Russia is now tearing apart brand-new planes to keep older ones in the air. The country's civil aviation continues to deteriorate under international sanctions, forcing it to dismantle even new, fully equipped aircraft to obtain spare parts, Ukraine's Defense Intelligence (HUR) reports.
About 95% of all passenger traffic in Russia operates on Western-built aircraft, mostly Airbus and Boeing, according to HUR, a figure consistent with the roughly 90% EP has reported in earlier Ukrainian intelligence assessments.
Much of that fleet has flown past its guaranteed service life and would long since have been retired under international norms, but cut off from certified maintenance, Russia keeps flying it against the rules.
Repairs are carried out without proper certification, parts are often handmade from unsuitable materials, and what cannot be made is imported through third countries.
The usable fleet is shrinking toward a hard floor
The risk of seizure abroad has boxed Russia's usable fleet into a narrow set of planes. Because of the danger of arrest in foreign jurisdictions, Russia can relatively safely operate only about 400 foreign aircraft and fewer than 150 Soviet and Russian-built machines, according to HUR.
The 400-aircraft figure tracks the roughly 400 Western jets Russia appropriated from foreign leasing companies after the 2022 full-scale war, planes it re-registered domestically and cannot fly to most of the world without risking impoundment. Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service reported in October 2025 that Russian carriers could shed hundreds of planes by 2030 as sanctions block imports of aircraft, parts, and maintenance, with more than a third of the civil fleet already cannibalized for parts.
The homegrown replacement program is failing on the specifics
Russia's plan to replace Western aircraft with its own is ambitious on paper and stalling in practice. The state has a program running to 2030, worth about $12 billion, to build 994 civilian aircraft and 765 helicopters, according to HUR, but an industry cut off from Western technology cannot make components of adequate quality.
The failures are specific and checkable. The MC-21, meant to replace the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737, had to have its capacity cut from 210 to 163 seats because of problems with its domestic PD-14 engines. The Superjet has hit similar engine trouble, and Russia has abandoned new modifications of the Il-96 entirely.
Regional aviation is no better. The LMS-901 "Baikal," meant to replace the Ukrainian-designed An-2, cannot do what its predecessor could: take off and land on unprepared dirt strips. The Il-114-300, meant to replace the An-24 and An-26, can operate only from paved airfields, and the use of unsuitable propeller materials carries a risk that the propellers could fail.
Ukraine's president has taken the question of Patriot production to the company that builds the missile. Volodymyr Zelenskyy met a team from the American defense company Raytheon and said Ukraine is negotiating joint production of interceptors for the Patriot air defense systems, one of the country's key air defenses, he announced.
The meeting is the first direct, publicly reported contact between Zelenskyy and Raytheon since US President Donald Trump pledged at the Ankara's NATO summit on 8 July to grant Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriots.
At the Farnborough Airshow this week, senior executives from Raytheon parent RTX and from Lockheed Martin described talks on Ukrainian Patriot production as "early days" and said they were awaiting US government guidance on licensing.
Zelenskyy's meeting, led by Raytheon Vice President Joseph Deantona, is the Ukrainian side pushing that process forward directly with the company rather than waiting on it.
Zelenskyy ties talks back to Ankara
Raytheon is a powerful defense company whose equipment Ukraine has long used to protect people from Russian attacks, Zelenskyy said at the meeting, thanking the team for its readiness to take the partnership to a new level, specifically on joint production of Patriot interceptors.
The sides also discussed other areas of cooperation, including non-offensive military equipment, and agreed that Ukrainian teams at the government level and in the private sector should stay in contact with Raytheon to work out the details of the partnership.
Interceptor shortage is reason for urgency
The Patriot interceptor is the weapon Ukraine most needs and can least produce, which is what makes any production deal so consequential and its timeline so pressing. Ukraine's interception rate against ballistic missiles was roughly 40% in June, against 89% for air threats overall, and only Patriots reliably engage the ballistic and hypersonic missiles in Russia's massed strikes.
The gap between negotiation and missile is the catch. Independent estimates put the first Ukrainian-built interceptors well over a year away, and the deepest bottleneck is a Boeing guidance component made in only two places on Earth.
For the near term, Zelenskyy has been clear that the missiles that matter come from existing American stocks.
He told NATO's United States envoy this week that increased interceptor deliveries through the PURL mechanism are "the key priority, because Russia's massed strikes do not stop." The Raytheon talks are about the year after this one, while the PURL deliveries are about tonight.
Ireland brought more aid to Ukraine. Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Helen McEntee announced a new $146 million package of bilateral support for Ukraine in 2026, during the visit to Kyiv on 23 July, the Irish government reports.
Ireland has provided $643 million in support to Ukraine since February 2022, in addition to hosting around 85,000 Ukrainians under Temporary Protection.
The package splits into $117 million for priority non-lethal military equipment and $29 million to help repair and protect Ukraine's critical infrastructure, with a focus on energy ahead of winter.
Martin arrived in Kyiv to show Irish solidarity three weeks after President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Dublin to mark the start of Ireland's presidency of the Council of the European Union, which runs through the end of 2026.
Alumina question follows Martin to Kyiv
The discussions were also focused on a Russian-owned refinery in Ireland, according to the Irish government.
"I also briefed the President on the findings of our investigation into Aughinish Alumina and the export of alumina to Russia," he said.
The Aughinish plant is owned by the Russian metals giant Rusal, and the investigation into it is the uncomfortable subtext of Ireland's support for Ukraine.
Ireland's Department of Enterprise opened a review after The Irish Times and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project published an investigation into the plant's alleged role in supplying Russia's military industry.
Speaking during a visit to Kyiv on Thursday, Martin said the investigation into the Co Limerick facility did not find "definitive" evidence that it was supplying alumina to the Russian military, but could not rule out that scenario.
“What we have said is that the evidential threshold isn’t there to prove that it goes into weapon making; on the other hand, neither can you say definitively that it doesn’t," Martin said.
He said close to half of Ireland's alumina exports go to Europe, namely Sweden and France.
The government may look for another route to the same end. Ireland would work with the European Commission to find a way to ensure its alumina exports do not feed the Russian war machine, without necessarily sanctioning the product, Martin said, calling it "both an Irish issue and a European issue."
Ukrainian forces armed a civilian-style transport plane with interceptor drones
It's such a good idea that Russian forces have copied it
Russian training planes and transports hauling cheap interceptors could help fill gaps in Russian air defenses
Sometime late last year, some enterprising Ukrainian volunteers mounted a 7.62-millimeter minigun to the port fuselage hatch of an Antonov An-28 turboprop transport—and went hunting for Russian Shahed attack drones.
