A drone came down on a beach full of Russian holidaymakers, and the evidence points to Russia's own air defense bringing it there. On 3 August, drones attacked Krasnodar Krai, and one crashed onto a beach in Arkhipo-Osipovka near Gelendzhik, killing at least six people, three of them children, and injuring around 40, Krasnodar Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said.

Russian outlet Agentstvo and OSINT analysts assessed that the drone likely fell because of Russian air-defense fire rather than a direct hit, citing gunfire audible in footage before the drone dived and an abrupt change in its flight path.

The beach sits directly in front of the Rassvet resort, a facility of NPO Mashinostroyeniya, one of Russia's key missile-manufacturing enterprises.

The warning system did not sound

Survivors say they had no notice. Local residents and holidaymakers complained that no air-raid alert sounded at all, though warning systems are installed in the village, and the Russian channel Astra also noted that no alert was heard in the region during the attack, per the reports.

People on the beach were in the open, with little chance to take cover, even if they had been warned. The absence of a siren in a resort packed at the height of the summer season left sunbathers and swimmers with no warning that a drone was overhead and being fired at.

The target was a missile maker's resort

NPO Mashinostroyeniya develops cruise missiles for the Russian army, and its Rassvet recreation base was the apparent target roughly 300 meters from where the drone came down, the Supernova Telegram channel reported.

Ukraine strikes Russian military-industrial sites across the country, and a missile-development enterprise is a legitimate military target. What turned a strike near a defense plant into a mass-casualty event on a beach was, by the analysts' account, Russian air defense knocking the drone down over the crowd rather than away from it. Ukraine had not commented on the strike.

The dynamic is one Ukraine knows intimately in reverse

Russian air-defense missiles and the debris of intercepted drones regularly fall on Ukrainian cities, killing civilians, and Ukraine has long documented how interception over populated areas kills the people it is meant to protect.

Trump ‘disappointed’ with US attorney amid reports he’s considering removing her from her post

• Trump’s reflecting pool saga: a timeline

Donald Trump accused US attorney Jeanine Pirro of having “folded like an umbrella” amid reports that he was considering removing her from her post.

Trump criticized Pirro on Monday after she dropped vandalism charges against a former Olympian accused of damaging the recently renovated Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. Trump nominated Pirro to serve as interim US attorney for the District of Columbia last year, and the Senate later confirmed her in August.

Russia's biggest online retailer is trying to stop its own workers from filming air defenses. From 3 August, Wildberries has allowed warehouse employees to bring only button mobile phones without cameras to work, a decision taken after staff began filming drones and the aftermath of their strikes and spreading the material, Russian Telegram channels reported.

The ban is a reaction to Ukrainian strikes. On 31 July, employees received a message stating that photo and video recording during air-raid alerts at the warehouses supposedly poses a security threat, could reveal the location of air-defense forces, and violates Russian law, according to "Ostorozhno, novosti".

Wildberries said that after workers were allowed to bring smartphones onto warehouse grounds, cases of filming drones and their attacks, and sharing that footage, were recorded.

The camera ban follows a month of burning warehouses

The timing ties the ban directly to Ukraine's campaign. Ukrainian drones destroyed eight Wildberries warehouses in July, about 15.4% of the marketplace's total storage, killing one employee at its Elektrostal facility.

Workers inside those facilities filmed the strikes as they happened, and the footage spread across social media, documenting the fires and the damage in real time. The camera ban is Wildberries' answer to remove the phones that turned its own employees into witnesses.

The stated reason is security, the effect is silence

Wildberries framed the ban as protection. To "eliminate such risks," from 3 August, only button phones without cameras are allowed at logistics centers, the company said, adding that such devices let workers stay in touch with family while meeting security requirements.

The security rationale doubles as information control. Footage of burning warehouses is evidence of a campaign hurting a flagship Russian company, and by stripping cameras from the workforce, Wildberries removes the most direct source of that evidence. The move is a quiet admission of how much the strikes have landed: a company does not confiscate its workers' phone cameras over attacks that are not doing damage.

Ce sera une rencontre spéciale pour Amandine Pierre-Louis, nouvellement arrivée avec les Roses.

Exclusives

Can Ukrainian forces save Sloviansk and Kramatorsk?. Sloviansk and Kramatorsk are the last big free cities in Donetsk Oblast. Can Ukrainian forces save them from a creeping Russian advance?

Repeated Russian missile-targeting failures may themselves violate the laws of war. The authors of a new Ukrainian war-crimes framework say the error-or-method question may be the wrong one—and name the evidence that would settle it.

