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Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) has named 10 people and two institutions it says are teaching Ukrainian children under occupation to handle weapons—and preparing them to serve Russia.
HUR says those named use youth groups, occupation education authorities, and schools to erase children’s Ukrainian identity and prepare them for Russian military service. Publishing their names supports Ukraine’s efforts to document the system and hold its organizers accountable, but HUR announced no charges or sanctions with the update.
At a May 2026 “Zarnitsa 2.0” competition, the Kremlin-backed Movement of the First taught children to handle weapons and explosives and operate drones, HUR said.
At the competition’s stage in occupied Zaporizhzhia Oblast, regional organizer Viktoria Kostromina stated those skills would provide children with a “reliable foundation in life.”
The training sits inside a much larger school system. From 1 September, occupation schools will add a separate basic military-training track alongside a new Russian ideology class and behavior grades. More than 582,000 children across nearly 2,000 schools study under the imposed Russian curriculum, according to the Almenda Center of Civil Education.
Russia is also embedding combat preparation more deeply. “Cossack classes” will make ideological and combat-related drills compulsory for fifth-graders in four occupied Donbas cities. In Crimea, occupation authorities say they have built a pipeline that selects schoolchildren for drone training and ultimately for the Russian military reserve.
The policy has a long horizon. Putin’s 2025 strategy set a 95% “Russian civic identity” target for occupied populations by 2036.
HUR linked the individuals to the Movement of the First, Yunarmia, occupation education bodies, and a school in Simferopol.
Whom the HUR identified
- Artur Orlov: chairman of the Kremlin-backed Movement of the First.
- Oleksii Lavrentiev, Marina Tsvetinskaya, Ruyal Aliyev, Ekaterina Kozyr, Viktoria Kostromina and Kateryna Popova: regional Movement of the First organizers in occupied Ukraine.
- Svitlana Bespalova: occupation deputy education minister in Crimea.
- Nikita Polyakov: Yunarmia organizer in occupied Kherson Oblast.
- Dmytro Pryvidion: director of School No. 5 in occupied Simferopol.
HUR also identified two institutions: Pryvidion’s School No. 5 and the Selet–Ak Bars youth center in Foros. It says the school holds militaristic activities and produces devices for loading rifle magazines, while the center stages pro-war events for children.
All 12 entries now appear in the “Child Kidnappers” section of HUR’s War&Sanctions database.
Ukraine has previously pursued individual organizers through criminal cases. In 2024, the SBU accused a Crimea occupation official of using schools and military camps to indoctrinate pupils and encourage enlistment in Russia’s forces.
Ukraine’s ombudsman later asked the ICC and Ukrainian law enforcement to recognize systematic child militarization as a crime against humanity.
Russia has threatened Britain with “consequences” over reports that Ukrainian forces used drones manufactured by UK companies to carry out strikes inside Russia.
The Russian Embassy in London accused the UK of deliberately escalating the war by supporting Ukraine’s long-range strike campaign, saying Britain was seeking to “contain Russia and inflict maximum damage on it by proxy.” It warned that the deeper Britain becomes involved, “the higher the price it will pay.”
The threat followed news that Ukrainian forces had used two British-built drone systems to strike targets inside Russia for the first time. The Sunday Times, citing Ukrainian military sources, reported that the drones had been used against targets including oil refineries in Volgograd and Yaroslavl over the past six months.
The Russian Embassy said in a statement that the reported use of British-made drones “confirms that London is deliberately opting for an escalation of the Ukraine crisis.”
It warned that British actions would “inevitably carry consequences for which it will have to answer,” without specifying what form those consequences could take.
The warning comes as Ukraine has significantly expanded its long-range strike campaign against Russian military and energy targets. Kyiv has increasingly used large drone swarms to hit targets deep inside Russia, seeking to disrupt military production, logistics, and energy revenues while forcing Moscow to spread its air defenses across a much larger area.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham rejected Moscow’s warning, saying Britain would continue supporting Ukraine despite Russian threats, The Independent reported on Tuesday.
“This is the UK doing what it has long said it would do, which is to support Ukraine 100 per cent against this illegal war led by Vladimir Putin,” Burnham said during a visit to Wolverhampton.
“We are providing support so that Ukraine can defend itself,” he said, adding: “We are not fair weather friends. We will be there in Ukraine’s hour of need, and that won’t change.”
UK Work and Pensions Minister Lilian Greenwood similarly said Britain’s resolve to support Ukraine remained “completely steadfast” and that the country would continue providing the military equipment Kyiv needs.
