A year ago, 12 Ukrainian brigades could order their own weapons off a state marketplace. Now, more than 500 units can. DOT-Chain Defense, which lets frontline units order necessary supplies using state funds or bonuses with just a few clicks, has scaled across most of Ukraine's Defense Forces, the Defense Ministry said.

The platform is the delivery backbone of Ukraine's soldier-led procurement revolution. It lies in a shift in the philosophy of defense procurement. Ukraine is abandoning the Soviet principle of "fight with whatever is handed down from above" and transitioning to a market-based model that centers on the choice of the individual soldier.

Over its first year, it has put more than 1.3 million drones and other systems into units' hands, worth about $1.9 billion, and the orders show what this war runs on: 84 percent are drones, with electronic-warfare gear and ground robots making up most of the rest. It is also the engine behind the points-for-kills system that lets units bank credit for battlefield results and spend it on their own equipment.

Access jumps from 12 to 500 units

The growth has been steep. DOT-Chain Defense is now used by combat units across the armed forces, the National Guard, the border and special transport services, the police, the Security Service, and Defense Intelligence, says Deputy Defense Minister Mstyslav Banik.

Assault regiments and the "Drone Line" project have joined, ordering unmanned systems to their own specifications.

Drones dominate the orders

By the ministry's count, electronic-warfare systems make up 8.6 percent of everything ordered, ground robotic complexes 7.2 percent, and ammunition a sliver at 0.2 percent.

The gear, worth about $1.9 billion, came both through direct marketplace purchases and through the "Army of Drones. Bonus" program, the points system tied to the same platform.

The US copies the model

The approach has drawn imitators. The US has launched its own Amazon-style marketplace for military drones, explicitly modeled on Ukraine's Brave1 Market and DOT-Chain Defense. For Ukraine, the payoff is data: a running record of which weapons work on which part of the front, which the state uses to scale up what performs.

A Ukrainian company has disclosed a small aircraft that can bomb a target, relay radio signals, carry FPV drones behind enemy lines, or strike on its own. The KARA, a fixed-wing drone made by Ukrskytechnology, is listed on Ukraine's state Brave1 Market in three tiers, from a bare airframe to a ready-to-fly aircraft, Defender Media reported.

One airframe does the work of several, and it goes for some $9,900. The marketplace it sits on, Brave1 Market, has processed more than $235 million in orders, lists over a thousand products, and lets frontline units buy gear even before a weapon clears formal codification.

One airframe does four jobs

What the KARA does depends on how it is kitted out. Fitted one way, it drops cargo; another, it works as a signal repeater to extend a unit's radio reach; another, it ferries FPV drones deep into the enemy rear to be released; and another, it carries out strikes itself. Buyers choose among an empty glider they equip themselves, a Plug-N-Play version with basic electronics installed, and a Ready-To-Fly model.

The drone flies light and far

The specifications are modest but flexible, according to Ukrskytechnology. The KARA has a tactical radius of 70 kilometers, and a stated endurance of 2.5 hours, cruises at 90 kilometers per hour and tops out at 120, and works at 200 meters but can climb to 3,000.

It runs on either an electric motor or a combustion engine, and carries two payload blocks of up to three kilograms each under the wing. Launched by catapult and landing like a plane, it takes 10 minutes to set up.

The marketplace lists it now

The KARA is being prepared for codification, the formal approval that clears a weapon for standard state procurement, but it does not have to wait for that to reach the front. Brave1 Market was built precisely so that units can buy proven kit fast, without waiting on the slow pipelines of the past, and the KARA is already there for the price of a used car.

TAF Industries signed a joint-venture memorandum with Danish firm Upteko for production but says bureaucracy is slowing the process. Meanwhile, Resist.UA agreed to invest in BlueShadow, a Danish maritime-defense startup whose founder commanded a US nuclear submarine and whose engineering team works largely in Ukraine, Defender Media reported.

Ukraine's defense industry has outgrown much of its own 2022-era hardware in two years of rapid wartime iteration, but a government fee of 20-30% on export permits and over 200 stalled co-production bids have left the country's foreign arms sales far behind battlefield demand. Deals like the two in Denmark route Ukrainian technology into allied markets without waiting for Kyiv's export apparatus to catch up.

Ukrainian first-person-view drones, made on Danish soil

Drone maker TAF Industries plans to produce its first batch in Denmark by the end of 2026, through a joint venture with local firm Upteko. The two signed a memorandum in August 2026, but paperwork on both sides has slowed things down.

"We need to pass a fairly large number of bureaucratic procedures to make it possible," chief business development officer Mykhailo Diachenko told NordicDefenceWatch.

He called the year-end target reachable, "though maybe it will look more like a miracle."

TAF wants footholds in other countries that support Ukraine. It has started the process in Norway and is negotiating with Sweden's Recas. Diachenko said the goal is local production plus sharing Ukrainian combat experience and technology with European partners. TAF builds FPV drones, with capacity near 1 million units a year.

A Ukrainian fund bets on Odesa's sea defense

Ukrainian fund Resist.UA signed a letter of intent to invest an undisclosed sum in Danish maritime-defense startup BlueShadow's €2 million ($2.29 million) pre-seed round, the company announced. BlueShadow's software collects data from maritime sensors, commercial feeds, and open sources, merges them into a single operational picture, and uses AI to detect threats, Defender Media reported.

The company has also built an open software platform it says can help intercept Shahed-type drones. BlueSentry, designed to protect ports, offshore wind farms, undersea cables, and maritime borders from hybrid attack, is one product that the company plans to launch in the Baltic and North seas in October. BlueDragon, now in prototype testing with Defense Ministry certification targeted for late 2026 and deployment planned for spring 2027, is designed to defend Odesa with autonomous swarms of armed sea drones meant to shoot down Russian attack drones.

Founder Charles Maher is a former US Navy submarine commander who ran a nuclear-powered boat, Defender Media reported. Almost his entire engineering team works in Ukraine, drawing on more than 15 Ukrainian suppliers. Resist.UA this summer launched Resist 2.0, an Estonia-based fund aiming to raise €50 million for Ukrainian defense-tech companies.

Four foreign volunteers serving in the Babai rifle battalion are training to operate FPV drones in Ternopil Oblast in western Ukraine, where they have formed a dedicated drone team, Suspilne reported on 22 September.

Ukraine's military increasingly looks to unmanned systems for roles traditionally carried out by soldiers. In May, an adviser to the commander of Ukraine's Third Army Corps said the corps planned to replace roughly 30% of its infantry with ground robotic systems by the end of 2026 "to save the lives of our soldiers." The plan concerns ground robots rather than FPV aircraft, but reflects the broader move toward using unmanned systems on the battlefield.

From mortars to FPV drones

The team was assembled by Harry, a British volunteer who has fought in Ukraine since arriving in March 2022. He served as a machine gunner in Kharkiv and during the Kharkiv counter-offensive, as well as in Bakhmut and Zaporizhzhia.

Before coming to Ukraine, Harry served with People's Defense forces against ISIS in Syria. He said Ukraine's battlefield is fundamentally different, with drones and artillery making combat more dangerous.

For Fuzzy, a former British Army infantryman and counterterrorism specialist, the transition came after more than two years as a mortar operator. He arrived in April 2022 and initially trained Ukrainian defenders before moving into combat roles.

Fuzzy said he had initially been reluctant to switch from mortars to FPVs but found the drones not as difficult to operate as he had expected after training for more than two months.

Not everyone on the team flies. Rupert, who served in the British and Israeli armies, called Ukraine the clearest case of right against wrong since 1939 and said anyone who does nothing will regret it. His role on the team is technical: setting up antennas and checking drones before flights. "The younger guys can fly," he said.

Mac, an American with no previous military service, joined the war in a different role. He arrived in February 2025 and served with the Azov brigade as a logistics specialist in Donbas. Ukraine first appeared on his radar with the 2014 Maidan protests, he said, and when Russia's full-scale invasion began—"seeing the massacre in Bucha, the maternity hospital blown up in Mariupol"—he called it a higher calling and began preparing to come.

Adapting to the battlefield

The volunteers came to Ukraine with different backgrounds and have taken different roles during the war. Harry assembled the FPV team from fighters he had served with in different Ukrainian units. Fuzzy said the changing nature of the war made the transition necessary.

"The war has changed so much that what I was teaching could no longer be applied everywhere," Fuzzy added. "At this stage of the war, we have to keep pace with the times—everything is improving now."

Harry said his long-term goal is to live permanently in Ukraine and open a business. "I see Ukraine as my home," he said. "I want to defend not just the Ukrainian people but also the place where I want to live the rest of my life."

Ukraine's forces have shot down more than 350,000 Russian drones since the start of the year. The count, some 220,000 fixed-wing drones, 100,000 quadcopters, and 31,000 long-range Gerans, was filmed hit by hit in the DELTA combat system and verified by the Brave1 defense-innovation cluster, the Defense Ministry said.

Meanwhile, Russia is now threatening NATO countries directly, its drones probing Polish and Baltic skies, and those countries manage to down only a small fraction of what crosses their borders. In one incursion, Poland shot down just four of about 19 Russian drones.

Ukraine's 350,000 is the record of a force that has had to master drone defense at an industrial scale, night after night.

The tally runs to hundreds of thousands

Most of the kills belong to the Defense Forces' unmanned-systems units, which downed more than 320,000 Russian fixed-wing and copter drones. Those units, together with mobile fire groups and army aviation, also brought down faster Geran-type attack drones.

The pace has been relentless: in August alone, Ukraine destroyed some 35,000 fixed-wing drones and nearly 24,000 copters, the ministry said.

DELTA verifies every hit

Every downing is logged and confirmed in DELTA, the digital system Ukraine uses to run the battlefield, and which the ministry calls a key to its edge over Russia. Filming and verifying each kill lets commanders study how it was done and scale up whatever works.

The purpose is concrete: knocking down fixed-wing drones blinds Russian reconnaissance, and blunts strikes on cities and critical infrastructure, while downing copters keeps Russia from finding and hitting front-line positions. Each drone stopped, the ministry says, is potentially the life of a Ukrainian soldier or civilian saved.

The same threat now shadows NATO

That threat is spreading. Prime Minister Donald Tusk told Poland's parliament that intelligence points to Russian plans for drone and missile strikes on countries backing Ukraine.

The allies being warned are the ones that have struggled to stop even a handful of drones, while Ukraine, out of necessity, has learned to bring them down by the hundred thousand.

Ukrainian drones struck Rosneft's Kuibyshev refinery in Samara overnight on 22 September, hitting two primary crude-processing units and triggering a large fire, Ukrainian drone and missile maker Fire Point confirmed. The strike is part of Ukraine's ongoing campaign against the fuel infrastructure that sustains Russia's war—the same plant had to halt crude processing after a drone attack in June. The attack came one day after US President Donald Trump for the second time in a week urged Ukraine's leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to stop the refinery campaign.

FP-1 drones hit both primary processing units

Fire Point said its FP-1 drones struck the Kuibyshev refinery, hitting the AVT-4 and AVT-5 atmospheric-vacuum distillation units—the plant's primary crude-processing installations. A large fire broke out on the refinery grounds. The Kuibyshev refinery is part of Rosneft and has a designed processing capacity of about 7 million tons of crude oil per year. It is located more than 900 km from the war zone in Ukraine.

Ukrainian Telegram channel Exilenova+ began reporting explosions and air defense activity in Samara Oblast at 3:50 a.m. By 4:24 a.m., the channel posted videos showing a night fire at the refinery. OSINT channel World Militaries identified the AVT-5 unit as the initial fire site.

Russian news Telegram channel Astra separately confirmed the fire at the Kuibyshev refinery.

By morning, the fire was still burning. The smoke plume stretched about 100 km across Samara Oblast, Exilenova+ reported.

The Kuibyshev refinery stopped processing crude in June 2026 after Ukrainian drones hit its AVT-4 and AVT-5 units—the same pair now struck again. Each unit processes about 10,000 tons of crude per day, or roughly 73,000 barrels. The refinery had also suspended operations after a drone attack in August 2025.

Other targets in the overnight wave

Exilenova+ also reported that Ukrainian forces struck a military base in the city of Pochep in Bryansk Oblast overnight, with fire observed at the site. Residents of Tolyatti in Samara Oblast reported explosions, and witnesses suggested the Tolyattikauchuk synthetic rubber plant had been hit, Suspilne reported.

Samara Oblast Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev confirmed the attack, claiming Russian air defenses intercepted "dozens of drones." He said drones "targeted industrial enterprises" but did not name which ones. Russia's Defense Ministry claimed 297 Ukrainian drones were intercepted over 14 oblasts and occupied Crimea.

Part of an ongoing campaign against Russian fuel infrastructure

Ukraine's General Staff confirmed strikes on both the Bashneft-UNPZ refinery in Ufa and the Kuibyshev refinery in Samara, with fire observed at both sites. Ukraine has been striking Russian refineries continuously for months—hitting targets in Saratov and Volgograd on 11 September, Slavyansk-na-Kubani on 14 September, Syzran on 15 September, Yaroslavl on 17 September, and Ufa on 21 September, the night before the Kuibyshev strike. Earlier, the General Staff said the campaign has disabled 45% of Russia's oil-refining capacity. The strikes have also pushed Russia's fuel crisis into Central Asia, where shortages forced Kazakhstan to seek emergency supplies.

Trump urged Zelenskyy to stop the campaign for the second time in a week during their 21 September call, telling him "don't hit diesel fuel" and blaming Ukrainian strikes—not the Iran conflict—for rising US diesel prices.

Russia's Africa Corps deployed a Russian-made kamikaze drone against al-Qaeda-linked insurgents in central Mali before losing the aircraft, Ukrainian defense outlet Militarnyi reported. A local monitoring account says fighters brought it down as the mercenaries pulled back from the Dioura area after more than a week under siege.

Moscow's mercenary arm in Africa answers to the same Defense Ministry that runs its war on Ukraine, and its military supply line into Africa keeps expanding. This lands now because Ukrainian drone crews are helping the forces fighting Russia there, so tactics both sides honed in Ukraine are now surfacing in the Sahel.

