious eight-wheeler, it includes the tracked TerMIT, the wheeled TOR 4×4, and the TRAX Utility firefighting and rescue robot. The company says it has delivered more than 4,000 robots to Ukraine’s armed forces since the full-scale invasion, used across more than 50 brigades.

Tencore calls it Ukraine’s first integrated ecosystem of its kind. Putting the platforms into one system is meant to make them easier to use, maintain, and fit with extra equipment. One of the first shared add-ons is AI KIT, a hardware and software module that lets a robot keep to its route or drive back on its own after losing contact with its operator.

On show in Washington

Tencore displayed MAT1LDA carrying a TerMIT robot at the Association of the US Army’s annual trade show in Washington this month, Breaking Defense reported.

Other Ukrainian makers have built swimming ground robots too: one switches from land to water in seconds, and another can tow 10 tons, its maker says. In April, Tencore formed a joint venture with France’s Shark Robotics.

During their visit to Kyiv in September, US President Donald Trump’s envoys urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to consider restarting the pipelines that once carried Russian gas to Europe, The New York Times reported on 17 October. They presented it as part of a peace deal with Russia. In the weeks that followed, they pressed the idea with European officials, while Washington freed Russian diesel and spared Russia’s oil buyers from new US penalties.

Energy sales fund Russia’s war, and Ukraine’s halt of transit in January 2025 left TurkStream as Gazprom’s only pipeline route into the EU. Meanwhile, Russia has kept bombing Ukraine’s grid through the energy truce Washington declared on 11 October.

The pitch in Kyiv

Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner put the idea to Zelenskyy when they met him in Kyiv, the newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the talks. Trump officials argued that transit fees, which Ukraine gave up at about $1 billion a year, would benefit Kyiv, and that European voters would eventually want cheaper energy. Russia’s share of EU gas imports had fallen from 45% in 2021 to 13% last year.

The envoys presented renewed Russian gas sales as one of the economic incentives in a wider settlement covering Russia’s relationship with NATO, security guarantees for Ukraine, and territorial control. Some European and Ukrainian officials suspected Washington would seek a cut of the profits. The White House denied that the Nord Stream pipeline had been a subject of recent discussions. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed that resuming energy cooperation is in Russia’s interest and, right now, even more in Europe’s.

Germany pushes back

At Ukraine talks the envoys hosted in Florida last week, Günter Sautter, security adviser to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, forcefully opposed the idea. German lawmakers have called a return to Russian deliveries a disaster for European security, even treason, as the far-right AfD courts Gazprom to bring the gas back. Former Economy Minister Robert Habeck, who steered Germany off Russian gas after 2022, said Trump “seems to have more sympathies with Vladimir Putin than he has with the Ukrainians.”

One concession after another

Rather than pressure Putin or strengthen Ukraine, the administration has spent much of its peace effort on economic incentives for Russia, the newspaper wrote. The US Treasury cleared imports of Russian diesel on 9 October. On 16 October, Trump waived the penalties on Russia’s oil buyers that Congress had passed in the Graham Act. Washington is also weighing relief for sanctioned shadow fleet tankers. And the White House ordered limits on the military satellite service Ukraine’s forces rely on, Reuters reported.

Putin’s economic envoy Kirill Dmitriev claimed the ice had broken and more joint initiatives would follow, including data centers powered by Russian nuclear energy. The talks also cover the sale of Lukoil’s foreign assets to a group that includes the US government, the newspaper reported earlier this month. Zelenskyy, who had heard the pitch in Kyiv, alluded to it in a Financial Times interview this week.

“The question will be when will the next deal be? Maybe it will be gas. Definitely it will be gas,” he said.

Reopening the pipelines could hand Moscow back significant revenue and strengthen its sway over Europe’s energy market, Liga noted. Each new concession lowers the price Russia pays for continuing the war.

Two Romanian F-16s shot down two jet-powered Russian Geran attack drones over Romania’s territorial waters near Sulina on the evening of 17 October, Romania’s Defense Ministry said. The ministry released cockpit images of the mission the next day, as NATO allies prepare to discuss Black Sea security at a special session Romania requested.

This comes as Moscow continues its air attacks on Ukraine, while the US is trying to make deals with Russia over its diesel and lift sanctions. Russia keeps striking Ukraine’s energy system and cities, while its drones and suspected saboteurs keep turning up inside NATO, from tankers hit off Romania to a foiled arson attempt at a Starlink site in Lithuania.

Down within minutes

The F-16s took off from the 86th Air Base at Borcea at 17:43 after radar detected a group of air targets about 120 km east of Zmiinyi (Snake) Island, flying southwest, Ukrainian military outlet Militarnyi reported, citing the ministry. The first drone entered Romanian airspace at 17:59 and was shot down at 18:01 southeast of Sulina. The second entered at 18:01 and was downed at 18:05 east of Sulina.

Both were jet-powered attack drones of the Geran family, the ministry said. The Geran is Russia’s version of the Iranian-designed Shahed. When first detected, the drones were about 65 km from the coast of Russian-occupied Crimea and 140 km from the Ukrainian-held shore, and their southwest course may point to Russian origin, Militarnyi calculated.

The ministry posted the cockpit images on 18 October, showing a missile launch and a fireball over the sea. “Targets spotted, identified, engaged and neutralized!” it wrote.

Allies to meet on the Black Sea

A special session of the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s top decision-making body, will discuss defense and deterrence in the Black Sea on 20 October at Romania’s request. Romanian President Nicușor Dan has confirmed that the two tankers that caught fire near Sulina last week were hit by drones, and a NATO military source told Reuters they were Russian.

Romanian radar has logged 54 drone intrusions into the country’s air and sea space since Russia’s full-scale invasion, 35 of them this year, and the military has shot down six such targets in 2026, Defense Ministry data show.

Searches in Poland and Lithuania

Within hours, Poland’s Operational Command said it was checking a possible airspace violation by an unknown object overnight into 18 October. Troops, police, and military police searched for a possible crash site south of Lublin after residents reported the loud sound of a flying object around 02:00, Militarnyi reported.

On the morning of 18 October, an unknown drone entered Lithuania’s airspace and triggered air raid alerts, the country’s crisis management center said. NATO jets accompanied it but could not shoot it down because of bad weather, Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said. Debris preliminarily identified as drone parts was later found in the village of Juodžioniai in Pasvalys district, and the army said the drone may have entered from the direction of Poland.

Romania moved from escorting Russia’s stray drones to firing on them in July, when its F-16s downed three in 72 hours.

Someone tried to set fire overnight to a Lithuanian company that stores Starlink communication equipment, but tipped-off guards foiled the attempt, Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius said. He linked the attack to Russia’s hybrid war against Europe. It is the third suspected sabotage of Starlink infrastructure in Europe in under a month.

Russia keeps attacking Ukraine at the front and from the air while running a sabotage campaign behind the lines in Europe, which ISW has linked into one pattern. Starlink keeps Ukraine’s drone units and front-line troops connected, and Poland pays for much of that service.

Fuel canisters and a control unit

The attack came just after midnight, the prime minister wrote. Security services had warned the company about possible attacks, security was stepped up, and the attempt failed.

The company provides connectivity through nine Starlink satellite antennas used by Ukraine, Sinkevičius told Lithuanian public radio LRT. At almost 2 a.m., intruders tried to burn the antennas and their control unit, leaving behind incendiary liquid in canisters of 3 to 10 liters.

“It is obvious that this is part of Russia’s hybrid war with elements of sabotage,” he said, adding that the client was likely “the Russian side.”

He said he believes the people involved, and how many there were, are known, but gave no details, citing the investigation.

Police Commissioner General Arūnas Paulauskas said no suspects had been detained, any damage was minimal, and the company kept working. A pretrial investigation is under way.

A drone the same morning

Hours later, an object that apparently entered from Poland crossed northern Lithuania, and NATO jets failed to identify it, Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said. Possible fragments were found in the Pasvalys district near the Latvian border. Latvia’s military said the object may have blown itself up on a course toward Latvia.

Sinkevičius said the sabotage version had to be checked for the drone too. He called the National Security Commission for Monday, 19 October, to examine both incidents and consider giving services more powers to neutralize drones.

The third Starlink site

In September, a fire destroyed the distribution panel at a Starlink ground station in Wola Krobowska, Poland. Germany detained two Turkish nationals on 12 October, and Warsaw blamed Russian intelligence. In Bulgaria, masked intruders burned 11 of 17 Starlink antennas near Sofia.

