Ukraine can now measure how cost-effectively it kills, and the math favors it. Every dollar Ukraine's Defense Forces spend on striking a target inflicts several times more losses on Russia, as confirmed by the Mission Control module in the DELTA battle system, Ukraine's Defense Ministry reported.

Mission Control, launched six months ago, now processes 50,000 missions a week and over 230,000 reports, allowing Ukraine to track not just what it hits but also what each strike costs relative to the damage it causes. In June, every dollar Ukraine spent on a strike cost Russia nearly five times as much.

The economics favor Ukraine's strikes

The system prices both sides of every strike. Mission Control records the cost of what Russia loses, ranging from a few hundred dollars for telecommunications equipment to hundreds of thousands of dollars for air-defense systems and other high-value targets.

The June figures show the gap. Hitting one enemy soldier costs Ukraine $3,032, compared with roughly $65,000 that Russia spends to maintain one. Meanwhile, hitting a piece of equipment costs $2,674, and targeting an infrastructure object costs $1,487.

Every mission feeds the next

Mission Control logs each mission to sharpen the next. The military analyzes what worked, what did not, and why to adjust tactics for the next mission rather than blindly repeating mistakes, according to the Defense Ministry.

The data breaks down by mission type and depth. It sorts missions into reconnaissance, strike, logistics, and evacuation, and by range, 20-plus and 50-plus kilometers, showing for each unit what it strikes, how effectively, at what cost, and what economic damage it inflicts, while also tracking which Ukrainian equipment is lost, at what depth, and under what circumstances.

The goal is fewer Ukrainian lives spent

The measurement serves a purpose beyond economics. The Defense Ministry said it continues implementing technologies so each mission makes the next more precise and helps preserve the lives of Ukrainian soldiers, gradually shifting the most dangerous battlefield tasks to robotic systems.

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

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

The Shahed site and the Orion control station

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

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

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

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

The relay points that extend the drones' reach

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

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

Ukraine has approved a drone built to reach the deepest parts of Russia. Ukraine's Defense Ministry has codified the domestic Dovbush T40 uncrewed aviation complex, a strategic-level drone for deep reconnaissance and precision strikes on distant Russian targets, the ministry announced.

The drone extends the reach of Ukraine's homegrown deep-strike arsenal to Siberia. With a wingspan of nearly 5 meters, the Dovbush T40 has enough range to hit targets beyond the Urals and in Russian Siberia.

What the drone does

The Dovbush T40 is a multi-role strategic aircraft. It is designed for deep reconnaissance, fire correction, and precision strikes on structures, equipment, and enemy personnel far from the line of contact.

Its endurance is the enabler. More than a day aloft gives it the range to reach targets, letting Ukraine threaten the deep-rear sites, from factories to airfields, that Russia has kept far from the front for safety.

Its advantages over similar drones

The drone offers several edges, the ministry said. It has ultra-low radar visibility, a high-performance engine with electronic fuel injection, and a choice of strike methods, either as a kamikaze drone or by dropping a munition.

It is built to work under jamming. The Dovbush T40 stands out for high resistance to electronic warfare, according to the Defense Ministry, the recurring requirement for any Ukrainian drone meant to fly deep into a contested electromagnetic environment.

It builds on combat-proven predecessors

The drone comes from a maker with a track record. It was built by a Ukrainian enterprise whose Dovbush T20 and Kotyhoroshko drones have operated on the battlefield since 2022 with some of the highest effectiveness ratings.

The T40 is an evolution of a proven system. The medium-range Dovbush T20, used for reconnaissance, real-time artillery correction, and pinpoint strikes, evolved through battlefield feedback into the longer-range, more powerful T40. It joins a fast-growing domestic fleet: since the start of 2026, Ukraine's Defense Ministry has codified 413 uncrewed systems, almost all of which are Ukrainian-made.

Russia's most-used mapping service has digitally hidden a military missile site near Finland by copying a fake forest over it on satellite imagery, Finnish public broadcaster Yle reported. Western map services still show the same position, and a Finnish military analyst called the concealment careless and self-defeating. The clumsy edit points to Moscow's growing fear of Ukrainian drones.

What Yandex tried to erase

The concealed site sits beside the Kronstadt naval base, on Kotlin Island off St. Petersburg in the Gulf of Finland. Editing software copied trees from another image and laid them over the missile position. Until now, Russia mostly blurred sensitive locations rather than deleting them, but this edit tries to hide the target's existence outright. The same battery still appears on Google, Apple, and Microsoft satellite maps. In the covered zone, Russia has previously kept Bastion anti-ship missiles and their radar and reconnaissance systems.

A cover-up that gives itself away

Marko Eklund, a military expert and former Finnish intelligence officer, called the secrecy pointless. Western and Ukrainian analysts read their own satellite images, not Yandex, so the edit protects nothing in practice. He believes an administrative order drove it, and that the work was done sloppily. Anyone who knows what to look for can spot the seams and repeating patterns. 

Explore further

Kronstadt, Russia’s major naval Base after Black Sea Fleet losses, gets hit by Ukrainian drones (VIDEO)

A pattern set by Ukraine's drones

Russia's map cover-ups have tracked Ukraine's deep strikes. A Moscow court ordered Yandex to mask an oil refinery in Ryazan in 2024 after repeated Ukrainian strikes, and a Nordic-Baltic investigation later counted 119 blurred sites near Russia's northwestern border. Blurring shows up at once, while cloned forest hides the tampering itself.

Kronstadt gives Russia one of its main Baltic Fleet bases, and Ukraine's drones have already reached it. In early June, they set a Russian missile corvette ablaze in dry dock there.

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

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

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

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

Russia's long war on Ukraine's energy grid

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

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

Ukrainian forces have used British drones to attack targets inside Russia for the first time, adding two UK-built systems to Kyiv’s arsenal, The Sunday Times reported on 15 August, citing Ukrainian military sources. The newspaper explicitly identified oil refineries in Volgograd and Yaroslavl among the targets struck during the previous six months.

Ukraine still relies mainly on domestically produced drones. But the British systems give Kyiv cheaper weapons that can be replenished and launched in volume. They help sustain Kyiv's attacks on Russian oil, logistics, and military targets without running down limited stocks of Western long-range missiles.

The Sunday Times called this a new phase in UK–Ukraine military cooperation. A senior British defense source said the deployments showed London was “not nervous anymore” about Russian pressure.

What British support adds to Ukraine’s homegrown drone force

Britain has supplied Ukraine with two systems with very different ranges. The Nyan, a jet-powered one-way attack drone made by BAE Systems subsidiary Callen-Lenz, can travel more than 150 miles. The second is catapult-launched and has a range above 600 miles; The Sunday Times withheld its manufacturer’s name on security grounds.

Long-range drones typically cost £50,000 to £100,000, compared with more than £750,000 to replace a Storm Shadow missile, the newspaper said. They can also be stockpiled and launched in swarms, helping Ukraine strain Russian air defenses without exhausting finite missile stocks.

The drones extend wider British support. In June, the UK announced funding for 150,000 Ukrainian-produced drones by the end of 2026. Ukrainian forces have also deployed British Rapid Ranger systems against Russian Shaheds and used UK-supplied Storm Shadows inside Russia, protecting Ukraine at home while widening its options across the border.

Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign reaches 52 Russian regions

Across Ukraine’s overall campaign, The Sunday Times reported almost 700 successful deep strikes between January and June. They reached 52 Russian regions and caused more than £35 billion (about $47.3 billion) in economic damage.

A senior Ukrainian military source said the British systems were proving successful. “When we launch them, we always say Slava Ukraini and God save the King,” the source told The Sunday Times.

