Ukraine's Defense Procurement Agency contracted for about $8 billion worth of unmanned aerial vehicles in the first half of 2026. It is double the figure for the same period last year, Ukraine's Defense Ministry said. 

Purchases go partly through the state weapons marketplace, DOT-Chain Defense, where combat units select the systems they need with budget funds, and the agency handles contracts, payments, and logistics, bringing the average delivery time for in-stock items down to 9 days.

Ukraine received 1,028 ground robots and over $790 million in equipment through the same family of systems by mid-2026. The $8 billion in drones is the aerial side of the same overhaul, and it doubled year-on-year.

Battlefield data decides what gets bought

In March, the Defense Ministry introduced a procurement approach that bases drone demand on battlefield data rather than human judgment, which it says minimizes subjectivity and reduces the risk of corruption.

The algorithm is specific. Combat data from Ukraine's digital systems — eBaly, DOT-Chain, Brave1 Market, DELTA, and Mission Control — generates a ranking of unmanned systems by real performance. The General Staff, on units' requests, uses that ranking to set the list of systems to buy, defining quantities and types directly. The agency then contracts what the list names.

The point of the loop is that the state buys only drones that work, hit targets, and have proven themselves at the front, per the Defense Ministry.

It is the same eBaly performance system that has delivered more than 181,000 drones, robots, and other items to frontline units in 2026, with units ordering equipment based on points earned for confirmed battlefield results. Battlefield data, not procurement lobbying, determines market allocation.

Competitive tenders cut costs, and one contract saved 16%

For part of the drone fleet, the agency runs closed competitive tenders based on tactical-technical specifications from the General Staff, which widens the field of participants.

That approach has a track record. The same competitive method applied to long-range 155mm ammunition achieved savings of over 16%. It is the reform-and-savings logic that outgoing Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov made central to his tenure.

Also, the Defense Ministry, together with the Cabinet and the procurement agency, introduced a mechanism to adjust contract prices for fiber-optic drones, which kept contracting and the supply of that type running despite a sharp global rise in optical fiber prices. Fiber-optic drones cannot be jammed because they trail a physical cable, making them one of the most sought-after systems on the front.

Ukraine no longer has to send its Rosomak APCs abroad for repairs. The 146th Separate Repair-Restoration Regiment has announced that its troops have completed specialized training in Poland to service and repair Rosomak armored personnel carriers.

That shortens repair time and keeps damaged APCs closer to the units that need them, at a moment when Ukraine is pushing to do more of its own military maintenance rather than depend on foreign workshops.

Ukrainian troops completed course at modern Polish military base

The training was conducted at a modern Polish base by local instructors who work with the Rosomak and covered the vehicle's structure, its main systems, diagnostics, servicing, and fault correction.

The troops gave particular attention to modern diagnostic equipment, finding hidden defects, and repairing the running gear and weapons systems. All of them passed final exams and received certificates confirming their qualification.

Domestic repair keeps vehicles in fight

Sending an armored vehicle abroad for repair means losing it for weeks or months due to transport delays, queues, and the return trip. For a wartime army, that is the time a vehicle spends off the battlefield rather than on it.

The regiment said the new knowledge will significantly improve the quality and speed of repair work and provide effective technical support for the Rosomak directly in Ukrainian units.

In 2023, former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that the Ukrainian Army purchased 100 Polish KTO Rosomak armored vehicles. He revealed the Ukrainian order would be financed through EU and US funds.

Domestic maintenance is wider Ukrainian push

The Rosomak training fits a broader Ukrainian drive toward self-sufficiency in keeping Western equipment operational. Ukraine has worked to localize repair and production for donated systems across the board, reducing the downtime and dependence that come with shipping damaged equipment back to the countries that supplied it.

The same logic runs through Ukraine's defense-industrial scaling. Ukraine built 90% of its newly authorized weapons itself in the first half of 2026, up from 70% a year earlier.

Ukraine hit a Russian warship at its own dock in Crimea. Ukraine's Defense Forces struck a Project 10410 Svetlyak-class patrol ship at Kerch, along with tankers, a refinery 700 kilometers inside Russia, and a string of fuel and logistics targets over 16 July and the night into 17 July, Ukraine's General Staff reports.

Most consequential hit was far to the north

Ukraine also struck the Slavneft-YANOS refinery in Yaroslavl on 16 July, recording an impact followed by fire on the plant's grounds.

YANOS is one of Russia's five largest refineries and the biggest in the country's central region, processing about 15 million tons of crude a year into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, lubricants, and bitumen, including products that feed Russia's military-industrial complex and armed forces.

Ukraine has struck YANOS repeatedly throughout 2026 and keeps returning to it, part of a campaign the General Staff says has idled 42.74% of Russian refining and cost the industry $13.5 billion since August 2025.

The degree of damage at YANOS and the results of the other strikes are still being assessed, the General Staff said.

Ukraine hit tankers and gas carrier in Black and Azov seas

Beyond the ships already named, Ukraine struck two tankers — one of them a gas carrier — and a tug in the Black and Azov seas. The tankers move Russian oil, petroleum products, and liquefied gas around nternational sanctions, and carry fuel for the Russian armed forces.

The naval strikes fit a widening Black Sea campaign.

Ukraine has been hitting Russian tankers, warships, and port infrastructure night after night, driving toward the isolation of occupied Crimea and squeezing the shadow fleet Moscow uses to keep oil revenue flowing under sanctions.

Additionally, Ukraine hit the "TES-Terminal-1" oil terminal and a fuel-and-lubricants depot in Kerch, occupied Crimea, and the "Shakhtarsk" oil depot in Shakhtarsk, Donetsk Oblast.

