Outgoing Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov used a briefing on 16 July to say Ukraine's top military command blocked his reforms and that Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi handed him an ultimatum, Militarnyi reported. He said he had pushed to replace both Syrskyi and General Staff chief Andrii Hnatov, and that the General Staff spent months refusing to sign off on his changes. He spoke a day after confirming he was leaving the post.

Zelenskyy's decision drew a rare wartime backlash: protests broke out in Kyiv and more than a dozen cities, and deputy Air Force commander Pavlo Yelizarov resigned the same day, warning that the firing and the blocking of Fedorov's reforms would "cause numerous casualties and destruction of Ukraine." 

Fedorov, credited with building the drone force that reshaped the war, is being replaced mid-reform. 

The ultimatum

Fedorov said that once Zelenskyy told him he did not plan to dismiss Syrskyi, he accepted it and agreed to work with the general, "because our client is the Ukrainian people." But his ministry's initiatives began to be blocked, he said, and Syrskyi was "not ready to talk about problems personally, to his face."

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Instead, the commander preferred to "weave intrigues" and assume someone had ordered a media campaign against him. That is what led Syrskyi to effectively deliver an ultimatum, Fedorov said.

"Instead of figuring out how to defeat Russia asymmetrically, which is the commander-in-chief's task, he figured out how to split the country," he said. 

Fedorov stressed he had not set an "either me or Syrskyi" condition and was ready to keep working, and credited Syrskyi with saving the country in 2022. But the war had fully changed since, he argued: 

"The drone changes the architecture. The management system has changed, we must change."

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Why he wanted the command replaced

Fedorov said he had proposed "radical personnel decisions" — removing both Syrskyi and Hnatov — to fix systemic problems in the army, Liga reported. Ukraine has no other option, he argued, if it wants to beat the enemy asymmetrically and with minimal losses, "where strong leader-commanders will develop, will not be suppressed and written off." He tied the demand to ending abuses in the army, including in the Skelia assault regiment, hit weeks earlier by reports of non-combat deaths in its training centers.

The blocking

The obstruction was concrete, Fedorov said. For six months the General Staff refused to sign the documents needed to change the ministry's structure and create a competence center, citing formal objections and a reluctance to bring in new people.

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The ministry kept improvising around the blocks: 

"We always hacked this with some non-standard solutions and continue to do it, but overall it doesn't work if we're talking about a serious system." 

Even routine reforms stalled — approving a basic plan to supply brigades with drones took four months, and distribution still ran on loyalty rather than need, he said at the same briefing.

Fedorov also rejected the blame directed at his ministry over mobilization, noting the recruitment centers answer to the commander-in-chief and the General Staff, not to him, Liga reported. There is no fixing mobilization "without a new social contract and without real changes in the army," he said.

Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) struck two sanctioned Russian oil tankers with naval drones in the Black Sea, the SBU said. The vessels belong to the shadow fleet Moscow uses to sell crude around Western sanctions, and Russian aircraft tried and failed to stop the attack.

Two tankers, one sanctions-busting job

The SBU, working with the Navy, hit the ocean-going tankers Louise 1 and Banda — both under Ukrainian sanctions — with Mamai naval drones. 

Louise 1 had moved Russian crude through the G7 and EU embargo, loading at Baltic and Black Sea ports with its transponder switched off. In 2026 alone, it carried nearly 3 million tons of Russian Urals crude, the SBU said.

Banda had run Russian crude out of four ports: Ust-Luga, Kerch, Novorossiysk, and Nakhodka.

As the drones closed in, Russian aircraft fired machine guns and dropped bombs at them, without success, the SBU said. 

The service calls each shadow-fleet tanker a legitimate target and a working part of Russia's war machine. Every strike, it says, cuts the oil money paying for the invasion.

A week earlier, the SBU's Sea Baby drone hit the sanctioned tanker Blue in Ukraine's waters off occupied Yalta. Ukraine has spent 2026 turning cheap drones into kinetic sanctions on Russia's tanker fleet. Sea Baby drones have wrecked shadow-fleet tankers across the Black Sea since late 2025.

The air campaign running alongside it

The naval strikes run in parallel with an aerial-drone campaign by the Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS). On 16 July, SBS operators struck 11 more shadow-fleet vessels — five oil tankers, a gas carrier, three dry-cargo ships, and two tugs.

That brought the 6–16 July total to 147 vessels: 117 in the Sea of Azov and 30 in the Black Sea.

"The goal: paralysis of the logistics of oil, fuel, and cargo that bypasses sanctions," commander Robert "Madyar" Brovdi wrote. 

Peaceful "cardboard protests" against the dismissal of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov broke out in Kyiv and at least 16 other Ukrainian cities on the morning of 16 July. The "cardboard" refers to handmade signs the protesters hold. The rallies were timed to the parliament session set to weigh a wider government reshuffle, and echoed last year's protests over Ukraine's anti-corruption bodies. Their message was to keep Fedorov in the job.

Kyiv fills the square that hosted last year's protests

In Kyiv, participants gathered from early morning in the square beside the Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theater.

Suspilne says the action was called by veteran and former combat medic Dmytro Koziatynskyi, one of the organizers of the 2025 protests defending the independence of Ukraine's anti-corruption agencies, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP). He asked people to bring cardboard placards and stressed that the action must stay peaceful.

Protesters oppose the constant reshuffling of officials and the removal of people whose work they consider effective, Koziatynskyi said. Hundreds gathered on the square, most of them young people and students, chanting "Fedorov is defense minister!"

From Lviv to Odesa, the same message

Similar rallies ran the same morning in Ivano-Frankivsk, Vinnytsia, Lutsk, Khmelnytskyi, Lviv, Uzhhorod, Dnipro, Ternopil, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Cherkasy, Rivne, Zaporizhzhia, Zhytomyr, Chernivtsi, and Poltava.

Crowd sizes ranged from a few dozen to around a hundred per city. Several began with a minute of silence for those killed in the Russo-Ukrainian war.

The signs spelled out the anger. In Vinnytsia, people held signs reading "Don't destroy what works," "Bring back Fedorov," and "Don't take away hope." In Lutsk, slogans included "Ukraine needs results, not personnel games." In Lviv, protesters on Svobody Avenue by the Taras Shevchenko monument carried placards asking why one man's ego mattered more than the state's defense, and one that read "The audit showed 300 billion in theft. They removed the auditor, not the thieves."

In Mykolaiv, 26 people gathered by the city council with signs reading "Moscow is glad about your decision" and "Swap prisoners, not Fedorov." 

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Cherkasy protesters chanted "Klymenko — no" and "Give back prisoners, not Fedorov." Lviv participant Sofia Boiko said she came out for democracy and a free country, calling it wrong to remove someone who had finally started making decisions that worked, and describing Fedorov as the most effective defense minister of the full-scale invasion.

The Ukrainian government–run United24 media platform joined today's protests:

"Today, the UNITED24 Media is pausing all publications to join protests over the dismissal of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. See you there," the project's X wrote.

What led to the protests

The rallies followed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's decision not to renominate Fedorov as defense minister. Deputies from the Servant of the People party told Suspilne, after a faction meeting with the President, that he would instead put forward Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko for the post — a figure associated in public perception with a Soviet-style mindset.

Commanders of two National Guard corps, however, supported the nomination of Klymenko. Notably, the National Guard is subordinate to the Interior Ministry, not the Armed Forces.

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On 15 July, Fedorov confirmed he was leaving and summed up his tenure, listing among his results cutting Russian forces off from Starlink, expanding drone-procurement programs, a procurement reform, weapons contracts, and the testing of Ukrainian ballistic missiles.

Mykhailo Fedorov summarized his tenure as Defense Minister, citing the cutoff of Russian forces from Starlink, the launch of the Logistics Lockdown campaign to isolate occupied Crimea, increased funding for the Drone Line, and larger drone purchases than last year.

Fedorov led the Defense Ministry from January 2026, having replaced Denys Shmyhal. Klymenko took over the Interior Ministry in February 2023 after Denys Monastyrskyi died in a helicopter crash in Brovary. The defense minister is appointed by parliament on the President's nomination, as the post falls under the presidential quota.

Greece is blocking the European Union's newest round of sanctions on Russian gas to shield a single shipping company, the Financial Times reported. The objection has stalled the bloc's 21st sanctions package for a week and forced an emergency extension of the cap on Russian oil prices. At the center sits one Greek tycoon and a fleet of tankers built for Russia's Arctic.

The company at the center

Athens is protecting Dynagas after its ambassador warned the sanctions would "ruin" the company owned by Greek shipowner George Prokopiou. Greece's ambassador to the EU told fellow envoys on Wednesday that the planned measures, which would ban transporting Russian LNG to third countries, would "ruin" the firm, two people briefed on his remarks said. Two others confirmed he had named Dynagas as the reason Greece could not back the package.

Dynagas has moved more than 10 million tons of Russian LNG since the start of 2025, the FT calculated using data from analytics firm Kpler, identifying 11 of its ships that completed 144 voyages in that time.

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A veto that freezes the whole package

The EU's 21st sanctions package needs unanimous support, so one refusal is enough to hold it. Greece's objection has left the rest of the package stalled, freezing planned measures against additional Russian banks, crypto platforms, and defense-industry firms. The package also carries a mechanism to lower the ceiling above which companies may legally buy and transport Russian crude. 

The bloc's previous round added 46 shadow-fleet tankers to its blacklist, bringing the total past 630 ships.

Prokopiou controls Dynagas alongside Dynacom, whose Russian-crude trade has brought in $915 million over three years — the biggest such haul of any Greek shipowner. When the US-Israel war with Iran erupted, Dynacom was among the earliest operators willing to run tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.

A senior Ukrainian Air Force commander has quit over Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov's removal, public broadcaster Suspilne reported. Pavlo Yelizarov tied his resignation to the reshuffle, and warned about the reforms it leaves hanging.

A resignation report tied to one firing

Yelizarov posted his resignation report in the stories on his Facebook page. He gave a single reason: Fedorov's dismissal.

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Yelizarov joined Ukraine's Armed Forces on 24 February 2022, the first day of Russia's full-scale invasion. He took the deputy Air Force command on 19 January 2026.

The reshuffle behind the exit

His departure comes during a wider Cabinet shake-up. Ukraine's parliament confirmed Fedorov as defense minister on 14 January, replacing Denys Shmyhal, in Yulia Svyrydenko's government.

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On 15 July, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signaled he would propose Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko for the post in the new Cabinet — a criticized pick.

The dismissal also brought people onto the streets. Ukrainians rallied against it in Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipro, Vinnytsia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Khmelnytskyi, Uzhhorod, Lutsk, Kropyvnytskyi, and other cities.

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Belarus has spent 2026 repairing and upgrading its civil-defense shelters nationwide, the Belarusian opposition project Belpol reported. The investigators frame the drive as another stage of the regime's militarization, tied to its alignment with Russia. They caution, though, that shelter work alone is no proof of preparing for war.

Inspections, fines, and a jump in "unfit" shelters

Belpol shared scans of the underlying documents. For example, Mahilyow Oblast had 276 civil-defense structures as of 2 June. Officials deemed 204 ready, 72 unsatisfactory, and earmarked 38 for restoration and 34 for write-off.

February–April checks produced 66 orders to fix violations and held 11 officials liable. Belpol says the rise in shelters marked unfit most likely reflects a more thorough audit, not shelters decaying in a few months.

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The work spans the whole country

The regional report is only part of the picture. Belpol points to state procurement orders for the same work across Belarus. The state telecom Beltelecom ordered design work to modernize a civil-defense space in Minsk. The National Bank of Belarus is reconstructing protective rooms in its headquarters on Independence Avenue. Brest is upgrading a bomb shelter inside a wastewater treatment complex, while Mahilyow repairs a shelter at the Strommashina plant and inspects others, including the Stroygaz enterprise. The tenders reach government offices, telecoms, industry, utilities, and banks — a centralized program, Belpol says, not scattered repairs.

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Why this fits a pattern

Belpol is careful: modernizing shelters is not by itself evidence of war planning, and many states do it for resilience. Yet since 2022, Minsk has deepened military ties with Russia, hosted joint exercises, militarized its economy, expanded territorial-defense units, and tightened its mobilization system.

Previously, France's Emmanuel Macron warned Alyaksandr Lukashenka against being dragged into the war in a May call, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy has demanded that Minsk dismantle the Russian relay stations on its soil used to guide attack drones.

The European Union has given Ukraine permission to spend part of its defense loan on Chinese-made drone components, the Financial Times reported. The waiver covers the first money released under the loan, and it lays bare how far the EU still depends on Beijing for parts it cannot supply itself.

The carve-out

Kyiv requested and secured an exemption for the first defense tranche, worth €5.9 billion and set aside entirely for drones. It lets Ukraine buy certain Chinese components that the bloc does not make in sufficient quantity, two people familiar with the decision told the FT. That tranche is the opening slice of a wider support loan that reserves €60 billion for weapons purchases.

Rules built to keep the money inside the bloc

Under the loan's terms, weapons bought with EU funds must come mainly from the single market, Ukraine, or approved partners such as Canada. Other countries can qualify by signing a security partnership with the union, contributing to the scheme, and backing Ukraine substantially. The UK joined on 13 July.

For suppliers outside those groups, foreign components may not exceed 35% of a contract, and purchases must not undercut the EU's own security and defense interests. But the rules leave a door open. When eligible countries cannot deliver comparable goods fast enough, or in the volumes Ukraine needs, Kyiv can ask Brussels to let it buy elsewhere. That is the door Ukraine walked through for its drone money.

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China supplies both sides

The waiver throws light on Beijing's role at both ends of the war. Brussels has branded China "the key enabler of Russia's war" as a major supplier to Moscow's military-industrial complex, even as it concedes that Ukraine's own arms makers lean on Chinese parts too.

Ukraine has built one of the continent's most inventive defense sectors under bombardment, outrunning the continent's established arms makers in several fields. Even so, its appetite for drones outpaces what Kyiv and its allies can produce of certain components. Ukrainian officials put drones at roughly 80% of Russian battlefield casualties.

