Exclusives

Europe deepens trade with India while Western parts keep reaching Russia’s weapons. Brussels is drafting its largest-ever corporate blacklist over the war—and expanding trade with the country those parts pass through.

Russia can rebuild Wildberries warehouses more easily than it can replace warehouse workers. The warehouses are replaceable—but at a record 2.1% unemployment, the spooked workers who staff them are not.

Precision missiles hit the coordinates. Investigators ask who was still standing there. A new framework names the pattern in four Russian strikes—and aims at Russia’s standard legal defense.

Europe wants Ukraine’s railway split. The war wants it whole. Ukraine has two years to split its railway on the EU model—and no intention of giving up the wartime control that model is built to remove.

Greece blocked a gas ban, France and Italy softened an entry ban—now Brussels tries 1,600 companies helping Russia’s war. Bloomberg sources says the proposed list covers firms feeding Russia's military industry, and the work stayed out of public view.

Military

Ukraine orders nationwide bomb shelter inspection as more head underground amid rising ballistic missile threat. Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi ordered authorities to inspect every civilian shelter and ensure people can enter as soon as a ballistic missile threat is known.

"There is no sky that is 100% safe": Poland to consider sending more Patriot missiles to Ukraine after Russian missile crashes on its territory. The pledge comes after a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile flew nearly 100 kilometers into Poland during Moscow's latest mass attack on Ukraine, prompting Warsaw to review additional military support.

Warsaw confirms a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile overshot Ukraine and hit a field in Poland. The Kh-101 flew across Ukraine and traveled about 95 km inside a NATO member before it fell.

Russia builds sea drones to hunt Ukraine, Ukraine just torched the base where they sit in occupied Crimea. Operators struck the hangars of a Russian naval uncrewed-boat base at Snizhne, near Yevpatoriia, setting off a large blast. Other targets: radars, a launcher, a Shahed base.

Russia parked a 5,000-kilometer jamming station in Crimea, Ukraine parked a drone on top of it. The hit came near Cape Fiolent overnight, another Russian high-value asset lost on a peninsula Ukraine keeps working to cut off.

Ukraine preparing "asymmetric" response to Russia's ballistic missile campaign, Zelenskyy says. Zelenskyy says Ukraine has approved technological and asymmetric measures to counter Russia's growing use of ballistic missiles, while seeking more air defense interceptors from European partners.

Intelligence and technology

This Ukrainian 344-kg armored capsule keeps wounded soldier in constant contact with operator, with emergency exit he controls himself. Ukraine's Robotized Complexes unveiled the Murakha CaseEvak, a ground robot with an armored medical capsule that remotely evacuates wounded soldiers from zones where enemy drones hunt rescuers.

Ukraine loses another F-16 to onboard emergency. Ukraine lost an F-16 on 29 July during a mission to intercept Russian air targets.

Ukraine's interceptors shot down Russian spy drone at 6,400 meters. It's thousand meters above Everest's base camp. Ukrainian National Guard pilots intercepted a Russian ZALA Z-20 reconnaissance drone at one of the highest altitudes at which Ukraine has downed an enemy drone.

Ukraine's Defense Forces sent FP-1 drones to Ryazan, a refinery and a warehouse burned. Open-source analysts worked through eyewitness frames to place the blaze at the complex the marketplace calls Ryazan: Tyushevskaya. Later in the morning, the drones reached a Perm refinery 1,500 km from Ukraine.

International

EU releases another €3.47 billion for Ukraine's "urgent needs", drones, missiles, air defense, and Gripen jets. The latest EU defense tranche will fund drones, missiles, air defense, and Gripen fighter jets, with Brussels pledging additional military support for Ukraine in the coming weeks.

The Belarusian tunnel to the EU was almost done. Then Lithuania drilled a hole in exactly the wrong place, for the diggers. Polish tunnel-detection equipment narrowed down the location, and a single bore confirmed a passage running from Belarusian soil.

US Senate took first step toward Graham sanctions bill on Russia. It gives Trump power to impose 500% tariffs on Russian oil. The US Senate voted 86-12 to advance the Russia sanctions bill renamed for the late Senator Lindsey Graham, hours after his funeral.

Ukraine hits 201 Russian shadow fleet ships in three weeks. Commander says Crimea's supply route is now blocked indefinitely. The campaign has run alongside strikes on Crimea's power grid and air defenses, part of a broader effort to make holding the peninsula costlier by the week.