Former UK Air Marshal Greg Bagwell predicted Moscow would “sabre rattle” and potentially declare British factories legitimate targets. Other defense sources warned of intensified cyberattacks or espionage against the UK.

Ukraine’s Navy said its forces struck the launch positions and deployment site of a Russian Bastion coastal missile system in occupied Crimea overnight on 16 August, reportedly inflicting significant losses in equipment and personnel.

Russia has regularly used Crimea as a launch platform for strikes against Ukraine, making its missile systems there a priority target for Ukrainian forces seeking to reduce Russia’s ability to attack Ukrainian territory.

The Navy said the final Russian losses were still being assessed and did not provide details on the weapons or personnel destroyed.

Bastion systems used to strike Ukraine

The Bastion is a costly and scarce Russian coastal missile system that can launch P-800 Oniks cruise missiles. Russia has used Oniks missiles launched from occupied Crimea to attack targets across southern and other regions of Ukraine.

Oniks is a supersonic anti-ship cruise missile that Russia has adapted for strikes against ground targets in Ukraine, including Odesa Oblast. The missile can travel at more than 3,000 km/h, making it difficult for air defenses to intercept. Its standard range is about 300 kilometers, while upgraded variants can reportedly reach up to 800 kilometers and carry a 300-kilogram warhead. Russia launches ground attacks with Oniks from mobile Bastion systems based in occupied Crimea.

The Navy also said Russia uses Bastion systems to launch Zircon hypersonic missiles against Ukraine.

The Zircon is a newer hypersonic cruise missile designed to reach speeds of roughly Mach 5–9. Russia has used it against Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, with launches previously reported from Bastion systems in occupied Crimea. Its officially claimed range exceeds 1,000 kilometers, although analysts question that figure; Ukrainian analysts have estimated a lower effective range.

Bastion launchers in Crimea are a particularly important target for Ukraine: they give Russia a mobile platform for striking targets across southern Ukraine and, with Zircon, deep into the country. Ukraine’s air defenses have struggled to intercept these missiles, making strikes on the launchers an important way to reduce the threat before the missiles are fired.

The Ukrainian Navy said the strike was part of ongoing efforts to reduce Russia’s combat potential in the Black Sea region.

Several Ukrainian strikes recorded overnight

The Crimea strike came amid a broader wave of Ukrainian attacks on Russian military, industrial, and logistics targets overnight on 16 August.

Ukraine’s General Staff reported a strike on the Kamensky Combine in Russia’s Rostov Oblast, where a fire was recorded. The plant produces solid rocket fuel for Russia’s Uragan, Smerch, and Tornado-S multiple-launch rocket systems, as well as components for other missile and aviation weapons.

In Moscow Oblast, a Ukrainian drone struck a 250,000-square-meter Wildberries warehouse in Koledino, while another fire was reported at the Severnoye Domodedovo logistics complex. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry later confirmed the Wildberries facility had been put out of operation, saying it was the retailer’s largest warehouse by area.

The General Staff also confirmed the results of two earlier strikes. It said the ZapSibNeftekhim petrochemical complex in Tobolsk was shut down after its central gas-fractionation unit was struck on 10 August, while an 11 August strike damaged several processing units at the Orsknaftaorgsyntez refinery in Orenburg Oblast.

The strikes show the expanding reach of Ukraine’s campaign against the military and industrial infrastructure supporting Russia’s war, from missile systems and rocket-fuel production to oil, petrochemical, and logistics facilities.

A drone hit a major Wildberries warehouse at Koledino near Moscow overnight on 16 August 2026 and set it ablaze, Moscow Oblast Governor Andrey Vorobyov said. Vorobyov described the overnight swarm as “one of the most massive drone attacks in recent times.”

It comes amid an expanding Ukrainian campaign against Wildberries, Russia's largest online retailer with a vast network of warehouses and logistics centers, that has reached warehouses from Moscow Oblast to the Urals. Ukrainian authorities say Wildberries facilities are used to supply components for Russian drone production and navigation equipment, making them part of Russia’s wartime logistics network.

The Koledino fire puts a major part of Wildberries’ storage and sorting capacity at risk. At about 250,000 square meters, the complex is one of the retailer’s largest logistics hubs. Ukrainian sources say the marketplace has moved drone parts and other military-linked goods. Wildberries denies supporting Russia’s military. 

Wildberries’ parent company, RWB, confirmed the fire, saying workers had been evacuated and deliveries rerouted. 

Unlike the 28 July fire at Koledino industrial park, the latest blaze was confirmed at Wildberries’ own Koledino warehouse. Initial reports in July had also pointed to Wildberries, but open-source investigators later identified the burning building as a neighboring warehouse run by a third-party logistics company.

A second fire broke out at Warehouse No. 15 in MLP Severnoye Domodedovo, a multimodal logistics complex near one of Moscow’s main airports. Vorobyov said the warehouse stores medications.

Vorobyov claimed an 83-year-old man was killed after a drone fell on a private home in the Ramenskoye district, while at least six other people were injured across the region.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin claimed that Russian air defenses destroyed 201 drones approaching the region.

Ukraine confirms Wildberries warehouse was targeted

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry confirmed that the Wildberries logistics hub in the Koledino industrial park was put out of operation during the overnight drone attack.

The ministry said the facility, which covered 250,000 square meters, was Wildberries’ largest warehouse by area. It also said Ukraine has now disabled seven of the company’s 10 largest logistics centers.

Ukraine’s campaign against Wildberries keeps growing

Ukraine’s campaign against Wildberries began on 18 July 2026, when drones struck warehouses in Elektrostal and Kotovsk. Reported attacks have since reached the retailer’s sites across Russia, including a newly opened hub near Voronezh and a warehouse in Tver targeted three times in two weeks.

By 14 August, Agentstvo had counted fires at more than 20 Wildberries sites. The sustained attacks had already prompted Wildberries to prohibit warehouse workers from bringing smartphones to work, citing concerns that photos and videos taken during drone alerts could pose a security risk. 

The effects on Russia’s economy

The number and geographic spread of Ukraine’s strikes have put sustained pressure on the retailer’s nationwide warehouse network and Russia’s economy at large. 

Earlier fires destroyed goods belonging to independent sellers, The Moscow Times reported. Wildberries said it was considering compensation, although its contracts do not require the company to cover losses caused by drone attacks. 

In response to Ukraine’s strikes, the company has also reportedly sought additional storage in Kazakhstan, giving local warehouse operators greater leverage as it tries to replace capacity lost in Russia.

The physical disruption was followed on 15 August by a Ukrainian cyberattack targeting Wildberries’ payment and customer service systems. The hackers said customers could not make payments or reach the company through its main online support channel. 

Ukraine struck the plant that fuels the rockets Russia rains on its frontline cities. On the night of 16 August 2026, Ukraine's Defense Forces hit an important Russian military-industrial enterprise, the Kamensky Combine in Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, Rostov Oblast, and a fire was recorded at the site, the General Staff reported.

The plant makes the fuel for weapons that Russia uses to grind down Ukrainian civilian areas. The Kamensky Combine produces solid rocket fuel for the Uragan, Smerch, and Tornado-S multiple-launch rocket systems, which Russia fires at frontline cities like Zaporizhzhia, where there is no metro to shelter in and civilians have only minutes to get behind walls the rockets punch through easily.

The Tornado-S is one of Russia’s most advanced long-range rocket artillery systems, capable of striking targets up to 120 kilometers away. Russian “Tornado-S” and “Smerch” systems are designed to fire and retreat rapidly, making them extremely difficult to locate.

The target feeds Russia's rocket artillery

The Kamensky Combine is a node in Russia's weapons production. It produces solid rocket fuel for the rocket systems, as well as a range of missile systems and aviation strike weapons, with its output directly serving the needs of Russia's armed forces.