The UK Ministry of Defence also said Russia should have “no doubt” about the government's resolve to oppose Russian aggression in Ukraine and against Britain and its allies.
According to The Sunday Times, one of the British systems used by Ukraine is the Nyan, a jet-powered one-way attack drone produced by BAE Systems subsidiary Callen-Lenz, with a reported range of more than 150 miles.
The second system has a reported range exceeding 600 miles, although its manufacturer was not identified for security reasons. The drones provide Ukraine with additional long-range strike capacity that can be produced and deployed in larger numbers than more expensive Western cruise missiles.
The reported deployment marks a further expansion of UK military support for Ukraine as Kyiv increasingly takes the fight to Russian military and energy infrastructure inside Russia.
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Romania detected more than 100 drones involved in seven attacks on Ukraine’s Danube ports in recent days, interim Romanian Defense Minister Radu Miruță told Romanian channel Digi24 on 17 August 2026. He said the attacks were the most intense recorded recently and that Ukrainian forces destroyed most of the drones “a few dozen meters from Romanian airspace.”
Russia’s growing attacks on Ukraine’s Danube ports put a key export route at risk as Kyiv seeks other outlets while its Black Sea ports are under attack. They also put Ukraine's southern border region under pressure as Kyiv develops trade links with Moldova and Romania, and NATO routes more military aid through Romania.
The latest drone swarms remained over Ukraine, and officials found no indication that Romania’s threat level had risen, Miruță stated. The Romanian military nevertheless remained on alert as attacks intensified across the Danube.
With Russia hitting its ports, Ukraine is turning to Romania and Moldova to keep trade moving. Kyiv and Chișinău are discussing a rail link through Moldova to Romania’s Constanța port, though Ukraine estimates it could carry only about 10% of its grain exports.
The rail proposal comes as Russian port strikes have cut monthly agricultural exports by 20–30% and left up to 10 million tons of grain in storage without buyers, Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi has said.
NATO said in December that a second aid hub in Romania would begin operating in January. It was designed to supplement the main center in Rzeszów, Poland, and route supplies toward Ukraine’s southern and eastern fronts.
Russian drones targeting Ukraine have repeatedly entered Romania as Moscow attacks Ukrainian ports across the Danube. More than 40 such incursions had been recorded by early June, Romanian Foreign Minister Oana Țoiu said.
The most serious occurred on 29 May, when a drone hit an apartment building in Galați. Two people were injured, and about 70 residents fled or were evacuated.
Vladimir Putin suggested that the aircraft might have been Ukrainian, but Romania’s forensic investigation later identified it as a Russian-built Geran-2.
Romanian forces later shot down three drones in 72 hours in July, while Miruță said Spanish pilots and Romanian troops destroyed a fourth on 16 August.
Debris from drones intercepted over Ukraine has also washed onto Romania’s coast, prompting temporary access restrictions while specialists checked for explosives.
Bucharest is buying low-altitude radars and ground interceptors through the EU’s SAFE program. Miruță said drones often fly at 70 to 150 meters, and ground systems would be cheaper to use than fighter-launched missiles.
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India, the world’s biggest edible-oil importer, bought a 10-month high of about 1.5 million tons of vegetable oil in July, up roughly a third from June, as refiners restocked for the August-to-November festival season.
The jump was led by palm oil, up by half, and soybean oil, up about a third, data compiled by UkrAgroConsult. Sunflower oil rose just 4%, the weakest of the three, and India buys most of it from Ukraine and Russia, the world’s leading exporters.
Vegetable oil and meal earn more than 15% of Ukraine’s foreign currency.
Now the sunflower supply is the one going into reverse. India’s sunflower-oil imports are set to fall in August to their lowest since February, with about 150,000 tons of cargo delayed at Black Sea ports and buyers in the south switching to soybean, four traders told Reuters.
The switch is only partly about the war. Soybean and palm oil are cheap, and India’s own mills are pressing less oil from a smaller domestic harvest, leaving refiners leaning on imports, Rajesh Patel told OFI. The GGN Research partner expects soybean oil imports to top 500,000 tons a month into the autumn.
Ukraine is in no position to capture that demand. Russian strikes on Chornomorsk in mid-July forced Kernel, its largest exporter, to halt its terminals there, and the country’s farmers’ union reckons the summer attacks have cost a third of its capacity to ship grain by sea.
Vegetable oil and meal earn more than 15% of Ukraine’s foreign currency, among its largest sources of the hard cash that funds the war, the industry association Ukroliyaprom has said.
