Ukraine struck one of Russia's largest oil refineries deep in the Urals and a military airfield overnight in a long-range attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on 21 August. The Ukrainian Army's General Staff confirmed the refinery and airfield hits, while Zelenskyy said the same night also reached the Black Sea and brought fresh damage from earlier strikes on a Russian warplane and a drone-launch site.

Fire at a major Lukoil refinery in Perm

Zelenskyy said the overnight drones hit the Lukoil-Permnefteorgsintez refinery — known as PNOS — in Perm, where the General Staff recorded a fire on the plant's grounds. The target sits more than 1,500 km from Ukraine's northern border, in a region near the Ural Mountains.

The refinery is one of Russia's largest, able to process more than 13 million tons of crude a year, with more than half its output sold abroad until recently. It supplies fuel to both Russia's economy and its army.

Ukrainian Telegram channels Supernova+ and Exilenova+ shared footage of explosions and a rising plume, with locals reporting a series of blasts at the site. Russia's Perm Krai authorities claimed they repelled the attack and downed 16 drones.

Kyiv has repeatedly hit the plant through the year. After a strike at the end of July, it had been running well below capacity.

Airfield, Black Sea, and other targets the same night

The General Staff said the same night's drones also struck the Marinovka military airfield in Volgograd Oblast, located in Russia's Volga region, with the damage still being assessed, while Zelenskyy added that Ukraine achieved unspecified results in the Black Sea. The military also reported hitting a drone storage and launch site near Donetsk, a materiel warehouse in occupied Crimea, two command posts in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, and six relay stations in Crimea used to steer Russia's Geran and Gerbera attack drones.

Zelenskyy also confirmed damage from earlier strikes: a Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber hit at the Akhtubinsk airfield, about 600 km from the front line, and a drone store and launch site struck at Primorsko-Akhtarsk, roughly 180 km away. The strike extends a run of deep hits this month, from the TANECO refinery in Tatarstan and a Black Sea oil terminal to three refineries hit in one night and an Omsk refinery struck 2,500 km away in Siberia.

A retired Russian FSB major-general whose company built secure communications for the Kremlin's security services and military has been found dead in his Moscow apartment, RFE/RL's Current Time reported. Russian outlets, citing their own sources, say the 83-year-old apparently killed himself, though authorities have released nothing. His death adds to a run of senior Russian military and security figures dying in the capital.

An FSB veteran who wired Russia's spies

Igor Laptev, 83, was found dead in an apartment in Moscow. Russian outlet MK and others, citing sources, wrote that he probably took his own life on the afternoon of 20 August. Izvestia claimed he died from a gunshot wound to the head. No suicide note or motive has been reported, and Russian law enforcement has issued no official statement.

Laptev was a chemist-technologist by training who served in the Soviet KGB, including combat in Afghanistan, according to Delovoy Peterburg. In the KGB and later the FSB, he worked on information security. In the late 1990s, he was a deputy minister for taxes and duties, and from 1998, he chaired the board of Informtekhnika i Svyaz, now the Informtekhnika group.

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A supplier to the FSB, the guards, and the army

The company says on its own site that it makes communications systems for federal authorities and security structures, including the FSB, the FSO federal guard service, the Defense Ministry, and the interior ministry. According to OSINT VARTA, it develops and produces specialized telecom equipment and software for secure communications, building switching systems and special-comms platforms for security agencies and state bodies. It also works with Voentelecom, a Russian Defense Ministry structure, to supply troops with digital telecom gear, Militarnyi reported.

A string of deaths among Russia's brass

Laptev's death is not the first in Moscow involving retired Russian generals. On 2 May, retired colonel-general Stanislav Petrov — founder of Russia's radiological, chemical and biological defense troops, who helped create the TOS-1 Buratino heavy flamethrower system — was found dead in a central Moscow apartment. Weeks ago, Moscow buried a general under roadblocks and metal detectors after a bombing that likely killed him at a commander's gathering.

Polish officers have detained a Ukrainian accused of trying to murder a figure from Ukraine's weapons sector on Moscow's orders, Reuters reported. Investigators say his homemade explosive failed to detonate, and he fled to Poland, where officers detained him. The case is the latest in a run of Russian-directed plots targeting people tied to Ukraine across Europe.

A car bomb that failed

The suspect, named only as Serhii P. under Polish privacy rules, allegedly went after a figure in Ukraine's weapons sector in Irpin, a town in Kyiv Oblast just northwest of the capital. The ABW, Poland's Internal Security Agency, said he planted an improvised explosive device under a car used by the potential victim. The device was meant to be set off remotely with a cellphone, but it "did not detonate due to a malfunction," the agency said.

The suspect, a 63-year-old Ukrainian, fled to Poland after the attempt collapsed and was arrested in Warsaw on 5 August 2026, the Ukrainian outlet NV says. Polish authorities announced the arrest on 20 August and said it kept him from using Poland as a hideout while he dodged investigators. Prosecutors charged him with trying to kill with a bomb and with holding explosives without a permit. The charges carry a floor of 15 years behind bars and a ceiling of life, they said.

