Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney attended a presentation of Ukrainian drones, Ukrainian-Canadian developments, and defense-component manufacturers in Calgary on 10 September, the Ukrainian presidential readout said.

The event followed the signing of documents on defense and security cooperation, which Kyiv calls the first step toward a Drone Deal on the American continent. That deal would take cooperation beyond individual Ukrainian-Canadian production projects toward a broader industrial model pairing Ukrainian technology with Canadian manufacturing capacity.

The systems shown included the Vampire 4S, a heavy multirotor that drops munitions at night and that Russian troops call Baba Yaga, and SkyFall's P1-SUN interceptor, designed to bring down Shahed-type drones and priced at about $1,000 at this year's World Defence Show. The lineup also included the Shrike FPV drone and the Hor reconnaissance UAV. Companies also presented projects involving drones, ground robotics, and secure communications.

The systems and joint projects

The presentation featured Himera radio sets alongside the four drone systems. Zelenskyy and Carney were also shown the remote operation of the Ratel ground robotic complex and uncrewed maritime systems from UFORCE and Scorpena.

Airlogix plans to produce the Hor reconnaissance UAV with Canada's Sentinel. Ai Drones UA and Bombardier Recreational Products (BRP) showed a prototype ground robotic complex, while Himera and Quantropi presented secure communications solutions. The announcements at the event covered future cooperation between GTH and General Dynamics Mission Systems–Canada, JK Land Vehicles and General Dynamics Land Systems, and a training program between SkyFall and Calian.

The readout said that 21 Canadian companies took part and that they already integrate their components into Ukrainian systems.

Canada's drone problem

Canada's armed forces hold 2,000 drones today and will need millions, Carney said in Calgary. A new national drone marketplace is meant to build the capacity for those millions inside two years, with Ukrainian firms teaching Canadian ones while Canadian manufacturing and AI expertise flows back the other way.

A third of all the drones Canada builds will go to Ukraine's defense, Carney pledged. The presidential readout puts the share at 30% of the drones the joint program is to produce.

Callsign Bilyi, a former air-assault soldier, stepped on a PMN-2 anti-personnel mine in July 2025 during a combat mission in Kharkiv Oblast. Callsign Terri, a former industrial worker from Kharkiv Oblast, lost part of his lower leg after stepping on a petal mine near a position in the same oblast shortly before. Both underwent amputations, rehabilitation, and prosthetic fitting, then chose to return to Khartiia, the National Guard formation they had served with, according to Ukrainska Pravda.

Over 100,000 amputations have been performed in Ukraine over four years of war, and the fighting has added as many as 390,000 disabilities, according to the World Health Organization. While the figure does not distinguish soldiers from civilians, these two men show one route back into the war for soldiers who cannot return to the ground: the screens of a drone-saturated battlefield, where what they learned on foot still counts.

Both men could have been discharged, they told Ukrainska Pravda, and chose instead to keep serving in ISTAR (intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance). The operator watches drone feeds, tracks friendly and enemy positions, and passes targets to strike teams. 

Bilyi's path back to service

Bilyi says the job needs what he already had: "An ISTAR operator should have combat experience, to understand where things are, to know what a position looks like. If you come in without it, they show you a picture. But if you have never felt what that is, it is not the same."

He moved to Khartiia at the end of 2024 and was wounded on his first mission with the unit. His tourniquet remained on his leg for two days before scouts carried him out. Bilyi returned to Khartiia on 12 May 2026, less than a year later, fitted with an electronic Allux prosthesis.

"I've gotten used to it. Sometimes I forget I don't have a leg," Bilyi said.

Part of why he returned was to set an example for the men in his unit: "He serves on a prosthetic, so why should I be down? You can keep moving forward."

From the trenches to the monitors: Terri's shift in perspective

Terri was wounded on his third frontline mission at the end of June 2025. His tourniquet was on for 25 hours before his amputation, and the next day, he refused when a doctor suggested removing his knee as well. He returned this summer, choosing ISTAR over a posting with ground robots.

Sitting at the screens changed how he understood the war. As a foot soldier, he had felt frustrated with drone crews when resupply failed.

"Back then I thought, why aren't they dropping us water," he said. "But when I sat down at the monitors and saw how it all works, I realized we'd blamed the guys for nothing."

A Russian strike hit a warehouse across the street from Liudmyla and Leonid Ryzhak's Kyiv apartment overnight into 8 September, sending a blast wave through their home hours before they were due to get married, the Associated Press reported. Leonid, 43, a soldier on leave from the front, had come back for the wedding.

Ukrainians keep marrying and rebuilding through a war that keeps interrupting both. More than 79,000 couples registered their marriages in the first half of 2026, 16% more than in the same period last year, nearly 40% of them online, according to Ukraine's Ministry of Justice figures. In July alone, the UN counted 437 civilians killed across the country, the deadliest month since May 2022.

The explosion blew out the windows, scattered furniture, and left the apartment uninhabitable. The couple fled to a shelter with Liudmyla's 6-year-old daughter and two guinea pigs. Their cat hid and could not be found. A second strike hit after they reached the shelter.

Neighbors clearing debris stopped to congratulate them.

“We should all be celebrated, that we survived,” Liudmyla replied.

They dug their wedding clothes out of the debris. Liudmyla, 33, shook broken glass from her white tulle skirt, which had small holes. Leonid could not find his dress trousers, so he wore army trousers with his embroidered shirt and sneakers.

The strike was part of a mass Russian attack on Kyiv that came once US peace envoys left the capital, ending a lull that had held for three days. Russia launched 166 drones and 32 cruise missiles at Ukraine overnight, along with ballistic and anti-ship missiles, and air defenses downed 142 drones, 31 cruise missiles, and two ballistic missiles, the Air Force said. Three people were killed in Kyiv, Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said.

The couple arrived at the registry office on time, at 10:40, but another air-raid siren sounded soon after and the office closed. They waited in the courtyard for almost three hours as explosions hit the surrounding districts.

Eventually, the alert ended, and the couple went inside.

"If God gave me a continuation of life, then why should I put it off?" Liudmyla said. "At least for now, I have the right to be happy," she added.

They got married.

Viktor Hurniak was a Ukrainian photojournalist who worked for UNIAN, a major Ukrainian news outlet, and for Reuters, and co-founded the LUFA photo agency, according to Ukrainska Pravda. He joined the fight in the Russo-Ukrainian war in September 2014. Russia killed him on 19 October that year near the village of Smile in Luhansk Oblast, as he helped evacuate wounded soldiers under mortar fire.

Since the Russo-Ukrainian war began in 2014, Ukrainian media workers have been killed while reporting, as civilians, and after joining the armed forces.

From photographer to volunteer

Hurniak had been photographing since he was 14. He started at the Ternopil newspaper 20 Khvylyn, and UNIAN picked up his work after he happened onto a fire on Crimea’s Ai-Petri in 2007.

By summer 2014, Viktor was raising money and finding helmets, body armor, clothing, and vehicles for Ukrainian troops, often delivering the supplies himself. His network and ability to source equipment earned him the callsign Oligarch among Aidar soldiers.

On one trip to Italy, Viktor, his father Petro, and friends returned with 550 helmets.

Friends, including Vitalii Derekh, tried to persuade him not to go further. They argued that he was more useful finding equipment than carrying a rifle.

Hurniak answered: “Well, I want to fight.”

In September 2014, he joined Aidar’s 24th territorial defense battalion.

His decision did not make him more distant from his family. Olesia Yedynak-Khoma recalled that after joining the battalion, he contacted them more often, sent photographs, and shared more about what was happening in Donbas. He told his sister Olia that there was “real life” in Donbas and that he had found sincere people and a strong sense of brotherhood there.

The day Russia killed him

On 19 October 2014, Hurniak was helping evacuate wounded soldiers from checkpoint 32 on the Bakhmutka road near the village of Smile in Luhansk Oblast when mortar fire hit. He was killed by shrapnel.

Viktor was 27. His daughter Yustyna was two.

Seven years later, Ukraine posthumously named Viktor Hurniak a Hero of Ukraine and awarded him the Golden Star.

His photographs were later exhibited in Poland, Estonia, Germany, and the United States, including at the European Parliament in an exhibition titled “Donbas: War and Peace.”

His story continues

Writer Iryna Vovk's Viktor Hurniak, published by Folio in its "True Heroes" series, was presented at a memorial festival in his home region in October 2025 and in Ternopil in January 2026, 11 years after his death. The book is built from the recollections of his family and friends.

Olesia Yedynak-Khoma, one of Hurniak’s friends, founded a scholarship in his memory at the Ukrainian Catholic University’s School of Journalism and Communications.

The question Hurniak once asked himself later became a guiding phrase for his sister Olia:

“What have you done for victory?”

He had already given his own answer. Urged to keep sourcing equipment rather than carry a rifle, he said he wanted to fight, and in September 2014 he went.