A Russian war drone over the Sahel

The monitoring account Alerte Sahel reported that Africa Corps troops, encircled in their camp for over a week, fired the drone at positions of JNIM—the al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims—before breaking out and fleeing. The published video shows a damaged fixed-wing drone with an elongated fuselage and a straight wing. Alerte Sahel first called it an Orlan-10. Militarnyi identified it by its shape as a Molniya. The footage shows the aircraft only after it fell and does not reveal how it went down, so the shootdown claim rests on Alerte Sahel's account—which adds that the jihadists are "increasingly developing skills in mastering attack drones."

The Molniya is a cheap, simple fixed-wing kamikaze drone with a range of about 30-40 km. It carries a warhead of up to 7 kg and also flies reconnaissance and artillery-spotting runs.

Fighting around Dioura

Combat near Dioura, in Mali's Mopti region, has run since 10 September 2026, when JNIM struck Malian army positions. Mali's General Staff said it launched air-ground operations in response. It later reported on 17 September that its units, backed by partners, kept up their operations around the town. On 8 September, JNIM had ambushed an Africa Corps and Malian convoy near the village of Kaka in the same region, killing 13 Russian and Malian troops between them.

Russian authorities left residents in and around Moscow without air raid sirens or phone alerts during Ukraine's largest combined strike on Moscow Oblast, apparently to guard turnout at Russia's parliamentary elections, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said. The silence angered residents and even pro-war commentators as a major oil refinery burned.

For most of this war, Russia has handled strikes on its cities as a routine to be announced, warned about, and waited out. Withholding warnings during the heaviest raid yet, in the middle of a national vote, suggests authorities will trade residents' safety for the look of a calm election when a political milestone is on the line.

Sirens stayed off during the biggest raid

Ukraine hit strategic sites across the Moscow area overnight on 19-20 September, the last day of Russia's State Duma vote. Moscow Oblast officials did not switch on air alert sirens or send the SMS warnings they had used during far smaller attacks. They quietly restricted mobile service without major public notice. Ukraine struck oil and logistics targets, not polling stations, according to the experts, and authorities appeared to place high turnout above protecting civilians.

Moscow Oblast residents complained that no alert reached them, some posting on the Telegram channel of regional Governor Andrei Vorobyov before it closed comments. A prominent Kremlin-linked military blogger attacked the official response, saying it erodes public trust and that cutting mobile service does "not really help."

What the drones hit

Ukraine's General Staff reported striking the Gazpromneft-Moscow Oil Refinery in the city's Kapotnya district, one of Russia's largest plants, causing a large fire. Ukrainian manufacturer Fire Point said its FP-1 drones completely shut down the refinery, with all primary processing units damaged.

Governor Andrei Vorobyov claimed air defenses countered 249 drones across 17 municipal districts. The strike was part of Ukraine's widening campaign against the fuel sector funding Russia's war, with about a fifth of Russian refining capacity offline.

Poland will have more than 1,000 automated warning sirens in Lublin Voivodeship by the end of 2026, Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński said on 19 September, up from nearly 350 now. The region had about 30 remotely activated sirens at the beginning of 2024.

The expansion comes as Russian attacks on the west of Ukraine are reaching closer to Poland. Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Russia is expected to intensify attacks on Ukraine's critical infrastructure and warned of possible "accidental" drone or missile strikes on NATO countries, including Poland. He also said Russia is introducing jet-powered drones that move much faster and at higher altitudes.

Sirens sound as drones approach the border

A Russian air attack on western Ukraine triggered air-raid warnings in Poland's Lublin and Podkarpackie regions on 17 September. Sirens sounded in Lublin and Rzeszów, while residents received an SMS warning: "ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ATTENTION! Threat of an air attack. Find a safe place. Follow the instructions of the emergency services. Await further announcements."

The Polish military said its aircraft were activated in response to Russian strikes involving jet-powered drones against western Ukraine. A Russian drone flying toward Poland fell on Ukrainian territory about four kilometers from the Polish border, according to Polish authorities. Polish airspace was not violated.

Airports in Lublin and Rzeszów temporarily suspended operations to give military aircraft freedom of movement. Polish authorities said the measures were preventive and intended to protect Polish airspace.

More strikes on the border zone

On 13 September, Russian strikes near the Yahodyn-Dorohusk border crossing damaged a gas station and hit the locomotive of a Kyiv-Warsaw passenger train about two kilometers from the Polish border. No deaths were reported, and the border crossing temporarily halted operations.

On 19 September, Poland again activated ground-based air-defense systems and increased radar reconnaissance in response to another wave of Russian strikes on Ukraine. The operation ended the same day with no violation of Polish airspace recorded.

Shelters, sirens, and a 1939 echo

Beyond sirens, authorities have marked nearly 3,500 official shelter locations in Lublin Voivodeship. More than 500 State Fire Service stations and volunteer fire units took part in special exercises on 19 September to practice responses to warning signals and emergency alerts.

"We are building a civil-protection system virtually from scratch," Kierwiński said at a briefing in Lublin. "We have very, very little time."

The 17 September strikes fell on the anniversary of the Soviet Union's 1939 invasion of Poland. Prime Minister Donald Tusk described the Russian attack as "massive, extremely brutal."

The 13 September strikes near the border also drew a response from Kyiv. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha described them as Putin's terror "knocking" directly on the doors of the EU and NATO and called for a "full trade embargo, a total entry ban, and complete sanctions against Russia's military-industrial complex."

For the first time, Ukraine has dropped ground robots behind Russian lines from the air. The 3rd Army Corps, behind the mission, says its heavy drones delivered kamikaze unmanned ground vehicles more than 10 kilometers into the Russian rear during the "second season" of Operation Vivaldi, letting Ukrainian troops flank them and clear another 40 square kilometers.

Vivaldi is the counteroffensive the corps is running near Lyman in northern Donetsk. Over its first two "seasons," the 3rd Army Corps and attached units have retaken more than 125 square kilometers, half of it de-occupied outright, and inflicted more than 3,000 casualties on Russian forces.

The operation, run under an information blackout for months, has also disrupted Russia's push and, the Institute for the Study of War found, its plan to encircle the fortified belt of Donetsk cities.

Brigadier General Andrii Biletskyi, corps commander, has said the operation, which he named after Vivaldi's Four Seasons, will run through four phases, and only two have been completed. The air-dropped robot is the newest report on how the corps fights.

Machines go first, infantry follows

The corps casts the tactic as a means of expending robots rather than people.

"In assault operations, drones and ground robots always go ahead of the infantry," Biletskyi says.

The 3rd Army Corps was the first in the world to begin air-dropping ground robotic systems. Our heavy bombers deliver kamikaze robots more than 10 kilometers into the Russian rear.

Wars are won by infantry, one of the corps' soldiers added, "but we protect ours, so the robots go to the enemy first."

A dome hides the assault

As the assault groups advanced amid the operation, Ukrainian air defense and electronic warfare threw a protective dome over the battle area, blinding Russian drones so they could not read the operation's design.

Meanwhile, artillery and strike drones hit command posts, communications nodes, logistics, crossings, and reserves, letting Ukrainian units dig in on the ground they had taken.

On the Lyman axis, the corps says it freed the villages of Shandryholove and Derylove and took control of Drobysheve, and that Vivaldi has kept Russia from shifting significant forces to the Kupiansk front.

Russia is quietly moving to expand the capacity of the plant behind its long-range attack drones, a step that could sharply raise how many it launches at Ukraine, according to Politico. The plan turns on a single carbon fiber factory in Russia's Tatarstan region and runs to the end of the decade.

These files add something narrower than Russia's known intent to fight on: they identify carbon fiber as a critical material capping how many drones it can build. To break that cap, the Kremlin is funding production lines that will not run until the decade's end—a bet on winning by out-building Ukraine, even as the strikes grind on.

The bottleneck Russia wants to break

Politico obtained internal documents from Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom showing its Alabuga-Volokno plant would add 500 tons of military-grade aerospace carbon fiber a year by 2029. Rosatom declined to comment. Weapons expert David Albright, who heads the Institute for Science and International Security, estimated that volume could yield airframes for about 28,000 more attack drones a year—a 78% jump.

Ukraine already estimates Russia can build more than 36,000 Shahed/Geran kamikaze drones a year. Carbon fiber is the choke point: it keeps the airframes light and strong, and Russia has no cheap substitute.

"Without the carbon fiber, they can't make the drone. Can't substitute for the carbon fiber in the drone and keep its weight down," Albright said.

Moscow is investing in the raw material, not just more assembly halls—the fiber, not floor space, is what caps output.

Ground already cleared in Tatarstan

Documents gathered by the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center describe a new factory on the site designed to produce UMT42S-3K aerospace-grade fiber. Satellite images from May to July show land cleared for construction. Albright's own August imagery shows foundations going in. He said the stated 2027 completion date "requires rapid construction." Russia has spent the past year adding new assembly halls at the same site.

The plant and its parent, Rosatom's Umatex Group, already sit under US, UK, and other Western sanctions. The US House Select Committee on China and the Ukrainian government both verified the documents, officials told Politico.

The push comes as Russia leans harder on jet-powered Shaheds, which Ukraine's Air Force says are hard to down with conventional defenses. Kyiv has fielded its first jet interceptor and tested a new one in September—but the plant is a bid to out-build those defenses faster than Ukraine can scale them.

For years, Ukraine’s air defenses blunted Russia’s attempts to terrorize its cities from the sky. Now, after four years of adaptation, Moscow is fielding faster drones, massing ballistic missiles, and finding new ways to overwhelm a Ukrainian air-defense network running short of the interceptors needed to stop them.

Russia’s aerial campaign is becoming harder to contain just as its attacks are killing more Ukrainian civilians. July recorded at least 437 civilian deaths, the highest monthly toll since the early months of the full-scale invasion, with UN monitors pointing to Russian missile and drone attacks as a key factor.

That shift is visible most clearly in Russia’s rapidly expanding use of jet-powered Geran drones. These drones can exceed 400 km/h, making them significantly harder to intercept than the slower, propeller-driven Shaheds Ukraine has spent years learning to counter. Russia reportedly launched as many as 2,850 jet-powered drones in August alone.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that Russia’s escalation with the new drones is becoming “increasingly terrorist” and called for urgent efforts to develop defenses against them.

While Ukraine’s Western partners have taken steps to strengthen its air defenses, Russia has spent the same period adapting and expanding its ability to attack from the air. The gap is becoming increasingly visible in the skies over Ukrainian cities.

Ukrainian civilians are already paying the price

Russia has increasingly turned its ability to strike deep inside Ukraine into a weapon against civilian life itself: hitting residential areas, fuel stations, railways, energy infrastructure and other sites across cities far from the front.

Since late August, Kyiv has faced near-continuous Russian drone attacks, with Russia increasingly sending waves of drones against the capital throughout the day and night. The shift has made air-raid alerts, explosions and disruptions to daily life a near-constant reality.

For Ukrainians, Russia’s evolving aerial campaign is measured in destroyed homes, injuries, deaths, and lives permanently changed. 

In Kyiv, it has also changed everyday life: explosions interrupt sleep and work, people run for shelter as strikes unfold overhead, and the threat of another attack is never far away.

And the pressure is no longer confined to Kyiv. Kharkiv, Odesa, Sumy and Zaporizhzhia are all facing increasingly sophisticated combinations of drones and missiles.

The danger is not simply that Russia is launching more weapons. It is that Moscow has spent years learning which weapons can penetrate Ukraine’s defenses, how to combine them, and how to force Ukraine to spend its most valuable interceptors.

Zelenskyy’s warning captures the urgency: “You cannot simply wait for Russia to perfect its repertoire of killings.”

Russia is adapting faster than Ukraine can rebuild its shield

The jet-powered Geran is only one part of the problem.

Russia has also dramatically increased its use of ballistic missiles. Reuters reported that 228 ballistic and hypersonic missiles were launched in July and the first eight days of August, with more than half being inaccurate RM48U training missiles repurposed for combat. 

Ukraine has virtually exhausted its US-made Patriot interceptors, the only systems in its arsenal capable of reliably intercepting Russia’s ballistic missiles, while Moscow continues launching them at a high tempo.

The result is a more complex aerial threat: fast drones that are difficult to intercept, ballistic missiles that are extremely difficult to stop, and large waves of cheaper weapons that can force Ukraine to expend scarce defensive ammunition.

Ukraine is developing new ways to counter them, including interceptor drones specifically designed to hunt down the jet-powered Gerans. But Ukraine is developing these systems as Russia is already deploying its new weapons at scale.

Western countries have continued providing air-defense assistance. Canada, for example, announced a C$350 million package for interceptors earlier this month. But Ukrainian officials continue to say that deliveries remain far below what is needed to protect the country from Russia’s expanding aerial campaign.

Russia has spent years expanding the weapons it can use against Ukraine, while Ukraine and its partners are still racing to develop and supply the systems needed to stop them.

The threat Europe helped Russia develop

Some of Ukraine’s Western partners are now confronting a threat Russia has spent years developing over Ukraine: an increasingly sophisticated aerial arsenal that could eventually be turned against them.

European officials and defense analysts are increasingly warning that NATO countries themselves lack enough air and missile defenses to deal with a large Russian attack. 

Latvia’s President Edgars Rinkēvičs recently said Europe is not sufficiently prepared for the kind of drone and aerial warfare Russia has developed in Ukraine, including because of delays in supplying Ukraine with critical air-defense systems.

Those concerns are no longer hypothetical. On 14 September, an Italian NATO fighter jet shot down a Russian-made Geran-2 drone over Lithuania after it entered the country from Belarus. Poland and Romania have also faced Russian drone incursions since 2025.

This creates a problem that is partly of Europe’s own making. Russia has had more than four years to refine its drones, missiles, production lines and tactics while Ukraine’s partners have often been too slow to provide enough weapons to counter those systems as they were developed and deployed at scale.

In that same period, many European countries continued trading with Russia, particularly in fossil fuels, allowing Moscow to keep generating revenue from European markets even as those same governments were providing military aid to Ukraine.

The result is a Russian aerial arsenal that is more capable than the one Ukraine faced in 2022 – while some of the countries now worried about a future Russian threat lack the air defenses needed to protect themselves.

Western governments helped Ukraine fight Russia’s air war, but not at a scale or speed sufficient to prevent Russia from adapting. 

Ukrainian civilians are paying the price for the time Russia was given to expand and refine its aerial warfare. Now, Europe is having to prepare for the possibility that those capabilities could one day be used against it. 