Months later, in April, the same crew added much heavier armament to their Shahed-killing gunship—in the form of inexpensive interceptor drones hanging from the old transport's wings. Interceptor drones normally launch from the ground before slamming into their Russian targets. But low clouds can blind them. Launching from an airborne An-28 means the interceptors can get above the clouds—and continue their hunt in all but the worst weather.
It's such a good idea that Russian forces have copied it. A new video that circulated online depicts Russian aircrew arming an Antonov An-2 biplane and a Yakovlev Yak-52 turboprop training plane with underwing interceptor drones. The Ukrainians also use Yak-52s for air defense against drones, albeit with a gun-armed shooter in the back seat.
The An-2 was designed in the 1940s. It cruises at barely 250 km/hr. The 1970s-vintage Yak-52 is slightly faster at 285 km/hr. But both types are stable and maneuverable and cheap to operate. They may not be able to take down the highest and fastest aerial targets, but they don't have to. They're for the lower, slower targets.
In other words, the An-2s and Yak-52s complement surface-to-air missiles and missile-armed fighters. They don't replace them. "This is the low-cost way if providing area air defense," wrote Michael Bohnert, an analyst with the California think tank RAND.
The interceptor drones hanging under the An-2 and Yak-52's wings function as inexpensive air-to-air missiles, helping the old planes hit Ukrainian drones from potentially 10 km away or farther. The concept is simple. The biplane or trainer takes off, maneuvers between incoming Ukrainian drones and their target and launches its underwing interceptors, most likely one at a time.
A crew member in the cabin of the An-2 or the back seat of the Yak-52 sees what the interceptor sees on a handheld console, and steers the interceptor to a collision with a Ukrainian drone. Some interceptors drones have a small explosive payload, but they don't normally need it: the impact alone should take down a drone.
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Enviable concept
It's obvious why the Russians copied the Ukrainian gunship concept. Ukrainian drones struck no fewer than 1,000 Russian air defense systems and related facilities just between June and March, according to Ukrainian analysis group Tochnyii. The resulting gaps in Russian air defenses helped more Ukrainian drones reach strategic targets such as munitions factories and oil refineries.
Now the Ukrainians are launching more than 11,000 one-way attack drones a month at targets in occupied Ukraine and Russia itself, steadily bleeding the Russian war effort through thousands of pinpricks. Russia needs more air defenses, fast. The cheaper the better as it scrambles to replace destroyed missile batteries and plug gaps in the overall air defense network.
Old turboprop planes costing just a few thousand dollars and hour to fly, and carrying interceptor drones also costing just a few thousand dollars, are just the thing. An-2s and Yak-52s could fly over Moscow or other cities in western Russia, swatting down incoming Ukrainian drones and freeing up higher-end air defenses to focus on harder targets such as Ukraine's Fire Point FP-5 cruise missiles.
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Russia is running out of its best eyes in the sky
Where a propeller-driven attack drone cruising at just 200 km/hr is vulnerable to an interceptor drone speeding along at 350 km/hr or faster, an FP-5 jetting along at 950 km/hr is too fast to intercept with a drone. It's not that the Russians can't shoot down an FP-5—they can and do—but it's apparent they usually do so with missiles costing hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece or more.
Those missiles are in increasingly short supply in Russia, just as they are in Ukraine. The Russians are keen to save them for the hardest targets. And that means taking down the easiest targets with something like an old transport plane lugging $2,000 interceptor drones.
The Russians' improvised gunships aren't foolproof, of course. Russian forces adapted to Ukrainian forces' gunships by acquiring more jet-propelled Shaheds that can outrun the gunships. The Ukrainians could adapt in the same way: adding more jet drones to their attack mix in order to thwart the Russian gunships.
Ukraine's newest frontline motorcycle can carry two soldiers, avoid the mines that kill trucks, and recharge a unit's drones. The Defense Ministry codified the MUL.E, Ukraine's first all-wheel-drive electric motorcycle, and cleared it for use in the Armed Forces, the Defense Ministry announced.
Motorcycles have become one of the most sought-after vehicles on the front, alongside pickups, giving Ukrainian troops speed and mobility where logistics are hard, roads are absent, or small groups operate.
In 2026, Ukraine's Defense Procurement Agency contracted 1,500 motorcycles for the Armed Forces, three times last year's volume, and by bringing six companies into a competitive tender, it cut the final price and saved the state budget nearly $290,000. The MUL.E is the sharper end of that push: not just cheaper transport bought in bulk, but a purpose-built machine with capabilities no internal-combustion motorcycle has.
The MUL.E was developed at a Ukrainian defense enterprise in response to soldiers' requests for high-intensity modern warfare. It carries personnel with weapons, small cargo, and wounded across all surfaces, including off-road, and can tow a loaded trailer, per the Defense Ministry.
What sets MUL.E apart
During testing, the MUL.E confirmed its stated characteristics, the Defense Ministry said. Its distinctive features are the ones a conventional military motorcycle lacks: a 2×2 all-wheel-drive design, two independent motors for survivability if one fails, near-silent operation, fast deployment and packing, long autonomous running time, and significant range.
The mine resistance is the standout. The MUL.E's wide off-road tires and all-wheel drive let it cross difficult terrain, washed-out ground, sand, deep snow, and marsh, and because it exerts low ground pressure, roughly like an infantryman's foot, it does not trigger most mines designed to destroy cars and armored vehicles. A vehicle that can drive over anti-vehicle mines without setting them off is a real advantage on a front where mining has made many routes impassable.
Bike is also power station
The MUL.E's second role is what its makers call a bike-generator. A full charge lasts nearly 100 kilometers, and unlike other electric vehicles, the MUL.E does not simply stop when its batteries run out.
Mounted on the frame is an additional gasoline generator that recharges the onboard batteries. It is detachable, so it can be lifted off and used as a power source in its own right: charging the batteries of phones, communications equipment, and FPV drones, or supplying electricity to a unit in field conditions. That turns the motorcycle into mobile infrastructure.
A small group operating far from any grid can ride the MUL.E in silently, then use it to keep their drones and radios powered.
The dual function fits Ukraine's wider drive toward electric frontline transport that is quiet and hard to detect. Ukraine approved the WOLFSTORM electric motorcycle in June 2026, an 80 km/h machine that defeats thermal and acoustic detection and carries two soldiers in full gear.
The MUL.E adds all-wheel drive, mine resistance, and a generator to that concept, extending what an electric two-wheeler can do for the small mobile groups that increasingly define how Ukraine fights.