As of 1 September, Russian mines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) had harmed 1,688 civilians since the start of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine's Main Directorate of Mine Action, Civil Protection and Environmental Safety said. The figure breaks down into 1,515 adults and 173 children, with farmers the worst-hit occupational group at 296.

More than 20% of Ukraine's territory—139,000 km²—was suspected of contamination as of mid-2025, according to the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS). The contamination poses a long-term civilian hazard because mines and unexploded ordnance can remain dangerous long after fighting has moved on. UNMAS has described Ukraine as the most heavily contaminated country since the end of the Second World War.

Ukrainian law enforcement opens criminal proceedings after each civilian detonation on a Russian mine as part of investigations into Russia's violations of the laws and customs of war, the directorate said. The data is collected under Protocols II and V of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, Ukrinform reported.

Beyond farmers, the occupational groups most affected were the unemployed (238), pensioners (166), schoolchildren (165), critical infrastructure workers (164), and drivers (108), the directorate said.

UN human rights monitors recorded 51 civilian casualties from mines and explosive remnants of war in June, including seven killed and 44 injured.

The danger also extends to the people clearing contaminated areas: a Russian strike killed two Norwegian People's Aid deminers and wounded four in Kherson Oblast the same month. Russian forces had hit a clearance team before, killing two Danish Refugee Council workers near Chernihiv in September 2025.

The annual economic losses from contaminated land are estimated at around $11 billion, largely from lost exports and local tax revenue, according to the deputy minister coordinating Ukraine's demining.

The soldier, known by the call sign Tatarin, is part of a Ukrainian unit that recovers damaged battlefield vehicles on the Pokrovsk front. The work aims to keep the vehicles out of Russian hands and return them to service, ArmyInform said. Tatarin told ArmyInform that his team has recovered everything from armored personnel carriers to tanks.

Tatarin said he spent more than 20 years working in a mine in Donetsk Oblast. He is from Myrnohrad, lived in the same place his whole life, and stayed there until 2024, when he joined the army.

"I'd like to go back, but there's nothing left there. Everything is smashed," he said, adding that he is now fighting for his own home.

After the training center, he was assigned to the 155th Separate Mechanized Brigade, where he now commands a technical reconnaissance squad. When an order comes down, his team drives out ahead in a US-made HMMWV, known as the Humvee, to see how a damaged vehicle can be hooked and how another vehicle can reach it, then plans the run before the recovery vehicle goes in.

A mission through the minefields

One of the hardest runs was for a damaged French VAB armored personnel carrier, left in an area Ukrainian units were already withdrawing from. It had to be taken out so Russian forces would not get it. Four men went: Tatarin, Did from Dnipro, Blogger from Zhytomyr, and Patron from Ternopil Oblast.

They reached the VAB, but their Humvee hit a mine nearby, and the men suffered blast concussions and other injuries. A wheel was torn off, and Tatarin drove them to a treeline on the remaining three, he said. Then a Russian first-person-view (FPV) drone found them. They had just jumped out and started moving away when it struck the vehicle, he said. It burned, along with their radios.

There were no Ukrainian positions left nearby. Tatarin said they walked more than 10 kilometers to get out, through minefields and tripwires. "We were caught between two fires. We walked blind," he said. With no cover, they ran across the open stretches. The treelines had been destroyed, and the sky was filled with drones, leaving them unable to tell whose was whose.

Eventually, they found a beaten path and heard voices—Ukrainian infantry from a neighboring unit, weapons already charged. Tatarin is from Donetsk Oblast and speaks mostly Russian, and his comrades told him to say nothing so the group would not be taken for the enemy, he said. They called out that they were from the 155th. The infantry then passed their identity back by radio. Their own brigade, it turned out, had already been searching for them, including with drones.

The neighboring unit collected them the next day in another Humvee, and another FPV drone came at that vehicle. Tatarin and a comrade with the call sign Vovchyk fired back from the moving Humvee, Vovchyk with an automatic rifle and Tatarin with a pump-action shotgun. The drone detonated about 30 meters away. "In the best blockbusters you wouldn't see this," he said. "It was hard. War is war." They reached a safer area, where medics were waiting. The main thing is that everyone came out alive, he said.

Russia is accumulating missiles for autumn and winter strikes on Ukraine's critical infrastructure as well as for possible provocations against European NATO members, Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service (SZR) reported. Major General Oleh Luhovskyi, the service's first deputy head, gave the assessment to the national security advisors of European leaders, SZR said on 6 September. SZR did not say how they responded.

Russia has repeatedly tested NATO's eastern flank through drone incursions, airspace violations, and military activity, increasing pressure on the alliance's eastern members. But no Russian missile strike on NATO territory has been established as deliberate, so SZR's warning points to a potential new form of escalation rather than an established pattern.

Russia's missile buildup

SZR said Russia has accumulated about 400 hypersonic missiles of various types, without specifying which systems are included, and could produce up to 300 ballistic missiles by the end of 2026.

Russia has also deployed additional launchers in the Bryansk, Kursk, and Voronezh oblasts bordering Ukraine, according to the service.

About 60% of the enterprises involved in missile production are still not under international sanctions, SZR said, presenting that as a gap allowing the Kremlin to sustain production. The service called for urgent sanctions on at least 55 more companies still supplying Russia's military-industrial chain with electronic components and machine tools, or handling its payments.

Ukraine's Defense Intelligence (HUR) has estimated that Russia can produce 60–70 Iskander-M missiles per month. In August, HUR said Kinzhal mass production had been suspended in April and that about 50 Kinzhals remained in reserve. Kinzhal is one hypersonic type among several that SZR's undivided figure of 400 may include.

Pressure on NATO's eastern flank

• Russia's military aircraft repeatedly approached NATO airspace in July, and allied fighter scrambles along the eastern flank jumped by more than 250% compared with July 2025.
• Russian drones have also approached Romania's airspace and entered Latvia's.
• A Russian Kh-101 cruise missile landed in a field in Poland during a strike on Ukraine in July, putting a Russian missile on NATO territory.

The Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant lost the 330-kV Ferosplavna-1 line—which the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) called the plant's only remaining off-site power line—on 20 August and has since run on emergency diesel generators, Ukraine's state nuclear operator Energoatom said on 6 September. A day earlier, the IAEA said the plant's diesel reserves were under increasing strain and warned it could lose all power within days unless external power was restored or fuel deliveries continued.

The Zaporizhzhia plant has been under Russian control since March 2022, when Russian forces seized the facility during the invasion. The plant stopped generating electricity in September 2022, and all six reactors have been in cold shutdown since April 2024, leaving the plant dependent on external or backup power for cooling and other essential safety systems. Repeated damage to the plant's external power connections has forced it onto emergency diesel generators multiple times, including during a month-long loss of off-site power in 2025.

How much diesel the Zaporizhzhia plant has left

The plant's most recent delivery to its off-site fuel farm took place in March, and the next one, set for May, is still held up by military activity, the IAEA reported on 20 August. At that point, the plant reported having more than 10 days of diesel available for its emergency generators.

By 29 August, the plant was down to about 10 days of diesel—its minimum regulatory reserve—and IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said that was roughly how long it had left without restored power or more deliveries. Several dozen tons reached the plant on 27 and 28 August, but a week later the agency shortened the warning to within days, with the plant down to two generators and running its cooling pumps on and off to save fuel. No nuclear plant should have to throttle its essential cooling systems to conserve diesel, Grossi said.

How the plant lost its last external power line

Ferosplavna-1 is a backup line from the thermal plant next door, one of 10 the IAEA counted before the war. The main 750-kV Dniprovska line failed on 24 March. Technicians repaired it under a June ceasefire, but it has never been switched back on, because a substation more than 100 kilometers away was badly damaged. Ferosplavna-1 has carried the plant alone since. It went down on 26 April for the 15th time since 2022, by both counts, and cut out repeatedly around a June attack on the thermal plant. It went dead on 20 August—the 27th loss by Energoatom's count, the 26th by the IAEA's.

Ukrainian technicians began repairs on 5 September under a local ceasefire the IAEA brokered, with a few days' work expected. The line was still dead on 7 September, its 19th day without off-site power, the plant's Russian-installed management claimed to Russian media. Fixing it may not bring the power back anyway, Rosatom chief Aleksei Likhachev claimed the same day, blaming Ukrainian inaction for the other line still sitting repaired and unconnected—which the IAEA puts down to the wrecked substation.

Energoatom's assessment of the generator risk and Russian claims

Russian forces run the plant's emergency generators as everyday power, outside the conditions they were built for, Energoatom said on 6 September. Weeks of continuous running raise the risk of several backups failing together, and constant starts under load make the systems that start them likelier to fail. Even in cold shutdown, a blackout would threaten control of the safety systems and the spent fuel pools, and the plant is already in gross violation of its safe-operation limits, it said. Only a Russian pullout, military and civilian, and a handover back to Energoatom would guarantee safe operation, the company said, which also wants both grid lines back.

