Ukraine opened a nationwide investigation into soldiers' payments five days ago. The State Bureau of Investigation has now charged a deputy commander of a separate security and servicing battalion in Odesa Oblast with issuing travel orders that sent his subordinates to fake combat groupings on paper, the bureau reported on 25 August.

Combat pay in Ukraine runs on paperwork. Assault and zonal payments depend on time spent on each mission and require documentary confirmation, with the highest rates going to troops on the line of contact.

The travel orders carried the scheme

The soldiers collected the additional payment known as the Defender's Bonus for combat participation that did not happen, taking about $15,600, without grounds, according to the agency.

"In fact, soldiers remained in Odesa. Despite this, they were paid an additional bonus," officers said.

Part of that money went back to the officer who arranged it. He was detained and charged under Part Five of Article 426-1 of the Criminal Code, which covers a military official exceeding authority and carries a sentence of up to 12 years.

The case sits inside a national sweep

The bureau launched the operation, called Justice for Soldiers, on 20 August together with the General Staff, conducting 72 searches and preparing suspicions against 22 people.

Most of the cases concerned money wrongly paid to soldiers. Twelve proceedings were related to the illegal calculation and receipt of payments by soldiers, with 58 searches conducted and suspicions planned against 20 people.

Twelve of those proceedings deal with the illegal calculation and receipt of payments by soldiers. A separate strand covers commanders using troops for private labor.

A separate strand targeted the misuse of soldiers themselves. Five searches were conducted in a case involving the illegal use of military labor, in which subordinates, instead of performing military duties, were used for construction, household, and other work in the commanders' private interests.

Ukrainian officers have marched in one of Canada's oldest military parades for three consecutive years, Ukraine's Consul General in Toronto, Oleh Nikolenko, said. They took part in the 105th Warriors' Day Parade in Toronto, an event honoring former and serving military personnel that draws veterans, active-duty soldiers, and their families.

The parade rests on a working military relationship. Canadian forces have trained more than 50,000 Ukrainian security forces personnel since 2015 under Operation UNIFIER, roughly 16,000 of them across Europe since the full-scale invasion, with about 300 Canadian personnel currently deployed on the mission, Canada's Department of National Defense said.

The parade has opened the CNE since 1921

The Warriors' Day Parade has opened the Canadian National Exhibition every year since 1921, marching from the Princes' Gates along Princes' Boulevard to the Stanley Barracks, and organizers call it the longest-running veterans' parade in the free world, according to the CNE.

The consul general framed it as a signal

Nikolenko said Ukrainian soldiers standing among those Toronto honors carried weight beyond the occasion.

"It was very important to see Ukrainian defenders among those to whom Torontonians paid tribute. Their presence is a powerful symbol of the strength of Ukrainian-Canadian friendship, solidarity, and shared support," he stated.

European capitals opened their parades this summer

During the summer of 2026, Ukrainian defenders took part in different parades of their allies. In July, twenty-five Ukrainian soldiers marched down the Champs-Élysées at France's Bastille Day parade on 14 July, behind around 500 troops from 35 Coalition of the Willing countries, while two French Mirage 2000B fighters opened the flypast with a Ukrainian co-pilot in each cockpit.

A week later, the same soldiers led the foreign component of Belgium's National Day parade in Brussels, their first appearance in the city that hosts NATO and EU headquarters.

However, Ukraine was not invited to Poland's Armed Forces Day parade in Warsaw on 15 August, the largest in Polish history, while contingents from the US, Canada, Australia, Lithuania, and other allies did take part, Militarnyi reported.

Exclusive

Ukraine fires state bank chair after alleged $3.3 million bail-laundering scheme. The government and central bank also moved against Sense Bank's CEO and financial monitoring chief while reviewing the bank's entire supervisory board.

Ukraine's secret counteroffensive takes the pressure off Sloviansk. Under strict operational security, the Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps has been counterattacking north of Lyman. For months now.

Russia turns failed drone defenses into grounds for state control of company assets. Russia can now take control of a company's property and shares if it fails to protect key infrastructure from drones—even when the controller is foreign.

Ukraine escaped the empire in 1991. The empire struck back.. It took 22 years of Moscow holding the strings, and then an invasion, to make Ukrainians fight for the real thing.

Why did Ozon fall as much as 29% while Russia's market lost 2.9%?. After five weeks of strikes on privately held Wildberries, attacks on listed Ozon gave investors a direct price for warehouse risk.

Military

The fifth fire at the same refinery this year—and Russia still calls it debris. Ukraine's military confirmed the strike, naming the Afipsky plant as a fuel supplier for the forces invading Ukraine.

Ukraine destroys depot that occupiers filled with generators, after Russian state TV filmed them. Russian propagandists inadvertently filmed the target themselves.

Intelligence and technology

Poland signs $2 billion Piorun order, largest ever for launcher Ukraine has used since 2022. The framework deal covers several thousand launchers and missiles, more than 80 percent of them for Poland.

For first time, Ukraine is tendering ground robots to ministry-set specifications and no maker can take more than half of any class. The Defense Procurement Agency is applying the tender template it introduced for fiber-optic drones three days ago.

Russia's attack drones now jam the cheap interceptors sent to kill them. The jammer reads the interceptor's own video frequency, then floods it—blinding the operator who steers the drone.

Ukrainian drone maker is pitching its new five-inch strike FPV as assault squad's mortar. F-Drones says its F5 carries a kilogram, fits several to a rucksack, and flies six kilometers on fiber.

Ukraine mapped Russia's Su-35 down to individual control units—and found 22 firms nobody has sanctioned. The names cover engines, guidance, jamming gear, and the air-to-air missiles the aircraft fires.

International

Spanish nun's foundation brings her 45th convoy to Kyiv on Independence Day. It hands ambulance and six vehicles to border brigade fighting for Kharkiv. A convent foundation from Manresa delivered an ambulance, a pickup, and five cars, then opened the next stage of a medical program.

Humanitarian and social impact

A Russian drone chose its own target and killed three. The code that told it what to look for was readable. Ukrainian investigators found an Nvidia Jetson Orin module inside the wreckage, unencrypted, with the object-recognition code still readable.

582,000 children, 2,000 schools, no Ukrainian language: Russia sent occupied territories its first lesson – on "Unity of the Peoples of Russia". Ukrainian language was removed as a school subject entirely under federal standards on 15 December 2025.

Chernivtsi Oblast commissions three mini power plants to keep heat on during blackouts. The 3.9 MW addition contrasts with a March finding that 41% of 137 tracked donor units remained uncommissioned.

Aid the Ukrainian Red Cross stockpiled for winter in Kherson burned in a Russian drone attack. Alongside the cold-weather equipment, the warehouse held the emergency materials aid workers use to close up buildings torn open by Russian strikes, the Ukrainian Red Cross says.

Political and legal developments

Russia set target specific target for military recruits in 2026: in Arkhangelsk Oblast, man was sent to front after being detained for drinking on street. The School of the Conscript recorded 11 complaints in July and August.

About 50 grams of suspected military explosive lay in a German field 10 days after the attempt on Ukraine's plane. Germany's police worked the ground for two days before a first assessment identified the substance, and other leads had already taken officers to a village north of the runways.

Read our earlier daily review here.

A delegation from the Spanish Santa Clara Convent Foundation, with Sister Lucía Caram, visited Ukraine on its most important day. It handed an ambulance, a pickup, and five cars to the 11th Border Detachment, the "Forpost" brigade holding one of the hardest sectors in Kharkiv Oblast, the State Border Guard Service reported.

The vehicles are the visible part of a medical channel. Sister Lucía Caram, based in Manresa, delivered its 45th convoy to Kyiv this week, according to Atalayar.

The surgery program moves to its next stage

Acting Border Guard Service head Major General Valerii Vavryniuk met the delegation alongside a simultaneous video call with Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles.

Two commitments came out of it. The border service is to continue rehabilitating severely wounded border guards in Spanish medical facilities, and to begin advanced training for its own surgeons in reconstructive surgery.

Housing came up as well

Caram raised an initiative by the HANSEN Ukrainian Mission, which offered partnership support in housing families who lost their homes to fighting in the east.

The two sides also discussed rehabilitation more broadly for border guards wounded in combat. Vavryniuk thanked Caram and Spain for the aid programs.

Catalan business pays for the convoys

Before the meeting, Caram and the head of the 10th Mobile Border Detachment laid flowers at the Nebesnyi Dozor monument in Kyiv's Darnytskyi district. She also attended Ukraine's National Prayer Breakfast, the annual interfaith event bringing together political, religious, and civic figures.

Earlier, Robles announced Spain would transfer 100 VAMTAC armored tactical vehicles to Ukraine, along with a batch of 155 mm artillery shells.

In March, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced a new €1 billion military aid package for Ukraine for 2026. Part of the aid, financed through the EU SAFE instrument, was intended to support the development of joint production within Ukraine’s defense industry. 

Ukrainian troops have been shooting down Russian aircraft with Polish Pioruns since 2022. Poland's Defense Ministry has signed a framework agreement worth more than $2 billion for several thousand shoulder-fired systems in the largest order ever placed for these launchers and missiles.

The money comes from SAFE, the European Union's 150-billion-euro defense loan facility created in response to Russia's war. Poland holds the largest national envelope at 43.7 billion euros, ahead of 18 other participants, TVP World reports.

Four countries split the order

The systems will go to the armed forces of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Norway, the last of which is not an EU member. More than 80% of the missiles and launchers are earmarked for the Polish army, with the implementation agreement for Poland financed from SAFE funds, according to the ministry's release.

The contract also covers simulators, training, and logistics packages. Mesko, part of the state-owned PGZ defense group, manufactures the system.

"Piorun is our export hit," said Magdalena Sobkowiak-Czarnecka, state secretary at Poland's Defense Ministry, adding that other EU countries showed interest in them during talks on the SAFE mechanism.

The seeker head does the work

The Piorun is a modernized Grom that remains in Polish service. The upgrade brought a modified launch mechanism, a new and more sensitive homing head, and an electro-optical sight mounted on a rail.

Those changes improved target acquisition, resistance to countermeasures, and effective range against low-flying aircraft, helicopters, cruise missiles, and drones.

Ukraine's record set the reference

Poland approved its first Piorun transfer to Ukraine on 1 February 2022, three weeks before the full-scale invasion. Ukrainian crews have since used the system against cruise missiles, aircraft, and helicopters, and Western analysts list it among the short-range systems European industry can supply without American approval.

