Ukraine went after the sites and systems Russia uses to launch and steer its most powerful attack drones. On the night of 17 August 2026, Ukraine's Defense Forces struck a series of important Russian military targets, hitting drone storage, launch, and control infrastructure across occupied Crimea and Kherson Oblast, the General Staff reported.

The strikes target the infrastructure behind Russia's drone attacks, not just the drones themselves. By hitting storage sites, control stations, and relay points, Ukraine degrades Russia's ability to launch and guide the Shaheds, reaching the launch and command nodes rather than intercepting drones one by one in the air.

The Shahed site and the Orion control station

The first strike hit a Shahed base. Ukraine struck a storage, preparation, and launch site for attack drones near Hvardiiske in occupied Crimea, with a fire recorded at the site, the General Staff said.

The second hit the launch platform for one of Russia's newer drone missiles. Ukraine struck the ground-control station of an Orion drone at Novofedorivka in occupied Crimea. The Orion is a large Kronshtadt strike-reconnaissance drone and the aerial launch platform for the jet-powered S8000 "Banderol" cruise missile, which Russia fires from Crimea at Odesa.

It flies at 520-560 km/h cruise speed and up to 650 km/h maximum, has a range up to 500 km, and carries a 114.3-kg fragmentation-high-explosive warhead.

Until Russia developed a ground launcher, the rare Orion, with only nine lost in the whole war, was the only way to fire a Banderol.

The relay points that extend the drones' reach

Ukraine also hit the relays that guide Russian drones. It struck a ground system for controlling Geran and Gerbera attack drones at Olenivka in occupied Crimea, and a communication and power point for a drone relay on the Tendra Spit in Kherson Oblast.

Those relays matter because they extend range. Russia uses ground relay stations to guide its drones farther than a direct signal reaches, so destroying them shortens how deep the Shaheds can be steered into Ukraine. The degree of damage is being clarified.

Germany has placed part of a federal ministry directly next to a Berlin building that France links to Russian intelligence, the newspaper Tagesspiegel reported. The branch office shares a wall with the Russian House, a cultural center long suspected of serving as a Kremlin front. One of its units works on protecting Germany's critical networks from attack.

A shared wall in the heart of Berlin

The Federal Ministry for Digital Affairs opened a branch at Taubenstraße 42/43 on 1 July. It sits wall-to-wall with the Russian House on Friedrichstraße, reporter Claudia von Salzen found. The ministry moved in because its main headquarters nearby had run out of space.

Two of the ministry's six departments now operate there. One covers digital infrastructure, including a unit for the security and resilience of public telecom networks.

The other handles digital identities, trust services, and the cybersecurity industry. Both are fields a hostile intelligence service would want to watch.

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Why the address raises alarms

The Russian House is officially a science and culture center. It opened on Friedrichstraße in 1984 to promote friendship with the Soviet Union.

Rossotrudnichestvo, a Russian state agency, runs it. The EU sanctioned that agency in July 2022 as the Kremlin's main tool for hybrid influence. In Germany, it allegedly helped organize pro-Russian rallies, and many of its staff abroad are Russian intelligence officers.

A leaked French Interior Ministry letter states the building serves as cover for Russian intelligence. The Russian House rejected that and claimed it is a purely cultural institution.

Other branches of government took the threat seriously

Across town, German lawmakers near the Russian Embassy hardened their offices years ago. They were told to avoid Bluetooth devices and to fit their windows with anti-espionage film.

Berlin is also reviewing whether to close the Russian House over the espionage suspicions, TVP World reported. A senior lawmaker, Roderich Kiesewetter of the CDU, called the ministry's choice a clear failure of risk awareness.

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The ministry said it picked the site because the building is federally owned and the right size. It did not answer whether the proximity to the Russian House counts as a security risk.

Russia's shadow war has already reached Germany

Germany has become one of the busiest fronts in Russia's campaign of drone incursions, sabotage, and spying. By December, Germany had logged more than 1,000 suspicious drone flights in 2025 alone. The drones have swarmed both civilian airports and military sites, shutting Munich Airport over two days in October 2025 and stranding thousands of travelers. Analysts judge it highly likely that Russia flew some 144 surveillance drones over a dozen NATO countries between August 2024 and February 2026, including near Ramstein Air Base and NATO nuclear sites. In early August 2026, security staff found an explosives-laden drone beside a Ukrainian cargo plane at Leipzig-Halle airport, an incident Western intelligence tied to Moscow.

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Much of the ground work runs through disposable agents recruited online. In March 2026, authorities arrested operatives who had surveilled the head of a Bavarian drone firm arming Ukraine, a case its domestic service treats as a planned assassination. Prosecutors separately charged three men over a plot to mail exploding parcels from Germany, described as a test run for future arson attacks.