Russia is firing more missiles and drones than Ukraine can stop, and the gap is widening. Ukraine downed just one in twenty ballistic missiles in the last two big attacks. Patriots are rare, and the one workaround—striking the launchers—stays blocked.

Military

DeepState: At current pace, Russia won't capture all of Donetsk Oblast even by 2027. Russia recorded few territorial gains during its bloodiest month in 2026, making Moscow's goal of seizing the rest of Donetsk Oblast less likely.

Russia tows its own ships between bays to keep them from being finished off, Ukraine's navy says. Russia is shifting to jet-powered drones in its air attacks.

Belarus is forming its fourth airborne brigade 40 km from Ukraine, with a permanent base set for 2027. Minsk's Special Operations commander says the new 37th brigade is taking shape near Homel, with its permanent base by the Ukrainian frontier not ready until 2027.

Ukraine destroyed 12 fuel tanks at Russian export terminal. That's enough fuel to fill 1,000 rail cars. Ukraine's 413th "Raid" Regiment struck the Taman oil terminal in Krasnodar Krai on 30 July, setting a fire NASA satellites detected.

Ukraine's sea drone that never touched the shore struck two Russian radars in occupied Crimea. The uncrewed boat stayed offshore and released an FPV drone that finished the job, part of an operation Ukraine's spies ran in late July.

The most in any month this year: Russia fired 126 ballistic missiles at Ukraine in July. The count of Iskander-M, North Korean, and repurposed air-defense missiles topped every month since January, a monitoring channel tracking the launches found.

ISW: Russia's long push toward Sloviansk gains no ground as Ukraine counterattacks. Its assaults across northern Donetsk Oblast produced no confirmed advances in the newest DC-based think tank's war assessment, an offensive now grinding into its fifth month.

Intelligence and technology

French firm that beat NATO's tender on glide bombs is now teaching Ukraine's interceptor to see its target without GPS. Ukraine's "General Cherry" unit signed with French firm Alta Ares to integrate AI guidance into its BULLET anti-Shahed interceptor.

To catch Ukraine's cruise missiles, Russia is risking the scarce A-50 radar planes it has no way to rebuild. After losing some of its most valuable airborne radar aircraft and with sanctions hampering replacements, Russia is increasingly relying on the few A-50Us it still has.

International

Ukraine wants its office inside EU Parliament, mirroring bloc's representation already open in Kyiv. Parliamentary diplomacy amounts to one aim: keeping legislatures across Europe and the G7 mobilized behind Ukraine as the war and the accession process both grind on.

"We have no Churchill in Europe so far": Europe's top pro-Ukraine coalition may lose its two founders within year while Russia's attacks continue. With Starmer gone and Macron leaving next year, there is a rising fears of a leadership vacuum in Europe's pro-Ukraine coalition.

Humanitarian and social impact

He was missing child on Ukraine's own registry. Monitors say they've now found him wearing Russian "Z" and posing with its flag. Oleksandr Mustiatse, a Ukrainian boy taken under occupation in Kherson Oblast and listed as missing, has been identified as a soldier in the Russian army, Save Ukraine says.

Political and legal developments

The Guardian: French theme-park company kept working with sanctioned Russian oligarch year after EU blacklisted him, documents show. New records show Puy du Fou continued working with its Russian oligarch partner after he was sanctioned in 2014, as it now pursues a £600 million UK expansion.

New developments

A Russian warehouse built to hold 120 million items is burning east of Moscow region. Russia's largest online retailer confirmed the fire, evacuated staff, and reported no casualties, while the regional governor said emergency crews were working at the scene.

Read our earlier daily review

Coalition of 25 states ask the US Court of International Trade to halt tariffs, calling them unlawful

• Trump imposes fresh tariffs on dozens of trading partners

A coalition of 25 US states sued the Trump administration on Monday over new tariffs pegged at 10% to 12.5% on goods from 60 trading partners, calling them a pretext for replacing import taxes struck down by the supreme court in February.

The states are asking the US Court of International Trade to halt the tariffs, declare them unlawful and order refunds of duties that have already been paid.

A doomed Russian tank assault on 22 July along the southern approaches to the twin cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the last big free cities in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, was ultimately a sideshow. The Russians’ main effort, in their long and bloody campaign to capture all of Donetsk, is playing out in the north, not the south. 

The front northeast of Sloviansk “has been the most successful for the Russian army throughout 2026,” mapper Clément Molin noted. 