The plant has enough fuel for its generators but cannot restock while the access roads are shelled, the plant's Russian-installed management claimed to Russia's state news agency TASS on 31 August. TASS blamed Ukrainian forces for the shelling, though the quoted remarks named no one.

The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine adopted a decision to introduce two levels of air alerts, with yellow for drone attacks and red for a heightened threat of missile or combined strikes, Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi said on 3 September. Under the yellow level, designated businesses can operate if they meet safety requirements, while a red alert will require work to stop and people to move to shelters.

Russia continues to attack Ukrainian cities with drones and other long-range weapons, repeatedly disrupting civilian and economic activity. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia is using mass drone attacks to wear down civilian life and economic activity, while the existing system of signaling all aerial threats in the same way no longer fits Russia's tactics.

How it will work

Businesses cleared to operate under a yellow alert must ensure staff and visitors can reach shelters. Where that access is missing, the Cabinet is giving businesses three months to provide it.

The General Staff, the Air Force, the government, the Defense Ministry, the Interior Ministry, and the State Emergency Service will set the specific indicators for declaring each level weekly, Zelenskyy said.

What still has to be worked out

Zelenskyy also directed officials to develop geographic targeting for alerts, so warnings can be limited to areas facing an actual threat. The measure is still being worked out and is not yet part of the new system.

The new approach is intended to allow economic activity to continue during drone threats while preserving stricter measures for more serious attacks. The government has not yet finalized which businesses will qualify to remain open under a yellow alert or all of the criteria for applying the two levels.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Armenia's 2025 law launching the EU accession process "amounts to a declaration of withdrawal" from the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan replied that Armenia had filed no notice to leave and had violated none of the bloc's rules. The leaders met on 1 September in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, during a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit.

The exchange turns Armenia's westward shift into an open dispute over how far it has already moved from Moscow. Yerevan is preparing an EU application and has frozen participation in Russia's military alliance, but it still belongs to the trade bloc. Russia remains Armenia's largest trade partner, accounting for about 35% of its foreign trade.

The disagreement

In the opening minutes, Putin acknowledged that Armenia's aspiration to join the EU was the country's "legitimate right," but said it "creates difficulties" given Armenia's membership in the bloc that links Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Armenia. He told Pashinyan that adopting a law launching the process of joining another organization "amounts to a declaration of withdrawal from ours."

Putin urged Armenia to decide quickly and repeated his call for a referendum on whether Armenia should remain in the trade bloc or pursue EU membership, telling Pashinyan to give the people a choice so the matter could be closed.

Pashinyan pushed back. He noted that the bloc's rules have no mechanism to expel a member state—only a voluntary withdrawal process requiring six months' notice—and that Armenia has filed no such notice. He told Putin the issue had not matured enough for a referendum, arguing that Armenia first needs to submit a formal EU application, receive a response, and agree on an accession roadmap.

How far Armenia has moved

Armenia's parliament passed a law launching the EU accession process in March 2025, though the government has said the law does not amount to a formal membership bid. On 24 August, Pashinyan told lawmakers that the government would begin preparing a formal application "in the near future." Armenia has also dropped the "strategic partner" label for Russia from its new government program and effectively frozen its participation in the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization since early 2024.

Russia's response

Since May 2026, Moscow has imposed a series of bans on Armenian agricultural imports—including fruit, vegetables, and mineral water—citing phytosanitary concerns. The EU called the measures "economic coercion" and announced a support package of more than €50 million for Armenia in June.

Pashinyan says dialogue will continue

After the meeting, Pashinyan posted a video describing the talks as "very good" and saying the two leaders had agreed to continue a "sincere and constructive dialogue" during a future visit to Moscow. He said bilateral relations needed to be "rethought" under new circumstances.

Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said in an interview aired on 31 August that Russia remains "more than a strategic partner" because existing treaties make the two countries allies, adding that the change in the government program's wording should not be interpreted as an end to that relationship.

Mirzoyan was responding to Armenia's new 2026–2031 government program, which replaces the "strategic ally" and "strategic partnership" language used in the previous five-year plan with a commitment to "transform and deepen" relations with Russia. The previous program referred to an "Armenian-Russian strategic alliance" and pledged to strengthen "allied relations and strategic partnership" with Moscow.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan explained on 27 August that keeping the strategic-partnership language would raise questions about why Russia and the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization had failed to fulfill their security obligations to Armenia in 2022.

Armenia has removed the language of alliance from its government program without ending the treaties, CSTO membership, or energy ties that still bind it to Moscow.

Azerbaijan attacked Armenian territory near Jermuk in September 2022, striking positions inside sovereign Armenia rather than the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. Yerevan invoked Article 4 of the Collective Security Treaty, the clause treating an attack on one member as an attack on all, and requested assistance. The alliance sent a fact-finding mission but no troops. requested military assistance. Armenia froze its participation in the CSTO at all levels in 2024, stopped financing it, and has boycotted its summits and military exercises.

Why the alliance frayed

Armenian trust in Moscow had deteriorated further by September 2023, when Azerbaijan retook Nagorno-Karabakh after a brief offensive and Russian peacekeepers deployed to the region did not intervene. Armenian officials accused them of failing to protect the enclave's population.

Yerevan has since moved closer to the European Union. In March 2025, Armenia's parliament passed a law to launch the accession process, though Pashinyan has said any actual membership would require a referendum, and Armenia has not applied to join.

What still ties Armenia to Russia

Even so, Armenia remains heavily dependent on Russia for energy. Russia supplied the bulk of Armenia's natural gas in 2021, and Armenia imports all of its nuclear fuel from Russia, leaving it effectively reliant on imported fuel for nearly 70% of its electricity, according to the International Energy Agency. The country remains a member of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union.

Mirzoyan acknowledged that strains had emerged in recent years, citing statements by Russian officials, coverage in Russian media, and Moscow's restrictions on imports of Armenian goods. He called for relations to be made "healthier" and returned to a course of "mutual respect," and said Yerevan did not want a "war of words" with Moscow. Pashinyan said on 1 September that he expected to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin later that day in Bishkek.

Poland's governing coalition under Prime Minister Donald Tusk misread how far Kyiv's ambitions had grown and kept presenting Warsaw as Kyiv's indispensable guide to Europe, Polish journalist Mateusz Mazzini argued in The Guardian on 26 August 2026. It also never readied Polish society to treat refugees as its equals, and it encouraged the belief that Warsaw could decide whether Ukraine gets into the EU, he wrote.

The two countries built their partnership during Russia's full-scale invasion, with Poland becoming Ukraine's main supply route for Western weapons, a leading provider of military and humanitarian aid, and a leading advocate for Kyiv's bid to join the European Union. That relationship has since frayed over refugee policy, historical disputes, and attitudes toward Ukrainians. A July poll by CBOS, Poland's biggest pollster, found that 52% of Poles opposed accepting Ukrainian refugees, compared with 42% who supported it, the first such reversal since the survey began in 2015.

He also points to Russian propaganda on Polish social media, where false stories about Ukrainian "welfare queens" living off Polish taxpayers feed hostility that keeps turning violent. Neither government prepared for the goodwill running out, he says, and Russian disinformation worked the gap they left to drive the two apart and thin Europe's backing for Kyiv.

Historical disputes have added to the tension

On 19 June 2026, Polish President Karol Nawrocki revoked the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest state decoration, previously awarded to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The move followed a decree Zelenskyy signed on 26 May giving an existing Ukrainian special operations unit the honorary name Heroes of the UPA, after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

Nawrocki cited Poland's dispute with Ukraine over the UPA's role in the World War II-era massacres of Poles in Volhynia. He said the decision did not change Poland's strategic security policy and that Poland continues to support Ukraine because Russia's aggression threatens Poland and Europe.

The journalist also faults Poland for missing how Ukrainians in the country have become more economically independent. They established more than 33,000 sole proprietorships in Poland in 2024, according to the Polish Economic Institute.

Ukraine has changed internationally as well, in his account, going from taking Western aid after the 2022 invasion to selling military technology and know-how around the world. Kyiv's leaders now approach Washington and Western European capitals on their own, he argues, and no longer need an "advocate," least of all in Warsaw.

Looking ahead, he expects Ukraine to integrate further into the European economy, competing more directly with French and German businesses as it already does with Polish ones. Kyiv, in his forecast, will approach Brussels, Paris, and Berlin as an equal rather than a supplicant, on the argument that the cost it has borne holding Russia off Europe entitles it to that place. His warning is aimed past Warsaw. Poland has already paid for misreading Ukraine, he writes, and other European capitals can still avoid repeating the error.

A wave of anti-Ukrainian attacks

The strain has also turned violent. Ukrainian citizens filed 180 hate-crime reports with Polish police in the first half of 2026, roughly one a day and more than 30% above a year earlier, national police figures showed, Rzeczpospolita reported. The figures count reports filed, not confirmed offenses.