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The ABW framed the case as proof that Russian intelligence runs operations far beyond its own borders, using people who move between countries to do the work. For years, Kyiv and Western capitals have said Moscow enlists people — Ukrainians among them — to run sabotage and spying missions, a charge Russia keeps rejecting.

A pattern across Europe

The plot fits a wider Russian campaign. Weeks earlier, Warsaw detained a Russian man whom Moscow had allegedly recruited to murder a Ukrainian-American in the same city. 

Earlier this year, Ukrainian investigators recently exposed a coordinated scheme to kill a Russian dissident and Ukraine supporter in Lithuania, German prosecutors filed sabotage charges against a Ukrainian and a Latvian, and an earlier plot targeted the chief of German arms-maker Rheinmetall.

Poland and the Baltic States have been named prime targets for Russian sabotage over their backing for Kyiv.

Finland is investigating a suspected violation of its airspace by a Russian aircraft over the Gulf of Finland, its Defense Ministry said. Authorities have not identified the aircraft or said whether the crossing was deliberate, and the country's border guard has opened an inquiry. The case adds Finland to a growing list of NATO states reporting Russian intrusions along the alliance's frontiers.

What Finland reported

A Russian aircraft is suspected of violating Finnish airspace in the western Gulf of Finland on the afternoon of 20 August, Defense Minister Antti Häkkänen said. He said the country treats every such case seriously and that an inquiry is running.

"Every suspected territorial violation is taken seriously. An investigation is underway," Häkkänen said.

The ministry statement did not name the aircraft. The Border Guard later identified it as a Russian Il-20 reconnaissance plane, Finnish broadcaster Yle reported, saying the suspected crossing lasted about three minutes and reached some 4.7 nautical miles into Finnish airspace at its deepest. It said it would release more as the inquiry advances.

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A pattern along NATO's frontiers

The suspected crossing follows two earlier Finnish cases this year. Finland suspected Russian military aircraft of entering its airspace in May, off Porkkala while one avoided a thunderstorm, and again in June, summoning Russia's chargé d'affaires over the two incidents.

Other members of the alliance keep logging similar incidents. Romania has destroyed a sea drone and recovered aerial-drone debris on its soil, and Russian drones have struck near Moldova's border with Ukraine. Kyiv has also accused Russia of steering Ukrainian drones toward Finland and the Baltic States through electronic warfare.

Finland joined NATO in 2023 and has since rearmed sharply, ending a domestic ban on nuclear weapons as part of a wider defense shift. It has stepped up support for Ukraine, most recently backing a power-plant project before Russia's winter energy campaign. Helsinki has also argued it is too early to negotiate with Moscow while the war continues.

Romania destroyed an explosives-laden maritime drone near its critical Neptun Deep gas platform and recovered debris from a separate aerial drone that crashed on its soil, the Romanian Defense Ministry reported. The incidents came during a major Russian attack on Ukraine on 20 August that killed 14 people in Kyiv city and oblast, caused incidents in Moldova, and triggered air defense activation in Poland.

F-16 fires cannon at sea drone near gas platform

A commercial vessel spotted a drifting maritime drone near the Neptun Alpha production platform, approximately 80 nautical miles east of Constanța, at around 06:28, the Defense Ministry said. Two Romanian F-16s scrambled with orders to fire. One engaged the target with its onboard cannon—the first time Romania used a cannon against a drone and the first engagement against a maritime drone. All previous shootdowns used air-to-air missiles against aerial drones.

The country's Defense Minister Radu Miruță said the drone was carrying explosives and was spotted just hundreds of meters from the platform where several hundred people work. Through a recently established direct communication channel, Ukraine confirmed the drone was not of Ukrainian origin. President Nicușor Dan directly blamed Russia, condemning "the intensification of these types of irresponsible incidents on the part of the Russian Federation."

The engagement came nine days after Romanian navy divers destroyed two Gerbera-type drones drifting near the same platform by controlled detonation.

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Aerial drone crashes in Romania's Tulcea County

Earlier overnight, Romanian radar detected aerial targets near the Ukrainian border at 02:23, the Defense Ministry said. Two Spanish F-18s from NATO's air policing mission and a Romanian IAR-330 SOCAT helicopter scrambled. At 03:21, a drone crossed into Romanian airspace 13 km east of Galați and crashed three minutes later near the village of Grindu in Tulcea County. No casualties or damage were reported. The fragments posed no explosive hazard.

The crash came four days after a Spanish F-18 shot down another drone over Romanian airspace, Euronews reported. Romanian F-16s intercepted three Russian drones in July.

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Poland activates defenses, Moldova hit by drone spillover

Poland's Operational Command activated military aircraft and ground-based air defense systems during the Russian attack as a preventive measure. The Netherlands provided air defense support. No breach of Polish airspace was recorded.

