Ukraine's army doesn't have as extensive human resources as Russia, so it is teaching its machines to do more of the work on their own. Ukrainian developers are building autonomy into aerial and ground drones so the systems take over tasks the operator once did, the defense outlet Oboronka reported.

Across reconnaissance, bombing, interception, and ground robots, Ukrainian firms are automating the steps that once tied up a pilot, allowing a single operator to run multiple drones at once.

Automating reconnaissance and mission planning

The heaviest early demand for autonomy is in reconnaissance. Farsight Vision's FSV Platform builds real-time 3D terrain maps from drone imagery for planning assaults and strikes, and models where enemy electronic warfare and radio dead zones lie, so FPV pilots can avoid losing their link.

Meanwhile, Sine Engineering offers "autonomy modules" that let a drone navigate on its own. A Mavic flies to an observation point, works for 30 to 40 minutes, and returns, with the pilot only turning the camera, so one operator can run several drones.

"70 to 80% of the need for autonomy right now is reconnaissance," Sine Engineering CEO Andrii Chulyk said.

Autonomy for bombers and FPVs

Heavy bomber drones waste most of a pilot's time in transit. A bomber's target can sit 35 to 60 kilometers from launch, over 25 minutes each way, and a mass raid needs a pilot per drone, so Lasar's Group uses route-planning software to tie up to five bombers to one pilot, who connects for a few minutes to line up each strike.

A single pilot can carry out bombing runs one after another with a group of bombers, preserving personnel for other missions.

Autonomous FPVs are pricier but far more capable: Chulyk estimated an AI drone that finds and destroys a target in a swarm would cost $2,000 to $3,000, against about $700 for a pilot-flown night FPV with auto-capture.

Sine Engineering argues one automated FPV can replace up to ten simpler drones in hard missions, while The Fourth Law's Maksym Savanevskyi favors adding auto-capture to cheap existing drones, which he says makes a radio-controlled drone two to four times more effective.

"Fire and forget" for interceptors and robots

The hardest problem for interceptor drones is the "last mile", spotting a small target against open sky. The Fourth Law's TFL Anti-Shahed module scans the sky and detects targets at twice the range of the human eye, marking a Shahed so the pilot knows where to fly.

Savanevskyi predicts Ukrainian makers will field automatic Shahed-killing solutions by year's end. That points toward "fire and forget" interception, said Yevhen Lesin of the 412th Nemesis unmanned-systems brigade, though he warned against autonomy for its own sake, noting automated launch from ground robots creates technical problems and needs more people, not fewer.

Ground-robot autopilots remain among the field's hardest tasks: DevDroid's Oleh Fedoryshyn noted it took Tesla ten years to make the car autopilot work. At the same time, frontline dirt roads, cratered and unmarked, are nothing like marked highways, so DevDroid's robots now cross only short link-dead stretches on their own before the operator resumes control.

A Ukrainian officer says the army still has no proper system for getting its wounded off the battlefield. Tetiana Chornovov, the commander of a platoon of anti-tank guided missile systems, has called for systemic reform of casualty evacuation in Ukraine's Armed Forces, saying that in the fifth year of the full-scale war, evacuating soldiers from the battlefield remains in most units "a force majeure that no one is ready for."

Most Ukrainian units lack dedicated evacuation groups and specialized armored transport, so evacuations happen in chaos with improvised means, with exceptions only in individual brigades, she says.

Amid public debate over whether ground robots can do the job, Chornovol argues the problem is larger than any single technology, and that the absence of a reliable way out shapes how soldiers fight.

The psychological stakes

Chornovol said the certainty of rescue matters as much as the rescue itself.

"You can't imagine how the existence of professional evac groups would improve the psychological atmosphere at the front. Everyone wants to hope that someone will come for them, will save them," she said.

Her own fear is concrete. Fighting in her fifth year, she said her greatest fear is "that something happens to my people and we'll be helpless, because the evacuation problems will be my problems, and in a small platoon I can't allocate resources to create my own evac group."