Ukraine's strikes on Russian refineries are pushing Moscow to export crude it can no longer process at home, Bloomberg reported. Buyers are not taking it fast enough, so Russian oil is piling up on tankers at sea. The value of those exports keeps sliding, and tanker loadings dipped in the week to 12 July.

Ukraine's refinery strikes are forcing crude onto the water

Ukraine has stepped up its strikes on Russia's refineries. Yesterday, it hit the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat plant far inside Russia, and the Afipsky facility near the Black Sea. The wave of attacks has driven Russian refining runs to their lowest in more than 21 years this month. That deepens a domestic fuel crunch and squeezes the global market. With less crude to process at home, Moscow is likely diverting more into exports as its own production falls. Russia pumped 8.93 million barrels a day in June — about 830,000 below the level it promised the OPEC+ producer group.

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The oil is piling up faster than buyers take it

Soaring exports are not being matched by deliveries. So Russian crude is stacking up on tankers, loaded but not yet discharged, Bloomberg wrote. The total has climbed back near its start-of-2026 highs — about 135 million barrels by Sunday.

Cargoes are building up near Egypt in the Mediterranean and east of Singapore. Five Urals tankers are anchored off Egypt, and another five have halted near Singapore, a gathering point for shadow-fleet ships hauling sanctioned oil. A growing share of the oil at sea is on vessels that seem to be sitting idle rather than sailing.

Fewer tankers, and less money for the same oil

Russia shipped 3.98 million barrels of crude a day in the week to 12 July, down from 4.08 million. Year-to-date volumes remain above every annual average since 2022, yet the four-week export value fell $200 million to $1.68 billion a week. Urals prices have nearly halved since mid-April.

Russia sent 4 million barrels of oil a day toward Asia. Only about half was openly bound for India and China, while 1.9 million barrels a day remained undeclared, likely until tankers crossed the Arabian Sea. Türkiye took 160,000 barrels a day, and Syria 40,000.

Ukraine's aerial attack drones opened a new front against Russia's sanctions-dodging shadow fleet, striking 20 vessels in the Black Sea in a single night, the Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS) reported. The raid launched the Black Sea phase of a campaign that had until now played out in the Sea of Azov, and it pushed the 10-day tally well past a hundred ships.

The Black Sea cluster opens

Overnight on 15 July, SBS operators struck 17 oil tankers, two gas carriers, and one tug in Black Sea waters. Six drone units ran the raid together: the 9th "Kairos" Battalion of the 414th "Magyar's Birds" Brigade, the 1st Separate Center, the 20th "K-2" Brigade, the 412th "Nemesis" Brigade, the 427th "Rarog" Brigade, and the 413th "Raid" Regiment.

The two gas carriers fell to Nemesis and Raid operators. The 1st Separate Center took the tug.

The timing was deliberate. SBS commander Robert "Madyar" Brovdi wrote that the Black Sea cluster of operation MoLoChKa ("Dairy") opened on 15 July, the Day of Ukrainian Statehood. He framed the night as a scoreline: 20 to nil.

136 ships in 10 days

The Black Sea haul adds to a running total that has climbed fast. From 6 to 15 July, Ukraine's drones struck 136 vessels of Russia's shadow fleet across both seas.

Of those, 116 went down in the Sea of Azov between 6 and 14 July, as an earlier daily count tracked. The 20 Black Sea kills on 15 July carried the campaign west into deeper, wider water.

Bigger tankers, a different aim point

The Black Sea vessels seen in the SBS video are ocean-going ships, far larger than the flat-bottomed river couriers Ukraine has been burning along the Azov feeder route. The footage from the FP-1 or FP-2 attack drones shows the operators aiming mostly for the deck structures rather than the bridges, with follow-up drones filming the fires that spread after the first strikes.

The operation's stated goal is steady disruption of Russian logistics and the money behind them. Disabling tankers, cargo ships, and support vessels complicates oil exports and limits Russia's ability to fuel its troops and the occupation force in Crimea.

Russia has stripped much of the air defense from its far-north bases, satellite imagery sourced by RFE/RL shows. Some units appear to have shifted toward areas Ukraine's drones can now reach. One analyst ties the shift to a war that forces Moscow to guard more ground with fewer launchers and crews.

Russia's Arctic missile sites emptied out

Around the Rogachevo air base on Russia's Novaya Zemlya islands, most air-defense equipment has disappeared from a missile site operating there since at least August 2015. A 6 July image records the change. Launchers and radars stood there in September 2019. By this July, the site read close to bare.

The submarine city lost much of its shield

In Severodvinsk, on the White Sea, Russia builds and repairs its nuclear submarines. Several decades-old air-defense positions around the city now appear vacant. Satellite images show roughly 24 S-300 and S-400 launchers gone from specialized positions around the city.

At least some of the missing launchers appear to have been redeployed. New batteries have appeared beside likelier targets. 

By the Saratov refinery in Russia's southwest, an empty field filled with launch vehicles, their tubes raised. Drones have struck that refinery repeatedly since early 2025. In Moscow, crews have seized park land in the capital to host S-400 batteries these past weeks.

Open-source investigations estimate that about 60% of Russia's S-300 and S-400 systems have left their pre-2022 positions. Air defense has mostly stayed around the country's nuclear silos and its long-range bomber bases.

A professor at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies, Katarzyna Zysk, reads the far-north drawdown as "a growing mismatch between the targets Russia must protect and its available launchers, interceptors, and trained personnel." The pullback suggests Moscow sees no big strike coming against the far north, and judges it can cut protection there without unacceptable risk.

Latvia's frontier with Belarus has not gone a single day without an attempted illegal crossing since late March, according to Radio Svaboda, RFE/RL's Belarusian service. The country's border service ties the sustained pressure to a state-run hybrid campaign, and its chief has named Latvia's support for Ukraine among the reasons the country has become the primary target.

An unbroken run since March

Latvia's State Border Guard has logged migrant crossing attempts from Belarus for 111 consecutive days, a Pozirk analysis of the agency's operational data found. Radio Svaboda reported the tally on 15 July.

Between 25 March and 13 July, officers recorded 7,791 attempts — an average of 70 a day. In winter the traffic was a fraction of that. From 1 January to 24 March, a span of 83 days, the agency counted just 141 attempts, or 1.7 a day. Pozirk calculated a year-to-date total of 7,932, or about 41 daily, while Latvia's State Border Guard listed 7,933.

On 13 July, the entire EU-Belarus frontier saw 42 attempts, 41 of them on the Latvian line and one on the Polish. The day before brought 41, then 87 on 11 July and 103 on 10 July, with Latvia taking the bulk each time. Lithuania has seen no crossing activity for five days.

Across the bloc's Belarus border, neighboring states logged 9,116 attempts since January. Latvia absorbed 87% of them. Lithuania took 9.9%, or 904, and Poland 3.1%, or 280.

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Riga's border chief points to its stance on Ukraine

Latvia is the number-one target in a hybrid war unleashed by the Belarusian authorities, State Border Guard head Guntis Pujāts told Delfi. The situation at the border, he said, presents serious challenges.

Pujāts said the migrant smugglers have grown more aggressive, pushing officers toward harsher detention methods and a need for wider support from the National Armed Forces. Border guards stopped roughly 7,600 people from crossing illegally this year, far more than in the same period of 2025.He said one of the causes of such pressure is Latvia's consistent support for Ukraine and its condemnation of Russian aggression. 

A campaign running since 2021

Neighboring EU states treat the flow as a hybrid attack organized by the regimes in Minsk and Moscow. Lukashenka has repeatedly said Belarusian guards will not stop migrants heading for the bloc through his country.

The crisis began in 2021, when thousands of people from Asian and African countries started crossing from Belarus into Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland in an organized way. It has continued at varying intensity since, and dozens of migrants have died along these borders.

Bulgaria has pulled out of the Coalition of the Willing, the group of nations backing Ukraine against Russian aggression, Bloomberg reported. Pro-Russian Prime Minister Rumen Radev announced the exit on 14 July, a day after skipping the coalition's Paris summit. The move is the latest in a string of anti-Ukrainian steps Sofia has taken since Radev took office in May.

"Not prolonging it by military means"

Radev told reporters on 14 July that Bulgaria rejects the coalition's core purpose.

"We're not participating in a coalition that insists on continuing financial and military aid to Ukraine. The solution to this conflict is not in prolonging it by military means, but in a strong diplomatic mission that will finally put an end to the escalation," he stated.

Bulgaria attended previous coalition meetings but sent no representative to the Paris gathering. The withdrawal distances the Balkan country further from the EU majority standing behind Kyiv. Radev has repeatedly rejected accusations of siding with Russia, claiming he favors "pragmatic" relations with the Kremlin.

A pattern two months in the making

The coalition exit caps a rapid reversal of Bulgarian policy. Radev, a former president who called occupied Crimea Russian, became Prime Minister in May after his party won the country's eighth election in five years. He promptly halted government-supplied military aid to Kyiv, though commercial arms sales continue.

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Radev has also promised to block EU sanctions moves against two prominent Russians: Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, and oligarch Vagit Alekperov, the founder of oil giant Lukoil.

Poland will not lift its ban on Ukrainian agricultural imports for now, Deputy Agriculture Minister Adam Nowak announced in Brussels, Polskie Radio reported. The refusal keeps one of three national embargoes in place as the new EU-Ukraine trade agreement approaches. For Kyiv, access to European markets remains a strategic source of wartime export revenue.

Warsaw sees no way to move first

Warsaw justifies the ban by the need to protect their farmers' interests. Nowak stated:

"We see no possibility of lifting this ban unilaterally. It would deal a blow to the Polish food market and thus bring losses for consumers. Ukraine received access to European markets without complying with all the standards, while Polish farmers are obliged to meet them. This is the only way to stabilize the situation on the Polish market," he claimed. 

The Deputy Minister called the current moment especially difficult ahead of the harvest. Grain prices remain very low, he claimed, while farmers struggle to find storage.

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Three embargoes against one trade deal

The new trade agreement between the EU and Ukraine takes effect from November, according to Polskie Radio. In theory, all unilateral trade restrictions must then disappear. Poland, however, keeps its own embargo, and Slovakia and Hungary do the same. 

For Ukraine, European market access carries strategic weight, not just economic value. The agrarian sector depends heavily on exports, and foreign-currency revenue from agricultural deliveries grew by more than 9% in the first months of 2026. Ukraine produces far more than its internal market can absorb. Export restrictions, therefore, hit the sector's stability directly, along with the foreign-currency inflows the state budget relies on.

• In 2023–2024, Polish farmers and truckers repeatedly blocked border crossings in both directions, at times spilling Ukrainian grain from trucks and railcars.

Ukraine's drone operators struck 11 more Russian vessels in the Sea of Azov overnight on 14 July, bringing a nine-day total to 116, the Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS) said. SBS commander Robert "Madyar" Brovdi laid out what the campaign is for. The strikes paralyze the courier tanker fleet that moves Russian oil to export and fuel to occupied Crimea.

One night's haul: five tankers, five dry cargo ships, one tug

The overnight strikes hit five tankers, five dry cargo ships, and one tug, all in the Azov Sea. Operators of the 1st Separate Center, the 413th Separate Regiment Raid, and the 20th Separate Brigade K-2 struck the tankers and cargo ships. The 413th regiment hit the tug. 

The operation, now at its ninth day, carries the name MoLoChKa, a Ukrainian term for dairy products. Both Brovdi and the SBS shared thermal video of the strikes. 

NASA FIRMS satellite data again shows fires at the anchorage north of occupied Kerch — the same spot that burned on 12 July and 13 July — plus at Russia's Port Kavkaz across the strait.

The July tally stood at 91 vessels by 12 July. A day later, strikes on 15 more ships spread across the whole Azov Sea.

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Why the drones don't sink the ships

Brovdi said his operators strike the vessels without sinking them, turning them into ghosts drifting across the sea. 

"The shadow fleet is wasting away, but it must disappear as a species," he wrote. 

He promised to record a video explaining the operation in detail.

Euromaidan Press earlier suggested why the drone operators target the ships' controls instead of trying to sink them: this still knocks out the ships, doesn't carry environmental harm, and prompts Russia to send tugs to tow them away — adding the tugs to the target list.

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The courier-tanker bottleneck

The campaign's core target is Russia's feeder fleet, Brovdi explained. These are small and medium flat-bottomed tankers, 140 meters long with 7,000 tons deadweight. They carry oil from Russian river transshipment bases down the Volga-Don Canal and across the Azov Sea. Russia's large export tankers sit too deep to enter those shallow terminals. They load at anchor in the Black Sea instead, each taking the volume of 12–15 courier runs. Paralyzing the couriers, therefore, effectively blocks the export of Russian oil at its source, Brovdi said. His drones also burn the tugs that tow struck tankers across the sea. 

The same squeeze limits gasoline deliveries to Crimea through the shallow neck of the Azov Sea. That leaves road and rail cisterns as Russia's main and very dangerous option, since Ukrainian drones keep both under fire control. 

SBS: the target is Russia's war logistics and war money

Despite international sanctions, Russia keeps exporting oil through its shadow fleet and spends the revenue on the war against Ukraine, the SBS noted. The operation's goal is the consistent disruption of the enemy's logistics chain. Disabling tankers, dry cargo carriers, and auxiliary vessels complicates oil exports and limits maritime transport. It also cuts Russia's ability to fuel its troops and the occupation grouping in Crimea. 

A Russian senator has demanded the destruction of the Starlink satellite constellation, claiming its loss would allow Russia to win the war in Ukraine within weeks, The Moscow Times reported. The call landed as a joint European investigation revealed that Russia and China have worked on anti-Starlink weapons for three years without producing a solution. 

"Koschei's needle in Elon Musk's egg"

Dmitry Rogozin, a senator and former head of Russia's space agency Roscosmos, wrote on Telegram that Ukraine must lose access to Starlink. He demanded a "systematic zeroing out" of the satellite constellation.