Ukrainian infantry encircled and retook the village of Kolodiazi north of Lyman without getting drawn into street fighting, while a drone battalion kept the sky above them shut, the battalion’s chief of staff told Suspilne on 18 October. The village fell during the fourth and final phase of Operation Vivaldi, Ukraine’s counteroffensive in northern Donetsk Oblast.

For years now, Russia has aimed to seize Lyman and cross the Siverskyi Donets River. It needs this area to encircle Ukraine’s fortress belt of Donetsk Oblast cities from the northwest, ISW assesses. Vivaldi’s four phases retook 277 km² and 16 settlements on that approach, and a veteran of the operation has said Ukraine’s assault troops suffered more than ten times fewer casualties than Russian forces doing it.

Drones over the infantry

The 60th Mechanized Brigade fought in all four phases of Vivaldi and took Kolodiazi in the last one, said the chief of staff of the brigade’s Fatum unmanned systems battalion, callsign Krash.

“Our task, as an unmanned systems battalion, was to escort and ‘close’ the air in front of our infantry to make it impossible for the enemy to hit it. To suppress all the firing assets possible,” he said.

The brigade’s 3rd Mechanized Battalion, the main striking force, encircled Kolodiazi and retook it without getting drawn into street fighting, Krash said. The 1st Mechanized Battalion kept Russian reinforcements out of the area, while drone crews suppressed artillery, hit supply runs, and worked against Russian drone operators.

500 troops and 200-plus vehicles

The drone battalion killed or wounded about 500 Russian troops during the fourth phase and struck Russian armored vehicles, trucks, and motorbikes, its chief of staff said.

“More than two hundred pieces of various equipment: Grad and Uragan multiple rocket launchers, various armored vehicles, tanks, armored combat vehicles. Most of all motorbikes and quad bikes, there the count runs into the hundreds. This is our enemy’s main logistics tool,” he said.

Ghost villages

The villages retaken in northern Donetsk Oblast are nearly empty of civilians, Krash said.

“It’s very typical for de-occupied settlements: these are ghost towns. You can see right away where the occupier stepped. All the settlements are under the control of the Third Army Corps, our forces stand there and prevent enemy infiltration. But civilian life in these towns is either absent or very scarce,” he said.

Third Army Corps commander Brigadier General Andrii Biletskyi reported Kolodiazi’s liberation, along with Zelena Dolyna and Lypove, when he summed up Vivaldi’s fourth phase, which secured 101 km².

Russia has started fitting its enlarged Gerbera-2 drones with a 10-kg warhead and an extra bag of incendiary mixture, Ukrainian military outlet Militarnyi reported on 18 October. The setup is designed to start a fire where the drone hits and is probably meant for attacks on critical infrastructure and warehouses, the outlet said.

Russia’s industry makes about 3,000 jet-powered Geran-4 and Geran-5 drones a month, Ukraine’s military intelligence has said, and Russian strikes have destroyed 2.1 million m² of Ukraine’s modern warehouse space since the full-scale invasion began. A cheap drone that carries fire adds one more threat for air defenses that already let nearly half of Russia’s jet-powered Shaheds through.

A fire bag behind the warhead

Ukrainian Telegram channel Polkovnyk HSh posted photos of the payload on 17 October. Gerbera-2 strike and reconnaissance drones had begun to appear with a 10-kg high-explosive fragmentation-incendiary warhead and an extra package of incendiary mixture, the channel wrote. They navigate with Kometa-M12, a 12-element antenna array designed to resist jamming, it added.

In the photos, the incendiary mixture sits in a separate soft plastic tank behind the main warhead, Militarnyi said. Gerbera-2s have been seen with warheads of 4 to 10 kg depending on range, while strike versions of the original Gerbera usually carried up to 5 kg, the outlet noted.

Half a Shahed engine

Russia has mainly fielded the Gerbera, a cheap drone shaped like a Shahed, as a decoy and reconnaissance platform flying alongside Shahed-type strike drones. It has also used bigger Gerberas to drop FPV drones.

Serhii Beskrestnov, now an adviser to Ukraine’s president, flagged a much bigger Gerbera in Ukraine’s skies on 7 August. The Gerbera-2 has a larger airframe, a reshaped wing, and a bigger tail fin, Militarnyi said. In August, the outlet reported it had a stronger piston engine: half of the one in the Shahed-type Geran-2, at about 275 cm³. Production of these engines was set up at the Izhevsk Motorcycle Plant, according to preliminary information the outlet cited.

Earlier versions ran on a Chinese DLE60 model-aircraft engine of about 61 cm³. The switch was likely possible because Geran-2 engine output partly freed up as jet-powered Geran-4s took a growing share of Russia’s drones, Militarnyi said. The Gerbera-2’s fuel tank also holds up to 63 liters, against 10 liters on the original.

One reached Poland’s Baltic coast

In September, a drone preliminarily identified as a Gerbera-2 was recovered from the Baltic Sea near Rusinowo, on Poland’s coast. It carried a high-explosive fragmentation warhead of about 4 kg, a Polish military prosecutor said.

Ukrainian drones struck St. Petersburg’s oil terminal, a fuel depot, an Ozon distribution center, and a VK data center overnight, setting off fires across the city, monitoring channels reported. Russian outlet Meduza called it apparently the largest attack on the city and Leningrad Oblast since the war began. Russian officials acknowledged fires, damaged homes and substations, and power cuts.

Russia keeps fighting along the front while bombarding Ukrainian cities and the grid behind it. Ukraine’s long-range drones, in turn, target the oil exports and logistics that fund and supply that war, and Russia’s Baltic oil ports have been hit repeatedly this year. St. Petersburg is a symbolic place: Russia’s so-called second capital and Putin’s hometown.

Oil terminal and fuel depot on fire

Ukrainian forces struck the Petersburg Oil Terminal with FP-1 drones, starting a fire, Ukrainian drone maker Fire Point said. The company described the terminal as one of the region’s largest, handling 12.5 million tonnes of petroleum products a year, including for export.

Piter port and oil facility in one shot pic.twitter.com/KfptwkhsDS

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 18, 2026

St. Petersburg Governor Aleksandr Beglov acknowledged fires at the terminal and in four city districts, adding that Pulkovo airport had restricted flights. By morning, firefighters were still battling blazes at the terminal, the Ruchyi oil depot, and industrial warehouses in the Kolpinsky district, he wrote. He claimed one person was killed and five injured. Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ reported that the Ruchyi depot had been burning since the night.

Ozon hub, VK data center, and a bridge

An Ozon distribution center in Kolpinsky district caught fire after the attack, the company said, Russian independent outlet Astra reported. Astra’s open-source intelligence analyst described it as one of Ozon’s busiest fulfillment centers in northwestern Russia, covering up to 79,000 m².

Ozon in St. Peterburg pic.twitter.com/tA9iwRJf7d

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 18, 2026

FP-1 drones also hit a VK data center in Novosergiyevka, Leningrad Oblast, causing serious damage, Fire Point said. VK acknowledged a drone attack on the site but claimed its services were working normally. Leningrad Oblast Governor Aleksandr Drozdenko claimed air defenses downed 145 drones over the oblast alone. He acknowledged damage to the data center’s transformer equipment and warehouse complex, and minor damage to the Vostochnaya substation. Two other substations in Yanino went offline, cutting power to about 20,000 people, he said.

A drone also hit the cable-stayed bridge over the Korabelny fairway, part of a toll highway linking the city’s north and south, Exilenova+ reported, adding that the extent of the damage was still being clarified. The channel also reported a fire near a Russian Aerospace Forces radar company outside the village of Kaporskoye.

To reach St. Petersburg, Ukrainian drones had to cover 1,000 km across four Russian regions guarded by air defenses and electronic warfare, said Serhii Beskrestnov, adviser to Ukraine’s president on defense technology.

“And these are not cruise missiles with special systems, these are drones that fly at speeds of up to 200 km/h,” he wrote.

Strikes resume after a one-sided truce

The same night, Russia hit Ukraine’s grid again, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy counted 76 Russian strikes on energy since the ceasefire was announced. US President Donald Trump declared the truce on 11 October. Ukraine paused its refinery strikes for three days at Washington’s request, but Russia struck a Kharkiv power plant within hours and kept hitting the grid. Zelenskyy then said Ukraine was resuming strikes on Russian oil and would stop again only in exchange for more US interceptors for its Patriot systems. Trump called the renewed strikes “a disgrace” and said he found Zelenskyy “more difficult to deal with than Putin.”