Moldova faced multiple incidents. At 03:16, the country's National Army detected what was preliminarily identified as a Shahed-136/Geran-2 drone crossing from Ukraine near Kotlovyna in Odesa Oblast into Moldova's Gagauzia region. It returned to Ukrainian airspace six minutes later, public broadcaster Moldova1 said.

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Separately, an explosion at a truck parking lot on Ukrainian territory about 150 meters from the Giurgiulești-Reni border crossing at around 03:45 sparked a fire that spread onto Moldovan soil, Newsmaker reported. Border police found drone fragments in a crater approximately 1 km inside Moldovan territory. 

Russia's Matryoshka bot network has launched disinformation campaigns targeting elections in Sweden, Germany, and France this month, fabricating video clips branded with the logos of trusted European media outlets, Sweden's national public broadcaster SVT reported. Analysts in multiple countries found the campaign aims not to reach mass audiences but to overwhelm newsrooms' fact-checking capacity.

Fake clips target Swedish PM weeks before the vote

Seven fabricated video clips appeared on the social media platform X within a single hour on 18 August. Among them were clips branded with the logos of SVT and the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Others hijacked the visual branding of Euronews and Germany's Der Spiegel. None were ever produced by these outlets.

The fake videos spread lies about election fraud in Sweden and directed false accusations at Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson personally. Sweden holds general elections on 13 September.

"We see this all over Europe. Russians target countries that support Ukraine," Kristersson told SVT.

Russian opposition analysis group Antibot4navalny linked the posts to Matryoshka, a pro-Russian influence campaign named after the Russian nesting doll.

Also known as Operation Overload and Storm-1679, Matryoshka was first exposed by Antibot4navalny in 2024 and is one of several Kremlin-linked disinformation networks alongside the Doppelgänger campaign and Storm-1516. A previous SVT review found the majority of Matryoshka's posts aimed to influence Western support for Ukraine.

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Campaign targets newsrooms, not audiences

The fabricated posts rarely get more than a few hundred or a few thousand genuine views, Antibot4navalny told SVT. Analysts say the campaign is not primarily designed to reach a large audience. Matryoshka operators actively push fabricated posts to journalists and fact-checkers, often disguising them as verification requests. A 2024 report by France's state anti-disinformation body Viginum suggested the campaign aims to distract and overload newsrooms' fact-checking resources through large volumes of targeted requests. In posts targeting Sweden, the network tagged the social media accounts of several outlets, including SVT and Dagens Nyheter.

The campaign may also seek to generate media coverage that amplifies its message or makes it appear more influential than it is, the think tank ISD assessed.

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Germany and France targeted the same month

On 12 August, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), warned that Matryoshka is targeting local and regional elections in Germany scheduled for September. In early August, France's Viginum detected a Matryoshka operation directed at presidential candidate Gabriel Attal ahead of the 2027 vote. French prosecutors opened a probe into the campaign on 18 August.

In April, the network promoted false claims of Ukraine's involvement in the assassination attempt on US President Donald Trump.

Ukraine has brought another 103 servicemembers home from Russian captivity in the first stage of a new prisoner exchange, the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War reported on 19 August 2026. Most of the returning defenders are wounded or seriously ill after captivity that, for some, reached back to 2022, the year of Russia's full-scale invasion. The United States and the United Arab Emirates helped organize the swap, the headquarters said.

Who came home

The freed group covers nearly every branch of Ukraine's forces. It includes members of the Armed Forces, the Navy, Territorial Defense, the National Guard and the State Border Guard Service. Alongside soldiers and sergeants, several officers were released.

The Coordination HQ detailed the composition. The Defense Ministry accounted for 92 of those freed, and the Interior Ministry for 11. Two of the returnees are officers, the rest enlisted personnel and NCOs. Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi said his ministry's 11 broke down into five National Guardsmen and six border guards.

The defenders had been captured across the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson and Sumy directions, as well as at Mariupol. The single largest share, 72, fell on the Donetsk front. The youngest freed defender was born in 2000, and the oldest is 59.

Years behind Russian bars

The captures span the entire full-scale war. One of those freed had been held since 2022, 16 since 2023, and 48 since 2024. Another 31 were seized in 2025 and seven this year. By the same tally, the International Committee of the Red Cross had confirmed the captivity of 102 of the group before the handover, with a single case verified through other sources.

A previous swap in late June returned 160 defenders, all of them held since 2022.

Wounded and ill

The released defenders will undergo full medical examinations, receive physical and psychological rehabilitation, and obtain the state payments provided by law. The head of the President's Office, Kyrylo Budanov, said doctors were already doing everything necessary for the returnees, most of whom came back with wounds and serious illness.

Their condition fits a wider pattern Ukrainian officials have described, in which Russia starves most captives and executes many surrendered soldiers on the battlefield.

"We remember everyone still in captivity"

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the freed included men who had defended Mariupol. 

"We remember every man and every woman still held captive. We are doing everything possible to bring all our people home," he said.