One evacuation, seven casualties

Chornovol has backed her argument with a case from a year ago, when her Stuhna anti-tank missile crew was subordinated to a neighboring brigade. At four in the morning, she was told of one killed and one wounded by an enemy chemical-weapons strike, with the evacuation placed entirely on her crew despite weak coordination and unfamiliar terrain.

The rescue attempts compounded the toll.

"My combat vehicle with excellent electronic warfare and an anti-mine grader, which set out for the evacuation, blew up on an anti-tank magnetic mine dropped from a drone," she recalled.

The grader saved lives, but four of her best soldiers were badly concussed. A second vehicle from the brigade, with one of her men as a guide, hit another anti-tank mine, but without a grader: "the mine exploded under the hood, the driver lost his legs, the others were concussed." A third vehicle made it through by luck and took out the wounded and the dead.

"So one evacuation, seven casualties. One severe, without legs," she said, noting the brigade simply had no normal evac group or evac protocol.

She organized the Stuhna evacuation herself, bringing in border guards to control the road, waiting for a window in drone flights, and repairing the electronic-warfare gear stripped from the first knocked-out vehicle.

What Chornovol wants built

Chornovol believes that creating separate staffed evacuation units within brigades is the most necessary reform now, each with an autonomous team and special transport.

"There should be the best drivers, with salaries like assault troops, but also medics, pilots, EW specialists, sappers to defuse mines dropped by drones, and pros: hunters with shotguns to down drones," she said.

On equipment, she argued against relying on ground robots, which she agrees are too slow for evacuation and often easy targets for enemy drones. The main transport, she said, should be a small, fast, lightly-armored vehicle with an anti-mine bottom, light enough to survive the anti-tank mines the enemy drops.

"For a platoon, such equipment is too much, but I don't understand why the whole brigade we were attached to didn't have such an evac vehicle," she said.

She nearly lost five of her men, she added, because of the absence of adequate evacuation approaches and proper light-armored vehicles in the army, asking why the National Guard has them for evacuation while the Armed Forces do not.

Ukrainians and supporters will form human chains in cities abroad at 19:00 (7 p.m.) on 24 August 2026 to mark Independence Day, Ukraine’s Mission to the European Union announced on 20 August.

Russia’s invasion has driven more than 5.6 million Ukrainians to seek refugee or other international protection abroad, according to the UN Refugee Agency. The human chains will help displaced Ukrainians and established diaspora communities show that Ukraine still needs their host countries’ support, the organizers say. Participants follow in the footsteps of Ukrainians in the Soviet era who formed human chains to demonstrate their desire for independence.

The 2026 Chain of Unity campaign website listed 55,600 participants on 22 August. Ukrainians and their supporters will gather on central streets and squares in Warsaw, London, Berlin, Rome, Toronto, New York, and other cities, where they will hold hands in local chains.

An interactive map allows people to find, join, or organize a local chain. Ukraine’s Cultural and Foreign Ministries support the action, which is being held only outside the country.

Ukrainians abroad will use Independence Day in other ways to draw attention to Ukraine’s wartime needs. Ukrainian community groups have organized rallies in 11 cities across 10 countries, calling on European governments to use Russian central bank reserves frozen under sanctions to fund Ukraine.

Why human chains still matter to Ukraine

Human chains became a powerful symbol of Ukrainian unity as Soviet rule weakened and the independence movement moved into the open.

On 21 January 1990, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians formed the nearly 700-kilometer “Ukrainian Wave” from Ivano-Frankivsk through Lviv to Kyiv. It became late-Soviet Ukraine’s largest public demonstration and helped build momentum for independence the following year.

The pro-independence People’s Movement of Ukraine (Rukh) spent five months organizing the chain. When gaps appeared, organizers bused volunteers from Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk to fill them, while participants supplied their own fuel.

The 1990 chain marked the anniversary of the 1919 union of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and Western Ukrainian People’s Republic, two Ukrainian states that emerged after World War I. By joining hands across regions while their country remained part of the Soviet Union, participants showed broad support for restoring Ukraine's sovereignty and unity.