Ukrainian engineers near the front rewrite their drones' software every couple of days. A NATO army needs about six months to push the same update. That gap in speed is the central challenge for the Western trainers working with Ukrainian troops in Poland, who say Ukraine's wartime tempo is exposing how slowly the West moves in peacetime, the Business Insider reports.

Russia's war forces the Ukrainian Army to buy, train, and adapt at a pace peacetime armies are not built for, and its experience is pushing NATO to confront how much its own bureaucracy slows it down.

The alliance has studied that experience without yet fully absorbing it: in an Estonian war game last winter, a ten-person Ukrainian drone team wiped out two NATO battalions in a day.

Now NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is calling for a large-scale transformation of the West's defense industry so its armies can react faster.

Two speeds meet in Poland

The place where those speeds collided was Camp Jomsborg, a base Norway built in an eastern Polish forest in a matter of months. There, under an operation called Legio, trainers from across northern Europe drill Ukrainian soldiers while the Ukrainians hand their front-line lessons back to NATO.

The camp sits, as its operations officer, a major identified only as John, put it,  at "the mental and geographical middle point between war in the east and peacetime mechanism in the West."

A drone update tells the story

Brigadier General Atle Molde, who commands the task force, put the gap in numbers. If a Western drone needs new software, he said, "you have to send it to a Western country or a company, and an update takes six months." 

In Ukraine, "they have the engineers sitting close to the front updating every two days, every two weeks, developing software, adapting it to genuine situations."

Molde said he wants to see greater initiative in innovation within Western armies, but to achieve that, "it has to be some major changes that have to be done on all levels when it comes to legislation."

Ukraine's battle-tested drone makers did not win a single top slot in the Pentagon's latest drone contest. But some Ukrainian technology won anyway, competing quietly under the names of Western partners, The Defender Media reports.

The Pentagon's $1.1 billion Drone Dominance program does not allow direct purchases from Ukrainian firms, which must set up a US legal entity to bid.

The Ukrainians who competed under their own names were hampered by export licenses, the hunt for non-Chinese components, and visa issues, and none of the four cracked the top five in either category.

American firms sweep the top slots

The Pentagon picked five winners each in two categories, long-range strikes out to 15 kilometers and close-in assault. Eric Schmidt's Perennial Autonomy topped the long-range field with its Hornet drone, on 80.1 points, and Neros led the close-in category with 88.1. Neros already supplies Ukraine with 6,000 of its Archer FPV drones.

The rest of the winners, from ORQA's US arm to XTEND and ModalAI, were American as well. All will receive Pentagon supply contracts, with order sizes to be set later.

Ukrainians win under other flags

The Ukrainian firms that announced their entries, F-Drones, General Chereshnya, Grim Tech, and Stellarion, all missed the cut, though General Chereshnya had reached the program's second round earlier in the year.

Bureaucracy tripped the open entrants

Stellarion laid out what went wrong. Getting export permits and moving hardware took so long that integrating American parts, including warheads, and adapting the finished system on schedule became "complicated," its representatives said.

Finding NDAA-compliant, non-Chinese components ate up more time, and visa delays kept its specialists from fixing technical problems on site.

Firms that missed the top five can enter later rounds: a Gauntlet 2.5 contest for bomber drones is set for October, and a third phase begins in February 2027, with missions built to test control of several drones at once.

Poland will provide another aid package to Ukraine, which will include, among other things, “what Ukraine needs right now,” Deputy Minister of National Defense Stanisław Wziątek said, reports Polskie Radio. He said the package would include missiles for F-16 fighter jets, which the Ukrainian military uses to shoot down Russian drones.

Ukraine is critically short of missiles for F-16 fighter jets, which shoot down Russian UAVs. Recently, it was reported that pilots sometimes took off without missiles, using only the aircraft’s built-in M61A1 Vulcan cannon, which is dangerous for civilians. Poland’s newly promised aid will include these missiles for Ukraine.

Among other things, Poland will provide aviation equipment, the report said. Media reports added that the aid package may be worth around €50 million.

Ammunition for F-16s and possible aviation equipment

“Our aid is in the process of being prepared. Everything will happen in a moment. I cannot say what it contains, I can only say that it is what Ukraine needs right now. This includes basic ammunition. These are the ones mounted on F-16s to shoot down Russian drones,” Wziątek said.

AIM-9 and AIM-120 are air-to-air missiles that the Ukrainian Armed Forces use with F-16s to fight Russian aviation, Militarnyi says. The outlet adds that last year Ukrainian F-16s were spotted with APKWS II missiles, which are effective against drones. As for the aforementioned aviation equipment, Poland may provide decommissioned MiG-29 fighter jets or drones, the media outlet suggests.

The MiG-29 does not use the same scarce stocks of AIM-9 and AIM-120 missiles.

Missile shortage is not new

In July 2025, America abruptly suspended arms supplies to Ukraine, affecting some types of weapons. Among them were more than 90 US-made AIM air-to-air missiles that were in Poland and on their way to Ukraine, but were withdrawn by the US, according to a Wall Street Journal article. Since then, Ukraine has received Western aid for air defense systems, but missiles have remained among the items in short supply.

Ukraine faced a severe shortage of F-16 missiles from late November to mid-December, according to Reuters. One source said Ukraine had "nothing to put on its jets for almost a month."

While F-16s likely rank first by number in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the Soviet-made MiG-29 ranks second, Euromaidan Press. Ukraine had enough R-73 missiles for this fighter, but when the Ukrainian Armed Forces also began using them for ground-based launchers after 9M33 missiles for Soviet Osa air defense systems ran out, the rate of consumption increased sharply.

Ukrainian forces were observed resuming the use of older missiles that had been considered obsolete. There is an alternative: using the fighter’s cannon. However, this practice is dangerous.

A Ukrainian drone maker has revealed it built a strike weapon it kept classified, deputy director Andrii Rymaruk told Radio NV. For two years, Ukrspecsystems, known for manufacturing Ukraine's SHARK reconnaissance drones, hid its connection to the RAM-2X strike drone, even as crews used it to hunt Russia's costly air defenses and missile launchers deep behind the front. By 2025, it had quietly become the Defense Forces' flagship mid-strike drone.

Ukraine's war on Russia's air defenses increasingly runs on drones its own industry builds and fields in secret, revealed only once they have already destroyed the enemy's costliest launchers and radars. Holding one back that long lets its crews rack up strikes before Moscow can study the weapon and build a counter—and this maker went public only once wrecked drones had reached Russian hands.

Why come out now

The RAM-2X first flew in combat in early 2024, but the maker kept its role secret. Rymaruk said the company wanted the drone and its crews to finish the job first—destroy what needed destroying—before talking. Once shot-down units reached the enemy and turned up on social media, silence no longer protected anything. So after two years, Ukrspecsystems unveiled the drone at the MSPO defense expo in Kielce, Poland.

What it kills

This is a mid-strike drone—a loitering munition that flies deep behind the lines, circles, and dives into its target. Its victims include S-400 and S-300 air defenses, the systems Russia uses to shoot down aircraft, and Iskander launchers that fire ballistic missiles at Ukrainian cities.

Rymaruk put the RAM-2X's own tally at more than 350 Russian systems destroyed since 2024, while Defender Media, which interviewed him, reported more than 1,000 targets over two years. Ukrspecsystems credits the wider RAM series, which reaches back to a fixed-wing model supplied from late 2022, with more than 450 target engagements, over 400 of them against air defenses. Today, it destroys 50 to 60 pieces of Russian equipment a month.

How far, how many

The drone has grown fast. It flew 140 km in 2024 and now hits targets up to 180 km, almost 230 km in good conditions, and a crew from the 429th Achilles unmanned-systems brigade set a range record at 215.5 km. It has spread from a few crews to about 100 military units and 250 trained teams, and one operator can fly it from anywhere in Ukraine. It also works in pairs with the SHARK-M reconnaissance drone—one finds the target, the other kills it. In July, Ukrainians crowdfunded 30 of the drones for military intelligence and the security service through Serhii Prytula's foundation.

A large-scale police operation is underway after a drone of unknown origin crashed 1 kilometer from a Bundeswehr base, German media outlet Bild reported on 15 September.

Drones have repeatedly flown over German military bases, and German prosecutors are already treating one August find near Ukraine-bound cargo as attempted sabotage. Germany's military counterintelligence has tied repeated sabotage on German soil to Russia, with high probability. Neither the owner nor the origin of this drone is known. Russia has denied involvement in earlier incidents, some of which Germany has officially attributed to it.

Discovery near airbase triggers large-scale search

Parts of the drone were found east of Lake Steinhude, the media outlet said. The crash site is one kilometer from the Bundeswehr's Wunstorf air base in Lower Saxony, the German military confirmed to the outlet. The drone crashed in an open, uninhabited area, the state criminal police office said. After the debris was discovered, authorities launched a large-scale search operation in the area to find additional parts of the UAV, according to Bild.

Investigators do not yet know who owns the drone

The search continues, and the state criminal police office says there are so far no indications of a danger to the public. Investigators learned about the discovery on Monday and want to analyze any other drone parts they find to determine its origin, the media outlet reported. Only then could more be said about the circumstances of the crash, it added.

Drones have been spotted over Bundeswehr bases many times

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the number of reports of drone sightings has "increased significantly" and become "more consistent," a spokesperson for the Bundeswehr Operations Command told RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND) in August.

"Overall, several hundred suspected drone overflights have been reported in the area of the German Armed Forces in recent years," the command spokesperson told RND.

What came before this crash

Germany is the busiest front in Russia's covert campaign in Europe. A Semtex-laden drone turned up beside a Ukrainian cargo plane at Leipzig/Halle airport in August, and investigators this month named a Russian intelligence operative and a Belarusian petty criminal. Berlin blamed Moscow and ordered Russia's Bonn consulate closed.

Two Bulgarians were arrested over a September arson at a Munich building site between two defense-tech headquarters, a day after two attempts to sabotage the power grid that Germany has not attributed. Germany suspects a planned assassination of a Bavarian drone maker's boss, watched by agents hired for single jobs.

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Not every strand leads to Moscow. German military counterintelligence this week attributed part of the drone activity over Bundeswehr sites to Chinese intelligence.

Elsewhere the tempo holds: Polish prosecutors have opened more than a hundred espionage cases in 20 months, and in the Netherlands a former commander of US Army forces in Europe said Russian saboteurs attacked the rail network and tried to kill him, which Dutch Railways said they knew nothing about.

Ukraine has authorized 81 private companies to run their own air defense against Russian drones, letting the factories and infrastructure sites that Moscow hits daily shoot back, Ukraine's Defense Ministry says. The firms have been provided "authorized" status under an experimental program, a count that has climbed from 51 in mid-July, according to ArmyInform.

The idea is to let the targets defend themselves. Russian drones strike Ukrainian factories, warehouses, and power sites so relentlessly that the state cannot shield everyone, so the Defense Ministry is enlisting the companies being hit to form their own drone-defense teams.

Ninety-two firms have already applied, among them operators of critical infrastructure and businesses from across the country's industries and regions. The teams are not freelancers: they fold into Ukraine's layered air defense under the command of the Air Force, so they do not fire into a shared sky blind.

The count climbs fast

The program has grown quickly since it began in late 2025, from 24 companies in April to 30 in June, 51 in July, and 81 by mid-September. The units are made of trained, certified civilian staff, some running mobile fire teams with heavy machine guns, others flying interceptor drones.

By June, they had already shot down more than 20 Russian attack and reconnaissance drones, the ministry said, including one jet-powered Geran, the faster variant that has strained Ukraine's defenses.

Russia's drones drive the demand

The Defense Ministry launched the project at the end of 2025 to add a layer of protection for workers and production sites that had become routine targets.

The goal the ministry set for the wider effort is stark: detect every aerial threat and destroy 95 percent of them. The steady climb in members, roughly one company added per day since July, suggests that demand is not slowing.

A Russian drone struck a scheduled passenger minibus in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk Oblast on the morning of 16 September, killing and injuring people on board, the oblast military administration reported. The vehicle was running an intercity route when the drone reached it on the open road. Prosecutors opened a criminal case, and the head of the oblast council called the attack a cynical strike on people going about their day.

Five killed on the Pokrov to Dnipro run

Five people died at the scene, and doctors are treating at least seven injured, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Military Administration, Oleksandr Handzha, said. Russian forces struck Nikopol district with an FPV drone, damaging a route minibus that was travelling on the highway, the Prosecutor General's Office said.

Mykola Lukashuk, who heads the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Council, wrote that the strike was aimed and cynical.

"Russians cynically struck a passenger bus. Just a minibus in which people were travelling on their own business," he wrote.

The photograph Handzha published shows the windows torn out along one side of the white van, with blood running down the panel below them. In Lukashuk's image of the front end, the destination board behind the cracked windshield reads Pokrov, via Nikopol, to Dnipro, three towns strung along the same road.

The Dnipropetrovsk Oblast prosecutor's office opened proceedings under Article 438 of Ukraine's Criminal Code, which covers violations of the laws and customs of war, Interfax-Ukraine reported.

Drones had also attacked the district center and the Marhanets community in the same region, damaging an apartment building without hurting anyone, the administration said.

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Russia’s drone hits Nikopol bus mid-route: 3 dead, 12 injured at city-centre stop

Buses on these roads have been hit all year

Nikopol district lies on the Dnipro River directly across from Russian-occupied territory, which puts its roads inside the range of short-range drones. A drone hit a city bus in central Nikopol in April, killing four people and injuring 17, after which the mayor cut services and ran the rest off the fixed schedule. In June, a drone struck a minibus in Nikopol, killing two people and injuring 12, among them two 12-year-old girls, and in August a drone burned out another route minibus elsewhere in the district, injuring at least seven passengers.

The pattern runs past this district. A drone hit a bus near Dnipro in May, injuring six people including a child and a pregnant woman, and war analysts have assessed that Russian forces use harm to civilians as an instrument of the war in southern Ukraine rather than as its by-product. 

An FPV drone, short for first-person view, sends a live video feed back to whoever is flying it. The operator watches the target grow in the frame and steers the drone into it. A bus in motion is a target that has to be chosen and followed. FPV models are not the only cheap weapon over these roads: Russia also flies Molniya strike drones, which reach further and are switching to digital video that Ukraine's current detectors cannot pick up.