The Security Service of Ukraine noted the swap ran through the joint center it operates to coordinate the search and release of prisoners. Oleh Ivashchenko, chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) and head of the Coordination Headquarters, met the returning defenders in person. 

Ukraine has opened its own criminal investigation into the 2022 destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, months after Germany charged a Ukrainian over the blasts, Suspilne reported. Prosecutors in Kyiv registered the case on war-crimes grounds and say they will test whether Russia staged the sabotage to discredit Ukraine. Serhii Kuznietsov is due to stand trial in Germany in October.

Kyiv will test a Russian false-flag version

Ukraine's Security Service, under the Prosecutor General's Office, opened proceedings on 9 July under the article on violations of the laws and customs of war. Kuznietsov's Ukrainian lawyer, Mykola Katerynchuk, told Suspilne about the case.

The Prosecutor General's Office confirmed it is supervising a probe into the "possible commission in September 2022, amid the international armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine, by citizens of Ukraine, of actions connected to the undermining" of both pipelines in the Baltic Sea. It said the case was registered after the "independent discovery in the media" that Germany had charged a Ukrainian citizen.

Given Russia's use of hybrid methods, investigators will also examine whether Russians organized the explosions as a "false flag" operation, using Ukrainian citizens or imitating their participation to discredit Ukraine.

The office said it used the laws-and-customs-of-war charge because it matches the qualification chosen by Germany's Federal Prosecutor's Office.

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The case against Serhii Kuznietsov

The pipelines exploded on 26 September 2022. On 8 August 2025, Germany's Federal Court of Justice issued an arrest warrant for Kuznietsov, alleging he led a group of six who mined the pipelines and detonated them remotely.

Italian police arrested him on 21 August 2025, and Italy's Supreme Court later confirmed his extradition to Germany. A Polish court, by contrast, refused a German request for another Ukrainian suspect, Volodymyr Zhuravlov.

On 2 July 2026, Germany's Federal Prosecutor's Office published its charges — an attack on civilian objects, causing an explosion, and destroying structures. Kuznietsov denies guilt.

Ukraine's anti-corruption bureau and anti-corruption prosecutors opened a special operation against an alleged criminal organization reaching into the Office of the President, the two agencies said on 19 August 2026. Detectives said a sitting and a former lawmaker led the group, released a wiretap recording that points to the presidential administration, and seized a document laying out a plan to shape public opinion around the anti-corruption fight. Media reports place a deputy head of the President's Office among those searched, though investigators have not confirmed any names.

A case named after a Hollywood film

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP) ran searches on the morning of 19 August and unveiled the operation hours later. The two agencies said they had exposed an alleged criminal organization run by a sitting and a former member of parliament, with senior Office of the President officials taking part, the bureau said. It promised further details later.

The operation carries a mocking name, Forest Gump, drawn from the suspects' own words. In a 47-second recording of intercepted conversations, one man ties the label to how the group allegedly hid money. 

"We've got Saving Private Ryan, right? But only an idiot would register the theft of money—and their tuition on top of it—on their own children. That's why, Forest Gump," he says.

Other fragments reference cash and the presidential administration directly. "Well, there are four bags of money there," one voice says on the tape. Another adds: "If we do this, you can drive to the Office of the President yourselves. Believe me. I can see it."

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The document found in the search

During the searches, NABU said, agents recovered a document containing an "anti-crisis" communications plan built around the work of a temporary investigative commission in Ukraine's parliament. The bureau described it as a set of communication steps and messages aimed at managing the public situation around that commission.

The plan maps out a media campaign across Telegram, social platforms, talk shows, and named Ukrainian and international outlets. It casts the commission head as the main voice, frames the effort as “audit, not attack,” and aims to build trust in the commission while shielding the President and Cabinet.

Who investigators are said to be targeting

Media reports say the investigative actions include searches at Iryna Mudra, a deputy head of the Office of the President. A source told Ukrinform that detectives were working at Mudra, who oversees judicial reform and the creation of a special tribunal on the crime of aggression against Ukraine. NABU said it would not comment on the ongoing actions for now.

Beyond Mudra, the case reportedly involves member of parliament Vadym Stolar and former lawmaker Maksym Mykytas, along with Justice Ministry officials, RBC-Ukraine reported. 

The raids reach a state-linked bank

NABU also searched Sens Bank's supervisory board, including suspended chair Mykola Hladyshchenko, sources told Ekonomichna Pravda — a thread running back to the "Mindich tapes," where those under investigation discussed lining up the bank's board seats as their own "quotas." The recording also echoed that case's reported detail: a former minister's son schooled at a Swiss college costing up to $200,000 a year, which the tape's "children's tuition" line appears to touch.