The ministry's announcement names no allocation for Ukraine.

Ukraine's ground robots ran more than 100,000 missions in the first eight months of 2026. The Defense Procurement Agency will now buy logistics and strike ground robotic complexes according to specifications set by the Defense Ministry, rather than approving models one at a time, the ministry announced.

The mechanism is three days old. The agency applied the same structure to fiber-optic FPV drones on 22 August—classes, multiple lots each, no supplier above half a class. Ukraine is standardizing how it buys entire weapons categories, one category at a time.

The rules sort makers by class

Complexes will be divided into classes by operating range and payload, with four to five lots per class. No single manufacturer may take more than half the order within one class.

Suppliers must meet the technical specifications and hold at least one codified ground robotic complex. The procurement runs in a closed environment under defense security requirements.

"A tender is one of the best instruments for this, because we can buy more equipment for the same money and minimize the risk of supply disruptions by splitting the order among different manufacturers," Deputy Defense Minister Mstyslav Banik said.

Mission volume keeps climbing

Monthly figures of ground robot missions logged in the DELTA combat system rose almost without interruption: 7,511 in January, 11,028 in April, 19,969 in July. Units recorded another 15,729 between 1 and 20 August, about 790 a day compared with roughly 640 a day in July, The Defense Post reported.

Ukraine has contracted more than 22,000 ground robots since January, nearly double the total for all of 2025. The number of units operating them grew from 117 at the end of 2025 to 230 by mid-2026.

A commander disputes the evacuation case

The ministry lists casualty evacuation as one of the tender's purposes. A frontline officer challenged that three days ago.

Tetiana Chornovol, who commands an anti-tank guided missile platoon, said ground robots are too slow for evacuation and often easy targets for Russian drones, arguing brigades need staffed evacuation teams and small light-armored vehicles instead.

Neither the Kremlin nor the CIA have commented on the visit

Ukraine's cheap interceptor drones have been knocking Russia's nightly attackers out of the sky, so Russia has now bolted a jammer onto some of its own drones to blind them, according to Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov, an adviser to Ukraine's President on defense technology. He examined the system, found in drone wreckage, and mapped how it strikes back at the interceptor sent to hunt it.

Russia batters Ukrainian cities with long-range drones most nights, and Ukraine has leaned on a cheap shield—drones costing a few thousand dollars—instead of burning through far pricier missiles. Anything that dulls that shield pushes the cost of defending the sky back up.

A jammer that waits for the interceptor

The unit rides on a Geran, Russia's version of the Iranian Shahed one-way drone. It listens for the video signal an approaching Ukrainian interceptor beams back to its pilot. Its receiver reads the interceptor's working frequency, then orders a transmitter to bury that same channel in noise, Beskrestnov found.

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By his first estimate, the jammer's signal runs about five times stronger than the interceptor's video link—enough to wipe the picture and any chance of steering the drone onto its target.

Seconds decide it

In Beskrestnov's account, the system detected a test transmitter and switched on jamming after about three seconds, and the feed cut out. The device stays nearly idle until a hunter comes close, then jumps to full power to smother the signal. It targets the ordinary analog video band around 5.8 gigahertz that many cheap interceptors still use.

Possible answers, include interceptors with terminal-guidance homing for the final stretch of flight, digital communication links, or transmitters set to non-standard frequencies.

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An old problem for Russia's drones

Russia has tried again and again to keep its one-way drones alive against Ukraine's defenses, including wiring jammers into some Shaheds earlier this year. Spending weight and power to protect a drone from a far cheaper interceptor shows how well those cheap drones work.

A Ukrainian drone maker is pitching a weapon that works like a mortar, not a drone. F-Drones has unveiled the F5, a compact five-inch strike FPV built for assault units working treelines, built-up areas, and position support at short range, according to the company's announcement.

Fiber-optic drones are now a bulk consumable. Ukraine's military received 374,000 under state contracts in 2025 and nearly as many again in the first four months of 2026, the Defense Ministry reported in April.

The F5 arrives three days after Ukraine's Defense Procurement Agency launched its first purchase of fiber-optic FPV drones, in line with ministry-set specifications rather than individual manufacturers.

The specifications come from the manufacturer

F-Drones describes a lightweight five-inch carbon frame that carries up to one kilogram and is supplied in two control configurations.

The fiber-optic version flies about six kilometers. The radio version reaches roughly twice that, up to 13 kilometers. Several drones fit in one backpack, and a ground robot can deliver nine to a position at once, compared with the six FPVs per carrier on the Black Widow ground system.

Fiber optics buys immunity at a cost

F-Drones calls the fiber version fully invulnerable to electronic warfare. Fiber-optic control does defeat jamming because the drone emits no radio signal, but the cable restricts range and maneuverability and can snap or tangle mid-flight, cutting control. Ukrainian crews have also tracked Russian operators by following reflective fibers in sunlight back to the launch point.

The company compares its drone to a mortar

The pitch is about availability, not reach.

"In its role, the F5 is closer to an 82mm mortar than to a classic long-range FPV: always nearby and ready to close out the task here and now," the company said.

The F5 ships with a codified Opera electronic initiation board, and F-Drones says the aircraft has been tested and codified by Ukraine's Defense Ministry.

Ukraine's military intelligence has named the Russian companies that build the Su-35S fighter jet and singled out those no country has sanctioned, according to the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine's Defense Ministry (HUR). The unsanctioned suppliers make parts as ordinary as wheels and fuel-system units, and one of them helped develop the aircraft. Kyiv wants sanctions efforts synchronized across every link of Russia's military-industrial complex.

The 22 firms no one has sanctioned

HUR identified 79 companies in the Su-35S production chain. Of those, 22 face no sanctions from any country restricting Russia over the war. The agency highlighted three. Rubin Aviation Corporation supplies the aircraft's braking and non-braking wheels. Gidroavtomatika builds the AU46-05 control units inside the fuel system. The Oktava research institute carried out design and development work on the Su-35S itself.

What the rest of the network builds

The 79 firms develop and produce the engines and fuel system, the control, communications, and guidance systems, the electronic warfare suite, and the main aviation missiles the jet carries into the war against Ukraine. HUR set the data out in the "Components in weapons" section of its War&Sanctions portal. The page carries a rotatable 3D model of the aircraft whose parts open onto the firms behind them, alongside directory listings and a profile for each company.

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Three sanctions regimes, loosely aligned

The gaps HUR points to exist because the restrictions are not one list. The EU legislates in packages, the US and other G7 states maintain their own designations, and Ukraine issues sanctions by presidential decree, each covering a different set of firms. Kyiv has spent years asking partners to synchronize those lists, and its own designations often run ahead of them. A company can therefore supply a frontline fighter and still trade freely under most of them.

Previously, HUR ran the same exercise on the Su-34, where a third of the production network was still unsanctioned. The same pattern shows up above the component level, with Russia's largest arms conglomerate covered by EU measures while hundreds of its subsidiaries are not, and Western machine tools still sitting inside Russian missile plants. 

Ukrainian drones struck the Afipsky oil refinery in southern Russia overnight on 25 August, monitoring Telegram channels reported. Regional authorities claimed falling drone debris caused fires. Ukraine's General Staff later confirmed the strike, and, in the same post, a hit on a gas processing plant in Astrakhan Oblast the night before. 

Fire at the plant, and Russia's debris account

Initially, the Ukrainian monitoring Telegram channels Exilenova+ and Supernova+ reported the strike, publishing footage of the fire and placing one burning storage tank on the plant's grounds. NASA's FIRMS satellite fire data confirmed the burning site, Militarnyi reported.

The Krasnodar Krai operational headquarters stated that falling drone parts started the fire. Governor Veniamin Kondratyev claimed that debris fell on the grounds of the Afipskaya railway station, killing two people and injuring two more, and stated that fires broke out in the nearby settlement and at the refinery itself.

Ukrainian forces struck two U-272 gas separation units at the Astrakhan gas processing plant the night before, the General Staff wrote in the same post. That plant makes technical sulfur, which goes into explosives. 

Drones also attacked Rostov Oblast overnight, with the Novoshakhtinsk refinery as the target, according to Supernova+.

The refinery Ukraine keeps targeting

Drones have reached the plant repeatedly this year, in January, March, June, and July, making the latest hit the fifth since the start of the year, The Moscow Times counted. In the July case, the Russian news Telegram channel Astra said the fire started near the tank farm.

Ukrainian drones have attacked Russian refineries more than 70 times since the start of 2026 and knocked several dozen plants out of service, The Moscow Times said, while Ukraine's General Staff counted 194 strikes on refineries in the first half of the year alone. Five stopped processing entirely after strikes since 1 August: Permnefteorgsintez, Orsknefteorgsintez, Zapsibneftekhim, and the Saratov and Volgograd refineries, the outlet said.

Russian propagandists filmed the target for Ukraine themselves. Operators of Ukraine's 422nd Separate Unmanned Systems Regiment "Luftwaffe", part of the 17th Army Corps, have destroyed a Russian logistics hub that occupation forces had set up inside a former Epicentr hardware store in occupied Melitopol, regiment commander Major Mykola Kolesnyk told Army TV.

Melitopol sits on Russia's land corridor to occupied Crimea. The city was occupied on the second day of Russia's full-scale war in 2022.

Russian occupation forces had moved a large consignment of generators and other equipment into the building for military use. Russian state television broadcast footage of the delivery.

Propaganda footage exposed the shipment

The video gave the regiment its confirmation. Russian channels posted footage showing many generators that had not been there before, Kolesnyk said, that had been brought in deliberately.

"The hub was used, above all, to supply the people fighting directly against us, as their forward positions are not far from there. Calling it a civilian facility would be a considerable stretch, because this really was a hub whose services were used directly by Russian troops," Kolesnyk explained.

Operators tracked the target before striking

The regiment watched the site before hitting it, and no civilian was harmed, according to Kolesnyk. He set the operation against the Russian strike on Kryvyi Rih on 21 August, when two waves of drones, half an hour apart, killed 16 people and injured 130, including 23 children.

The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine visited the site and a hospital and said the shopping center was operational and full of civilians when it was struck, and that the attack appears to breach international humanitarian law.

Generators feed the drone war

The hub's destruction will narrow Russian capacity to equip shelters, Kolesnyk said. The generators mattered for a more specific reason.