The Prosecutor General's Office documented more than 11,000 attacks by short-range drones on civilians, medics, rescuers, and police, with criminal cases rising from 2,427 in 2024 to 6,771 in 2025 and another 2,010 opened in the first four months of 2026. 

Ukraine has successfully tested another interceptor designed to counter Russia’s increasingly common jet-powered Geran attack drones, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 15 September.

The test comes as Russia rapidly expands the use of faster jet-powered Gerans, creating a new problem for Ukraine’s air defenses: these drones give defenders less time to detect and engage them while allowing Russia to maintain large-scale attacks. A successful interceptor could give Ukraine a cheaper, scalable way to counter that threat without relying as heavily on scarce high-end air-defense missiles.

Zelenskyy said Commander-in-Chief Mykhailo Drapatyi reported the successful test, during which the new interceptor struck a Russian Geran drone.

The system still reportedly needs further work, including improvements to some aspects of its control. But the successful test marks another step in Ukraine’s effort to develop a new layer of air defenses against Russia’s faster drones.

Russia is making its drone attacks faster and larger

Russia has sharply expanded its use of jet-powered Gerans in recent months, adding a faster and more difficult-to-intercept threat to its large-scale drone campaign.

Geran is Russia’s designation for its domestically produced Shahed-derived attack drones, with newer jet-powered variants representing a major upgrade over the earlier propeller-driven models.

Zelenskyy recently said Russia launched around 2,100 drones against Ukraine last week, alongside nearly 1,700 guided aerial bombs and 78 missiles. The attacks have increasingly targeted energy facilities, railway infrastructure, businesses, and residential areas.

The newer Gerans are faster than earlier Shahed-derived drones and can reach targets deep inside Ukraine. Their speed gives Ukrainian air defenses less time to detect, track, and engage them.

Russia has also changed how it uses its drones. Rather than concentrating attacks almost exclusively overnight, Russian forces have increasingly launched waves during the day as well, keeping Ukrainian cities under repeated air-raid alerts.

The result is a growing challenge not only of interception, but of scale. Ukraine must defend a large territory against increasingly large drone barrages while preserving more sophisticated air-defense missiles for ballistic missiles and other threats.

Ukraine is building a new layer of air defense

Ukraine has already been racing to develop such systems. In late August, Defense Minister Yevhen Khmara said four potential interceptor systems capable of shooting down jet-powered Gerans had undergone field testing. Ukraine was aiming to bring them to the required level and eventually produce thousands of units.

Today’s announcement shows that effort continues to produce concrete results.

Ukraine is also expanding other parts of its counter-drone network. Zelenskyy said the country is increasing purchases of electronic warfare equipment and reorganizing mobile fire groups and air-defense positions.

The goal is to build enough layers to cope with Russia’s evolving drone campaign: electronic warfare, mobile fire teams, traditional air defenses, and increasingly specialized interceptors.

Russia is making its drones faster and launching them at greater scale. Ukraine’s response is now moving beyond adapting existing defenses toward developing weapons specifically designed to catch them.

Falling Russian drone debris started 17 forest fires in Chernihiv Oblast between 7 and 13 September, burning 10.8 hectares, Ukraine's state forestry enterprise Forests of Ukraine said.

Russia's drone campaign is causing damage beyond its immediate targets, as falling debris can start fires in forests and other open areas. Forest fires linked to military activity have become a recurring problem across Ukraine. The previous week, 56 forest fires covering 84 hectares were recorded nationwide, with 95% attributed to hostilities, according to the state forestry enterprise.

Drone wreckage also started fires in eight other oblasts during the same period. Kherson Oblast recorded 3.7 hectares burned, Odesa 2 hectares, and Sumy 1.91 hectares. Smaller areas were affected in Zaporizhzhia (0.7 hectares), Dnipropetrovsk (0.5 hectares), Kyiv and Zhytomyr (0.12 hectares each), and Mykolaiv (0.1 hectares), according to Forests of Ukraine.

Russia kept up the daily barrages all week. Between 7 and 13 September, it launched more than 2,000 strike drones at Ukraine, by the Air Force's daily counts, and air defense downed or suppressed about 1,800 of them. The heaviest came on the night of 13 September, when 453 drones and S8000 Banderol munitions flew in from six directions and 405 drones and four Banderols were brought down. Twice that week, Russia also attacked in daylight, sending 410 drones on 12 September and 323 on 13 September between 06:30 and 18:00.

About 165,000 hectares of Ukrainian forest have burned since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022, with most of the damage linked to fires caused by shelling and combat.

In total, 46 forest fires covering 25.7 hectares were recorded across the enterprise's territory that week, with about 72% linked to military activity, according to Forests of Ukraine.

The wider environmental toll

The fires are part of a wider environmental toll from Russia's war. The Initiative on Greenhouse Gas Accounting of War, working with the NGO Ecodiya and Ukraine's environment ministry, put emissions from war-driven landscape fires over the first four years at 70 million tons of CO2 equivalent, in an assessment reported by the Ukraine War Environmental Consequences Work Group.

The same review recorded 2,643 environmental incidents monitored by Ecodiya, with 2025 accounting for 931 of them.

Russian drones killed one man and injured eight people in Kyiv on the morning of 15 September, hitting two gas stations along with warehouses, a restaurant, and an office building, the National Police reported. The strikes came in a night-long wave of 200 drones that also hit Odesa Oblast in southern Ukraine. 

What Russia hit in Kyiv

The first drone came down at a gas station in the Darnytskyi district shortly after 06:00, and more drones hit warehouses in the Obolonskyi district around the same time, the Kyiv Military Administration said. The strike critically wounded a man who was standing near the Darnytskyi station.

The attack resumed after 08:00. A drone struck a non-residential building in the Solomianskyi district, then a second gas station in the Holosiivskyi district, where heavy smoke rose over the site. Mayor Vitalii Klitschko reported the number of injured climbing through the morning, from two to four to eight, with two of them in serious condition. Emergency services put six of the eight in the Solomianskyi district, which took a second hit around 10:00.

The man hurt at the Darnytskyi station died in hospital at about 10:35. Beyond the two stations, police recorded damage to warehouses, a fast-food restaurant, and a business center.

The wave that carried them

Russia launched 200 strike drones from 18:00 on 14 September, the Air Force said: Shahed types including jet-powered ones, Gerberas, and Parodiya decoys, flown from Russia and occupied areas. Air defense downed or suppressed 187 of them by 08:00, with hits recorded at seven locations and debris falling at three more. The attack was still running when that count was published.

Russian drones killed a man and injured eight in Kyiv, hitting two gas stations

Russian forces hit Odesa Oblast at the same time. Russian forces struck residential buildings, logistics sites, and port and transport infrastructure, oblast head Oleh Kiper said, damaging roofs, facades, and windows of private houses along with dozens of garages and cars.

The same night, NATO fighters shot down a drone over Lithuania that had crossed from Belarus, and Ukrainian forces struck the Syzran refinery in Samara Oblast and a warehouse in Taganrog.

Why gas stations

Kyiv's filling stations have been under systematic attack since 10 September, when a drone came down at a station near a shopping mall. On 11 September, jet drones hit two Ukrnafta complexes on opposite banks of the city and returned to strike one of them a second time.

Unlike filling stations in the border oblasts, which Russia hits with cheap short-range drones, the Kyiv stations are being struck with its most expensive ones. Ukrainian stations are mostly struck with the Geran-4 Seeker, the variant fitted with machine-vision targeting, according military observer Oleksandr Kovalenko of Information Resistance.

More than 300 gas stations have been attacked across Ukraine since the current wave began, according to energy ministry data. The strikes have moved gradually from front-line oblasts deeper into the country, and about 80% of damaged stations return to work. 

Ukraine's battlefield-tested drone makers and Europe's arms firms have sat down together for the first time to build drones and the systems to shoot drones down as a single industry. Eighteen companies, nine Ukrainian and nine European, held the opening meeting of the EU-Ukraine Drone Alliance in Brussels, Defender Media reported.

The alliance answers a threat both sides now share. Russia is scaling up its own drone production. Its drone war has spilled past Ukraine, with its drones crossing repeatedly into NATO airspace this summer and showing Europe how unready it is for the fighting Ukraine has learned the hard way.

The Alliance will support Ukraine's capabilities it needs on the battlefield, while strengthening Europe's defense readiness for the future.

The alliance sets up shop

The first job is organizational, said Roman Tkachenko, a co-founder of the Ukrainian firm Tencore: form the governing bodies and set the priorities. The 18 members were chosen from about 400 applicants, Kubilius said, and the alliance is designed as a decision-making body, according to UA News.

On the Ukrainian side, it includes Tencore, Athlon Avia, and Vyriy Industry. On the European side, Germany's Quantum Systems, Italy's Fincantieri, and Denmark's Terma.

Kubilius, who opened the session and called it historic, said the first tangible results should come by the end of the year. He named accelerating joint ventures and counter-drone projects as the top tasks.

Europe wants Ukraine's combat edge

Kubilius was blunt about what Europe hopes to learn: how to adapt a product in days, shorten development cycles, and scale a production line from a peacetime trickle to full output within weeks. In return, he said, the EU offers Ukraine cutting-edge technology and continent-wide manufacturing.

The Alliance will bring together companies, start-ups, researchers, armed forces, and other users from EU countries and Ukraine.

The Alliance is a result of the Drone Deal, announced by President Ursula von der Leyen in Kyiv on 15 July, according to the EU Commission.

An oil refinery in Slavyansk-on-Kuban in southern Russia was attacked overnight on 13 September, Astra reported. By morning, residents began posting videos showing smoke over the refinery and nearby areas. That same morning, Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence (HUR) reported that Ukrainian drones had struck the Slavyansk-EKO refinery.

Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries have become systematic, aimed in part at reducing the Russian military’s access to fuel, which is critical for waging the war. Ukrainian forces have been striking strategic facilities located hundreds of kilometers from the front line.

The design capacity of Slavyansk-EKO is approximately 5.2 million tonnes per year, though actual volumes are lower by about one to two million tonnes, Militarnyi reports.

Thick smoke visible for dozens of kilometers

The Ukrainian strike hit a key oil-processing unit and the facility’s oil storage tank farm, which “fuels the criminal war against Ukraine,” HUR reported.

Two oil storage tanks were destroyed in the strike, according to photos published by Dnipro Osint. Militarnyi noted that the photos also show damage to neighboring tanks.

The strike reportedly hit the area containing the facility’s largest storage tanks. The refinery operates using purchased or tolling crude oil because it does not have its own crude oil production base.

The refinery has been targeted before

Slavyansk-EKO is one of the largest independent oil refineries in southern Russia. The facility is located in Slavyansk-on-Kuban, about 69 kilometers northwest of Krasnodar.

Ukraine’s General Staff said that the refinery is “part of the energy rear of the Russian Federation and involved in supplying the armed forces of the aggressor.”

Before the 13 September strike, Ukrainian drones had struck the refinery at least four times, starting in 2024:

• 27 April 2024 — a Ukrainian drone attack damaged the Slavyansk refinery, after which a fire broke out at the facility.
  
• 19 May 2024 — SBU drones attacked the Slavyansk refinery, after which the facility suspended operations.
  
• 26 January 2026 — Ukrainian Defense Forces struck infrastructure at the Slavyansk-EKO refinery. According to preliminary data, elements of the primary oil refining unit were damaged.
  
• Five months later, on 28 June, Ukraine struck the Slavyansk refinery again, causing a large fire at the facility. EP noted that the refinery supplies fuel, including to occupied Crimea.
  

Russia has fielded a new generation of cheap, jet-powered drones and cruise missiles faster than Ukraine or the US can build defenses against them, according to The Wall Street Journal. The weapons run on Chinese parts that slip past Western sanctions, and they are already getting through air defenses designed to stop slower drones. Analysts say the West underestimated how fast Moscow could move from an idea to a full assembly line.

Russia now leans on cheap, mass-produced drones to swamp Ukraine's air defenses with sheer numbers night after night, and its factories keep growing to keep the attacks coming. The bigger lesson reaches past this war: in a long fight, cheap weapons in large numbers can beat a small stock of expensive ones.

A cheap weapon that gets past Ukraine's defenses

Ukraine had learned to shoot down the Iran-designed Shahed drones Russia was launching. Then Moscow moved the goalposts. The newest model, the Geran-5, looks more like a missile than a drone—Mike Monnik, head of the drone-threat firm DroneSec, called it "essentially a poor-man's cruise missile," and it forced a rewrite of Ukraine's counter-drone playbook. The Geran-5 and the Banderol cruise missiles are each estimated to cost about $100,000. A US Tomahawk costs more than $2 million.

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Built fast, with China's help

Moscow needed only about two years to take each weapon from the drawing board to the battlefield, reworking earlier designs, testing them in combat, and pushing them into serial production. Ukrainian assessments, echoed by the drone-intelligence firm DroneSec, trace the leap to Chinese parts—the turbojet engines, the navigation computers, the radios—most of them off-the-shelf, dual-use gear anyone can buy. The weapons are aimed at Ukrainian cities and infrastructure—a Banderol struck a residential area of Kharkiv in July.

An expensive problem for the West

US forces and NATO have knocked down cheap drones with costly Patriot interceptors and fighter jets, often firing several interceptors at a single weapon. Western firms that built interceptors for slow drones are now scrambling to make faster, jet-powered ones. Kateryna Bondar of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said the West keeps underestimating how fast Russia turns experiments into production, and that Kyiv had years of warning yet was still caught off guard.

"I'm surprised everyone is surprised," she said.

At NATO's July summit in Ankara, members committed more than $40 billion to counter-drone defenses over the coming five years.

Russia has upgraded the Iranian Shahed it fires at Ukraine into jet-powered drones that Iran now wants back, the Financial Times reported. Tehran plans to use them in its own war against Israel and the United States, the paper reported, citing Western intelligence.

Russia now fights with weapons it churns out and revises mid-fight, a homegrown production model fast enough to turn a cheap imported airframe into something its original supplier now wants back.