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Echoes of the Mindich tapes

The operation lands atop a major graft scandal of Ukraine's wartime politics. In November 2025, NABU unveiled the Mindich tapes, documenting a $100 million kickback network around state nuclear operator Energoatom and reaching President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's former business partner. The case later widened to touch other parts of Ukraine's defense and energy sectors. It followed a summer 2025 attempt to curb the anti-corruption bodies' independence, which mass protests forced the authorities to reverse.

Satellite imagery shows the damage Ukraine's Flamingo missiles inflicted on Russia's main rocket-assembly plant, the Ukrainian Telegram channel Exilenova+ reported on 18 August. The overhead photo show a collapsed roof section over a key hall at the Progress Rocket Space Center in Samara, a Russian city about 900 km from the war zone in Ukraine. It puts a measurable figure on damage Kyiv had until now only claimed.

The satellite photo centers the damage on building 106A, Exilenova+ said. Crews there wire the rockets' control systems, cabling and instrument bays. The imagery shows two missile hits on that hall, the channel reported.

The collapsed roof section runs 85 meters long and 35 meters wide. Ukraine struck the plant on 15 August with its home-built Flamingo cruise missiles, which President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed at the time.

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A rocket hall with no domestic replacement

Progress is the only plant in Russia that serially assembles the Soyuz-2 rocket family, used to launch military reconnaissance and targeting satellites, Exilenova+ noted. 

The plant also lofts the Rassvet satellites built by Bureau 1440, Russia's answer to Starlink. The country has no full alternative to the Samara site, they added. Next to building 106A stands 106B, the complex's final-assembly hall.

Ukraine's Fire Point company builds the Flamingo, a long-range cruise missile. Its growing reach lets Kyiv strike defense and space plants far from the front. Overhead imagery has exposed earlier Flamingo damage deep inside Russia.

Ukrainian drones struck Moscow and the surrounding oblast overnight into 18 August, cutting power, setting off fires, and hitting a warehouse of the Russian online retailer Wildberries, monitoring Telegram channels reported. Russian officials claimed air defenses shot down most of the drones and blamed the damage on falling wreckage. Ukraine's military did not claim the attack.

Fires and casualties across Moscow Oblast

Ukrainian monitoring Telegram channel Exilenova+ began posting footage of the strikes around 4:00. Fires broke out on an apartment-block roof and in another building in a town east of Moscow, and a retail pavilion caught fire near a shopping mall in a town to the southeast, Russian news Telegram channel Astra reported. Moscow Oblast Governor Andrei Vorobyov claimed air defenses downed more than 150 drones over the oblast. He stated three people were hurt, and that debris damaged homes.

The attack knocked out electricity for more than 5,000 customers and 46 "socially significant" facilities in two districts east of the capital, knocking 109 transformer substations offline, the regional utility Mosoblenergo said. It blamed equipment damage early on 18 August and estimated about two hours to restore power.

A Wildberries warehouse hit

A drone hit a Wildberries logistics warehouse in the region, where Vorobyov said a fire was quickly contained with no casualties. Wildberries said debris only grazed a wall, that staff had been evacuated in advance, and that its goods were unharmed. Footage shared by Exilenova+ showed a large hole near the roof and no visible fire.

Russia's claims

Russian officials gave sweeping counts. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin claimed 620 drones flew toward the capital region overnight, with 180 downed there. Russia's Defense Ministry claimed it destroyed 791 drones over 15 Russian regions and occupied Crimea. In a separate daily tally, it claimed 1,671 drones over 24 hours, Interfax-Russia reported. Russian state news agency RIA Novosti called the claimed drone figure an absolute record. 

Ukraine's response

Ukraine's General Staff listed strikes on an ammunition depot in Donetsk Oblast and several drone-control points in Russia's Belgorod Oblast and Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia Oblast, but made no mention of the Moscow attack. 

Ukrainian defense-technology company Fire Point posted video of drones over the region, citing reported explosions near a Moscow oil refinery and a possible hit on warehouse infrastructure. Fire Point manufactures the FP-1—one of the types of long-range drones widely used in such attacks.

A campaign on a Russian retail giant

Wildberries warehouses have become a frequent Ukrainian target. On 16 August, Ukraine struck the retailer's logistics sites near Moscow, halting operations, and Kyiv has now knocked out seven of its 10 largest warehouses. The strikes have cost the company at least 17% of its warehouse space and pushed it to seek storage in Kazakhstan.

Russia struck the center of Pechenihy, a settlement in Ukraine's Kharkiv Oblast, on the morning of 18 August, killing at least 10 people and wounding at least 18, Ukraine's State Emergency Service reported. Two missiles hit a post office and shops at a crossroads ringed by homes, setting a cafe and cars ablaze. Emergency crews recovered bodies from the rubble as rescue work continued through the day.

A strike at rush hour

Russia fired two Banderol cruise missiles into the settlement at 08:40, the Prosecutor General's Office said, opening a war-crimes investigation into the deaths. The missiles hit the central part of Pechenihy just as residents were heading to work and businesses were opening, the settlement's head, Oleksandr Husarov, said. He put the preliminary midday toll as high as 20 wounded, cautioning the figures were not final.

Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv Oblast Military Administration, reported that the strike burned a cafe and seven cars across roughly 400 m², and damaged 10 private houses, the post office, five shops, and 15 vehicles.

The Banderol is a low-cost, jet-powered cruise missile that Russia has used against Ukrainian cities before. Built by the sanctioned firm Kronshtadt with foreign components, it reaches up to 650 km/h and carries a 114.3-kg warhead. Ukraine recently found that a new ground launcher could let Russia fire the missile in salvos and without warning.

Ukraine's response

Acting Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Putin "continues to drag out the war instead of accepting Ukraine's realistic ceasefire proposals." President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia had "brutally struck a crowded crossroads" where the post office and shops stood, ringed only by homes, and vowed a response, urging partners to add pressure on Moscow.

The same day, Russia also struck the Kharkiv Oblast city of Izium, wounding five people, among them a nine-year-old child, and damaging five private houses, Syniehubov said. Emergency services worked at the site and the wounded received care.

Ghana has publicly demanded that Russia halt the recruitment of its citizens to fight in the war against Ukraine, following 17 August talks between the two countries' foreign ministers in Moscow, The Moscow Times reported. Ghana's top diplomat said Moscow agreed to work on the matter, while Russia confirmed that Ghanaians had signed military contracts but defended the practice. 

Ghana brings its dead and missing to the table

Ghanaian Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa accused Russia of the "illegal recruitment" of Ghanaians for the war on Ukraine. After the Moscow talks, he said his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, agreed to work toward resolving the issue, according to Interfax Russia. Ablakwa reported that 62 of his compatriots had died in Ukraine, with a further 15 listed as missing, Bloomberg reported.

Russia confirms the contracts, then justifies them

Lavrov confirmed that Ghanaian citizens had signed contracts with Russia's Defense Ministry. He claimed the Ghanaians had signed out of solidarity with a country that had helped Africa fight racism and for financial reasons. He stated that Moscow had received similar appeals from other countries, and that a dedicated Defense Ministry structure reviews such cases and would examine the additional requests raised by the Ghanaian side.

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A pattern stretching across two continents

The recruitment of African nationals to reinforce Russian forces has alarmed governments across the region. Kenya and South Africa had already pressed Moscow with similar demands. In February, Kenyan intelligence said Russia had deceptively lured more than 1,000 Kenyans into the war, many of them promised jobs as truck drivers or security guards.

In December 2025, South Africa detained five people suspected of recruiting mercenaries for the Russian army. Last fall, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, daughter of former South African President Jacob Zuma, was reportedly involved, convincing 20 young men they were traveling to Russia for bodyguard training to later work in her father's party. Botswana in July reported the deceptive recruitment of its citizens, saying the number of victims was "growing at an alarming rate," and Panama later leveled similar accusations. Russia's Foreign Ministry claimed the signed contracts were voluntary.

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Ghana's confrontation echoes earlier ones

Ukrainian officials say the death toll among African recruits has climbed into the hundreds, turning what Moscow frames as voluntary service into what several governments describe as trafficking.

In March, three governments had already confirmed their citizens were being lured to the war, including more than 1,000 Kenyans and over 50 Ghanaians killed. Kenya said the same month that Russia had agreed to stop using its recruits, though families of the missing were still waiting. 

A European Parliament resolution has separately accused Russia of stripping African recruits of their documents and sending them to the Ukrainian front.

Ukraine has knocked out seven of the 10 largest logistics hubs run by Russia's biggest online retailer, the US-based Institute for the Study of War assessed. The strikes are part of a campaign to wear down Russia's defense industry and the dual-use supply lines that feed its war. The newest raids hit two warehouses near Moscow overnight.

Two hubs near Moscow burned overnight

On 15-16 August, Ukrainian drones struck Wildberries' single largest hub, a 250,000-square-meter depot in the Koledino Industrial Park in Podolsk, Moscow Oblast. Ukraine's Defense Ministry reported the hit, about 420 kilometers from the border.

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Wildberries confirmed the fire and said it had to reorganize its supply chains. Moscow Oblast Governor Andrei Vorobyov acknowledged the strike, and geolocated footage showed the depot ablaze.

Drones also hit a second warehouse the same night, in Domodedovo, roughly 430 kilometers from the border. Footage showed a fire at the Severnoye Domodedovo complex.

Why the warehouses are targets

Ukrainian officials say Wildberries helps supply the Russian military, moving drone components and navigation gear. Kyiv folded the retailer into a deep-strike campaign that began in mid-July.

The company is Russia's answer to Amazon, its largest online marketplace. Its sprawling depots make broad, hard-to-defend targets.

The damage keeps growing

By early August, the strikes had destroyed at least 1.18 million square meters of Wildberries storage, about a fifth of its capacity, ISW noted. The toll has climbed since.

The losses ripple outward to independent sellers who rent space in the hubs. Many have watched their stock burn with no compensation.