"A generator is what makes it possible to charge batteries for the unmanned component that then flies at us. So it is an absolutely legitimate target, and I am sure we will not stop here," the commander added.

Ukraine has dismissed Mykola Hladyshenko as chair of the supervisory board of state-owned Sense Bank after NABU released recordings that it says show the bank was used to launder 150 million hryvnias ($3.3 million) to post bail for a former minister.

The Cabinet’s 21 August decision ended Hladyshenko’s powers and appointed a state representative to the board to help restore a quorum. The Finance Ministry and National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) must now ensure the bank is properly governed and prepare it for sale.

New recordings changed the NBU’s assessment

The NBU’s 20 August decision followed a review opened in May, when recordings linked to the wider Mindich case raised questions about Hladyshenko’s independence. The regulator twice asked Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies for evidence, but they could not release pretrial investigation materials. Hladyshenko stepped aside while the review continued.

NBU Governor Andrii Pyshnyi told Parliament that new public evidence changed the regulator’s assessment. The material suggested that Hladyshenko’s withdrawal had been merely formal and that he continued to influence the bank.

It also raised questions about the remaining board members’ oversight. That evidence emerged on 19 August as part of Operation “Forest Gump”.

The Mindich tapes are recordings from NABU’s investigation into an alleged $100 million kickback network at state nuclear operator Energoatom. They are named after businessman Tymur Mindich, a former business partner of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

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The NBU also demanded that Sense Bank suspend Liudmyla Snihur, head of the bank’s financial and currency monitoring department, while it investigates possible interference with the bank’s operating systems. The government initiated suspension proceedings against the chair of the management board, Oleksii Stupak.

According to Ekonomichna Pravda’s account of the NABU materials, investigators allege that the group moved illicit cash through Sense Bank, companies under its control, and private individuals before using the money to post bail for former Energy and Justice Minister Herman Halushchenko, a suspect in the Mindich case.

Snihur allegedly helped create a temporary “window” during which transactions passed without the bank’s usual checks.

Sense Bank was already for sale

Ukraine nationalized Sense Bank, formerly Alfa-Bank Ukraine, in 2023 after sanctions barred its Russian-linked owners from controlling it.

Kyiv was preparing to privatize Sense Bank before the current investigation. The government accelerated sale preparations on 20 August and said the proceeds would fund Ukraine’s defense forces.

Russia is ramping up a campaign of covert mobilization to recruit troops for its war against Ukraine. Over the past month and a half, residents of at least 17 Russian regions have complained of forcible detention, beatings, and coercion into signing contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry, the independent outlet Verstka reported, citing three legal-aid organizations.

Russia recruited 403,000 soldiers in 2025 and set a target of 409,000 for 2026, Ukraine's military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said. Since April, Russian companies have been ordered to nominate two to five employees each for military service.

The School of the Conscript recorded 11 complaints in July and August. Five came from Udmurtia, one each from Primorye, Irkutsk, Ryazan, and Arkhangelsk oblasts, one from Buryatia, and one from the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk Oblast.

The victims share a profile

The men targeted are not chosen at random. In most appeals, complainants say the victims are men with alcohol, drug, or mental health problems, older or physically disabled men, men living alone, and men with pending legal trouble, said Timofey Vaskin, who heads the legal department at the School of the Conscript.

Four cases show the method

Idite Lesom documented how the coercion works in practice. In Novorossiysk, a man was taken to a police station, beaten, had drugs planted on him, and was made to sign a contract.

In Arkhangelsk Oblast, a man detained for drinking on the street was sent to the front. In Omsk, a man was taken from his workplace, held, and had the contract signed for him. In Udmurtia, a man was removed from a psychiatric register and sent to Donetsk Oblast.

Recruiters work from state records

The targeting runs on official data. Authorities know who carries debts, who is under investigation, and who has recently lost a driver's license, and those are the people they pursue, said Idite Lesom's director, Grigory Sverdlin.

Volunteers are getting harder to find, which is why the pressure is increasing, he added. Call to Conscience advised men in affected regions to grant relatives the power of attorney to represent them at enlistment offices, avoid drinking alone, and refuse to sign a contract under any circumstances.

Ukrainian investigators recovered an unencrypted American AI module from a Russian Molniya drone that killed three civilians near a Zaporizhzhia gas station on 6 July, and read the code that guided its targeting, the New York Times reported. No human operator made the final call.

Commercially sold AI boards have been turning up inside Russian strike weapons for more than a year, and autonomy is the direction both armies are moving in. What changed is the evidence rather than the technology. Until now, autonomy had to be inferred from what a wreck lacked—an antenna, a radio trace.

Tetiana Bubynets, a 19-year-old accounting student at Zaporizhzhia National University, was declared dead at a hospital, one of her professors said. Oleksii Svirin, 41, and Roman Karpii, 48, later died of their injuries. The drone had attempted to navigate around an apartment building toward the gas station's propane tanks but struck a wall and detonated near people sheltering there.

What investigators found in the wreckage

The wreckage contained an Nvidia Jetson Orin minicomputer, an off-the-shelf AI module that costs a few hundred dollars. The chip was not encrypted. Ukrainian officials said they could read the terrain imagery loaded for visual navigation and the object-detection code that defined what the drone was trained to target, NYT reported. The drone carried no radio antennas and was flying in a wave of approximately six, none of them transmitting. A missing antenna alone would not prove self-targeting—a drone flying a preprogrammed route needs no antenna either, but it would have no use for an Nvidia chip.

Human operators had programmed the drone to fly toward the gas station and set the general target area before launch. Once near the site, the onboard system identified and selected the specific object—most likely propane tanks it had been trained to recognize—on its own, drone experts and military officials said. Vadym Kushnikov, a drone expert at the Kharkiv Aviation Institute, described the drone as "a preprogrammed tool trained in virtual reality to track specific objects," NYT reported.

Where else the Nvidia module has turned up

Kateryna Bondar, a senior fellow at the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told NYT that no earlier Russian strike by a self-targeting drone has been documented killing civilians, which would make 6 July the first such case on record. She called the Nvidia module "the best proof" that Russia was experimenting with autonomous AI.

The Jetson Orin is not new to the battlefield. The module is made by the American chipmaker Nvidia. Ukraine's sanctions on Russia's AI drone supply networks, imposed in August 2025, hit Russian, Chinese, and Belarusian drone developers and component suppliers—not Nvidia.

Ukrainian intelligence first identified the module in the V2U autonomous strike drone in June 2025, mounted in a Chinese Leetop A203 minicomputer. It has since reported Jetson-based AI modules in Russia's Lancet and Klin drones—the Klin an older Jetson TX2—and, most recently, in the S-71 Monokhrom cruise missile.

In those cases, the finding was the hardware, and what Ukrainian intelligence inferred from it. This time, the code itself was legible.

Nvidia confirmed to NYT that the photographed board was a Jetson Orin. The company said the minicomputer is a consumer-grade product "sold to students, developers and start-ups for a wide range of beneficial applications," that it does not sell the computer in Russia, and that it is widely available through resellers.

Zaporizhzhia as testing ground

Russia began test flights of AI-guided Molniya drones in May, and had begun testing self-targeting systems in the V2U several months earlier, some of those for last-mile guidance only, Ukrainian air defense experts told NYT. Local air defense officials said Russia has been aiming at civilian objects—pumps and propane tanks at gas stations—along with military recruitment centers while trying out autonomous drones in Zaporizhzhia. Why those targets were chosen for the tests is not clear.

Gas stations have been under sustained attack independently of the AI trials. Russia has destroyed approximately 200 across Ukraine since spring, around 50 in June alone, by UNITED24 Media's count.

In Zaporizhzhia, gas stations now prop plastic sheeting at odd angles around propane tanks to confuse the drones' image recognition, and Ukraine has turned to shooting down drones that electronic warfare cannot jam.

Russian forces are fighting against time to close a pincer around the last free cities in eastern Ukraine. The deadline: the coming winter, which will strip the leaves from the trees and leave any attacking force exposed to overhead surveillance and attack.

But in one key sector, Ukrainian forces are spoiling the coordinated Russian operation to partially surround Sloviansk and neighboring Kramatorsk. With admirable operational security, or OPSEC, a clutch of Ukrainian brigades under the 3rd Army Corps hasn't just blunted the advance of the Russian Center Group of Forces—it has pushed the Russians back.

This Ukrainian counterattack along the axis through the town of Lyman, ongoing since May, has largely escaped widespread notice. Yes, there is some scant video evidence of Ukrainian attacks. And yes, a few analysts have adjusted their maps to account for apparent Ukrainian advances, especially in the direction of Nove, a Russian-occupied village 15 km north of Lyman, which itself lies 15 km north of Sloviansk.

But for the most part, Ukrainian and Russian sources have avoided talking about Lyman. "The Ukrainians kept a good level of OPSEC and the Russians have been reluctant to publish videos from these areas" depicting their retreats, analyst and mapper Clément Molin noted in June, just a few weeks after the Ukrainians attacked toward Nove.

Molin, for one, expects the OPSEC to lift in the coming days. "By the end of the month, we should have an official update on the good results of a Ukrainian offensive that has largely remained secret," he wrote on Monday.

April offensive

The Ukrainians' limited counteroffensive around Lyman apparently kicked off on in mid-April. One of the first attacks that left any real evidence occurred on 22 May, when a small Ukrainian mechanized force—perhaps from the 60th or 66th Mechanized Brigade, the 77th Air Assault Brigade, or the Presidential Brigade—attacked in armored trucks and M-113, Stryker, and BTR-4 armored personnel carriers. Heavy bomber drones flew top cover.

The Russian 144th Motor Rifle Division fought back with its own drones. Interceptor drones took aim at the bombers. First-person-view and heavy bomber drones blasted at least one BTR-4, hitting it before and after it dropped off its infantry passengers. Drones struck some of the disembarked Ukrainian infantry.

How many Ukrainian troops survived and entrenched in new positions on 22 May is unclear. Regardless, the Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps wasn't done with Nove. Attacks continued. And sometime after the 22 May assault on Nove, "the Ukrainians managed to consolidate their gains," Molin concluded after scrutinizing a few videos and some satellite imagery.

By early July, Ukrainian forces had succeeded in "operationally encircl[ing] the Russian forces defending the village of Nove," according to analyst and mapper Thorkill. "Fierce fighting is currently underway to expel the Russians from that locality," Thorkill reported at the time.

