Exclusives

“I can travel back to Finland and be safe. That is a luxury”: Sanna Marin on the Russian strike that stopped her train from Kyiv. The former Finnish prime minister has visited Ukraine around ten times since the full-scale invasion. This trip, she says, had more air-raid alarms than any of them, and a Russian drone hit the train travelling beside hers to the Polish border.

Military

No missiles intercepted again: Russia strikes Kyiv water infrastructure amid warnings of harsher winter attacks. Russia also struck residential areas in Odesa and Zaporizhzhia, injuring civilians and damaging homes and other civilian infrastructure.

Ukraine strikes two Russian S-400 launchers in Bryansk. The same systems were used to attack Kyiv overnight.. Ukraine is increasingly targeting systems Russia uses to launch missiles at its cities as Kyiv faces shortages of high-end interceptors.

One pincer stalled a year ago, the other has just been broken near Kostiantynivka—Russia’s ring will not close, Ukrainian commander says. Frontal assaults on fortified cities cost far more men and time than closing a ring behind them would have.

Intelligence and technology

Ukraine kept this strike drone secret for two years—its maker says it has destroyed more than 350 Russian systems. Ukraine's RAM-2X had been hunting Russian air defense systems and ballistic missile launchers, and the silence ended only when wrecked drones reached Russian hands.

Ukraine put an Italian-Swiss Skyguard into combat duty. The missile inside is a Cold War design derived from the American Sparrow. Spain and Italy delivered Skyguard/Aspide starting in 2022. The 38th Regiment just showed it on combat duty for the first time.

Ukrainian border unit’s HIMERA B1 relay took 10 strikes from Russia’s FPV drones and guided bombs. Last one leveled building and tower, and relay kept working. Border guards dug the HIMERA B1 out of the rubble because it was still transmitting.

US charges five as alleged Kremlin assassination network reaches American soil. Prosecutors say the network expanded from targeting Russian dissidents and defectors to arranging attacks against European countries supporting Ukraine.

In April, 24 Ukrainian companies ran their own air defense. By mid-September, 81 do — about one new firm per day. They've already downed 20-plus Russian drones.

Ukrainian partisans claim sabotage at Russian plant supplying missiles Moscow uses to bomb Ukrainian cities. ATESH says its agent disabled the power supply at the Voronezh facility, disrupting production of components used in Russian weapons.

International

EU pledges €3.3 billion for Ukraine, von der Leyen says “more is coming” as Russia’s escalating air war makes life in Ukrainian cities increasingly difficult. The new funding comes as Ukraine appeals for more air defense to counter increasingly complex Russian attacks, including advanced missile and drone strikes on Kyiv.

Belarus holds military drills around the Suwalki Gap, NATO’s only land link to the Baltics. Minsk says troops are guarding infrastructure, manning checkpoints, and practicing against saboteurs and drones. It has not disclosed the total number of personnel involved.

Russia kills captain of Tanzanian-flagged ship in latest attack on civilian shipping in Black Sea. Russia has repeatedly attacked civilian shipping around Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, putting international crews and maritime trade at risk.

“What Ukraine needs right now”: Poland to provide Ukraine with scarce F-16 missiles to shoot down jet-powered drones. The aid package will also include aviation equipment, Poland’s deputy defense minister says.

Fire temporarily shuts part of Slovak ammunition plant amid plans to triple capacity. The company operating the factory plans to triple its annual capacity of roughly 100,000 shell bodies and holds a seven-year agreement to supply EU states.

A fifth of Russian refining sits idle, and the sector’s earnings still grew. The money is being made on prices and state compensation rather than on the volumes the front line actually needs.

The EU has billions in unspent defense funds. It wants to use them for projects with Ukraine. The plan could bring more Ukrainian defense companies into Europe's growing defense industry.

Russia ships armor to Libya despite mounting vehicle losses in Ukraine. Two sanctioned cargo vessels crossed the Mediterranean without broadcasting location data. Russian and Libyan authorities have not disclosed who was to receive their cargo.