"The enemy will lose its advantage in global control of unmanned systems, and the war will end within two to three weeks with its complete rout. Starlink is that very needle of Koschei the Immortal that must be taken out of Elon Musk's egg and broken," Rogozin stated.

Communication and control of unmanned systems matter more in modern combat than thousands of tanks and aircraft, Rogozin claimed. He asserted that Russia knows several ways to cut its enemy off from Starlink, without naming any.

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China offered anti-Starlink options back in 2023

Rogozin's statement came amid the publication of an investigation by Der Spiegel, The Insider, and Le Monde into Russian-Chinese military-technical cooperation. Beijing offered Moscow various ways to counter the Starlink network as early as 2023, the outlets found.

The Chinese proposals ranged from cyberattacks and diplomatic pressure to developing means of physically destroying satellites. So far, no solution has been proposed, according to the investigation.

Ukrainian drones set fires at two Russian oil facilities at opposite ends of the country overnight on 14 July, according to monitoring channels and Russian regional authorities. The Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat petrochemical complex burned in Bashkortostan, some 1,300 km from the war zone, while the Afipsky refinery caught fire in Krasnodar Krai, around 400 km from the front. A Rosneft oil depot next to the Salavat plant was likely hit as well.

The last big gasoline producer still standing

Residents of Salavat heard a series of explosions in the early hours, then watched thick black smoke climb over the industrial zone, visible across the city. Ukrainian monitoring Telegram channel Exilenova+ published footage of the fires. Russian news Telegram channel Astra confirmed through its OSINT analysis that the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat complex was struck and burning.

The complex was the last major gasoline producer that strikes had not yet touched in 2026. Its loss means roughly 11,000 tons of daily fuel deliveries gone from the Russian market — about 5% of domestic demand. Drones already struck the plant twice in September 2025, after which the regional head insisted it worked on as normal.

Preliminary damage: primary unit and polyethylene workshop

Ukrainian monitoring channel Supernova+ reported preliminary hits on the AVT-6 primary oil distillation unit and workshop No. 20, which produces high-density polyethylene. Nothing leaves a refinery without primary distillation, so damage there stops the whole production chain.

The strike likely reached beyond the complex itself. The Rosneft-Opt oil depot nearby probably caught fire too, according to Astra.

Bashkortostan head Radiy Khabirov claimed a "massive attack" of drones on Salavat's industrial zone was repelled. He attributed the "pockets of smoke" to falling debris of downed drones and stated nobody was hurt. Russia's aviation authority restricted operations at the Ufa airport during the attack.

Afipsky burns again at the other end of the fuel map

In Krasnodar Krai, the first explosions near the Afipsky refinery sounded around midnight, and a powerful fire followed, Ukrainian monitoring channel Krymsky Veter reported. The blaze rose near the plant's tank farm, according to Astra's analysis of witness footage. The Krasnodar Krai operational headquarters confirmed the fire at the refinery after the drone attack.

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The export-oriented plant runs two primary distillation units with capacities of 9,786 and 8,829 tons per day and does not currently make gasoline or diesel for the domestic market, Reuters reported. Together with the affiliated Krasnodar refinery, it processed 7.2 million tons in 2024 and 3 million tons in the first half of 2025. Ukraine's General Staff puts its share at about 2.1% of Russia's refining.

The EU has imposed sanctions on 15 people and an entity over the torture of Ukrainian POWs and detained civilians, the Council of the EU announced. The 13 July listings reach prison officials in occupied Ukraine and inside Russia, and one detention facility. Among the targets are people tied to the Olenivka mass killing and the jail where journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna died.

Olenivka's deputy chief held responsible for mass killing of POWs

Eight Russians and one entity fall under the EU's Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime. The most prominent is Dmitry Neelov, first deputy head of the Olenivka prison in occupied Donetsk Oblast. The Council says he took part in torturing, beating, and humiliating Ukrainian POWs and civilian captives. It blames him directly for the prisoners' mass deaths at the colony on 28–29 July 2022. He deliberately held back evacuating wounded prisoners after a Russian attack on the colony. A number of senior officers and colony employees who degraded prisoners join Neelov on the list.

A UN expert panel confirmed in 2025 that Russia carried out the strike that killed over 50 Ukrainian defenders there. 

Torture as staff entertainment at Penal Colony No 7

Alexei Khavetsky, security chief of Penal Colony No 7 in the village of Pakino in Russia's Vladimir Oblast, ran the systematic abuse of Ukrainian POWs. Under his supervision, prisoners suffered electric shocks, deliberate starvation, sexual abuse, and extreme humiliation "for the entertainment of the colony staff," the Council states.

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FSB officer tortured civilians in three occupied oblasts

The list also includes Yan Zanevsky, an officer of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). He took part in the illegal detention and torture of civilians in occupied parts of Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. He beat, suffocated, and sexually abused detainees.

The Taganrog jail where Roshchyna died becomes a sanctioned entity

The one entity designated is Pre-trial detention center-2 in Taganrog, known as SIZO-2. Russia holds Ukrainian POWs and civilians there, women and journalists among them. Systemic torture there has led to deaths. Journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna spent a year detained there before her death, and her body bore numerous torture marks.

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Whole command chain of Penal Colony No 10 listed

Seven more individuals fall under a separate regime targeting human rights abuses inside Russia. They are Alexander Gnutov, who heads Penal Colony No 10 in Udarny village, his five deputies, and Galina Mokshanova, head of its medical unit. The colony has held hundreds of Ukrainian POWs and civilians captured in occupied territories. Former detainees describe beatings, electric shocks, mock executions, sexual violence, stress positions that caused trophic ulcers, and refusals of medical care. Detained civilians endure the same abuse as the POWs, with no trial and no legal status.

All listed individuals and the entity face an asset freeze, and EU citizens and companies cannot make funds available to them. 

Ukrainian drones struck an oil depot near Stavropol and set fire to the port that ferries Russian fuel and ammunition into occupied Crimea overnight on 13 July, according to monitoring channels. It was the second depot hit in the same locality in four days. Russia's local authorities confirmed the fire.

Two depots, four days, one kilometer apart

Drones hit the depot next to the railway in Vyazniki, near Stavropol, southern Russia, late at night, Russian news Telegram channel Astra reported after reviewing footage and eyewitness accounts. A powerful fire broke out. Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ showed it was still burning at 9 a.m. Ukrainian monitoring channel Supernova+ said at least two tanks caught fire. The blaze continued into the afternoon.

Residents of Mykhailovsk — the town adjoining Vyazniki — and nearby settlements reported a series of powerful explosions. Fuel tanks then began exploding, spreading the fire.

Stavropol Krai governor Vladimir Vladimirov confirmed the drone raid on the "outskirts of Stavropol" and the fire in the industrial zone of Vyazniki. He claimed nobody was hurt. Authorities evacuated residents of the street next to the industrial zone because of the risk of further explosions.

The port that keeps Crimea supplied

In Krasnodar Krai's Temryuk district, the regional operational headquarters reported a fire "on the territory of one of the enterprises." Ukrainian monitoring group Krymsky Veter identified the site from satellite imagery: the oil products transshipment complex and the railway station of the port of Kavkaz.

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Port Kavkaz links Russia to occupied Crimea through the Kerch ferry crossing. Russia has used those ferries to push ammunition, weapons, and fuel onto the peninsula. Ukraine hit the port on 21 and 23 June, igniting its oil terminal. After the first of those strikes, Krasnodar authorities suspended ferry traffic and told truck drivers to reach Crimea by the land corridor instead.

Russia's Defense Ministry claimed air defenses and electronic warfare "intercepted" 342 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones over 16 regions, including Moscow and Moscow Oblast, and over the Azov and Black seas. 

Russia wants to start moving grain and other cargo through the Syrian naval base it leases, keeping warships at one berth and commercial shipments at the other, Reuters reported. Syrian officials describe the plan as central to Moscow's effort to hold on to Syria through trade after losing its closest Middle Eastern ally. Syria's port authority denies the project exists.

Wheat at one berth, warships at the other

Russia hopes the logistics hub at Tartus will be working by mid-July, Syrian officials said. The first cargoes, according to Ajaj, run from wheat, grain, and animal feed to vegetable and mineral oils, timber, steel, clinker, coal, rice, and sugar. Organizers are targeting about 250,000 tons of cargo a month. The opening shipment is meant to be 30,000 tons of grain.

Rus Line, a Syrian logistics firm, is developing the hub together with Russian companies that sit under the Russian-Syrian Business Council — a body run by Russia's Industry and Trade Ministry. The council announced an "assembly and distribution center for Russian goods" at the port on 6 June.

Pier No. 4 is where the cargo will be handled, Rus Line chief executive Jinan Mubadda said. The company's general manager, Ossama Ajaj, called that pier a "restricted zone" of the naval base, and said the site stays under Syrian command: nothing moves without a green light from Syria's General Authority for Ports and Customs. Ajaj also suggested Russia would keep a "reduced military presence."

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The port authority rejected the account after publication. Spokesman Mazen Alloush called reports of a Russian commercial hub at Tartus "entirely false" and said any deal over Syrian ports or border crossings would go public only via official state channels.

The plan builds a regular shipping line between Novorossiysk—Russia's port on the northeastern Black Sea coast—and Tartus, with goods distributed onward across Syria and its neighbors. Iraq and Jordan come first on Ajaj's list of destinations, with the Gulf — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain — next in line.

What Moscow already holds in Syria

The hub would extend an economic grip that survived the collapse of Russia's military position. Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea supply 85% of the wheat Syria imports — 2.9 million tons this 2025-26 season, according to a Syrian customs document. Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service has documented that shipments of grain grown on occupied Ukrainian land resumed to Syria in 2025.

Syrian reliance on Russian crude has grown since Assad's fall. The country took about 16.8 million barrels of Russian oil in 2025 and roughly 60,000 barrels a day in early 2026.

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After Assad fell in 2024, Moscow lost its main Middle Eastern ally, and its Syrian leases became uncertain. In 2025, Syria canceled Stroytransgaz's 49-year contract to develop commercial facilities at Tartus — the very business Russia is now trying to restart.

Russian military flights returned to the Hmeimim airbase in late October 2025. Moscow and Damascus are still negotiating the fate of both installations. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed in June that the sides were discussing a possible "reformatting" of Russia's military facilities.

Ukrainian drone operators struck a hidden Russian fuel-logistics base in occupied Novoamvrosiivka in Donetsk Oblast, Militarnyi reported. The strike by the 1st "Azov" Corps of Ukraine's National Guard damaged fuel reservoirs and blocked the railway supplying the site. The corps says the occupiers must now abandon the base entirely.

Operation Hell: finding what Russia hid

Russia spent a long time building a network of logistics hubs across occupied territory, considering them safe from Ukrainian attacks, the corps' press service wrote. The Novoamvrosiivka base accumulated and supplied petroleum products for the Russian occupation grouping. 

"Petroleum products are the blood of war," the corps said, announcing what it called Operation Hell.

They conducted thorough reconnaissance first, then hit the concealed base with precise strikes by Hornet drones. The attack damaged the fuel reservoirs and the base's infrastructure.

The strikes also blocked the railway line Russia used to deliver materiel and supplies to the site, the report states.

The wider hunt for Russia's rear fuel stores

The Novoamvrosiivka strike extends a run of Ukrainian attacks on fuel and logistics sites across the occupied east and south. Ukraine continues its "logistics lockdown," targeting Russian supply trucks across the occupied territories, while the attacks on fuel and military facilities in the occupied East come almost every day.  

Ukrainian forces hit a Russian fuel and lubricants depot near Rozivka in occupied Zaporizhzhia Oblast on 10 July. Earlier this month, the SBU destroyed a logistics hub near Pokrovsk stocked with drones and ammunition, alongside fuel depots in Novohryhorivka and Chervone.

Ukraine's General Staff also listed a railway bridge across the Siverskyi Donets and a fuel storage site in occupied Luhansk among six targets hit in a single day in early July. Railway fuel tankers in occupied Makiivka burned under drone strikes in late May.

Ukraine is heading into a government reshuffle: President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced a renewal of the Cabinet of Ministers on 12 July, Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram, and Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko confirmed she is leaving the post. The President tied the shake-up to an updated political strategy for the war's demands. Parliament could vote on the change within days.

A new strategy, a new government

"Ukraine is changing its political strategy," Zelenskyy wrote. 

A specific, experienced person will answer for every priority direction, he said, naming the United States and the Patriot license deal, a European anti-ballistic project, EU membership, relations with Poland and Hungary, and preparation for winter, when the Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities are likely to escalate as they did every previous winter. 

"We determined that the changes require a renewal of the Cabinet of Ministers," the President added, thanking Svyrydenko and offering her "a new significant direction in relations with a key partner."

Svyrydenko confirmed the departure the same day. 

"I am ready to continue serving the Ukrainian state and carrying out tasks aimed at strengthening Ukraine's positions, protecting national interests, and bringing a just peace closer," she wrote.

She has led the government for almost a year, since 17 July 2025. Several MPs say her new post may be Ukraine's embassy in Washington, though officially the role stays unnamed. The President also promised changes among the heads of law enforcement agencies.

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The Naftogaz chief leads the race

Lawmakers name four candidates for the premiership: Naftogaz and Ukrnafta chief Serhii Koretskyi, First Vice PM and Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, and Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov. Opposition MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak called Koretskyi the favorite. Sources of RBC-Ukraine, including in the President's Office, agree.

Koretskyi took over loss-making Ukrnafta in 2022 and turned it into one of Ukraine's most profitable companies. In spring 2025, he became head of Naftogaz with the state gas company's storage nearly empty — and steered it through the hardest winter. If appointed, he becomes Ukraine's third prime minister of the full-scale war. Zheleznyak says the Rada may vote on dismissing the Premier as early as 13–14 July, after which the government works in acting status, likely under Shmyhal's interim leadership.

Meetings with ministers and a mayor

Alongside the announcement, Zelenskyy published reports on one-on-one meetings with Koretskyi, Shmyhal, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko, Fedorov, and Terekhov — each with public praise for results. Such a string of individual audiences is not an ordinary day in Kyiv. On the eve of a reshuffle, every man in those chairs needed a message: assurance that he stays, or word that he moves.