After 1991, Ukrainians kept the tradition on Unity Day, the 22 January holiday marking that union. They often joined hands across Dnipro bridges to symbolize east-west unity. This year’s action takes the gesture abroad: refugees, established Ukrainian communities, and supporters are using it to show they remain part of one nation.

Ukrainian analysts warn that the situation on a key stretch of the Donetsk front is becoming increasingly dangerous for two cities central to Ukraine's defense. The eastern flank of the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration is taking on an increasingly threatening character, and earlier stabilization measures are clearly not working, military analyst Oleksandr Kovalenko said.

The two cities anchor the line that has held Russia back for over a decade. Sloviansk and Kramatorsk form part of the so-called fortress belt, the line of Ukrainian fortifications that has restrained the Russian advance since 2014. The agglomeration serves as the most important bastion and logistics hub for Ukrainian forces in the east. A threat to it is a threat to the backbone of Ukraine's defense in Donbas.

Russia is 12 to 13 km away

Kovalenko laid out how close Russian forces have come. Their forward positions are 12-13 kilometers from Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. He warned that if Russia's pace does not slow, the first infiltrations into both cities could come by December 2026.

The advance is measured in ground lost. The problem on the eastern flank runs about 30 kilometers, where Russia's 3rd Combined Arms Army operates.

"Only in the third week of August, Russian forces captured 21 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory in this section of the frontline," the expert said.

Russia uses the terrain of the "Cretaceous Flora" reserve, its hilly micro-relief rather than open steppe, to advance, absorbing not just square kilometers into pockets but villages and settlements.

The flank threatens neighboring sectors

The deterioration is spreading pressure sideways. The advance creates pressure from the southern bank of the Siverskyi Donets on the zone of the 3rd Army Corps, which had stabilized the Lyman direction and pinned Russian forces near Yampil, Kovalenko believes. The former Siverskyi direction saw the fastest rate of territorial loss of any sector in 2025, slowed in April and May 2026, but the 3rd Combined Arms Army's advance has not yet been stopped.

The cumulative loss is large. After losing more than 500 square kilometers over a year, the unstable flank, sagging since June 2025, is becoming a problem for other directions, looming over or pressuring them.

Kovalenko argued the sector has gone months without attention while threatening both the main agglomeration and the successfully held directions around it.

Analysts urge reinforcement before it is too late

Kovalenko proposed a specific fix. The sector must be reinforced as soon as possible, he said, suggesting that the nearest resource, Andrii Biletsky's 3rd Army Corps, often described as one of the most capable formations in Ukraine's forces, be used at least to relieve both banks of the Siverskyi Donets.

"Once infiltrations into Sloviansk and Kramatorsk begin, reinforcing garrisons and landing intelligence-directorate troops will not solve the problem but only delay the inevitable," he warned.

A second analyst gave a similar warning. Yurii Butusov, a drone company commander in the National Guard's "Khartia" corps, said that if Ukraine's forces retreat from there, Russia gains tactical advantages and Sloviansk-Kramatorsk is gradually lost, ultimately leading to the loss of the Donbas.

He also said that only Biletskyi can take responsibility for this battle.

"Only orderly command and organization at the front now will allow us to turn the course of a battle that is so far not going in our favor," Butusov said.

A Ukrainian company is building a thermal camera sharp enough to spot targets far beyond what its drones can see now. Ukrainian firm Oko Camera is developing the Oko HD, with a 1280×1024 sensor, company representatives told the defense outlet Oboronka at DALO Industry Days 2026, Scandinavia's largest defense industry exhibition, in Herning, Oboronka writes.

The camera's sensor has four times as many pixels as the company's previous lines, extending the range at which targets can be detected and recognized, directly affecting how far the drone or robot fitted with it can spot a target.

HD long-wave infrared cameras are rare on the global market and, the company says, are not currently available in Ukraine at all.