The damage is still being assessed. The extent of the damage and the results of the strike are being clarified, the General Staff said, with a fire confirmed at the site.

Two earlier strikes were confirmed hit

The General Staff also confirmed results from recent deep strikes. Analysis of additional data confirmed the shutdown of the ZapSibNeftekhim complex in Tobolsk, Tyumen Oblast, one of Russia's largest petrochemical plants, after its central gas-fractionation unit was struck on 10 August.

A refinery was confirmed to have been hit, too. The 11 August strike at the Orsknaftaorgsyntez refinery in Orsk, Orenburg Oblast, damaged its hydrocracking unit, several primary oil-processing units, and a secondary distillation unit. The refinery produces gasoline, diesel, aviation fuel, and other products for Russia's armed forces and military industry.

The campaign continues

The General Staff signaled more to come. Work on key military and military-industrial targets of the enemy continues, it said, closing with "to be continued."

That promise fits a campaign that has spent 2026 reaching ever deeper into Russia, hitting the refineries, petrochemical plants, and now rocket-fuel factories that supply the war. Each confirmed strike degrades a different piece of Russia's ability to produce the weapons and fuel its forces run on.

Samara Oblast Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev confirmed that a missile struck an unnamed industrial enterprise overnight on 15 August 2026. Andrii Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, said the Progress Rocket Space Center was burning. He provided no damage details.

Progress would be a significant target because it builds Soyuz-2 rockets used to launch Rassvet, Russia’s planned alternative to Starlink. Its Soyuz-2.1b rockets carried Russia’s first serial-production Rassvet satellites into orbit this year. However, neither the governor’s statement nor available imagery establishes that Progress itself was hit.

Exilenova+ published early footage from Samara and reported that a Flamingo cruise missile had struck the city.

A mature Rassvet network could reduce Russia’s dependence on unauthorized Starlink terminals. For now, neither damage to Progress nor the reported use of a Flamingo missile has been independently confirmed.

Open-source analysts at Falcon Insight Map geolocated the smoke near Aviakor’s Building No. 106. Militarnyi said Aviakor and Progress sit a few hundred meters apart, and available images could not establish which enterprise was hit. The industrial area lies roughly 900 kilometers from Ukraine.

Kyiv pushes strikes deeper into Russia

Ukraine has increasingly attacked factories far behind the front to disrupt the supply chains sustaining Russian weapons production.

Speaking separately to Euromaidan Press, defense scholar Marc DeVore urged Ukraine to disrupt Russian missile production and launches. Retired US Lieutenant General Ben Hodges noted that Ukraine’s interceptor shortage means it is better to “kill the archer” than try to stop every arrow. 

In June 2026, Ukrainian cruise missiles hit a Voronezh semiconductor plant supplying components for the Pantsir-S1, Iskander-K, and Kh-101.

A reported Flamingo strike in July also damaged the Avitek defense plant in Kirov, more than 1,200 kilometers from Ukraine.

The deeper strikes come as Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) says Russian factories are producing 110% to 120% of their monthly missile quotas. 

How the Samara plant supports Russia’s Starlink alternative

The Progress factory in Samara makes the Soyuz-2.1b rockets used to launch Rassvet satellites developed by Russia’s Bureau 1440. A second batch of 16 entered orbit in July, bringing the serial constellation to 32.

Rassvet’s coverage remains intermittent. However, Moscow plans to deploy 292 satellites by the end of 2027 and 924 by 2035. A Ukrainian defense adviser estimated that continuous service would require 200–250 satellites.

Russia's glide-bomb strike on Kramatorsk killed one person and wounded 18, the head of the Donetsk Oblast Military Administration, Vadym Filashkin, reported on the morning of 14 August. The Donetsk Oblast Prosecutor's Office has opened a war-crimes investigation into the attack.

Russian forces dropped eight FAB-250 aerial bombs fitted with universal glide and correction modules (UMPK) on the city on the evening of 13 August, hitting residential areas including apartment buildings, the prosecutor's office reported. An apartment building and a car were damaged. Filashkin said the strikes also hit the nearby settlement of Bilenke.

The strike on the residential area was another instance of Russian forces using guided aerial munitions against civilian areas. Under international humanitarian law, civilian objects may not be deliberately targeted.

The toll rose overnight. Filashkin first reported at least one killed and 15 wounded on the evening of 13 August. By the next morning, the prosecutor's office had documented 17 of the wounded — seven men and 10 women aged between 47 and 85 — with blast and traumatic brain injuries, shrapnel wounds, cuts to the head, arms and legs, and abrasions and bruises. Filashkin's later update put the number of wounded at 18.

"Russia again turned an ordinary evening in the city into deadly danger. This is not an accident or a mistake — this is how the enemy wages war against our people," Filashkin said.

Deliberately directing attacks against civilian objects may constitute a war crime under international humanitarian law. The prosecutor's office has opened a pre-trial investigation under Part 2 of Article 438 of Ukraine's Criminal Code.

"In total, over the past day, Russians shelled populated areas of Donetsk Oblast 37 times. 624 people, including 90 children, have been evacuated from the front line," Filashkin reports.

Repeated pattern of glide-bomb strikes on Donetsk Oblast

Russian forces regularly use FAB-250 bombs equipped with UMPK to strike populated areas in Donetsk Oblast and other frontline regions.

On 11 August 2025, Russian aircraft dropped FAB-250 bombs equipped with UMPK on a residential quarter in Bilozerske, Donetsk Oblast. Two civilians were killed, a 43-year-old man and a 34-year-old woman, while seven others were injured, including a 16-year-old boy. Eight apartment buildings and six vehicles were damaged. A pre-trial investigation was opened under Part 2 of Article 438 of Ukraine's Criminal Code.

On 18 September 2025, Russian forces struck civilians with a FAB-250 bomb equipped with UMPK in Kostiantynivka, Donetsk Oblast. Five residents aged between 62 and 74 were killed; three men and two women were outside at the time of the strike. The facades of four apartment buildings were damaged.

On 25 June 2026, Russian forces dropped three FAB-250 bombs equipped with UMPK on Druzhkivka, Donetsk Oblast. A 56-year-old woman was killed, and four others were injured: a 68-year-old man and three women aged 51, 58, and 67, sustaining blast injuries and shrapnel wounds.

On the evening of 12 August 2026, NASA displayed a map on which Crimea was marked as Russian. It happened during the live broadcast of a total solar eclipse: on the graphic, the peninsula was separated from mainland Ukraine by a border line and presented as part of Russia.

Crimea is a Ukrainian region that Russia occupied after its illegal annexation in 2014. Ukraine and the overwhelming majority of the world's states do not recognize that annexation, and no cartographic error changes the peninsula's status under international law. Each uncorrected map treats as ordinary what international law still calls an illegal occupation.

What happened during the broadcast

The US agency streamed the total eclipse, whose path crossed Greenland, Iceland, and Spain, live to a global audience. The error appeared on one of the visibility maps NASA showed during the broadcast: on it, Russia's border was drawn along the land boundary between mainland Ukraine and the peninsula, creating the impression that Crimea belongs to Russia.

Not the only case

In December 2024, FIFA eventually apologized for a map it displayed during the qualifying draw for the 2026 World Cup that left occupied Crimea outside Ukraine's borders. The graphic was meant to show pairs of teams that cannot be drawn against each other for geopolitical reasons, among them Spain and Gibraltar, Kosovo and Serbia, and Ukraine and Belarus. It marked out Ukraine but drew the country without the peninsula. Ukraine's Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi objected, Kyiv called the omission an unacceptable error, and football's world governing body pulled the image.