The timing follows the President's evening address on 11 July, announcing the coming personnel changes on diplomatic fronts over the slow delivery of agreed weapons support. 

Remnants of Russia's Wagner mercenary group have built a drug empire in the Central African Republic on the painkiller tramadol — a fief beyond the reach of law enforcement or even Moscow itself, the Wall Street Journal reported. Up to 500 mercenaries remain along the upper Oubangui River, led by Pavel Prigozhin, son of the group's late founder. Their control of the opioid trade now funds weapons, militias, and a deepening grip on the country.

Poor man's cocaine

Tramadol is normally prescribed for aching joints or post-surgery recovery. At high doses, the opioid turns into a fiercely addictive stimulant — the poor man's cocaine, as it is nicknamed. The recommended dose runs 50–100 milligrams. Shops across the Central African Republic routinely stock tablets of 200 milligrams and higher.

The pill runs through every layer of Wagner's local economy, the WSJ found. Miners at the group's gold pits take it to push through punishing shifts. Demonstrators rallying for Russia's involvement swallow the pills to keep hunger and exhaustion at bay. Fighters in the country's long insurgency swallow high doses for courage.

"In battlefield contexts, tramadol is being taken in massive doses," Nathalia Dukhan of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime told the outlet. "Fear vanishes and agitation surges as combatants enter a pharmacological trance."

The river that feeds the empire

The pipeline starts in India: pharmaceutical companies there ship the drug to firms in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Shipments are registered as standard 50-milligram doses, researchers and traders told the WSJ. High-dose pills travel concealed in the cargo. From Kinshasa, smugglers move the pills to the border town of Zongo, then across the Oubangui River. On the other side, they fill shops and market stalls throughout Bangui, the Central African Republic's capital.

The mercenaries' chief target in recent months has been that river trade, and their hold on it has tightened. Demand is strong enough that the local price tripled over the past year. Profits multiply again abroad. A consignment worth about $7,000 in the country can fetch up to $21,000 in Cameroon — once smugglers hand roughly $4,000 to Wagner and allied armed groups en route, traders told the outlet.

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Prigozhin's son inherits the last fief

The remnants hold their ground upriver under the younger Prigozhin's command. Wagner arrived in 2018 under a security pact with President Faustin-Archange Touadéra and beat back the insurgency threatening his rule. After the elder Prigozhin died in a 2023 plane crash, Russia absorbed most of the group's operations worldwide — but not here. The country's remoteness and the remnants' deep entrenchment blocked the takeover. The Pentagon-sponsored Africa Center for Strategic Studies says the old Wagner has in effect taken over the state.

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Illicit gold exports alone bring the group an estimated $180 million a year, the Global Initiative calculates. Tramadol trafficking adds a second revenue stream — and the cash buys more weapons for Wagner's forces and militias.

The country's isolation has kept Wagner off the international radar, former State Department official Cameron Hudson told the WSJ. That gives the group a freer hand — much as its Africa Corps successors operate with impunity in Mali. And the fief is looking outward: the researchers warn Wagner is entering Sudan's Darfur in coordination with the Rapid Support Forces rebels.

Modern war is won by whoever creates, tests, and refines new weapons faster — not by whoever spends years at the design stage, Fire Point co-founder and chief designer Denys Shtilerman said in an interview with Liga. The man behind Ukraine's most prolific deep-strike weapons contrasted his company's battlefield iteration with Russia's Soviet-era design school. He also revealed that the Iskander missile's navigation systems trace back to Ukrainian specialists.

"Whoever experiments faster wins"

Modern war rewards a different rhythm of weapons development, Shtilerman argued. 

"Now whoever experiments faster wins. You made it, you watched — does it fly or not — and then you start testing it on the battlefield, improving it, improving it. It's an endless process," he said.

Many European countries adopt weapons once development formally ends, he added. Only combat shows whether a weapon actually meets the demands of modern war. Fire Point's own record follows that logic: the company spent a year of combat trials before its Flamingo cruise missile started landing on target, and its FP-1 drones went through months of fuel-versus-warhead refinement.

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Soviet habits in Russia's weapons school

Russia's engineering school has largely preserved the Soviet approach to weapons design, Shtilerman said. He pointed to the construction of the S-300 and S-400 air-defense systems, where he found no solutions that would simplify production.

"The fourth compartment, where the control fins are mounted — such a complex part. Why did they make it like that? Very many questions," the designer said.

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The company testing its answer on Russian soil

Fire Point supplies over half of Ukraine's deep-strike weapons, according to Ukraine's General Staff. Its FP-1 drones — including the extended-range variant that reached the Omsk refinery 2,500 kilometers away in Siberia — and FP-2 mid-range drones carry much of the nightly campaign against Russian refineries, depots, and occupied-territory infrastructure. The company says it produces 300 such drones daily.

The next stage is ballistic. Ukraine's ballistic missile will begin live testing on targets inside Russia in autumn 2026, Shtilerman said, naming Moscow among the first targets. The company is also developing an interceptor meant to bring the cost of stopping a ballistic missile below $1 million.

Ukrainian FP-1 strike drones set Russia's Syzran oil refinery burning on 12 July, and the damage to the facility may be the campaign's largest single result in months, Ukrainian OSINT analysts assessed. Analysis of footage shared by local residents points to hits on every primary crude processing unit at the Rosneft plant. The facility, some 800 km from the warzone, has burned many times before.

Fire before dawn

The attack came in the night and morning of 11–12 July, with footage of the strikes appearing from around 4:30 a.m., monitoring Telegram channels Supernova+ reported along with Exilenova+ and others. A large fire broke out on the refinery grounds and was still burning as of 7 a.m. Kyiv time, per local residents' photos and videos. OSINT channel Dnipro Osint assessed that the strike probably damaged the ELOU-AVT-5 installation, which provides up to 30% of the plant's primary processing. Russian news Telegram channel Astra confirmed through its own OSINT analysis that the fire burned on the Syzran refinery's territory. 

"100% of primary processing capacity"

OSINT channel Cyberboroshno went further, mapping the damage to three key units, coordinates included. The FP-1 drones hit the AVT-5 primary processing unit (2.6 million tons a year, 30% of primary capacity) and the AVT-6 unit (6.3 million tons, the remaining 70%). A third hit landed on the LCh-35/11-600 catalytic reformer, which makes essential gasoline components.

The hit on the reformer, the channel noted, was accidental. The video shared by Exilenova+ shows the unit's stack suddenly appearing in a drone's flight path, triggering an airburst of the warhead directly above the installation. The shrapnel cloud shredded the unit, which later footage shows on fire — an accident that worked in Ukraine's favor.

The sum, per Cyberboroshno: 100% of the plant's primary processing capacity damaged, a combined 8.9 million tons a year. With no crude distillation running, the analysts noted, the refinery produces nothing at all. By the volume of capacity hit, the channel called it possibly the biggest single result of recent months — larger than the strike on the AVT-11 unit at the Omsk refinery, estimated at 8.4 million tons at the time of that attack.

As the long-range drones targeted the refinery deep inside Russia, the medium-range UAVs hit more tankers in the Sea of Azov: 

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One Russian ship every 112 minutes for a week: Ukraine hits 14 more vessels as total tally nears 100

A plant that keeps burning

The refinery is a veteran target. Drones struck it on 21 May 2026, seriously damaging the AVT-6 unit — then responsible for over 70% of the plant's capacity — and forcing a prolonged full stop. Reuters reported on 25 May, citing sources, that the plant had suspended operations. An earlier attack came on 18 April, and drones hit the plant three times in August 2025 alone. The 21 May attack was already the 11th strike on Syzran.

Ukrainian drones hit 14 more Russian vessels — 10 tankers and four ferries — overnight on 12 July in the Sea of Azov, Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS) commander Robert "Madyar" Brovdi reported. The strikes cap a week in which Ukraine hit 90 ships serving Russia's continued occupation of Crimea and the fuel trade in the Black Sea region. Moscow, a week into the losses, has shown no visible attempt to defend its commercial shadow fleet.

One vessel every 112 minutes 

This morning, Brovdi wrote:

"14 vessels on the night of 12 July: 10 tankers and 4 ferries," the commander said, adding that this puts the week of 6–12 July at 90 units of Russia's shadow fleet hunted down by the "birds" of SBS. 

That works out to one Russian tanker, tug, dry cargo carrier, or special vessel struck every 112 minutes of the week. 

"Moscow will fall," the commander added.

His post carries video of the strikes:

Among the identifiable targets are the ferries Mariya, Yeysk, and Sky One — the latter hit in the port of occupied Kerch by pilots of the 413th Raid Regiment — plus an unnamed ferry used for transport across the Kerch Strait.

The SBS's live scoreboard currently shows 14 new strikes on Russian shipping. The tally can move in either direction during the day — up or down — as internal reports get verified. The total of Russian ships hit in July now stands at 91.

NASA FIRMS satellite data shows fires in the usual location — the anchorage north of occupied Kerch.

Small tankers, double duty

The shadow fleet tankers under attack are not blue-water, ocean-going ships. They are smaller—yet mostly also sanctioned—vessels built for Russia's internal waterways, sized to squeeze through the Volga-Don Canal. Russia has moved them en masse to the Azov and Black seas for two jobs: pumping export fuel at sea into ocean-going shadow-fleet tankers sailing with trackers switched off, and supplying occupied Crimea.

Damaging them en masse kills two birds with one stone. Each disabled tanker cuts the volume of Russian oil exports at the source and tightens the noose around the occupied peninsula. And beyond the material damage sits the sheer shame: shipping disabled in such quantities has not been seen since World War II.

Disable, don't sink

Madyar's videos show the method. Ukrainian drones consistently go for the ships' superstructure and bridge, or sometimes the propulsion section at the stern. The goal appears to be to render the vessels uncontrollable rather than send them under.

Sinking would demand more drones per ship — and would cause an ecological disaster in the shallow Sea of Azov. Moreover, the tugs that come to evacuate the ships-turned-barges become the next targets.

Russia can't fight back

About a week into the campaign against its shipping, Russia has shown no sign of trying to protect the vessels — no warplanes or helicopters, no navy ships, not even onboard firearms. Some ships display metal bars rigged in front of the bridge, a passive, improvised anti-drone screen that is useless against the powerful FP-1 and FP-2 strike drones. 

Moscow's only visible reaction has been retreat: it halted shipping through the Don-Azov canal and closed the Kerch Strait after the tanker strikes — pulling its disabled vessels off the water instead of defending them.

The pace shows why. Just the night before, the tally was staggering: "28 vessels of Russia's shadow fleet hunted down on the night of 11 July in the Azov Sea by the Birds of SBS," Madyar wrote yesterday: 

And the ships were only part of that night's work — the SBS also hit nine energy nodes in the occupied territories, the Saky thermal power plant, a training ground, a special communications node, and what the commander called an enemy lair in Horlivka, Donetsk Oblast.

Russia's harvest is running out of the diesel its own war burned up: Ukrainian strikes on oil refineries and depots have left combines idle just as the grain ripens, The Moscow Times reported. The shortage runs from the southern grain belt to Siberia, and the harvest window is days wide. The country that invaded its neighbor can no longer fuel its own fields.

A fifth of Russia's grain, no diesel to cut it

The pain first lands in Rostov Oblast and Krasnodar and Stavropol krais, which grow a fifth of Russia's grain, Forbes reported. Stations in Krasnodar Krai cap sales at 100–200 liters per person — a combine burns up to 300 in one shift. Diesel surfaces in the region only along the M4 highway, where people camp at gas stations overnight, hoping a tanker truck shows up. 

"Many don't risk going out to harvest without confidence that fuel will be delivered to the field," a local farmer said. In Rostov Oblast, which normally gathers about 10 million tons of grain, farmers put possible losses at up to 15%.

Idle combines, busy bureaucrats

In occupied Crimea — the epicenter of the fuel collapse — harvest machinery "simply stands motionless," a representative of an organization working on the peninsula said. In the Sakha Republic, a vast region in eastern Siberia, the 200-liter purchase cap barely covers a day of work after a 200–300 km drive to the pump. Small and mid-sized farms hold diesel for about 14 days of field work and buy the rest at inflated spot prices.

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Moscow's response so far is paperwork. 

"Officials just keep compiling an endless number of tables with charts of fuel needs and capacities, and that's it," an agricultural worker in Sverdlovsk Oblast complained. "Everyone understands that if the harvest isn't brought in, it will be a nightmare. But nobody understands how exactly to help."

The clock does not care: grain must be harvested within roughly a week to 10 days of ripening or it starts shedding, said Andrei Sizov of the SovEcon analytical center. By 1 July, Russia had threshed 1.3–1.5 million hectares — a third of last year's pace, mostly due to weather so far. SovEcon still forecasts 88.9 million tons of wheat, down 2.5%.

Why the diesel is gone

The shortage traces straight to Ukraine's deep-strike campaign: over the past two months, drones reached all of Russia's top-10 refineries, collapsing diesel production and dragging refining down to lows unseen since the early 2000s. The strikes have not paused — Russian fuel tanks burned from the Azov coast to the Moscow region just overnight, and the campaign has already put fuel rationing on the streets of most Russian regions.

12 more Russian vessels have been hit in the Sea of Azov over the past 24 hours, Ukrainian drone forces reported. Ukraine's drone campaign to sever occupied Crimea rolled through a fifth straight night on 10 July, hitting tankers, ports, fuel depots, and the peninsula's power grid. The OSINT channel Cyberboroshno found satellite evidence of Russia's Azov tanker fleet shrinking fivefold under the strikes, while Planet Labs imagery confirmed a burning tanker and another damaged vessel near the Kerch Strait. The same night, a key substation strike left occupied Yevpatoriia without power in Crimea, while at least three oil facilities were struck in Russia next to the Azov and Black seas.