Russia has connected two of its drones that could not talk to each other before. Ukraine has documented a case in which Russia controlled "Molniya" drones via "Gerbera" relay drones over a MESH network, which was previously impossible due to a licensing restriction, presidential adviser on defense technology development Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov said.
That MESH network is the technology Russia now relies on for its entire drone-control system. In it, radio modems on the drones connect to one another in the air, each relaying to the next, so that if one drone drops out, the signal routes around it through another, Beskrestnov explained.
Same Chinese manufacturer produces these drones
Even if 80% of the drones are destroyed, the rest can still relay. The network lets operators inside Russia steer drones over Ukraine from hundreds of kilometers away, and it is what makes the online-controlled Shahed a hard air-defense problem Ukraine faces.
The new development is that two previously separate drones have joined the same mesh. The MESH modems on the Molniya and the Shahed-family Gerbera come from the same Chinese manufacturer and operate on the same frequency band, Beskrestnov said, but until now they were not compatible with each other due to a licensing restriction.
"Today we have the first case of controlling Molniyas through a Gerbera," he said.
Flash says fix is simple: kill Gerbera
Beskrestnov called the change expected and told Ukraine's air defenders how to answer it. He asked everyone to note the fact, because the scheme will probably spread.
"If anything, we drop the Gerbera, and the Molniyas fall on their own," he said.
The logic is the relay chain's own weakness: if the Gerbera is the node passing control to the Molniyas, destroying that relay severs the Molniyas from their operators. A drone flying on a link that no longer exists loses its guidance.
That points at a target Ukraine already tracks. The Gerbera is a cheap foam decoy-and-reconnaissance drone Russia flies alongside Shaheds to draw fire, scout air defenses, and, increasingly, carry the mesh modems that relay control to other drones. Turning it into a control node for Molniyas makes it more valuable to Russia and more worth shooting down for Ukraine.
The former Ukrainian defense minister says he will only take back his old job, not another role. Mykhailo Fedorov explains that he is refusing every position Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has offered him in the state sector, because only the defense minister is among the roles that "really determine the course of the war," Suspilne reported.
His words came amid the fallout from a reshuffle that had run for over a week. Zelenskyy dismissed Fedorov on 15 July, per his own announcement, triggering six days of protests in Kyiv and at least 16 other cities that demanded his reinstatement.
Fedorov said he is grateful to Zelenskyy for the proposed ways to keep working for Ukraine, but that only three positions, apart from the soldiers on the battlefield, actually shape the war: the president, the defense minister, and the commander-in-chief.
"That is why I am not agreeing to any position other than that of the defense minister," he said.
No other post, in his view, has the real authority to defeat corruption in procurement, complete the army transformation he began, plan asymmetric operations against the enemy, and root out what he called a culture of lies and irresponsibility within the system.
Fedorov names the plan he says he was hired to finish
Fedorov grounded his refusal in unfinished work. He recalled that he came to the Defense Ministry in January 2026 at Zelenskyy's invitation, with a team and "a concrete plan for how to end the war."
That plan he called AIR-LAND-ECONOMY: defend the sky, halt the front, and strike the enemy's economy.
"Over six months, we consistently implemented exactly this plan. For the first time in recent years, Ukraine began to seize the initiative," Fedorov said.
The results, he argued, created something that had not existed before — a window of opportunity to force Russia to peace through strength — "and it cannot be lost."
Stance corners president
Fedorov's all-or-nothing position converts public sympathy into leverage. A Rating Group poll conducted on 20 and 21 July found that 72% of Ukrainians opposed his dismissal and 5% supported it, while 55% backed the removal of then-Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has granted the demand with less public backing, Syrskyi's removal, and stalled on the one with more, Fedorov's return.
Now Fedorov has removed the middle option. By refusing any role other than the defense minister, he leaves President Volodymyr Zelenskyy two choices: reinstate the minister he fired a week ago, or leave out of government the official three-quarters of Ukrainians wanted kept.
An American activist who spent years repeating Russian talking points told her followers she had been wrong about Ukraine. Laura Loomer, a far-right blogger and ally of US President Donald Trump, shared her impressions with hundreds of thousands of followers after visiting the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra and the Dormition Cathedral, damaged by a Russian drone strike.
The visit is the public face of a documented reversal. Loomer long echoed Kremlin narratives and criticized US aid to Ukraine, and after a fact-finding trip to Kyiv in July 2026, she acknowledged she had been "propagandized by Russian media."
"I was living in a media echo chamber, and I was propagandized by Russian media on social media to believe those things. So I came to Ukraine to see the country for myself," she wrote.
The Lavra tour, alongside senior Ukrainian officials, was the culmination of that trip, which also took her to the mass graves in Bucha and through Russian strikes on the capital.
"Putin droned Jesus Christ. The Woke Reich and Russia don't want you to see this video..." Loomer wrote on X, attaching a four-minute clip recorded inside the Lavra's main cathedral.
Ukrainian officials welcomed visit
Loomer toured the Lavra with Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture Tetiana Berehna and First Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Serhii Kyslytsia.
The National Reserve said she was shown the Tower of St. John the Recluse, the Mystetskyi Arsenal building, and the Dormition Cathedral, all of which were damaged in the 15 June Russian attack, and was briefed on the restoration.
"It was interesting to sit down and talk to LauraLoomer and then to go to Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra on Wednesday," Kyslytsia wrote, thanking Loomer for "taking the initiative and traveling to Ukraine at this time."
Berehna framed it as a matter of witness.
"Russia is destroying Ukraine’s cultural heritage while Ukrainians simply want to live, create, raise children, and build our future. Thank you, Laura, for visiting Ukraine," she said.
Dormition Cathedral lost most of its roof
The site Loomer filmed carries a specific loss. The Dormition Cathedral lost more than 80% of its roof in the Russian attack, and over a dozen sites across the National Reserve were damaged.
The cathedral is not incidental to the war on heritage. The Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the holiest places in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, founded in 1051.
A Russian strike damaging it is the kind of event Ukraine has documented across its cultural landscape: nearly 2,000 heritage sites damaged or destroyed since 2022, according to Ukraine's prosecutor general.
Russia's strike at the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra prompted condemnation from European foreign ministers. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said that "For us French, this would be equivalent to bombing Notre-Dame or the Basilica of Saint-Denis."
Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsakhna said Russia had "once again demonstrated its barbarity and contempt for humanity's shared heritage," describing the Lavra as a UNESCO World Heritage site and "one of Christianity's holiest monasteries" that had "been a place of worship for nearly a thousand years."