Ukraine has hit the St. Petersburg area before. In July, drones set fire to Wildberries warehouses near the city. In August, Ukraine began striking Ozon hubs, starting in Samara Oblast. The hubs move dual-use goods such as electronics and drone components.

Russia has kept striking Ukraine’s energy sector throughout the week since US President Donald Trump announced an energy ceasefire, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 18 October. From overnight into Sunday, Russian drones and a ballistic missile hit substations, homes, and industrial sites from Odesa to Volyn. They killed civilians and left tens of thousands of families without power.

Russia fights along the front line while hitting cities and the grid behind it with drones, missiles, and glide bombs. Ukraine says Moscow plans up to 1,000 such munitions against 60 key infrastructure sites this winter, and jet-powered drones partly free it to concentrate missiles on fewer targets, the Institute for the Study of War assessed. With Graham Act penalties on hold and US sanctions on Russian diesel suspended, Russia faces no new US cost for its strikes on Ukraine’s grid. Protecting and restoring the grid falls to Ukraine’s air defenses and repair crews.

Russia hit energy sites 76 times in a week

Zelenskyy counted 76 deliberate Russian strikes on energy and oil-and-gas facilities since Trump’s announcement. Overnight, Russia hit substations in Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi, and Odesa oblasts, he said. In the past week, Russia fired almost 2,700 attack drones, 1,700 aerial bombs, and 66 missiles, most of them ballistic, mainly to cause a blackout. His message was aimed at Washington.

“America must see that Russia is not taking steps in return for the lifting of sanctions or deals. On the contrary, they take every signal that they can make money as proof that their bet on war is working and they can keep fighting,” Zelenskyy wrote.

Overnight, Russia launched one Iskander-M ballistic missile and 180 Shahed-type drones, 26 of them jet-powered, the Air Force reported. Air defenses downed or suppressed 152 drones, but strikes hit 20 locations.

Power cuts from Odesa to Ternopil

Strikes left about 24,000 consumers in Odesa Oblast without power, oblast head Oleh Kiper said. In Vinnytsia Oblast, the attack damaged critical infrastructure and forced emergency outages, oblast head Natalia Zabolotna wrote. Drones hit three energy facilities in Ternopil Oblast, one of them for the second time, and cut power to some consumers, oblast head Taras Pastukh said.

Civilians killed and injured

A Russian strike on Zaporizhzhia killed a 27-year-old woman and injured two others, including a 16-year-old, the State Emergency Service reported. In Poltava, an evening attack killed one person, injured four, and damaged 10 detached houses, city council secretary Kateryna Yamshchykova said.

A drone hit a high-rise in Odesa and set its roof on fire. A 13-year-old girl was hurt, city military administration head Serhii Lysak said, and Kiper put the number of injured at two.

In Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Russian drones and artillery injured three people, oblast head Oleksandr Hanzha said. In Donetsk Oblast, Russian attacks killed seven civilians on Saturday, six of them in Sloviansk, oblast head Vadym Filashkin reported.

Fires in the west, alerts across the border

A morning drone strike set warehouse and production buildings ablaze at an enterprise in Manevychi, Volyn Oblast, oblast head Roman Romaniuk said. With heavy smoke blowing toward the town, Romaniuk urged residents to stay indoors, shut windows and doors, and switch off ventilation. A repeat strike set an enterprise in the district on fire again, the State Emergency Service said, adding that air tests found no dangerous concentrations outside the site. In Lviv Oblast, drone debris damaged a logistics warehouse and two houses, oblast head Maksym Kozytskyi said.

Polish military aircraft operated in Poland’s airspace twice during the attack, as the Government Security Centre warned residents of Lublin Voivodeship and later alerted Subcarpathian Voivodeship. In Lithuania, NATO jets failed to identify an object that apparently entered from Poland, Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said.

A ceasefire Moscow never confirmed

Trump announced the energy ceasefire on 11 October, news that surprised Zelenskyy. A White House official said Russia was still weighing it. Hours later, Russia hit a Kharkiv power plant, and on 14 October it fired 39 ballistic missiles at the grid. Then Trump waived Graham Act penalties on buyers of Russian oil, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the administration wants 60 days to weigh the economic effects.

Two tankers caught fire within about 12 hours off Sulina, Romania’s port at the mouth of the Danube, Romanian authorities reported. The crew of one said a drone hit it inside Romania’s territorial waters, while Bucharest says it is still checking whether drones were involved. Bulgaria, where drones sank ships in its economic zone this month, says it lacks proof that Russia launched them.

For months, Russia has struck civilian ships on the sea route that carries most of Ukraine’s farm exports, while its drones have repeatedly crossed into Moldova and Romania during attacks on Ukraine. As long as Bucharest and Sofia wait for drone wreckage before naming anyone, Russia, the party Bulgaria’s own prime minister says the logic points to, pays no price for extending its war on Ukraine’s trade routes into NATO members’ waters.

Seven sailors missing after the second fire

The San Marino-flagged chemical tanker Wine Trader reported a fire in its superstructure around 07:00 on 15 October while anchored in Romanian territorial waters about 13 nautical miles southeast of Sulina, Romania’s Naval Authority said. By midday, five of its 12 crew had been recovered and seven were still missing.

Hours earlier, at 01:34, a drone entered Romanian airspace over the country’s waters southeast of Sulina for about a minute before vanishing from radar, the Defense Ministry said. Authorities have not named a cause for the fire, though unnamed sources

Russia hit central Ukraine’s Kirovohrad Oblast with its largest attack since the full-scale invasion, killing residents of the oblast capital, Kropyvnytskyi, the oblast’s head said. Russian strikes hit more than a dozen oblasts, and Ukraine’s president said Moscow escalated deliberately after sanctions relief.

Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine continues on the front line and behind it, where its drones, missiles, and glide bombs strike towns daily. Kyiv is drafting winter crisis plans as Russia targets the biggest cities, and logistics is hit too: Russia struck one retailer’s warehouse hub 10 times in a day.

Three dead in Kropyvnytskyi

Oblast head Andrii Raikovych counted almost 360 Russian drones over Kirovohrad Oblast and hits on 26 locations, mostly in Kropyvnytskyi. In his words, “the enemy deliberately struck critical infrastructure, transport enterprises, logistics facilities, and residential buildings.” In a post after midnight, he reported a third death and six injured, five of them in hospital.

Air-raid alerts around the city ran from 15:20 on 14 October to 05:33, and Suspilne correspondents heard more than 20 explosions in Kropyvnytskyi, the public broadcaster reported. The national emergency service counted 25 struck locations, and rescuers were still putting out fires in the morning, the service’s spokesperson in the oblast said.

A wave Kyiv ties to sanctions relief

Nationwide, Russia launched 580 drones and two Kh-59 guided missiles from 18:00 on 14 October, and air defenses downed or suppressed 536 drones by 08:00, the Air Force reported. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia killed three people in Kropyvnytskyi and three in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, where oblast head Oleksandr Hanzha reported two dead.

Zelenskyy counted more than 850 Iranian-designed Shahed attack drones between the start of 14 October and 09:00 the next day, “precisely at the time of an artificial speed limitation for our defensive capabilities.” Overnight into 14 October, SpaceX capped speeds on its military Starshield satellite service, disrupting Ukrainian missions. He added that Russia escalated “deliberately, having received a relaxation of sanctions and seeing attempts to pressure Ukraine.” Last week, Washington cleared Russian diesel trade after a call between US President Donald Trump and Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin.

Strikes from Kyiv to Odesa Oblast

In Kyiv, a drone fell into a residential yard, Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote, later putting the injured at six. Drones hit two industrial enterprises in Poltava Oblast, its head Vitalii Diakivnych wrote, and a later strike on Poltava injured three people, rescuers said in a preliminary count. Ukraine’s state gas company Naftogaz said a drone set one of its gas production facilities in the oblast on fire, halting its work.

Russian guided aerial bombs injured two women and a man in Izium, Kharkiv Oblast, on 15 October, according to preliminary data from oblast head Oleh Syniehubov, who had counted nine injured in the oblast over the previous day. Over that day, Russian attacks killed three people in Donetsk Oblast, the oblast police said, and one in Kherson Oblast, where oblast head Oleksandr Prokudin reported five more injured. In Kherson city, a drone injured a man, the oblast administration said. In Sumy Oblast, a drone hit a house and left two people in acute stress, its administration said.