On 24 September 2024, the British broadcaster Sky News published an investigation into a scheme for supplying sanctioned goods to Russia through third countries, Georgia among them. The report was accompanied by three maps of vehicle-transport routes into Russia, on each of which Crimea was marked as Russian territory, Detector Media reports. The maps have since been edited, and Crimea is now marked as part of Ukraine.

The Polish broadcaster TVN showed a map of Ukraine on which occupied Crimea was marked in a separate color during the entertainment show The Floor. The episode aired on Polish television, and the broadcaster published its video on its website in 2025.

Behind Putin's sacred Crimea stood Sevastopol's airfields

Explaining the annexation, Putin spoke not of the military but of sacred things. In his December 2014 address to the Federal Assembly, he called Crimea a place of "enormous civilizational and sacral significance," comparing the peninsula to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Europe rejected that mythology: just ten days after the sham referendum, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 68/262 by a vote of 100 to 11 and declared the annexation illegal.

But behind Moscow's "spiritual" rhetoric lay a different purpose for Crimea. Sevastopol, its airfields, and its logistics turned the peninsula into a springboard for the 2022 invasion, and it is largely for this reason that Ukraine's forces are now focused on striking Crimea. Robert "Madyar" Brovdi, commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces on 10 August said that the strikes are the first phase of a campaign meant to render the peninsula unusable for Russian troops.

"Crimea is one of the key conceptual pillars on the path to ending the war," Madyar told the Associated Press.

On 16 July, one-way attack drones from the Ukrainian state security service—the vaunted SBU—motored 800 km to strike Engels-2 air base in western Russia. At the time, there were reportedly five bombers on the ground at the base: four Tupolev Tu-22Ms and a single Tupolev Tu-95.

The drones struck the four-engine, propeller-driven Tu-95. "According to preliminary data, the plane suffered critical damage," the SBU claimed. "It completely tore off the tail part." That particular aircraft, the SBU added, had been used systematically to launch massed missile strikes on Ukraine. Satellite imagery later confirmed the bomber's destruction.

Nearly a month later, we finally know which drone type the SBU flung at Engels-2 and its parked bombers. They were MICH 2000s—Ukrainian aircraft that began as copies of the Chinese ZTK-150, built after Beijing stopped selling. Ukrainian website Oboronka, which visited the factory, broke the news. "Today, the Mich' is no longer just a Chinese plane, but a drone that is exclusively used by the SBU Special Operations Center 'Alpha.'"

According to Oboronka, whose report was agreed in advance with the manufacturer and the SBU, the MICH 2000 flies as far as 2,000 km with a warhead weighing 25 to 60 kg. "The list of targets hit by this drone is updated every week," Oboronka noted. They include Russian ports, military and industrial sites around Moscow and Engels-2.

The Engels-2 raid might be the most immediately impactful. After the 16 July raid, the Russians may be down to 43 Tu-95s, only a dozen of which are usually active at any given time.

The plane that came from China

The MICH 2000 started as someone else's drone. In the summer of 2023, Beijing restricted exports of the civilian aircraft Ukrainian units had been buying and converting into deep-strike munitions. At the end of that year, a team of Ukrainian developers flew to China to buy some anyway.

At the factory, they found dozens of ZTK-150s coming off the line—Shahed lookalikes distinguished mainly by a pair of forward canards. The Chinese intermediaries floated selling the production technology outright, and Ukrainian commanders liked the idea. But when the team came back ready to buy, the factory's management refused.

The intermediaries wanted the deal anyway. They offered to assemble the drones somewhere without export restrictions—and to train Ukrainian pilots. The team took the training. "We came there to teach pilots to fly Chinese drones," one member told Oboronka. "And in parallel with the training we photographed everything that was there. Everything from the production process to the arrangement of the shelves and cabinets." They flew home with trained pilots and eight Chinese drones.

Two years later, the Ukrainian version costs $48,000 in its basic configuration. The Chinese original costs $50,000. And according to the manufacturer, almost nothing of the Chinese drone survives in the MICH 2000 now except its outline.

Whittling down the bomber fleet

Ukrainian drones are slowly chipping away at the Tu-95 fleet. A 2022 drone raid badly damaged one of the lumbering turboprop bombers at Engels-2, potentially leaving no more than 51 intact Tu-95s in the Russian air force inventory at the time. Smuggling tiny explosive drones across Russia in trucks on 1 June, 2025, the SBU hit at least seven more Tu-95s as well as four Tu-22Ms, among other aircraft.

The 16 July raid is the more recent Ukrainian effort to shrink the Russian bomber force, but it surely won't be the last. The Russians' roughly 120 bombers—Tu-95s, Tu-22Ms and Tupolev Tu-160s—launch the cruise missiles that routinely blast Ukrainian cities and power plants.

Struggling to intercept all Russian deep strike munitions in the target zone, in part owing to a deepening shortage of the best air defense missiles, Ukrainian forces increasingly aim to prevent the Russian munitions from even launching—by smashing munitions factories or, yes, destroying irreplaceable bombers. Of the three Russian bomber types, just one—the Tu-160—is still in production, albeit at a rate of barely just one every year or two.

Explore further

Ukraine kills bomber inside Russia. Soviet Union stopped building them decades ago — so this one is gone for good

Expect more MICH 2000 raids. The type's anonymous builder churns out 6,000 MICH 2000s a year but aims to boost output to 10,000 a year. And the firm customizes the drones to suit particular missions.

According to Oboronka, there are eight main versions. "Fighters can choose what kind of communication they need: analog, digital or Starlink. They can choose the warhead, the size of the fuel tank, the possibility of additional guidance." The navigation system can be made more jam-proof by adding additional jam-resistant controlled reception pattern antennas.

Explore further

Russia has figured out how to stop Ukraine’s most powerful missile

Drone strikes by MICH 2000s and other drone types aren't the only ways Ukrainian forces are trying to blunt Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities and power plants. Ukrainian drone teams are also trying to take out the last five warships in the battered Russian Black Sea Fleet that can fire Kalibr cruise missiles.

On 11 August, drones struck at least three of the ships in the port of Novorossiysk in southern Russia. The frigates Admiral Essen and Admiral Makarov and the corvette Bykov all suffered visible damage.

Ukraine’s Defense Forces struck a Russian Nebo-U long-range radar in occupied Sevastopol and several other military targets in Russia and occupied Ukrainian territories during a series of overnight attacks on 13 August, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces reported.

The strikes are part of Ukraine’s broader “Middle-Strike” campaign, which targets Russian military infrastructure beyond the immediate front line.

Nebo-U radar hit in Sevastopol

The most significant overnight target was a Russian Nebo-U radar station in Sevastopol, occupied Crimea.

The Nebo-U is a Russian long-range, three-coordinate radar operating in the meter wavelength range. It is designed to detect and track airborne targets, including aircraft, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles.

The General Staff said disabling the radar weakens Russia’s ability to detect and track incoming aircraft, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles, potentially making it harder for Russian forces to detect future Ukrainian strikes and giving Ukrainian weapons a better chance of reaching their targets.

The Nebo-U is estimated to cost around $100 million, making it a high-value Russian surveillance system.

The radar strike supposedly came during a broader Ukrainian drone attack on Sevastopol that also damaged energy infrastructure, according to Russian occupation authorities. The attack caused a citywide blackout before power was later restored through a temporary setup. Ukrainian drones also reportedly targeted the Balaklava power plant, one of Crimea’s two main power stations.

Earlier strikes hit Crimean military infrastructure

The General Staff also reported strikes on Russian military infrastructure in occupied Crimea on 12 August, including a control tower at the Saky airfield.