A drone came down beside a Bundeswehr air base, weeks after Berlin blamed Moscow for the Leipzig airport attack. The drone's owner and origin are still unknown, and investigators are collecting further parts before saying anything about how it came down.

For first time, foreign government is funding Ukrainian drone school: Canada picks foundation that has already bought Ukraine nearly $50M in drones. Canada, once behind on drones, gets Ukraine's combat experience in return.

Humanitarian and social impact

Thousands are starving in occupied Oleshky. People have no food, no way out, and Russian forces bomb incoming aid. More than 6,000 people, including around 200 children, may remain trapped in the Russian-occupied city, where civilians lack food, water and medicine and some are risking mined fields to escape.

Russia’s war has devastated Donetsk Oblast, with losses already exceeding $26 billion. The preliminary estimate covers destroyed industry, energy infrastructure, agriculture, transport, and other sectors, while much of the damage remains impossible to assess.

Ukraine receives 252 bodies as repatriation remains one of the few functioning channels with Russia. The repatriation of bodies gives families of missing Ukrainians a chance to identify their loved ones and finally bury them.

From the frontline to a rehab center: a rescued dog from Pokrovsk now helps wounded Ukrainians on the other side of the country. A rescued puppy from Pokrovsk now has an unusual volunteer role: visiting wounded Ukrainians at a rehabilitation center in Lviv.

Political and legal developments

Kyiv’s arms industry wants to kill the export fee. Parliament just refused to route that money to the army. Ukraine's arms makers want the 20-30% export fee scrapped as Europe's defense market opens—while parliament won't route the cash to the army.

The US House just passed the first major Russia oil sanctions in two years—one signature stands between them and law. Named for the late Senator Lindsey Graham, it clears the way for tariffs of up to 100% on China, India, and the other top buyers of Russian energy.

Ukraine’s Build with Ukraine has 200-plus foreign cooperation bids pending decision. Its arms industry, representing 400-plus firms, wants to help fix mechanism. The Council of Defence Industry wants a costly new export-permit fee scrapped.

He thought Ukrainian army uniform would hide what he did under occupation. It didn’t. Man who guarded Kherson’s Russian-run prison drew eight years. He guarded cells holding captured Ukrainian resistance members, then hid inside the army before the SBU caught him at a training center.

Read our previous daily review here.

Exclusives

The West has tried everything except ending the war. Diplomacy, sanctions, 200 rounds of talks—Russia used all of it to buy time. Diesel prices in America are just the tsunami's latest wave.

Military

Ukrainian partisans claim sabotage at Russian plant supplying missiles Moscow uses to bomb Ukrainian cities. ATESH says its agent disabled the power supply at the Voronezh facility, disrupting production of components used in Russian weapons.

Ukraine's Vivaldi counteroffensive disrupts Russia's plan to encircle Donetsk Fortress Belt – ISW. Ukrainian forces have likely advanced beyond the territory publicly disclosed by Kyiv, while Russian sources increasingly acknowledge setbacks around Lyman.

Russian general killed in Ukraine weeks after telling Putin Kostiantynivka was captured. Major General Anton Grunis was killed in occupied Donetsk Oblast after leading Russian forces on the Kostiantynivka front.

Intelligence and technology

Ukraine put an Italian-Swiss Skyguard into combat duty. The missile inside is a Cold War design derived from the American Sparrow. Spain and Italy delivered Skyguard/Aspide starting in 2022. The 38th Regiment just showed it on combat duty for the first time.

Ukrainian border unit's HIMERA B1 relay took 10 strikes from Russia's FPV drones and guided bombs. Last one leveled building and tower, and relay kept working. Border guards dug the HIMERA B1 out of the rubble because it was still transmitting.

Russia ships armor to Libya despite mounting vehicle losses in Ukraine. Two sanctioned cargo vessels crossed the Mediterranean without broadcasting location data. Russian and Libyan authorities have not disclosed who was to receive their cargo.

Ukraine's Build with Ukraine has 200-plus foreign cooperation bids pending decision. Its arms industry, representing 400-plus firms, wants to help fix mechanism. The Council of Defence Industry wants a costly new export-permit fee scrapped.