Humanitarian and social impact

Russia likely used North Korean missile in strike that killed Ukrainian family. Reuters and President Zelenskyy say preliminary evidence points to a North Korean ballistic missile in the strike that killed five members of the Voronov family during Russia's latest mass attack.

Two children pulled from the rubble alive, three did not survive, one village near Kryvyi Rih after Russian missile attack. Last night, Russian missiles killed eight Ukrainians and injured dozens.

Ukrainian drones destroyed nearly 15.4% of Russian retail giant's storage space in July. Ukrainian drones destroyed eight Wildberries warehouses in July, which is about 860,000 square meters.

Russian soldiers raped Ukrainian woman and shot her in back when she tried to escape in Bucha. Ukraine has now put their names on record. Ukrainian police charged two Russian soldiers from the 76th Air Assault Division.

This Ukrainian border town has served as Russia's testing ground for new weapons of terror since 2023. Then, it turns them on rest of Ukraine.

Russia is bombing Kostiantynivka to rubble while pushing its infantry into it on foot. Artillery and guided glide bombs hit the city as small Russian groups try to dig into whatever buildings they can reach.

Political and legal developments

62 of the 140 foreign parts in this Russian missile were American. Ukraine wants that gap closed. An Iskander missile Russia fired at Kyiv Oblast on 10 July held more than 140 foreign components, Ukraine's sanctions chief says, most made recently.

Investigators descend on Ukraine's recruitment offices in a coordinated nationwide operation. The operation, run with the army's General Staff, reached most regions on 30 July and is expected to produce named suspects.

Ukraine's army has some brigades starved of soldiers and others overstaffed. New commander is now auditing why. Ukraine's General Staff has launched a check on how its brigades, regiments, and corps are manned.

Read our previous daily review here.

Exclusives

Precision missiles hit the coordinates. Investigators ask who was still standing there. A new framework names the pattern in four Russian strikes—and aims at Russia's standard legal defense.

Europe wants Ukraine's railway split. The war wants it whole. Ukraine has two years to split its railway on the EU model—and no intention of giving up the wartime control that model is built to remove.

Russia and Ukraine justify their strikes the same way. Only one justification holds up. Ukraine is now hitting Russia's power grid, ports, shipping and warehouses — the same categories Russia hits in Ukraine. Both call the targets military. The facts decide who is right.

Ukraine's newest mine-clearing vehicle is a 1960s-design APC with nobody inside. Allies have shipped Ukraine more than 1,700 M113s. Khartia's engineers just showed what one looks like with nobody inside.

A couple beaten for being Ukrainian—the latest case in Poland's rising anti-Ukrainian violence. The video, filmed by a Ukrainian living nearby, spread online, and police detained two suspects the next day.

How tight is Russia's fuel crisis? Altai now caps each car at one fill a day. Drivers had gamed the midnight reset to take two rations. This week, the Siberian republic shut the window.

Russia's strikes stopped Ukraine's grain ships. Its farmers are the ones paying. World wheat price is climbing on the supply scare—yet the grain stuck in Ukraine's ports fetches less by the week.

Military

Ukrainian drones destroyed nearly 15.4% of Russian retail giant's storage space in July. Ukrainian drones destroyed eight Wildberries warehouses in July, which is about 860,000 square meters.

Ukraine loses another F-16 to onboard emergency. Ukraine lost an F-16 on 29 July during a mission to intercept Russian air targets.

Ukraine's army has some brigades starved of soldiers and others overstaffed. New commander is now auditing why. Ukraine's General Staff has launched a check on how its brigades, regiments, and corps are manned.

Russia is bombing Kostiantynivka to rubble while pushing its infantry into it on foot. Artillery and guided glide bombs hit the city as small Russian groups try to dig into whatever buildings they can reach.

Ukraine's Defense Forces sent FP-1 drones to Ryazan—a refinery and a warehouse burned. Open-source analysts worked through eyewitness frames to place the blaze at the complex the marketplace calls Ryazan: Tyushevskaya. Later in the morning, the drones reached a Perm refinery 1,500 km from Ukraine.

Ukraine's interceptors shot down Russian spy drone at 6,400 meters. It's thousand meters above Everest's base camp. Ukrainian National Guard pilots intercepted a Russian ZALA Z-20 reconnaissance drone at one of the highest altitudes at which Ukraine has downed an enemy drone.

Ukraine hits 201 Russian shadow fleet ships in three weeks. Commander says Crimea's supply route is now blocked indefinitely. The campaign has run alongside strikes on Crimea's power grid and air defenses, part of a broader effort to make holding the peninsula costlier by the week.