Ukrainian forces also struck a communications relay near Chornomorske used to control Russian Geran and Gerbera strike drones, according to the General Staff. It said the strikes weaken Russia’s ability to operate the military airfield and control its attack drones.

Russian logistics and supply sites targeted

Ukrainian forces also struck a Russian drone control center near Myrne in occupied Zaporizhzhia Oblast, a fuel and lubricants depot near Dovzhansk in occupied Luhansk Oblast, and an ammunition depot near Novyi Hai in occupied Zaporizhzhia Oblast.

Another strike hit a Russian logistics and equipment depot near Kalanchak in occupied Kherson Oblast.

The General Staff said these strikes disrupt Russian logistics and reduce the military’s ability to accumulate and use ammunition, equipment, and personnel.

Strike reported inside Russia

Ukraine also reported striking a Russian personnel concentration area near Butyrky in Russia’s Belgorod Oblast.

The General Staff did not provide details on the weapons used, the scale of damage, or possible casualties at the individual sites.

The latest report is part of Ukraine’s continued campaign to strike Russian military infrastructure beyond the battlefield. The “Middle-Strike” concept focuses on targets that support Russia’s ability to conduct and sustain combat operations, including command, logistics, air defense, and other military facilities.

The General Staff said Ukrainian forces continue to carry out strikes against key Russian military targets.

Since mid-July, Ukrainian drones have burned their way through the warehouses of Wildberries, Russia’s answer to Amazon, and how much of it is gone has become a question with too many answers.

Estimates in circulation range from a fifth of the company’s network to well over half, and they clash because each counts something different.

Only by sorting out what each figure measures can you see what the campaign has actually done—and what it has done is heavier, where it counts, than the modest numbers suggest.

Ukraine has concentrated its drones on a couple of dozen hubs that move most of the goods, while the hundreds of small depots that pad the total remain mostly untouched.

Wildberries is no marginal target. Nearly half of everything Russians buy online runs through it, a marketplace as woven into daily life there as Amazon is in the West. And Kyiv is not burning it for the sneakers.

Estonian military intelligence reports that Wildberries, though not a military firm, supplies the Russian armed forces with kit bought straight off the platform—body armor and drone parts—a case Ukraine makes too. Wildberries denies it.

Yet once the strikes began, the company pulled its “SVO” tag, the label that had gathered those goods in one place, while the goods stayed on sale under other categories; it also barred warehouse workers from carrying camera phones.

Explore further

Russia’s largest retailer is taking cameras away from its own workers month after eight of its warehouses burned

Count the hubs, and the damage jumps

The clash comes down to the word “network.” Most of Wildberries’ floor space is scattered across small sorting points that would hardly be missed if one burned. Set the damage against all of it, and the loss—about a fifth—looks minor.

But the parcels move through these two dozen hubs that hold more than half the company’s space, and those are the ones Ukraine has hit: more than a third are damaged, and by another count, well over half are out of action. It is the same campaign counted in two ways, and only the second shows its aim.

The gap between a building’s size and its damage is easy to miss, and the biggest hub shows how. Koledino, outside Moscow, covers more than 200,000 square meters, and that number keeps getting logged as a loss.

It shouldn’t be. When a drone came down there on 28 July, the fire took a neighboring warehouse—a separate operator that stocks shelves for chains like Lenta and Auchan—while the Wildberries hub kept working.

Damage reaches beyond the warehouses

The Wildberries strikes are one arm of a declared campaign. On 25 June, Zelenskyy announced a 40-day operation to pressure Russia to end the war.

The warehouse strikes began on 18 July near Moscow and have since spread across a dozen regions, reaching as far as Yekaterinburg in the Urals.

The cost runs beyond floor space. At least eight people have been killed in the strikes so far—warehouse staff and residents caught near the hubs when the drones came down. And the pressure is pushing the company outward: Wildberries is scouting for storage in Kazakhstan, hunting warehouse space beyond the reach of Ukrainian drones.

Explore further

Ukraine’s strikes gave Kazakhstan leverage over Russian retail giant Wildberries

The fires have become a line in Russia’s budget. The Kremlin is weighing state loans to keep Wildberries upright—at a point when the federal deficit had, halfway through 2026, already outrun the shortfall the Treasury set aside for the entire year.

Oil and gas revenue, the Kremlin’s main source of war funding, keeps falling short. Russia appears unwilling to let a company this central fail. Paying to save it, hub by burned hub, is the bill Ukraine is now handing Moscow.

Ukraine reached the port where Russia's Black Sea Fleet took shelter and hit four of its warships. On the night of 12 August 2026, in a joint operation, Ukraine's Defense Forces struck the naval base at Novorossiysk in Russia's Krasnodar Krai, the General Staff reported.

Novorossiysk became Russia's main Black Sea naval base after Ukrainian strikes and sea drones drove the fleet out of occupied Sevastopol in Crimea, so reaching its warships there strikes at the refuge that was supposed to be safe.

The ships that were hit

The four vessels are among the fleet's more capable surface combatants. The two Project 11356 frigates, Admiral Makarov and Admiral Essen, are among the newest and most important surface ships Russia has kept in the Black Sea, both capable of launching Kalibr cruise missiles at Ukraine.

The Buyan-M is another Kalibr shooter. The Project 21631 small missile ship carries the same cruise missiles Russia fires at Ukrainian cities, and the Vasily Bykov is a patrol ship of the class Ukraine has struck before, so the strike damaged both major missile-carrying combatants and a patrol vessel in one night.

The overall damage at the base is still being assessed.

The fleet has no safe harbor left

The strike extends a campaign that has steadily pushed Russia's fleet eastward and out of action. Ukraine drove the Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol without a navy of its own, using drones and missiles, forcing Russia to pull its ships back to Novorossiysk, farther from Ukraine but not out of reach.

This means that Russia holds no waters it can use and now no harbor where its ships are safe. Ukraine's Defense Forces said they consistently reduce Russia's capacity to continue its armed aggression, and damaging four warships at their fallback base is the naval form of that pressure.

Russia has been shooting down most of Ukraine's best long-range cruise missiles as fast as Ukraine can launch them. Just one or two of the $500,000 Fire Point FP-5 Flamingo missiles have hit their targets in recent weeks.

That means Russian air defenses are working for now. Whether they'll continue to work is the critical question for Ukrainian strike planners.

Under the cover of darkness on 6 August, the Ukrainian army's 19th Missile Brigade launched at least three of the six-ton, jet-propelled Flamingos toward Tyumen Oblast in western Siberia. The missiles traveled around 2,500 km before disappearing, according to mapper AMK Mapping.

The apparent shoot-downs capped a difficult week for Ukraine's deep strike campaign. AMK Mapping claimed the Russians shot down 10 of 11 launched Flamingos since 1 July. That count is one mapper's, based on open-source tracking, and no official Ukrainian or Russian figures exist to check it against.

The mapper may be off by one. Between 24 and 25 July, at least one Flamingo struck the Vyatka Machine-Building Enterprise Avitek missile plant in Kirov Oblast 1,300 km from the border with Ukraine. Michael Bohnert, an analyst with the RAND think tank in California, concluded that two Flamingos hit the plant, causing visible damage.

It was a potentially powerful blow. Among other things, Avitek produces parts for the Tor medium-range surface-to-air missile system. Slowing Tor production "will have the most impact," Bohnert explained. And the Ukrainian system that a Tor slowdown might benefit the most is ... the Flamingo.

After all, the Tor is one of the air defense systems the Russians could use to shoot down Flamingos. "Any slow-down in the production of these could greatly improve the prospects of FP-5 performance over time," Bohnert noted.

Aerial defenses

At present, however, it seems that the Flamingo's biggest problem is in the air, not on the ground. Russia is shooting down most of the incoming FP-5s because it has eyes in the sky.