The squeeze runs through geography Ukraine cannot change: almost all its farm exports leave by sea, through a handful of Odesa ports now under regular fire, with no land route at anything near the scale.
Kyiv now expects to export barely half the harvest it had planned to sell abroad this season, and is arranging emergency loans so farmers can plant the next crop. Since the start of August, grain leaving by rail has dropped by more than three-quarters year-on-year, according to Ukrzaliznytsia data.
Latvia's public broadcaster opened a new fundraising drive on 17 August to pay for the rehabilitation of wounded Ukrainian soldiers, LSM reported. The effort is timed to Ukraine's Independence Day on 24 August. Donations run through the charity Ziedot.lv.
Russia's invasion has produced a generation of wounded and traumatized Ukrainians whose recovery will outlast the war. The state already counts more than a million registered veterans, a number that climbs every month.
The drive, called "Together with Ukraine in Thought and Deed!", runs from 17 August to 13 September 2026. Latvian Public Media (LSM) organized it with Ziedot.lv and the Ukrainian Embassy in Latvia. It is dedicated to rehabilitation. Organizers said every euro goes to that goal. Latvians can give online through Ziedot.lv, or by calling a national donation line charged at €5 including VAT.
The campaign's ambassador is Odita Krenberga, an LSM journalist who has reported from the Ukrainian front line. She said only seconds separated her from death or serious injury, and that many others never got that chance. Russia has taken hundreds of thousands of lives and wounded even more, she said, calling it a painful injustice. Ukrainians, she added, are fighting "for the security of us all, for a safe Europe."
Rūta Dimanta, who heads Ziedot.lv, said "the wounds of war take a long time to heal." They are not only physical, she said, but also the pain of loss, helplessness, and injustice. Soldiers must live with the deaths of comrades and the pain in their souls. The money cannot erase that, but it can fund recovery in Ukraine and Latvia, allowing them to carry on with their lives.
Since the war began, LSM and Ziedot.lv have raised more than €2 million across earlier appeals. The two partners have already sent Ukraine a locally built naval drone, and Latvia has funneled millions to front-line oblasts on the Russian border. Latvia has also pledged 0.25% of its GDP a year to Ukraine's defense—a bigger share than most larger allies give.
Ukraine brought the world's most battle-tested counter-drone experience to a NATO exercise. From 3 to 14 August, Ukraine took part in NATO's Baltic Trust 2026 exercise in Latvia, which focused on countering drones and other threats posed by uncrewed aerial systems, the General Staff reported.
The exercise responds to a mounting Russian threat against NATO's Baltic flank. Russia has probed the alliance's eastern edge so aggressively that NATO scrambled over the Baltic, jumping more than 250% in July.
Also, Moscow has increasingly launched drones on the Baltic States. Even on 14 August, the final day of the drill, a NATO fighter shot down a drone over Latvia after Russian electronic warfare pushed it off course, the second Baltic drone incursion that week. Baltic Trust 2026 was NATO's answer: about 650 participants from 24 countries building the counter-drone defenses that the threat demands.
Baltic Trust focused on integration, not single technologies. Soldiers, specialists, and industry representatives jointly tested new technological solutions in conditions close to a modern operational environment, the General Staff said.
The core was whether the pieces work as one system. Participants checked how detection tools, command-and-control systems, and counter-drone measures can exchange data, form a common operational picture, and enable coordinated response.
Ukraine's participation carries particular weight in this field. No NATO member has faced the scale of drone attack Ukraine confronts nightly, and its forces have built and continually adapt the detection, interception, and electronic-warfare methods that down Russian drones by the tens of thousands.
That makes Ukraine a source of hard-won practical knowledge for allies still preparing for threats Ukraine already lives with. Bringing Ukrainian experience into a NATO drill turns the country's battlefield lessons into shared allied capability, on exactly the drone warfare the alliance is scrambling to counter on its eastern flank.
Baltic Trust served NATO's broader readiness. Jointly testing and integrating such solutions helps turn technological innovation into practical capabilities that strengthen readiness and collective defense.
Previously, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service Head Sergey Naryshkin accused NATO of escalating military activity near Russia’s borders. He warned that Poland and the Baltic states would be the first to suffer in the event of a war between Moscow and the Alliance.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
Slovak company STV Machinery has produced the first two prototype hulls for the BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle after a 36-year break in production. The plant in Dubnica nad Váhom began developing an updated design in 2024, and a contract with an unnamed foreign customer was signed in late 2025, with serial production scheduled for 2026 to 2027.