The aim of the Ukrainian counterattacks is obvious. The 3rd Army Corps intends to put pressure on the northern right flank of 10 km-by-10-km salient jutting into the battleground north of Lyman. The Russian 144th Motor Rifle Division has been pouring troops into the salient, clearly intending to surround and isolate Lyman instead of directly assaulting it—all in order to clear a path toward Sloviansk.

Salients are risky for both sides, however. The farther the Russians extend their Lyman salient, the more exposed they are on their flanks. The Ukrainians know this. And even if the 3rd Army Corps can't fully cut across the salient in order to surround the Russians inside of it, the corps can at least take advantage of the salient's exposed flanks.

Capturing Nove, on the very northern edge of the salient, could allow the Ukrainians to bring to bear more artillery and drones on the Russians south of Nove. The 3rd Army Corps doesn't have to fully encircle the Russian troops closest to Lyman in order to hammer them with withering firepower.

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Just how successful the 3rd Army Corps has been in its local counteroffensive could become clearer very soon. That won't spell lasting relief for Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, however. Fighting against the clock as summer begins turning into fall and then winter, the Russians are slowly advancing toward the twin cities from several directions.

The siege of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk is coming. Perhaps not this year, but surely by 2027. To fully safeguard the twin cities, the Ukrainians would need to duplicate their success north of Lyman along several other directions.

That's a big ask of a Ukrainian force that's overall still outnumbered and outgunned.

The school year in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine will open with propaganda. On 1 September, pupils in territories outside Ukrainian government control will begin the day with a flag-raising, Russian anthem, and a first lesson drawn from the state "Conversations about Important Things" program, the occupation outlet Donetsk News Agency reported.

Russia's curriculum now governs almost 2,000 schools in the temporarily occupied territories, shaping the education of more than 582,000 children, according to research by the Almenda Center of Civil Education, Ukrainska Pravda reports. Ukrainian was removed as a school subject entirely under federal standards on 15 December 2025.

Russia's education minister Sergey Kravtsov said the relevant recommendations have already been sent to the regions.

The first lesson carries a state theme

The opening session is tied to what Moscow calls the Year of the Unity of Russia's Peoples. The stated content covers cohesion among the country's peoples, "careful treatment of historical memory," and the formation of patriotic views and spiritual-moral guideposts.

"Conversations about Important Things" run every Monday in schools and colleges across Russia and the occupied territories. In practice, the sessions serve as propaganda.

Three other changes land on the same date

The flag ceremony is not the only thing new this September. A compulsory Russian identity subject, a standalone military training course, and behavior grades for children in second grade all take effect on 1 September, the Yellow Ribbon resistance movement reported.

Two new regional history textbooks also became compulsory for grades 5–7 that day. They recast Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts as historically Russian land.

Earlier, an expert mission under the OSCE's Moscow Mechanism told the OSCE Permanent Council that Russia's remaking of education in the occupied territories breaches Article 43 of the Hague Regulations and Article 50 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The local administration told Suspilne that Chernivtsi Oblast, on Ukraine’s borders with Romania and Moldova, has commissioned three gas-fired cogeneration units totaling 3.9 MW since the beginning of 2026. The units generate electricity and usable heat from the same gas, allowing municipal boiler houses to continue supplying heat when grid power fails.

Ukraine’s Communities Ministry says smaller, decentralized plants are part of the country’s response to repeated Russian attacks on energy infrastructure. Producing power close to where it is consumed helps maintain essential services when larger facilities or transmission lines are damaged.

A strike at one large plant can cut off all services. When generation is divided among boiler houses and utilities, damage to one unit affects only that site, while the others continue operating. Disabling the whole system would require attacks on many separate targets rather than on a single concentrated source.

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According to Vasyl Zazuliak’s Facebook post, one 1.2–1.3 MW unit installed in Chernivtsi fully covered a large boiler house’s electricity demand and could send an additional 400–500 kilowatts into the grid. Zazuliak, then Chernivtsi’s deputy mayor, said the boiler house could therefore continue operating during a blackout.

The latest Suspilne report says the oblast installed two earlier units, each with 1.5 MW of capacity, during 2024–2025. Five more units totaling 10.5 MW are due by the end of 2026, followed by seven totaling 20.4 MW in 2027. Officials withheld their locations because disclosure could harm national security.

Delivery has outrun commissioning

Lviv-based investigative outlet NGL.media surveyed Ukraine’s regional administrations about cogeneration equipment supplied during 2022–2025. Its March investigation found that 59% of 137 identified units had been commissioned by February.

Ukraine’s Communities Ministry told the outlet that USAID had supplied 188 units in total, meaning the 59% figure covers the documented sample rather than the entire program. Projects often stalled because utilities could not finance connections or find specialists to install and service the equipment.

The Cabinet later allocated funding to connect 75 existing units with almost 100 MW of electrical capacity. It ordered communities to complete the connections by 1 October after acknowledging that local authorities lacked sufficient financing and technical expertise.

German investigators now count three drones around the failed 4–5 August attack on a Ukrainian cargo plane at Leipzig airport, Tagesschau reported on 25 August. Officers found the third machine and a suspected military explosive in a field near the runways. Security circles assume Russian intelligence services helped plan the attempt, and Russia denies any role.

A third drone and about 50 grams of suspected hexogen

Investigators found the third drone on the early evening of 14 August in a field in Kabelsketal, security circles told NDR, WDR, and the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ). The area borders the airport's western edge in Saxony-Anhalt. Forensic technicians from Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) arrived that day, and the next day they reportedly found a substance at the site. First assessments put it at about 50 grams of hexogen, a military explosive known internationally as RDX. The perpetrators may have had a far larger attack in mind than what has become public, according to Tagesschau. 

The target was a Ukrainian plane

The drone found on the tarmac was meant to hit a Ukrainian Antonov cargo aircraft that moves military goods, according to the investigation cited by the public broadcasters NDR and WDR and SZ. The bomb never went off, because its detonator was apparently defective. The plane had been apparently loaded with ammunition the previous day. Leipzig/Halle carries military freight for the German armed forces and NATO allies, and Ukraine's Antonov Airlines uses it as a base, Euronews reported the same day.

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A bomb-laden drone hit a Ukrainian An-124 in Germany, then lay unnoticed for hours

The first drone turned up on the airport grounds at around 23:42 on 4 August. Shortly afterward, at about 00:03, a second drone reportedly collided with a cargo plane of the delivery company DHL. That aircraft had broken off its landing because the first find shut the airport, and it probably hit the drone at fence height at several hundred kilometers per hour. Neither that drone nor parts of it have turned up, NDR, WDR, and SZ reported. The German broadcasters placed the damage on the tail unit, while Bild gave a different account, putting the collision about six kilometers out with minor damage to the nose, Euronews said.

Camera footage analyzed after the attempt showed a quadcopter carrying Semtex plastic explosive fly into the wing of a parked An-124 Ruslan without detonating, and Washington assessed that the drone belonged to Russian intelligence. The same airport saw a parcel ignite in July 2024, before crews could load it onto a DHL cargo plane, in what security services treated as a suspected Moscow-linked arson plot.

State-protection officers at the BKA work under orders from Federal Prosecutor General Jens Rommel to establish how the attack was meant to run and who is responsible. Investigators are following several leads, among them recovered DNA. Germany ranks among Ukraine's biggest military backers, and its authorities suspect Russia of orchestrating many of the drone incidents as part of a campaign of sabotage, espionage, and disinformation, Euronews said.

Humanitarian supplies stored for the coming winter in Kherson burned in a Russian drone attack, the Ukrainian Red Cross said. The fire at the organization's warehouse also took stock kept for emergency repairs after Russian strikes. The attack injured no staff or volunteers, and Red Cross teams keep working in Kherson and Kherson Oblast.

Winter equipment, medical supplies, and blankets among the burned stock

The attack occurred on the evening of 23 August. The fire damaged or destroyed aid worth almost UAH 28 million ($626,000), the Red Cross said. Part of the stock was equipment and materials for the autumn and winter period. Another part was held for fast response after Russian shelling, including materials for temporarily covering damaged buildings. The warehouse also stored medical supplies, blankets, hygiene kits, and equipment for supplying water and electricity.

Kherson and the de-occupied part of Kherson Oblast come under Russian attack every day with various weapons. Authorities there report civilian casualties and damage daily. Ukrainian prosecutors have documented more than 11,000 small-drone attacks on civilians since 2024, with nearly half of the cases in Kherson Oblast.

Aid the Ukrainian Red Cross stockpiled for winter in Kherson burned in a Russian drone attack

Aid stores keep burning across Ukraine

In early August, the Ukrainian Red Cross said Russian forces had subjected its facilities to "unprecedented attacks" in July, which hurt its ability to respond quickly and deliver aid to people. A massive Russian attack on Kyiv damaged one of its warehouse complexes, burning 320,000 units of humanitarian cargo and hospital equipment worth more than $1.77 million. Russian forces destroyed a Red Cross humanitarian aid warehouse in Kherson on 20 December 2023. 

Other aid stores have burned this summer, among them a World Health Organization medical warehouse in Dnipro and a Kyiv Oblast warehouse holding HIV-prevention supplies.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has made inadequate drone defenses and slow repairs grounds for putting private assets under state management. His 24 August security decree opens a new way to government control over Russia’s economy.

It expands a mechanism Russia has used against foreign-owned businesses since 2023, according to research by Nektorov, Saveliev and Partners (NSP), a Russian law firm that tracks state takeovers.

A business need not lose a facility before the measure can apply. Decree No. 604 allows action over late security measures, safety violations, conduct that endangers normal operations, ineffective counter-drone steps, or delayed restoration.

The text does not specify what counts as “ineffective” drone protection or how quickly a facility must be restored. Covered sectors include energy, industry, communications, utilities, transport, logistics, and life-support infrastructure, plus any sites deemed important to Russia’s security or economic stability.

Foreign controllers are also covered, including foreign organizations and citizens controlling Russian companies. Temporary management can reach all or part of an entity’s Russian property, securities, stakes in Russian companies, and other property rights—the rule is not limited to the damaged or vulnerable facility alone.

“Temporary” control has no deadline

At the same time, the text mentions no automatic return deadline. Putin must instruct the government to begin temporary management and then end it. By default, the Federal Property Management Agency assumes the owner’s powers, except for the right to dispose of the assets. The assets’ costs will be covered from its income.