The Russian air force's fleet of lumbering Beriev A-50U radar early-warning planes now has one mission and one mission only: the A-50Us with their fuselage-mounted radars patrol over the likeliest flight paths for Flamingos motoring into the Russian interior to strike strategic industries.

The A-50Us are effective in the role. As recently as June, more Flamingos were getting through Russian defenses. Between 9 and 10 June, the 19th Missile Brigade launched five Flamingos at the VNIIR-Progress electronics plant in Cheboksary, in western Russia, 960 km from the Ukraine border.

Two missiles struck the plant, punching right through anti-drone protections and inflicting major blast and fire damage with their 1,150-kg warheads, the biggest on any Ukrainian deep strike munition.

Russia adapted fast. On 4 July, an A-50U helped missile batteries on the ground spot and shoot down five FP-5s flying toward Votkinsk, 1,360 km from Ukraine. From its perch thousands of feet in the air, the A-50U has a much longer detection range against low targets than any radar on the ground can manage.

Explore further

To catch Ukraine’s cruise missiles, Russia is risking the scarce A-50 radar planes it has no way to rebuild

Targeting A-50Us on the ground and in the air in a series of drone and missile ambushes, the Ukrainians have destroyed two A-50Us and damaged at least two others, reducing the fleet to no more than five. Russia has no way to build replacements. But those five planes are now fully committed to the anti-Flamingo fight.

On 7 July, the Russians reportedly launched four of the irreplaceable planes at the same time in order to coordinate the Flamingo shoot-downs. Now, almost all Flamingos go down in flames before they reach their targets.

Ukraine isn't powerless. Fire Point has been working hard to improve the Flamingo and make it harder to shoot down. Perhaps most importantly, it seems the company tweaked the missile's altimeter in order to help it fly lower. The lower a missile flies, the better chance it has of hiding among the radar clutter created by surrounding terrain.

But if a lower-flying Flamingo is harder to shoot down, the improvement hasn't yet registered in the statistics. For now, Russia has figured out how to take out almost all of Ukraine's heaviest deep-strike missiles.

Explore further

Russia is running out of its best eyes in the sky

Ukraine struck a Russian drone-control relay station and two other military targets in occupied Crimea and the occupied south overnight on 12 August, its General Staff said. Explosions rolled across the peninsula through the night, Sevastopol declared repeated air-raid alerts, and towns across occupied Crimea lost power, according to Ukrainian monitoring channels and Russian occupation authorities. 

Russia launches its attack drones at Ukraine from sites inside Russia and across occupied territory every day, and relay stations let it steer those drones over long distances. Occupied Crimea is the logistical spine of Russia's hold on southern Ukraine, the funnel through which fuel, ammunition, and reinforcements reach the front, and its fixed airfields, power plants, and control stations sit within reach of Ukraine's growing long-range arsenal.

What the General Staff says was hit

Ukraine's Defense Forces struck three targets overnight, the General Staff reported. The first was a ground relay station used to control Geran and Gerbera attack drones near Olenivka in occupied Crimea. The others were a Russian repair unit near Mariupol in Donetsk Oblast and a staging point for an enemy drone unit near Marivka in Luhansk Oblast.

Hitting these sites weakens Russia's ability to command its attack drones, keep its military vehicles running, and sustain its units, the General Staff said. 

Euromaidan Press could not independently verify the strikes and damage.

Explore further

Ukraine’s Crimea campaign could strike seven times more targets with faster funding, Brovdi says

Russia flies these drones through a chain of ground repeaters, often mounted on mobile-operator towers or similar tall structures, boost the control signal so operators inside Russia can steer Geran and Gerbera drones over Ukraine from hundreds of kilometers away. Kyiv has dismantled similar relay networks before, including one Russia had built on towers and rooftops in Belarus.

Explosions and blackouts across occupied Crimea

Sevastopol declared three air-raid alerts, and the Russian-installed governor Mikhail Razvozhaev claimed Russian forces downed more than 30 drones, with the heaviest activity over the Balaklava district and no one hurt.

The Ukrainian monitoring channel Krymsky Veter reported explosions in Feodosia and Kerch, and drones close to the Kacha and Belbek airfields. Residents reported air-defense activity near major cities.

The channel said explosions sounded near the Balaklava thermal power plant, a mobile gas-turbine station, and a substation in Sevastopol. Power cut out across parts of occupied Crimea, leaving Sevastopol, Simferopol, and several more cities and districts without electricity.

Explore further

Sea drones, jet drones, and Neptune missiles hit one Russian port in a single night

After the attack, Krymsky Veter's monitoring group reported two large fires near Sevastopol, citing satellite data. One sat by a road junction near the village of Pervomaiske under Balaklava, where a bridge crosses the railway. The other burned near one of the local beaches. The group also logged an already-extinguished fire in the Inzhyr tract that had been reported the day before.

The same night, Ukraine also struck Russia's naval base at Novorossiysk, the fleet's main Black Sea base since late 2023.

Part of the campaign to isolate Crimea

The overnight strikes fit Ukraine's months-long effort to cut occupied Crimea off from the forces and supplies that sustain it. Ukrainian drones have severed road and rail links to the peninsula, left it rationing fuel under rolling blackouts, and pushed the campaign onto the sea by hunting the tankers that supply it. 

On 12 August 2026, Ukraine targeted Russia's main Black Sea naval base and oil terminal at Novorossiysk overnight. Fires broke out at the port's oil and fleet facilities, two of Russia's largest grain terminals stopped work, and debris damaged homes across the city, according to Ukrainian monitoring channels and local Russian authorities. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the operation hours later.

Kyiv calls it a "unique operation" on the fleet's last big base

Zelenskyy said Ukraine's Defense Forces hit the Novorossiysk naval base overnight on 12 August. The port city is situated more than 350 kilometers from the front line on Russia's eastern Black Sea coast. The Ukrainian president described the assault as a unique operation against the last main outpost of Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

"Our Palianytsia jet drones, Neptune missiles, and naval uncrewed systems precisely struck the designated targets," he said, adding that hits were confirmed on air-defense positions, piers, and seaport infrastructure.

Fires at the Sheskharis oil terminal and the naval harbor

Ukrainian drones hit the oil terminal and the naval base, the Ukrainian defense outlet Militarnyi reported. Its analysis of NASA satellite fire data placed blazes at the Sheskharis complex, where crude loads onto tankers, and near the naval base and fuel-storage tanks.

Sheskharis is the endpoint of Transneft's main pipelines and a key export point for Russian crude on the Black Sea. Novorossiysk ships 600,000 to 700,000 barrels of oil a day.

The Ukrainian monitoring channel Krymsky Veter said fires broke out near the Sheskharis pier and the military harbor where Black Sea Fleet ships and submarines dock. Russia moved vessels to Novorossiysk after Ukrainian strikes pushed the fleet out of occupied Crimea.

Two grain terminals stop at the world's top wheat exporter

Novorossiysk's two largest grain-handling terminals halted work after the strikes, Reuters reported, citing four industry sources. The world's top wheat seller, Russia sends most of its exports out through Black Sea ports.

The Novorossiysk grain terminal, which can move 8.5 million tons a year, halted work as owner Demetra Holding assessed the damage. NKHP, a terminal handling 7.1 million tons a year, also stopped, its main owner OZK said, adding that no one was hurt. The Ukrainian monitoring Telegram channel Exilenova+ described NKHP, Russia's largest deepwater grain terminal, as one of the sites hit.

The strikes extend Ukraine's effort to deny Russia the grain and oil revenue that funds the war, a mirror of Russia's own summer campaign against Ukraine's ports: as Moscow strikes Odesa's terminals to choke Ukrainian exports, Kyiv works to shut Russia's own.