Russian forces shelled and struck front-line and border regions across northern, eastern, and southern Ukraine over the past 24 hours, killing at least eight civilians and wounding more than 40, regional authorities reported on 17 August. Sumy, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts reported deaths, while people were wounded in Kharkiv, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Chernihiv, and Odesa Oblasts.

Russia's daily strikes have hit populated areas and civilian infrastructure both near the front line and far behind it. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that 13 regions had come under attack over the past week, with more than 1,550 attack drones, nearly 1,560 guided aerial bombs, and 62 missiles, most of them ballistic, launched at Ukraine.

North: FPV drone attacks firefighters’ vehicle

In Sumy Oblast, Russian forces carried out more than 50 strikes on 24 settlements across 11 communities. A drone strike in the Sumy community killed a 75-year-old man and a 72-year-old woman and wounded another civilian, the Sumy military administration said. It also said two more people were wounded in the Seredyna-Buda community. A mass drone attack on Sumy caused large fires and wounded at least one person, Sumy city military administration head Serhii Kryvosheienko said.

In Chernihiv Oblast, a 41-year-old man was wounded in a Geran drone strike on the Kozelets community, Head of the Regional Military Administration Viacheslav Chaus said. He added that Gerbera drones destroyed a hangar and farm equipment in the Kholmy community. In a border village in the Horodnia community, an FPV drone struck a yard, and a second FPV drone hit a firefighters' vehicle that had arrived at the scene. A house later caught fire. A critical infrastructure facility was also hit.

In Kharkiv Oblast, six people were wounded in strikes on Kharkiv and nine other settlements. The heaviest damage was reported in Izium, where 19 houses and four apartment blocks were damaged, head of the Regional Military Administration Oleh Syniehubov said.

East: Russian strikes destroy 30 stalls

In Donetsk Oblast, Russian forces killed two residents of Kramatorsk and wounded 18 people across the region, Head of the Regional Military Administration Vadym Filashkin said. In Sloviansk, round-the-clock strikes damaged critical infrastructure and destroyed 30 stalls at the Lisnyi market, Sloviansk City Military Administration Head Vadym Liakh said.

In Poltava Oblast, two industrial facilities were hit, causing fires, and drones also attacked another industrial facility in Myrhorod district, Head of the Regional Military Administration Vitalii Diakivnych said. No casualties were reported.

In Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Russian forces attacked four districts nearly 20 times from the evening of 16 August, wounding five people, Head of the Regional Military Administration Oleksandr Hanzha said. He added that houses and outbuildings caught fire in Pavlohrad and Nikopol district.

In Zaporizhzhia district, two people were killed and three wounded, Head of the Regional Military Administration Ivan Fedorov said. He also reported 1,217 strikes on 60 settlements across the oblast, including 20 air strikes, about 846 drone attacks, and 350 artillery strikes.

South: strike damages civilian vessel flying the flag of Togo

Russia struck facilities of Ukraine's state-owned Naftogaz Group 13 times over the past week, hitting several regions with drones and missiles, the company reported on 17 August. Gas extraction infrastructure was among the targets, and one asset was hit several times. Naftogaz said the strikes seriously damaged equipment and production capacity and cut part of its output. No employees were injured this time.

The strikes are part of a systematic Russian drone and missile campaign against Ukraine's oil and gas production, intensifying as winter approaches. Naftogaz has now counted 293 strikes on its facilities since the start of 2026.

Acting Naftogaz CEO Serhii Fedorenko has said the strikes are meant to inflict maximum damage on Ukraine's infrastructure ahead of the heating season. The company said Russian attacks destroyed 37 sites in its network during the first seven months of 2026, 32 Ukrnafta filling stations and five Ukrhazvydobuvannia complexes.

The strikes carry a human cost too: EP has reported 312 workers killed across the group since 2022. In what Naftogaz called its largest strike on gas production infrastructure, Russia fired 35 missiles and 60 drones at facilities in the Kharkiv and Poltava regions in October 2025.

Russia's long war on Ukraine's energy grid

Russia has bombed Ukraine's power and heating systems through every winter of its full-scale invasion. Each year the strikes have grown heavier. Then-Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said last winter's attacks damaged or destroyed roughly 80% of Ukraine's energy system. Across 2025, Russia hit energy sites more than 600 times, damaging all 15 of the country's thermal plants. The strikes have forced repeated nationwide blackouts and cut heat to homes in sub-zero cold.

That previous campaign failed to collapse the grid, so Moscow now eyes Ukraine's water systems as its next winter target. Heading into the coming winter, Ukraine received about three times fewer air-defense missiles in the first half of 2026 than a year earlier. Kyiv is answering with its own deep strikes on Russian refineries and military plants. For civilians, the pattern means another winter of cold homes, rationed power, and threatened water supplies.