Interfax published Denis Manturov’s remarks. The first deputy prime minister said the measure would be used selectively for specific security tasks and would leave formal ownership unchanged.

Komsomolskaya Pravda’s Alexander Kots raised a practical problem: Russian law, he wrote, gives businesses no instructions for defending sites against drones or cruise missiles, while barriers require extensive approvals, and private guards cannot easily be given weapons more powerful than shotguns.

The decree followed weeks of Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries, ports, and warehouses. Ozon reported six disruptions at its facilities after 22 August. The listed retailer’s shares fell as much as 29.09% from Friday’s close on Monday, after five weeks of strikes on privately held Wildberries.

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Why did Ozon fall as much as 29% while Russia’s market lost 2.9%?

Refining hit two-decade lows as strikes forced Russia to import gasoline, while a sixth Ust-Luga attack since March struck the country’s largest Baltic port.

NSP’s nationalization study records more than 100 cases since 2022 and about 6.5 trillion rubles (about $78 billion) in seized assets. It says cases averaged one court hearing and roughly two months.

The NSP temporary-management table lists several foreign-owned businesses placed under “temporary” management from 2023 whose owners still lack access because the arrangements remain indefinite.

Andy Burnham played guitar with Ukrainian soldiers on his first official trip to Kyiv as prime minister.

Ratcliffe’s purpose and meetings in Russia are not immediately clear but it marks the first known trip from a US spy chief since November 2021

The UK is the first country outside of Ukraine to get access to Kyiv’s ‘Avengers’ database

The 33-year-old was previously described as someone who was ‘not a fighter’

Editorial: Mr Burnham’s choice of Ukraine for his first overseas visit as prime minister is loaded with meaning, and sends a strong message about his priorities on the global stage – not least to Donald Trump

In 1991, Ukraine did not shed a drop of blood. It was a transition of power. We raised a flag, we declared ourselves independent, and we received our independence as a gift.

Now we are shedding rivers of blood for real independence.

That is the difference between this Independence Day and the ones before it, and I do not think we have absorbed it yet.

Colonial theory has a name for what happened to us thirty-five years ago. It is called flag independence. You raise the flag, you declare the state, and for a while you believe that was it—that this was the end, and now we simply continue as an independent nation.

In theory it was believed to be like that. In practice, every decolonized nation eventually discovered the same thing: it is not the end. It is the beginning.

The nations that gathered at Bandung in Indonesia in 1955 worked this out before us. They had their flags. They also had the former metropolis still holding the strings—to their economies, their cultures, their political classes. They named it: neocolonialism.

And they understood that real independence would take something longer and harder than a declaration. Not only liberation with arms, but liberation of the mind from the colonial legacy. Not erasing the colonial memory—reworking it, synthesizing it into something new.

So here is the shape of it. Before 1991, Ukrainians waged a struggle for independence without statehood. After 1991, we have been waging a struggle for independence within statehood. The struggle did not end. It changed its conditions.

What was gathered into the Act of Independence

The declaration was a beginning, but it was also a result—of generations.

It begins in the nineteenth century, with people like Taras Shevchenko, who essentially invented a Ukrainian identity. It was a construction. It was not, as Putin claims, the invention of Vladimir Lenin. It was the invention of Ukrainian intellectuals, writers, and religious leaders, who constructed this nation on the basis of what came before—the Cossack Republic, Kyivan Rus, the long stretch from the Middle Ages through early modernity.

Then the dissidents of the Soviet period. Then the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which fought on two fronts against three colonizers: the Germans, the Poles, and the Soviets. Their struggle was clearly anti-colonial. Brutal, but anti-colonial. I do not justify everything they did. I am applying postcolonial theory in order to make sense of what they did, or tried to do. They were defeated. Their ideas resurfaced in 1991 and were gathered into the Act of Independence.

And that Act, while it closed a long period of Ukrainian struggle without a state, opened a new one.

Today, more independence than colonialism

Before 2013, I would say, there was more neocolonialism than independence.

This is a description, not a figure of speech. The former metropolis re-established the strings. Russian capital came into the economy under the presidencies of Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yanukovych, and Russian corruption came with it.

Proxy parties were planted—the Party of Regions and its various clones. Russian pop music was everywhere, which sounds like a small thing and is not: in postcolonial studies, literature and popular culture are considered among the most effective vehicles of neocolonial control.

Today it is the other way around. Neocolonialism has not evaporated, but the proportion has changed. There is now more independence than neocolonialism—and that itself is what thirty-five years of struggle have achieved.

And corruption was a neocolonial instrument. This is the part Ukrainians resist, so let me put it plainly: our fight against corruption is effectively an anti-colonial fight. In Ukraine people sometimes present this as a dilemma—either we fight corruption or we fight the Russians, we cannot do both. From the perspective of postcolonial studies the dilemma does not exist. Both are anti-colonial efforts. They go hand in hand.

Empires have always travelled with religion on their shoulders, and religion has always helped establish imperial rule in the colonies. In the Ukrainian case it was first the Greek Catholic Church, established in 1596 an instrument of Polish colonization, although this is not the case anymore. But that is how it began.

And presently Russia’s instrument of recolonization is the Moscow Patriarchate, still present in Ukraine as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC MP).

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Here I have to say something uncomfortable for many Ukrainians.

Nations that decolonize very often produce new subalterns. In post-colonial language, these are parts of the population that are subdued, oppressed by the dominant power. But we may be producing such subalterns as an effect of pushing back against Russian colonization: groups of Ukrainians belonging to the UOC MP being marginalized, subalternized, by our own struggle. It is a very difficult dilemma how to deal with this subalternization, and I do not have a resolution for it.

Two revolutions against the ratio

Both of Ukraine’s major “Maidan” protests were anti-neocolonial revolutions.

In the Orange Revolution of 2004 and again during the Euromaidan Revolution in 2013, Ukrainians protested because they had decided there was not enough independence—that what we had was more neocolonial than independent, more fake than real, and that the proportion had to be corrected. That is what a Maidan is. A public consensus that the ratio is wrong.

In February 2022, independence very nearly ended. People gave our statehood three days—and not only Russians. That was the opinion of most observers. It did not end. We survived it. But our statehood is still not secured, and it is being secured every day, including today.

What Ukraine contributed to the empire, and how

There is an argument against everything I have said so far, and Ukrainians make it as often as anyone. They object: look, we have contributed to the Russian Empire and to the Soviet one. We have basically built them.

Which is true.

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But Ukrainians were never permitted to contribute as independent agents. They were allowed to contribute exactly as long as they lost their identity—as long as they denounced their own agency. They were contributors without their will and without their identity.

Corsica is my example. It had its own culture, its own identity, its own language, still spoken in pockets. Go into a good Corsican restaurant in Corsica and they may speak Corsican to you; I have had this experience. But it is not a language widely spoken anymore. It has been completely subsumed by French, and France holds Corsica tightly today. And what is France? To a great extent, it is the creature of a great Corsican named Napoleon Bonaparte, who built the French Empire. Nobody concludes from this that Corsica was not a colony.

It is remarkable to me that Putin still does this. He puts people with Ukrainian backgrounds into key positions—in the military, in propaganda, in negotiations.

• Vladimir Medinsky, one of his chief propagandists and now his negotiator, was born in Smila, in Cherkasy Oblast, my own small motherland.
• Valentina Matviyenko, third in the official hierarchy, comes from Shepetivka in Khmelnytskyi Oblast.
• Kirill Dmitriev, who negotiates with the Americans, was born in Kyiv to a family of Ukrainian biologists.

It was Medinsky, incidentally, who announced in a 2012 interview that the Russian people has one extra chromosome—his explanation for how Russia survived the catastrophes of the twentieth century when other nations, the Scythians and Sarmatians among them, broke and vanished. Russians mocked him for it, since an extra chromosome is the marker of Down syndrome.

As a claim, though, it is a race claim. Made by a man born in Cherkasy Oblast, about a people he was not born into.

They contribute to the Russian neo-empire. They contribute to it not as Ukrainians but as those who denounced Ukrainian identity. This is how empire functions. It absorbs the representatives of subaltern nations who willingly denounce their own will. It was so under the Romanovs. It was so in the Soviet empire. It is so in Putin's quasi-empire now.

Ukrainians were, and still are, a subaltern nation.

Papua, and Scotland

There are worse outcomes than ours and there are better ones.

The Papuans of West Papua tried. They fought for independence, failed, and many of them were killed. They are still oppressed. That is the bad end of the range, and it is not hypothetical.

The better scenario would be the Scots. They had statehood, and it was strong—kings and queens, pride, history, narratives, everything a full and self-sufficient nation possesses. Then they lost it. They are not being killed. They do not suffer the way the Papuans suffer. And yet many of them remain deeply dissatisfied with what they are. We support the United Kingdom, of course, but we are also mindful of the peoples who constitute it—Scots, Irish, Welsh. They have their pride, their nation, their language, their history, their self-consciousness, their identity.

They cannot fully live any of it without independence.

That would be a much better scenario for us than the Papuan one. From where we are now, I still do not think it would be enough.

Colonies taken by neighbors

Timor-Leste has stayed with me. One of the newest countries in the world, independent since 2002, and before that a genocide. Up to a third of its population died. Its capital, Dili, was destroyed in 1999.

Our own Baturyn, the capital of the Cossack Hetmanate, was destroyed by Peter I's army in 1708 in the same way.

And Timor is not an overseas colony. That is the other thing. There is the colonization conducted across an ocean—the Dutch in the Malay Archipelago, to which Timor belongs—and there is the colonization conducted by a neighbor. Indonesia, having been a Dutch colony itself, became independent, developed a colonial attitude within thirty years, and invaded Timor.

Ukraine was taken by neighbors too. First Poland, then the Russian Empire. Both committed atrocities here. We always resisted, and always with some violence—there has never been an anti-colonial struggle that was not violent, and ours is not an exception. I wish it were an exception. It was not.

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The first colonization, and the first decolonization

The Polish colonization is the one Ukrainians forget, and it matters for a reason that has nothing to do with Poland.

It ended. And the decolonization from it was successful: we regained our ground, re-established Ukrainian identity on our territory, our own way of living. And there was a process of reconciliation that worked, at least to some extent. That is the first decolonization Ukrainians ever accomplished, and it is the paradigm I hold onto when I think about what happens with Russia.