The Slovak outlet Future Army reported this on 15 August, citing STV Group's director of special projects, Pavel Beran. He said one prototype is being used to test final assembly and the integration of weapons systems, while the second is undergoing physical and stress testing. The company will not disclose the customer's identity, citing security and business-ethics considerations.
Ukraine has a substantial need for armoured vehicles. Its forces already use and modernise the BMP-1, and cooperation with Western manufacturers could help replenish the fleet faster. In 2024, for example, Ukraine and Germany's Rheinmetall agreed to produce the Lynx IFV and to expand defence cooperation.
According to Militarnyi, the new hulls remain outwardly similar to the Soviet BMP-1 design but have been reworked to more modern requirements. STV Machinery revised the design to meet NATO standards for ergonomics and materials, and strengthened the armour using more modern materials.
Future vehicles will offer a choice of powerplant, with Western-made engines among the options. STV Machinery, the Slovak firm, will produce the hulls and other components, after which its Czech sister company STV Group will carry out full assembly and testing.
The exact size of the order is not yet known, though earlier reports suggested production could eventually reach up to 100 hulls a year.
The company has not named the customer. Defense Express suggested as early as December 2025 that it could be Ukraine. One scenario the outlet floated was the supply of hulls or turretless vehicles, which would allow other combat modules to be fitted.
The Dubnica nad Váhom plant previously built licensed versions of the BMP-1, known locally as the BVP-1. Serial production there ran until 1989, after which the plant went more than three decades without making new hulls for the vehicle. The site is the same, but the manufacturer is not: the original vehicles came off the ZŤS Dubnica nad Váhom line in the Czechoslovak era, while today's hulls are made by STV Machinery.
At the same time, the BMP-1 remains a vehicle of the 1960s. Even a modernised hull does not change the platform's fundamental limitations, particularly its level of protection. So if Ukraine really is behind the order, it is likely more a way to rapidly increase the number of armoured vehicles than a long-term replacement for modern Western IFVs, Defense Express noted in 2025.
Also Defense Express stressed that the customer's identity remains only speculation, adding that the buyer could turn out to be another country that operates or once operated the BMP-1, and that firmer detail will have to wait for the company.
Russia has built or expanded at least 10 drone bases along its borders with Ukraine and Belarus, creating launch capacity for newer jet-powered attack drones, the most powerful of which could reach Warsaw, The Telegraph reported on 16 August 2026.
The network expands Russia’s capacity for mass drone attacks on Ukraine, while some sites could later threaten NATO. The findings come as Russia is also expanding bases and other military infrastructure along NATO’s northern and Baltic borders. The Telegraph found no evidence that Moscow is planning such an attack.
Seven of the 10 sites were used during recent bombardments of Kyiv, tracking data cited by The Telegraph showed. Using leaked documents, satellite imagery, and DroneSec's analysis, the newspaper identified at least 59 launch rails—tracks that launch fixed-wing drones without runways.
Around 20 appeared long enough for Russia’s latest long-range models, while one base could reportedly store over 1,000 drones.
Leaked Ukrainian documents cited by The Telegraph say the jet-powered Geran-4 and Geran-5 can carry 90-kilogram warheads. However, Ukrainian military intelligence puts the Geran-4’s range at up to 450 kilometers, while the larger Geran-5 has a stated range of up to 1,000 kilometers — enough to reach Warsaw from several of the new sites.
DroneSec founder Mike Monnik said expanded launch capacity and harder-to-intercept technology together increase pressure on Ukrainian air defenses.
Russia is also expanding military infrastructure elsewhere along NATO’s borders. A Nordic-Baltic investigation identified new or expanded infrastructure from Norway to Kaliningrad, with potential capacity for up to 115,000 personnel.
Satellite imagery showed new barracks, ammunition warehouses, and expanded bases near NATO’s northern and Baltic members.
The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank, assessed that the construction likely supports future Russian operations against NATO rather than an imminent attack. Most Russian combat power remains committed to Ukraine, it said.
Russia has already built comparable hubs for attacks on Ukraine. Satellite imagery analyzed by the open-source intelligence group Strategic Aviation of Russia showed 10 additional launchers under construction at Tsymbulova in Oryol Oblast, following the start of work on 22 April 2026.
At occupied Donetsk Airport, the group identified enlarged launch pads, roads to a Geran and Gerbera drone warehouse, and the apparent construction of another storage building.
Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) said it struck Shahed storage and launch sites at Primorsko-Akhtarsk on 2 August 2025. Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert "Madyar" Brovdi reported hitting drone logistics, warhead-storage, and preparation facilities at Donetsk Airport on 30 December 2025.
486 Africans recruited into Russia’s armed forces are dead, while Ukraine is holding 35 citizens from 17 African countries as prisoners of war, Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) told Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne in findings published on 16 August 2026. Its overall tally rose only slightly from May, climbing from 2,965 recruits from 36 countries to at least 2,982 from 37.
Russia’s recruitment in Africa is part of a broader effort to enlist foreigners for its war. A joint human-rights investigation found that Russia had recruited at least 27,000 people from more than 130 countries since 2022. The system helps Moscow replenish its forces while shifting battlefield risk onto foreigners, many of whom are drawn in by financial pressure, deception, or coercion.
The largest groups of recruits came from Kenya, Egypt, Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Algeria, and Mali, the ministry told Suspilne.
Russian security services use a “broad arsenal of manipulative methods,” the Ukrainian MFA said. Recruiters promise civilian jobs, education, high salaries, Russian citizenship, or migration benefits. In many cases, foreigners must sign Russian-language military contracts under threat of deportation or imprisonment.
The FIDH–Truth Hounds–KIBHR report found recruiters using social media and intermediaries to advertise civilian jobs. Of 16 foreign POWs interviewed, 13 said they had been promised they would not fight. Most reached combat positions within weeks.
Kenyan engineer Francis told journalist Dmytro Karpenko, who interviews prisoners captured while fighting for Russia, that he thought he had accepted a security job. In Russia, he received a military uniform instead. After two weeks of training, he reached the front and was captured.
Nigerian recruits Hamzat Kazeen Kolawole and Mbah Stephen Udoka died in an assault after receiving little or no training, Ukrainian military intelligence said. Botswana reported “heartbreaking calls” from its citizens describing “perilous conditions” at the front.
Ukraine’s diplomatic missions regularly inform African officials about the recruitment of their citizens and run awareness campaigns, according to the ministry.
The MFA and Ukraine’s POW Coordination Headquarters also launched Stop Russian Recruiters, a website that explains recruitment methods, shares victims’ accounts, advises people at risk and their families, and accepts reports about recruiters.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Two adults allegedly attacked a 14-year-old Ukrainian girl and her 12-year-old brother after hearing them speak Ukrainian, Ukraine’s Consulate General in Gdańsk said. The attack occurred on 14 August 2026 in a park near a railway station in Bydgoszcz, north-central Poland.
The case comes amid a documented rise in anti-Ukrainian violence in Poland, with recent attacks reported throughout the country. Recent incidents include attacks on Ukrainians in Poznań and Wrocław, as well as on people mistaken for Ukrainians or defending them. Police data obtained by the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita showed 180 hate-crime reports involving Ukrainian citizens in the first half of 2026, over 30% more than a year earlier.
The pair, a man and woman with a small dog, shouted obscenities and made nationality-based threats, the consulate said.
“They twisted a child’s arm, broke a toy drone, and threw fragments at the boy,” the Ukrainian consulate said, adding that the fragments scratched him.
The consulate said a complaint had been filed, police were searching for the pair, and the children were physically safe but severely stressed. It urged witnesses to contact the police. Polish police had not commented by the time of publication.
The attack on the children came amid a string of assaults on Ukrainians across Polish cities.
Shortly after midnight on 13 August 2026, an intoxicated woman insulted two Ukrainian men, spat at one, and struck one of them outside a restaurant in Poznań, according to Polish media. Police detained her and another woman the following day.
In July, three men allegedly beat a young Ukrainian couple in Wrocław after first asking whether they were Ukrainian. Police detained two suspects and continued searching for the third.
That month, a man in Łódź attacked a passerby he supposedly mistook for a Ukrainian, breaking his nose and jaw. Three men also reportedly beat a 60-year-old Pole who intervened when they harassed a Ukrainian teenager on a Poznań tram.
The attacks coincide with a broader decline in Polish-Ukrainian relations. Polish support for accepting Ukrainian refugees fell from 94% in March 2022 to 48% by early 2026, while politicians increasingly use Ukraine as a wedge issue.
Much of the fallout stems from disputes over the Volhynia massacres—the 1943–44 mass killings of Polish civilians by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and Polish retaliatory violence against Ukrainian civilians.