The sensor is built for long-range detection

One of the camera's main tasks is observing objects at great distances, and the higher-resolution sensor should let it detect and recognize targets from farther away, though the company has not disclosed the specific range, Oko Camera said.

Its type is what makes it uncommon.

"LWIR cameras, that is, long-wave infrared cameras with HD resolution, are not common on the world market," the company's partnerships manager said.

In Ukraine, they essentially do not yet exist, giving a drone or robotic system fitted with one a longer detection range than current domestic options allow.

It is aimed at production in 2027

The Oko HD is still a prototype. The company plans to make its first working samples by the end of 2026 and hand them to clients who have already requested the cameras, Oko Camera said.

It is meant to be both affordable and capable. The company expects the Oko HD to become one of the most accessible thermal HD cameras on the world market, and after testing confirms its specifications, plans to launch it into production in 2027.

Kyiv held the 9th International Veterans Forum. The event took place ahead of Ukraine’s Independence Day, with US Special Representative for Ukraine Keith Kellogg and German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul joining it, the Ukrainian Presidential Office reports.

As of 1 May 2026, more than 2 million people had veteran status. Of the 2,014,623 veterans in total, 1,471,193 had combatant status, while 159,132 had received disability status as a result of the war, according to the National Institute of Strategic Studies.

Ukrainians will decide who counts as a hero

At the forum, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the new Ukrainian Pantheon, where Ukrainians who played a significant role in shaping the national consciousness and identity will be buried.

Ukrainians themselves will decide whom to call their heroes, he said, adding that the veteran community should be involved in national commemoration policies.

The Cabinet of Ministers adopted a resolution establishing that the Ukrainian National Pantheon will be located on the grounds of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra National Preserve, which has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1990.

The forum brought together a veteran community of more than two million

The Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra was founded in 1051 and was controlled by the Russian Church for centuries. After Ukraine gained independence, it was used by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate until the state began the process of returning it to the Ukrainian people.

“The Ukrainian Pantheon will definitely exist. Only Ukrainians will decide for themselves who our heroes are,” Zelenskyy stated.

He also emphasized that Ukraine’s independence rests on the shoulders of people who are ready to fight for it. According to Zelenskyy, independence is not a single moment in the country’s past.

“Each of us can name many important moments, days and battles when the fate of our state was being decided. And it is being decided now,” Zelenskyy stressed.

The Ukrainian president expressed hope that Ukraine would achieve peace and thanked the country’s defenders.

Ukrainian FP-1 drones struck an Ozon warehouse in Chapayevsk, Russia’s Samara Oblast, overnight on 22 August 2026, manufacturer Fire Point said.

The attack on the Chapayevsk facility expands Ukraine’s warehouse campaign from Wildberries, Russia’s largest online marketplace, to its second-largest rival, Ozon. Ukraine has repeatedly targeted Russia's major e-commerce distribution hubs to disrupt commercial logistics that Kyiv says help sustain Moscow’s war.

Ozon said the attack injured people and prompted the evacuation of more than 500 employees.

The strike was the first confirmed Ukrainian attack to damage and set fire to an Ozon warehouse, Reuters reported. A drone alert forced Ozon to evacuate a facility in Tatarstan on 31 July, but the building was undamaged and later reopened.

Fire Point said the facility is one of Ozon’s largest warehouses in Volga Oblast, storing goods and processing more than 215,000 orders for delivery each day.

Ozon and Wildberries—Russia’s two largest online marketplaces—and their smaller rivals collectively sell goods and services worth the equivalent of 8.5% of Russia’s GDP and employ 4 million people, Reuters reported in July.

Ozon suspended operations indefinitely and stopped accepting seller deliveries, the company said. As a result, shipments are being redirected to other facilities, while affected orders will either be fulfilled elsewhere or canceled and refunded.

Several people were receiving medical treatment, Samara Oblast Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev claimed. Neither he nor Ozon specified how many people were injured, and the extent of the damage remains unclear.