In April, 24 Ukrainian companies ran their own air defense. By mid-September, 81 do — about one new firm per day. They've already downed 20-plus Russian drones.

International

A drone came down beside a Bundeswehr air base, weeks after Berlin blamed Moscow for the Leipzig airport attack. The drone's owner and origin are still unknown, and investigators are collecting further parts before saying anything about how it came down.

For first time, foreign government is funding Ukrainian drone school: Canada picks foundation that has already bought Ukraine nearly $50M in drones. Canada, once behind on drones, gets Ukraine's combat experience in return.

Humanitarian and social impact

Strikes on UN warehouses push aid money from delivery to protection. The UN is weighing underground storage for Ukraine aid supplies after Russia hit 10 of its facilities this year.

Russian drone killed five people on a scheduled minibus in southeastern Ukraine. The vehicle was running an intercity route through a district that sits across the river from Russian-held ground when the strike caught it.

Political and legal developments

US charges five as alleged Kremlin assassination network reaches American soil. Prosecutors say the network expanded from targeting Russian dissidents and defectors to arranging attacks against European countries supporting Ukraine.

He thought Ukrainian army uniform would hide what he did under occupation. It didn't. Man who guarded Kherson's Russian-run prison drew eight years. He guarded cells holding captured Ukrainian resistance members, then hid inside the army before the SBU caught him at a training center.

Kushner's "win-win" peace deal is impossible when Putin wants all of Ukraine — Zelenskyy. The Ukrainian president said he knew Putin would never change his goal, and that the deal formula was built on a misreading of what Russia wanted.

Read our earlier daily review here.

Exclusives

Russian spies ran a campaign against Kyiv on Anthropic’s Claude, and the AI chatbot’s maker caught them at it. The operators automated phishing, intrusion, and data theft, leaving the human to refine the workflows.

Military

"Only the first season" – Ukraine unveils secret counteroffensive in a region Russia has been trying to seize for 12 years. Ukraine says its forces have cleared Russian infiltrators and retaken territory in northern Donetsk, while the broader scope of "Operation Vivaldi" remains undisclosed.

"Huge increase" in Russian assault groups trying to break through to Dobropillia, but they are using familiar tactics, staff sergeant says. But the Ukrainian military has already mined the main routes Russian forces could use to reach the city, according to the soldier.

Ukraine's drone campaign is changing where Putin goes – now his flagship forum is being moved out of Sochi. Ukraine has sharply intensified its deep-strike drone campaign since Putin last visited Sochi, and now his security service is moving his flagship forum out of the resort.

Ukraine keeps hitting the fuel that Russia's war runs on. Its latest target is the Slavyansk-EKO refinery, with an annual processing capacity of at least 3 million tonnes. The Ukrainian military struck it as part of a deep-strike operation, according to military intelligence.

Ukraine hit the radar that guards Sochi, the Russian resort city it struck ten days ago. Drones burned two fuel depots there ten days ago, and the Ukrainian military says the system meant to stop them is now the target.

No NATO army has fought modern war: Ukrainian officers set their battlefield practice against NATO doctrine and exposed where its assumptions no longer fit. Ukrainian and NATO officers spent three weeks together in Poland.

He had survived Mariupol, Russian captivity and took over Ukraine's Azov grouping in Donetsk. Now Brigadier General Prokopenko warns Russia may mobilize up to 600,000 for its next offensive. Prokopenko, the Mariupol-defense commander now leading the Azov grouping in Donetsk, says the aim is to seize all of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Intelligence and technology

Chinese drones over German bases, paid saboteurs lighting fires for Russia—Germany's military spells out the new normal. First mandated annual report from Germany's MAD puts a Kremlin sabotage pattern on the statutory record—plus Chinese drones over Bundeswehr bases.

Poland can't arrest its way out of Russia's spy pipeline—107 espionage cases in 20 months, and the tempo is holding. 67 cases in 2025, at least 40 more in the first eight months of 2026—and those are only the top-tier investigations Poland's national prosecutors handle.