In Odesa Oblast, strikes damaged two apartment blocks, a company, and a bank office without casualties, oblast head Oleh Kiper said. Later, a jet-powered Shahed hit a store in the oblast, Zelenskyy wrote, and Kiper counted four injured in a preliminary tally. Drones also hit an enterprise in Ternopil Oblast, and five people sought medical help, rescuers said, while drones damaged two homes in Rivne, oblast head Oleksandr Koval said.

Ukraine’s Navy hit six Su-34M bombers at Russia’s Borisoglebsk military airfield in Voronezh Oblast with Neptune missiles overnight into 15 October, the Navy said. Residents filmed a large fire at the base after a missile alert, and the Navy’s count has not been independently confirmed. The facility is about 400 km from the frontline.

Glide bombs are now central to how Russia’s army fights, used to pin down Ukrainian defenders, including drone teams, before small infantry groups move in. They also hit frontline cities and the civilians who live in them.

Six bombers and flight equipment hit, the Navy says

The Neptune coastal missile system also hit technical equipment that supports flights, the Navy said. It recorded secondary detonations and a fire on the airfield and said details were still being clarified.

The Su-34M can carry several guided and high-explosive aerial bombs at once, along with missiles, the Navy noted. It called the jet one of Russia’s key tools for glide-bomb strikes on Ukrainian positions and frontline towns. In September, a Ukrainian Neptune missile reached a Russian warship at its own pier.

Fire over the airfield late on 14 October

Voronezh Oblast Governor Aleksandr Gusev declared a missile alert across the region shortly before 22:00 local time on 14 October. Within an hour, Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ reported explosions and a fire, preliminarily at the Borisoglebsk airfield. It later wrote that the airfield had come under missile attack and a fire was burning there. Ukrainian monitoring channel Supernova+ posted footage from the town showing the blaze.

A large fire is raging at the site of the missile strike. https://t.co/l4aqVvNJIg pic.twitter.com/JYjhM57GYh

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 14, 2026

On the morning of 15 October, Gusev claimed that 33 drones and several jet-powered aerial targets had been downed over the oblast overnight. He did not mention the airfield.

A base Ukraine has hit before

The airfield hosts the 783rd training aviation center and units of the 105th composite aviation division of Russia’s Aerospace Forces, which flies Su-34, Su-35S, and Su-30SM jets, Ukrainian defense outlet Militarnyi reported. In summer 2026, it had no permanently based combat jets, and Russia used it mainly as a stopover to refuel and rearm aircraft striking Ukraine, the outlet said, citing satellite observation.

Ukrainian drones hit the airfield overnight on 8 July, starting a fire, and satellite images later showed its fuel and lubricants depot destroyed. Drones also attacked the base’s pilot training center in July 2025.

The same night, Ryazan Oblast Governor Pavel Malkov reported a fire at an oil refinery in Ryazan. It came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine was resuming strikes on Russian refineries.

Update: Satellite imagery confirms the strike

New satellite images show damage at Borisoglebsk airbase and six Su-34 bombers positioned in the affected area two days earlier, although the extent of the aircraft losses remains unconfirmed.

The monitoring channel Exilenova+ reports that 4 airframes were completely destroyed, while 2 others sustained significant damage.

Ukraine will resume strikes on Russian oil refineries, ending a three-day pause it held at Washington’s request, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the Financial Times in an interview published on 15 October. Russia kept bombing Ukraine’s energy system throughout the pause, while Kyiv lost US missile warnings and its Starlink service slowed. Zelenskyy said Ukraine would halt energy strikes again only in exchange for more US air defense.

Ukraine's deep-strike campaign targets the Russian oil industry, which fuels Russia's army in Ukraine and earns the export revenue funding the war. Striking the plants that turn Russian crude into fuel, 12 of them hit in September alone, is one of the few levers Kyiv controls on Moscow’s war income. US President Donald Trump has blamed those strikes for higher US fuel prices, which most analysts attribute to the Iran war, and Washington has threatened to withhold intelligence, and reportedly weapons, unless Kyiv gives it up. Each step Washington takes toward Moscow, from fuel waivers to talk of frozen assets, widens the gap Europe and Ukraine must fill, while Russia gains revenue and time to keep striking.

A pause that bought nothing

Zelenskyy said he stopped the refinery strikes for three days to meet US wishes, but Russia kept hitting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and killing civilians. During the pause, Ukraine received no US warnings of ballistic missile launches, he said. Starlink also slowed across the country, hampering front-line operations and mid-range strikes on Russian military targets, he added.

Russia used those days to fire 39 ballistic missiles and more than 120 drones at Ukraine’s grid overnight into 14 October, leaving at least 600,000 people without power. “We hold energy ceasefire from our side,” Zelenskyy told Piers Morgan on 14 October. Of the Starlink slowdown, he added: “I’m sure that they knew what they did.”

The price of another pause

Ukraine could again stop hitting Russian energy only if it receives more US interceptors for its Patriot systems, Zelenskyy told the FT. He warned that a halt could simply invite more US-Russia deals that feed Russia’s war machine, and predicted the next one would involve gas.

US intelligence officials had warned Ukraine’s embassy in Washington that a new strike on Russia’s energy facilities would end all intelligence sharing at once, The Washington Post reported, citing a person familiar with the matter. Washington has not fully cut it off, but the threat stands, the person said. Trump said on 13 October that the US was still sharing intelligence.

Washington’s other moves toward Moscow

A senior US official told Axios the administration had nothing to do with the Starlink limits, which Elon Musk had blamed on the US military. The administration is also considering easing sanctions on shadow fleet tankers, which have carried oil from Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, so the blacklisted vessels could haul non-sanctioned cargo, a US official told Reuters. The US Energy Department said the move would not help Russia ship its oil or fuel.

Washington eased sanctions on Russian oil this spring, after which Russia’s oil income jumped $890 million in a week, and it extended that waiver despite telling allies it would not. US envoys also proposed unfreezing part of Russia’s frozen assets to lure Moscow back to talks, an idea European officials rejected, the Financial Times reported.

US President Donald Trump’s envoys told Kyiv that letting Russia sell diesel could draw Moscow back to peace talks, Reuters reported. In the same meeting, they said Russia’s leader was not ready to negotiate. Since then, Moscow has offered nothing in return, and Trump has brushed off claims that Russia helps Iran.

Washington is pressing Ukraine to stop striking Russian refineries and offering Moscow economic incentives to return to peace talks, even though Russia has made no commitment in return. Yesterday, Russian ballistic missiles hit Kyiv before air raid sirens sounded, amid disputed warnings that the US could cut intelligence support. Meanwhile, Ukraine is being asked to halt its long-range campaign against the oil infrastructure that fuels and finances Russia's war.

The pitch: a diesel deal as a signal to Moscow

Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner met the Ukrainian delegation in Miami on 9 October. They described Russian President Vladimir Putin as unprepared to negotiate but said the diesel deal could help restart three-way talks, two of the sources said.

The third source said the deal could “soften” Moscow because it “sends a signal that Trump is open to do things” with Russia. One of the sources described the plan:

“The idea was that the US could go back to Russia and say ‘See, the Ukrainians stopped striking and we gave you this deal. Now it’s your turn to do something.’”

Ukraine’s part was to stop hitting Russian refineries. Kushner repeated Trump’s request at the meeting, noting the administration had made it several times, two sources said.

Kyiv was asked to hold its fire on Russian oil

The Ukrainians agreed to nothing formally, Reuters’ sources said. They signaled they would accept an energy ceasefire if Russia did the same, but saw the US approach as an attempt to appease Russia with business deals.

Two days later, Trump declared an energy ceasefire, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine was ready if Russia reciprocated. Euromaidan Press has monitored official and unofficial Ukrainian and Russian sources and found no reports of new Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries after Trump’s announcement. One of the last, on the night of the diesel announcement, knocked out more than half the tanks at a fuel-export terminal in Rostov-on-Don.

Three sources told Reuters the envoys did not threaten to cut US support over the refinery strikes. A Ukrainian official told Axios, however, that the envoys warned Trump could cut Ukraine off from US intelligence, which a US official denied. US officials are also believed to have told European allies that Trump would halt PURL, the NATO scheme for Europe-funded US weapons for Ukraine, unless the strikes stopped, according to FT.