Ukraine says Russia keeps putting uranium in the drones it fires at Chernihiv Oblast, the only region of the country that borders both Russia and Belarus. Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) documented six more cases of Russian forces using munitions with uranium components against Ukraine, found in Geran-2 attack drones that struck Chernihiv Oblast between April and June 2026.
The findings extend a pattern EP first reported in May, when the SBU found depleted-uranium striking elements in a Geran-2 warhead near Chernihiv.
Russia mounts old Soviet R-60 air-to-air missiles on the Geran-2 drones, and the uranium sits in those missiles' warheads. The purpose is the arms race in the sky: the R-60 turns a strike drone into an air-to-air weapon meant to kill the Ukrainian aircraft and helicopters that intercept incoming drone swarms. What the SBU is now documenting is that the radioactive warhead configuration is not a one-off but a recurring feature of the strikes.
The radiation readings are the concrete findings. During inspection of the drone impact sites and radiological survey of the warheads, an SBU investigative group and State Emergency Service specialists recorded radiation up to 80 times the natural background, with gamma readings on individual drone fragments running from 8.3 to 24 microsieverts per hour against a permissible sanitary norm of 0.3.
What SBU claims, and one caution on isotopes
The SBU's forensic account is specific. Its expert examination found the missile warheads contained nuclear material identified as Uranium-235 and Uranium-238, confirmed with dosimetric equipment and a mobile automated radiological complex. The agency opened a criminal case under Article 438 of Ukraine's Criminal Code, on war crimes, and neutralized the munitions.
Depleted uranium is dangerous mainly as dust and as toxin
The health risk from these munitions is real but specific, and worth stating precisely to neither understate nor inflate it. Depleted uranium's principal hazards are chemical toxicity as a heavy metal and the radioactive dust released when a round burns or shatters, rather than penetrating radiation from an intact fragment.
That is why the SBU has issued a warning about handling. The service urged citizens who find fragments of drones, missiles, or other munitions not to approach, touch, or move them, but to move to a safe distance and report the find to the SBU hotline at 1516, the State Emergency Service at 101, or the National Police at 102.
Damaged or burned munitions pose the greatest danger, as they may release radioactive dust hazardous to people and the environment. A gamma reading of 24 microsieverts per hour is roughly 80 times background and enough to flag debris as hazardous to anyone in prolonged contact, though a single brief exposure at that level is far below the dose that causes acute harm.
The companies that actually build the Patriot say the deal with Ukraine has barely started. RTX, the parent company of Raytheon, is studying how to proceed after US President Donald Trump announced the US would grant a license, a senior executive said Monday, cautioning that talks are still early, Breaking Defense reported from the Farnborough Airshow near London.
The manufacturer's account confirms the gap between Trump's promise and any actual missile. Trump announced at the NATO summit in Ankara on 8 July that the US would let Ukraine manufacture Patriots, but did not actually grant the license, and Lockheed Martin and RTX, the two firms that build the system, had not been informed. Two weeks later, at Farnborough, both companies described the process as just beginning.
"That process has just started. And we'll of course be following the US government's lead" on licensing, said Tom Laliberty, Raytheon's president of land and air defense systems.
The Patriot is not one product but several, which is why "a license" is not a single act. The system consists of an RTX radar and other subsystems, as well as interceptors built by both RTX and Lockheed Martin. RTX makes the GEM-T interceptor. Lockheed Martin makes the PAC-3, and both can engage air and missile threats.
Manufacturers describe separate tracks, all early
Laliberty laid out where Ukrainian involvement could enter, and none of it is close to a decision. There are different levels at which RTX's supply chain could be engaged, he said, pointing to partners worldwide that produce components, operate maintenance facilities, and, in some cases, assemble complete missiles.
The feasibility studies and the licensing work would run in parallel, he added, and then "hopefully something of all that will yield the ability for Ukraine to get the right level of support that they desire for increased Patriot production.”
Lockheed Martin's account matched it. Tim Cahill, President of Missiles and Fire Control at Lockheed Martin, said "it's early" and that discussions were underway with the US Army.
“We’re going to support the US Army and the [Trump] administration on what they want to go do. I believe they are evaluating options, and we will support each of those options and do what needs to be done based upon that,” he said.
Gap is measured against war that will not wait
The manufacturers' caution matters because the timeline they describe collides with the calendar Russia is setting. Ukraine's interception rate against ballistic missiles was roughly 40% in June, against 89% for air threats overall, and Russia's massed strikes continue nightly.
Independent estimates put the first Ukrainian-built interceptors far off. Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, former Commanding General of US Army Europe, told Euromaidan Press he is "pretty certain it will not produce anything in the next three to six months.
Through-line is promise still catching up to reality
What the manufacturers confirmed on Monday is that, despite all the political momentum since Ankara, the license that would let Ukraine build its own Patriots is, in their words, still in its early days.
The missiles Ukraine needs tonight will keep coming, if they come, from existing American stocks through PURL, not from a Ukrainian production line that does not yet exist.
What Mykhailo Fedorov described the day after his dismissal is not the residue of wartime secrecy. It is the result of conscious decisions taken on specific dates, by named ministers, against the advice of the partners paying for the weapons.
Speaking to Ukrainian journalists on 16 July, Fedorov said the largest ammunition tender in the country’s history had closed with five winners. A sixth company had joined late.
This firm had publicly campaigned against competitive bidding, had been searched by law enforcement, and had cut its own price by $1,000 per shell the moment it understood the tender would go ahead anyway.
Mykhailo Fedorov at his briefing on 16 July 2026, the day after his dismissal as defense minister. Photo: screenshot from Novyny.LIVE
Fedorov said department heads at his ministry had been appointed by private companies, and would not attend meetings without bringing law-enforcement officers along. He described a contract proposal with a markup of 200–300%, for a company he said belongs to a well-known person who does not live in Ukraine.
Ninety minutes of it. Names withheld, sums exact, mechanisms laid out.
Not one word verifiable by anyone outside the ministry.
The ministry said the savings on the 155mm tender paid for tens of thousands of extra shells. A procurement figure is not accounting. It is whether a gun fires in October.
Ukraine will spend about $51 billion on weapons and equipment this year, much of it borrowed from the European Union. More than 90% of that spending is classified—NATO’s own figure, against an alliance norm of 5%.
How the money becomes rounds is decided inside a system that publishes percentages and withholds everything else.
That is the story, not whether Fedorov was fired to protect someone’s schemes, which cannot be established and which this article will not pretend to establish.