Russia says its own drone debris damaged homes and killed two

Krasnodar Krai Governor Veniamin Kondratyev claimed several hundred drones attacked the region overnight and that falling debris struck 21 residential buildings and four enterprises in Novorossiysk. He claimed two people were killed, including an eight-year-old child, and 13 wounded across the krai, with about 90 residents moved to temporary shelters.

Novorossiysk Mayor Andrei Kravchenko claimed debris hit six residential buildings, a commercial building, and a construction site, and that there were casualties.

The Russian news Telegram channel Astra reported that a café burned on Sukhumskoye Shosse, across the road from the entrance to the Novorossiysk naval base. Astra also found that a strike damaged School No. 15 near the fleet's ship berths.

Part of a widening summer campaign

The strike fits a broader Ukrainian effort this summer to carry the war onto Russian soil and drain the Kremlin's ability to fight. A day earlier, Ukrainian drones set a Wildberries logistics complex ablaze near Voronezh and hit an oil refinery in Orsk. Overnight on 10 August, drones struck a petrochemical plant in Tobolsk and a refinery in Tatarstan.

A Ukrainian drone strike shut the plant that produces 40% of Russia’s liquefied petroleum gas on 10 August, and the country’s fuel crisis snapped back across at least 16 regions within days.

The shutdown of the Sibur ZapSibNefteKhim complex in Tobolsk, western Siberia, removes about six million metric tons of annual LPG capacity from a fuel system that was already under strain.

Explore further

“This is money of his accomplices burning”: Russian partisans and Ukraine hit Siberian plant tied to Putin’s inner circle

Gasoline restrictions had begun easing across Russia at the end of July, when Ukrainian drones temporarily shifted to other targets. When the strikes resumed in early August, fuel rationing returned immediately, the independent Russian outlet 7×7 reported.

Three industry sources told Reuters on Tuesday that the complex stopped operations indefinitely “while the extent of the damage and its consequences are being assessed.”

No LPG volumes were offered from the Tobolsk delivery point on Russia’s commodity exchange—a point that earlier this year handled about 4,000 metric tons of propane-butane mix per day. Sibur declined to comment.

A strike on one unit stopped the entire plant

Tyumen Oblast Governor Aleksandr Moor confirmed a fire at an industrial site following a drone attack but did not identify the facility.

Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces Deep Strike units, working with the Russian insurgent movement Chornaya Iskra (Black Spark), claimed the strike. The plant sits more than 2,200 kilometers from the front line.

Militarnyi’s OSINT analysis identified the specific target as the complex’s central gas fractionation unit—the plant’s entry point, where raw hydrocarbons are separated into usable products before anything else in the production chain can run. About half of ZapSibNefteKhim’s output feeds Sibur’s own petrochemical complex in Tobolsk; the rest goes to market.

Sibur held contracts to supply feedstock to defense-industry enterprises, including the Kamenskiy Kombinat, which produces solid rocket fuel and motors for the Grad, Smerch, and Uragan rocket systems.

Sibur also supplied the Perm Gunpowder Plant, which makes charges for multiple-launch rocket systems, air-defense complexes, and cruise missile boosters, Militarnyi also reported. The Sverdlov Plant and Biysk Oleum Plant, both explosives manufacturers, were also Sibur clients.

Fuel rationing returned within days

Across at least 16 regions, the fuel restrictions that had briefly eased in July are back, 7×7 reported.

In Sochi—Russia’s most famous beach resort—Mayor Andrei Proshunin said on Telegram that fuel was available at only 38 of the city’s 58 gas stations. Deputy Mayor Vyacheslav Bauer told residents and tourists to use public transport or stop driving, the Moscow Times reported.

In Bashkortostan, authorities banned gasoline sales in canisters, leaving at least one resident unable to fuel his lawnmower—as he complained to regional head Radiy Khabirov during a televised address, a Bashkortostan outlet reported. Production at the Ufa petrochemical complex is unaffected by the drone strikes, Khabirov said.

Still, the shortage persists for a different reason: every time a drone-alert protocol is activated, fuel tankers halt en route to gas stations, regional official Elena Prochakovsky explained at a briefing reported by Prufy. Three districts remain in a fuel “red zone,” and 19 of 26 gas stations in Sterlitamak are operating.

Lipetsk Oblast Governor Igor Artamonov told residents not to expect improvement for one to two weeks, Lipetsk outlet Ploshchad reported. “If you can leave 10 liters unfilled, the person arriving on empty will thank you,” he said.

Russia’s fuel system was already breaking

The Tobolsk shutdown lands on an already fractured system. By mid-July, fuel rationing had spread to more than half of Russia’s regions. Ukraine’s drone campaign had struck Russian refineries 194 times in the first half of 2026 alone—eleven times the previous year’s pace—knocking nearly half the country’s refining capacity offline, Ukraine’s General Staff reported on 4 July.

Repair timelines keep slipping because sanctions block the spare parts Russian plants need. To plug the gap, Russia has banned gasoline exports, permitted lower-grade fuel, and begun importing gasoline from India and Morocco, refined from its own crude—shipping it 14,000 kilometers home because its refineries cannot meet domestic demand.

The Tobolsk shutdown removes more LPG output than any single strike of the war. Russia was already rationing fuel in more than half its regions before this strike.

Ukraine’s Agriculture Ministry has cut its forecast for agricultural exports in 2026–2027 by 54% as Russian attacks disrupt shipping through Odesa’s ports, Bloomberg reported.

The ministry now expects 29.6 million tons of agricultural exports, down from 64.4 million. Its wheat export forecast fell by 53%, from 17.6 million tons to 8.3 million tons.

Ukraine grows far more grain than it consumes, exporting 65%–70% of its agricultural output. Bloomberg said the sector generated more than half of Ukraine’s export revenue last year. But Russia’s summer attacks have stalled the sea corridor as the harvest arrives, driving some wheat prices below production costs. Land and river routes cannot match the Black Sea shipping capacity, while sales through neighboring EU states remain politically contested. That leaves farmers with less money for the next sowing and further reduces Ukraine’s export income.

Ukraine has about 59 million tons of grain storage. That storage could be full by early November, leaving the country 11 million tons short of space by the end of fall 2026. 

Wheat sells below cost as the silos fill up

Ukraine’s export bottleneck is already hitting its farmers. Port prices fell by another 12-15% in one week, while some farmers sold wheat below production cost. When ships stop, traders either stop buying or pass the higher cost of alternative routes on to producers. That leaves farmers with less cash for fall sowing.

To ease the pressure, the government has approved subsidized loans for agricultural producers. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv would expand storage. Ukraine's Agriculture Ministry has also asked the European Commission for €220 million to help cover interest for small and medium-sized farms.

Ukraine and Moldova are discussing a rail route to Romania’s Constanța port. According to the report, grain was already being redirected through Romania, Slovakia, and Hungary, but these routes cannot replace Odesa’s capacity.

Now the ports and the ships are Russia's targets

The export bottleneck is only part of the problem. Russia’s bombardment also threatens the ports, civilian ships, and crews needed to keep the corridor operating. 

The port of Odesa normally handles about 90% of Ukraine’s grain shipments. Russia intensified attacks on terminals and civilian ships in July 2026 as the harvest reached the coast.

On 19 July, three Russian missiles struck the foreign-flagged Golden Leo as it left Odesa carrying corn, killing 10 people, including a Ukrainian sea pilot. Three days later, no vessel passed through the corridor.

Alternative routes offer little relief, as record-low Danube levels were restricting river traffic. Poland continues to bar Ukrainian grain from its domestic market. Those constraints leave more of the harvest inside Ukraine and farmers with less money to plant the next crop.