The tanker hunt's fifth night, seen from orbit

Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS) updated their 9 July tally to 15 vessels hit, up from the initially reported 14. The force's live dashboard showed 12 more fleet targets struck by mid-afternoon on 10 July, within 718 total target hits over 24 hours. Cyberboroshno's chronology of the campaign: two tankers on 6 July, nine vessels on the 7th, nine on the 8th, fourteen on the 9th, and 12 ships on the 10th.

Journalists of Skhemy, an RFE/RL project, published Planet Labs satellite images showing the aftermath. One frame near the Kerch Strait captures a tanker on fire, with another vessel bearing visual signs of damage about 10 kilometers away. The imagery resolution does not allow identifying the ships' class or type, the journalists noted.

A fleet vanishing from the satellite record

Cyberboroshno's analysis of satellite imagery tracked the shadow fleet's collapse in numbers. Around 1 July, about 100 vessels sat north of the Crimean Bridge in the Azov Sea, with roughly 100 more to the south near the Taman port. By 6 July, the northern group had thinned to about 40. By 8 July, some 20 remained in the north, one of them burning, with massed movement toward the bridge.

The northern vessels are mostly small river-class tankers, the analysts found. They shuttle fuel south, where cargo is transshipped onto much larger ships for direct Black Sea runs to importer countries. The vessels belong to Russia's so-called shadow fleet, used to circumvent sanctions.

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The ports and depots that feed the fleet

On 10 July, the tanker strikes were supplemented by hits on the two ports that load the vessels — Taganrog's Kurganneftprodukt terminal and the port of Azov, both in Rostov Oblast on the northeastern coast of Azov Sea. The Cyberboroshno analysts confirmed fires at all five oil depots of the city of Azov: the Port depot inside the harbor, the DonTerminal depot two kilometers away, the railway station depot, and two more in the southern industrial zone.

At the Ilsky refinery in Krasnodar Krai — the Russian region across the Kerch Strait from occupied Crimea — the channel mapped the burning zone over the plant's largest primary processing unit, AVT-6. The unit's capacity of 3.6 million tons a year provides 56% of the refinery's total output. 

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Yevpatoriia goes dark after the Moinaki substation strike

Explosions sounded across occupied Crimea through the night of 10 July, Suspilne reported, including in Kerch. The monitoring channel Krymsky Veter reported a hit on the Moinaki substation in Yevpatoriia — on Crimea's western coast — at 02:30 and a fire there by 03:42.

The 110/35/10 kV Moinaki substation is a key energy node for the city. Russia ran a modernization of the facility worth 1 billion rubles (about $12.5 million) in 2024, replacing its power transformers and almost quadrupling its capacity to 126 MVA. After the strike, Yevpatoriia and nearby settlements lost power, subscribers told the channel.

Power restrictions and water cuts across the peninsula

The Russian-controlled power company Krymenergo announced additional electricity restrictions in Crimea's Southern and Central energy districts, citing "repair works," Russian state agency RIA Novosti Crimea reported. A number of settlements in the peninsula's northwest remained without power. Alushta's occupation administration head Galina Ogneva claimed 1,650 customers there lost electricity because of bad weather.

The occupation water utility Voda Kryma reported partial water supply loss across the peninsula due to an accident on Krymenergo's grid. Russia's Defense Ministry claimed 376 drones intercepted overnight over Crimea, other occupied territories, the Azov Sea, and Russian regions, without saying how many over the peninsula.

Ukrainian drones set fires across Russia's oil infrastructure overnight and into midday on 10 July, monitoring channels and Russian officials reported. The Ilsky refinery in Krasnodar Krai, a port oil terminal in Taganrog, and a fuel depot in Azov burned, while fires were reported near refineries in Moscow and Tatarstan. 

Ilsky refinery burns for the fifth time this year

Drones struck the Ilsky refinery in the Severskaya settlement of Krasnodar Krai, the regional operational headquarters claimed, attributing the fire to "falling debris" of downed drones. Ukrainian channels published footage of the blaze. Drone fragments also fell in a courtyard of a detached house and at a local enterprise, the headquarters claimed, reporting no casualties.

Ukraine's General Staff confirmed the previous strike on 2 June.

Taganrog: the port's oil terminal ablaze, residents evacuated

The attack on Taganrog lasted all night, local residents reported. Fires broke out at the port, where the Kurganneftprodukt terminal — annual transshipment volume of 1.2 million tons — burned, Ukrainian channels reported. The facility reloads oil products from rail onto sea vessels in the Azov Sea. Astra's OSINT analysis identified the burning site as the Kurganneftprodukt fuel depot.

City mayor Svetlana Kambulova claimed an evacuation of residents whose homes fell into the emergency zone, TASS reported. Rostov Oblast Governor Yuri Slyusar claimed firefighters were extinguishing the port fire, with drone debris damaging a detached house and an administrative building's roof.

A fire also broke out near the Taganrog Aviation College, which trains specialists for Rostov Oblast's aviation and machine-building industries, Petro Andriushchenko of the Center for the Study of Occupation reported.

Drones damaged at least two tankers in Taganrog Bay the night before, and a tanker and a fuel reservoir burned there after strikes on 30 May. Ukraine's drone forces destroyed an Iskander launcher and two Tu-142 planes at the city's military airfield in late May.

Town of Azov: fuel tanks burn behind their protective nets

A series of explosions hit the city of Azov near Rostov-on-Don, where the largest fire engulfed an oil depot, Exilenova+ reported with OSINT analysts confirming the blaze. The depot sits by the Azov sea port and stores and transships light oil products. Ukrainian channels identified the site preliminarily as the DonTerminal depot. Footage shows Russia had covered the reservoirs with anti-drone nets — the strike hit them regardless on the morning of 10 July.

The drones also struck the Azov Optical-Mechanical Plant, which makes sights, rangefinders, thermal imagers, and fire-control systems for Russian aircraft, armor, and warships. The plant belongs to Russia's Tactical Missiles Corporation and was targeted by drones in July 2025.

Slyusar claimed about 35 drones were downed over Taganrog, Azov, and two districts, with fires at two oil-product storage sites in Azov and an administrative building in the village of Kagalnik. An Azov resident wrote in the comments that the city's sirens sounded only after the fires had started. Eyewitness footage suggests Ukraine's Defense Forces used domestically made FP-1 or FP-2 kamikaze drones for the Rostov Oblast strikes, as the targets sit relatively close to the front line.

Moscow: drones through the night, a fire near the Kapotnya refinery

Moscow came under drone attack through the night of 10 July, with Domodedovo airport temporarily halting flights, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin claimed. Sobyanin's posts counted six drones downed overnight, four more toward morning, and five by midday — 19 claimed in total. Russian Telegram channels reported similar restrictions at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo airport.

By midday, Exilenova+ shared a video showing a tank farm with one tank burning and reported a fire in the area of the Kapotnya refinery in Moscow, with details being clarified. Astra reported a declared missile danger in Moscow Oblast alongside the unconfirmed Kapotnya fire, with authorities urging residents to stay away from windows. 

Nizhnekamsk smokes again

Exilenova+ also reported a fresh fire in the area of the Nizhnekamsk refinery in Tatarstan, with details pending. Ukrainian drones struck the Nizhnekamsk refining cluster two days earlier.

Russia's Defense Ministry claimed air defenses intercepted 376 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones overnight across Belgorod, Bryansk, Kaluga, Kursk, Leningrad, Novgorod, Pskov, Rostov, Smolensk, and Tver oblasts, the Moscow region, Krasnodar Krai, occupied Crimea, and the Azov Sea.

Poland holds credible information that Russia is again planning provocations, and it is publicizing that fact to stop Moscow from acting, Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said in Warsaw, Polish broadcaster RMF24 reported. Speaking alongside his French counterpart on 9 July, he set the intelligence against a long list of Russian covert operations across Europe. Sikorski framed exposure as a weapon that has worked against the Kremlin before.

"The Russians are again planning something"

Sikorski and French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot faced questions about recent media reports, including in the Washington Post, that Russia is actively considering attacks on NATO targets and that the US has warned allies. Sikorski declined to comment on what intelligence services say. Poland's deputy prime minister, he still left no doubt about the broader picture.

"But the fact that Russia is waging a hybrid and kinetic war against both France and Poland is no secret," he said.

Sikorski added:

"That the Russians attack our systems of party competition, our critical infrastructure, or use shadow-fleet ships to map critical infrastructure — all of this is known. But also arson, attacks on rail tracks, drone attacks, and sending death squads to kill Vladimir Putin's enemies — all of these are hostile activities. We do nothing of the sort in Russia." 

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The 2022 precedent: exposure works

Sikorski recalled that before invading Ukraine, Russia intended to stage classic false-flag provocations to hand itself a pretext for the attack. 

"Back then, the services of the United States warned about this, and that deterred Russia from carrying out those provocations," he said.

The same logic drives today's disclosure: "The aim of these warnings is to deter them from carrying out these provocations. And may it be so," Sikorski told a journalist. 

He aired a similar caution in June, saying the Kremlin could stage a false-flag operation within the next two years.

Ukraine appears to have "initiated a new phase in its campaign to isolate occupied Crimea" by targeting Russian seaborne gasoline tankers, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessed. The shift follows months of strikes that degraded the land routes feeding the peninsula. A reported admission from a Russian general suggests Moscow has no force left to stop it.

What ISW sees in the tanker campaign

Months of Ukrainian mid- and long-range strikes on the roads and rail lines linking Russia with occupied Crimea have left the peninsula dependent on gasoline brought in by ship, ISW wrote in its 9 July assessment.

The intensifying strikes against fuel tankers "demonstrate a new phase in Ukraine's ability to rapidly adapt to Russia's shift toward seaborne fuel transportation," the think tank assessed. ISW expects the campaign to keep disrupting Russia's ability to move fuel between Russia and occupied Crimea in an effort to isolate the peninsula.

The numbers behind the assessment

Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert "Madyar" Brovdi reported that drone crews struck 14 Russian vessels in the Azov Sea overnight on 9 July — 12 gasoline tankers, the tug Alfeo, and one dry cargo ship. He named the Chelsea-6, Aura, Sonar-1, Ilya Repin, Galiaskar Kamal, Venera-3, and Penelope among the tankers hit, putting the four-day total at 35 vessels.

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The campaign has not paused since. This morning, the SBS grouping's public statistics page shows 12 additional Russian ships struck over the past 24 hours.

No effective counter left, Russian general reportedly admits

A man identified as an active-duty Russian general reportedly told Russian journalist Dmitry Kolezev on 6 July that Russia cannot effectively counter Ukraine's intermediate-range strike campaign. The reason: the Russian General Staff in 2024 dissolved the Crimean Defense Group after concluding it had too few naval assets to protect the peninsula, the general reportedly said.

Ukraine and Poland have restarted negotiations on Warsaw's "MiGs for drones" offer, Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said on 9 July, according to PAP. The proposal would hand Kyiv up to nine MiG-29 fighter jets in exchange for Ukrainian drone technology. The talks resume two weeks after Poland publicly froze the transfer.

"MiGs for drones" back on the table

"There is a clear offer: MiGs for drones. The Ukrainians said yes, then began to reconsider, now they have returned to talks — and very good," Kosiniak-Kamysz said at a press conference after the NATO summit in Ankara. "I hope this offer will be positively finalized."

Talks are underway on implementing Ukraine's war experience in Polish defense systems, the Minister added.

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From December offer to June freeze

Poland first offered the swap in December 2025, when the Polish President announced readiness to hand over MiG-29s in exchange for anti-drone systems at a joint briefing with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukraine's president called the jets important, noting Ukrainian pilots already fly the type.

In late June, Warsaw refused to transfer the fighters, with Kosiniak-Kamysz saying Kyiv had walked away from the drone-technology arrangement, Militarnyi reported. The head of Poland's state defense group PGZ said last month that Polish plants may join the repair and maintenance of Ukrainian F-16s and MiG-29s. Ukraine's Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov named joint MiG-29 modernization a pillar of deepening defense cooperation in January.

Poland inside the Patriot pipeline

In Ukraine, US President Donald Trump's promised production license remains months from delivering a missile. Meanwhile, Poland already holds preliminary US approval to manufacture PAC-3 interceptors. Warsaw also signed an agreement with the US, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden to create a European servicing center for PAC-3 Patriot interceptors. Poland, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands received status at Ankara, allowing the transfer of Patriot production and servicing technologies.

"Poland is one of the states indicated by the United States where this production and servicing should take place, so here we will also cooperate with Ukraine," Kosiniak-Kamysz said, adding that no equipment transfer to Ukraine happens without Poland.

Asked when Patriot production could start in Ukraine, he called it a stage of many weeks. Today, only the US makes the missiles, at a scale that does not even cover American needs, the minister said. 

"We are determined. Poland is ready immediately for servicing and further actions."

Ukraine's drone forces struck 14 more Russian "shadow fleet" vessels in the Azov Sea overnight on 9 July, pushing the four-day total to 35 ships, Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS) commander Robert "Madyar" Brovdi said. The overnight haul included 12 tankers, one cargo ship, and one tug. The strikes ran alongside a wave of attacks on occupied Crimea's power grid and air defenses, and a blackout hit the occupied part of Kherson Oblast.

35 vessels in 96 hours

Brovdi shared a video of the strikes and reported that drone crews hit 14 Russian shadow fleet vessels overnight — 12 tankers, one cargo ship, and one tug, all in the Azov Sea. That brings the toll to 35 tankers, cargo ships, and special-purpose craft in 96 hours. He named the struck ships, most flying the Russian flag, but also including the Panama-flagged, sanctioned tanker Galiaskar Kamal and the tug Alfeo towing a barge named Aphrodite.

The SBS separately said operators of the 1st Center, the 20th K-2 Brigade, the 412th Nemesis Brigade, and the 413th Raid Regiment carried out the strikes. It stressed that Russia keeps exporting oil through the shadow fleet despite sanctions, funneling the revenue into its war. The Deep Strike Center, operating within the SBS since December 2025, coordinated all the targets.

Brovdi's four-day chronology shows the campaign building night by night: two tankers on 6 July, ten vessels on the 7th, nine on the 8th, and fourteen on the 9th. Several vessels, including the Sanar-17 and Klimena, appear twice — struck, then struck again.