What Moscow has offered in return

A person close to the Kremlin told Reuters that Putin would return to the table only when he gets “the remaining 11% of Donbas.” Ukraine refuses to cede more land. During the 9 October call that produced the deal, Putin declined to commit to resuming talks, his aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters, Axios reported.

Moscow has not confirmed the energy ceasefire either. Trump insisted on 12 October that the sides had agreed “because I said they agreed,” RFE/RL reported. On the evening of 12 October, Russian munitions collapsed an apartment stairwell in Kharkiv, killing four people. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak, meanwhile, claimed diesel exports could reach 3.0–3.5 million tons a month by year-end, above the volumes Trump announced.

“Too much to lose”: Trump on Russia and Iran

Late on 12 October, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he did not believe Russia and China were helping Iran, since they have “too much to lose.” In March, he told Fox News that Putin “might be helping them a little bit.” Asked about Russia’s possible support for Iran, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News on 2 September that his message to everyone was to “stay away.” That month, a Financial Times investigation found Russia secretly helping Iran develop supersonic cruise missiles that could threaten US warships.

A drone strike on 10 October put more than half of the large fuel tanks out of action at an oil-loading terminal in Russia’s Rostov-on-Don, Russian news Telegram channel Astra found. The terminal loads fuel onto river and sea tankers for export, and it burned for two days while a local channel wrote that reeds might be on fire. Neither Kyiv nor Moscow has officially acknowledged the hit. It came hours after US President Donald Trump announced a diesel deal with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Russia has spent the autumn hammering Ukraine’s power grid ahead of winter. Ukraine’s long-range drones keep hitting the refineries, depots, and terminals that fuel Russia’s army and earn it export revenue. Every burned tank turns that revenue into repair bills, while Moscow is already subsidizing its own fuel pumps. A refinery-only truce of the kind the White House described a day after the strike would shield the Russian plants that feed terminals like this one.

Seven of 12 tanks out of action

Astra’s analysts concluded from eyewitness footage that at least seven of the terminal’s 12 large tanks had been knocked out. Ukrainian monitoring channel Supernova+ counted seven burned-out tanks and one more scorched by the fire.

The fire was still burning in the early hours of 12 October. Local channel Rostov Glavny posted video of the burning tank farm, passing on rumors that reeds were on fire and noting the city’s second day under smoke, The Moscow Times reported. Footage filmed in the daytime on 12 October showed no more open flames, only gray smoke, according to Astra.

A terminal that loads fuel for export

The site is the oil-loading terminal of the Novoshakhtinsk Oil Products Plant, formerly known as Yug Rusi, in Rostov-on-Don’s Zheleznodorozhny District. It receives, stores, and transships fuel onto river and sea tankers, including for export, Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ said.

The terminal also supplies fuel to the Russian army and earns Moscow hard currency, ZN reported. The Moscow Times put its loading capacity at 3.5 million tons a year and its tank farm at about 60,000 cubic meters, roughly 16 million gallons.

The refinery itself stands in the town of Novoshakhtinsk near the border with Russian-occupied Luhansk Oblast. The terminal sits on the Don River with access to the Sea of Azov, Ukrainian military outlet Militarnyi noted. Ukraine hit the refinery in June, and Ukraine’s General Staff reported striking the Yug Rusi terminal on 9 July, placing it in Bataysk.

A night of drones over the region

Exilenova+ posted images of the burning terminal in the early hours of 10 October. It presented them as the site after Trump’s phone call with Putin. The channel later shared NASA satellite fire data showing the blaze.

Rostov Oblast Governor Yuri Slyusar claimed the attack injured six people. Slyusar further stated air defenses downed more than 100 drones over the region. Radio Liberty’s Russian Service noted that neither side had officially confirmed the hit on the terminal.

Hours after the US-Russia diesel deal

The strike came hours after Trump announced on 9 October that Russia had agreed to supply diesel to US and global markets. The US Treasury then cleared the trade with a sanctions license.

On 11 October, Trump declared an “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine. Under it, he expects Ukraine to stop striking Russian refineries, a White House official told Axios.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that evening that Ukraine’s armed forces had received all relevant orders. Neither Ukrainian monitoring channels nor Russian officials have reported a new strike on a Russian oil facility since. On 13 October, Zelenskyy said Ukraine was ready to guarantee an energy ceasefire if Russia took matching steps.

Russian munitions brought down a stairwell of an apartment building in Kharkiv on the evening of 12 October, and rescuers recovered three bodies from the rubble overnight, local authorities reported. Survivors described fire, falling glass, and pets left behind. The strike came days after Washington waived sanctions on Russian diesel, as it expects Kyiv to stop hitting Russian refineries.

Russia hits Ukraine’s cities every day as it readies a winter campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure, and its oil exports keep bringing in the money that pays for the drones and missiles. A halt to Ukraine’s refinery strikes with no matching halt to Russia’s strikes would leave Moscow’s fuel income intact while Kharkiv digs through rubble. Estonia’s prime minister has already urged Europe to help Ukraine destroy those refineries instead.

A stairwell gone in Kholodnohirskyi district

Russian munitions hit Kharkiv’s Kholodnohirskyi district repeatedly from around 21:17, and Mayor Ihor Terekhov preliminarily identified them as Banderols. At 22:21, he said one strike had hit a residential building, possibly trapping people. He then added in a follow-up post: “Very serious destruction—an entire stairwell has collapsed.”

The strike destroyed an entrance of the four-story building, the State Emergency Service (DSNS) said. It counted 11 injured across the city’s evening strikes, and a rescuer was hospitalized, while Terekhov put the number at 10. By 06:56 on 13 October, rescuers had found a third body. Oblast head Oleh Syniehubov confirmed three dead and said the search continued. Experts will check whether the building is still fit to live in, he added.

Over 24 hours, Russian attacks killed three people in Kharkiv and injured 37, including two children treated for acute stress, Syniehubov reported.

“I realize I’m on fire”: two residents recall the strike

Larysa Maksimenko had just put her bedridden husband to sleep when the strike hit, she told Suspilne Kharkiv. She suffered a head wound and burns.

“I went to the kitchen to switch on the kettle for myself, to have some coffee. I realize I’m on fire. Then glass fell on me. I came to, and I’m buried under everything. All covered in blood,” she said.

The window bars were broken, and medics carried her husband out through the window. Rescuers later found a woman under the rubble in her apartment, likely a neighbor, Maksimenko said. All she wants now, she said, is to get to her husband in hospital.

Viacheslav Chibitko, who lives on the second floor next to the collapsed entrance, saw a flash, and then everything blew out. He got his three dogs out, but five cats are still inside. During the clearing, a concrete slab fell on a rescuer, Suspilne’s correspondent reported. Crews pulled him out and handed him to medics.

Kyiv’s toll rises, and strikes hit other cities overnight

The evening drone strike on a 25-story building in Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district killed two people, Kyiv prosecutors reported. The second victim was found dead in a car near the building. Prosecutors counted at least seven injured, including a 17-year-old girl, while Mayor Vitali Klitschko counted 11 in the capital.

From 18:00 on 12 October, Russia launched five ballistic missiles, nine loitering munitions, and 108 attack drones, Ukraine’s Air Force reported. Air defenses downed or suppressed 88 drones. A Russian drone attack injured four patients at a medical facility in Khmelnytskyi Oblast, oblast head Serhii Tiurin said. In Dnipro, a Russian attack injured a 64-year-old man, oblast head Oleksandr Hanzha reported. A downed Russian drone set two houses on fire in Murovane near Lviv, oblast head Maksym Kozytskyi said.

On 12 October, a Russian Smerch rocket with a cluster warhead hit a house in Cherkaske, Donetsk Oblast, killing three people, including a 13-year-old girl, oblast head Vadym Filashkin reported.

Russian attacks killed more than 150 people in the week to 11 October, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. Russian bombs killed at least 20 people in Zaporizhzhia on 10 October, by the oblast’s count. On 9 October, the US waived its sanctions on Russian diesel until April 2027. The White House expects Kyiv to halt refinery strikes under its proposed energy ceasefire.

The EU adopted its largest-ever round of sanctions listings on 12 October, targeting the suppliers behind Russia’s war industry, the Council of the EU announced. The bloc acted as Russia keeps killing Ukrainian civilians every day, while US President Donald Trump eases sanctions on Russian diesel.