The story is why a country that spent four years building an oversight system for its arms spending has now reached a point where the only account of how that money moves comes from a fired ex-minister, and cannot be checked.
An FH-70 howitzer, which uses 155mm rounds, at the frontline in Ukraine. Photo: General Staff
What the state published
In May, Ukraine’s Defense Procurement Agency signed the largest artillery contract in its history: six manufacturers, 155mm shells, a competitive procedure against a starting price, savings above 16%—enough, the ministry said, for tens of thousands more shells than planned.
Six manufacturers, unnamed. A percentage with no unit price on either side of it. No count of who bid and lost. That is the complete public record.
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Competition across six manufacturers saves Ukraine 16% on its largest-ever 155mm shell contract
There is a reason, though. A supplier named in a public document is one with a Ukrainian address Russia can find, so the procedure runs closed. Every specialist accepts the logic.
The rule is written down. NATO’s 2024 procurement review set the 90% against a Euro-Atlantic standard of up to 5%, a level it treats as a peacetime target. The six unnamed manufacturers are not an exception to Ukraine’s approach to buying weapons. They are the rule, and the alliance Ukraine wants to join has said so in writing.
Now read that against what Fedorov told reporters on 16 July. The published figure is accurate. It hides the holdout, the searches, and the $1,000 climbdown—everything that made the number mean something. True and useless.
Mykhailo Fedorov during a June interview, a month before his dismissal, in which he described leaks and private-company influence inside the defense ministry. Photo: screenshot from PRESSING / Army—Media of Ukraine's Defense Forces
Importantly, Fedorov had said something similar already before he was fired.
In a June interview, he described officials leaking material from meetings with the procurement agency and telling excluded companies why they had been excluded.
That cannot be dismissed as the grievance of a dismissed man. It also cannot be confirmed.
His own account contains the reform’s limits. By his description, only a fifth of drone purchases run through competitive tender; four-fifths go to manufacturers ranked highest on battlefield performance data.
That may be the right design. But it is not what “moving procurement to open tenders” sounds like.
A tender with one bidder is competitive in name only.
What the monitors can see
StateWatch, a think tank that monitors defense contracts, went through every tender the Defense Procurement Agency published in March—99 of them, worth about 15 billion hryvnias ($340 million). The average number of companies bidding on each was 1.6, which means that most drew a single bidder. Drone purchases attracted more.
A tender with one bidder is competitive in name only.
StateWatch also marks the limit of its own work. It sees only what passes through Prozorro, the open electronic bidding system. Direct contracts never enter it.
Neither does anything classified, which is most of it.
What StateWatch can see is only a fraction of what Ukraine spends. It has recorded one clear improvement: the General Staff now specifies drones by technical characteristics rather than by manufacturer name, a change the think tank had recommended to remove preferences for particular producers.
The Logistics Forces command went public against Fedorov last week, arguing that announced tenders and signed contracts are not the same as equipment reaching units.
Procurement volume is presented as delivered supply, which a spokesperson called pure PR, citing grenade launcher rounds made in 1984 as an example of what arrives.
A serious argument, resting on the same unverifiable ground as the claims it disputes.
Ukraine’s Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Rustem Umerov, 10 February 2026. Photo: Rustem Umerov on Facebook
The oversight, unbuilt
It’s not that the oversight system was just thrown overboard. It was first built, then dismantled in stages, each stage documented—and it was built partly at the insistence of the states paying for the weapons.
The Defense Procurement Agency was set up in August 2022. At the Washington summit two years later, NATO and Ukraine approved a joint review of Ukrainian defense procurement—requested by Ukraine’s defense minister—resulting in 21 recommendations.
It told Kyiv to run two agencies throughout the war, one for lethal purchases and one for everything else, and to establish independent supervisory boards immediately to provide the agencies with governance and oversight outside the ministry.
But the agreed structure did not hold.
Over the following year, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov narrowed the board’s powers by decree and removed the agency’s procurement chief, despite the board voting unanimously to keep her. In December 2025, his successor Denys Shmyhal merged the two agencies into one, effective 1 January 2026.
Denys Shmyhal (L) as Defense Minister of Ukraine and Mykhailo Fedorov as First Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine pose together. Photo: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine
NATO’s review had recommended the merger, but for peacetime. Regarding doing it mid-war, NATO said the opposite: no further centralization while the fighting continues—it would disrupt supply and erode public support for the reform.
Fedorov arrived thirteen days later.
So the tenders ran inside an agency consolidated during the period the review said not to consolidate, supervised by boards whose powers had been narrowed a year earlier, under a ministry that had already removed one procurement chief for reasons her own board rejected.
The secrecy protecting suppliers is unavoidable, and no one in Berlin or Washington disputes it.
But the narrowing of oversight is a different matter: the boards were weakened, and the agencies merged by choice, directly against the written advice of the countries paying for the weapons.
Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko addresses the Verkhovna Rada before the vote on her dismissal, 14 July 2026. Photo: Svyrydenko/Telegram
The dismissal
Fedorov was removed on 15 July during a cabinet reshuffle.
Yulia Svyrydenko lost the premiership the same week, and nobody marched for her. For Fedorov, protests broke out in 17 cities the next day, with signs reading “They removed the auditor, not the thieves.”
Officially, no reason was given. What exists is an account of a closed faction meeting, reconstructed by Ukrainska Pravda from deputies in the room.
The president said he could no longer tolerate a defense ministry and general staff at war with each other, and that Fedorov had not delivered his promised mobilization reform. In a line that has aged strangely, he added that both Fedorov and Syrskyi should by rights go—but that he could not do both at once.
The Financial Times reported a fourth reason, citing people familiar with the situation: that Fedorov had repeatedly blocked attempts to steer lucrative contracts toward favored companies. The presidential office declined to comment. The General Staff denied there was any dispute at all.
Four explanations, arriving by four routes. The analyst best placed to weigh them, Volodymyr Fesenko, told the paper there seemed to have been a trigger “which we still do not fully understand.”
Olexiy Haran, professor of comparative politics at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and research director at the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation. Photo: Olexiy Haran / Facebook
Euromaidan Press reported a fifth reading: Oleksiy Haran, a professor of comparative politics at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, argued that Fedorov’s real liability was that he had grown too popular to be a reliable subordinate for Zelenskyy.
Fedorov’s trust rating had just overtaken the president’s own. The Financial Times also noted that people around Zelenskyy suspected the minister of his own political ambitions.
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Fedorov had asked for two men to be fired: the commander-in-chief and the chief of the General Staff. Instead, he himself was dismissed.