In late July, three men allegedly beat a Ukrainian couple in Wrocław after asking whether they were Ukrainian. Police detained two suspects and treated the assault as a nationality-motivated hate crime. Earlier that month, a man in Łódź attacked a passerby he mistook for Ukrainian, breaking his nose and jaw and telling him his place was not in Poland.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb said Ukraine would receive about 90% of the drones that Finnish companies build under a planned Finland–Ukraine framework agreement, Mi-Ukraina reported on 26 August. Three days earlier in Kyiv, he said the other 10% would stay in Finland.

The planned arrangement follows a broader European shift toward co-production with Ukraine rather than supplying weapons from existing stockpiles. Drones have shaped much of the fighting on both sides since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, and Russia has repeatedly struck defense plants inside Ukraine—a Bayraktar plant under construction in Kyiv was hit four times in six months by August 2025—pushing Ukrainian makers to expand production into allied countries, Finland among them.

Asked what still had to be agreed before production could begin, Stubb said nothing did.

"Everything is done. There is a so-called framework agreement on drones that we're working on. It's more about cooperation between states—that is, Zelenskyy and me. And the companies between themselves do what they have to do. I think the doors are already open," Stubb said.

He said the 90/10 ratio is common practice in corporate contracts and that companies would determine the pace of production after finalizing their decisions. Some details could remain classified because of military secrecy, he said.

At a press conference on 23 August after the Nordic-Baltic Eight summit with Ukraine, Stubb had described the deal as still taking shape. He said seven Finnish defense companies interested in cooperation with Ukraine, including on maritime drone production, had traveled to Kyiv with him and that one had already provided production estimates.

"The companies are making actual deals. I'm looking forward to the results, but it seems one of the companies has already provided data on the number of drones that can be produced in Finland. And I think the deal will follow approximately the so-called 90/10 proportion. So 90% of the output is supplied to Ukraine, and 10% stays in Finland," Stubb said, according to Unian.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 23 August that three of the seven Finnish companies present had already signed agreements for joint production, including drones. Yle identified the three as Patria, Insta, and Boomeranger, saying they had signed letters of intent with Ukrainian counterparts. Patria and the Ukrainian company General Chereshnia signed a memorandum of intent to produce defense drones in Finland, Patria announced.

Separately, Ukrainian drone maker Airlogix and Finnish technology company Innokas signed a letter of intent to establish joint drone manufacturing in Finland under Ukraine's "Build with Ukraine" initiative. Ukrainian firm TAF Industries and Finnish company Summa Defence had signed a similar agreement earlier under the same initiative.

Zelenskyy said the cooperation would combine Ukrainian combat experience with Finnish technology. Stubb said Finland already faces hybrid attacks, from undersea cable sabotage to drones, and treats sabotage as a standing risk to the plants, adding that Finland ranks among the largest per-capita suppliers of military equipment to Ukraine.

From support to co-production—and a two-way expertise swap

Stubb said the planned arrangement is not far from Denmark's model of directly financing Ukrainian defense production, according to Yle.

Zelenskyy said the agreements cover drones built in Finland for Ukraine and Europe, expanded maritime unmanned systems, and a plant for ground robotic systems, and Stubb said the documents signed during the visit concerned air, land, and sea.

The Finnish president said in the Mi-Ukraina interview that Europe's relationship with Ukraine has changed since the full-scale invasion. Ukraine once needed European support, while Europe now needs Ukraine's battlefield experience, he said. What Finland learned, by his account: trench warfare is over, a 40-kilometer kill zone means tanks firing at shorter range have no role, and Ukraine holds more data on modern war than the rest of Europe combined.

The Embassy of Ukraine in the USA asked the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra (ASO) on 25 August to cancel Russian-born violinist Vadim Repin's participation in its Forces of Nature concerts on 6–7 November at Maryland Hall, citing his involvement in Russian state-sponsored and state-linked cultural initiatives.

Since 2022, Ukrainian diplomats have turned individual concert bookings into an object of foreign policy, arguing that a performer carrying Russian state honors and state money brings the state onto the stage with him. Western institutions have answered case by case rather than by policy, so every booking is renegotiated from scratch, and what one venue cancels, another can quietly restore.

The embassy said Repin performed with the State Kremlin Orchestra on 21 February 2024 at a concert the Kremlin Foundation staged for Defender of the Fatherland Day, a Russian military holiday, framed as a tribute to Russia's "great defenders." It said his Vadim Repin Foundation for the Development of the Arts has received substantial funding since the start of the full-scale invasion from Russia's Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives, a state-established institution supporting Russia's cultural policy.

The embassy's request comes four years after the Annapolis Symphony dropped Repin from a March 2022 program and staged a tribute to Ukraine in his place—a decision the orchestra said at the time reflected both the war and respect for Repin's apolitical stance and the safety of him and his family.

The orchestra has not addressed the reversal directly, but the program notes for the concert argue that Shostakovich wrote the concerto for Ukrainian-born David Oistrakh under Stalinist repression and that it "calls on listeners to reject the politics of revenge and hate while embracing the healing cycle of forgiveness." The embassy is asking ASO to reaffirm what it describes as the solidarity with Ukraine shown in 2022.

"We hope the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra will give these concerns careful consideration and reaffirm the solidarity with Ukraine it demonstrated in 2022, when it withdrew Mr. Repin from its program and replaced his performance with a musical tribute to Ukraine," the embassy said.

In March 2022, days after Russia's full-scale invasion began, ASO replaced Repin's planned appearance. The orchestra's then-executive director, Edgar Herrera, told WTOP that the decision was not only a response to the war but also "out of respect to Repin's apolitical stance and concerns for the safety of himself and his family."

The embassy noted that Germany's Mannheim Philharmonic, the Hungarian National Philharmonic, and Florida's Palm Beach Symphony have all reconsidered working with Repin this year, and that Palm Beach canceled his performance in March. Mannheim dropped a February concert after a request from Ukraine's embassy in Berlin, and the Hungarian orchestra replaced him at its Budapest season opening in June. A Change.org petition launched in June by Ukrainian Cultural Front DC had already called on ASO to cancel the November concerts.

Neither ASO nor Repin has commented publicly on the embassy's request.

Ukrainian investigators recovered an unencrypted American AI module from a Russian Molniya drone that killed three civilians near a Zaporizhzhia gas station on 6 July, and read the code that guided its targeting, the New York Times reported. No human operator made the final call.

Commercially sold AI boards have been turning up inside Russian strike weapons for more than a year, and autonomy is the direction both armies are moving in. What changed is the evidence rather than the technology. Until now, autonomy had to be inferred from what a wreck lacked—an antenna, a radio trace.

Tetiana Bubynets, a 19-year-old accounting student at Zaporizhzhia National University, was declared dead at a hospital, one of her professors said. Oleksii Svirin, 41, and Roman Karpii, 48, later died of their injuries. The drone had attempted to navigate around an apartment building toward the gas station's propane tanks but struck a wall and detonated near people sheltering there.

What investigators found in the wreckage

The wreckage contained an Nvidia Jetson Orin minicomputer, an off-the-shelf AI module that costs a few hundred dollars. The chip was not encrypted. Ukrainian officials said they could read the terrain imagery loaded for visual navigation and the object-detection code that defined what the drone was trained to target, NYT reported. The drone carried no radio antennas and was flying in a wave of approximately six, none of them transmitting. A missing antenna alone would not prove self-targeting—a drone flying a preprogrammed route needs no antenna either, but it would have no use for an Nvidia chip.

Human operators had programmed the drone to fly toward the gas station and set the general target area before launch. Once near the site, the onboard system identified and selected the specific object—most likely propane tanks it had been trained to recognize—on its own, drone experts and military officials said. Vadym Kushnikov, a drone expert at the Kharkiv Aviation Institute, described the drone as "a preprogrammed tool trained in virtual reality to track specific objects," NYT reported.

Where else the Nvidia module has turned up

Kateryna Bondar, a senior fellow at the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told NYT that no earlier Russian strike by a self-targeting drone has been documented killing civilians, which would make 6 July the first such case on record. She called the Nvidia module "the best proof" that Russia was experimenting with autonomous AI.

The Jetson Orin is not new to the battlefield. The module is made by the American chipmaker Nvidia. Ukraine's sanctions on Russia's AI drone supply networks, imposed in August 2025, hit Russian, Chinese, and Belarusian drone developers and component suppliers—not Nvidia.

Ukrainian intelligence first identified the module in the V2U autonomous strike drone in June 2025, mounted in a Chinese Leetop A203 minicomputer. It has since reported Jetson-based AI modules in Russia's Lancet and Klin drones—the Klin an older Jetson TX2—and, most recently, in the S-71 Monokhrom cruise missile.

In those cases, the finding was the hardware, and what Ukrainian intelligence inferred from it. This time, the code itself was legible.