Germany has placed part of a federal ministry directly next to a Berlin building that France links to Russian intelligence, the newspaper Tagesspiegel reported. The branch office shares a wall with the Russian House, a cultural center long suspected of serving as a Kremlin front. One of its units works on protecting Germany's critical networks from attack.

A shared wall in the heart of Berlin

The Federal Ministry for Digital Affairs opened a branch at Taubenstraße 42/43 on 1 July. It sits wall-to-wall with the Russian House on Friedrichstraße, reporter Claudia von Salzen found. The ministry moved in because its main headquarters nearby had run out of space.

Two of the ministry's six departments now operate there. One covers digital infrastructure, including a unit for the security and resilience of public telecom networks.

The other handles digital identities, trust services, and the cybersecurity industry. Both are fields a hostile intelligence service would want to watch.

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Why the address raises alarms

The Russian House is officially a science and culture center. It opened on Friedrichstraße in 1984 to promote friendship with the Soviet Union.

Rossotrudnichestvo, a Russian state agency, runs it. The EU sanctioned that agency in July 2022 as the Kremlin's main tool for hybrid influence. In Germany, it allegedly helped organize pro-Russian rallies, and many of its staff abroad are Russian intelligence officers.

A leaked French Interior Ministry letter states the building serves as cover for Russian intelligence. The Russian House rejected that and claimed it is a purely cultural institution.

Other branches of government took the threat seriously

Across town, German lawmakers near the Russian Embassy hardened their offices years ago. They were told to avoid Bluetooth devices and to fit their windows with anti-espionage film.

Berlin is also reviewing whether to close the Russian House over the espionage suspicions, TVP World reported. A senior lawmaker, Roderich Kiesewetter of the CDU, called the ministry's choice a clear failure of risk awareness.

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The ministry said it picked the site because the building is federally owned and the right size. It did not answer whether the proximity to the Russian House counts as a security risk.

Russia's shadow war has already reached Germany

Germany has become one of the busiest fronts in Russia's campaign of drone incursions, sabotage, and spying. By December, Germany had logged more than 1,000 suspicious drone flights in 2025 alone. The drones have swarmed both civilian airports and military sites, shutting Munich Airport over two days in October 2025 and stranding thousands of travelers. Analysts judge it highly likely that Russia flew some 144 surveillance drones over a dozen NATO countries between August 2024 and February 2026, including near Ramstein Air Base and NATO nuclear sites. In early August 2026, security staff found an explosives-laden drone beside a Ukrainian cargo plane at Leipzig-Halle airport, an incident Western intelligence tied to Moscow.

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Much of the ground work runs through disposable agents recruited online. In March 2026, authorities arrested operatives who had surveilled the head of a Bavarian drone firm arming Ukraine, a case its domestic service treats as a planned assassination. Prosecutors separately charged three men over a plot to mail exploding parcels from Germany, described as a test run for future arson attacks.

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. 

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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.

Japan's Self-Defense Forces shadowed four Russian missile boats as they passed close to the country's northern coast, the Japanese Joint Staff reported. The warships never entered Japanese waters, yet the move sharpened a diplomatic standoff over islands Russia seized in 1945. Tokyo lodged a protest and summoned Russia's ambassador.

Japan tracked the warships back through the strait

On 14 August, Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force spotted the four boats near Cape Soya on Hokkaido, heading west. A P-3C patrol aircraft from the 2nd Air Wing watched them and gathered information. The boats stayed 40 kilometers from shore and did not cross into Japanese waters.

The vessels carried hull numbers 916, 946, 971, and 978. Japan had spotted the same four ships on 9 August, 70 kilometers northwest of Rebun Island. They then passed east through the Soya Strait before doubling back.

The transit followed Putin's trip to a contested island

The return passage came days after Vladimir Putin visited Iturup—one of the Kuril Islands—on 13 August. The Soviet Union seized the island in 1945, breaking a neutrality pact it had signed with Japan. Moscow treats the Kuril archipelago as strategically vital and keeps building up forces there. Iturup hosts the Burevestnik military airfield.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called Putin's trip absolutely unacceptable. She said it contradicts Tokyo's stance on the Northern Territories, as Japan calls the islands. Japan's Foreign Ministry summoned Russia's ambassador, Nikolai Nozdrev, and lodged a firm protest. It asked him to pass Tokyo's position to Moscow at once.

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What the Molniya-1 missile boats carry

Militarnyi noted that the project 12411M Molniya-1 boats, which NATO calls Tarantul III, come from the Almaz Central Marine Design Bureau. The first entered service in 1981.

They are built to hit surface targets in coastal and near-sea zones. Their main upgrade over earlier versions was four supersonic Moskit anti-ship missiles, replacing the older Termit.

Each boat can reach 41 knots and carries a crew of 40. Its weapons include a 76mm gun, two rapid-fire 30mm mounts, and Igla-1 air-defense missiles.