From a 185 km/h propeller drone to a jet that looks like a missile

Russia started building the Geran, its own version of Iran's Shahed, in 2023. The first Geran-1 flew at up to 185 km/h with a 20-kilogram warhead. The newest Geran-5 flies at up to 600 km/h, carries a 90-kilogram warhead, and has a range of up to 1,000 km. Newer models add thermal cameras, AI-assisted guidance, Russian anti-jamming antennas, and Chinese mesh modems.

Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov, a non-staff adviser to Ukraine's president on defense technology, has described how such drones work:

"A Russian operator flies at an altitude of 2–5 km, spots the target, locks onto it using the camera, and then the Shahed automatically attacks the target."

Almost all of Russia's jet drones used against Ukraine carry such a camera, he added.

Skipping the testing, straight to combat

Centralized production lets the Kremlin redesign fast and fold in combat lessons.

"The reason Russia was able to create a major new production line from scratch was because it's technologically a lot simpler than making something like tanks, which require enormous, unique and costly machine tools," said Ruslan Pukhov, who heads the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.

He added that they essentially skipped the long testing period that usually accompanies any military development process, with changes going straight into production and being checked in combat.

A Ukrainian company has unveiled a homegrown strike drone built to fly deep behind Russian lines, Militarnyi reported on 13 September. Octava Defence showed the new long-range aircraft—a bigger version of a drone already used in combat—at the MSPO 2026 defense expo in Kielce, Poland. The company says the smaller drone is built to keep working in electronic warfare conditions without a reliable satellite signal.

Russian jamming is one of the biggest obstacles to Ukrainian strikes deep in the rear, which is why Ukrainian makers keep building guidance that does not depend on satellite signals.

The workhorse is already in the fight

The base FLYCAT, presented in January 2026 by another Ukrainian firm, Venator Technologies, is a strike drone Ukrainian forces have used in combat since March. An improved model went into action in July and August and is now undergoing codification—entry into Ukraine's official weapons register.

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The company says the updated drone can fly more than 80 km, stay in the air for an hour, and carry a warhead weighing up to 3.7 kg. It is built to hunt armored vehicles, artillery, radars, and air-defense systems, as well as lighter shelters and communications gear. It can pair with a scout drone that finds the target and passes the coordinates. Several FLYCATs can also strike a single target together or hit multiple targets at once.

Nearly everything on it is built in Ukraine—the communications, navigation, guidance, and warhead. Only the engines come from abroad. Its two cameras—day-only or day-and-night—feed a terminal-guidance module that picks out the target from 2,000 m as it closes in.

The one that reaches deeper

The FLYCAT SL is a bigger, longer-range version, and it is still in testing. The company says it is built to fly more than 200 km, stay airborne for over two and a half hours, and carry a heavier load of up to 7 kg.

That range is meant to let it go after command posts, armored vehicles, artillery, and air defenses far behind the front line.

Russia struck a fourth Ukrainian pharmaceutical warehouse in two weeks on 14 September, setting fire to the Odesa depot of medicine distributor BaDM, Ekonomichna Pravda reported. Russian forces hit it during an attack they ran across the country through the night. 

The fourth depot, and what Russia did to it

The BaDM complex stands on the edge of Odesa. The strike started a fire on the grounds, and the State Emergency Service worked at the site. It left significant damage to the storage buildings.

Preliminarily, nobody was hurt, sources on the pharmaceutical market told Ekonomichna Pravda. BaDM is one of the biggest wholesalers moving medicines to Ukrainian pharmacies.

The three depots Russia hit before it

• Russia opened the run on 3 September, when it damaged the Biokon logistics complex in Boryspil raion, Kyiv Oblast. That site counts as the country's largest specialized pharmaceutical warehouse.
• Overnight on 8 September, Russian forces attacked the Kyiv warehouse of Optima-Pharm with two ballistic missiles. They had already destroyed that site, which belongs to one of the largest distributors, in 2025.
• On 13 September, Russian forces struck Universal Logistic, the second-largest medicine warehouse in Ukraine. Four specialized sites in two weeks is a pattern, and Russia now hits medicine storage as it has hit food, construction materials, and parcels.

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WHO humanitarian warehouse in Dnipro destroyed in strike, Director-General says

The attack the Odesa strike came in

Russia launched 108 strike drones from 18:00 on 13 September, Ukraine's Air Force said. The wave carried Shahed-type drones, among them jet-powered ones, Gerbera drones, and Parodiya decoys. Air defense downed or suppressed 85 of them by 08:00. Ukrainian forces recorded hits at seven locations, and the Air Force said the attack was still running when it published that count.

Russia is building large new production halls at the Tatarstan site where it assembles the Shahed/Geran-type attack drones it fires at Ukrainian cities, the Ukrainian geospatial and satellite intelligence analyst Dnipro Osint reported, publishing satellite images of the work. At least five long buildings stand finished in the southern part of the Alabuga special economic zone, with internal roads and access ways laid around them and further construction under way. What the new halls are for is not known yet.

What the images show

Several of the large workshops in the zone's southern section are already complete, and several more sites are in active construction, the analyst said. Laid roadways, and the outlines of additional buildings appear beside the finished rows, and he published the coordinates of the site along with the images.

The plant behind the nightly waves

The zone lies near the city of Yelabuga, more than 1,000 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, and has been one of Russia's principal military plants since 2023. It assembles the Shahed-type strike drones Russia calls Gerans, along with the Gerbera decoys flown alongside them, built at a tenth of a Shahed's cost to make Ukrainian air defense spend interceptors on empty airframes.

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Output has climbed with the attacks. Russia builds about 3,000 of the jet-powered version a month, by Ukrainian military intelligence's count, and has accumulated a reserve of more than 6,000 Gerans for large-scale attacks. The zone itself expanded by 340 hectares in a year, media reported in May.

Chinese firms supply the engines, navigation systems, and avionics, with Iran's role reduced to consultations and occasional deliveries, while Moscow claims the drones are fully localized. The workforce includes teenage students from the site's own Alabuga Polytech college and women recruited as labor migrants from African and Central Asian countries, some of whom were later sent to the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.

Struck repeatedly, expanding anyway

Ukrainian long-range drones have hit the zone's workshops more than once, including a confirmed strike on Shahed storage there. None of them disabled the facility, since Ukrainian long-range drones carry too little explosive to wreck industrial buildings. Russia has also fortified the site, installing more than 20 towers with heavy machine guns on its territory and perimeter.

Ukraine is expanding its military activity beyond the war’s main battlefield, with Ukrainian drone specialists helping forces fighting Russian troops in Mali and operating in other parts of Africa, according to CNN.

The deployments mark a growing effort by Kyiv to challenge Russia in regions where Moscow has expanded its own military presence. Ukrainian forces are using expertise developed during the full-scale invasion, particularly in drone warfare, to support partners operating against Russian troops.

Around 15 Ukrainian drone specialists are reportedly deployed in northern Mali, where they are supporting the Tuareg-led Azawad Liberation Front in its fight against Russian forces and Mali’s military government. Several Ukrainian specialists are also reportedly operating in Sudan and Libya, according to a Ukrainian intelligence source cited by CNN.

Ukrainian drone specialists in Mali

The Ukrainian personnel in northern Mali are not directly fighting on the front line, CNN reported. Instead, they are helping train local forces and supporting their drone operations against Russian and Malian government forces.

The cooperation centers on the Tuareg-led Azawad Liberation Front, which has been fighting Mali's military government and Russian forces operating alongside it.

Ukraine's involvement with the Tuareg rebels dates back to at least 2024. After a July 2024 ambush near Tinzaouaten killed dozens of Wagner and Malian troops, Ukrainian military intelligence spokesperson Andriy Yusov said the rebels had received “necessary information.” Kyiv later denied that it had provided substantial assistance.

The relationship has since developed further. CNN reported that Ukrainian specialists assisted the rebels during fighting earlier this year, when Tuareg and al-Qaeda-linked militants attacked Russian forces and forced them to withdraw from the area around Kidal.

The cooperation does not reflect a broader political or ideological alignment between Kyiv and the Tuareg. Ukrainian personnel told CNN that the two sides are working together because they face a common enemy: Russian forces.

“Culture and religion are different, but when you are being attacked by the same idiots, ideological differences fade into the background,” a Ukrainian Defense Intelligence source told CNN.

The source said that operations against Russian forces abroad can also serve Kyiv’s war effort at home by putting additional pressure on Moscow.

“It puts pressure on them. This whole story has both psychological and real results,” he said.

The Ukrainian presence in Mali also appears to have a training role extending beyond the Tuareg. A Ukrainian Defense Intelligence source familiar with the operations told CNN that troops from Chad, Niger and Burkina Faso had previously traveled to Mali to receive drone training from Ukrainian soldiers.

Challenging Russia's African foothold

Russia has significantly expanded its military presence in Africa since the withdrawal of French and other Western forces from the Sahel.

The Africa Corps, which grew out of Wagner after the death of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, has become an important instrument of Moscow's influence in the region. Russian forces provide military support to authoritarian governments including Mali's while helping protect regimes that have pushed out Western forces.

For Ukraine, supporting forces fighting Russia in Africa provides another way to put pressure on Moscow outside Ukraine.

A Ukrainian intelligence source told CNN that overseas deployments also allow Kyiv to use the military expertise it has accumulated during the war as a tool of foreign policy and build security relationships with other countries.

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Ukraine's military footprint extends further

Mali and Sudan are part of a wider Ukrainian effort to deploy military expertise abroad.

Ukraine has also developed a military presence in Libya. An RFI investigation published in March reported that more than 200 Ukrainian officers and technical specialists were based at three locations in western Libya with the approval of the Tripoli-based government.

CNN has now confirmed, citing Ukrainian sources, that Ukrainian naval-drone specialists have used a military base in Misrata to launch attacks against Russian shadow-fleet vessels while training Libyan forces.

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Ukrainian teams have also traveled to several Middle Eastern countries to train local forces in countering Shahed-type drone attacks from Iran, which intensified its drone campaign after the start of the US-Iran war earlier this year. Such deployments build on Ukraine's extensive experience defending against Russia's large-scale drone campaigns.

The activities point to a broader shift in how Ukraine is using its wartime capabilities. Drone warfare developed to defend Ukrainian territory is increasingly being used to build partnerships, support forces fighting Russia and pursue Russian military and economic interests far beyond the front line.

For Moscow, that creates a new challenge as it tries to expand its own military footprint abroad.

Russia struck a passenger train just two kilometers from Ukraine’s border with Poland on 13 September, as Moscow continued a second day of attacks on Ukraine’s railway network and expanded strikes against transport and logistics infrastructure far from the front line.

Russia is increasingly using its expanding drone fleet to reach transport, logistics, industrial and civilian infrastructure deep inside Ukraine. Western regions, long considered safer because of their distance from the front, are now seeing strikes on railways and border crossings, making even civilian travel and routes out of the country increasingly dangerous.

The latest attack took place in Ukraine’s north-western Volyn Oblast, near the Yahodyn border crossing with Poland. According to Ukraine’s state railway operator Ukrzaliznytsia, a Russian drone struck the locomotive of a passenger train.

A monitoring team detected the threat in advance and warned the train crew, preventing casualties. The railway operator said trains to Warsaw and back were already running again after the strike, although with significant delays.

A gas station was also struck in a Russian drone strike near the Yahodyn crossing, causing a large fire, according to UNN, adding to the danger around a key transport route between Ukraine and Poland.

Poland also issued an air-raid alert for areas near the Ukrainian border, including Włodawa, Łęczyński and Świdnik counties and the cities of Chełm and Krasnystaw.

The attacks came alongside Russian strikes on railway infrastructure in several other parts of Ukraine.

Update: Diplomatic train may have been Russian drone’s target

Update 19:00: Ukrzaliznytsia later said a diplomatic train carrying security advisers from several EU member states and former European leaders, including former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, had been at Yahodyn shortly before the strike. Another train at the station during the attack carried former CIA Director David Petraeus.

Ukrzaliznytsia said the Russian drone may have been targeting the diplomatic train, which departed earlier than scheduled as railway staff adjusted train movements in real time because of the ongoing threat of Russian strikes. The operator said it continues to change routes and schedules as tracks are damaged or blocked by attacks.

Russia targets railways across Ukraine

Ukrzaliznytsia said this was the second consecutive day of Russian attacks on the railway network.

On 12 September, Russian drones struck railway facilities in Lutsk, Volyn Oblast, including a passenger train, as well as Fastiv, Kyiv Oblast. Passengers were evacuated after the threat was detected.

Ukrzaliznytsia said its monitoring center and railway personnel remain on heightened alert as Russia continues targeting the network. Evacuations and diversions have caused delays on several routes, including services toward Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and Kryvyi Rih.

Russia also attacked a railway infrastructure site in Vinnytsia Oblast on 13 September, according to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service. 

Russia’s drone campaign is expanding

Russian attacks are increasingly reaching critical infrastructure and civilian areas across Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia struck energy facilities, railway sites, businesses and residential buildings during the latest wave of attacks, including missile and drone strikes on Odesa.

Zelenskyy said Russia had launched around 2,100 drones against Ukraine in the past week, alongside nearly 1,700 guided aerial bombs and 78 missiles.

He said Russia is using jet-powered Geran drones to “destroy the economy and destroy people’s lives.”

Russia has sharply increased its use of upgraded Geran attack drones in recent months, which are faster than earlier versions and can cover the long distances needed to strike targets deep inside Ukraine. Their growing speed and scale are putting additional pressure on Ukraine’s air-defense system, which has to detect and intercept large numbers of drones across the country.

“Russia’s terrorism is a common threat for many,” Zelenskyy said, arguing that the threat must be defeated in Ukraine rather than allowed to spread further into Europe.

Border crossings increasingly targeted

The strike near Yahodyn comes after Russia began targeting Ukrainian border crossings farther from the front line.

Since late August, Russian forces have struck at least five Ukrainian crossings with Moldova and NATO member Romania. The crossings handle civilian traffic, trade and logistics that are increasingly important to Ukraine as the war continues.

On 9 September, Russian drones struck the Starokozache crossing with Moldova, killing two civilians and injuring three others. One Russian drone entered Moldovan airspace and flew toward Romania, prompting NATO aircraft conducting air-policing duties to scramble.

Russia also struck the Orlivka ferry crossing on the Romanian border twice in early September.

The attacks prompted growing concern in Poland. On 10 September, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Poland expected Russia could target Ukrainian border crossings with Poland as Moscow expands its strikes against transport and logistics routes.