Nvidia confirmed to NYT that the photographed board was a Jetson Orin. The company said the minicomputer is a consumer-grade product "sold to students, developers and start-ups for a wide range of beneficial applications," that it does not sell the computer in Russia, and that it is widely available through resellers.

Zaporizhzhia as testing ground

Russia began test flights of AI-guided Molniya drones in May, and had begun testing self-targeting systems in the V2U several months earlier, some of those for last-mile guidance only, Ukrainian air defense experts told NYT. Local air defense officials said Russia has been aiming at civilian objects—pumps and propane tanks at gas stations—along with military recruitment centers while trying out autonomous drones in Zaporizhzhia. Why those targets were chosen for the tests is not clear.

Gas stations have been under sustained attack independently of the AI trials. Russia has destroyed approximately 200 across Ukraine since spring, around 50 in June alone, by UNITED24 Media's count.

In Zaporizhzhia, gas stations now prop plastic sheeting at odd angles around propane tanks to confuse the drones' image recognition, and Ukraine has turned to shooting down drones that electronic warfare cannot jam.

The European Commission approved €6.1 billion ($7.12 billion) in new defense procurement for Ukraine on 24 August, covering air and missile defense systems, missiles, ammunition, and radars. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the decision as Ukraine marked its Independence Day.

Russia's intensifying missile campaign has outpaced what Ukraine's partners can supply, and Europe is now financing the systems its own industry can build while the scarcest interceptors stay in American hands.

How the €90 billion loan pays out

The funding is part of the EU's €90 billion ($105 billion) Ukraine Support Loan for 2026-27, with €60 billion allocated to defense and €30 billion for budgetary support. The new package comes on top of €16 billion in previously approved defense procurement. Reuters put the disbursed total at €8.35 billion.

On 30 June, the European Commission disbursed €3.9 billion as the first payment under a first tranche of around €6 billion dedicated to drone procurement. On 15 July, it disbursed €1.1 billion, and on 30 July another €3.47 billion for drones, missiles, air defense, and Gripen fighter jets. The Commission's own three defense-window payments add to €8.47 billion.

Most of the buying will be from EU defense companies, and the Commission said deliveries will mean drawing down stockpiles, reprioritizing orders, and raising production. Under the mechanism, Ukraine submits signed contracts with defense companies, and the Commission reviews them before releasing funds.

Interceptor deliveries are falling as strikes rise

Air defense is among Ukraine’s most urgent military needs as Russia steps up its aerial campaign. The European Commission said Ukraine faced 376 missile strikes in July alone.

Kyiv has repeatedly warned of shortages of interceptors, particularly for ballistic missiles. The shortfall traces to Washington: since the United States went to war with Iran, it faces its own Patriot shortage and has resisted releasing large numbers to Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy released figures ahead of the Independence Day meeting that show the scale: Ukraine received 675 Patriot interceptors in 2023 and 364 in 2025, while 264 are projected for 2026, against a request for at least 300 for the winter, according to Kyiv Post.

Allies gather in Kyiv with missiles on the table

The announcement coincided with a hybrid meeting of the Coalition of the Willing in Kyiv. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and French President Emmanuel Macron co-chaired the meeting, with Macron joining by videoconference, the Élysée Palace said. European Council President António Costa also took part, and NATO was represented by Deputy Secretary General Radmila Šekerinska.

Britain agreed to let defense firm MBDA release classified information on UK components of the long-range SCALP missile so Ukraine and France can set up local assembly lines, the UK government said. The EU decision followed Norway's pledge on 23 August to provide Ukraine with about $9 billion in support in 2027, including military, humanitarian, and financial assistance. Nordic and Baltic leaders announced the pledge during a visit to Kyiv.

Ukraine is asking Elon Musk to let it arm deep-strike drones with his Starlink network and turn them on Russian ballistic-missile launchers far inside Russia, the Financial Times reported. The plan needs Musk's approval — and US President Donald Trump was cool to the idea when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy raised it at the White House on 28 July, with people present expecting Musk to refuse.

Kyiv is chasing the workaround because its air defenses are stretched: Russia keeps escalating its missile and drone strikes, and Ukraine is running low on the Patriot interceptors that are its only dependable answer to Russian ballistic missiles. As Russia builds more missiles and drones, Ukraine's interceptor needs run into the hundreds before the year is out.

At the meeting, FT reported, Zelenskyy pressed Trump to lobby Musk for permission to fly Starlink-linked drones across the Russian border. He capped the pitch at 200 km into Russia — far enough to reach launch sites, command posts, and other targets — on the calculation that a shallower limit might make Musk likelier to agree.

Starlink could extend Ukrainian drone strikes

Riding SpaceX's satellites, Starlink drones hold a steadier link to their pilots at long range than ordinary radio allows, and they shrug off the jamming that grounds other drones. The drones have already shown their worth in the fighting at home, and Vienna-based military analyst Franz-Stefan Gady said that across the border they "could be very useful in hunting" Russian launchers, FT wrote.

Kyiv's best channel to Musk has also just closed: Zelenskyy recently fired his defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, who had a direct line to the billionaire.

Speaking to a Ukrainian podcast on 6 August, Fedorov said that even with a channel to Musk still open after his firing, he had made no progress on cross-border Starlink use—"a difficult task right now."

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The Fedorov protesters lost. But they backed a man for what he built, not what he promised—and that may be new in Ukraine.

Musk’s Starlink decisions have affected both sides in the Russo-Ukrainian war

Musk has backed Ukraine's heavy dependence on Starlink for military command and comms. In 2022, Musk declined to extend Starlink coverage for Ukrainian troops mid-operation near occupied Crimea, citing his fear of triggering a nuclear escalation.

He has also acted against Moscow: in February, at Fedorov's direct request, Musk shut down the Starlink terminals that Russian forces had been operating illicitly against Ukraine.

Now, Musk answered Fedorov's Monday post with a line about "trying to do the right thing" and wanting peace — and said nothing about the Starlink ask.

Mariia's working day starts at 4:30 a.m. A cook with the reconnaissance battalion of Ukraine's 40th Artillery Brigade, she has cooked for as many as 860 soldiers at once—borsch at military scale, and the steady work of keeping a brigade fed—Army Inform writes in a profile of her service.

Mariia's seven years in uniform put a human scale on a war that began in 2014: one working life spent feeding soldiers.

Mariia's path to that kitchen began long before the full-scale invasion. She wanted to enlist in 2014, when Russia's war in the Donbas started, and joined the army in 2019, she told Army Inform. Her first posting took her to Popasna, in the east, where she served for eight months. Russia's full-scale invasion, in February 2022, caught her unit in Kharkiv Oblast.

One moment from the first weeks of the invasion has stayed with her, she told Army Inform: in March 2022, an elderly couple who assumed the soldiers had nothing gave them what little they had themselves—ten eggs and four cigarettes. She has kept cooking in the years since.

Ukraine’s military-pay system, in force since 1 June, includes bonuses for taking enemy servicemembers prisoner and for confirmed kills in small-arms or hand-to-hand combat, the Defense Ministry explained on 20 August.

Under the Defense Ministry’s payment rules, the capture reward is divided among the troops involved, while the kill bonus requires video confirmation. Both are paid by order of a unit commander and fall outside the monthly limit on other combat bonuses.

How the new payments work

Oksana Liekontseva, a senior Defense Ministry official, said the highest additional payments go to troops carrying out assault operations on the line of contact or inside Russian defenses. Lower rates apply to restoring Ukrainian positions or operating farther from the front.

The zonal and assault payments depend on the time spent on each mission and require documentary confirmation. Base salaries and existing combat payments remain unchanged, while eligible personnel who do not receive combat payments can receive a smaller supplement.

The overhaul is part of a broader military reform President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced in May, combining higher frontline pay with new fixed-term contracts.

Combat medic and writer Yaryna Chornohuz has argued that bonuses cannot substitute for adequate base pay and predictable service terms, particularly for troops who have already served for years.

Khrystyna, 22, joined Ukraine's 159th Separate Mechanized Brigade after finding the unit on social media and leaving her contact details — a recruiter called her back and offered her the "18–24" contract, she said in a video published on the brigade's Facebook page.

Roughly one-third of candidates at Ground Forces recruitment centers in early 2026 chose positions as drone pilots or operators, according to the Ministry of Defense. About 80,000 Ukrainian service personnel participate in drone operations in some capacity, according to official Armed Forces statements.

Before enlisting, she worked as an administrator, a waitress, and a sushi chef. After signing, she completed professional training that included drone operation and combat sorties.

"I always believe that the 159th is the elite," she said, adding that what she liked most about military life was the people in her unit.

"18–24" program details

The "18–24" program, launched on 11 February 2025, offers one-year voluntary contracts to Ukrainians aged 18 to 24 who are not yet subject to conscription. Recruits receive a UAH 1 million (about $22,400) bonus, monthly pay of up to UAH 120,000 ($2,700), a zero-interest mortgage, and free medical care.