Russia’s planned winter campaign against Ukraine’s infrastructure depends on arms factories fed by a web of component suppliers and on oil revenue that still flows despite Ukraine’s refinery strikes, so every supplier cut off from that web raises the cost of waging it. As Washington eases off, Europe’s own pressure has a gap: its ports still take record volumes of Russian Arctic gas, and a full ban on long-term contracts starts only in 2027.

Missile suppliers top the list

More than half of the new listings hit the supply chain for ballistic missiles that Russia “uses to kill Ukrainian civilians every day,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said in the statement. Russian attacks killed more than 150 people in the past week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 11 October.

The list names 826 Russian companies, mid-level firms the Council calls the “core” of Russia’s arms industry, with at least €20 billion in yearly turnover, and 743 people who run them. They make parts for missiles, drones, and military aircraft, from semiconductors and radars to explosives and navigation systems. Their assets are frozen, EU firms may not finance them, and the executives may not enter the EU.

Foreign ministers ratified a deal EU envoys reached on 7 October. Ukraine’s sanctions commissioner Vladyslav Vlasiuk said 60% of the listings came from Ukrainian proposals.

Ministers reject the diesel deal

EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg vowed to keep the sanctions despite Trump’s diesel deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Euronews reported. Kallas addressed Washington directly as she arrived.

“The US is our biggest ally, but our message is clear: if we want to end this war, the only way we can do this is (by) putting more pressure on Russia,” Kallas said.

Irish Foreign Minister Helen McEntee called the deal “concerning,” and Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys said it was “not the European way.” Kallas warned that an energy truce covering only refineries would favor Russia, since Ukraine has one refinery and Russia “plenty.”

Trump announced the diesel deal on 9 October, and the US Treasury waived sanctions on Russian diesel until April 2027. Zelenskyy said the EU would provide about €3 billion more in military aid this week.

Washington presses Kyiv

Trump expects Ukraine to stop hitting Russian refineries under his proposed energy ceasefire, a White House official told Axios. Zelenskyy said Kyiv would halt such strikes if Moscow did the same. On 10 October, Trump told reporters it was time for Ukraine to get a new president. Germany’s foreign minister, Britain’s defense secretary, and a senior lawmaker from Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s party backed Zelenskyy, while the Kremlin sided with Trump.

Zelenskyy offered to hold elections after a 60-day ceasefire, and Kallas said elections are impossible while the war goes on. The Institute for the Study of War assessed that Russia exploits Ukraine’s legal ban on wartime elections to drag out the war.

Russia and four allies began five-day military drills in Belarus on 12 October, the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) said. The troops are rehearsing peacekeeping and a biological-threat response. Minsk insists the drills target no one, while Belarus’s army chief calls them deterrence against hostile states.

Russian troops crossed Belarus to advance on Kyiv in 2022, and it now hosts Russian units with Oreshnik missiles and equipment guiding attack drones into Ukraine. Every foreign deployment there worries Kyiv and neighboring NATO members, which blame Minsk and Moscow for border pressure.

Riot police and drone crews in a “peacekeeping” drill

Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan brought more than 1,500 troops and over 300 weapons and vehicles, including about 80 drones, The Moscow Times reported, citing the bloc. Armenia, the sixth member, is not among them. The peacekeeping drill runs in Vitsebsk Oblast, bordering Latvia and Lithuania, with Belarusian riot police and internal troops joining, the bloc’s command said.

Russia sent motorized rifle, reconnaissance, electronic warfare, and drone units from its Central Military District, the CSTO said. Russia, this year’s chair, prioritized peacekeeping readiness and the joint biological protection and medical unit, a bloc general said.

Belarus’s military insisted the drills are planned, yet its army chief called them “one of the measures of strategic deterrence against aggressively minded states” and claimed the West is “effectively preparing for a new hot war.”

Pressure on Belarus’s neighbors

In Latvia, armed, masked escorts from Belarus tried to force migrants across this month, the military said, and raiders stole border cameras hours later. Estonia’s police and border guard chief warned migration pressure could jump before winter, as Russia eases entry from countries like Ethiopia and Belarus passes migrants on to the EU. Lithuania posted up to 100 soldiers on its border with Russia’s Kaliningrad, and in September NATO’s Italian jets downed a drone that crossed in from Belarus. On 9 October, Minsk summoned Ukraine’s envoy over an alleged drone strike on a Belarusian truck in Russia, and Kyiv rejected the “absurd accusations” of “an accomplice in the crime of aggression against Ukraine.”

Belarus keeps its army on alert

In September, Belarusian armor drilled near the Suwałki Gap, NATO’s land link to the Baltic states, and Lukashenka said the whole army would be checked, up to mobilization. On 12 October, he ordered a snap check of a 6th Separate Guards Mechanized Brigade battalion, state news agency BelTA reported. European spy agencies also warn of more Russian assassination plots against defense executives.

Ukraine’s intelligence still rates the threat from Belarus as low, but each new contingent, missile unit, and airborne brigade there widens what Kyiv and NATO’s eastern flank must watch.

German industry expects Russian sabotage against the country’s companies to persist and take more forms, the deputy head of the Federation of German Industries (BDI) told Handelsblatt. His warning follows alarms from Germany’s intelligence services, which describe the country as a main target of Russia’s covert campaign in Europe.

Russia keeps striking Ukrainian cities and power plants every day while trying to weaken the European support that keeps Ukraine fighting. Germany is home to arms makers producing with and for Ukraine, so pressure on its companies targets the supply behind Ukraine’s defense.

Industry expects attacks to last and change form

The warning came from Holger Lösch, the BDI’s deputy managing director.

“German industry is preparing for the threat to persist and for attack methods to become more varied,” he told Handelsblatt. “Companies don’t end up in the crosshairs by chance,” he added.

Russian influence and sabotage operations are no longer an abstract scenario, and companies, critical infrastructure, and defense supply chains are already among their targets, Lösch said. Companies now receive more threat warnings, and their cooperation with the authorities has improved significantly, he noted. “What is still missing are joint procedures to quickly derive concrete measures from warnings,” Lösch said, calling the protection of the economy a cornerstone of national security.

German intelligence describes a Russian shadow war

The warning comes a week after a public hearing of the intelligence oversight panel of the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, on 5 October. There, Martin Jäger, head of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND), said Russia was waging a shadow war against Germany. “Germany has become a main obstacle to Russian hegemonic power projection in Europe and thus a target of Russian action,” Jäger said. “The danger of attacks against targets in Germany remains real and present,” he warned.

Sinan Selen, head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, told the same hearing that Russia was showing a readiness for sabotage and killings.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on 1 October that Germany was preparing for further hybrid attacks, “including serious ones,” and would respond “quickly and very clearly,” as it did after the drone attack at Leipzig airport.

Drone bombs, arson, and paid saboteurs on German soil

In August, a drone carrying Semtex explosives hit the wing of a Ukrainian An-124 cargo plane at Leipzig/Halle Airport but did not explode. Germany blamed Russia on 1 September, and German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Germany was not at war with Russia but was a “target of war.”

German authorities suspect Russian intelligence of commissioning an arson attack near two Munich defense firms, and a confidential Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) assessment counted more than 165 suspected sabotage cases in Germany between January and August. The same assessment recorded 747 suspicious drone incidents involving 1,068 drones over critical infrastructure, military sites, and defense companies.

Germany’s Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) warns that the threat from low-level agents, locals paid small sums for one-off jobs such as arson or photographing military sites, has increased significantly. European intelligence agencies also report that Russia is increasingly targeting defense company executives, including at smaller drone makers, and the BfV has advised some German firms to hire close protection.

As long as Germany keeps backing Ukraine, Russian pressure on its companies is unlikely to ease, and the gap between warnings and action that industry flagged leaves smaller firms, with fewer resources for security, the most exposed.

Ukrainian strikes hit a site housing Russian troops in Khrustalnyi, a city in Russian-occupied Luhansk Oblast, overnight on 12 October, according to local reports. Satellite fire data recorded blazes at a former motor depot there, in an area Russia once used as a logistics base for its offensive in the region.

Russia keeps attacking in Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast and strikes Ukrainian cities and power plants every day. Its offensive depends on troops, ammunition, and fuel moved through occupied Ukraine, so strikes there reach the supply chain behind the front.

Fires at a former motor depot in occupied Khrustalnyi

Ukrainian forces launched heavy strikes around Khrustalnyi in eastern Ukraine overnight, the Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ reported. It counted three separate fires and one large blaze, and said local residents reported a hit on a site where Russian troops were based. Ukraine’s military had not officially commented on the strike by the publication time of this article on 12 October.