Tusk said Poland had received intelligence indicating that similar attacks could occur against crossings involving other countries. He also warned that Poland and Europe needed to prepare for different scenarios along Europe’s eastern flank.

The strike near Yahodyn came only three days after that warning.

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“Russia is trying to expand the geography of its terror”

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Russia was deliberately expanding the geography of its attacks.

“Moscow tries to expand the geography of its terror,” Sybiha said, arguing that Russia is trying to turn the entire territory of Ukraine into a battlefield as it fails to achieve its objectives on the front.

He said Moscow was targeting “civilians, trains, and the infrastructure that keeps the country moving.”

Sybiha called for stronger air defenses, interceptors and counter-drone capabilities, as well as measures targeting Russia’s drone production and supply chains.

In a separate statement after the Yahodyn attack, Sybiha said Russia’s strikes near the Polish border were “not just a continuation of its attacks on our state borders.”

“This is Putin’s terror ‘knocking’ directly on the doors of the EU and NATO. Russian barbarians are at your gate, dear partners,” he said, urging European countries to respond with stronger sanctions.

Attacks moving closer to NATO

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said members of his ministry had been stuck at the same Ukrainian-Polish border crossing only hours before the latest images emerged because of the Russian drone threat.

“Russia’s attacks are becoming more intense and moving ever closer to NATO and the EU,” Tsahkna said.

For the first time, two unmanned boats have fought a battle at sea, and the Ukrainian one sank its Russian rival. The Ukrainian Defense Intelligence has spotted a Russian drone in the Black Sea, and a Sargan-3000 naval drone armed with a remote-controlled machine-gun turret opened fire and destroyed it, the Ukrainian Navy said on Telegram, calling it "the first-ever naval battle between unmanned boats."

Drone-versus-drone combat has moved from the sky to the sea. Ukraine has already rewritten naval warfare with uncrewed boats, sinking warships and pushing much of Russia's Black Sea Fleet back to port without a navy of its own to speak of.

Now it has fought and won the first duel between two robot vessels, a glimpse of automated sea combat. The claim is the Navy's. It released a video of the encounter but did not provide a date, an exact location, or the type of Russian craft, and it has not been independently verified.

A gun turret decides the duel

The Russian vessel was detected by units of the Ukrainian Defense Intelligence, the Navy said, before the Sargan-3000 closed in.

The Ukrainian drone carried an automated 12.7mm Protector remote weapon station, a turret of the same type mounted on some NATO warships, and used it to sink the Russian boat.

The published footage shows the two drones engaging and the Russian craft going under.

The Sargan-3000 reaches far

The Sargan-3000 is a Ukrainian multi-purpose strike drone that passed combat testing in April. It has a combat radius of up to 1,600 kilometers, runs at 40 to 55 knots, and carries up to 450 kilograms of payload, according to Militarnyi.

It is the same class of boat that sank the Russian border patrol ship Izumrud near Novorossiysk in July.

Ukraine keeps rewriting naval war

The battle fits a campaign that has reshaped the Black Sea. Ukrainian sea drones have sunk the corvette Ivanovets (link) and the landing ship Caesar Kunikov (link), in 2025, even shot down a Russian Su-30 fighter jet (link), and in the last ten weeks alone struck 285 vessels of Russia's shadow fleet (link).

Russia is now racing to build its own uncrewed fleet, and satellite imagery suggests it is constructing a dedicated naval-drone port in occupied Crimea, a sign that the sea, like the sky, is filling with machines that fight each other (link).

Russia’s growing ability to sustain weapons production despite Western sanctions is being driven by a flow of Chinese components and materials, Vladyslav Vlasiuk, the Ukrainian president’s commissioner for sanctions, told journalists on July 7.

Vlasiuk’s statement comes as Russia escalates its drone and missile strikes on Ukraine, while the U.S. continues to hold back on imposing tougher sanctions against Moscow and foreign-made components are still being found in Russian weapons used in the attacks.

Ukraine has previously documented that Chinese companies have contributed electronics and materials used in the production of these drones.

Just days earlier, after a large-scale Russian attack on July 4, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha shared on social media a photo of a component from a Shahed-136/Geran-2 combat drone discovered in Kyiv. According to Sybiha, the part was manufactured in China and delivered recently.

"The trend of China’s (role) is increasing," Vlasiuk told journalists.

He said that the presence of Chinese-made components and materials in Russian weapons is on the rise, adding that Beijing is expanding its technological capabilities and can now replicate some American technologies.

When asked by Kyiv about the Chinese parts found in Russian weapons, Beijing responded by claiming that such support is "non-lethal," the president's commissioner for sanctions said.

Beijing remains one of Russia's key wartime partners, helping Moscow evade Western sanctions and emerging as the leading supplier of dual-use goods used by the Russian defense industry.

In April, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that China, alongside Iran and North Korea, is supplying weapons to Russia.

His remarks followed reports that Ukrainian soldiers had captured Chinese nationals fighting together with Russia's army in Donetsk Oblast. Later, Zelensky revealed that at least "several hundred" Chinese nationals are fighting on Russia's side in Ukraine.

Ukraine has already sanctioned several Chinese companies tied to Russia’s war effort.

The South China Morning Post reported that China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi reportedly told the EU's top diplomat Kaja Kallas on July 3 that the country cannot afford for Russia to lose the war in Ukraine amid fears Washington would shift focus towards Beijing.

Experts echo Rutte’s warnings on Russian-Chinese threat to NATO, Taiwan

If Beijing moves against Taiwan, NATO might soon find itself in a two-front war with China and Russia — or so the alliance’s secretary general believes. “If Xi Jinping would attack Taiwan, he would first make sure that he makes a call to his very junior partner in all of this, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin… and telling him, ‘Hey, I’m going to do this, and I need you to to keep them busy in Europe by attacking NATO territory,’” Secretary General Mark Rutte said in a July 5 interview with the New

The Kyiv IndependentMartin Fornusek

Editor's note: This story was updated with a statement made by Ukraine's General Staff.

Ukraine's military confirmed on July 7 that it targeted a chemical plant in Russia's Moscow Oblast used for producing ammunition and explosives, the General Staff said.

The plant, located 88 kilometers (55 miles) northeast of Moscow, produces industrial and military-grade chemicals, including explosives, ammunition components, and aircraft protection systems.

Established in 1915, the plant is one of the city's largest employers and plays a key role in Russia's defense-industrial complex. Its location in Krasnozavodsk places it roughly 530 kilometers (329 miles) from the Ukrainian border.

It is affiliated with the Russian state defense conglomerate Rostec and supplies the Defense Ministry, Interior Ministry, Federal Security Service (FSB), and other law enforcement agencies.

Moscow Oblast authorities have not officially confirmed the attack. Russia's Defense Ministry claimed that air defenses intercepted or destroyed 91 Ukrainian drones across multiple regions, including eight over Moscow Oblast.

In a statement released later on July 7, Ukraine's General Staff confirmed that units from its Unmanned Systems Forces, in coordination with other elements of the Defense Forces, carried out a precision strike against the Krasnozavodsk Chemical Plant.

The facility was specifically targeted to disrupt Russia's ability to produce explosive materials and ammunition, including thermobaric warheads used in Shahed-type drones.

"A series of explosions was recorded in the area of Krasnozavodsk, and firefighting equipment was seen moving through neighboring settlements," the statement read. The results of the strike are still being assessed, it added.

The Kyiv Independent could not independently verify the reports.

The reported strike comes as part of Ukraine's broader campaign to disrupt Russian logistics, weapons production, and supply lines far behind the front line.

In recent months, Ukrainian drones have hit multiple industrial and military sites across Russia, including oil depots, airfields, and electronics facilities.

After airport chaos, tanker blast, Putin fires Russian transport minister

The dismissal comes amid a series of high-profile disruptions to Russia’s aviation and shipping sectors.

The Kyiv IndependentTim Zadorozhnyy

Drones attacked Russia's Black Sea Fleet at the port of Novorossiysk in Krasnodar Krai overnight on July 6, the Russian media outlet Astra reported.

Ukraine has not officially commented on the reported strikes, and the Kyiv Independent could not independently verify the claims.

An air alert was sounded in the city for several hours, and air defense was active. The consequences of the attack are still being determined, according to Astra.

The media outlet also published footage purportedly showing a burning maritime drone that was allegedly shot down during the attack.

Krasnodar Krai is located east of Crimea, with the Kerch Strait separating them at their closest point.

Ukraine regularly strikes military targets within Russia as Moscow continues to wage its war against Ukraine.

The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that Russian forces downed 120 drones overnight on July 6.

Thirty drones were shot down over Bryansk Oblast, 29 over Kursk Oblast, and 18 over Oryol Oblast, according to the ministry. An additional 17 and 13 drones were reportedly intercepted over Belgorod and Tula oblasts, respectively, the ministry said.

Due to drone attacks in Russia, numerous flights were canceled or delayed at several airports, including Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, overnight between July 5 and July 6.

Ukrainian drone strike on Russian airfield hits bomb depot, aircraft

The airfield hosts Su-34, Su-35S, and Su-30SM jets that Russia regularly uses in air strikes against Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian military.

The Kyiv IndependentOlena Goncharova

Editor's note: The story was updated with new reports about operations at Russian airports during drone strikes.

Several Russian airports have canceled flights due to safety concerns over Ukrainian drone attacks, the Russian Federal Aviation Agency (Rosaviatsia) reported on July 6.

Rosaviatsia reported on the evening of July 6 that 287 flights had been grounded across three major airports: Moscow's Sheremetyevo,  St. Petersburg's Pulkovo, and Strigino Airport in Nizhny Novgorod.

The restrictions follow a wave of closures the previous night, also triggered by drone threats. Russia's Defense Ministry claimed that it had intercepted 120 drones on Russian territory overnight between July 5 and July 6.

Ukraine hasn't commented on the report. Kyiv's drone campaign, which has increasingly disrupted civilian air travel in Russia, is part of Ukraine's broader strategy to undermine Russia's logistics far beyond the front line.

Rosaviatsia confirmed the temporary pause in flights at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, citing airspace restrictions over the capital and strong winds. At Sheremetyevo, 171 flights were canceled and 56 more were delayed, causing crowds of passengers to form at the airport.

At Pulkovo, 90 flights were canceled and 37 remain delayed due to safety concerns. In Nizhny Novgorod, 26 flights were canceled and 13 delayed. Flight restrictions have also been imposed on Russia's Ivanovo, Kaluga, Pskov, and Tambov airports, the agency said.

The Kyiv Independent couldn't immediately verify these claims.

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This latest drone attack on Moscow follows an earlier Ukrainian operation targeting the Borisoglebsk airfield in Russia's Voronezh Oblast overnight on July 5.

Ukraine's General Staff reported that the strike damaged a warehouse containing guided bombs, aircraft, and other military assets.

The Borisoglebsk airfield is known to host Su-34, Su-35S, and Su-30SM jets, which Russia regularly employs in air strikes against Ukraine. Military assessments are underway, with initial reports suggesting a training and combat aircraft may have been destroyed.

NASA's Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) detected a fire near the Borisoglebsk military airfield shortly after the strike. Residents in the area reported 8–10 powerful explosions around 2 a.m. local time, according to the Russian independent outlet Astra.

The attack on Borisoglebsk was part of a broader overnight drone campaign across Russia, with explosions and fires reported in at least six regions.

Serhii Bratchuk, spokesperson for the Ukrainian Defense Army's Southern Division, told the Kyiv Independent in May that Ukraine is shifting its drone strategy, deliberately aiming to disrupt Russian aviation operations and make the war visible to the Russian population.

Trump says Putin ‘wants to keep killing people,’ signals US may send Patriots to Ukraine

“It just seems like he wants to go all the way and just keep killing people. It’s not good,” U.S. President Donald Trump said.

The Kyiv IndependentTim Zadorozhnyy

Ukraine struck a critical Russian military-industrial site overnight on July 5 that produces components for high-precision weapons used by Moscow to attack Ukraine, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces reported.

The site in question is JSC VNIIR-Progress, a Russian state institute that specializes in developing electronic warfare (EW) systems, including the Kometa antenna arrays, used to jam satellite, radio, and radar signals.

The institute is located in Cheboksary, Chuvash Republic, about 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) away from the Ukrainian border.

The Kometa antenna is used in Shahed-type drones, Iskander-K cruise missiles, and guided aerial bomb modules — all high-precision weapons used by Russia to strike civilian and military targets across Ukraine.

The General Staff confirmed that Ukrainian weapons reached the target area but said final damage assessments were still underway.

The VNIIR-Progress institute has been sanctioned by both the United States and the European Union for its role in supporting Russia's war effort.

The Iskander-K is a precision-guided cruise missile with a range of up to 500 kilometers (311 miles), frequently used by Russia to target civilian areas. Shahed drones have become a central part of Moscow's airstrike tactics since late 2022 due to their low cost and high payload.

Located on the Volga River, Cheboksary is the capital of the Chuvash Republic and lies deep inside Russian territory. Russian independent media outlet Astra and local Telegram channels earlier reported explosions in the city overnight.

Russia's Defense Ministry claimed to have shot down two drones over the region.

This marks the second known Ukrainian drone strike on VNIIR-Progress. On June 9, explosions and fires were also reported at the facility following another drone attack.

Russia's largest airports experienced hours-long flight delays and cancellations on July 5, as authorities imposed temporary restrictions due to a reported threat of Ukrainian drone attacks, the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel Shot reported.

Ukraine hasn't commented on the report. Kyiv's drone campaign, which has increasingly disrupted civilian air travel in Russia, is part of Ukraine's broader strategy to undermine Russia's logistics far beyond the front line.

Some passengers in Russia reported waiting more than 10 hours on July 5 as their flights were being delayed, according to Shot.

Departures at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport were halted for several hours, delaying over 20 flights. At St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Airport, roughly 50 flights were delayed and more than 20 canceled.

Leningrad Oblast Governor Alexander Drozdenko said that two drones were shot down south of St. Petersburg, prompting a temporary suspension of operations at Pulkovo Airport.

The disruptions followed a wave of Ukrainian drone attacks overnight, which targeted military and industrial infrastructure in at least six Russian regions.