The bad news for Ukraine is that its forces in the area—parts of six brigades including the 53rd, 54th and 63rd Mechanized Brigades and the 81st Air Mobile Brigade and the 117th and 120th Territorial Defense Brigades—are “insufficient,” according to Molin. 

Worse, relentless Russian bombardment of the roads and paths leading to and through Sloviansk means the Ukrainians may struggle to sustain any additional brigades in the area. Assuming there are any free brigades, of course.

The bombardment is intensifying. On 31 July, a Russian warplane struck the Sloviansk Chemical Plant, deep inside the city, with a 1,500-kg KAB-1500 precision glide bomb. “The city has come under increasingly heavy attacks in recent days,” AMK Mapping noted.

But the same difficult terrain, crisscrossed by the Donets Canal and dense Ukrainian fortifications, complicates Russian attacks. There are few protected approaches toward Sloviansk from the Russians’ main bases in the ruins of Siversk, 31 km to the east. And one big town town stands between the Russians and the free city: Mykolaivka.

And the Ukrainians are bombarding Russian supply lines with the same intensity that the Russians are bombarding Ukrainian supply line. It’s for those reasons that Molin expects the Russians to eventually lay siege to Sloviansk and neighboring Kramatorsk from the northeast.

But not anytime soon. “It is highly unlikely that the battle for Sloviansk will begin this year, not least because the fighting in Mykolaivka is likely to be prolonged,” Molin predicted.

Crawling advance

The slow pace of the Russian advance belies the worsening conditions in Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. Out of a combined pre-war population of around 440,000, just 90,000 people remain in the twin cities. The other 350,000 have fled.  

As the cities slowly empty, all eyes turn to the tiny village of Rai-Oleksandrivka, 14 km east of Sloviansk. “This small village, seemingly insignificant at first glance, is actually of strategic importance, as the surrounding high ground overlooks the city of Sloviansk,” Molin explained. 

“In recent weeks, Russian forces have been consolidating their hold on the village and the surrounding heights, even though Ukrainian troops still maintain positions in many areas,” Molin wrote. 

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Russia took the cages off its newest tanks. The new Arena-M shield bought them a few minutes.

Russian forces are already relentlessly bombarding Ukrainian supply lines in the area with air-launched glide bombs. As Russian ground forces advance closer to Sloviansk and consolidate along key heights such as those around Rai-Oleksandrivka, they can begin aiming more tube artillery at the same supply lines, compounding the Ukrainians’ logistical problems. 

The coming battle is neither won nor lost yet. But time is running out for Ukrainian forces to reset the battlefield in their favor. 

If the Ukrainian command can prioritize the front, and push enough supplies to front-line positions, it might yet save Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. As Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky completes his reshuffle of key civilian and military leaders and a new command, that command’s attention “must shift to the Donbas,” Molin stressed.

Briana Whatley sues Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback for unpaid scholarship from company he founded

A far-right Republican candidate in Florida’s governor’s race has been accused of stiffing a high school debate champion over the better part of $11,000 in scholarship money she won from a company he founded.

Student Briana Whatley landed the awards as regional and national champion of Incubate Debate, a league-style competition set up by the candidate, James Fishback, to encourage youth to engage in political discourse.

Ces nouvelles surtaxes, de 10 % ou de 12,5 % selon les pays, sont entrées en vigueur le 24 juillet dernier.

Le Canadien de 27 ans devrait affronter mardi l'Américain Zachary Svajda, au premier tour.

Republican congressman was investigated for untoward and inappropriate advances toward two female staffers

The US House of Representatives ethics committee on Monday recommended that Chuck Edwards, a Republican congressman, face censure after determining he “fostered a hostile work environment and engaged in sexual harassment” by giving gifts and lavishing attention on two young female staffers.

The bipartisan panel began investigating the second-term North Carolina congressman earlier this year, after receiving complaints about his conduct. In their report, they determined Edwards broke House rules by singling out the two unidentified aides for special treatment that made them uncomfortable and harmed relations with other employees.

• Israeli striker scored, then gestured at CF Montréal fans

• Revolution ‘strongly condemn’ the chants

The New England Revolution have denounced chants they deemed “antisemitic” and “discriminatory” from CF Montréal fans during Saturday’s MLS matchup between the sides in Quebec. The specific chants were directed towards New England’s Israeli striker Dor Turgeman, with broadcast microphones capturing fans chanting “free Palestine” shortly before he scored a goal.

MLS on Monday confirmed it was “aware of reported antisemitic and discriminatory language directed at a New England Revolution player” and that the matter is under investigation.

Il sera le premier Canadien à participer à une mission commerciale vers la Station spatiale internationale.