A drone operator track added in July 2025 extends the commitment to two years and includes up to 45 days of basic training and up to 60 days of professional drone training.

Uptake has been slow—only around 500 recruits had joined by December 2025, United24 Media reported.

The Unmanned Systems Forces—established in June 2024 as the world's first military branch dedicated to unmanned systems—number about 15,000.

Ukraine is recruiting an additional 15,000 operators under its "Drone Line" frontline strategy, The Defense Post reported.

In an interview with Army Inform, Colonel Illia Petryna, commander of the 25th Separate Sicheslav Airborne Brigade, said the brigade created a ground-robotics company as a pilot unit and that it was among the first Ukrainian brigades to organize ground robots this way.

The company was initially created to test how the systems could work in combat. They are now being used for different battlefield tasks, Petryna said. Some robots carry supplies. Others are used for evacuation or provide fire support.

The move is part of Ukraine's broader effort to build dedicated units around ground robots. In February 2025, Ukraine's Defense Ministry said the military was forming units focused on unmanned ground systems after testing that had begun in summer 2024. The systems were already being used for logistics, fire strikes, and evacuating wounded soldiers.

Ukraine has since continued expanding their use. By March 2026, 167 units were using ground robots, up from 67 in November 2025. More than 9,000 combat and logistical missions were conducted with unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) that month, according to the Defense Ministry.

Learning from the battlefield

The 25th's robotic company also gives soldiers a way to test systems and report problems directly to manufacturers.

“Cooperation with manufacturers is the basis,” Petryna said. “They draw information from us about what is needed now, what is relevant at the front.”

Soldiers use the machines in combat, identify what does not work, and pass that information back to manufacturers. The next versions can then be adapted to conditions at the front.

That creates a direct feedback loop between the battlefield and the companies developing the technology.

Petryna sees that constant adaptation as necessary because the technology and tactics of the war keep changing.

“Probably, right now, no statute in the world fits how this war is being fought,” he said. “The war has changed fundamentally.”

For the 25th, the robotic company is one way to keep adapting as the battlefield changes.

The crew flies with the Black Sky unmanned-systems battalion of the National Guard's 3rd Operational Purpose Brigade Spartan. The commander, callsign Arti, said the crew's middle-strike drones can strike Russian military vehicles as close as 50 and as far as 150 kilometers behind the front line, mostly trucks and passenger cars, Army Inform reported.

The war now reaches deep into the Russian rear, where strike drones hit vehicles once safe from the front. Every Russian vehicle this crew burns is a blow to the invasion's logistics, leaving fewer supplies and fewer troops able to reach Russian positions. (edited) 

Arti said the drones' main advantages are their range, speed, and stealth, while navigator Schultz, another crew callsign, said they are particularly effective 50–60 kilometers from the line of contact.

How the crew works

The four-person crew includes a pilot, navigator, technician and sapper. Arti joined the military intending to fly drones and first served as a second pilot on another crew before moving to middle-strike aircraft.

Schultz was mobilized in September 2024 and spent nearly a year and a half flying Mavic drones for reconnaissance, dropping munitions and delivering supplies to Ukrainian troops. That experience helped him transition to middle-strike drones.

“I navigate the terrain and give the pilot the course to fly,” Schultz said. “I already know the areas where enemy vehicles may move and where they may stage near the treelines.”

Schultz said Russian forces have become increasingly reluctant to move vehicles close to the front line after repeated Ukrainian strikes.

"At 50 to 60 kilometers from the [frontline] they're quite effective. Right on the line we won't find anyone now — nobody drives there anymore, because our guys worked them over for so long. The occupiers are already afraid to drive closer. It knocks out all the enemy's logistics," he said.

Schultz said this can mean fewer supplies and personnel reaching Russian positions.

He recalled the first time he watched one of the crew’s strikes in real time. Reconnaissance operators tracked a vehicle carrying Russian personnel while the drone crew moved in to attack.

“We saw it ourselves—we saw how we hit it, how everything exploded and burned,” he said.

The crew began flying middle-strike drones only a few months ago.

“We’re a young crew. There’s still a lot ahead,” Schultz said.

The head of UN Tourism, Shaikha Al Nowais, named medical tourism and Ukraine's IT sector as the country's strongest cards for winning back foreign visitors after the war, at a Kyiv briefing. Ukraine already holds everything a tourism economy needs, she said, from culture and landscapes to cuisine. Al Nowais, the first woman to lead the organization in its history, was making the first visit by a UN Tourism chief to Ukraine in a decade.

A UN specialized agency publicly treated Ukraine as a future destination rather than a war zone, as Kyiv tries to anchor its reconstruction to sectors that can earn hard currency and bring people back to emptied regions. Both sectors she named were among Ukraine's stronger performers before 2022.

Before the invasion, Ukraine was receiving about 13 million visitors a year, with tourism worth roughly 3 to 4 percent of GDP, RBC-Ukraine reported citing the numbers mentioned at the briefing.

"Bringing all stakeholders in the tourism process together with the state under one umbrella could unlock great potential," Al Nowais said.

A medical tourism hub before the war

Before Russia's full-scale invasion, Ukraine had a reputation as an affordable place for fertility treatment and surrogacy, dentistry, laser eye surgery, and cosmetic procedures, the US-based Medical Tourism Association said. Prices often ran a fraction of Western European ones. In the late 2010s, the country's medical tourism association counted tens of thousands of foreign patients a year. Because that trade rests on clinics and specialists rather than rebuilt infrastructure, Al Nowais said it could bounce back fairly quickly once the war ends.

A tech sector that grew through the war

Ukraine's IT exports reached about $6.8 billion in 2021, close to a tenth of all the country's exports, and the industry has been one of the few to keep growing through the war. The same ecosystem produced the Diia app, a state-services platform installed by more than a third of Ukrainian adults before the invasion, along with globally used products such as Grammarly and GitLab. A sector that has shown it can ship and scale under bombardment is, on Al Nowais's logic, well placed to build the booking, logistics and guide services a returning tourism market will need.

Ukraine's Acting Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha met her in Kyiv on 15 August 2026 to discuss tourism's place in reconstruction, and UN Tourism agreed to provide 500 scholarships for Ukrainians to study at its Online Academy, 200 of them reserved for veterans, with Kyiv setting the rest of the allocation.

Entry-level employers are finding it harder—and more expensive—to recruit young men. On Work.ua, one of Ukraine’s largest job platforms, the number of male candidates aged 18 to 22 who responded to vacancies fell 19% between July 2025 and July 2026, Lesia Prymakova told Ukrainska Pravda. The decline reached 29% in hospitality and retail.

At the same time, advertised entry-level pay moved close to Work.ua’s overall median. The median salary for vacancies open to students rose 24%, while pay for jobs requiring no experience increased 23%.

The candidate pool shrank after the government eased wartime travel restrictions for men aged 18 to 22 last summer, following an initiative by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The government said the change was intended to discourage families from taking boys abroad before their 18th birthdays, when the previous rules would have prevented them from leaving.

Hospitality and retail feel the squeeze

Restaurant owners tied the decline in young applicants directly to the eased travel rules. Sommelier Oleh Kravchenko, who owns Kyiv wine bar Win Bar, said two of his staff, a bartender and a cook, were preparing to leave the country, and that the bar had begun hiring more women, whereas server positions had earlier been held only by men.

He said his payroll had risen 5 to 10% and that he now raised wages at least every six months, even as rent, utilities, and food costs also climbed. Olena Borysova, who owns the GastroFamily group behind the Bilyi Naliv chain, said young applicants had become rare over the past year.

Ukraine’s labor shortage extends far beyond this age group. Ukraine’s full-time workforce fell from 7 million in 2021 to 5.3 million by late 2025, while the National Bank expects the net outflow of workers to continue into 2027.

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Ukraine’s economy posted its sharpest contraction since the wartime recovery began

Against that backdrop, 48% of companies reported labor shortages in a survey cited by Ukrainska Pravda, without attributing them specifically to the travel change, and Work.ua put the overall median advertised wage up 20% year on year. These are nominal advertised salaries; annual inflation stood at 7.7% in July, so the real increase is smaller.

No one knows how many stayed abroad

No reliable count shows how many young men remained abroad. Social Policy Minister Denys Uliutin cited an estimate from European partners that some 400,000 men aged 18 to 22 left Ukraine between August 2025 and April 2026. However, the estimate does not identify unique individuals or subtract those who later returned, Vasyl Voskoboinyk, head of the NGO Office of Migration Policy, told Ukrainska Pravda.

Voskoboinyk estimated that around 300,000 men in this age group had been working, equivalent to about 2% of Ukraine’s labor force, and said their departures had not caused a broader labor-market collapse.