Which does not mean it is finished. Some of the reactions coming from the Polish side now are, to me, surprising and incomprehensible, and I can explain them only through this lens: post-colonial phantom pain. They lost a limb and they still feel it. Russia feels the same phantom pain about what it calls the Russian World, and reacts far more violently, because Russia is historically far more violent. But the pain is the same kind of pain.

One white nation killing another

Much of the world does not accept that any of this is decolonization. In the Global South the response is: one white nation is killing another white nation, why should we care.

They should care, because our struggle is the same as theirs was. If ours is meaningless, then theirs was meaningless too.

They are working with a black and white colonial paradigm—sometimes literally—which skims over the surface. There is a name for what we are: a South within the North. Inside the Global North pockets of land and people exist whose experience and self-perception are closer to the peoples of the Global South than to their neighbors. Ukraine is one of those pockets. Our vision of ourselves may be nearer to the Global South than to Europe.

Race is the real difference, and I will not pretend otherwise. Though even there the resemblance is closer than people assume. When we were a Polish colony, the Poles developed the idea that we were an inferior people—chłopy—while they were Sarmatians, a superior nation. Not race as skin color. Race as ethnic origin, which does the same work.

By my own study, something like 90% of the criteria that apply to other colonies apply to Ukraine. Perhaps 10% do not.

But before the world can see this, we Ukrainians have to see it.

Why the blood

Fanon believed that violence is embedded in colonialism—that it is intrinsic, that you cannot be a colonial power without being violent, without being prepared to kill the subalterns. He also believed that anticolonial struggle is inevitably violent. Sartre, who wrote the preface to him, believed it too. Maybe that is right, and it would be a good and easy explanation.

But our struggle is particularly bloody for a particular reason, and it is Russian. Russia has adopted most of its ideas from the West, and has almost always put them into practice through violence exceeding anything done in the place the idea came from. Marxist ideas about the counter-revolutionary nature of the peasantry produced the Holodomor; American culture wars are producing this one.

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Our resistance is violent because their aggression is. It is a reaction, and it does not exceed the action. If anything it is disproportionate in the other direction. They kill our civilians in daylight and destroy hospitals and residential buildings. We destroy their oil plants and the warehouses of their online marketplaces.

From the standpoint of genocide studies, what is being done to us is a classical genocide. Not a rhetorical trope—a scientifically provable case. What is unprecedented is not the death toll but the intensity: the quantity of weaponry and ammunition involved in this anti-colonial war has no precedent among anti-colonial wars.

Agency

This is what Ukraine has to contribute to postcolonial theory, and I think it is the important thing.

The victims are not powerless and they are not will-less. They have their own volition. They have their own agency. And the purpose of an anti-colonial struggle is to regain agency—not merely independence, not merely economic freedom, not merely the cutting of ties with international capital or with the old and new empires. Agency.

Our struggle is a struggle for and through our agency. And it is a path that other peoples still living with the residues of colonialism could follow.

The neocolonialism that is not Russian

The Russian form is the most obvious available to us. It is not the only one.

The newest arrived with the Trump administration, which tried to exchange support for our resources—rare earth elements and so forth—essentially requiring us to give them up in return for help. This is a classical neocolonial attitude. It is what happens when a neocolonial power is being established.

I want to be careful here, because this is the policy of the White House and not of Americans. Most Americans who come to Ukraine come as volunteers, prepared to sacrifice their lives, because they understand that global democracy depends on what happens here. The neocolonial attitude belongs to a minority. Unfortunately, that minority currently holds power.

It is a new situation for us, but it is not unique for the world. Still, we can survive it if we understand what it is.

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Whether it is worth it

It is not for us to answer that.

Our generation has decided that it is worth it. But we should remember that we have also decided for the next generation. The Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, a volunteer legion of students and intelligentsia raised in Lviv in 1914, decided in their time that it was worth sacrificing themselves for Ukrainian independence, and we now judge that they were right. The UPA, fighting into the 1950s, decided the same. They were defeated.

We do not know how the next generation will judge us. Because there will be millions of Ukrainians who will not have been born as a result of this war. They will not decide whether we were right or wrong. They will not exist.

Those who do exist will make the judgment.

Cyril Hovorun

Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun is a professor of ecclesiology, international relations and ecumenism at Sankt Ignatios College, University College Stockholm, and a director of the Huffington Ecumenical Institute at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

Edited by Alya Shandra

Editor's note. The opinions expressed in our Opinion section belong to their authors. Euromaidan Press' editorial team may or may not share them.

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Ukrainian drones worked over dozens of Russian military and industrial sites overnight on 24 August, reaching from occupied Ukraine and the Black Sea to southern Russia, the commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS) reported. The night's targets included a fighter jet at a Russian airbase, air-defense radars, fuel and propellant facilities, and vessels of Russia's sanctions-evading shadow fleet. A fuller breakdown released later in the day named the site of each strike and the unit that carried it out. Footage released with the breakdown shows the strikes.

Ukraine has been running mid-range strikes across the belt from occupied Crimea to Rostov Oblast for months, taking out the radars, missile batteries, and the aircraft that fly air-defense patrols over it — a rolling effort to thin the cover that meets every deeper Ukrainian strike.

A fighter jet and a decoy at the same airbase

Robert Brovdi, callsign Madyar, said his crews hit 66 targets in the operational depth of the Russian rear. Among them was a MiG-29 at Dolotinka, on the grounds of the Millerovo airbase in Rostov Oblast. The 1st Separate Center of the SBS carried out that strike.

The same unit hit a mockup of a Ka-52 Alligator attack helicopter at the same location. Russia uses such decoys to draw drones away from real aircraft.

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It was the third Russian fighter jet Ukrainian drones reached in two days. Crews struck another MiG-29, a jet SBS identified as a Su-33 and Militarnyi assessed as a Su-30SM, and an Orion strike-reconnaissance drone at Vityazevo in Krasnodar Krai on 23 August. Ukrainian drones have caught a MiG-29 on a Russian airfield before, at Kursk in July.

Four radars, from Rostov Oblast to occupied Crimea

Crews hit four radar systems overnight. Two Kasta-2E2 sets went down at Geraskin and Karaichev in Rostov Oblast, and a Nebo-SV at Gukovo in the same oblast. All three fell to the 1st Separate Center.

The fourth, an ST-68, stood at Rozdolne in occupied Crimea. The 9th Kairos battalion of the 414th Madyar's Birds brigade struck it.

The radar work is part of a campaign against Russian sensors and launchers that has run for months without a pause.

Rocket propellant, fuel, and two ships

The 1st Separate Center struck the Kamensky Combine at Kamensk-Shakhtinsky in Rostov Oblast, a plant producing solid rocket fuel, according to SBS. The 9th Kairos battalion hit a fuel tank at Yeysk in Krasnodar Krai. In occupied Luhansk Oblast, the 20th K-2 brigade struck a fuel depot belonging to the 106th material support brigade of Russia's 41st Army at Dovzhansk. 

Brovdi also said his crews hit and destroyed two shadow-fleet vessels, a tanker and a bulk carrier, in the Black Sea. No independent account of either loss has appeared.

A drone school, relays, and a base in occupied Kherson Oblast

In occupied Kherson Oblast, Ukrainian crews destroyed the quarters of a Russian National Guard rapid-response unit and hit two relay stations for Geran attack drones, according to the SBS breakdown.

They also struck a shelter for a Zala reconnaissance drone crew in occupied Crimea, a drone school in occupied Zaporizhzhia Oblast, and a drone laboratory in occupied Donetsk Oblast.

Brovdi also reported 11 Russian rear deployment points burning across occupied Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk oblasts, along with strikes on energy nodes in occupied territory.

Questions remain over how some of Burnham’s promises will be paid for

Russian forces have gained ground on the eastern approaches to Sloviansk and continue to prioritize an eastern route toward the city, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Their earlier push from the northeast had bogged down, and Russia now aims to set up a future assault on one of the last major cities Ukraine still holds in Donetsk Oblast. A quick move on the city itself remains extremely unlikely, ISW said.

Russia's 2026 summer campaign in the east has advanced through field edges and small villages rather than the breakthroughs the Kremlin keeps promising, the grinding pattern that has defined the fighting across Donetsk Oblast for years.

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Kostiantynivka: Why one city in Donbas matters so much that Putin lies about having captured it

The eastern approach

Ukrainian military observer Kostiantyn Mashovets reported that Russian forward units are advancing across several tactical areas at once in the Sloviansk direction. He said the command of Russia's 3rd Combined Arms Army rushes assault infantry forward right after each successful infiltration. Russian troops reached the southeastern edge of Pyskunivka, east of Sloviansk, from the east and northeast, moving off positions they had seized on the southern bank of the Siverskyi Donets, Mashovets said. Zakitne lies northeast of Pyskunivka and Kryva Luka southeast of it, and ISW read the advance as evidence Russia has consolidated positions in both.

They also infiltrated the southern and southeastern outskirts of Mykolaivka from western Rai-Oleksandrivka. ISW assessed that Russia is running a dual effort to connect its units near Kryva Luka with those at Rai-Oleksandrivka, so it can assault Mykolaivka from dominant terrain to the east and south at once. Mashovets added that other Russian groups slipped through three settlements along the E-40 Bakhmut-Sloviansk highway, trying to hold the western bank of the Siverskyi Donets-Donbas Canal and reach the river just east of the city.

ISW observed reports on 23 August that Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian infiltration attempt in Mykolaivka.

Oleksandr Borodin, spokesperson for Ukraine's 3rd Army Corps, said the Lyman direction falls in his corps' zone and that Russia's goal there is to half-encircle the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration from the flank—first securing bridgeheads across the rivers, then cutting logistics. He called those plans unrealistic:

"We have quite serious defensive positions there and have been preparing for a long time. The capabilities they currently have to try to accomplish this task are insufficient even to come close to achieving such a goal."

Why Moscow switched directions

Russia prioritized attacking Sloviansk from the northeast through Lyman when it opened its spring-summer 2026 offensive, but that effort has largely stalled. The Siverskyi Donets River, which loops north and northeast of the city, together with a web of canals, handed Ukrainian defenders a natural moat. So Russian commanders now treat Mykolaivka as a key prize. Taking it would let them strike west toward Sloviansk from the east, skirting the water obstacles that blocked the northeastern route.