Ukraine successfully tests interceptor against faster Gerans as Russia floods its skies with drones. Russia is increasingly deploying upgraded drones capable of striking deeper and faster, intensifying attacks that cause mass destruction and civilian casualties across Ukraine.

For first time, Ukraine's drone makers and Europe's arms firms have joined one body: EU-Ukraine Drone Alliance. Eighteen companies aim to build drones and counter-drone systems together, folding Ukraine's combat-tested industry into Europe's.

Modern war that the US is not ready for: For the price of one American cruise missile, Russia builds 20 "poor-man" drones and missiles. Russia is fielding cheap jet drones and missiles built with Chinese parts—slipping past defenses Ukraine and the West spent years building.

International

Russian warship fires flares at Danish military helicopter as Moscow's provocations escalate. One flare passed close to the aircraft during a routine mission off Denmark, as NATO called the incident another "irresponsible Russian action" intended to intimidate allies.

Finland approves second-largest defense package for Ukraine as Russia's next brutal winter campaign looms. The €290 million package contains military equipment urgently requested by Ukraine as Kyiv braces for another winter of Russian attacks on cities and critical infrastructure.

19 Russian defense companies remain outside international sanctions, helping sustain Russia's war machine. The companies are part of KRET, a major Russian defense holding, and produce navigation systems, gyroscopes, and motors used in missiles and drones.

A century ago, bright red trousers made soldiers easy targets. Ukraine's ex-army chief says the West is wearing them again. Ukraine's ex-army chief Zaluzhnyi: the war has surrendered itself to marketers and wheeler-dealers chasing quick profit, and the West's old security guarantees are the red trousers all over again.

Italian jets destroyed a drone over Lithuania in the first such shootdown in the country. Lithuania says there is a high probability it carried explosives, and its origin has not been established.

Lithuania launches military exercises across 12 municipalities as Russia keeps probing NATO's eastern border. A larger multinational exercise is running at the same time on the Belarusian border, with about 2,500 troops from eight countries.

Belarus trains troops to fight saboteurs as Minsk puts its military on a war footing. Warnings that Russia could use Belarusian territory against Ukraine or a NATO state give the drills their edge.

Humanitarian and social impact

Russia brings children from Moldova's Transnistria to occupied Crimea for "patriotic education". Schools in the Russia-backed enclave now begin each week with separatist flag ceremonies. Rights activists say children as young as 11 train with weapons and drones.

Russia has damaged 500+ Ukrainian locomotives as attacks on railways reach Polish border. Ukraine is urgently asking partners for replacement locomotives as more than half of the fleet's wartime losses have occurred this year.

Russia keeps hitting Kyiv's gas stations. Now they get military air-threat tracking. Authorities are giving fuel-station workers real-time information on aerial threats after a series of strikes on stations across the capital.

Russian drones started 17 fires in Chernihiv Oblast, adding forest to the list of things the war destroys without aiming. Falling wreckage sparked blazes across nine oblasts in a single week, with nearly three-quarters of all forest fires linked to military activity.

Russian drones killed a man and injured eight in Kyiv, hitting two gas stations. The overnight wave sent 200 drones at Ukraine, and the capital's filling stations have become a recurring target this month.

Russian strikes will cost Ukraine's economy up to $10 billion this year, ministry says. Kyiv is answering with compensation and cheap credit, aimed at the companies losing warehouses fastest.

Political and legal developments

"We expect specifics from our partners": Zelenskyy says Ukraine will accept energy truce with Russia only if West guarantees Moscow won't break it after its elections. Zelenskyy says any potential truce needs Western guarantees.

Zelenskyy suspends prosecutor general who charged the bureau probing his own office. The agencies he accused are the ones whose independence Brussels treats as a condition of Ukraine's EU accession.

Read our previous daily review here.

Exclusive

Russian spies ran a campaign against Kyiv on Anthropic's Claude, and the AI chatbot's maker caught them at it. The operators automated phishing, intrusion, and data theft, leaving the human to refine the workflows.

Military

Ukraine keeps hitting the fuel that Russia's war runs on. Its latest target is the Slavyansk-EKO refinery, with an annual processing capacity of at least 3 million tonnes. The Ukrainian military struck it as part of a deep-strike operation, according to military intelligence.