Six days later, amid ongoing protests, Zelenskyy dismissed Oleksandr Syrskyi and named Mykhailo Drapatyi as his replacement. On 22 July, the president signed the decree and appointed Ihor Skybiuk chief of the General Staff in place of Andrii Hnatov.
Five days before his own appointment, on the day after Fedorov’s dismissal, Drapatyi had written that the army needed rules under which making the right decision would not depend on an individual commander’s courage or on the backing of particular officials, and that the transformation had to continue regardless of which ministers or teams came and went.
A Ukrainian soldier prepares 155mm artillery shells in his fighting position. Illustrative image, photo via Eastnews.ua.
What is not public
The personnel decisions are public. The procurement record, largely, is not. What stays sealed inside the 155mm tender and the cases around it:
The five winners of the 155mm procedure, and the sixth company that joined late
the initial and final unit price
the losing bidders, in any category
the companies said to have been represented by ministry officials
the company said to carry a 200–300% margin, and the person said to own it
the Bureau of Economic Security letter, or any case number attached to it
the results of the internal investigations and the polygraphs
which direct contracts were canceled, and which companies lost them.
Why he was fired cannot be known. Whether his reform survives him can—it will show in what the ministry does next, in public.
The second 155mm tender closed for offers on 7 July, eight days before Fedorov’s dismissal. Whether it was completed, how many bidders it drew, whether contracts were awarded—the ministry either publishes that or does not.
The drone tender is at the same stage. The share of procurement that is competitive rather than direct is a number the ministry chose to publish under Fedorov; whether it keeps publishing is a decision, and a visible one.
An acting minister runs the ministry now. Yevhenii Khmara, a career security service officer, took over on 20 July but has not been confirmed by parliament.
The merged agency’s supervisory board still exists, and what it is permitted to see is the closest thing the system has left to an independent instrument.
Fedorov said he did not know what to say. He said he was sorry.
Emergency workers responding to a Russian strike on Romny in Ukraine's Sumy Oblast overnight on 3 July 2026. Photo: Ukraine's State Emergency Service
Sumy Oblast, the week before
The week before he was dismissed, Fedorov went to Sumy Oblast. He had been getting messages, he said, that the region had been abandoned.
What he found he called typical: several units responsible for the area on paper, and nobody responsible for the sky over the city.
At a building struck by a guided bomb, Fedorov, still the minister then,met a man who had buried his wife and daughter the day before. The man, a soldier, had been heading back to the front when it happened. He was on the phone with his family and saw the bomb come in. The first one missed. The second hit the building.
Fedorov said he did not know what to say. He said he was sorry.
Then the man told him he had seen that Ukraine had signed the Gripen contract, that Gripen shoots down the aircraft that drops those bombs, and asked him to push it through and destroy the people who killed his family.
That contract wassigned on 30 June: 16 Gripen E fighters, about $2.5 billion, paid for with a European Union loan. The aircraft are scheduled to arrive in 2029 and 2030.
A Russian military jet — reported to be the newest Su-57, the country's only operational stealth fighter — crashed in Moscow Oblast on 23 July, Russian and Ukrainian channels reported. The pilot ejected and survived, and officials reported no casualties on the ground. Russia's own pro-war blogger pointed the finger at Russia's air defense.
Russia keeps losing warplanes it cannot quickly replace — burned at their bases by Ukrainian drones, dropped by accidents on aging airframes flown at high sortie rates, and, more recently, shot out of the sky in air-to-air combat with Ukraine's F-16 fighters — such a case possibly occurred earlier this month. Every combat jet comes off the line slowly, and in small numbers, so each loss lands hard on a stretched force.
What is known about the crash
The jet went down around 13:50 in the Odintsovo district near Zvenigorod, west of Moscow. Russian outlet REN TV reported the crash, and local channel Zven_Info published photos of a fire in a field near homes. Russian Telegram channel Mash saidthe aircraft was a Su-57 on a training flight and that the pilot ejected.
Russia's Defense Ministry, through state news agency TASS, said a combat-trainer crashed during takeoff, that the pilot ejected, and that there was no destruction on the ground. Officials did not confirm the aircraft type or the cause.
Russia's own bloggers point at Moscow's air defense
Russia's bloggers went further than the officials. Milblogger Romanov wrote that "a number of questions" should go to the crew of BARS-Moskva, a mobile air-defense group guarding the capital. Another Russian channel, arrowsmap, said the jet's own air-defense crew shot it down and asked whether a shoulder-fired missile had felled a fifth-generation fighter.
Those bloggers also warned that pulling such crews back would leave Moscow's skies open to Ukrainian drones. Ukraine had no role in the loss, and none of the friendly-fire claims carried official confirmation.
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The Su-57, and how often it meets trouble
The Su-57 is Russia's most advanced fighter, built by Sukhoi and first flown in 2010. Russia took its first serial jet into service in 2020, in small numbers. The type has a rough record: one of the first serial aircraft crashed in Khabarovsk Krai in December 2019, before the military even received it.
Ukrainian drones first damaged two Su-57s at the Akhtubinsk airbase in June 2024. In spring 2026, drones reached more of them at Shagol near the Urals, where Russian unit-cost estimates run to $100–120 million each. Russia has since kept the jet away from missions over Ukraine.
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Friendly fire
More often than not, Russian air defenders are yet another threat to their own pilots.
Russia's air defenses shot down their own Su-27 over occupied Crimea in March 2024, killed a Su-35 pilot with an S-300 over occupied Tokmak in 2023, and opened fire on one of their own helicopters near Moscow in 2025 after mistaking it for a drone.
Poor coordination between Russian aviation and its air-defense crews has cost Moscow its own aircraft again and again. Losing a scarce fifth-generation jet the same way would say more about the air defense meant to shield Moscow than about anything Ukraine did that day.
UNESCO has officially recognized that Russia is destroying Crimea's only World Heritage site. The UN body added "the Ancient City of Tauric Chersonese and its Chora" to its List of World Heritage in Danger, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha announced on X. The decision was taken at the 48th session of the World Heritage Committee.
Chersonesus Taurica is an ancient Greek city founded by colonists in the 6th century BCE on the territory of modern Sevastopol, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2013, and the only site of world significance in Crimea, per Suspilne.
Since occupying Crimea in 2014, Russia has stripped the site of its contents. Ukraine's Defense Intelligence has documented Russia appropriating cultural artifacts from Chersonesus and other Crimean sites through unauthorized digs, with 178 items tracked in the "Stolen Heritage" section of the War & Sanctions portal by late 2025.