Intelligence and technology

This Ukrainian 344-kg armored capsule keeps wounded soldier in constant contact with operator, with emergency exit he controls himself. Ukraine's Robotized Complexes unveiled the Murakha CaseEvak, a ground robot with an armored medical capsule that remotely evacuates wounded soldiers from zones where enemy drones hunt rescuers.

This Ukrainian border town has served as Russia's testing ground for new weapons of terror since 2023. Then, it turns them on rest of Ukraine.

Humanitarian and social impact

Russian soldiers raped Ukrainian woman and shot her in back when she tried to escape in Bucha. Ukraine has now put their names on record. Ukrainian police charged two Russian soldiers from the 76th Air Assault Division.

Political and legal developments

Greece blocked a gas ban, France and Italy softened an entry ban—now Brussels tries 1,600 companies helping Russia's war. Bloomberg sources says the proposed list covers firms feeding Russia's military industry, and the work stayed out of public view.

US Senate took first step toward Graham sanctions bill on Russia. It gives Trump power to impose 500% tariffs on Russian oil. The US Senate voted 86-12 to advance the Russia sanctions bill renamed for the late Senator Lindsey Graham, hours after his funeral.

New developments

The Belarusian tunnel to the EU was almost done. Then Lithuania drilled a hole in exactly the wrong place—for the diggers. Polish tunnel-detection equipment narrowed down the location, and a single bore confirmed a passage running from Belarusian soil.

Read our earlier daily review here.

Exclusives

Ukraine takes a Cold War-era American APC—and turns it into mine-blasting robot. Allies have shipped Ukraine more than 1,700 M113s. Khartia's engineers just showed what one looks like with nobody inside.

A couple beaten for being Ukrainian—the latest case in Poland's rising anti-Ukrainian violence. The video, filmed by a Ukrainian living nearby, spread online, and police detained two suspects the next day.

How tight is Russia's fuel crisis? Altai now caps each car at one fill a day. Drivers had gamed the midnight reset to take two rations. This week, the Siberian republic shut the window.

Russia's strikes stopped Ukraine's grain ships. Its farmers are the ones paying. World wheat price is climbing on the supply scare—yet the grain stuck in Ukraine's ports fetches less by the week.

Russia's ship strikes stall Ukraine's grain corridor. The damage is moving inland. Not one ship passed through the corridor on 22 July, at the height of harvest. The choke is now reaching Ukraine's farmers and its railways.

Ukraine's strikes left Crimea's prepaid fuel coupons worthless—and the biggest chain won't refund them. It is invoking a 14-day return law a Russian lawyer says doesn't apply—he calls it unjust enrichment.

Military

After Ukraine's Caspian strike, Iran warns of retaliation. Ukraine faces that threat without defenses its allies gave Israel. Monitoring channels raised the prospect of a ballistic strike, but Ukrainian officials say no such intent is confirmed.

A Siberian fuel plant 2,000 km from the war zone goes offline—drones struck it days ago. The refinery near Tyumen normally turns out roughly half a million tons of gasoline and millions of tons of diesel a year — for now it makes neither, per Reuters sources.

Ukraine went for Russia's "AliExpress" again—its next-door warehouse was ablaze. The Koledino 3PL depot, which serves Fix Price, Perekrestok and Detsky Mir, burned while Wildberries said its hub kept running.

Intelligence and technology

New ground launcher means Russia no longer needs rare drone to fire its Banderol missile. Photos show a Russian ground launcher for the S8000 Banderol cruise missile, previously fired only from rare Orion drones.

West of Ukraine is still out of reach of Russia's guided drones for reason. What is one thing that would close this gap?. Russia cannot yet steer guided Shaheds against Lviv and Volyn because its control network is out of range, but relays in Belarus would extend the threat west, Serhii Beskrestnov says.

Ukraine and NATO are funding joint teams to turn battlefield prototypes into weapons — each pairing Ukrainian firm with allied one. Brave1 and NATO began accepting applications for UNITE - Brave NATO, a joint grant program to scale drone and air-defense technology.

International

Russia increases ballistic missile strikes: Zelenskyy meets second Patriot interceptor maker within week in Washington to push back. On a Washington visit for Lindsey Graham's funeral, Zelenskyy met Lockheed Martin on joint weapons production and Trump at the White House, as the Senate moved a Russia sanctions bill renamed for Graham.