The Russian Defense Ministry said it intercepted 42 drones within three hours, mainly over the Belgorod, Bryansk, and Kursk oblasts near the Ukrainian border.

Novaya Gazeta Europe reported in May that at least 217 temporary airport closures have occurred across Russia since Jan. 1 due to drone threats, more than in 2023 and 2024 combined.

A similar wave of strikes ahead of Russia's Victory Day in May led to massive delays, affecting an estimated 60,000 travelers.

Ukraine’s new drone strategy — cripple Moscow’s airports, make Russian population ‘pay’

Hundreds of Ukrainian kamikaze drones have flown towards Moscow in recent weeks. None appear to have even reached the Russian capital, yet the effect on the city — and the wider country — has been hugely significant. Ukrainian drones have forced at least 217 temporary airport closures across Russia since Jan. 1,

The Kyiv IndependentTim Zadorozhnyy

A Russian missile and drone strike on Odesa on July 3 damaged the building of the Chinese Consulate General, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on July 4.

"Following tonight's massive Russian air attack on Ukraine, we discovered in Kyiv a component of a Russian-Iranian Shahed-136/Geran-2 combat drone, which was made in China and supplied just recently," Sybiha wrote on X.

"And right on the eve, the Chinese Consulate General's building in Odesa suffered minor damage."

The July 3 assault on Odesa killed two people and injured six others. China has not publicly acknowledged the incident or reported any damage to its diplomatic premises in the city.

The Shahed-136 drone, a loitering munition used by Russia in its attacks on Ukrainian cities, has been assembled in large numbers in Russia with components sourced globally.

Ukraine has previously documented that Chinese companies have contributed electronics and materials used in the production of these drones.

Beijing remains one of Russia's key wartime partners, helping Moscow evade Western sanctions and emerging as the leading supplier of dual-use goods used by the Russian defense industry.

China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi reportedly told EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas on July 3 that Beijing cannot afford for Russia to lose the war in Ukraine, according to the South China Morning Post, which cited unnamed sources familiar with the conversation.

The reported statement adds to growing concerns in Kyiv over China's expanding role in supporting Russia's war effort. President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly accused China of siding with Moscow.

As Russian-Chinese relations deepen, Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to visit China in September for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, where he is scheduled to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Zelensky, Trump discuss air defense, joint drone production amid Russian strikes

“Today we discussed the situation: Russian air strikes and, more broadly, the situation on the front lines. President Trump is very well informed,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

The Kyiv IndependentTim Zadorozhnyy

Editor's note: This story was updated with a statement made by Ukraine's General Staff.

Drones struck multiple targets in Russia overnight on July 4, including a high-value defense facility in the southern Rostov region, according to Andrii Kovalenko, head of the counter-disinformation center at Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council.

Kovalenko said a drone hit the Azov Optical and Mechanical Plant in the town of Azov, Rostov Oblast. The facility reportedly manufactures critical components for the Russian military, including sights, rangefinders, thermal imaging systems, and fire control equipment for tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, ships, and aircraft.

"Despite the difficult night, there is also good news. There were attacks on facilities in Russia, particularly in Moscow and Rostov regions," Kovalenko wrote. "This is where the 'eyes' for Russian armored vehicles are assembled."

Overnight on July 4, Russia launched a massive drone and missile assault on multiple Ukrainian cities, with Kyiv as the primary target. At least 23 people were injured in the capital amid widespread destruction and high levels of air pollution.

Ukraine's General Staff later confirmed that its drone units, operating in coordination with other elements of the Defense Forces, also struck the Scientific Research Institute of Applied Chemistry (FNTs NIIPKh) in Sergiyev Posad, Moscow Oblast.

The military said the facility is involved in the production of thermobaric warheads for Shahed-type drones and plays a critical role in Russia's airstrike capabilities.

"We confirmed that our munitions hit the target," the General Staff said. "A fire and heavy smoke were detected in the area of the facility." The full extent of the damage is still being assessed.

Russian officials also confirmed drone strikes across several regions.

Yuriy Slyusar, acting governor of Rostov Oblast, said a number of towns in the region were struck by drones. In the city of Azov, the attack reportedly damaged several cars and shattered windows in residential buildings. Debris from one drone allegedly fell onto a local stadium.

In the village of Dolotinka, a drone strike reportedly caused the collapse of a section of a residential apartment building, killing an elderly woman. Authorities said 20 residents were evacuated from the damaged structure.

In Sergiyev Posad in Moscow Oblast, four explosions were reported around 5 a.m. near the Zvezdochka neighborhood, accompanied by the sound of drone engines, according to local residents. Oksana Yerokhanova, head of the district, said a power substation was damaged in the incident.

Two people were injured in Sergiyev Posad, according to Governor Andrei Vorobyov.

Russia's Defense Ministry later claimed that air defense systems had intercepted or destroyed 48 Ukrainian drones overnight. According to the ministry, 26 were downed over Rostov Oblast, 12 over Kursk Oblast, six over Belgorod Oblast, three over Oryol Oblast, and one over Lipetsk Oblast.

The Kyiv Independent could not independently verify these claims.

Ukraine scrambles to clarify extent of US military aid pause and ‘whether everything will continue’

When the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) halted the transfer of critical air defense missiles and other weapons to Ukraine, Kyiv and its partners were caught off-guard and are now left scrambling for clarity on the scope and length of the Trump administration’s decision. The White House confirmed the halt after a July 1 report by Politico said shipments were paused due to concerns over the size of domestic stockpiles. The decision “was made to put America’s interests first following a DOD rev

The Kyiv IndependentAndrea Januta

Editor's note: This is a developing story and is being updated.

Explosions rocked the city of Kyiv for more than seven hours overnight on July 4, as Russia launched a record missile and drone attack targeting the capital and other cities across Ukraine.

At least one person was killed, and 23 others injured in Kyiv. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said 14 people had been hospitalized, while Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration, in the afternoon confirmed a body had been found during rescue operations.

"Today’s attack was like the worst nightmare come to life," Kyiv resident Olha Vershynina told the Kyiv Independent at the site of damaged residential buildings in the capital's Solomianskyi district. "Because when the strike happened, the lights went out and glass came crashing down on my head.

"It was terrifying. Our entire building was shaking."

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia launched a record 550 drones and missiles during the seven-hour barrage. Kyiv Independent journalists on the ground heard multiple rounds of explosions in the city beginning around 8 p.m. local time on July 3 and continuing into the early hours of July 4

The attack damaged apartment buildings, businesses, a school, a medical facility, railway lines, and other civilian infrastructure in multiple districts. Fires blazed across the city, making the air dangerous to breathe.

Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration, warned residents to close their windows due to dangerous levels of "combustion products" in the air.

"Russia, a terrorist country, has wreaked havoc," Tkachenko wrote on Telegram. "The Russians bring nothing but terror and murder. That is a fact."

Liliia Kuzmenko, 23-years-old and eight months pregnant, moved to Kyiv a month ago with her husband from the embattled city of Pokrovsk, Donetsk Oblast.

"The kind of explosions I heard here were unlike anything I heard in Pokrovsk. It’s just beyond words," she told the Kyiv Independent. "Fortunately, everything in our apartment is intact. But in others, the windows were blown out, and everything fell apart."

Ukraine's Air Force reported that Russia had launched a ballistic missile towards Kyiv at around 12:30 a.m, and then additional missiles around 2:30 a.m.

"This time was truly terrifying.," Maria Maznichenko, a pensioner who lives in Kyiv's Solomianskyi district. "The explosions kept coming. Shaheds drones were flying in every minute, like a swarm of bees — one after another. It was very frightening."

As officials reported real-time updates on damage and casualties amid the ongoing assault, Kyiv Independent reporters in the city said that smoke from explosions clogged the air even in neighborhoods far from the attack sites.

The massive assault came hours after a phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump, during which Putin reaffirmed that "Russia will continue to pursue its goals" in Ukraine despite calls for a ceasefire from the West.

"The first air raids in our cities and regions began yesterday almost simultaneously with the start of media discussions of President Trump's phone call with Putin," Zelensky said in a post on social media on July 4.

"This was one of the most large-scale air attacks – deliberately massive and cynical... Russia is once again demonstrating that it is not going to end the war and terror."

Tkachenko reported that an earlier drone strike damaged a residential building in the city's Obolon district, causing a fire to break out on the roof.

In the Sviatoshynskyi district, drone wreckage caused fires at storage facilities and hit the courtyard of a 16-story apartment building, Klitschko said. Vehicles in the area caught fire after the attack. Another fire broke out at a business in the district due to falling drone debris.

In the Dniprovskyi district, drone debris fell near a school and several residential buildings, Tkachenko reported.

Fires also broke out in the Solomianskyi district, Klitschko said. An administrative building was in flames after the attack, as were storage facilities and a garage. Debris damaged "non-residential buildings" in the area.

Klitschko reported another fire on the first floor of an 8-story residential building in the Shevchenkivskyi district, but said the building was not inhabited. Another fire broke out at a business in the same district.

A medical facility in the Holosiivskyi district was damaged in the attack, Klitschko said.

Ukrainian Railways (Ukrzaliznytsia) said that the attack damaged rail infrastructure in Kyiv and cautioned residents to expect delays due to diverted routes.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said that the consular section of Poland's embassy in Kyiv was damaged during Russia's attack on Kyiv. "I just spoke with Ambassador (Piotr) Lukasiewicz; everyone is safe and unharmed," Sikorski said.

He added that Ukraine urgently needs air defense systems.

Russia also targeted other regions of Ukraine with overnight attacks. Downed drones struck property and a vehicle in the city of Poltava, regional Governor Volodymyr Kohut reported. The strike injured two people.

Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities have faced intensified drone and missile strikes in recent weeks, with Russia deploying Iranian-designed Shahed drones in record numbers.

Russia on June 17 launched one of its largest attacks against Kyiv since the start of the full-scale war, killing 28 people and injuring 134 others. Less than a week later, ballistic missiles and kamikaze drones assailed the city in another mass strike.

Ukrainian officials have warned that continued attacks are aimed at wearing down air defense systems and terrorizing civilians.

Despite Russia's escalating attacks and Ukraine's desperate need for air defense munitions, the U.S. has decided to halt shipments of Patriot missiles and other promised weapons to Kyiv, claiming it needs to bolster its own stockpiles.

Ukraine scrambles to clarify extent of U.S. military aid pause and ‘whether everything will continue’

When the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) halted the transfer of critical air defense missiles and other weapons to Ukraine, Kyiv and its partners were caught off-guard and are now left scrambling for clarity on the scope and length of the Trump administration’s decision. The White House confirmed the halt after a July 1 report by Politico said shipments were paused due to concerns over the size of domestic stockpiles. The decision “was made to put America’s interests first following a DOD rev

The Kyiv IndependentAndrea Januta

Ukraine signed a major deal with U.S. company Swift Beat to co-produce hundreds of thousands of drones this year, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on July 3 during his visit to Denmark.

The long-term strategic partnership agreement was signed by Ukraine's Defense Minister Rustem Umerov and Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Swift Beat, in Denmark on the same day.

Under the deal, the company will produce various kinds of unmanned aerial vehicles for Ukraine, including those designed to intercept Russian drones and missiles, reconnaissance, attack, and other drones, Zelensky said in a statement published on the website of the President's Office.

"The key priority is interceptor drones that have already proven effective in Ukraine," Zelensky said. "We've tested models from several companies, and now we're signing serious contracts."

Swift Beat will increase its production capacity, aiming to produce hundreds of thousands of drones for Ukraine this year, with plans to scale up production in 2026, according to Zelensky.

"Modern drones will be supplied to Ukraine as a priority, on special terms and at cost," Zelensky said.

The announcement comes just a day after the U.S. Defense Department (DOD) has halted shipments of some air defense missiles and other weapons previously promised to Kyiv. Ukraine has been trying to negotiate buying U.S. weapons for months after U.S. President Donald Trump, who has opposed military aid to Kyiv, took office in January.

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Swift Beat has a significant presence in Ukraine, according to Zelensky's office. It specializes in autonomous AI-powered drones and cooperates with Ukrainian engineers and the military, conducting drone testing on Ukrainian territory, the statement reads.

Zelensky arrived in Denmark on July 3 to mark the country's assumption of the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union.

Zelensky also said that during his visit, he plans to raise the issue of political blockages hindering Ukraine's path to joining the European Union.

"We're ready to open three accession clusters and want to start with one now, in the very near future. But political blockages remain, purely political," he said.

While EU member states agreed to take into account the European Commission's assessment that Ukraine is ready to open the first, Fundamentals cluster, the process remains stalled due to Hungary's refusal to grant unanimous support.

Ukraine applied for EU membership in 2022 and was granted candidate status shortly thereafter, but full negotiations require the approval of all 27 EU member states.

Denmark has been a key backer of Ukraine since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. In February 2024, Copenhagen signed a 10-year bilateral security agreement with Kyiv, pledging long-term defense cooperation until Ukraine secures NATO membership.

Zelensky said he expects Denmark to expand its financial support for Ukraine's drone and missile production initiatives.

"What we've just signed requires significant funding. I'm counting on our relationship with Denmark," the president said.

The Ukrainian president will also participate in official events commemorating Denmark's presidency of the Council. According to Danish broadcaster DR, the events will be attended by Denmark's royal family, government officials, and EU leaders.

‘One of Russia’s most critical targets’ — Ukraine confirms strike on missile battery plant in Lipetsk

The Energia plant in Yelets produces parts for ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as batteries for drones and glide bombs. The factory was previously targeted multiple times this past May.

The Kyiv IndependentVolodymyr Ivanyshyn

Ukrainian drones struck a Russian ammunition depot in occupied Donetsk Oblast overnight on July 3, setting off a series of huge explosions, Ukraine's State Security Service said on July 3.

"Starting at 10 p.m., explosions rang out at the depots, followed by a powerful secondary detonation of ammunition and a fire," the SBU said in a post on social media.

According to the SBU, the ammunition depot is located in the occupied Ukrainian city of Khartsyzsk, near Donetsk, which is "of important strategic importance, as it is used by the Russians as a rear base."

"The enemy has placed command posts, logistics centers, and ammunition depots there. All of them are legitimate military targets," the statement added.

Unconfirmed videos posted to social media show a fire already burning followed by a large explosion and shockwave.