The frescoes, pottery, household objects, and icons taken from Chersonesus went to museums in Russia. Russian construction on the site, backed by illegal excavations, has unlocked access to up to 500,000 artifacts.
Site is target because of what it means
Chersonesus is where, by tradition, the medieval Kyivan prince Volodymyr was baptized in 988. This is the event Russian state ideology claims as the origin point of Russian Orthodoxy and, by extension, of a shared "all-Russian" history that absorbs Ukraine.
Russia has built its occupation narrative on that claim, making the Ukrainian site tell a Russian story, which is why Russian President Vladimir Putin personally backed turning it into the centerpiece of one of Russia's most ambitious propaganda projects.
That project is the "New Chersonesus" museum-and-park complex, opened in July 2024 on the grounds of the ancient site. Russian authorities built a sprawling development that includes museums, a Christian-themed park, an open-air theater, and reconstructed quarters, marketing it as a showcase of Orthodox and Russian civilization.
To raise it, Russian archaeologists and developers dug through the untouched layers of the ancient city, and the complex drew 700,000 visitors by October 2024, its foot traffic accelerating the destruction of the fragile archaeology beneath it. The result is a Russian-built theme park standing on, and made from the ruins of, a Ukrainian World Heritage site.
Russia built theater on necropolis
In 2024, Russian archaeologists and developers completely destroyedthe authentic monument, building a new open-air theater on the site of the excavations, said Evelina Kravchenko, senior researcher at the Institute of Archaeology of Ukraine's National Academy of Sciences, per Ukrainska Pravda.
Russia substitutes new construction for original monuments, destroying their authenticity, Kravchenko said at the Crimea Platform expert network forum.
"Negative processes are now happening with the only monument of world significance that we managed to nominate and inscribe on the list of monuments in Crimea, with Chersonesus Taurica," she claimed.
What Russia presents as heritage preservation, Ukrainian experts describe as the erasure of the original under a replica.
Listing rests on documented violations
The basis for the UNESCO decision was Russia's documented conduct on the peninsula: illegal archaeological excavations, large-scale construction on the monument's territory and its protective zones, destruction of the archaeological context, and the illegal movement of cultural property, the President's Representative Office in Crimea explained.
The decision also called on the international community to strengthen cooperation to prevent the illegal circulation of cultural property originating from occupied Crimea. During the discussion, representatives of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Switzerland openly supported Ukraine.
One site in vast toll
Chersonesus is a single entry in a campaign against Ukrainian heritage that spans the whole war. Russia has damaged or destroyed nearly 2,000 Ukrainian cultural heritage sites since 2022, and looted over 7.8 million artifacts from museums in occupied territory since 2014, Ukraine's prosecutor general reportedin June 2026.
From 1 January 2027, authorities will track the cost of meat, milk, bread, and a dozen other staples at every step from producer to store shelf, using tax-secret data pulled from shops’ cash registers—and even Russian retail experts say it won’t make groceries cheaper. The State Duma passed the measure on 22 July 2026.
The Federal Tax Service will hand a still-unnamed list of agencies the sales volumes, revenues, and prices of food companies along the whole supply chain—what Deputy Industry and Trade Minister Roman Chekushov called visibility “from zero to the shelf.”
From producer to store shelf, the state will track the price of bread from zero to the shelf.
The stated aim is to let the government act faster on a power it already holds: capping markups on socially important goods. Until now, regulators worked blind, relying on average statistics that missed what was happening on the ground, a deputy chair of the State Duma’s budget committee, Kaplan Panesh, said.
Officials call this the first end-to-end monitoring of the entire chain. The list runs from beef, pork, and eggs to buckwheat, potatoes, onions, and apples—the basic food basket, and the goods whose prices people feel first.
The reach reflects how hard it is to hide inflation. By early 2026, bread prices had risen almost 15%, half again as fast as headline inflation, and Russian newspapers were describing “galloping inflation” at the start of the year, after the government raised VAT from 20% to 22% on 1 January.
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Moscow has reached for price tools before, weighing forced fixed-price contracts in mid-2025; this one goes further, giving the state a live feed of the market.
Why watching prices won’t lower them
What the system cannot do is lower the bill, and the reason is structural. Russia’s inflation comes from wartime demand colliding with a shrinking workforce—the labor pool has fallen by 2.5 million since the full-scale invasion began—so money keeps chasing goods the economy cannot supply. None of that shows up in a till.
The costs that actually set food prices—logistics, rent, and wages—stay off the tax record, so the system can expose a retailer’s markup but not shrink a shopper’s receipt, trade-policy scholar Svetlana Ilyashenko said. She reads it as legalizing state access to raw transaction data and tilting the balance of power in the food market.
Others warn it could backfire. Past rounds of manual price capping on sugar, oil, and eggs “unbalanced the market,” and pooling that much commercial data invites leaks to competitors, retail-experts association head Andrei Karpov said.
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For most of the war, Moscow shielded ordinary Russians from its cost; that buffer is thinning—in many regions, fuel is now rationed.
A separate, still-pending plan flagged by Ukrainian intelligence would freeze the assets of Russians who have left the country, ahead of a possible new wave of mobilization this autumn.
Ukrainian drones struck oil-industry sites deep inside Russia again overnight on 23 July, setting off fires that burned into the morning, monitoring channels reported. The targets sat far behind the front, and Russian air defenses reported downing drones over more than a dozen regions. Ukraine's military had not claimed the strikes by morning.
Oil sales bankroll the invasion, and Ukraine's long-range drone campaign routinely reaches the refineries, depots, and pipelines that turn crude into fuel and cash far inside Russia. Kyiv keeps coming back to the same fuel-and-money network about as fast as Moscow can patch it. The General Staff says the effort has idled 42% of Russian refining and cost the industry $13.5 billion since August 2025.
Bashkortostan: a pipeline node, not just a refinery
Ukrainian monitoring Telegram channels Exilenova+ and Supernova+ reported a strike on the Subkhankulovo pipeline dispatch station near Tuymazy in Bashkortostan, about 1,300 kilometers from the front. Residents reported roughly eight impacts and a burning storage tank. Long-range Liutyi drones carried out the strike, Supernova+ said. The station belongs to Transneft-Ural and moves crude and fuel between Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, and other Russian regions.
A Transneft oil-pipeline station is on fire deep inside Russia
A fuel tank is ablaze about 1,300 km from the war zone. New footage shows flames at Transneft's Subkhankulovo pipeline station in Bashkortostan. Residents reported about 8 impacts.