The four belong to Russia's Pacific Fleet. The oldest, hull 971, entered service in 1990, and the newest, hull 916, in 2003.

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.

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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.

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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. 

Human Rights Watch is asking the US Congress to block Türkiye from transferring tens of thousands of decades-old cluster munitions to Ukraine. The State Department had earlier told Congress it is prepared to authorize the deal, which Ukraine wants to strengthen its firepower against the Russian invasion. 

What Türkiye wants to send

Türkiye has requested US permission to retransfer to Ukraine tens of thousands of cluster munition rockets, missiles, and artillery shells held in its stockpiles for decades. The package covers Türkiye's entire inventory of 12 M270 rocket launchers and three types of cluster munitions: 70 M39 ATACMS ballistic missiles, 2,524 M26 rockets, and 47,000 M509A1 203mm artillery shells, according to the State Department transmittal sheets.

The deal is valued at $256 million. Together, the rounds hold more than 10 million explosive bomblets, Human Rights Watch said, produced in part by Türkiye under US licenses first issued in 1987. The US removed the M509A1 shells from service in 1994, when the howitzers that fired them retired, according to HRW.

Cluster munitions scatter small bomblets across a wide area, and some fail to explode on impact, leaving hazards that can maim civilians long after fighting ends.

Ukraine, for its part, gave Washington written assurances not to fire earlier US-supplied cluster rounds in civilian-populated urban areas, and US officials said Kyiv had kept to its use constraints.

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What Washington says

A senior State Department official notified Congress that it is prepared to authorize the transfer, in documents printed in the Congressional Record on 6 August. Türkiye wants to shed older stock and focus its money on modern systems, the official said. Ukraine wants the munitions to bolster its fire support as it resists the invasion, the official added, noting that Ukraine already fields the same or nearly identical rounds. Congress can review the deal and pass a resolution of disapproval to block it.

Human Rights Watch argues the age and unreliability of the weapons make them a foreseeable hazard to civilians. Human Rights Watch deputy Washington director Nicole Widdersheim said the more-than-30-year-old munitions are inaccurate and prone to failure, and that their impact on civilians drove 112 countries to ban the weapon under the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

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The same group has documented Russia's cluster attacks since 2022

Human Rights Watch opposes the weapon for all sides and has tracked Russia's use of it throughout the war. It documented repeated Russian cluster strikes since 2022, called a Russian attack on Lyman a possible war crime, and logged further strikes on civilians in its World Report chapters on Ukraine.

In each case, the group called on Russia to stop firing the weapon. On the Türkiye deal, it is asking Congress for something more concrete — to kill the transfer before the munitions reach Ukraine.

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.

Russia's war drifted into Romania's Black Sea waters again, and this time the country's military blew the intruders up, acting Defense Minister Radu Miruță said. A vessel near an offshore gas field spotted two floating Russian drones, and army bomb-disposal divers destroyed them. Ukraine confirmed the aircraft were not its own.

A ship raised the alarm

Miruță announced the operation on Facebook, sharing a video. Crews working near the gas platform first noticed the drones in the water. Miruță identified both as Gerberas. A coast guard vessel carrying Romanian army sappers then sailed to the scene. The divers found two uncrewed aircraft adrift, along with several other fragments.

The drones lay in Romania's exclusive economic zone, roughly 90 nautical miles (about 167 km) east of Constanța, Militarnyi reported. Miruță said Romania's Defense Ministry then contacted Kyiv: 

"The Ministry of National Defense contacted the Ukrainian partners, who confirmed the systems do not belong to them."

To protect the shipping route and the work around the platform, the military destroyed the drones in a controlled blast, Suspilne relayed.

Russia designed the Gerbera as a decoy. The cheap foam aircraft forces Ukrainian air defenses to waste time and interceptors, and helps Russian crews locate those defenses. Later, Russia fitted some Gerberas with warheads, turning the decoy into a strike drone. The same model can also carry smaller attack drones or gather intelligence.

The attack on Ukraine

Ukraine's Air Force reported that last night Russia hit Ukraine with an Iskander-M ballistic missile, a Kh-31P anti-radar missile, and Kh-35 guided missiles, plus 138 Shahed-type strike drones — among them jet-powered ones, Gerberas, and Parodiya decoys — fired from several sites inside Russia and from occupied territory. 

The main targets were Sumy Oblast in the northeast and Odesa Oblast, Ukraine's Black Sea coastal region that lies northeast of Romania's shore. By morning, air defenses had downed or suppressed 112 of the drones, though strikes hit 16 locations.

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Adrift far from any front

The drones surfaced far from any battlefield. Russian uncrewed aircraft have repeatedly drifted into neighboring states during Moscow's attacks on Ukraine. Romania itself has shifted from escorting stray drones to shooting them down.

Neptun Deep is Romania's largest offshore gas project, due to start production in 2027. Bucharest is counting on the field to cut its reliance on outside supply and to feed neighbors that still lean on Russia. The two drones drifted into the waters around it.