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Ukrainian intelligence units will not help: Analyst warns that once Russia breaks into Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, reinforcing them only delays inevitable

A slow road into the Fortress Belt

Sloviansk anchors the northern end of Ukraine's Fortress Belt, a chain of fortified cities that has blunted Russian advances in Donetsk Oblast since 2014. ISW cautioned that Russian forces are extremely unlikely to make fast gains west of Mykolaivka, since they still need to seize several more settlements first.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 23 August that Putin has ordered his army to seize all of Donetsk Oblast by 31 December. By ISW's count, it is the 15th such deadline since 2022, and Russia has missed every one that has come due.

Zelenskyy put Russia's frontline casualties this year at around 267,000, including about 155,000 killed, and said 70% to 80% of them fall in the Kostiantynivka direction. Russia holds about 79.89% of Donetsk Oblast, by ISW's count, and Zelenskyy said the Kremlin is preparing to mobilize around 300,000 men after the 18–20 September State Duma elections, partly to reinforce Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.

The UK is providing Ukraine with the blueprints to long-range SCALP missiles, the prime minister announced in Kyiv

Ukraine brought a small group of servicemen home from captivity on 24 August, its Independence Day, and every one of them had been carried as missing in action, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced. The men crossed back through Belarus as a separate stage of the exchange now under way. Ukraine's prisoner-of-war agency later set out who they were.

Amid Russia's all-out war in Ukraine, prisoner swaps remain one of the few Ukrainian-Russian mechanisms still producing results while every negotiating track on territory and ceasefires stays deadlocked, which leaves each completed stage as the practical measure of what still passes between two governments that agree on nothing else.

Ten men Ukraine had listed as missing, not captured

President Zelenskyy said Ukraine was bringing back 10 of its soldiers through Belarus. They serve in the Armed Forces and the National Guard, and they defended the country in the Donetsk sector in the east. He called it a special stage of the exchange.

The Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, the state body that runs Ukraine's exchanges, specified the details in the afternoon. The freed men hold the ranks of sergeant, soldier, and sailor. All 10 had been logged as missing rather than captured. 

Two had been listed as missing since 2024, the other eight since 2025. The agency said the handover came out of talks run by its own exchange working group. It described the return as the second stage of the current exchange. 

The first stage ran on 19 August and brought back 103 servicemen. 

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Two officers, 101 soldiers—Ukraine’s newest homecoming from Russian cells

Locating Ukrainian captives inside Russia or the occupied territories is often difficult, as is verifying their identities, because Russia withholds data on captured soldiers and civilian hostages. Former detainees describe beatings, electric shocks, mock executions, and refusals of medical care, and civilians held without trial report the same treatment as the soldiers.

Roughly 7,000 Ukrainian service members were in Russian captivity as of May 2026, with civilian detainees estimated at 10,000 to 20,000. Ukraine had returned 9,606 military personnel and civilians through exchanges by late June. 

Independent businesses selling through M.Video, Russia’s largest electronics chain, waited months to receive customer payments for goods already sold. One seller received it only after filing a formal demand that usually precedes a lawsuit, according to a Vedomosti report.

The sellers are independent businesses using M.Video’s website as their storefront. Under M.Video’s seller contract, a customer buys from the independent business while M.Video collects the payment as the seller’s agent.

The business pays M.Video a commission for listing the product and handling payment and delivery. Until M.Video transfers the proceeds, the seller has already handed over the product but has not received the money from the sale.

Some sellers turn to legal demands

Sellers said payments for goods sold in May and June were still missing in August. One sent M.Video a formal demand on 13 August, giving the company five days to pay and waiving interest. The money arrived on 18 August.

Another business said its demand went unanswered, while its assigned manager stopped responding. It continued shipping orders until mid-July because M.Video had promised to transfer payment for its May sales.

Similar complaints had already surfaced two months earlier. M.Video told ABN that transfers were regular, but rapid growth sometimes required additional checks before funds could be released. The same report cited a business that had waited 24 working days after approving its sales statement; its previous transfer had also arrived late.

Independent sellers are taking a larger role in M.Video’s business. M.Video’s annual results show that products from these sellers accounted for one in every ten orders in 2025. According to its half-year marketplace update, turnover from these businesses quadrupled year-on-year as M.Video expanded beyond electronics. The number of products listed grew nearly sixfold.

The shift follows heavy losses in M.Video’s store-based business. M.Video’s annual results show that it lost about 64 billion rubles (about $770 million)—nearly one-fifth of its annual revenue. The chain closed hundreds of underperforming stores and opened only 11.

The European Commission approved €6.1 billion ($7.12 billion) in new defense procurement for Ukraine on 24 August, covering air and missile defense systems, missiles, ammunition, and radars. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the decision as Ukraine marked its Independence Day.

Russia's intensifying missile campaign has outpaced what Ukraine's partners can supply, and Europe is now financing the systems its own industry can build while the scarcest interceptors stay in American hands.

How the €90 billion loan pays out

The funding is part of the EU's €90 billion ($105 billion) Ukraine Support Loan for 2026-27, with €60 billion allocated to defense and €30 billion for budgetary support. The new package comes on top of €16 billion in previously approved defense procurement. Reuters put the disbursed total at €8.35 billion.

On 30 June, the European Commission disbursed €3.9 billion as the first payment under a first tranche of around €6 billion dedicated to drone procurement. On 15 July, it disbursed €1.1 billion, and on 30 July another €3.47 billion for drones, missiles, air defense, and Gripen fighter jets. The Commission's own three defense-window payments add to €8.47 billion.

Most of the buying will be from EU defense companies, and the Commission said deliveries will mean drawing down stockpiles, reprioritizing orders, and raising production. Under the mechanism, Ukraine submits signed contracts with defense companies, and the Commission reviews them before releasing funds.

Interceptor deliveries are falling as strikes rise

Air defense is among Ukraine’s most urgent military needs as Russia steps up its aerial campaign. The European Commission said Ukraine faced 376 missile strikes in July alone.

Kyiv has repeatedly warned of shortages of interceptors, particularly for ballistic missiles. The shortfall traces to Washington: since the United States went to war with Iran, it faces its own Patriot shortage and has resisted releasing large numbers to Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy released figures ahead of the Independence Day meeting that show the scale: Ukraine received 675 Patriot interceptors in 2023 and 364 in 2025, while 264 are projected for 2026, against a request for at least 300 for the winter, according to Kyiv Post.

Allies gather in Kyiv with missiles on the table

The announcement coincided with a hybrid meeting of the Coalition of the Willing in Kyiv. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and French President Emmanuel Macron co-chaired the meeting, with Macron joining by videoconference, the Élysée Palace said. European Council President António Costa also took part, and NATO was represented by Deputy Secretary General Radmila Šekerinska.

Britain agreed to let defense firm MBDA release classified information on UK components of the long-range SCALP missile so Ukraine and France can set up local assembly lines, the UK government said. The EU decision followed Norway's pledge on 23 August to provide Ukraine with about $9 billion in support in 2027, including military, humanitarian, and financial assistance. Nordic and Baltic leaders announced the pledge during a visit to Kyiv.

Ukraine is building a sea-facing layer of air defense along its southern coast, Kyrylo Liukov, head of the unmanned technologies department at the Serhii Prytula Foundation, wrote in a column for RBC-Ukraine. Winged interceptors now reach the Russian spy drones that guide strikes in the south.

Russia's nightly drone strikes on Ukrainian cities have turned air defense into a race to close every corridor Russia can fly through, over land first and now over the open sea. Kyiv does it with cheap interceptors rather than costly missiles, and keeps having to chase Russian workarounds. The sea was the stretch air defense could not reach, and it is where Russia keeps the spotters that make its Shahed swarms steerable.

Land and sea are two different fights

Defending the sky over land and over open water are two different problems, Liukov wrote. Multirotor copters are fast and simple to launch near the coast, but past roughly 25 km offshore, a multirotor is almost useless. Russia builds its mission routes so that drones cross dozens of kilometers over sea before they turn toward Ukrainian targets. Fixed-wing drones close the gap. Built like gliders, they loiter for over an hour and hold a link at 40 km and beyond, helped by an open radio horizon that land's terrain and buildings deny them.

Recon drones are the priority target for a reason. Beyond spotting and confirming hits, they work as relays in a MESH network for a group of strike drones. In that setup, Russian crews can steer Shaheds by hand right up to the moment of impact, Liukov wrote.

Southern units recently set three distance records with foundation-supplied interceptors. The 18th aviation commandant's office of Air Command South downed a Russian Orlan-30 reconnaissance drone 110 km out. It used a Wovkulaka Spitfire interceptor, the longest kill on record for that system.

The 12th Separate Special Purpose Center set the other two, flying a system from the miltech company TechnoTaras: an Orlan downed at 86 km, and a 145 km hunt measured from the takeoff point that held a stable digital link the whole way, Liukov wrote. That leaves Russia's drones exposed much farther from shore than its planners assume, he added—and if such results become routine, Russia has to pull its transit routes farther out still.

The Maiachnia beacon line

A less obvious problem was navigation, not shooting. A drone flying without GPS steers by landmarks, and over open sea, there are none. Late last year, the foundation, the 12th Separate Special Purpose Center, and TechnoTaras launched a project called Maiachnia. It strings radio beacons on the Skyline system along the coast from Ochakiv to Izmail. The beacons work on their own and keep backup power, tied to a central network that operators can adjust remotely. An operator can then track the drone even under GPS jamming, bad weather, or a temporary loss of link, and bring it home. More than five southern units now fly the foundation's winged drones.

The real stakes sit offshore—the southern ports and the Black Sea grain corridor that Russian drones threaten and that land-based copters can barely reach. Keeping Russian drones farther offshore would buy room there. But Russia is scaling up a faster, jet-powered Shahed, and the interceptor answer to it is early—so the offshore edge just won will have to be defended again.

Ukrainian strikes on Ozon’s warehouses sent the listed retailer’s shares down 29.09% from Friday’s close at Monday’s low, RBC’s market report said. The Moscow Exchange shifted Ozon’s main trading session to a 30-minute auction, while other trading modes remained open, exchange rules show.

Unlike privately held Wildberries, Ozon’s listing made investors’ response to the disruption immediately visible. The sell-off came before Ozon had calculated the physical damage, which the company said it would assess later in its statement on Chapayevsk.

Since 22 August, Ozon has reported disruption at six facilities: warehouses in Chapayevsk and Orenburg, three facilities in southern Russia, and another warehouse in Krasnodar.

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Russia was simultaneously attacking Ukraine’s retail and logistics infrastructure. Russian strikes burned two Epicentr hypermarkets in Odesa on Monday morning and caused fires at food warehouses in the city, regional authorities said.