Available education data show no comparable decline. The Education Ministry recorded a 28% year-on-year rise in university applications, while Kyiv-Mohyla rector Serhiy Kvit said the academy had not seen mass withdrawals. Applications count submissions rather than enrolled or retained students, so the increase indicates continued demand for places rather than a settled outcome.

Voskoboinyk said it was still too early to determine whether the policy had reduced departures among 16- and 17-year-old boys, its stated long-term aim.

Employers widen who they recruit

Employers are recruiting more broadly to fill the gap. Olena Kolesnikova of the Federation of Employers said firms were increasingly willing to hire from groups they had previously overlooked, with 94.4% open to internally displaced people, 91% to veterans, and 88% to people with disabilities.

Keeping young people in Ukraine, she argued, would take more than pay. "The right question is not how to keep young people from leaving, but how to make it worthwhile for a young person to start a career and build a life in Ukraine after they finish studying," she said.

Russia struck facilities of Ukraine's state-owned Naftogaz Group 13 times over the past week, hitting several regions with drones and missiles, the company reported on 17 August. Gas extraction infrastructure was among the targets, and one asset was hit several times. Naftogaz said the strikes seriously damaged equipment and production capacity and cut part of its output. No employees were injured this time.

The strikes are part of a systematic Russian drone and missile campaign against Ukraine's oil and gas production, intensifying as winter approaches. Naftogaz has now counted 293 strikes on its facilities since the start of 2026.

Acting Naftogaz CEO Serhii Fedorenko has said the strikes are meant to inflict maximum damage on Ukraine's infrastructure ahead of the heating season. The company said Russian attacks destroyed 37 sites in its network during the first seven months of 2026, 32 Ukrnafta filling stations and five Ukrhazvydobuvannia complexes.

The strikes carry a human cost too: EP has reported 312 workers killed across the group since 2022. In what Naftogaz called its largest strike on gas production infrastructure, Russia fired 35 missiles and 60 drones at facilities in the Kharkiv and Poltava regions in October 2025.

Russia's long war on Ukraine's energy grid

Russia has bombed Ukraine's power and heating systems through every winter of its full-scale invasion. Each year the strikes have grown heavier. Then-Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said last winter's attacks damaged or destroyed roughly 80% of Ukraine's energy system. Across 2025, Russia hit energy sites more than 600 times, damaging all 15 of the country's thermal plants. The strikes have forced repeated nationwide blackouts and cut heat to homes in sub-zero cold.

That previous campaign failed to collapse the grid, so Moscow now eyes Ukraine's water systems as its next winter target. Heading into the coming winter, Ukraine received about three times fewer air-defense missiles in the first half of 2026 than a year earlier. Kyiv is answering with its own deep strikes on Russian refineries and military plants. For civilians, the pattern means another winter of cold homes, rationed power, and threatened water supplies.

A Russian drone knocked out the robot sent to evacuate two wounded Ukrainian assault troops. Their company commander went in himself. He drove into the kill zone in an unarmored pickup truck, without body armor, and carried them out.

The Joint Forces Group released the footage on 16 August 2026. It identified the commander as Vladyslav Polskyi of the 475th Separate Assault Regiment (Code 9.2).

The two soldiers had captured Russian positions and were pulling back when Russian Molniya drones hit them, the group said. Both were seriously wounded and could not move on their own. A ground robot was sent to pull them out. A second drone hit it, and it stopped in the open, leaving the men exposed.

The group framed the rescue as the reason the regiment's soldiers take on the hardest assaults when others hold back: they know their commanders do not hide behind them, and will give everything to save every one of their men.

In June, Ukrainian ground robots ran nearly 17,000 supply and evacuation runs, taking on the exposed trips that used to get crews killed. Ukraine now fields some 25,000 combat robots. Their main limit, a presidential adviser says, is not hardware but staying connected under jamming, and a new Ukrainian antenna is meant to help. But no antenna stops what happened here. A drone hit the evacuation robot and knocked it out.

When the robot failed, the risk it was built to absorb fell back on the commander.

Borka arrived as a kid about a year and a half ago, carried in by one of the men and left at the door of the unit's house in Donetsk Oblast, the battalion's chief sergeant, who uses the callsign Sheva, told ArmyInform, the Ukrainian defense ministry's information agency. Someone suggested keeping him, someone else joked about meat, and no one followed through. He has stayed ever since, through several redeployments and near-daily Russian drone activity. On one occasion, a Russian FPV drone exploded near the position. The soldiers relocated in a hurry, then realized they had left Borka behind and went back for him, Sheva recalled.

Borka is one of many animals Ukrainian troops have taken in and pulled out of front-line areas during Russia's war against Ukraine. Sheva casts the care as a deliberate contrast. "They are our lesser brethren. We are responsible for those we have tamed. We are not like the Russians," he said, adding that comrades have evacuated dogs, cats, and once even a cow from wrecked settlements.

Sheva, who volunteered with friends at the start of Russia's full-scale invasion and has fought on the Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, and Donetsk fronts, says Borka is no easy houseguest. Whoever feeds him is his favorite, and whoever is late feeding him, Sheva included, risks a headbutt. He once snapped his tether and walked straight into the house where the soldiers were resting, to their general shock. To burn off his energy, the unit built him a training station out of a stump with an old helmet hung on it, and in winter they put up a small insulated shelter that he keeps demolishing, and they keep repairing. They trade chocolate bars for hay and straw, and tell his story to people who then pitch in with food.

The plan is, eventually, to find Borka a permanent home in good hands. "No one is going to send Borka for meat," Sheva said. On the front, he added, any small distraction has value: a cat purring on your lap settles you, and Borka does something different. "He's the kind of guy who keeps us all on our toes."

Starting in September, Belarusian 10th-graders will be split by gender for new practical training: boys will take a 10-hour drone-piloting course, girls an expanded tactical medicine block, Deputy Education Minister Alyaksandr Kadlubai said, according to BelTA. The changes fall under the "pre-conscription and medical training" classes already taught in Belarusian schools.

The update fits a broader pattern of militarizing education in Belarus since the 2020 protests and Alyaksandr Lukashenka's subsequent crackdown. Military-patriotic clubs, formalized under a 2022 presidential decree, have spread through Belarusian schools, sending children as young as elementary school age through weapons training and field exercises. This year, Radio Svoboda says that 10-day military field camps have become mandatory for 10th-graders, and kindergartens have opened groups with a military-patriotic focus.

Kadlubai singled out cooperation with a Minsk-based military unit, No. 5448, home to a police brigade of the interior troops, saying the ministry aims to "scale this experience across the whole of Belarus."

"We've strengthened the practical component," Kadlubai said. "We've shifted the balance toward practical classes and increased their volume."

While Belarus drills its own children, Russia indoctrinates Ukraine's

Belarus is not a neutral bystander to Russia's war. Alyaksandr Lukashenka's government let Russian forces stage the February 2022 invasion from Belarusian soil, and Kyiv says it keeps expanding the logistics routes, training grounds, and artillery positions Russia could use for future operations.

And what its ally teaches at home, Russia imposes by force on Ukrainian children under occupation. From 1 September 2026, occupation authorities roll out a curriculum built around loyalty to the Russian state — a compulsory Russian "identity" subject, a split-off military-training course, and behavior graded from the second grade as "exemplary," "acceptable," or "unacceptable." It already reaches more than 582,000 children in nearly 2,000 schools.

Russia's economy grew 1.3% in the second quarter of 2026, the state news agency TASS reported on 12 August, citing preliminary estimates from the state statistics agency Rosstat — a figure that, if accurate, would end a slump that had opened the year with the country's first quarterly contraction since 2023.

And it comes from a state agency months after Putin dressed down his economic team in April and demanded "concrete measures" to restore growth — the print then beat the government's own economists in exactly the direction he wanted.

The quarter may have brought a real if shallow rebound, or the state's statisticians may have produced the figure the president wanted. Either way it matters, because Russia's economy is what pays for its war, and its strength sets the ceiling on how long the Kremlin can keep fighting.

Barely growing all year

Even taken straight, the rebound is thinner than it looks. The first quarter had closed 0.2% down, and across the whole first half of the year output rose just 0.6%, half of last year's pace and close to seven times slower than the wartime boom of 2023 and 2024. The quarterly figure jumped. The underlying trend barely moved.

The weakness had been building for over a year. War spending drove the 2023–24 boom and overheated the economy; to curb the resulting inflation, the central bank raised its key rate to 21%, choking lending and investment. It has cut rates since, to 14% in July, but money is still tight and inflation is rising again as Ukrainian strikes push up fuel prices.

Growth the war paid for

As The Moscow Times set out, reviewing the data and the economists reading it, most of the quarter's growth rested on one-off factors: more working days than a year earlier, a temporary oil-revenue spike during the Iran war, and a budget that lifted spending 16%, a third of it on the army and weapons. The split underneath is the tell.