Lithuania proposes to implement special test for Russian and Belarusian artists and academics who enter state. Those who don't pass will be banned. Lithuania's Foreign Ministry proposed barring Russian and Belarusian cultural, scientific, and sports figures who performed in occupied Ukraine or backed the war from entering the country.

Romania hits cost trap Ukraine spent years escaping: $400,000 missiles against $20,000 drones. Romania spent about €1.5 million downing three Russian drones over three days, mostly on F-16 missiles.

Humanitarian and social impact

Plant can't mine because it can't ship: Russia's attacks on merchant vessels idle 4,480 workers at Ukrainian iron ore giant. Pivdennyi GZK, one of Ukraine's largest iron ore producers, is suspending mining because Russian strikes on merchant ships have effectively halted shipping to Black Sea ports.

Political and legal developments

Kyiv police detain journalist investigating corruption over draft violation, which his newsroom says doesn't exist. He was targeted the same way in 2024.

New developments

Behind a blue check, someone spoke for Ukraine's commander—then X shut the whole operation out. For days, statements attributed to Ukraine's newly appointed commander circulated from a profile he had never controlled.

Read our earlier daily review here.

Exclusives

Russia's ship strikes stall Ukraine's grain corridor. The damage is moving inland. Not one ship passed through the corridor on 22 July, at the height of harvest. The choke is now reaching Ukraine's farmers and its railways.

Ukraine's strikes left Crimea's prepaid fuel coupons worthless—and the biggest chain won't refund them. It is invoking a 14-day return law, a Russian lawyer says doesn't apply—he calls it unjust enrichment.

Military

Oil sites 1,300 km east, a port terminal near the front—Russia's deep rear had one loud night. The strikes ran from about 250 kilometers behind the front line to targets some 1,300 kilometers inside Russia, in the Udmurt Republic — one of the country's farthest interior regions.

Russia spent a fortune on this air-defense system—watch a drone undo it in seconds. New footage shows the moment a Ukrainian strike drone reaches a parked S-400 launcher and a radar in occupied Crimea.

Intelligence and technology

Look at this huge airport fire truck that Ukraine's Emergency Service just received from Luxembourg. Ukraine's State Emergency Service received a Rosenbauer Panther 8×8 airport firefighting vehicle, donated with support from Luxembourg's Defense Ministry and partner organizations.

Ukraine's new remote turret trades heavy machine gun for twin AK-74s and relies on Starlink when signal drops. Ukraine's Roboneers codified the "ShaBlya K-2," a remote-controlled turret pairing two AK-74 rifles in one mount to double fire density for covering infantry at close range.

Saving Western aid: Ukraine's new armored recovery tractor can haul 30-ton MRAP off battlefield. Ukraine codified the INGUAR-4, a 6×6 armored recovery vehicle that hauls damaged MRAPs up to 30 tons off the battlefield faster and cheaper than tracked recovery vehicles.

Moscow struggles to stockpile all the missiles it needs—so it fires them straight off the line, Ukraine says. Ukraine's Air Force reads the factory stamps on downed rockets as a sign the Kremlin has lost its cushion of stockpiled firepower.

Political and legal developments

Euractiv: Italy and Greece win a fur pass for Russia inside the EU's newest sanctions round. The two nations buy more Russian sable than anyone else in the bloc, and they lobbied to keep the pelts flowing while finished coats stay off-limits.

Caught before the strike—the student mapping Poltava's grid for Russian missiles. Ukrainian counterintelligence says it exposed her in advance, seizing the devices she used to work for the enemy.

Read our earlier daily review

Exclusives

EU sanctions Georgia’s only oil refinery over processing Russian crude. Company says it will switch suppliers. Brussels has imposed sanctions on Georgia's only oil refinery for processing Russian crude, expanding efforts to curb Moscow's energy revenues while giving the company six months before the restrictions take effect.

A Cold War submarine hunter is Ukraine’s newest Shahed killer. Ukraine's tiny interceptor drones need a little help getting into the air. An old naval helicopter is just the thing.

Military

Ukraine draws up a new target list for its long-range drones—and vows to keep firing. The updated priorities came out of a meeting of Kyiv's top commanders, who cleared the way for a campaign that has already run more than a thousand strikes into Russia this year.

Russia is massing for Dobropillia again using quad bikes and motorcycles, Ukraine’s National Guard says. Defenders of Ukraine's Pokrovsk sector report the enemy clearing mines and flying drones to move small storming groups toward the town north of the ruins of Pokrovsk.