Ukraine hit the radar that guards Sochi, the Russian resort city it struck ten days ago. Drones burned two fuel depots there ten days ago, and the Ukrainian military says the system meant to stop them is now the target.

He had survived Mariupol, Russian captivity and took over Ukraine's Azov grouping in Donetsk. Now Brigadier General Prokopenko warns Russia may mobilize up to 600,000 for its next offensive. Prokopenko, the Mariupol-defense commander now leading the Azov grouping in Donetsk, says the aim is to seize all of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Intelligence and technology

Modern war that the US is not ready for: For the price of one American cruise missile, Russia builds 20 "poor-man" drones and missiles. Russia is fielding cheap jet drones and missiles built with Chinese parts—slipping past defenses Ukraine and the West spent years building.

Iran armed Russia with Shaheds. Now it wants the jet-powered Geran-5 remake back to fight Israel and the US. Russia turned Iran's imported Shahed into a jet that flies at up to 600 km/h, with a new airframe closer to a cruise missile than to the propeller drone Tehran sent it.

Ukraine's FLYCAT strike drone is built to fly without satellite signals. Its bigger new sibling is designed to reach 200 km behind the front. Everything on the combat-proven FLYCAT but the engines is made in Ukraine, and Octava Defence says the new long-range version can stay airborne for more than two and a half hours.

Russia built five more halls for the drones it assembles using Chinese parts to hit Ukrainian cities. The nightly waves that reach Kyiv and the western border regions mostly begin on the assembly lines inside this zone.

International

"We expect specifics from our partners": Zelenskyy says Ukraine will accept energy truce with Russia only if West guarantees Moscow won't break it after its elections. Zelenskyy says any potential truce needs Western guarantees.

No NATO army has fought modern war: Ukrainian officers set their battlefield practice against NATO doctrine and exposed where its assumptions no longer fit. Ukrainian and NATO officers spent three weeks together in Poland.

Lithuania launches military exercises across 12 municipalities as Russia keeps probing NATO's eastern border. A larger multinational exercise is running at the same time on the Belarusian border, with about 2,500 troops from eight countries.

Humanitarian and social impact

Russian strikes will cost Ukraine's economy up to $10 billion this year, ministry says. Kyiv is answering with compensation and cheap credit, aimed at the companies losing warehouses fastest.

A fourth Ukrainian pharmaceutical warehouse has burned in a Russian strike since the start of the month. Russian forces damaged the newest one in Odesa, where the buildings belong to a wholesaler supplying drugstores across Ukraine.

Political and legal developments

Zelenskyy suspends prosecutor general who charged the bureau probing his own office. The agencies he accused are the ones whose independence Brussels treats as a condition of Ukraine's EU accession.

New developments

Belarus trains troops to fight saboteurs as Minsk puts its military on a war footing. Warnings that Russia could use Belarusian territory against Ukraine or a NATO state give the drills their edge.

Read our earlier daily review here.

Exclusives

Ukraine is working down the short list of ships that shell its cities with cruise missiles. A Neptune reached one of them tied up at its own pier. Drones went in with the missile, and the general staff counts three more vessels and the port's fuel-oil storage hit the same night.

Military

Russia strikes passenger train near Polish border as drone swarms reach deeper into western Ukraine. Russia's attacks on railways and border crossings are putting civilian travel at growing risk. Poland's Donald Tusk warned days earlier that Moscow could target Ukraine's crossings with Poland.

Watch first naval battle in history fought entirely by drones: Ukrainian uncrewed boat spots, fires on, and sinks Russian one in Black Sea. A gun-armed Sargan-3000 spotted and sank a Russian naval drone in the Black Sea.

Ukraine is closing Russia's skies without hitting single airliner: Russia shut its airports 993 times in August, worst month for civil aviation since war began. The closures are triggered by Russia's own emergency protocol every time a drone nears.