Ukraine’s Defense Forces are carrying out massive strikes in the area of occupied Khrustalnyi in Luhansk Oblast. Three separate fire hotspots and a large-scale blaze have been reported.

According to local residents, a site housing Russian troops was hit. pic.twitter.com/A8RHtuKY5i

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 12, 2026

NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), which tracks active fires by satellite, shows blazes at a former motor transport enterprise and an industrial zone in Khrustalnyi, Ukrainian military outlet Militarnyi reported. Three fire hotspots appeared there at 01:10 and spread by 02:07, the outlet said.

Ukraine also hit the site on 16 June 2022, striking an ammunition depot there, and local residents then heard secondary detonations, Militarnyi said. The site served as an important logistics base for Russia’s 2nd Army Corps in its offensive on Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, two cities in Luhansk Oblast, the outlet added.

Explosions at a Crimean airfield Russia used to launch drones overnight

Drones attacked occupied Crimea from the evening of 11 October into the night, and Russian air defenses, including mobile fire groups, fired across the peninsula, Krym.Realii, Radio Liberty’s Crimea service, reported. Explosions sounded in Simferopol, Feodosiia, and Yevpatoriia, among other places, the Crimean monitoring Telegram channel Crimean Wind said, according to the outlet.

Subscribers told the channel about a series of explosions and a glow at Russia’s Hvardiiske military airfield in Simferopol district as air defenses fired. Krym.Realii said neither Ukraine’s nor Russia’s military had commented and that it could not verify the reports independently.

Overnight, Russia also launched attack drones at Ukraine from several directions, including Hvardiiske in occupied Crimea, Ukraine’s Air Force reported.

Ukraine’s General Staff said in August that a 3 August strike on the Hvardiiske airfield destroyed nine aviation fuel tanks and damaged two aircraft hangars.

Ukraine keeps hitting Russian rear areas in occupied territory

On 10 and 11 October alone, the General Staff reported hitting a Russian repair base and supply depots in occupied Luhansk Oblast, along with Russian troop concentrations near Lysychansk and two other towns there.

Ukraine has also kept up its campaign of so-called middle strikes, drone attacks on Russian supply lines in occupied territory beyond the front. French mapper Clément Molin counted 770 confirmed drone hits on Russian trucks in September, up from 630 in August, with the strikes concentrated on supply routes running through occupied southern Ukraine into Crimea.

Strikes on troop sites and airfields far behind the front leave Russia fewer safe places in occupied territory to house troops and launch drones, adding to the battlefield losses Ukraine’s drones already inflict.

Ukraine has been striking the launchers Russia uses to fire ballistic missiles at its cities, Ukrainian Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara told journalists. He said the strikes have already disrupted some Russian attack plans, but supplies of anti-ballistic interceptors still fall short of the threat.

Russia strikes Ukraine’s cities and power grid with drones and missiles every day as it prepares to leave civilians without power and heat this winter. Ballistic missiles are the part of that barrage Ukraine still struggles to stop, so every launcher put out of action before it fires means fewer missiles to intercept.

Iskander and S-400 launchers hit since September

Ukrainian forces hit eight launchers used for ballistic strikes on Ukraine in September and early October, destroying three and damaging five, Khmara said. They belonged to Russia’s Iskander tactical missile systems and S-400 air defense systems, he added. Such strikes have already forced Russia to cancel or change planned ballistic attacks, the minister said.

The S-400 was designed to shoot down aircraft and missiles, but Russia also uses it to fire ballistic missiles at Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv. In mid-September, Ukraine reported hitting two S-400 launchers near Vygonichi in Russia’s Bryansk Oblast. Russia had used the same systems against Kyiv the night before.

On 23 August, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces had hit an Iskander launcher near the border. He described it as part of a separate operation to hunt nearby launch positions and linked the tactic to low stocks of anti-ballistic missiles.

Strikes on launchers while interceptors stay scarce

Khmara called the launcher strikes Ukraine’s asymmetric response to a ballistic threat that remains critical.

“Existing and potential supplies of missiles for anti-ballistic defense are not enough to fully cover this threat,” he said.

Instead of waiting for large long-term contracts, the Defense Ministry is looking for missiles in partners’ available stocks to speed up transfers, Khmara added. “We need dozens and hundreds of missiles, not one-off deliveries,” he stressed.

Meanwhile, Russia significantly cut its 2026 state orders for Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missiles, Ukraine’s military intelligence said on 12 October. It redirected the production capacity, components, and raw materials to Iskander-M ballistic missiles, the agency added.

Russia’s missile and drone attacks continue

Overnight on 12 October, Russia attacked Ukraine with a Kh-59 guided missile and 121 attack drones, 76 of them jet-powered, Ukraine’s Air Force reported. Air defenses downed or suppressed 89 drones, but strikes hit 15 locations, and the attack was still going on in the morning.

In the week to 11 October, Russia hit Ukraine’s power generation and transmission facilities more than 200 times and its gas and oil sites 17 times, Zelenskyy said. Russian attacks that week killed more than 150 people and injured more than 700, he added.

Jet-powered drones are still the main problem for Ukraine’s air defense. It stops more than 90% of slower propeller-driven Shaheds, compared with about 55% for the jet ones.

Ballistic missiles have struck Kyiv repeatedly this autumn. On 24 September, Russian ballistic and hypersonic missiles damaged a maternity hospital in the capital. On 7 October, a Russian missile barrage killed 22 people in Pryluky, Chernihiv Oblast.

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's seaborne exports of refined oil products rose to a three-month high in September, but the growth came from cheaper fuel oil and naphtha as diesel shipments fell to their lowest in more than a decade, Bloomberg reported, citing Vortexa data. Russia kept diesel at home after Ukrainian refinery strikes and paid oil companies to supply its pumps, while high crude prices lifted its crude export earnings.

During the ongoing deep-strike campaign, Ukraine's long-range drones have knocked out more than half of Russia's oil refining capacity, Kyiv says, and Russia's budget oil revenues are falling even as it raises war spending. High global crude prices are softening that blow.

Cheaper fuel out

Total seaborne product exports reached about 1.17 million barrels a day in September. Fuel oil shipments rose 6% to about 613,000 barrels a day, the highest since April. Naphtha, a feedstock for petrochemicals, jumped 35% to 363,000 barrels a day. Exports of refinery feedstocks, including vacuum gasoil, rose to about 32,000 barrels a day, according to Bloomberg.

The trade has moved north. Almost 80% of fuel oil cargoes left from Baltic ports, and naphtha loadings there rose almost 50% as Ukrainian attacks disrupted Black Sea infrastructure. In September, Ukraine reported hitting an oil terminal in Novorossiysk, Russia's main Black Sea oil port—one in a string of attacks on Russia's Black Sea ports and oil sites.

Diesel kept at home

Diesel and gasoil exports fell 28% to 144,000 barrels a day, the lowest monthly volume in Vortexa data going back more than a decade. Russia has restricted diesel exports to protect domestic supply after Ukrainian attacks on its refineries. Drones kept hitting them into October, from a Lukoil refinery in Volgograd to Gazprom's Salavat complex in Bashkortostan.

In September, Russia paid oil companies the biggest subsidy in more than four years to keep road fuel on the domestic market. It also imported about 350,000 tonnes of motor fuel by sea, mostly gasoline from India, Morocco, and Türkiye, Reuters calculations showed. Officials are considering letting some producers resume diesel exports in October to avoid overstocking, according to Interfax.

The diesel squeeze has reached the White House. US President Donald Trump stated on 30 September that diesel was hurt "not by the Middle East, but by what's going on in Russia, because those diesel refineries are being knocked out at a pretty alarming rate."

Crude carries the revenue

Russia's crude exports reached about 3.99 million barrels a day in the week to 27 September, and the estimated value of its seaborne crude shipments neared its highest since the full-scale invasion began, Bloomberg reported. Brent crude traded at about $102.60 a barrel on 9 October, according to Trading Economics data.

Kenya wants five of its citizens captured fighting for Russia in Ukraine to be treated as victims of human trafficking rather than prisoners of war, Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi told Kenyan lawmakers on 8 October, Bloomberg reported. Botswana is also seeking a citizen's return.