As of 27 JUL 2026, the approximate losses of weapons and military equipment of the Russian Armed Forces from the beginning of the invasion to the present day:

• Personnel: 1440580 (+1590)
• Tanks: 12225 (+8)
• APV: 25032 (+13)
• Artillery systems: 46831 (+37)
• MLRS: 1969
• Anti-aircraft systems: 1519
• Aircraft: 439
• Helicopters: 354
• UAV: 429555 (+1269)
• Cruise missiles : 4950 (+6)
• Warships/boats: 34
• Submarines: 2
• Vehicles and fuel tanks: 126302 (+491)

Intelligence and technology

Russia can’t fill its own ranks—so it asks North Korea for 30,000 more soldiers and new missile launchers, Ukraine says. Ukrainian intelligence points to reception sites readied in Voronezh Oblast since June, President Zelenskyy said.

Russia’s destroyed vehicles are being melted into buggies that save Ukrainian lives under drone fire. Two Ukrainian army corps received 10 new "Predator" evacuation buggies, a volunteer-built vehicle partly made from aluminum salvaged from destroyed Russian equipment.

International

Poland promised a 700-kilometer shield against Russia—two years on, satellites show four short fortified zones. Warsaw has spent since October 2024 on the project, yet only about 10 kilometers of actual linear fortifications have gone up. The situation in the Baltic States is even worse, a French analyst says.

Romania knocks a third Russian drone from its sky in 72 hours. The Sunday intercept happened over the sea near the Danube delta, as Bucharest prepared to lodge a protest with Moscow.

Humanitarian and social impact

Russia kills a 9-year-old girl in a Chernihiv supermarket, bombs Zaporizhzhia. Two people died at the supermarket and a 46-year-old man was killed by guided bombs hundreds of kilometers south, in daytime attacks on two Ukrainian cities.

Russia destroys a Home Depot-style megastore in Kryvyi Rih—the third one it has erased in the same region since 2024. Shahed drones set the Epicenter hypermarket ablaze on 26 July, and firefighters battled a blaze covering more than 16,000 square meters.

Russia hit Palau-flagged grain ship twice as it left port for Greece. Two sailors are missing. Eight crew members were rescued.

New developments

Works Ukraine evacuated for safekeeping are caught not by Russian shelling but by Polish ownership claim in court. Heirs of Polish prince Andrzej Lubomirski are suing to keep two paintings from going home.

Read our earlier daily review here.

Exclusives

A Cold War submarine hunter is Ukraine’s newest Shahed killer. Ukraine's tiny interceptor drones need a little help getting into the air. An old naval helicopter is just the thing.

Russia took the cages off its newest tanks. The new Arena-M shield bought them a few minutes.. The Russians' new Arena-M systems shoots tiny projectiles at incoming enemy drones. But it didn't save a rare Russian tank assault this week.

Washington taxes Russian goods at the same rate as Norway’s. It is a blanket forced-labor measure, not a Russia policy—and the sanctions that would hurt Moscow are still stuck in Congress.

Germany’s Zeitenwende stops at the Rosatom deal in Lingen. A licensed nuclear deal and a secret Baku channel surfaced in the same month. They are not connected. That is what should worry Berlin.

Russia just copied Ukraine’s cleverest drone hunter. A $500,000 missile is a costly way of taking down a $50,000 attack drone. So the Russians are arming old planes with cheap interceptor drones.

Military

Ukrainian unit downs 696 Russian drones in 19 days without firing shot at them. The Molniya kills matter more than their number suggests, because they are the hard ones.

"Very good results" – Wave of Ukrainian strikes across Russia and Caspian Sea overnight target warships, air defenses, logistics. Ukrainian officials say long-range drones targeted Russian military infrastructure across several regions, including a missile boat, S-400 components, drone command posts, and logistics facilities.

Romanian F-16 shoots down second drone in 2 days after another incursion over airspace near Ukraine. Romania intercepted and destroyed a second drone near the Ukrainian border, continuing a new policy of shooting down unauthorized aircraft entering its airspace.

Poland offers to build Patriot air-defense missiles with the US and Ukraine – on its own soil. The proposal comes as Ukraine seeks more Patriot interceptors to defend against increasingly frequent Russian ballistic missile attacks.

ATESH partisans report Ukrainian strike on Russian military fuel-tanker lot in occupied Luhansk. The partisan movement ATESH says a Ukrainian strike hit five Russian military fuel trucks in occupied Luhansk before they could be sent to support a Russian brigade operating in the Donetsk direction.