The dispute escalated after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a 26 May decree granting a Ukrainian special forces unit the honorary title “Heroes of the UPA.” Polish President Karol Nawrocki responded on 19 June by stripping Zelenskyy of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest state honor.
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.
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.
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.
The Russian leader’s first visit to the disputed Kuril islands has exposed how far ties between Moscow and Tokyo have deteriorated, and why Japan has grown increasingly assertive in expanding its military capabilities. Namita Singh writes
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Ukraine condemns Russia for jailing people on fabricated terrorism charges. Yet, its own security services keep sending Kremlin opponents back to Moscow, human rights defender Borys Zakharov said in an interview with Ukrainian outlet Texty.org.ua.
The handovers are not a relic of a friendlier past. They slowed after Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, then resumed; the transfers now run through third countries, Zakharov says, and at least one has ridden the prisoner swaps that bring Ukraine's captured soldiers home. Ukraine is returning the exact people who bet their lives on it; at the moment, it presents itself to the world as the rule-of-law side of this war.
Zakharov directs the charitable foundation Human and Law, which defends people fleeing authoritarian states. Russia prosecutes captured Ukrainians on invented terrorism charges, and Kyiv rightly calls it a sham. But when Chechens, Ingush, and other North Caucasians ask Ukraine for protection, officials sometimes brand them criminals and send them back—men who often fled two brutal Chechen wars and the crackdowns after them, and some of whom later fought Russia in volunteer units.
"We say: yes, they are criminals. We hand them over to Russia to die," Zakharov said.
International law forbids this. The principle of non-refoulement bars any state from returning a person to a country where they face death, persecution, or torture. Zakharov says Ukraine's migration authorities often skip that risk assessment entirely.
Take Timur Tumgoev, an Ingush volunteer fighter whom Ukraine extradited in September 2018. A Russian court sentenced him to 18 years on terrorism charges, his defenders call fabricated. Zakharov says he was tortured so badly that he can barely move.
Others escaped by luck. Ukraine nearly removed Zelimkhan Belkharoev, a wrestler, in 2016 despite an emergency order from the European Court of Human Rights, Zakharov says; a deputy justice minister intervened in time. Adam Osmayev, a Chechen battalion commander whose wife Amina Okueva was killed in a 2017 assassination attempt, was saved the same way years earlier.
The war did not end the handovers—it rerouted them. Direct extraditions paused; the transfers now run through Belarus, Moldova, and Turkiye, Zakharov says.
Zakharov says Zaur Shogentsukov, a Kabardian who crossed from Belarus to join Ukraine's forces, allegedly failed a polygraph test with the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and was pushed back into Belarus under a readmission deal. His tortured body later came back to his family in Nalchik, he says.
Alexey Gerasimov, a student from Russia's Chuvash region who reportedly backed his homeland's independence, slipped into Ukraine in 2024 to join the Sibir Battalion, a unit of Russian volunteers. He ended up in one of the large prisoner exchanges that followed the May 2025 Istanbul talks, and Ukraine delivered him to Russia, where he now faces terrorism charges—the independent Russian outlet Verstka reported in an investigation carried by Novaya Gazeta Europe.
The most recent case is still unfolding. Aslan Khakimov, a Russian engineer who fled the Federal Security Service (FSB) in 2015 and spent years building robots for Ukraine's army, has sat in a migration facility since April 2026, accused of financing terrorism and facing deportation.
The most recent case is still unfolding. Aslan Khakimov, a Russian engineer who fled the Federal Security Service (FSB) in 2015 and spent years building ground robotic systems for Ukraine's army, entered on forged documents and lived for a decade under a false identity, Ruslan Puptaiev—the illegal stay Ukraine's migration service cites for the deportation order it issued in April 2026. Russia has separately convicted him in absentia of terrorism, a charge his defenders call fabricated. His supporters argue that returning him would be a death sentence.
Ukraine's services frame these as wartime security decisions, and infiltration is a genuine risk. But non-refoulement admits no wartime exception: even a proven spy is not a country's to send to his death.
Zakharov offers a blunter explanation for at least some cases: money. In the Tumgoev handover, he says, the man's family was quietly invited to outbid Moscow—to top the sum Russian handlers allegedly pay SBU officers for each person delivered.
"Totalitarian regimes spare no money persecuting their opponents," he said.
Ukraine's security service has not confirmed his account, and the allegation rests solely on his testimony.