Russia tows damaged tankers into Kerch

Exilenova+ published a satellite image showing Russia driving hit sanctioned tankers into the occupied port of Kerch. The channel said the vessels are polluting the Azov Sea. NASA FIRMS satellite monitoring also logged new thermal anomalies in the sea's waters near the Crimean coast, pointing to fresh strikes on ships.

The NASA FIRMS wild fire monitoring service shows fires north of Kerch in the southern part of the Sea of Azov, and near Russia's Taganrog — on the northeastern end of the Azov Sea.

Rostov Oblast Governor Yuri Slyusar confirmed that drones attacked two tankers in Taganrog Bay. Crews were evacuated and no one was hurt, he claimed. The night before, two other tankers heading to Rostov-on-Don were hit in the same bay.

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Crimea's grid and military sites hit

The same night, drone crews struck 45 military targets across occupied Crimea and the occupied south, Brovdi said. Among the Crimean targets: the Saky thermal power plant, three fuel depots, a "Zhitel" jamming station, communication towers, and fuel trucks. Six more electrical substations went dark under the "Crimean switch-off" pool — 50 energy nodes hit between 1 and 8 July.

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In the occupied part of Kherson Oblast, the Russian-installed occupation head, Vladimir Saldo, reported a power outage the same night.

The European Union plans to open the sixth cluster in Ukraine's membership talks at an intergovernmental conference in Brussels on 14 July, a senior EU diplomat told Ukrinform. The external relations cluster would open for both Ukraine and Moldova, making it the second cluster unlocked in Kyiv's accession process. Conferences with Montenegro and Albania are planned for the same day.

Cluster 6 on the table for 14 July

"Internal discussions in the EU Council continue, but I think we are in a good position to hold intergovernmental conferences next week with Ukraine, Montenegro, Moldova, and Albania," the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

The conferences are scheduled for 14 July, when the EU's General Affairs Council meets in Brussels. The Ukraine meeting's agenda is the opening of cluster 6 — external relations — for Ukraine and Moldova. Some negotiation chapters may also be closed with Moldova and Albania the same day.

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One cluster agreed, the rest contested

Member states have so far agreed to open only one additional cluster with Ukraine. Discussions on the remaining clusters continue, though the EU "remains ambitious," the diplomat said.

"We are ambitiously striving to open all clusters as soon as possible, but obviously this issue needs to be worked through with several member states," the source said, declining to comment on the negotiating positions of the objecting capitals.

Momentum from Ankara

European Council President António Costa announced the imminent opening of another negotiating cluster with Ukraine on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara. Estonia's prime minister has urged the bloc to open all negotiating clusters for Ukraine without delay.

Ukrainian drones struck oil depots in Russia's Tver Oblast and Stavropol Krai overnight on 9 July, setting fuel tanks ablaze at both, regional officials and OSINT analysts reported. Ukraine's SBU security service confirmed the strikes, and monitors separately reported a hit on one of Russia's three largest refineries. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attacks part of Ukraine's "long-range sanctions plan."

Tver depot burns despite anti-drone nets

Tver Oblast head Vitaly Korolyov confirmed a fire in one reservoir of the "Tver oil depot" after what he called the repelling of a drone attack. Astra analyzed eyewitness footage and identified the burning site as the main depot of Tverneftprodukt, a subsidiary of Surgutneftegaz. The company stores and dispenses gasoline and diesel, supplying its own network of 52 filling stations and wholesale buyers across Tver Oblast.

Satellite images taken before the attack show protective nets over part of the reservoirs, Astra noted. The netting did not save the depot: at least one tank burned in its southwestern section. Monitoring channel Supernova+ also tracked the fire, and Exilenova+ published footage of thick black smoke over both struck depots.

Stavropol fire reaches the fuel tanks

In Stavropol Krai, southern Russia, Astra's initial analysis pointed to the Lukoil-Yugnefteprodukt depot in Mikhaylovsk. The outlet then refined its conclusion: the burning site is a separate, larger depot in the hamlet of Vyazniki, 1.3 km away — a major rear hub for receiving, storing, and shipping diesel and gasoline, built around a tank farm with a loading rack.

Governor Vladimir Vladimirov confirmed the strike on Vyazniki. The fire intensified by around seven in the morning and reached reservoirs holding flammable materials, he said, prompting the evacuation of residents from an adjacent street to temporary shelters.

Kirishi refinery reportedly hit

Supernova+ reported a strike on the Kirishinefteorgsintez (KINEF) refinery in Kirishi, Leningrad Oblast, citing local accounts. KINEF ranks among Russia's three largest refineries, processing 20–21 million tons of oil a year — over 6% of the country's total refining. Governor Aleksandr Drozdenko claimed air defenses downed one drone and denied casualties or damage. Russia's defense ministry claimed to have intercepted 73 drones over 11 regions and occupied Crimea overnight.

SBU and Zelenskyy confirm the depot strikes

The SBU confirmed that it hit two Russian oil infrastructure sites: the Krasnaya Zarya depot in Tver Oblast, 520 km from Ukraine's border, and the Stavropolskaya depot in Stavropol Krai, over 500 km out. Both handle gasoline and diesel. The agency called the operation part of its systematic work against the Russian oil sector, a key source of war financing.

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Zelenskyy confirmed the strikes. 

"Our warriors are carrying out the long-range sanctions plan in response to Russia dragging out the war and continuing its attacks," he said. 

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He added that Ukraine's Defense Forces also hit a reserve fuel storage site about 800 km from the front, an oil loading terminal in Rostov Oblast, and the pumping station near Ufa struck a day earlier. 

"We offered Russia a way to end this war long ago, and every day it chooses to prolong it should bring the reality of war back to where it began – to Russia," Zelenskyy said.

Italy expelled two Russian military attachés responsible for espionage uncovered by Rome prosecutors, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on 9 July. The two officers of Russia's embassy have three days to leave the country. The move caps a week in which Italian authorities arrested two former intelligence officers accused of selling state secrets to Moscow.

Two attachés, three days

Ivan Petrovich Gorbachev and Mikhail Vasilyevich Astakhov must leave Rome within three days, Tajani wrote on X. The Foreign Ministry's secretary general informed the Russian ambassador of the decision.

"Moscow continues to use its hybrid weapons to attack the West and Italy. A serious and unacceptable interference for the Italian Institutions and for national security," Tajani wrote.

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The spy case behind the expulsions

The expulsions follow a counterintelligence investigation that the Rome Public Prosecutor's Office launched in May 2025. On 7 July, authorities arrested two people on charges of passing classified information to a Russian agent — one who holds diplomatic immunity in Italy.

Prosecutors named the suspects as Gavino Raoul Piras and Vincenzo Di Pasquale, both 59, both former Italian intelligence officers. Reuters reported that the main suspect previously served in the Carabinieri police force. Five other people are under investigation, including four military personnel suspected of gathering state security information.

The suspects allegedly received money for the secrets. La Stampa reported they are believed to have passed details on rearmament plans in Italy, the EU, and NATO, the locations of drone-production facilities, and information on military aid to Ukraine.

Russia's Foreign Ministry told the state news agency Tass that Moscow "will give an appropriate response" to the expulsions.

The International Olympic Committee's decision to lift its years-long suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee has triggered calls in the EU to revoke the body's European funding, Politico reported. The IOC provisionally reinstated Russia's Olympic body on 7 July, paving the way for Russians to compete at the 2028 Los Angeles Games. 

Russia cleared for Los Angeles 2028

The IOC announced this week that it would pave the way for Russians to compete at the next Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028, though Russia's flag and anthem remain banned. Russian athletes have been barred or forced to compete as neutrals since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The IOC formally took the decision to provisionally reinstate the Russian Olympic Committee on 7 July.

Estonia targets the IOC's EU money

Estonia said it would propose that the European Commission cut off cash for the IOC by excluding the Olympic body from the EU's funding programs, including Erasmus+.

"It is impossible to understand decisions that seek to bring aggressor countries back into international sport as if nothing had happened," Estonian Culture Minister Heidy Purga said.

European Commissioner for Sport Glenn Micallef appeared to signal support. 

"Athletes should not pay the price for the decisions of their governments. But sport cannot become a back door for normalizing aggression. If dialogue cannot guarantee that, the EU and its member states must be ready to consider proportionate steps to defend the values international sport is built on," he told Politico.

Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braže called the IOC's move a "dangerous message." She argued that "Russia's imperial ambitions seek not only to annex Ukraine's territory, but also pursue international legitimacy of its conquests. It pursues both through every international platform available."

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The decision drew condemnation across the Atlantic as well. US lawmakers reacted with incredulity. The IOC has told Russia and the world that "you can bomb civilians one day and still proudly wave your flag at the Games the next," Republican Senator Rick Scott wrote.

Kyiv: the ruling breaks the logic of sanctions

Ukrainian Sports Minister Matvii Bidnyi called the decision an "alarming signal" for the world and asked international sports federations to uphold their bans on Russian athletes.

Vladyslav Vlasiuk, Ukraine's presidential commissioner for sanctions policy, stated that the IOC ruling contradicts the logic of international sanctions pressure, since Russian sport works as an instrument of state propaganda and support for the war. The Ukrainian World Congress demanded that the IOC cancel the decision altogether.

Russia keeps killing Ukrainian civilians daily — yet the Olympic movement now offers the aggressor state the international stage its war has cost it. The IOC's reinstatement hands Moscow a propaganda victory no battlefield advance has delivered, normalizing the aggressor while its missiles level Ukrainian apartment blocks. 

NATO has upgraded its two-decade-old Baltic air policing mission into air defense, giving pilots a wider mandate that includes destroying "objects that pose a threat," Reuters reported. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda announced the decision, taken at the alliance summit in Ankara. The change ends a peacetime-only format that dates to 2004.

From escort duty to shoot-down authority

The air policing mission over Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia began in 2004, immediately after the three states joined NATO. None of them operates its own fighter jets, so allied aircraft identify and escort Russian military planes flying near their borders.

"(The current) air policing mission is meant for peacetime, when fighters react to incidents by escorting. This way, we show that we take note of the incidents. It's a kind of deterrence," Nausėda told reporters in Ankara. "But what is happening today is not a totally peaceful environment."

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna wrote on X that the upgraded mission will have "greater flexibility and faster response to air threats."

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First shots came this year

NATO jets opened fire under the mission for the first time this year, downing suspected stray Ukrainian drones over Estonia in May and over Latvia in June. A Romanian F-16 carried out the first shootdown over Estonia's Lake Võrtsjärv; French jets downed the Latvian intruder three weeks later.

The drones were Ukrainian aircraft aimed at military targets inside Russia but either strayed off course or were diverted by Russian electronic warfare. Kyiv and Baltic governments assess that Moscow redirects them into NATO airspace deliberately. The wave of incursions this spring forced airport closures, triggered repeated air alerts, and brought down Latvia's government.

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A mission that kept growing

The jets currently scramble to meet every Russian military plane flying over international waters adjacent to the Baltic states, from Russia's Kaliningrad exclave into the Gulf of Finland. NATO expanded the mission in 2014, after Russia seized Crimea. It now includes over a dozen fighters from up to three rotating allies, flying from two regional airfields.

The escort format's limits showed last year, when the jets took off in response to a Russian Su-35 escorting a shadow fleet tanker after Estonia tried to detain the vessel. They did not engage the fighter.

Czechia will for the first time pay into a NATO scheme that buys US-made weapons for Ukraine, Foreign Minister Petr Macinka said. The step marks the first time Prime Minister Andrej Babiš's government joins military aid for Kyiv after refusing to spend Czech money on weapons. President Petr Pavel called the move a positive signal.

Prague redirects budget money into PURL

Czechia will redirect funds from some budget projects into the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, or PURL, under which allied countries pay for American weapons for Ukraine's Defense Forces, Macinka said before flying to the NATO summit in Ankara, Türkiye. Czech public broadcaster CT24 reported the announcement on 7 July.

"We are now looking at redirecting some projects that are mandatory in our budget toward Ukraine specifically into this PURL program," Macinka said.

He was due to present the shift to NATO and Ukrainian foreign ministers at a Tuesday dinner, Deník N reported. The first countries to join PURL were the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, and Canada; Czechia had stayed outside until now.

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A first for the Babiš government

Babiš's government, in power since late last year, had refused to allocate money for weapons for Ukraine or provide military aid. The President welcomed the change in Ankara. 

"The Czech Republic was one of the few that had not signed up to this process at all. So if it now goes ahead, that is certainly a positive signal," Pavel said.

The Prime Minister, meanwhile, called the purchase of American weapons for Ukraine a one-time move. He said he did not know the exact sum but that it would be small. He also cited an inherited budget with a 90-billion-koruna ($4.2 billion) hole for this year.

Ukrainian drones struck oil refineries and fuel infrastructure across several Russian regions overnight on 8 July, monitoring channels, Russian officials, and Ukraine's military reported. Fires broke out at the Saratov refinery, the Nizhnekamsk oil-processing plants in Tatarstan, and an oil-products pumping station in Bashkortostan, some 1,500 kilometers from the border. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the hits, calling them the latest of Ukraine's "long-range sanctions."

Saratov refinery burns after 3 a.m. strike

Monitoring groups began reporting explosions and a drone attack on the Saratov refinery around 3 a.m., the Telegram channel Exilenova+ said. The regional authorities had warned shortly before that Russian troops flagged a threat of drones. The local airport then restricted flights.

Saratov Governor Roman Busargin reported damage to civilian infrastructure, one person killed, and several injured. He did not name the refinery, though Ukrainian channels published footage of the moment of the strike. Astra confirmed the hit and fire.

Two Nizhnekamsk refineries hit in Tatarstan

By morning, drones reached the refining cluster in Nizhnekamsk, Tatarstan, where smoke was visible from neighboring towns. Ukraine's Special Operations Forces said they struck the TANECO complex and the TAIF-NK plant.

Astra's OSINT analyst named the probable target as TAIF-NK, with eyewitness footage showing a drone falling near the plant. Other monitors reported drones grazing the TAIF refinery and then striking TANECO. 