Ukraine retook 240 square km north of Lyman and nobody reported it for three months. The 3rd Army Corps attacked on 22 May and nobody outside the army reported it until late August. Whether it changes the war is the one thing the analysts do not agree on.

Future wars will be won not only by those who have the best technological systems, Ukraine's former top general says in London. Valerii Zaluzhnyi says an expensive Cold War missile has become a cheap weapon fired in bulk.

Russia has fired its Oreshnik with six warheads at Ukraine three times. State Duma defense committee member says "hour is not far" before fourth one. He cast it as revenge for a naval drone strike on Sochi.

Intelligence and technology

Fast kill but also long game: Russia is using AI-generated women and long conversations to lure Ukrainian soldiers to their deaths. The fake profiles are one of three versions of a honey-trap scheme that has killed six soldiers, the SBU says.

Russia is working to modernize its weapons on every front. This month, its drones are expected to carry 20-element anti-jam antennas to outpace Ukraine's jamming. Russia's new drones and cruise weapons navigate rather than fly, so Ukraine has to jam GPS, not the operator link.

A Russian intelligence operative and a Belarusian petty criminal: Germany names the Leipzig bomb-drone suspects. The files show one of them handled preparation and logistics, and the other left a scrap of glove on the equipment that flew the drone.

Second fire in a month hits the Bulgarian plant that ships ammunition to Ukraine, and sabotage is on the table. The country's interior minister has ordered every ammunition depot in the country inspected and says outside interference cannot be excluded.

"Its task is not cargo. Its task is people": After Russian FPV drone hit their house, K-2 brigade sent ground robot to carry casualties out.

"Credit to the Russians, they know how to scale," Ukrainian military spokesperson says. Ukraine's jet-drone interceptors show early promise, but harder job ahead. Scaling them up to match Ukraine's success against slower drones is the real test.

Money, not engineering, is what stands between Ukraine and Russia's fastest drones, Zelenskyy says. Dozens of firms are chasing the problem, but nobody has funded production at the scale the nightly waves demand.

International

Ukraine's fight against Russia reaches Africa as Ukrainian drone specialists support forces battling Moscow. Ukrainian drone specialists are supporting forces fighting Russian troops in Mali, training personnel from other Sahel countries and operating in Sudan as Kyiv expands its military activity far beyond Ukraine.

From Russian classrooms to Iran's defense industry: how Moscow trains Iranian specialists. Almost 10,000 Iranians studied at Russian universities in 2025, 42% more than two years earlier, by the Russian science ministry's count, with medicine still the most popular field.

The EU just released $7 billion for Ukraine to buy Patriot missiles and drones. The money comes from Europe's existing loan to Kyiv, and the decision finally lets Ukraine place orders for the American interceptors it cannot build itself.

A drone beside a Ukrainian cargo plane is costing Russia its last consulate in Germany. Four others closed in 2023, leaving Moscow with an embassy and, from this month, no consular presence outside it.

Ukraine shows its drones in Canada as Ottawa pledges a third of its future output. The presentation followed a declaration on defense cooperation that Kyiv calls the first step toward a drone deal still to be signed.

Humanitarian and social impact

"There is real hunger there": Oleshky, occupied town in Ukraine's Kherson Oblast, turned 942 this week. Behind Russian blockade, its people eat roadside grass. The 942-year-old Kherson city has spent months cut off, its aid convoys shelled.

Ukraine's Third Army Corps won't just hold Donetsk fortress cities. It's building mission to pull civilians out of them. A dedicated fund is opening to pay for more trips, more often.

"Sometimes I forget I don't have a leg": how two Ukrainian infantry soldiers returned to war behind screens. Two Ukrainian soldiers who lost limbs to mines have returned to Khartiia, their National Guard unit, working the drone screens, instead of walking into positions on the ground.

Political and legal developments

EU has never sanctioned Russia's nuclear sector. Activists say that gap just let Rosatom into German plant, and they're suing to close it. BUND says letting Russia's Rosatom help make fuel at the Lingen plant, amid the war and sabotage in Germany, hands Moscow critical infrastructure.