Russia, for its part, has already shown its games in these exchanges, at times swapping in people with no link to the war. As Kyiv negotiates ever-larger exchanges to free its own soldiers, the same machinery can carry the Russians and Caucasians who fought for Ukraine the other way — a propaganda gift to Moscow and a warning to the next would-be defector that Ukraine's protection may not hold. For a state that anchors its whole cause in the rule of law, that is a debt that keeps compounding.
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More than 100 drones were detected near Romania over the past 96 hours, with NATO fighter jets scrambled seven times in response to the increased aerial activity, Romanian Defense Minister Radu Miruță said, according to Antena 3 CNN.
The figures come as Romania faces a growing number of drone incidents linked to Russia’s war against Ukraine. Romanian forces have recently shifted from monitoring and escorting drones to actively destroying those that enter Romanian airspace, while NATO aircraft are increasingly being called on to respond to aerial threats along the alliance’s eastern flank.
According to Miruță, Romanian authorities detected more than 100 drones in the vicinity of Romanian territory during the four-day period. NATO fighter jets participating in air-policing missions were activated seven times.
Miruță did not report how many of the detected drones entered Romanian airspace, nor how many were identified as Russian or Ukrainian.
Miruță said most of the drones were destroyed by Ukrainian air defenses outside Romania, but close enough for their debris to reach Romanian shores.
“[Russia’s war in Ukraine] is a real war, with real consequences. That is why we are taking every measure we can to limit the indirect consequences that are also being felt here,” Miruță wrote on Facebook.
The report comes shortly after Romania destroyed two Russian Gerbera-type drones that were found drifting in the Black Sea near the Neptun Deep offshore gas project on 11 August. Romanian military divers carried out controlled detonations after Ukraine confirmed the drones were not Ukrainian.
The latest figures follow a significant change in Romania’s response to drone incursions.
In late July, Romanian F-16s shot down three drones over Romanian territory and territorial waters in three consecutive days. One of the drones was identified as a Russian Shahed-type attack drone, while investigations were conducted into the others.
The July incidents marked a shift from Romania’s previous approach of tracking or escorting drones that crossed into its airspace during Russian attacks on Ukraine. Four of the five drones shot down in EU and NATO countries at that point had been neutralized by Romanian military pilots, according to Miruță.
Romanian President Nicușor Dan called the repeated violations of Romanian airspace “inadmissible and intolerable” and Bucharest prepared a diplomatic protest to Moscow after one of the downed drones was identified as Russian.
Romania has repeatedly dealt with drones crossing its border during Russian attacks on Ukrainian territory, particularly in the vicinity of Ukrainian ports on the Danube and the Black Sea.
In June, a Ukrainian sea drone that had lost control, which Kyiv attributed to Russian electronic warfare, exploded near an oil terminal in the Romanian port of Constanța. No one was injured, but more than 1,000 people were evacuated from the area as a precaution.
The incidents have also extended beyond Romania. On 14 August, NATO fighter jets shot down a foreign drone after it entered Latvian airspace. Latvia said the drone had entered its airspace as a result of Russian electronic warfare activity.
The repeated incidents have made drone activity around NATO’s eastern border an increasingly regular consequence of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) plans to abolish special border zones along several boundaries with Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia, according to draft orders reviewed by the Russian outlet Agentstvo.
The proposed changes would remove restrictions that currently treat movement between Russia and occupied parts of Ukraine much like crossing an international border. The FSB says the move follows Russia’s claimed incorporation of the occupied Ukrainian territories into Russia.
The draft orders, as reported by Ukrainska Pravda, would invalidate previous FSB orders establishing border zones along the boundaries between Russia’s Rostov and Voronezh oblasts and the occupied territories of Ukraine.
A similar change is planned for occupied Crimea, where the current border zone along the boundary with occupied Kherson Oblast would be abolished.
The existing rules effectively impose additional controls on people entering and leaving the occupied territories, making movement subject to procedures similar to those used at Russia’s state border.
In the draft orders, the FSB justifies the changes by referring to the alleged “admission into the Russian Federation” of the occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kherson oblasts.
Russia illegally claimed to annex those territories, along with Zaporizhzhia Oblast, in September 2022. The move has been rejected by Ukraine and the international community, and Russia does not control all of the territory it claims to have annexed.
The FSB proposal would not completely eliminate the border zone in occupied Crimea.
A restricted zone would remain “within the boundaries of the Black Sea islands belonging to the Russian Federation,” according to the draft. The FSB’s regional directorate would determine where and when people could enter the zone and would install warning signs.