Previously, the Ukrainian military hit both TANECO and TAIF-NK on 12 June, and earlier struck Nizhnekamskneftekhim itself.

Security service hits Bashkortostan pumping station

Ukraine's SBU security service reported a successful strike on the Cherkassy oil-products pumping station in Bashkortostan, 1,500 kilometers from the border. At least eight SBU drones worked over the target, sparking a fire in the tank farm and at the station's production facilities.

"We consistently find and destroy the infrastructure that supplies the enemy army with fuel, logistics, and resources for war," SBU head Yevhen Khmara wrote. 

Astra separately assessed that Ukrainian drones probably also hit the Bashneft-UNPZ refinery in Ufa, where footage showed only smoke; Ukrainian channels said "Liutyi" drones carried out that attack.

Gas compressor station and airfield also targeted

The evening before, drones hit the Krasnodarskaya gas compressor station on Russia's Krasnodar Krai, Astra said. The Gazprom facility cleans, dries, and compresses natural gas for trunk routes, including the "Blue Stream" pipeline. Krasnodar Krai's operational headquarters confirmed a fire at an enterprise in the village of Smolenskaya after drone debris fell.

Ukraine's General Staff said the overnight strikes also hit the Borisoglebsk military airfield in Voronezh Oblast, alongside the Saratov and Nizhnekamsk refineries and six Russian shadow fleet tankers in the Black and Azov seas.

The six damaged tankers — one in the Black Sea, five in the Azov — were part of Russia's shadow fleet used to supply its forces in southern Ukraine, the General Staff said. Ukraine's drone forces reported that maritime campaign separately, putting the running total at 21 vessels struck in 72 hours.

President Zelenskyy confirmed the refinery hits. 

"Today our long-range sanctions reached the Saratov region, Tatarstan, and Bashkortostan, at distances of about 800, 1,400, and 1,500 km from the front line. Also, Voronezh Oblast, about 300 km from our border," he said.

A Russian State Duma deputy declared that destroying up to half of Ukraine's population is acceptable to eradicate what he called "Nazism," the Moscow Times reported. MP Alexei Zhuravlyov made the remarks in a conversation with a blogger. 

As Moscow's all-out war against Ukraine continues, Zhuravlyov's words spell out, in plain terms, the extermination agenda behind Russia's repeated "denazification" claims — the Kremlin accuses Ukrainians of Nazism while its own officials voice openly Nazi-style calls to wipe out a neighboring nation.

"Even fifty percent must be destroyed"

Zhuravlyov spoke in a YouTube interview. When asked how many "Nazis" there are in Ukraine now. Zhuravlyov claimed the figure used to be 2% but may now stand at 20–30%. Asked whether all of them should be destroyed, the deputy answered: "Preferably."

"All Nazis must be destroyed. All of them must be. You understand, if it's fifty—even fifty percent must be destroyed... So that this contagion is not there, so that no one threatens us," Zhuravlyov stated.

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The deputy claimed he saw "with his own eyes" how "these creatures come and hang everyone—Russians, non-Russians, regardless of your views." He offered no evidence. He insisted that "if this contagion is not uprooted from there, it will remain forever."

Kill criterion: a weapon in hand

Zhuravlyov allowed that some Ukrainians might switch sides—"change their views.". Those who refuse, he said, "must be destroyed, of course." Asked how to tell a "fascist" from a "non-fascist," the parliamentarian named the main criterion—defending their land with a weapon.

"If he has an assault rifle—yes, he must be destroyed. Why tell him apart? See him—kill him," he stated.

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Expulsion or death for those who won't recant

To back his claim that Ukrainians would quickly change their position, Zhuravlyov cited a phrase he attributed to a—possibly non-existent—"native Ukrainian": 

"Lviv has never yet met a single army in the world without bread and salt." 

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He then repeated that those who refuse to change their views should be killed or deported. 

"If you don't want to switch sides—you must be either expelled from there or destroyed," he said.

A script written in 2022

Zhuravlyov's formula—re-educate some, expel or kill the rest—repeats the program Russian state media laid out at the start of the full-scale invasion. In April 2022, the Kremlin-controlled agency RIA Novosti published a manifesto declaring that "denazification will inevitably be de-Ukrainization," a text Yale historian Timothy Snyder called a "genocide handbook." In that document, as in the deputy's interview, "Nazi" simply means Ukrainian.

Ukraine's Defense Forces destroyed two road bridges in Russia's Belgorod Oblast that fed a Russian army supply route toward the Kupiansk front, the Ukrainian military news outlet Militarnyi reported. Both crossings spanned the Urayeva River in the Valuysky district near the border. Russian authorities responded by closing a section of the road for nearly a month.

Two bridges over one river in one day

The Belgorod-focused Telegram channel Pepel Belgorod reported the first destroyed crossing on 7 July. That bridge stood at the village of Kolykhalino, and a missile strike reportedly brought it down. The road over it led to the Russian border town of Urazovo and a cluster of border villages, including Dvoluchnoye, Zherdevka, Mirnoye, and Berezhanka.

Later the same day, eyewitness videos showed a second wrecked bridge over the same river, between Urazovo and the border village of Dvoluchnoye. Local residents believe an aviation bomb may have hit it.

The published footage shows severe destruction. The central span collapsed on one bridge. The other lost its road surface and suffered damage to load-bearing structures. Neither can carry vehicle traffic in its current state. Ukrainian aviation dropped two other Belgorod Oblast bridges serving Russian military movements back in March 2025.

Route fed Russia's Kupiansk grouping

Russian occupation forces used this route to move equipment, ammunition, and personnel toward the Kupiansk direction, the channel said. The road ran through the Logachyovka border crossing, which the Russian army used to supply its units on the occupied territory of Kharkiv Oblast.

Kupiansk remains one of the war's flashpoints. Ukrainian forces cleared the city of encircled Russian troops, yet Russia keeps pressing the area with infiltration attempts, including through disused gas pipelines.

Month-long road closure

After the reports about the bridges, Belgorod Oblast's transport ministry restricted movement on the Valuyki–Urazovo–Logachyovka road section. Driving and parking on that stretch are banned from 7 July to 5 August. With both crossings down, only two paved roads and several dirt tracks now lead into Urazovo, the channel noted.

The bridge strikes came the same night fire engulfed Belgorod's linear production facility of main gas pipelines after a missile strike, Militarnyi wrote earlier. That enterprise runs gas transport lines and supplies natural gas to the city and the region.

Ukraine's drone forces struck nine more Russian "shadow fleet" tankers in the Azov Sea overnight on 8 July, Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS) commander Robert "Madyar" Brovdi said. The strikes extend a three-day maritime operation against fuel shipments bound for occupied Crimea, running alongside attacks on the peninsula's power grid. A Russian governor separately confirmed two tanker hits in his region's waters, while Ukraine's SBU security service reported more strikes on a key Crimean airbase.

21 vessels in 72 hours

Brovdi reported that drone crews "worked over" nine more Russian shadow fleet tankers during the night. That brings the toll to 21 vessels in 72 hours: 19 sanctioned tankers, one cargo ship, and one ferry in occupied Kerch. Pilots of the "Kairos" unit from the 414th "Madyar's Birds" Brigade, the 413th "Raid" Regiment, and the 1st Center of the Unmanned Systems Forces carried out the strikes. Kerch is located in the south-southwest of the Sea of Azov.

The operation began on 6 July. Over its first two nights, Ukrainian drones hit 12 tankers hauling gasoline across the Azov Sea toward the occupied peninsula.

Russian governor confirms hits in Taganrog Bay

Rostov Oblast Governor Yuri Slyusar stated that drones attacked tankers in Taganrog Bay overnight as the vessels sailed toward Rostov-on-Don. The attack damaged the ships and injured two people, he claimed. Rostov Oblast's Azov coast is in the sea's northeast.

"The crew had to be evacuated from one of the vessels. The tankers were empty, and no spill of oil products occurred. Information on the consequences will be clarified," Slyusar wrote.

He also claimed Russian air defenses downed around 70 drones attacking 11 districts of Rostov Oblast during the night.

50 energy nodes cut in eight days

The same night, drone crews hit 53 military targets in the operational depth of occupied Crimea and the occupied south, Brovdi said. Six more electrical substations went dark under the "Crimean switch-off" pool — exactly 50 energy nodes hit between 1 and 8 July. Other "sensitive objects" were hit too, with a full report to follow, the commander said.

The newly created Deep Strike Center of the Unmanned Systems Forces coordinated all targets. The energy strikes extend an expanding campaign that struck 37 energy facilities across the occupied south in the first five days of July.

SBU hits Dzhankoi airbase and Russian drone units

Ukraine's SBU security service said the same morning that its Alpha special operations unit spent the past week striking priority targets across occupied territories. At the Dzhankoi military airbase, drones hit relay stations for Russian Orion strike-reconnaissance drones and depots holding weapons and equipment. Strikes also reached the "Krym" port infrastructure in occupied Kerch and ammunition and fuel depots in Novohryhorivka and Chervone.

The SBU destroyed a logistics hub near Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast stocked with drones, ground robotic systems, and ammunition. Its drones hit bases of Russian drone crews in Komysh-Zoria and Kamianka in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. Depots in Hranitne and Styla in Donetsk Oblast were also destroyed. The strikes killed Russian drone pilots and unit commanders, the agency said.

Ukrainian Special Operations Forces struck the Omsk oil refinery almost 2,500 km from Ukraine's border — far beyond the Ural Mountains — the first time the war has reached the Siberian plant, and the last of Russia's 11 biggest gasoline producers to come under Ukrainian fire, the General Staff reported. The attack capped an overnight wave on 6 July that set oil facilities burning from Russia's Baltic coast to occupied Crimea. Air-raid sirens sounded in Chelyabinsk Oblast for the first time since the full-scale war began.

Special Operations Forces close the list of Russia's gasoline giants

Ukraine's General Staff said Special Operations Forces units hit the Omsk refinery in Omsk Oblast, recording an impact and a subsequent fire, with the damage still being assessed. Preliminary data pointed to the ELOU-AVT-11 primary oil processing unit, which has a design capacity of 8.4 million tons of crude a year.

The General Staff called Omsk the most powerful refinery in Russia, processing over 21 million tons annually with one of the country's highest refining depths at about 99%, and the last of Russia's 11 largest gasoline producers to be struck by Ukrainian forces. The plant makes high-octane gasolines, Euro-5 diesel, and TS-1 and RT jet fuel, along with petrochemicals and industrial oils — and supplies the Russian occupation army, the General Staff noted.

Astra's analysis, meanwhile, noted that other assessments rank the plant below the Kirishi and Achinsk refineries, and confirmed this was the first attack on the facility ever.

Earlier, Ukrainian Telegram channel Exilenova+ reported that the first hit landed on the AVT-11 unit — the heart of the plant. At least two spots burned, and footage suggested nobody vented the system pressure before the strike hit two primary processing units. NASA FIRMS satellites recorded fires at both the AVT-10 and AVT-11 units.

The Omsk plant accounts for roughly 10% of all Russian oil refining, and by various estimates covers over 50% of the Siberian Federal District's motor fuel needs. Dnipro OSINT confirmed that modernized FP-1 drones hit the technological columns of the ELOU-AVT-11 unit more than 2,500 km from the border.

Omsk Oblast Governor Vitaly Khotsenko claimed that several drones reached the city's northern industrial hub while air defenses kept repelling the attack, without naming the refinery. Half an hour earlier he had claimed drones were destroyed over the oblast.

Yaroslavl's Slavneft-YANOS burns again

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) confirmed its drones attacked the Yaroslavl refinery and the Yaroslavl oil-pumping dispatch station the same night, with explosions and smoke recorded at the plant. Exilenova+ reported the refinery hit, with NASA FIRMS data confirming the fire.

Yaroslavl Oblast Governor Mikhail Yevraev claimed a drone attack on the region and blocked traffic toward Moscow near the plant from roughly 04:00 to 07:33, never naming what burned. Astra's OSINT analysis showed smoke rising over the Slavneft-YANOS site.

Ukrainian drones have struck it repeatedly this year — on 28 June, 19 May, 8 May, and 26 April, among other dates. The repeated hits helped push gasoline rationing into St. Petersburg by June. The refinery sits over 700 km from Ukraine's border.

Baltic ports and Kaluga hit the same night

The SBU also confirmed a successful strike on the oil-loading terminal of the Vysotsk sea port in Leningrad Oblast, disabling two oil-loading stenders and hitting three tanks with petroleum products. Ukrainian drones already set a fire near Vysotsk in April. The SBU's drones struck the Pervyi Zavod refinery in Kaluga Oblast too, sparking a fire.

The General Staff added hits on the NOVATEK-Ust-Luga complex near Slobodka and the permanent base of Russia's 26th Missile Brigade near Luga in Leningrad Oblast. Ukraine has battered Russia's Baltic export network since March, at times halting up to half of the petroleum exports flowing through it. Leningrad Oblast Governor Alexander Drozdenko claimed 56 drones were downed by 08:40, admitting infrastructure damage at the Luga training ground and near the Ust-Luga and Vysotsk ports.

Kerch terminal hit, first siren in Chelyabinsk

In occupied Kerch, the overnight strike hit TES-Terminal-1 — one of the largest light petroleum transshipment complexes on the Crimean peninsula, the General Staff reported. The city's port and military infrastructure have taken repeated Ukrainian strikes within the campaign to isolate the occupied peninsula.

Russia has again accused the Baltic states of enabling Ukrainian drone attacks on its territory, this time claiming to hold "verified data," the Moscow Times reported. The accusation came right after Ukrainian drones struck Russian port infrastructure on the Baltic coast. It repeats a pattern of evidence-free Russian claims against NATO's eastern members that Western officials and analysts read as escalation groundwork.

"Verified data" that no one has seen

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin claimed that Riga and other capitals of the region open "air corridors" for drones attacking Russia. 

"Let us remind you that we have verified data that Latvia and other Baltic republics have already provided their air corridors for Ukrainian drones that attacked our country's civilian infrastructure," he stated to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. 