Ukraine’s previous strikes on Russian warehouses

Ukrainian drones had previously concentrated on Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer. Since 18 July, Ukraine has struck at least two dozen Wildberries warehouses, Reuters reported.

Ukrainian officials have alleged that Wildberries warehouses move military-linked goods, including drone components. The Kremlin has denied that the company supplies Russian forces. Fire Point made no corresponding claim about the Ozon warehouse.

Ukraine’s military said the same overnight wave also hit the Novokuibyshevsk refinery in Samara Oblast and caused a fire.

Russian and occupation officials claimed that the broader wave caused civilian deaths and injuries in Yeysk, Belgorod, Bryansk, and Russian-occupied Luhansk.

Ukrainian forces struck production facilities at the Novokuybyshevsk oil refinery in Russia’s Samara Oblast overnight on 22 August, sparking a fire at the Rosneft-owned plant, Ukraine’s General Staff said. The extent of the damage remains under assessment.

Ukraine has repeatedly targeted Russia’s oil refineries to restrict military fuel supplies and reduce the energy revenues supporting Moscow’s war. The latest strike came as gasoline rationing returned to Moscow and St. Petersburg, and Rosneft capped nationwide purchases. Militarnyi described the plant as one of Russia’s 10 largest refineries.

The Rosneft-owned refinery can process about 8.8 million metric tons of crude annually and produces more than 20 petroleum products, including aviation fuel and diesel, Ukraine’s General Staff said.

Fire Point said FP-1 long-range drones were used to strike the refinery.

The same overnight wave also hit an Ozon logistics center in Chapayevsk, where people were injured, and work was halted, Reuters reported, citing the company.

Neither the damage to the refinery nor any interruption to production has been independently confirmed.

Ukraine keeps pressure on Russian fuel supplies

The strike came one day after Ukraine confirmed hitting Lukoil’s Perm refinery, approximately 1,530 kilometers from Ukraine’s northern border. That attack also caused a fire, according to the General Staff.

At least four Russian refineries went offline during August amid continuing Ukrainian attacks.

By mid-August, filling stations in at least 12 Russian regions were experiencing hours-long lines. Some areas had reintroduced purchase limits or rationing based on license-plate numbers, according to the same report.

Gasoline limits had also been reinstated in Moscow and St. Petersburg, while Rosneft had capped sales at 30 liters per vehicle across its nationwide filling-station network. Diesel purchases remained unrestricted.

Russia has destroyed so many Ukrainian books this summer that the industry says it is fighting to survive. Russia has burned about 13 million books in three months, and the Ukrainian Publishing Association has asked President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to convene a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council on the state and recovery of the publishing industry, association head Artem Bidenko said.

The number of books lost amounts to nearly a third of the 33.21 million copies Ukrainian publishers printed in all of 2025. The whole book market turns over about to $169–193 million a year, roughly the revenue of a single mid-sized shopping mall, so strikes have pushed a small, vulnerable sector toward collapse.

The strikes have become systematic

Russia has hit Ukraine's printing capacity repeatedly. On 23 May 2024, a Russian missile struck the Faktor-Druk printing house in Kharkiv, killing seven workers as they printed children's books at a plant that produced roughly a third of all books in Ukraine, and earlier strikes destroyed the capacity of Pobutelektrotekhnika, one of Ukraine's largest printers.

This summer, the attacks have turned systematic. Russian strikes destroyed the Konvi printing house, and another hit a Kharkiv warehouse storing products of the Ranok publisher and the KnyhoLend chain, destroying about 8 million books, including 620,000 textbooks, with damage from that single strike estimated at $24 million. Direct losses to the industry now stand at at least $29 million, which the association believes understates the real figure.

The damage runs across the whole market

The strikes have hit retailers and publishers alike. This year, Russian attacks damaged Kyiv's Pochaina book market, the Alpaka bookstore, a Knyharnia Ye store in Podil, and Ranok's Kyiv logistics, and harmed the publishers Nash Format, Laboratoria, and BookChef, among others.