The proposed changes would remove the existing border zones along Russia’s boundaries with occupied Ukrainian territories, while retaining a border zone around certain Black Sea islands in occupied Crimea.
The planned changes reflect Moscow’s effort to incorporate occupied Ukrainian territories into Russia’s administrative and legal system.
In September 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed so-called “accession treaties” claiming to incorporate Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts into Russia. Russia’s parliament subsequently approved the claims.
The treaties purported to define the boundaries of the annexed territories according to the borders they had on the day Russia claimed to admit them into the Russian Federation, despite Russia not controlling the entirety of those regions.
Russia previously used similar measures to formalize its control over occupied Crimea after illegally annexing the peninsula in 2014.
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On 14 August, Ukraine's Military Intelligence (HUR) published data on 26 vessels via its War&Sanctions portal, noting that 18 ships face no sanctions from any of Ukraine's partner countries.
The agency said the ships carry Russian oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG), or agricultural products from occupied Ukraine. Euromaidan Press could not independently verify HUR’s vessel records.
Russia relies on maritime trade both to fund its war through energy exports and to sell crops taken from occupied Ukraine. Kyiv began building a dedicated system against Russia’s shadow grain fleet in April, modeled on its oil-fleet campaign. A US bill introduced this week would also target vessels, owners, insurers, and ports involved in sanctions evasion. HUR’s new list shows how many ships remain outside those restrictions.
HUR divided the 26 vessels into three groups:
HUR highlighted three of the 18 vessels that are not facing partner sanctions. The bulk carrier LAMAR S repeatedly loaded wheat at the Avlita terminal in occupied Sevastopol in 2026 for delivery abroad, including to Syria, the agency said.
NAYA FALCON carried baking soda and granulated wheat bran from occupied Sevastopol to Egypt and Cyprus, HUR said. The agency linked the oil tanker GREGAL to UAE-based Cymare Navigation FZC, which it described as affiliated with Sovcomflot, Russia’s state-controlled shipping company.
Crops taken from occupied land are sold abroad as Russian produce, while Russia's attacks leave Ukraine’s legitimate harvest with fewer routes to market.
Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service said Russia sold more than 2 million tons of grain from occupied Ukraine as Russian produce in 2025. The agency said ship-to-ship transfers at Kavkaz helped conceal its origin.
Meanwhile, Russian attacks have squeezed Ukraine’s legitimate grain trade. Strikes on civilian ships brought the Black Sea corridor to a near standstill during the July harvest peak. Ten people died when Russian missiles hit the grain-laden Golden Leo on 19 July.
HUR called on Ukraine and its partners to synchronize sanctions and detain vessels that violate restrictions. It said the measures could curb Russia’s maritime logistics and war funding.
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A Kyiv court has sentenced an unemployed man to 15 years in prison with confiscation of his property for carrying out arson attacks on behalf of Russian intelligence, Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) said on 13 August. The man was recruited while looking for "easy money" on Telegram channels and carried out two arson attacks in Kyiv before fleeing to Odesa, the SBU reported.
Russian intelligence increasingly recruits Ukrainians through Telegram for arson and sabotage. It targets people seeking quick money and treats them as disposable operatives, paying small sums for a single task and discarding them once they are caught.
According to the SBU, the man first set fire to a relay cabinet belonging to a railway signaling system. Russia intended the attack to disrupt freight logistics, including supplies to areas near the front.
The agent later burned a volunteer’s SUV used to deliver humanitarian aid and evacuate civilians from areas affected by Russia’s war. He carried out the attacks at night, using a flammable mixture and filming each incident on his smartphone before sending the footage to his Russian handler.
The SBU arrested him in Odesa in July 2025, where he had attempted to hide after carrying out the attacks. Investigators seized his phone, which contained evidence of his cooperation with Russia.
A court found him guilty on two counts — sabotage committed under martial law, and intentional destruction of property by arson — both carried out as part of a group acting on prior conspiracy. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison with confiscation of his property.
The case follows several similar convictions. In a May case, an agent received 15 years for burning a railway relay cabinet near a Dnipro station in an attempt to disrupt frontline logistics. The SBU said the unemployed local, recruited through Telegram, filmed the arson and reported it to his handler, then was caught before he could carry out a planned series of attacks on the city's critical infrastructure.
In June 2026, another agent was sentenced to 15 years for preparing to burn an electrical substation in Kropyvnytskyi.
In July, SBU investigators reported that a GRU agent in Zaporizhzhia received 15 years for preparing explosives for Russian-organized attacks.
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