In 2025, Ukrainian ambassador Ivan Kholostenko called Russia's role in Africa neocolonialism. As Africa Corps troops prop up friendly regimes, the Kremlin is carrying out "a typical colonial practice of resource extraction," taking gold, diamonds, bauxite, and uranium, according to Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence. Russia also uses the continent as a recruiting ground for its war: nearly 500 Africans have died fighting for Russia, Ukraine says.

Five Kenyans in a Ukrainian camp

Kenya is negotiating to bring the five men home, and President William Ruto has raised the matter with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Mudavadi told the Senate. One has been held since November 2025, the others since March and April. The youngest is 23, Bloomberg reported. Kenya's honorary consul found them held in humane conditions at the Zakhid-1 camp, with access to medical care, the government said. Ukraine also holds the remains of four Kenyans.

Victims or fighters for hire

African governments say some of their citizens went to Russia for promised work as drivers, security guards, or cooks and were then forced into military service. The Kenyans "report having been recruited under false promises of employment," Mudavadi said.

"The circumstances of their recruitment and conscription are consistent with trafficking in persons," he said.

Ukraine's POW authority sees most foreign recruits differently. "The main motive for most of these mercenaries is financial gain," Dmytro Usov, secretary of Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, said in November 2025, while stressing that many had ended up in Russia's army through fraud or coercion.

Ukraine holds that prisoners of war go home through exchanges, but Russia has never asked to trade for any foreign fighter except North Koreans, the headquarters said in May, adding it may consider other solutions if diplomats and lawyers find one.

Thousands of foreigners in Russia's ranks

Russia has recruited more than 28,000 foreigners from 135 countries, and more than 5,000 have been killed, a Ukrainian government website cited by Bloomberg says. Ukraine holds at least 213 foreign prisoners of war, not counting Russians and North Koreans, 37 of them African, according to documents Bloomberg saw. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin claimed on 3 September that people are "coming forward voluntarily and signing contracts."

Kenya's government counts 354 citizens linked to the war: 84 killed or missing, 34 hospitalized in Russia, and 62 repatriated. Petitioners told senators that 841 Kenyans remain unaccounted for. Mudavadi said his March visit to Moscow put Kenya on a Russian recruitment "stop list," with no new Kenyans enlisted since.

Some African governments take steps

In August, Botswana stopped eight citizens from joining the Russian military at airports in Botswana, South Africa, and Ethiopia, Bloomberg reported.

Ghana accused Russia of luring its citizens into the war the same month, after Kenya and South Africa. The European Parliament said in March that Russia strips African recruits of their documents. Ukraine, meanwhile, is drafting its first Africa strategy.

Russian drones hit Ukraine's power grid, warehouses, a food warehouse, a home-improvement store, and a farm overnight on 9 October, Ukrainian officials and emergency services reported. The strikes triggered emergency power cuts in Kyiv and other regions and killed at least three people across the country.

As Russia continues its daily terror attacks, it has likely begun its winter strike campaign early, aiming to make civilian life in Ukraine unbearable, ISW assessed. Those strikes now reach beyond the grid to the businesses that store and sell goods, adding to damage Ukraine's Economy Ministry expects to reach up to $10 billion this year.

Power cut in Kyiv and other regions

Russia launched 136 drones overnight, 93 of them jet-powered, Ukraine's Air Force said. Air defenses downed or suppressed 114. Drones hit eight locations, and debris fell at seven more.

DTEK, Ukraine's largest private energy company, introduced emergency power cuts on Kyiv's right bank and in the Bucha and Vyshhorod districts on the grid operator's orders. Ukrenergo, the national grid operator, imposed emergency outages in some regions, citing the strain Russian attacks put on the system. Planned schedules were suspended there. Hourly cuts across parts of Ukraine had already been set for the whole day.

The cuts came a day after a Russian strike knocked out several grid elements supplying Kyiv, leaving many consumers without power. Russia has sharply stepped up attacks on Ukraine's energy system in recent weeks, deliberately targeting power lines and transformers, Ukraine's Energy Ministry said.

Warehouses and a store

In the Bucha district of Kyiv Oblast, Russia hit warehouses and injured three people, Ukraine's State Emergency Service said. One was hospitalized. Rescuers were searching for a woman who may be under the rubble.

In Odesa, a strike damaged the roof of a warehouse storing food and started a fire, the region's emergency service reported. In the south of the oblast, Russia damaged buildings at holiday resorts and destroyed a café.

Near Chernihiv, Russia hit a site just outside the city after 03:00, the city council said. A Suspilne correspondent at the scene reported that a drone hit the Epicenter store, part of a large Ukrainian home-improvement chain. Russian forces also struck a farm in the Kulykivka community. No one was hurt in Chernihiv Oblast.

Russia has already destroyed more than two-fifths of Ukraine's modern warehouse space.

Three killed overnight

In Zaporizhzhia, Russia struck near an apartment building, killing a man, the Zaporizhzhia Oblast administration said. The number of injured rose to nine, including a 14-year-old girl, regional prosecutors said. One strike landed near an after-school education center.

In Ivano-Frankivsk, falling drone debris started a fire, and a man born in 1959 was killed, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast head Svitlana Onyshchuk said.

In Shyroka Balka, Kherson Oblast, a Russian drone dropped explosives on a house at about 06:20, killing a 74-year-old woman and injuring a 68-year-old man, regional prosecutors reported.

Russia injured three women in a Kharkiv suburb, Kharkiv Oblast head Oleh Syniehubov said. In the Nikopol district, a 24-year-old woman was injured, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast head Oleksandr Hanzha said.

Poland scrambled military aircraft as Russia struck targets in western Ukraine, its Operational Command said.

The past day's toll

Over the past 24 hours, Russia killed two people and injured 18 in Zaporizhzhia and the Zaporizhzhia district, regional council head Ivan Fedorov said. In Sumy Oblast, one man was killed and 14 people were injured, including two 12-year-old boys, the regional administration reported.

In Kherson Oblast, four people were injured, including a child, Kherson Oblast head Oleksandr Prokudin said. In Mykolaiv Oblast, a Russian drone injured two children aged three months and one year, acting oblast head Heorhii Reshetilov said. Three people were injured in Kharkiv Oblast, Syniehubov reported.

In Donetsk Oblast, Russia killed 35 people and injured 25 on 8 October, Donetsk Oblast head Vadym Filashkin said. Thirty-two of them died in Kramatorsk, most in a Russian bomb strike on two passenger buses.

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.

A Russian missile attack on Kyiv overnight on 7 October destroyed warehouse premises in the Podil district and badly damaged a book warehouse of Ukrainian publishing house Knyholav, the publisher said. Tens of thousands of books were lost, but no staff were hurt. It was the second time this year that Russia has destroyed Knyholav's stock.

Russia has destroyed Ukrainian books since the start of its invasion, seizing them from libraries in occupied areas and burning them in boiler houses. Since spring, it has also been aiming missiles and drones at the industry that makes them—printing houses, publishers' warehouses, and bookshops—destroying books by the millions. Each strike takes out not only stock but the reprints, new titles, and textbooks Ukrainian readers were waiting for, at a time when publishing in Ukrainian is part of how the country holds onto its identity.

Tens of thousands of books lost

The publisher can't yet say how many books were destroyed or can no longer be saved, it said, but tens of thousands were lost. The final count will be possible only once staff get full access to the warehouse and check the state of every book.

The losses include new titles Knyholav received over the past two months. They also include reprints of books Russia had destroyed in July at its previous warehouse. Knyholav had moved its rebuilt stock to this new warehouse after a Russian strike on 19 July destroyed its previous one outside Kyiv, along with about 250,000 books.

"This is a tangible blow for us. These are books we created, printed, and prepared for you," the publisher wrote. "But despite everything, we are holding on!"

The strike hit Kyiv's Podilskyi district, where a Russian attack caused a fire and the partial collapse of the floors of an office and warehouse building, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. The same overnight attack killed people in Pryluky, Kyiv, Kremenchuk, and Oleksandriia.

Millions of books burned

Russia's attacks destroyed more than 1.5 million books in July alone, Culture Minister Tetiana Berezhna said. On 1 August, a strike on the logistics center of publisher Ranok and the distribution center of the KnyhoLand bookshop chain in Kharkiv destroyed 8 million books, including 628,000 new school textbooks. Over three months, Russia burned about 13 million Ukrainian books, nearly a third of everything the country printed in 2025. In August, Russian missiles also hit Kyiv's largest book market.