The sector was already tiny. As of August 2026, the total floor space of all of Ukraine's brick-and-mortar bookstores only slightly exceeds the area of six football fields, according to the Ukrainian Book Institute, and the industry projects that total print runs may fall by 15% this year and sales by a quarter.

After a fire at the RNK-Ranok warehouses on 1 August, the institute estimated that total losses amounted to about 30% of Ukraine's annual book output.

Publishers say existing support does not reach them

The association says current mechanisms miss the industry's main asset. A war-risk compensation program in effect since 1 January 2026 covers real estate but not goods in circulation or finished products. For publishers, this means the book print runs that are among their principal assets. The program only compensates property destroyed after a firm joined the program in higher-risk areas.

The association asked for measures it says need no billions and face no legal obstacle:

• war-risk insurance extended to book stocks
• affordable loans to rebuild printing capacity
• restored state purchasing of books for libraries, suspended in 2022.

For 2026, only $627,000 was allocated to fund up to 75 books, while libraries in only about 21% of communities are refreshed annually, and Russian-language books still account for more than 40% of library holdings.

If Ukrainian publishers disappear, the association warns, foreign companies focused on commerce could take their place, ending the support for Ukrainian authors and identity that domestic publishing provides.

Ukraine's Defense Intelligence (HUR) says it has found evidence that Russia is running a network of secret biolabs. It was discovered on Lisy Island in Russia's Tver Oblast, where Russia conducts experiments with dangerous viruses and pathogens for military purposes.

Since Russia started its war against Ukraine, Moscow has repeatedly claimed Ukraine hosts secret US-funded biological weapons labs, a narrative it used to help justify its invasion, and which international bodies have rejected. The UN said in 2022 it was not aware of any biological weapons program in Ukraine, and Ukraine, which denies ever developing such weapons, now points the same charge back at Russia.

What HUR alleges

The facility has an official name and origin. The object in the middle of the Vyshnevolotsk reservoir, called the "Center for Experimental Physiology", was created on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin to "ensure the defense capability and security" of the country, according to HUR.

Since 2023, the waters around the island housing biological laboratories have been closed to fishing, swimming and boating, having been designated a “specially protected area of regional significance.”

The facility is protected from the air by air-defense missile crews, while the Kremlin has placed Defense Minister Andrei Belousov in charge of its security. Soldiers guarding the site have privately expressed fears of being infected with an unknown “nasty bug.”

HUR warns of a contamination risk

HUR has framed the lab's location as a hazard. The reservoir supplies fresh water to several settlements, including the town of Vyshnii Volochok, and feeds the Tvertsa River, which flows into the Volga River.

If dangerous pathogens or chemicals from the labs entered the reservoir, the consequences of epidemics and infections could be catastrophic not only for the region's population but for all of Russia.

HUR links it to a 2026 epidemic

The report has connected the lab to a recent outbreak. In spring 2026, an epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle broke out in Russia, which the Kremlin tried to hide from the world and its own population, HUR said.

It is not excluded that this and other similar cases could be the result of failed Russian experiments with viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens, HUR suggested. That claim, like the existence and purpose of the lab itself, rests on HUR's account and cannot be independently verified, but the accusation lands against the documented history of Russia weaponizing the biolab narrative against others.

Russia has struck Kyiv and its suburbs with ballistic missiles for a second consecutive day, killing civilians. Meanwhile, Ukraine lacks enough interceptors to stop them because deliveries from the US have halted.

The strikes land at a moment when Ukraine's ability to shoot ballistic missiles down has been cut off at the source. Ukraine intercepts ballistic missiles mainly with US-made Patriot systems. During the recent Oval Office meeting, President Donald Trump declined President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's request for hundreds of additional Patriot interceptors, according to the Financial Times.