Russian news Telegram channel Astra placed the fire at the station from eyewitness footage. Bashkortostan's emergencies committee later confirmed a fire, blaming falling debris — the explanation Russian officials routinely give for such strikes. A node like this is slower to repair than a single refinery, because it feeds several pipeline routes at once.
Ukraine burned another Transneft-Ural station in the same republic on 8 July.
Ulyanovsk Oblast: fire at the NS-Oil site
Drones also hit the NS-Oil facility at Novospasskoye, about 800 kilometers from the war zone. Supernova+ published footage of a large fire, and Militarnyi reported drones had struck the refinery. Ulyanovsk governor Alexei Russkikh claimed drones hit a fuel-and-energy site and started a fire.
Drones hit a Russian fuel facility 800 km from the front
A strike on NS-Oil's liquefied gas base in Ulyanovsk Oblast sparked a fire still burning hours later, black smoke drifting over Russia's Volga region.
Monitoring channels differed on the target. Exilenova+ described a liquefied-gas base, while Astra identified the refinery itself. The plant makes gasoline, diesel, and fuel oil. Accounts of its size varied widely, with Astra citing 30,000 tonnes a year and other channels putting it as high as 600,000.
Ukrainian drones hit the same plant in October last year.
Elsewhere overnight
Drones also reached Voronezh, the capital of a Russian region, bordering Ukraine's occupied northeast, where residents reported explosions. Voronezh governor Alexander Gusev claimed a falling drone set a detached house alight and killed a three-year-old boy, injuring his parents. He said the roof of an online retailer's warehouse was damaged. The company—Wildberries—had already halted night work after earlier strikes.
In occupied Crimea, the monitoring channel Krymsky Veter reported explosions near Feodosia, Yevpatoria, Sevastopol, and Yalta, and said Russian-installed Sevastopol governor Mikhail Razvozhaev claimed a drone attack on the city. Russia's Defense Ministry claimed it downed 223 drones overnight.
A parallel naval operation, codenamed MoLoChKa, keeps burning the shadow-fleet tankers that carry Russian oil to export and fuel to occupied Crimea. The force hit eight more vessels the day before, two more today, and its public scoreboard shows it closing on 200 ships this month.
Ukraine's plan to buy 16 French-made Rafale fighter jets remains unsigned, the aircraft's manufacturer said. France has yet to lock down either the terms of the purchase or how it will be paid for. The comments put a hard limit on a deal that European leaders had unveiled with fanfare 10 days earlier.
Amid the ongoing Russian invasion, Kyiv is trying to convert a Soviet-era air arm into a mixed Western fleet in the middle of a war, while Russian missiles and drones strike its cities almost nightly. Much of that effort turns on the distance between what leaders announce at summits and what manufacturers actually put under contract.
No signature, no financing
Dassault Aviation chief executive Éric Trappier addressed the deal at the company's half-year results, French daily Le Figaro reported. Trappier said Ukraine had expressed an intention to buy 16 Rafales, but the contract was not signed. The French state, he said, still had to formalize the deal and its financing.
Ukraine and France had earlier announced the first batch of 16 jets as part of a broader French agreement to form Kyiv's air fleet, which is now being rebuilt around Mirage, Gripen, Rafale, and F-16 fighters. Trappier's account leaves that first batch a stated intention rather than a firm order.
Storm Shadow, Scalp demonstrators mounted on a Dassault Rafale B, registration 337 4-IL, ILA Berlin Air Show 2018. Source: Wikipedia
Dassault handed over 12 Rafales to customers in the first half of 2026. Ten went to foreign clients, and two went to the French military. A year earlier, the company delivered seven over the same period, four of them abroad. The company booked no new firm Rafale orders at all in the first half of 2026.
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Where the Rafale sits in Ukraine's jet plans
The Rafale is the least-settled of Ukraine's three Western fighter tracks. Kyiv's pilots already fly American F-16s, delivered since August 2024, and are due their first Swedish Gripens in early 2027. Sixteen older Gripen C/D jets are set to arrive first, with a larger buy of newer models to follow.
The French jets sit further out. France set their delivery for 2028-2029, which would make the Rafale the last of the three types to enter Ukrainian service. Kyiv is assembling all three at once to retire its Soviet-era fleet, a mix that stretches pilot training and maintenance across incompatible aircraft.
Russia's forces have gained little ground in Ukraine this year even as Moscow inflates its battlefield tallies and stiffens its demands, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Ukrainian defenses and a counteroffensive have held Russian advances to a fraction of the official claims. That gap, the analysts said, appears to shape the Kremlin's thinking about war and peace.
Ukraine has spent this year turning Russian assaults into heavy losses for marginal ground. Each month of stalemate raises the human and economic price both sides pay to hold their positions. A Kremlin convinced it is winning is a Kremlin unlikely to negotiate, which points to more fighting rather than less. At the same time, Ukraine keeps widening its deep-strike campaign against the logistics, fuel, and industry funding the invasion, shifting pressure off the near-static front and onto Russia's rear.
The gap between the map and the front
On 22 July, the Russian Defense Ministry amplified a claim that its forces seized 2,226 km² in the first half of 2026. The figure came from a Russian propaganda Telegram channel. ISW assessed a far smaller number. By its count, Russian troops hold a net 81 km² gained across 2026 so far. Units seized or infiltrated about 627 km², the analysts found, but infiltration is not control. Soldiers who slip into a field or treeline do not hold it. Stripping those gains out leaves the smaller total.
A strong Ukrainian spring-summer counteroffensive helped keep Russia's net advance this low, ISW noted.
Moscow inflates the picture Putin sees
The exaggeration is not only public messaging. Russian officials keep constructing a false reality that appears to shape President Vladimir Putin and his choices. Russian channels have done this before over occupied Crimea's supply lines. Occupation head Yevgeny Balitsky recently assured Putin that the main road to Crimea was secure. Russia's own war bloggers refuted him within hours. ISW noted that inflated reports encourage Putin to keep refusing compromise.
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Moscow hardens its Ukraine capitulation demands
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed on 22 July that Russia's 2024 terms still stand. Those terms demand that Ukraine withdraw from its Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts. They also require Ukraine to drop its bid to join NATO. Bloomberg reported that Russia now refuses to return any occupied Ukrainian land. Sources close to the Kremlin said Russia's Defense Ministry assured Putin it can seize all of Donetsk Oblast by the end of 2026. ISW called that extremely unlikely and would not endorse it on any timeline.
In just a week, the dismissal of a Ukrainian defense minister set in motion a transformation of the country’s armed forces that replaced the old guard with a new generation of leadership
Connexion
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