Elsewhere on July 3, Ukraine confirmed strikes on the Energia factory in Russia's Lipetsk Oblast overnight, a facility that produces components for missiles and drones, including batteries for the Iskander missile system and cruise missiles.

Andrii Kovalenko, head of the Counter-Disinformation Center at Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, confirmed the strike, calling Energia "one of the most critical targets for Russia."

According to Kovalenko, the facility manufactures batteries for missile guidance and glider modules, including for the Iskander system and cruise missiles.

Ukraine's military regularly strikes military targets in Russian-occupied territories and deep within Russia in an attempt to diminish Moscow's fighting power as it continues its war against Ukraine.

On the evening of June 30, Ukraine similarly struck a command post of the 8th Combined Arms Army of the Russian Armed Forces in the Russian-occupied part of Donetsk Oblast.

Russia has for months focused its offensive efforts on the embattled town of Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast and has recently been escalating attempts to break through to neighboring Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, a region that has not yet seen combat.

BREAKING: Deputy commander of Russian Navy killed in Ukrainian strike in Kursk, Russian official confirms

Major General Mikhail Gudkov also led a brigade involved in combat operations against Ukraine. His death reportedly occurred during a Ukrainian attack on a Russian command post.

The Kyiv IndependentAnna Fratsyvir

Skyeton Prevail Solutions, a joint venture between Ukrainian drone manufacturer Skyeton and U.K.-based defense company Prevail Solutions, will manufacture and supply Raybird drones in the U.K., the two companies announced on July 2.

"Skyeton — a Ukrainian unmanned aircraft systems company with 19 years of engineering pedigree, and Prevail Partners — a leading U.K. defense and security company, announced a joint venture to fast-track the volume manufacture, supply, and support for the integration of its best-in-class drone into U.K. military applications," a statement by the two companies said.

Ukraine has developed drones that have proven to be effective amid the onset of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine in February 2022 and Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014.

President Volodymyr Zelensky and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer met in London on June 23, where the two leaders agreed to an "industrial military co-production agreement."

"The joint venture will scale the availability of Raybird with new manufacturing in the U.K. for both deployment in Ukraine and provide the necessary integration expertise from Prevail Partners for U.K. and other Western militaries," the statement said.

U.K. lawmaker Iain Duncan Smith described the move as an "important step" for U.K. drone production.

Skyeton says its Raybird drone has over 350,000 flight hours and is responsible for billions of dollars in Russian losses.

Ukraine has relied on drones to meet its own defense needs, as foreign military aid has fallen short in supplying necessary weapons and air defenses.

Ukraine’s new interceptor UAVs are starting to knock Russia’s long-range Shahed drones out of the sky

Russia’s Shahed drone swarms are pummeling Ukraine on a nightly basis, inflicting ever more death and destruction in cities that had managed to carve out some sense of normalcy amid wartime. Civilian alarm has grown. With traditional air defense stockpiles running low, the government is banking on newly created

The Kyiv IndependentKollen Post

Russia has the capacity to launch as many as 500 Iranian-designed Shahed attack drones at Ukraine in a single attack, but doing so on a daily basis is not possible, Ukraine's military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said on July 2, according to Suspilne.

In recent weeks, Russia has intensified its drone assaults on Ukrainian cities, often launching hundreds in a single day. The largest aerial attack since the start of the full-scale invasion occurred overnight on June 29, when Moscow launched 477 drones and 60 missiles across Ukraine.

"Launching 450–500 Shaheds every day — it's just not realistic," said Budanov during a ceremony recognizing five Ukrainian intelligence achievements in the national record book, according to public broadcaster Suspilne.

"But unfortunately, they do have the ability to do it periodically. They can realistically launch up to 500 in one strike," Budanov added.

Budanov also said Russia is upgrading the capabilities of the Shahed-type drones by improving their CRPA (Controlled Reception Pattern Antenna) systems, which protect the drones from GPS jamming. He noted that Russian engineers are now producing 16-channel CRPA antennas, which are harder to counter electronically.

"These antennas are currently produced in Russia, but the engineer who developed this CRPA antenna was here in Ukraine," Budanov said.

"Back in the early 2000s, no one here needed it, so the engineer moved to Russia. One (of the two engineers involved in the development) has already died under unclear circumstances. The other is still alive, though probably not for long."

Russia has used thousands of Shahed-type drones throughout its full-scale invasion to strike Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, often in large overnight waves. Ukrainian air defenses have adapted over time but face growing challenges as Moscow improves drone resilience and electronic warfare capabilities.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Moscow has launched 28,743 Shahed-type drones at Ukraine since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion.

Budanov also said Russia has made unsuccessful attempts to develop its own naval drones. The last known effort came in early June, when experimental models detonated before reaching Ukrainian territorial waters, he said.

"They didn't achieve results. Based on our information, they were heading toward the city of Yuzhne, searching for targets," he said.

Ukraine has been using domestically developed Magura naval drones to target Russian military assets in the Black Sea, keeping much of Russia's fleet pinned in port.

Despite their small size, the unmanned surface vessels have proven effective, including in a May 2 operation when Ukraine's military intelligence used Magura-7 drones armed with air-to-air missiles to shoot down two Russian Su-30 fighter jets near Novorossiysk. It was the first recorded instance of fighter jets being downed by naval drones.

Ukraine shows its latest ‘ship-killer’ Magura drone series to the public for the first time

The Magura drones, as well as the Sea Baby drones of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), were pivotal in turning the tide of the war in the Black Sea, destroying or damaging Russian ships and other assets.

The Kyiv IndependentMartin Fornusek

Ukrainian drones struck the Saratovorgsintez oil refinery in Russia's Saratov Oblast, causing damage to the facility, Ukraine's General Staff reported on July 1.

"An important facility has been hit," the General Staff said via its official Telegram channel.

The Saratovorgsintez refinery and chemical plant, owned by Russian energy giant Lukoil, is located nearly 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) from Ukraine's border in the city of Saratov. The city hosts multiple strategic military and industrial sites.

The refinery was targeted to "reduce the enemy's offensive capabilities," the General Staff wrote.

"The occupiers use the capacity of this refinery to supply fuel and lubricants to Russian military units involved in the armed aggression against Ukraine."

The attack was a joint operation carried out by Ukraine's military intelligence agency (HUR) and other military units, the General Staff said. A fire broke out at the site of the attack and damage to the refinery's technological installations has been confirmed. The full consequences of the strike are still being investigated.

The Kyiv Independent could not verify these claims.

The report is the latest in a series of announcements on July 1 about successful Ukrainian strikes on Russian targets. Earlier in the day, HUR released footage of Ukraine's UJ-26 drones, commonly known as Bober (Beavers), targeting high-value Russian air defenses and a fighter jet in occupied Crimea.

A source in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) told the Kyiv Independent that Ukrainian drones struck a major Russian military plant in the city of Izhevsk, over 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) from the front lines.

Ukraine also hit a Russian command post in occupied Donetsk Oblast, according to the General Staff.

Ukraine war latest: Ukrainian drones strike Russian plant 1,300km from border, SBU source says

Key developments on July 1: * ‘With surgical precision’ — Ukrainian drones strike Russian plant 1,300km away, SBU source says * Russian missile strike on Dnipropetrovsk Oblast kills brigade commander, injures 30 people, Zelensky says * Ukrainian forces hit Russian command post in occupied Donetsk Oblast, General Staff says * Zelensky signs ratification of

The Kyiv IndependentThe Kyiv Independent news desk

Ukraine's military intelligence agency (HUR) released on July 1 video footage showing domestically produced drones striking multiple Russian air defense assets and a fighter jet in occupied Crimea in what it described as a successful special operation.

The undated footage shows the combat use of UJ-26 drones, commonly known as Bober (Beavers), targeting high-value Russian military systems.

"These reliable weapons in the hands of HUR special forces are turning critically important Russian targets into useless scrap," the agency said in a statement.

HUR added that the Bober drones are effectively "gnawing through" Russia's expensive air defense systems "like barberries."

The released footage shows that the strikes destroyed or severely damaged several Russian military assets, including a Pantsir-S1 air defense system and its crew, a Niobium-SV radar, a Pechora-3 coastal radar, a Protivnik-GE radar, and a Su-30 fighter jet stationed at the Saky airfield in occupied Crimea.

The Kyiv Independent could not verify HUR's claims.

The strikes are part of Ukraine's ongoing efforts to degrade Russian military capabilities in Crimea, which has been under Russian occupation since 2014. Moscow reported Ukrainian drone strikes against the peninsula earlier on July 1, with the Crimean Wind Telegram channel reporting attacks in the vicinity of S-300/S-400 air defense systems.

Ukraine has increasingly deployed new drone systems to target Russian military assets on the front line and deep inside the Russian rear.

Russia-Iran alliance wavers as Tehran suffers major blows

Tehran, Russia’s main ally in the Middle East, has been dealt a heavy blow as Israel dismantled its network of proxies and then struck targets in Iran. The recent Iranian-Israeli war, which ended with a ceasefire on June 24, showed that the regional balance of power has shifted in Israel’s favor. This could have a major impact on Russian-Iranian relations as Moscow will have to recalibrate its approach to the region. Russian-Iranian cooperation is likely to continue but Iran’s ability to help

The Kyiv IndependentOleg Sukhov

Ukraine's defense technology cluster Brave1 has launched the development of anti-drone rifle rounds, significantly increasing the chances of hitting fast-moving aerial targets, the group said in a statement on June 30.

According to Brave1, the ammunition appears similar to standard rounds used in automatic rifles but features a specially designed warhead that increases the likelihood of shooting down FPV (first-person-view) drones or commercial quadcopters such as the DJI Mavic before they strike.

These types of drones are being used extensively on the battlefield by both Ukrainian and Russian forces. The cost-effective FPV drones have proven highly effective in destroying expensive military equipment.

The manufacturer has already codified the new rounds according to NATO standards, Brave1 said. The goal is to supply every infantry soldier with a magazine of specialized ammunition for use in case of aerial threats.

"These rounds that significantly improve the chances of hitting a moving target are a new development by Brave1," Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said.

"Our common goal is to ensure that every infantryman has a magazine of such ammunition and can equip his rifle with it in case of an air threat."

Ukraine continues to scale up its drone warfare capabilities. The Defense Ministry said on March 10 that it plans to purchase 4.5 million FPV drones in 2025 at a cost exceeding Hr 110 billion ($2.6 billion), with most of the funds allocated through the Defense Procurement Agency.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has set a goal of producing at least 30,000 long-range drones in 2025.

Tired of military aid delays, Ukraine has designed its own ballistic missile — and it’s already in mass-production

Ukraine announced on June 13 that its short-range Sapsan ballistic missile would go into mass production, a major development in Kyiv’s ongoing efforts to domestically produce the weapons it needs to fight Russia’s full-scale invasion. As Ukraine faces growing challenges in securing weapons from Western partners, and Russia continues launching

The Kyiv IndependentYuliia Taradiuk

Editor's note: This is a developing story and is being updated.

Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR) struck on June 28 the 1060th Material-Technical Support Center in the city of Bryansk, Ukraine's General Staff said.

The facilities store a Russian missile and drone arsenal, Ukrainska Pravda reported, citing a source in HUR.

Local residents reported hearing explosions and gun fire throughout the morning of June 28. Pictures posted on social media show smoke billowing from the area of where the centre, formerly the the 120th arsenal of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate, is located in an industrial area in the southern part of the city.

The General Staff said it was assessing the strike as extent of the damage was not immediately clear.

Bryansk Oblast Governor Alexander Bogomaz acknowledged a drone attack on the region overnight claiming that four civilians were injured in the attack, damaging ten homes and a vehicle.

Later in the morning, Bogomaz claimed that all the drones had been downed by Russian air defense unit in a separate attack, claiming that no damage had been inflicted. He did not mention the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate in his comments.

The Kyiv Independent cannot immediately verify the reports or claims made by Russian officials.

Bryansk Oblast, located in Russia's far-west, borders Ukraine's Chernihiv and Sumy Oblast, and has been the target of various Ukrainian strikes.

Ukraine's military regularly conducts strikes onto Russian and Russian-occupied territory.

Drones operated by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) struck the Kirovske military airfield in occupied Crimea overnight on June 28, the SBU told the Kyiv Independent. The attack destroyed Mi-8, Mi-26 and Mi-28 attack helicopters, and a Pantsyr-S1 self-propelled anti-aircraft missile and gun system, the SBU claimed.

Ukrainian drone strike on Crimea air base destroys 3 Russian helicopters, SBU claims

The attack destroyed Mi-8, Mi-26 and Mi-28 attack helicopters, and a Pantsyr-S1 self-propelled anti-aircraft missile and gun system, the Security Service of Ukraine told the Kyiv Independent.

The Kyiv IndependentKateryna Denisova

President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree on June 27 imposing sanctions on 52 Russian citizens as well as an additional 34 Russian companies and one Chinese entity involved in the production of Shahed-type drones and chip manufacturing machinery.

Ukraine introduced new restrictions as Russia has escalated drone attacks against Ukrainian cities over the past weeks, launching upwards of 400-500 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) per night.

Individuals and legal entities subject to Ukrainian sanctions cannot do business and trade in Ukraine, cannot withdraw their capital from the country. In the meantime, their assets are blocked, as well as their access to public and defense procurement, and entry into the territory of Ukraine, among other restrictions.

Andrii Yermak, head of the Presidential Office, said on Telegram that the sanction primarily enterprises and individuals collaborating with a Shahed manufacturing facility located in the town of Yelbuga in Russia's Tatarstan.

Russia has launched thousands of cheap but effective Iranian-designed Shahed drones against Ukraine since the fall of 2022. Originally designed in Iran, Russia has since produced its own Shahed-type drones on Russian territory.

Drones have become one of the defining tools of the full-scale war, used extensively by both Ukraine and Russia for surveillance, long-range strikes, and tactical battlefield advantage.

Earlier in the day, Zelensky signed a decree to coordinate sanctions against Russia with international partners, particularly the European Union and the Group of Seven (G7).

EU reportedly fails to adopt new Russia sanctions due to Hungarian, Slovak opposition

Unlike Ukraine-skeptic Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Slovakia has not previously attempted to block EU sanctions.

The Kyiv IndependentKateryna Hodunova