At the same time, when Ukraine sought to destroy Russia's ballistic launchers on Russian territory, US billionaire Elon Musk did not allow Ukraine to use Starlink to guide strikes on those launchers, The Atlantic reported. Ukraine can neither shoot the missiles down at the rate it needs nor freely strike the launchers that fire them.

A railway worker was killed in Kyiv

The overnight attack hit Ukraine's railway. On the night of 22 August, a Russian ballistic missile struck a railway enterprise in Kyiv's Darnytsia area, killing a Ukrzaliznytsia worker, the railway's board chairman Oleksandr Pertsovskyi said.

He described a strike timed to the threat.

"In Darnytsia, ballistic strikes hit one of the railway enterprises, at the same moment as, or even a second before, the ballistic threat appeared. One of our workers, a foreman, was killed on the spot. The rest we managed to evacuate quickly after the first strike," Pertsovskyi reported.

Russia launched about six ballistic missiles, with launches recorded from three directions, Kursk, Bryansk, and Millerovo, according to monitoring channels.

A morning strike on Boryspil killed two civilians

Russia struck again in daylight. In the morning, six to eight ballistic missiles attacked the Boryspil area in the Kyiv agglomeration, likely with cluster warheads, according to monitoring channels. Boryspil city is home to the Boryspil International Airport, Ukraine’s main and largest international passenger airport.

The strike killed civilians and hit infrastructure. Two civilians, a man and a woman, were killed, and the number of wounded rose to eight, including a child, with the daytime strike hitting a truck parking lot along with warehouses, a fuel station, a private household, and vehicles. Two trucks caught fire, and a blaze spread across 700 square meters of open ground, the State Emergency Service (DSNS) said.

The strikes come days before Independence Day

The attacks landed two days before Ukraine marks its Independence Day. The Security Service (SBU) has already urged citizens to be especially vigilant before and during the 24 August holiday because of the threat of attacks, warning that in wartime, Russia may use mass events for strikes, provocations, sabotage, cyberattacks, and other crimes.

The service has also warned against recruitment. It reminded Ukrainians not to publish photos or videos of military objects, critical infrastructure, checkpoints, or air-defense systems, nor to share information on the consequences of strikes or the movement of Ukrainian forces.

Russian special services may try to recruit Ukrainians to prepare attacks and sabotage, the SBU said, urging anyone offered money for arson, property damage, planting unknown objects, or collecting information on military sites to report it immediately.

Ukraine is buying the strike drones that Russian jamming cannot touch, and for the first time, to a common standard. The Defense Procurement Agency (DOT) has announced its first purchase of fiber-optic FPV kamikaze drones built to specifications defined by the Defense Ministry, the ministry announced.

By defining the specifications a fiber-optic FPV must meet, the Defense Ministry lets any maker compete by hitting that standard rather than having each model approved individually.

That is what makes it possible to split the purchase into competing lots among many suppliers, both large and mid-sized, and to buy the jam-proof drones at scale without relying on any single producer.

Why fiber-optic drones matter

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry is looking for a specific type of drone. They use a fiber-optic cable to connect to the operator, and unlike ordinary FPV drones that need a radio signal for control and video, these fiber-optic drones do not depend on the radio channel, so they work far better in the presence of active electronic warfare.

Fiber-optic drones let an operator keep control where radio-controlled drones lose their signal, and Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara said the drones give Ukraine's forces added ability to disrupt Russian assaults and conduct their own operations, striking enemy manpower.

The standard opens the field to any maker

The buy is not tailored to one producer. It is not conducted for a specific manufacturer or model, and producers can offer their own drones if they meet the defined characteristics, with the drones sorted into classes by parameters such as range (the length of the fiber-optic cable) and camera type.

The lot structure spreads the orders

Deputy Defense Minister Mstyslav Banik said the tender is structured so that various suppliers can participate. Each tender is divided into lots, with four lots per class of fiber-optic FPVs, and no participant may win more than 50% of a class's total volume.

That structure guards supply while also driving competition.

"This creates an environment for healthy competition among manufacturers, and at the same time minimizes the risks of supply disruptions," Banik added.