Military plants kept raising output; civilian industry kept shrinking, down 3.2% from a year earlier by the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting (CMASF), a Russian forecasting institute, according to its estimate.

Rosstat also billed the quarter as its strongest in six, and said it had beaten the forecasts of both the economy ministry, which had projected 0.9%, and the central bank, which saw 0.8%.

Few expect it to last

Russia will "remain in a state of stagnation" for the foreseeable future, said Liam Peach of Capital Economics, citing high interest rates and the fuel crisis.

Ukraine's long-range drones are adding to the strain. Their strikes have cut Russian oil refining to its lowest level in more than two decades, draining fuel supply and pushing prices up at home, and forcing Moscow, an oil giant, to import gasoline from as far as Morocco.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the results on 12 August after a briefing from Commander-in-Chief Mykhailo Drapatyi, Chief of the General Staff Ihor Skybiuk, and Airborne Assault Forces Commander Oleh Apostol.

Kyiv says the operation recaptured 745 km² and 26 villages across Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. The Airborne Assault Forces and attached units carried it out. The goal was to stop Russian forces from advancing further and push them beyond the administrative border of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. The President's Office put Russian losses at at least 9,550 killed and over 6,600 wounded. Ukrainian forces are continuing to build on the gains. The operation also added to Ukraine's prisoner exchange pool.

Since its 2023 counteroffensive stalled, Ukraine has mostly defended while Russia grinds forward, making any sustained Ukrainian advance rare. With Western aid uncertain and its own troops stretched, Ukraine rarely gets to trade defense for offense on its own land.

A reversal Russia paid for across the front

Ukraine has spent most of the past year on the defensive. The Oleksandrivka counteroffensive broke that pattern. For over six months, Ukrainian forces pushed forward rather than holding ground, and they did it in Ukraine's own Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, not on Russian territory.

The operation also hurt Russia elsewhere. Every unit Moscow sent to defend in the Oleksandrivka direction was a unit it could not use to attack other parts of the front, the US-based think tank ISW assessed. Russian recruitment is declining, which makes that tradeoff harder to absorb.

The numbers across the whole frontline tell the same story. Between late January and 12 August, Russian forces seized roughly 383 km² but lost about 234 km², according to ISW. The net Russian gain was far smaller than in previous seasons.

How Ukraine clawed the ground back

The counteroffensive began on 29 January, according to ISW. Texty reported it ran in two stages: January to May and May to August. It was one of two mutually reinforcing Ukrainian drives in the Oleksandrivka and Huliaipole directions. Both aimed to push Russia from Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and disrupt preparations for Russia's 2026 offensive.

Kyiv says the following 26 villages were liberated: Tolstoi, Novokhatske, Hrushivske, Zirka, Zelenyi Hai, Piddubne, Myrne, Tsehelne, Pryvillia, Zlahoda, Krasnohirske, Pryvilne, Novohryhorivka, Stepove, Kalynivske, Berezove, Novomykolaivka, Voskresenka, Oleksandrohrad, Yalta, Rybne, Maliivka, Sichneve, Ternove, Novoheorhiivka, and Zaporizke. The settlements span all three oblasts.

Where Kyiv's map and ISW's diverge

ISW described the results as evidence that Ukrainian forces can still carry out significant tactical advances and bring back limited mechanized maneuver on parts of the frontline.

It assessed that the success was likely the result of several factors working together: better Ukrainian operational planning, a campaign to suppress and destroy Russian air defenses, deeper strikes against Russian supply lines, Ukraine's advantage in tactical drones, and the 01 February Starlink cutoff that hit Russian forces in Ukraine.

Geolocated footage from 11 August showed Ukrainian forces holding positions southeast of Ternuvate and Vozdvyzhivka. Russian sources had claimed advances in those areas. ISW assessed those claims were likely largely exaggerated.

ISW's own mapping recorded roughly 627 km² of Ukrainian gains across the Oleksandrivka and northern Huliaipole directions combined. Even that two-direction total falls below Kyiv's 745 km² for the Oleksandrivka direction alone. ISW noted its conservative methodology likely underestimates Ukrainian advances.

The Airborne Assault Forces Command added that some flag-raisings over liberated villages were done at a "safe distance" from actual positions for operational security. This suggests forces had moved beyond the settlements they publicly named.

Lithuania's government approved an expanded plan on 12 August to fortify its borders with Russia and Belarus against a possible attack, LRT reports. Lithuania, a Baltic state and NATO member, sits wedged between Russia's Kaliningrad exclave and Belarus. The decision opens a new counter-mobility belt reaching inland from the border, a 20-meter strip that widens to 150 meters where the army marks out areas for operations.

The buildout answers a fear that has gripped the Baltics since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022: that a Russia left unchecked in Ukraine could turn on them next. Western intelligence agencies have warned for years that Moscow could eventually threaten NATO itself, and former CIA director David Petraeus has singled out Lithuania as the likeliest first target, pinned between Kaliningrad and Belarus and sitting beside the Suwałki Gap, the thin land corridor that is NATO's only overland route to the Baltic states.

The decision raises the number of engineering parks, storage depots for obstacles like concrete blocks and roadblocks, from 27 to 50, and gives that work until the end of 2028, more than three years past the original April 2025 target. The state rail company LTG Infra is to store the equipment. The changes could cost an extra €50 million ($58 million) from the State Defense Fund between 2026 and 2030.

Of the Baltic states and Poland fortifying their eastern borders, Lithuania is the most at risk yet the least fortified, according to a satellite review by open-source analyst Clément Molin, even as Belarus keeps testing that border with engineered migrant crossings. The plan is Lithuania's share of the Baltic Defense Line, the joint barrier it launched in 2024 with Latvia and Estonia, alongside Poland's parallel East Shield.

The design comes straight from Ukraine. Lithuania began building counter-mobility parks in 2023, drawing on Russia's war against Ukraine, and much of what it is now putting into the ground, the swamps, ditches, and obstacle fields, was tested first on Ukrainian battlefields, where mud, water, and simple barriers have repeatedly stalled armored advances.

The restored swamps should make some ground impassable to heavy military vehicles within a few years, the Defense Ministry says, with that work due by the end of 2030. Plans for defensive ditches and streams in the Marijampolė municipality were dropped, and the ministry found better sites in the Vilkaviškis and Šakiai districts. Deadlines for obstacles on roads and bridge approaches, and for fitting bridges with holders for explosives, were also moved to the end of 2028.

"Military counter-mobility is an important part of Lithuania's defence preparedness," Deputy Defense Minister Tomas Mikelkevičius said. "We seek to make the best possible use of Lithuania's terrain and engineering measures to impede an adversary's movement if necessary and create more favorable conditions for our armed forces to operate."

Lithuania approved its first counter-mobility plan in July 2024. The plan's original 2024 estimate put the full system at around €600 million ($690 million) over the decade.

Russia's pressure on the Baltic borders

The buildout lands amid steady friction along NATO's eastern edge. Latvia has absorbed the bulk of the migrant crossings funneled from Belarus, and this week found its first used smuggling tunnel under the border. Estonia has switched on the first sensors of a planned drone wall along its Russian frontier and is reallocating €500 million ($575 million) toward air defense and long-range strike. Russia, for its part, has shut seven rail crossings with Latvia, Estonia, and Finland without explanation.

The fortification drive is a bet on time. Estonia's military chief has set a two-year clock, warning Russia could be combat-ready again by 2027, and ISW analysts assessed in May that Moscow was manufacturing pretexts for aggression against the Baltics. Poland's parallel East Shield, meanwhile, has gone up far slower than promised, leaving the region's defenses still thin where the threat is judged greatest.

By the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine's account, Mykhailo, one of its soldiers, deployed to the forest in October 2024 with the rapid-response border commandant unit Shkval and held off Russian assaults while fortifying the ground under constant drone attack.

Holding a position like that on a static, drone-saturated front takes endurance as much as firepower. A unit has to supply itself, down to digging its own water under fire. The Serebryanskyi forest, on the border of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, has been contested since 2022. Euromaidan Press has previously reported on Ukrainian storming operations in the forest and on Azov's account of driving Russian forces from some positions there in 2024.

Mykhailo worked abroad in construction after his studies, then signed a contract with the State Border Guard Service in 2020. He served first at the Nismychi unit, then at Belz, where he worked as a district inspector, before the October 2024 rotation with Shkval put him on the positions for 115 days.

"Logistics were not easy. Drones delivered the food, and we also had to supply the positions with water. So we even dug our own well, to have our own water and to be able to bring in more food," Mykhailo recalled.

He returns repeatedly to the men around him. When his own endurance ran out, he said, it was his brothers-in-arms who kept him in place.

"Your brothers-in-arms motivate you. When I said I couldn't take it anymore, they said: 'Sit tight. Together to the end.' And so we all sat there together to the end," he said.

Mykhailo is motivated by his family, which he considers his greatest incentive to defend Ukraine.