He presented no evidence — Russia never does when it levels such accusations.

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The strikes behind the timing

Ukrainian drones hit the St. Petersburg oil terminal, the Vysotsk port, and Kronstadt overnight on 4 July. Several fires broke out at the terminal, which handles 12.5 million tons of petroleum products a year. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine's forces struck the port infrastructure with which the Kremlin "earns money for the Russian war." In Kronstadt, he noted, the target was military. The raid extended Ukraine's campaign against Russia's Baltic oil export gateway.

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A recycled accusation

Russia's Defense Ministry made the same charge in May, claiming that a group of six Ukrainian-made Lutyi drones crossed Latvian airspace in an attempted "terrorist attack on civilian infrastructure objects" near St. Petersburg. Riga denied it, and Russia's UN envoy then threatened Latvia with retaliation, drawing condemnation from Washington and Brussels.

Before that, in April, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova and Maritime Board chief Nikolai Patrushev claimed the Baltic states and Finland lend their airspace to Ukrainian drones. Patrushev asserted this served strikes on Russia's "non-military maritime infrastructure and merchant fleet," naming the Primorsk and Ust-Luga ports in Leningrad Oblast.

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Threats as a pattern

The recycled accusations fit a run of consistent Russian threats against the EU and the Baltic states. Institute for the Study of War analysts assessed in May that Moscow was manufacturing pretexts for aggression against the Baltics. Days before the latest claim, Russia shut seven rail crossings on its borders with Latvia, Estonia, and Finland without explanation, after reports it was preparing a "provocation" against the Baltic states or Poland.

A Chechen-born member of Germany's pro-Russian AfD party has joined the Russian army, posting photos of himself in a Russian uniform and appearing in an occupied Ukrainian city, according to Militarnyi. The politician's party had already begun expelling him after a trip to Chechnya earlier this year. His path from German party politics to Russia's war ran through Kadyrov's inner circle.

From party lists to Russian uniform

Murad Dadaev, also known as Noah Krieger, a member of the German right-populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD), announced his enlistment on his Instagram page, where he published photos in Russian military uniform, Militarnyi reported.

He also appeared in occupied Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast and took part in motorcycle assault training with Russian troops.

Bakhmut, once a city of over 70,000 people, was reduced to ruins in one of the war's longest and bloodiest battles before Russia occupied it in 2023. Now it's about 9 km from its outskirts to the frontline. Dadaev's photos show him armed, in body armor, among the city's gutted high-rises.

An expulsion already underway

The AfD's Lower Saxony branch, where Dadaev was registered, launched the procedure to expel him earlier this year without publicly explaining the decision. The move followed Dadaev's trip to Chechnya, where he visited Grozny and his native village of Samashki, attended a session of Chechnya's parliament with Russian strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, and met Zamid Chalaev, commander of the Kadyrov special police regiment.

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During the same trip, Dadaev presented Chechnya's deputy prime minister Akhmed Dudaev with a Third Reich-era Luftwaffe dagger bearing a swastika. Radio Svoboda journalists found that in Germany the politician openly backed the Kremlin's policies and Vladimir Putin, pushed for tougher migration rules, and used expressions typical of Nazis during World War II.

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A villa in Hanover and Kadyrov's men

In Hanover, the Chechnya-born politician founded several companies and rented a historic 850 m² villa for events, which he later continued to occupy illegally. He hosted his AfD party colleagues there.

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At the same venue, Dadaev received his compatriot Said-Magomed Ibragimov, former head of the Team Wolf Hamburg fight club. Human rights advocates linked that organization to the pro-Kadyrov biker group Guerilla Vaynakh Nation, suspected of violent crimes. Ibragimov was repeatedly seen in the company of Chechnya's government head Magomed Daudov and his deputy Abuzaid Vismuradov. Dadaev's family has direct ties to the Kadyrov regime's crimes on European Union territory, Militarnyi reported.

Russia's massive combined missile and drone attack overnight on 6 July killed civilians and wrecked several apartment buildings across Kyiv, Ukrainian officials reported. Air defenses stopped nearly all cruise missiles and most drones but intercepted none of the ballistic and Zircon missiles. The capital declared a day of mourning while rescuers kept digging through damaged high-rises.

Zero ballistic intercepts in a 419-weapon attack

Ukraine's Air Force said its radar units tracked 68 missiles and 351 attack drones during the night. The salvo included 23 Iskander-M and S-400 ballistic missiles, six Zircon/Oniks anti-ship missiles, 33 Kh-101 cruise missiles, and six Kalibr cruise missiles. Kyiv was the main target.

By 08:30, the defenders had downed or suppressed 363 targets. They stopped all six Kalibrs, 31 of 33 Kh-101s, and 326 drones. Not one ballistic or Zircon missile fell to an interceptor. The Air Force recorded 29 ballistic missile impacts and 18 drone hits at 34 locations, plus falling debris at 16 more.

Ukraine's Defense Ministry appealed to nearly 40 partner countries just four days earlier to urgently release Patriot interceptors. Those missiles remain the only reliable answer to Russian ballistic weapons.

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11 dead in Kyiv, three children among the hospitalized

Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko reported that the Russian attack killed at least 11 people in the city. One wounded man died in the hospital in the morning. The strike injured 46 people, and medics hospitalized 27 of them, including three children. Prosecutors opened another war-crime investigation over the deaths.

Four city districts took damage, with Podilskyi hit hardest. One nine-story building there lost its apartments from the fifth floor to the ninth. The State Emergency Service said rescuers walked 17 people out of that building and brought 28 more down by fire ladder. City authorities earlier reported two dead and 22 rescued at a 25-story Darnytskyi building that debris struck at the fourth-floor level.

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Klitschko added that Russian weapons hit residential high-rises in Darnytskyi district too. A fire broke out in a 25-story building, where the attack destroyed apartments between the second and fifth floors. Falling debris set apartments burning on the 23rd through 25th floors of a 30-story complex, and a garage cooperative nearby caught fire, rescuers reported. A warehouse burned in Obolonskyi district, and crews also worked in Holosiivskyi.

Day of mourning and rerouted trains

Klitschko announced that 7 July would be a Day of Mourning in Kyiv. Flags on all municipal buildings drop to half-mast, and the city banned entertainment events. The search operation in Podilskyi and Darnytskyi districts continued, with people possibly still under the rubble.

National railway operator Ukrzaliznytsia said the State Emergency Service restricted train movement on some Kyiv Oblast sections for safety reasons. Five long-distance trains switched to backup detour routes with all key stops preserved but delays expected. Suburban traffic in the Fastiv direction also suffered, so shuttle buses now link Boiarka with Kyiv.

One killed in Kyiv Oblast, a baby girl among the wounded

Head of the Kyiv Oblast Military Administration Mykola Kalashnyk reported that the attack killed one person in Bucha district. By 7:30, 15 residents of the oblast had been hurt, with 11 in hospitals, among them a nine-month-old girl. The strikes damaged detached houses, businesses, and other civilian sites across Bucha, Vyshhorod, and Brovary districts.

The most dangerous situation developed in Vyshneve, where unexploded ordnance threatened secondary detonation. Police cordoned off the strike site, and the city council urged residents and businesses to stay in shelters and off the streets until the all-clear.

Drones wound a man in Odesa

Russia attacked Odesa city in southern Ukraine with strike drones the same night. Head of the Odesa Oblast Military Administration Oleh Kiper said the attack injured a 23-year-old man, who received medical care. The drones damaged multi-story residential buildings, a parking facility with garages, and a detached house that caught fire.

Head of the City Military Administration Serhii Lysak noted that five detached houses and a dormitory took damage in Kyivskyi district. Crews restored the tram tracks, and public transport kept running.

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President Volodymyr Zelenskyy publicly warned on 5 July that Russia was preparing a new massive strike. Russia's previous mass attack on the capital killed 31 people and injured over a hundred.

American troops have largely left Estonia after the Pentagon paused new deployments to Europe and launched a review of its global force posture, according to Estonian public broadcaster ERR. Only a small part of the agreed contingent — mostly support personnel — remains in the NATO border state. A senior Estonian lawmaker says Washington's decision on its forces in Europe could come within months.

A contingent below its agreed floor

Under the current defense cooperation agreement between Estonia and the US, an American contingent of 500 to 700 troops should be stationed in the country. Only a small portion of that personnel remains, mostly service and support units, ERR reported.

Kalev Stoicescu, head of the Riigikogu's national defense committee from the Eesti 200 party, said the situation amounts to a paused rotation inside a wider review of the US presence in Europe. 

"They began the rotation, but its implementation is suspended until a final decision on the presence of US armed forces in Europe. That decision could be made within six months," he said.

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A summer rotation with no return date

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said:

"The Americans traditionally rotate in summer. That process is underway now, but because of the force structure review, we don't yet know how many troops and which units will arrive."

Estonian politicians read the pause as Washington seeking to shift more of NATO's security burden onto European members. The UK and French contingents remain in Estonia and keep their planned rotations.

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A pattern along the Baltic frontier

Estonia is the second Baltic state to face a US rotation gap in weeks. More than 1,000 US troops with Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles began leaving Lithuania in June with no confirmed replacement, the first such gap since 2020. The Pentagon's review is already pulling thousands of troops from Germany and Poland, and US officials have told Baltic and Nordic allies that some contracted weapons deliveries will be delayed.

The drawdown lands against a chorus of European intelligence warnings that Russia could be ready to test NATO within years of the fighting in Ukraine slowing, with most alliance defense chiefs pointing to a window around 2029 — while Europe's own rearmament plans mature only by 2030.

Ukrainian factories running on a few hours of electricity a day when Russia targets the Ukrainian power grid are buying up the Netherlands' worn-out wind turbines and putting them back to work, De Telegraaf reported. Hundreds of Dutch machines are nearing the end of their working lives at home. Instead of the scrapheap, many are being refurbished and shipped east.

A second life in a war zone

A Ukrainian entrepreneur named Serhii has already bought six of them. He runs a factory in the south that presses oil for the world market, and he wants nine turbines standing on a nearby hill by year's end. His power supply is the reason. The grid gives him roughly two hours of electricity, then ten hours without. A single Dutch turbine can change that math.

The war reaches the machines too — Russian attacks target not only substations and conventional power plants but also solar and wind arrays. A Russian drone hit the blades of one, Serhii said, and his crew set about repairing it. He plans to order three more before the year is out.

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Between 700 and 800 Dutch machines face the scrap heap in the coming years, with no reuse in sight. Yet many still have fifteen to twenty years of life left. Owners are replacing them with turbines that generate five or six times as much power, a practice the industry calls repowering, according to De Telegraaf.

The reconstruction billions

The Dutch wind trade association, NedZero, sees a bigger prize in Ukraine. It named a vice-chair from the diplomatic world, Bert van der Lingen, a former Dutch ambassador to Lithuania with experience in emerging markets.

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Van der Lingen knows the lenders financing Ukraine's reconstruction, including the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Alongside the tens of billions of euros pledged for weapons and drones, he said, civil support is growing, with tens of billions more set aside.

The catch is scale. Support "tickets" from the big lenders start at €10 million ($11 million), too large for a handful of turbines. So the industry bundles small installations into single big projects, which is where Ukraine's needs become the selling point. The turbines help decentralize Ukraine's grid and deliver green power, and Dutch firms could even become co-producers of wind farms. Eight turbines, he said, are ready to go.

Japan is stepping up drone cooperation with Ukraine to develop its own unmanned forces from Kyiv's wartime experience, and the two are building a joint drone cluster, the South China Morning Post reported. The centerpiece is a planned Japan-Ukraine Drone Cluster linking the two countries' industries. The drones are meant for Japan's defense against Russia and China, not for Ukraine.

Inside the cluster

The proposed cluster would unite Japanese manufacturers with Ukrainian defense firms, research centers, universities, and technology companies, the South China Morning Post says. Japanese companies are also working with European partners on anti-submarine drones.

Masayuki Masuda, who heads Chinese studies at Japan's National Institute for Defense Studies, the Defense Ministry's think tank, said the world has watched warfare change since Russia's invasion, and that drones will carry "much of the fighting on the future battlefield." He credited Ukraine's strong performance largely to drones.

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Masuda argued that quantity now matters as much as quality. Japan's many small firms, he said, could quickly turn out cheap drones in the numbers a war might demand.

A defense turn

The cooperation is part of a wider overhaul of Japan's defense policy. In May, Tokyo sent Self-Defense Force officers to NATO's mission headquarters in Germany for the first time—to a facility that coordinates weapons deliveries and training for Ukraine. Japan also joined the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL), the program through which allies fund US weapons for Ukraine, including Patriots. Japan, however, pledged funds only for buying non-lethal equipment from the US.

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The drive is not only about Russia's war. It is also a response to China's growing military activity, with Tokyo tracking Chinese drones near the disputed Senkaku Islands, close to Taiwan, and across the South China Sea.

Latvia's state police will begin checking the documents of everyone who visits Russia's embassy in Riga starting Wednesday, Foreign Minister Baiba Braže announced. She described the measure as a direct answer to how Russian security services treat visitors to foreign diplomatic missions in Moscow. The Russian embassy has already been informed of the new procedure.

Reciprocity at the embassy door

The rule takes effect on 1 July and applies to all visitors to the mission. Braže said it responds to Russian actions in Moscow, where the authorities screen the documents of people entering foreign diplomatic buildings.

The step gives Russia the same treatment it imposes on others, applied at its own embassy in the Latvian capital.

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More restrictions in the pipeline

Latvia is weighing further pressure on Russia and Belarus alongside the checks. The foreign ministry has prepared amendments to ban imports of certain industrial goods of Russian and Belarusian origin.

Officials are also discussing cutting trade links further and reviewing specific exemptions in critical sectors. The screening joins a run of Latvian measures targeting Russian and Belarusian presence, including a ban on the two countries' citizens buying real estate, which parliament classified as a tool of hybrid warfare. Earlier amendments to the Immigration Law also stripped away one route to temporary residence permits obtained through investment programs.