From escorting to firing: Romania changes how it meets Russia's wandering drones. The F-16 fighter downed the intruder near a village northeast of Bucharest. That same barrage threw Shahed and other drones plus five missiles at Ukraine, with border districts across from Romania among the targets.

Russia kills at least 10 in rare daytime ballistic strike on Kyiv defense industry event, as fears grow of larger attack to come. The attack injured around 100 people, damaged 27 homes and 44 vehicles in Bucha district, and came amid a broader wave of Russian drone and missile attacks across Ukraine.

"From Simferopol to St. Petersburg"—Ukraine's drone commander sums up one night of fire at Russia's online giant. Same retailer, the fourth assault in a week, Ukraine has a clear new favorite target. The Russian retailer's logistics network keeps ending up on fire.

One plant makes the seats that save Russian pilots—Ukraine's Flamingo missile torched it 1,200 km from home. The Avitek factory is the country's sole serial producer of escape seats for every fighter and attack aircraft in the fleet.

Zelenskyy meets team from Raytheon, US company that builds Patriots, and says Ukraine is now negotiating joint interceptor production. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met Raytheon executives in Kyiv.

Intelligence and technology

Ukraine arrests alleged Russian agent in Dnipro, accused of activating 1,000+ Starlink communications terminals to support Russian forces. The SBU says a suspect recruited by Russian intelligence used fake identities to activate more than 1,000 Starlink satellite terminals before authorities blocked the network.

Ukraine arrests two alleged Russian agents in Kyiv accused of activating Starlink terminals to support Russian missile and drone strikes. According to the SBU, the suspects registered dozens of Starlink terminals that Russian intelligence planned to use for missile and drone attacks and to detect Ukraine's electronic warfare defenses.

Intelligence: Russia's civil aviation deteriorates under sanctions, forcing it to dismantle even new aircraft to obtain spare parts.

International

Chosen from 252 officers of nearly 50 countries: Ukrainian lieutenant colonel took Best International Student prize at UK Defense Academy.

Italy called Ukraine's fired defense minister the day after his dismissal, with job offer. Italy's Defense Minister Guido Crosetto has said he offered former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov a position as his adviser.

Ready to share its combat lessons: Ukraine's acting defense minister and UK's new one, both appointed week ago, just spoke for first time. The main theme was the sky, and the specific asks were concrete.

Two Russians insist they were in Angola for cultural activity. Prosecutors find they tried to steer election and fuel deadly riots. Both have denied the charges.

EU sanctions Georgia's only oil refinery over processing Russian crude. Company says it will switch suppliers. Brussels has imposed sanctions on Georgia's only oil refinery for processing Russian crude, expanding efforts to curb Moscow's energy revenues while giving the company six months before the restrictions take effect.

EU adopts largest sanctions package on Russia: 218 names and 100+ banks and crypto platforms among those on the list. Banks, refineries, drone parts, crypto exchanges: the bloc's 21st sanctions package reaches further into Russia's economy than any round before it.

Ireland's PM brings $146 million aid package to Kyiv. He also shares findings on Russian-owned alumina plant in Ireland. Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin announced €125 million in aid on a Kyiv visit, while saying an investigation found no definitive proof a Russian-owned Limerick plant supplied Russia's war machine.

Humanitarian and social impact

Why do Ukraine's demining efforts matter beyond its borders? New study searches for answers.

Political and legal developments

Ukraine detains organizer of defense industry event struck by Russian missile that killed 10, charged with negligence. Investigators are examining whether security failures contributed to the scale of the tragedy on 24 July, while emphasizing that Russia bears responsibility for the attack.

Read our previous daily review here.

Exclusives

Russia took the cages off its newest tanks. The new Arena-M shield bought them a few minutes.. The Russians' new Arena-M systems shoots tiny projectiles at incoming enemy drones. But it didn't save a rare Russian tank assault this week.

Washington taxes Russian goods at the same rate as Norway’s. It is a blanket forced-labor measure, not a Russia policy—and the sanctions that would hurt Moscow are still stuck in Congress.

Germany’s Zeitenwende stops at the Rosatom deal in Lingen. A licensed nuclear deal and a secret Baku channel surfaced in the same month. They are not connected. That is what should worry Berlin.

Russia just copied Ukraine’s cleverest drone hunter. A $500,000 missile is a costly way of taking down a $50,000 attack drone. So the Russians are arming old planes with cheap interceptor drones.