Ukraine's parliament changes how military budget is cleared, and freezes money behind one of war's cleverest supply schemes, defense-industry council says. The program lets Ukrainian units turn confirmed kills into new weapons, but a parliamentary rule change has frozen the payments.

EU sanctions rollover stalls over Russian oligarch Usmanov as Paris backs Bratislava's demand to delist him. Ambassadors broke up with no agreement on renewing the measures, and they have one sitting left before every restriction on the list runs out on its own.

Canada sanctions eight Russians over deported Ukrainian children as only about 2,500 of more than 20,000 have come home. Ottawa's listing bars anyone in Canada from handling the property of the eight, and it took effect a week before Ukraine's leader arrived for talks.

Read our previous daily review here.

Exclusives

Ukraine is working down the short list of ships that shell its cities with cruise missiles. A Neptune reached one of them tied up at its own pier. Drones went in with the missile, and the general staff counts three more vessels and the port's fuel-oil storage hit the same night.

Military

Watch first naval battle in history fought entirely by drones: Ukrainian uncrewed boat spots, fires on, and sinks Russian one in Black Sea. A gun-armed Sargan-3000 spotted and sank a Russian naval drone in the Black Sea.

Ukraine is closing Russia's skies without hitting single airliner: Russia shut its airports 993 times in August, worst month for civil aviation since war began. The closures are triggered by Russia's own emergency protocol every time a drone nears.

Ukraine retook 240 square km north of Lyman and nobody reported it for three months. The 3rd Army Corps attacked on 22 May and nobody outside the army reported it until late August. Whether it changes the war is the one thing the analysts do not agree on.

Intelligence and technology

Fast kill but also long game: Russia is using AI-generated women and long conversations to lure Ukrainian soldiers to their deaths. The fake profiles are one of three versions of a honey-trap scheme that has killed six soldiers, the SBU says.

Russia is working to modernize its weapons on every front. This month, its drones are expected to carry 20-element anti-jam antennas to outpace Ukraine's jamming. Russia's new drones and cruise weapons navigate rather than fly, so Ukraine has to jam GPS, not the operator link.

Second fire in a month hits the Bulgarian plant that ships ammunition to Ukraine, and sabotage is on the table. The country's interior minister has ordered every ammunition depot in the country inspected and says outside interference cannot be excluded.

From Russian classrooms to Iran's defense industry: how Moscow trains Iranian specialists. Almost 10,000 Iranians studied at Russian universities in 2025, 42% more than two years earlier, by the Russian science ministry's count, with medicine still the most popular field.

International

EU sanctions rollover stalls over Russian oligarch Usmanov as Paris backs Bratislava's demand to delist him. Ambassadors broke up with no agreement on renewing the measures, and they have one sitting left before every restriction on the list runs out on its own.

The EU just released $7 billion for Ukraine to buy Patriot missiles and drones. The money comes from Europe's existing loan to Kyiv, and the decision finally lets Ukraine place orders for the American interceptors it cannot build itself.

Humanitarian and social impact

"There is real hunger there": Oleshky, occupied town in Ukraine's Kherson Oblast, turned 942 this week. Behind Russian blockade, its people eat roadside grass. The 942-year-old Kherson city has spent months cut off, its aid convoys shelled.

Ukraine's Third Army Corps won't just hold Donetsk fortress cities. It's building mission to pull civilians out of them. A dedicated fund is opening to pay for more trips, more often.

Political and legal developments

EU has never sanctioned Russia's nuclear sector. Activists say that gap just let Rosatom into German plant, and they're suing to close it. BUND says letting Russia's Rosatom help make fuel at the Lingen plant, amid the war and sabotage in Germany, hands Moscow critical infrastructure.

A Russian intelligence operative and a Belarusian petty criminal: Germany names the Leipzig bomb-drone suspects. The files show one of them handled preparation and logistics, and the other left a scrap of glove on the equipment that flew the drone.

Ukraine's parliament changes how military budget is cleared, and freezes money behind one of war's cleverest supply schemes, defense-industry council says. The program lets Ukrainian units turn confirmed kills into new weapons, but a parliamentary rule change has frozen the payments.

Read our earlier daily review here.