A Russian overnight strike heavily damaged a German-owned car-parts plant in Zhytomyr Oblast, forcing it to halt production, the company said. No workers were hurt, but the destruction was extensive. One of the region's major employers now has no restart date.

A German plant knocked offline

Russia struck Zhytomyr Oblast overnight into 9 August and hit the Kromberg & Schubert plant, which reported the attack on Facebook. Its production lines and infrastructure took heavy damage. 

"The most important thing for us is that no employees were hurt in the attack," the statement said. 

With the damage so severe, the plant suspended operations for an indefinite period. A restart depends on a technical assessment and the full scope of repairs, the company added.

Kromberg & Schubert is a civilian manufacturer with 100% German investment. It has run in the Zhytomyr region for 11 years and employs about 3,500 people. The plant makes the wiring harnesses that thread through cars, supplying European automakers.

Vitalii Bunechko, head of the Zhytomyr Oblast Military Administration, called it one of the region's budget-forming enterprises. He said the administration and local authorities are working to help the strategic investor and keep the plant running.

Part of a wider overnight assault

Bunechko reported that Russia had launched a massive strike on the oblast overnight. The attack also damaged civilian infrastructure, he said. State Emergency Service crews contained the fires, and investigators began work at the site. 

Russia has repeatedly struck Zhytomyr Oblast during the war, stepping up its drone strikes on northwestern Ukraine, often exploiting Belarusian territory.

Russia is trying to knock out Ukraine's gas production before the cold comes. Russia carried out massive strikes on the assets of the Naftogaz Group in eastern, western, and central Ukraine, the company reported.

The strikes target Ukraine's ability to produce the gas it needs for winter. The Russians aim to inflict maximum damage on Ukrainian production and other critical infrastructure to make preparation for the heating season impossible, acting Naftogaz chairman Serhii Fedorenko said, calling the intensity of attacks on oil-and-gas infrastructure sharply higher in recent days.

The strikes hit extraction across the country

Russia targeted the sites where Ukraine pulls gas from the ground. On the night of 9 August, the extraction assets of Ukrnafta and a company drilling site came under massive attack, with Russian forces using dozens of strike drones against the extraction infrastructure.

The damage stopped production. There is substantial destruction at the site; part of the equipment has been put out of commission, and the asset's operation has been halted. However, safety measures meant that workers at the attacked facilities were unhurt.

Fuel stations and production sites were also hit

The campaign extended to Naftogaz's retail and production network. On 7 and 8 August, seven UKRNAFTA filling complexes in Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Mykolaiv oblasts came under drone attack, and a worker at one station was injured and is in hospital receiving care.

Central Ukraine was struck, too. On 8 August, Russia attacked Naftogaz production facilities in the central part of the country with jet-powered drones, and the facility suffered serious destruction, though staff were in shelter at the time of the strike.

The target is the heating season

The strikes match the warning from First Deputy Prime Minister and Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal, who has said Russia's aim this winter is to destroy the systems Ukrainians need to survive the cold, from power to water, Politico reported. Damaging gas production now, months before winter, is meant to leave Ukraine unable to heat itself when temperatures drop, turning the coming season into another front against civilians in Russia's war.

Satellite imagery has confirmed that Ukraine's Defense Forces destroyed a Russian electronic-warfare system built to jam Starlink at Gelendzhik in southern Russia, the Ukrainian defense outlet Militarnyi reported. Ukrainian drones hit the machine on the grounds of a Russian border-guard base during their sweep of the Black Sea coast. It is one more of these costly jammers Russia has lost, even as Ukraine's long-range drones cannot use Starlink over Russia.

Satellites caught the before and after

Satellite images published by the OSINT community Dnipro Osint show the site cleared at Gelendzhik, in Russia's Krasnodar Krai. The Volna Kupol Garant complex is gone. Researchers called it the third destruction of this jammer recorded in open sources. The strike landed on the grounds of military unit 2156, the Novorossiysk border detachment of Russia's FSB Border Service.

Ukrainian drones likely hit it alongside a 7 August strike on cargo ships near Novorossiysk and Gelendzhik. Geolocated photos from residents point to a repeat strike on the base on 8 August.

Explore further

Ukraine’s newest drones don’t need Starlink. Russia spends $1.5 million to jam it anyway.

The Volna Kupol Garant is built from trailers carrying satellite antennas. It tracks a passing Starlink satellite and beams a strong signal that scrambles the terminals below across up to 20 km². Starlink is the SpaceX satellite-internet network that Ukrainian drones rely on to reach their operators. Each unit costs about $1.8 million. A same-named firm registered in occupied Simferopol builds it. The developer also makes the Volna 3M jammer that Russia has fitted to Mi-8AMTSh helicopters to block drone satellite navigation.

Ukraine has knocked out these jammers before. The 422nd Unmanned Systems Regiment, the Security Service of Ukraine's (SBU) Alpha special-operations center, and other Ukrainian units have struck such systems, including in occupied Crimea. The complex's weakness is its own power: beaming enough energy to reach a satellite makes it loud and easy to find. 

Explore further

Russians deploy massive $1.5M Starlink jammers, Ukrainians are blowing them up

And deep inside Russia, there is little Ukrainian Starlink to jam — SpaceX geofences the network to Ukrainian territory, and Elon Musk has refused Kyiv's push to use it for strikes into Russia so far.

The wider hunt

Ukraine's drone crews have spent 2026 tearing into Russia's air defenses and rear. The same run of Black Sea strikes that wrecked this jammer also burned a Russian S-400 air-defense system on the Gelendzhik coast. 

Russian forces struck a residential high-rise in Kharkiv's Saltivka district on the morning of 9 August 2026, killing two people and injuring more than 20 others, according to city and oblast officials. The strike collapsed several upper floors and trapped residents inside. Firefighters carried people down from the top stories while a second strike hit a neighboring building.

A missile through the upper floors

Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov reported the strike on Saltivka shortly after 07:00. He said Russia had hit a multi-apartment residential building. Minutes later he confirmed the blast destroyed floors 7 through 10, with wounded people inside.

Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv Oblast Military Administration, first described a Russian drone strike that killed two. His administration later clarified that a missile hit the high-rise, and that Russia also struck an office building nearby.

Residents were trapped behind the collapse, and crews began a rescue operation. Firefighters brought seven people down from the upper floors, the State Emergency Service reported. The destroyed ceilings sat between the seventh and tenth floors.

As the rescue got underway, Russia struck again. Terekhov said a neighboring high-rise was hit, writing that Russia "is deliberately striking residential buildings" and urging people to shelter. A third impact followed in one of the district's parks.

Russia regularly employs the double-tap tactic — striking a site, then hitting it again once rescuers arrive — to maximize casualties among first responders.

Two dead, 21 wounded, a boy of five among them

Terekhov counted a dozen wounded at first, then confirmed two people killed at the site. Syniehubov gave the fuller account: two men, aged 50 and 66, killed, and at least 21 people injured.

Among the wounded was a five-year-old boy. 11 people suffered blast injuries and two had carbon monoxide poisoning. Another eight, including a child, had acute stress reactions, and medics hospitalized four.

By late morning, Syniehubov said crews were still clearing the collapsed floors to be sure no one remained underneath. Specialists would then judge whether the building could still be used.

A day of strikes across the oblast

Over the past 24 hours, Russia struck Kharkiv and 12 settlements across the oblast, killing three people and wounding or shocking 25, the regional administration said.

In Izium, shelling injured eight people. Russia killed a 68-year-old man in Kivsharivka, near Kupiansk, and wounded a 47-year-old woman in Mykhailivka. In Lozova, a 60-year-old woman was hurt, and a transit evacuation point there took in 227 more people.