Ukraine’s defense minister explained how the country buys weapons—after he was sacked. A sacked minister spent 90 minutes explaining how Ukraine buys shells. He told more than the ministry had published in six months.

Russia will read shops’ cash registers to police food prices it can’t tame. Unable to bring down food prices, Russia is building a system to watch them instead.

Military

Poland offers to build Patriot air-defense missiles with the US and Ukraine, on its own soil The proposal comes as Ukraine seeks more Patriot interceptors to defend against increasingly frequent Russian ballistic missile attacks.

ATESH partisans report Ukrainian strike on Russian military fuel-tanker lot in occupied Luhansk The partisan movement ATESH says a Ukrainian strike hit five Russian military fuel trucks in occupied Luhansk before they could be sent to support a Russian brigade operating in the Donetsk direction.

From escorting to firing: Romania changes how it meets Russia's wandering drones The F-16 fighter downed the intruder near a village northeast of Bucharest. That same barrage threw Shahed and other drones plus five missiles at Ukraine, with border districts across from Romania among the targets.

Russia kills at least 10 in rare daytime ballistic strike on Kyiv defense industry event, as fears grow of larger attack to come The attack injured around 100 people, damaged 27 homes and 44 vehicles in Bucha district, and came amid a broader wave of Russian drone and missile attacks across Ukraine.

"From Simferopol to St. Petersburg": Ukraine's drone commander sums up one night of fire at Russia's online giant Same retailer, the fourth assault in a week. Ukraine has a clear new favorite target, and the Russian retailer's logistics network keeps ending up on fire.

One plant makes the seats that save Russian pilots. Ukraine's Flamingo missile torched it 1,200 km from home The Avitek factory is the country's sole serial producer of escape seats for every fighter and attack aircraft in the fleet.

Intelligence and technology

Intelligence: Russia's civil aviation deteriorates under sanctions, forcing it to dismantle even new aircraft to obtain spare parts

International

EU adopts largest sanctions package on Russia: 218 names and 100+ banks and crypto platforms among those on the list Banks, refineries, drone parts, crypto exchanges: the bloc's 21st sanctions package reaches further into Russia's economy than any round before it.

Zelenskyy meets team from Raytheon, US company that builds Patriots, and says Ukraine is now negotiating joint interceptor production President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met Raytheon executives in Kyiv.

Ireland's PM brings $146 million aid package to Kyiv. He also shares findings on Russian-owned alumina plant in Ireland Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin announced €125 million in aid on a Kyiv visit, while saying an investigation found no definitive proof a Russian-owned Limerick plant supplied Russia's war machine.

Political and legal developments

Ukraine arrests two alleged Russian agents in Kyiv accused of activating Starlink terminals to support Russian missile and drone strikes According to the SBU, the suspects registered dozens of Starlink terminals that Russian intelligence planned to use for missile and drone attacks and to detect Ukraine's electronic warfare defenses.

Read our previous daily review here.

Exclusives

Russia just copied Ukraine's cleverest drone hunter. A $500,000 missile is a costly way of taking down a $50,000 attack drone. So the Russians are arming old planes with cheap interceptor drones.

Ukraine's defense minister explained how the country buys weapons—after he was sacked. A sacked minister spent 90 minutes explaining how Ukraine buys shells. He told more than the ministry had published in six months.

Russia will read shops' cash registers to police food prices it can't tame. Unable to bring down food prices, Russia is building a system to watch them instead.

Crimea's political prisoners lost their lifeline—because keeping it open would have put more people in prison. The Crimean Solidarity movement backed families of the detained in the occupied peninsula, arranged legal defense, and circulated information that fell outside the official Russian narrative.

Team news

First order to Ukraine's new commanders: modernize force while holding it. Zelenskyy said Skybiuk will head the General Staff under new army chief Drapatyi.

Military

Two Russian oil sites burning north of Kazakhstan—Ukraine hit both in the dark. The twin strikes reached about 800 and more than 1,300 kilometers into Russia, hitting Ulyanovsk and Bashkortostan facilities.

ISW: Russia has taken just 81 km² of Ukraine this year—while claiming 2,226. The false picture is not just propaganda for the public but material that appears to reach the desk of Russia's leader, the think tank says.

Intelligence and technology

Ukraine's newest frontline motorcycle drives over anti-vehicle mines and works as power station. Ukraine codified the MUL.E, its first all-wheel-drive electric military motorcycle, whose detachable generator can charge FPV drones and power a whole unit in the field.