Two days earlier, President Vladimir Putin had said Kyiv should “expect a response targeting your most sensitive economic sectors” in comments published by state journalist Pavel Zarubin.

Ozon falls farther than the market

The MOEX index fell about 2.9% on 24 August. Ozon’s 29.09% decline went far beyond the broader sell-off, indicating that investors were reacting to company-specific risk rather than merely following the Russian market.

That risk had appeared before Ozon’s warehouses were struck. Its shares fell 2.3% on 22 July over concerns that the retailer might become a target. Six days later, VTB Bank fell 2.5%, with analysts attributing part of the decline to uncertainty surrounding its Wildberries partnership.

Wildberries, Ozon, and their smaller rivals sell goods and services worth the equivalent of 8.5% of Russia’s GDP and employ 4 million people—more than 5% of the country’s workforce.

The August attacks turned that risk into operational disruption. Ozon reported fires at its Makhachkala facility and Krasnodar warehouse. In Chapayevsk, the company evacuated more than 500 workers, suspended operations, and redirected shipments. The following day, it evacuated more than 300 workers and closed its Orenburg warehouse.

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Rerouting allowed Ozon to keep orders moving by transferring the workload to facilities that remained open. That is the business risk investors were pricing: a distributed warehouse network can absorb an isolated closure, while repeated attacks progressively reduce the capacity available to absorb the next one.

Each strike leaves fewer warehouses

Ukraine’s campaign against Wildberries shows how warehouse losses accumulate across a retail network. By the end of July, Verstka counted eight affected warehouses covering 860,000 square meters, or 15.4% of the company’s total warehouse space.

By mid-August, ISW counted seven of its ten largest hubs knocked out. The two estimates measure different things, but both show disruption spreading through the network.

A distributed warehouse system can absorb an isolated closure by moving shipments through other hubs. As more sites are lost, fewer alternatives are available to carry out that work. The economic effect, therefore, depends not only on the value of the buildings or goods destroyed, but on how much spare capacity remains after each strike.

Russia’s attacks on Ukraine illustrate the same logistical resilience. Two strikes destroyed warehouse buildings at Aurora’s distribution center, CEO Taras Panasenko said, but the retailer kept its stores open. Ozon similarly redirected shipments after closing warehouses in Russia.

Continued sales do not mean that the strikes had no economic effect. They show that retailers can absorb individual losses by relying on the rest of their networks. Repeated attacks gradually consume that protection, and Ozon’s public listing allowed investors to price the risk before the company could calculate the damage.

Ukraine celebrated 35 years of independence on 24 August, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy marked the day with an address listing what the invasion has cost Russia, published by the President's Office. He said Putin is mortal and out of time to understand Ukraine, and said Ukraine will not hand over Donbas or save the Kremlin half a million soldiers. He also asked partners for sanctions and weapons strong enough to force an end to the war.

Russia has been invading Ukraine since 2014 and fighting a full-scale war on it since 2022, and Ukraine now supplies a growing share of the missiles and drones it fights back with, while the air defense shielding its cities still hangs on decisions taken in Washington and European capitals—which is what makes a holiday speech a statement of what Kyiv will not trade and what it needs built or delivered next.

The losses he read back to Moscow

President Zelenskyy turned from his own citizens to Russia partway through the speech. 

"You wanted to take all our Ukraine, all our land; instead, you lost your oil refineries, your fleet, your profits, your entire generation that you sent into the meat grinder," he said. 

A country that wanted Ukraine erased from the map, he added, is now absent from the international agenda of the future civilization.

He set Moscow's self-image against its filling stations. 

"For 27 years, the head of Russia has talked about greatness, while Russia is standing in lines for gasoline," Zelenskyy said. 

Moscow and St. Petersburg brought back gasoline rationing this month, and Rosneft capped fills at every station in the country.

On the Russian leader he was blunt. 

"Putin hopes that we are tired. But we know that he is mortal," he said, adding that Putin never understood Ukraine and now will not have the time to.

A fifth Independence Day at war

Before the holiday, Russian ballistic missiles hit Kyiv and its main airport hub twice in 24 hours. A solution to Russian ballistic terror must be found, Zelenskyy said, and that gamble must not pay off. 

Russia does not want peace, it wants mobilization, the president said. Ukraine will not let Moscow seize the initiative or convince Europe that surrendering Donbas ends the war. Russia keeps pushing back the dates for taking all of Donetsk Oblast and will keep pushing them back, he said.

The president called Ukraine's defense industry a giant that forges independence around the clock, and demanded more from it. Mid-range strikes cut Russian logistics and long-range weapons cut Russian profits, he said, listing Moscow, Tuapse, Tula, Ryazan, Olenya, and Omsk among the places already hit. 

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Ukraine's home-built Flamingo cruise missiles should stop being a rare species and arrive en masse: "They must 'winter' in Russia," Zelenskyy noted. 

Previously, Flamingos have hit defense plants more than 1,000 km from the border, though they still appear in strikes in small numbers.

"China should no longer remain silent"

Ukraine is not asking anyone to fight for it, the president said — only for everything needed to stop the war before Putin starts the next one. He wants sanctions that make Russians howl and Moscow at a negotiating table, and said Washington has lost its illusions about Russian intentions. Europe must be Europe, he said: united, ambitious, brave. 

"China should no longer remain silent," he added, saying Beijing must cool the ardor of someone who puts on a sailor's uniform and cap and talks about a nuclear strike—a description that fits Putin.

Ukrainian drones struck three warehouses of the Russian online retailer Ozon across the country's south overnight on 24 August, monitoring Telegram channels reported. Ozon is Russia's second-largest online store, an Amazon-style marketplace, shipping customer orders out of huge regional depots. Fires broke out, the company closed one hub, and its shares fell in Monday trading.

Three warehouses, 314,714 square meters

The three struck sites cover 314,714 m² in three Russian regions, Militarnyi calculated. The largest, about 130,000 m², stands in Tyube in Dagestan, 800 to 900 km from Ukraine's border. Russian news Telegram channel Astra called it the company's biggest warehouse in the North Caucasus. Residents said the fire was visible up to 10 kilometers away.

Nevinnomyssk in Stavropol Krai holds the second site, 93,514 m². The third, 91,200 m², sits near Enem in Adygea, on the boundary with Krasnodar Krai. Drones have now hit five Ozon warehouses, Militarnyi noted.

The company's account differs

Ozon said fires started at its Dagestan and Krasnodar warehouses and that people were injured in Dagestan. In Nevinnomyssk it evacuated staff, closed the site, and stated that the facilities and the goods inside were "in order."

Six of the retailer's complexes have come under drone attack in three days, according to the company. The company also said the Adygeysk and Nevinnomyssk warehouses escaped damage. Monitoring data places a struck 93,514 m² warehouse in Nevinnomyssk.

Russian officials blame falling debris

Krasnodar Krai Governor Veniamin Kondratyev claimed drone debris allegedly killed two children at a private children's center in Krasnodar, with the injured count later put at 12.

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Head of Adygea Murat Kumpilov confirmed a fire at the Ozon center in Takhtamukaysky district. Acting head of Dagestan Fyodor Shchukin claimed falling drone fragments started the Kumtorkalinsky district fire and hurt nobody, which the company contradicts. Stavropol Krai Governor Vladimir Vladimirov claimed air defenses were repelling a raid on Nevinnomyssk's industrial zone.

Rostov Oblast head Yuri Slyusar claimed 120 drones were downed over the oblast. Russia's Defense Ministry claimed 351 Ukrainian drones destroyed across 10 Russian regions and occupied Crimea, without saying how many got through.

Ozon shares dropped 28% on Monday morning, state agency TASS reported, while Reuters put the fall at almost 13%.

The third night in a row

Ukraine has destroyed or damaged 29 marketplace warehouses since 18 July, RFE/RL said, mapping them with satellite imagery. Drones struck the Orenburg complex on 23 August, where the company pulled more than 300 workers out. On 22 August they hit the Chapayevsk warehouse in Samara Oblast, the first strike on the company, where people were injured.

Before Ozon, Ukrainian drones spent weeks on Wildberries, Russia's largest marketplace, wrecking about 15.4% of its storage space in July alone.

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Ukrainian partisans have dedicated their new “catch” to Ukraine’s Independence Day. According to ATESH, they destroyed a military KamAZ truck that was used in assaults on Donetsk Oblast and was stationed with Russian occupation forces in Rostov Oblast.

ATESH is a Ukrainian-Crimean Tatar partisan movement founded in September 2022 in response to Russia's full-scale invasion. The group operates in occupied Ukrainian territories and in Russia itself, with members including Crimean Tatars, Ukrainians, and Russians who were mobilized into the Russian army but now work for Ukraine.

The operation was carried out without the partisans even having to do it themselves. The vehicle was used in the offensive toward Kostiantynivka, one of the hottest sectors of the current fighting, alongside the Russian advances toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

The sabotage was carried out by a soldier from the Russian Armed Forces’ “Center” Group of Forces, which is assaulting Kostiantynivka. The vehicle was actively used to supply the advancing forces, and its loss disrupts Russian logistics.

Putin has a primary target, Zelenskyy says

Earlier, President Zelenskyy said that the offensive toward Kostiantynivka would remain one of the Russian military’s main priorities through the end of the year, according to Suspilne.

“Putin’s unchanged primary objective on the front is Kostiantynivka–Sloviansk. The latest deadline he has given his generals is to complete the occupation of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts by the end of the year,” he said.

Since the beginning of 2026, Russia has lost 267,000 personnel along the entire front line, including approximately 155,000 killed, according to the figures cited in the report. Russian forces are suffering their heaviest losses specifically in the sector stretching from Sloviansk to Kostiantynivka.

How was the operation carried out?

The agent joined the movement out of revenge: his commanders killed his fellow soldiers after he refused to pay extortionate demands. The partisans said that such abuses in the Russian army are commonplace, and that the only way to survive and punish those responsible is to resist from within.

Earlier, the partisans reported that Russia’s 64th Motor Rifle Brigade, which has been implicated in crimes in Bucha, was concealing its actual losses. The command allegedly registers many of the dead as “missing in action” in order to reduce the official death toll and avoid payments to their families.

Meanwhile, security and counterintelligence services are reportedly putting pressure on the women, threatening them with criminal charges for “discrediting” the army and the complete loss of any payments if they continue searching for their missing relatives.