For first time, Russia merged two separate drone types onto one Mesh network. Ukraine already has answer. Russia has linked its Molniya drones to Gerbera relay drones over a MESH network for the first time, previously incompatible, the presidential adviser said.

Two companies that actually build Patriots describe Ukrainian production as "just started," while Russia is firing ballistic missiles every night. Two weeks after Trump promised Ukraine a Patriot license, Lockheed Martin and RTX say they are only in early talks and awaiting US government guidance.

Russia's Su-57 newest stealth fighter crashes near Moscow—and the suspects are Russian air defenders. A Russian military blogger pointed at a mobile air-defense group guarding the capital, though no official confirmed the cause.

France hasn't finalized terms or funding for the 16 Rafale jets promised to Kyiv. What a Paris summit unveiled two weeks ago remains, in the manufacturer's own words, a stated intention rather than a purchase contract.

International

"Putin droned Jesus Christ": Far-right Trump ally who opposed Ukraine aid says she was wrong after visiting Kyiv. Laura Loomer, a far-right activist close to Trump, visited the drone-damaged Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra and told her followers Russia struck the heart of Christianity after years of pro-Kremlin rhetoric.

Humanitarian and social impact

Ukraine finds uranium in six more Russian drones. Their radiation readings ran up to 80 times background. The Security Service found uranium in Geran-2 warheads striking Chernihiv Oblast and warned residents not to touch drone fragments, which can release radioactive dust.

Political and legal developments

"I'm not agreeing to any other position": Ukraine's fired defense minister says only return to his former job will help end army procurement corruption. Mykhailo Fedorov says he will accept no post Zelenskyy offers except defense minister, arguing only three roles truly shape the war and he will take only his old one.

New developments

Russia's construction on Crimea's only World Heritage site exposed 500,000 artifacts. UNESCO has just declared complex is in danger. UNESCO added Chersonesus Taurica in occupied Crimea to its List of World Heritage in Danger.

Read our earlier daily review here.

NATO's former deputy supreme commander thinks the way out of Ukraine's grinding war was invented in 1918.

Sir Richard Shirreff, now chief foreign military advisor to Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, told Euromaidan Press that the front today looks like the First World War before its final act: four years of attrition, trench lines, infantry machine-gunned for a few yards of no-man's-land. The deadlock everyone now treats as permanent is, in his reading, exactly the deadlock of 1914–1917—and it broke.

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"Only after the innovation and revolution in military affairs in 1918 was a path carved through the German army," Shirreff said. "For the first time you had aircraft, tanks, artillery, and infantry coordinated by rudimentary radios—joined-up warfare."

That is the combined-arms breakthrough that produced the Hundred Days Offensive—the Allied advance that collapsed the German army in the war's final months, after years in which the same army could not be moved. The leap was not a new weapon. It was the synthesis: air, armor, artillery, and infantry fighting as one system instead of four, tied together by the new technology of radio.

The difference it made was total. For three years the Western Front had swallowed a generation—the Somme alone cost more than a million casualties for gains measured in miles.

What changed in 1918 was not more men or bigger guns; it was that the pieces began to move together. Tanks breached the wire, artillery walked ahead of the infantry on a timed schedule, aircraft spotted the guns, and radio held the sequence in step. An army immovable for years came apart in weeks.

Shirreff's argument is that Ukraine sits in the 1917 phase now—enormous mutual attrition, neither side able to convert battlefield success into a decisive break. Ukraine has already supplied part of the 1918 answer itself: deep-strike drones now reach more than a thousand kilometers into Russia, and its long-range campaign pins down a far larger army. Its engineers invent cheap, novel weapons for a battlefield nobody else in the world knows how to fight on.

The missing V-word

Ukraine can win the battles. Without the word “victory,” it loses the war.

What that innovation lacks is what 1918's lacked until the Allies supplied it: funding, scale, the West's technological edge, and integration into a system that turns invention into breakthrough.

This, he says, is where NATO could actually help—not with troops the North Atlantic Council will never sign off on, but by helping Ukraine "generate a big military idea," the doctrinal synthesis the alliance spent decades building and Ukraine is now improvising under fire.

The historical rhyme carries a warning too. The 1918 breakthrough came only after four years of casualties that a decisive earlier synthesis might have spared. Shirreff's point is that the pattern is available now—if the West chooses to help build it, rather than waiting for attrition to run its full course.

Shirreff lays out the full strategy—Sky Shield, the Article 5 guarantee for unoccupied Ukraine, and what a ceasefire "that means victory over Russia" would require—in our full interview.