The Kerch strikes compound a fuel squeeze already choking the peninsula. Ukraine's counter-logistics and energy campaign has forced occupied Crimea to halt civilian fuel sales, ration gasoline, and declare a peninsula-wide state of emergency, as strikes on terminals, substations, and the Kerch Bridge cut the routes that keep Crimea supplied from Russia.

“Bear Paw” amulet: Russians are paying sorcerers to enchant their cars into using less gas amid fuel crises, intelligence says

Ukraine has arrested Ruslan Kuchynskyi, the head of an enterprise in Vyshneve in Kyiv Oblast, suspected of involvement in the improper storage of ammunition at warehouses near civilian settlements, UNIAN reports. A Kyiv court is choosing a pre-trial restraint for him after a Russian attack triggered a massive detonation that damaged 13 hectares of residential development.

The 6 July strike killed 11 people in Kyiv itself and drove the citywide toll to 19. In Vyshneve, the secondary detonation burned for hours, and more than 600 residents were evacuated over the risk of further explosions.

Kuchynskyi is the first individual to face a court over the depot. The case will be heard behind closed doors because state-secret material will be disclosed, the prosecutor requested it, and the suspect's lawyer did not object. The remaining suspects will likely also have their restraint hearings held in closed session.

Russia fired missile, but depot should not have been there

Former Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko called it the largest destruction of the residential sector in the entire full-scale war.

Earlier, SBU Deputy Head Major General Oleksandr Poklad reported to Zelenskyy on who inside Ukroboronprom allowed the storage, and Zelenskyy said on 11 July that the directors of two state enterprises had acted in defiance of both the law and a decision of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief's Staff.

Russia launched the strike, but the depot's location is what turned it into a neighborhood-leveling event.

"There was a direct ban on this, both under the law and under the Staff's decision, and all of it was violated," Zelenskyy said on 11 July.

He said the specific officials are known, and the state's position is that each of them must be brought to fair justice.

"Every director must feel that people's lives depend on his decisions or his inaction," Zelenskyy stated.

General Staff spokesman Dmytro Lykhovii has confirmed the Commander-in-Chief's order banning the siting of ammunition depots near civilian buildings remains in force, per Euromaidan Press.

Case sits amid defense-industry reckoning

Kuchynskyi's hearing lands in the middle of a wider shake-up of Ukraine's defense-industrial leadership. Ukroboronprom chief Herman Smetanin resigned on 15 July, days after the Vyshneve tragedy, and Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov confirmed his own departure the same day.

Ukroboronprom, also known as the Ukrainian Defense Industry, groups roughly 100 enterprises that produce missiles, drones, armored vehicles, and ammunition. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has proposed a different job for Ihor Klymenko than everyone expected. He offered the outgoing interior minister the post of secretary of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC), and said the decree appointing him is being prepared.

The decision could have been changed amid mass protests against the resignation across entire Ukrainian cities.

The NSDC secretaryship is what he got instead, which means Ukraine's most-tipped defense minister candidate was moved sideways as the reshuffle closed. Klymenko had led the Interior Ministry since February 2023, taking over after his predecessor Denys Monastyrsky, who died in a helicopter crash in Kyiv Oblast.

Zelenskyy frames job as enforcement

Zelenskyy said he met with Klymenko and thanked him for his work in the Interior Ministry system.

"There were many difficult challenges, and the response was always effective. Ihor Klymenko will continue to work for Ukraine in the sphere of defending our state and people," he said.

The president defined the NSDC's role in terms of follow-through. The main task, he said, is the most effective possible coordination among all parts of the security and defense sector, as well as daily oversight of decision implementation. 

"Every decision of the NSDC of Ukraine and of the Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief must be fulfilled in full and on time," Zelenskyy added.

He named coordination of defense production as a separate priority.

Reshuffle rebuilt top of government in fortnight

Klymenko is expected to take the security council seat at a moment when the government around it has been almost entirely remade. A new prime minister, a departing defense minister, and now a new NSDC secretary have all arrived in the same reshuffle.

It is happening itself when Ukraine is trying to scale weapons production, hold together a ballistic-missile campaign, and stand up an anti-ballistic coalition at once.

Ukraine's private air defense continues to grow. Some 51 companies have now joined the experimental program that folds private enterprises into the country's air defense system, Ukraine's Defense Ministry said.

Air defense crews from four enterprises are already on combat duty, and they have downed more than 50 Shahed attack drones and Zala reconnaissance UAVs. The private crews do not act on their own — they operate as part of the overall system under the Air Force's Air Command.

Ukraine's Defense Ministry wants private and conventional air defenses to work together to repel 95% of aerial attacks, calling private crews one layer of a multi-layered shield.

Private crews already down the hard targets

At the start of June, the program counted 30 enterprises. The initiative has roughly quadrupled since spring. It counted 13 enterprises in March, 24 in May, 30 in early June, and 51 now.

The private groups are not limited to slow, easy drones. A private company's crew in Kharkiv Oblast downed a jet-powered Shahed in April 2026. This case marked the first time the business-based network intercepted the faster variant that outrun much of Ukraine's cheap interceptor fleet.

The crews train on the same equipment the Air Force uses. Training runs on virtual-reality goggles and Browning machine guns against simulated Shahed attacks, with a separate track for FPV interceptor-drone pilots.

Private air defense is one layer of widening system

The private program sits within a broader decentralization of Ukraine's air defenses. Ukraine has also allowed local governments to fund community air defense units under Air Force control directly and has deployed privately operated, remotely controlled machine-gun turrets to guard infrastructure.

The push comes as Russia launches hundreds of Shaheds and dozens of missiles at Ukraine on its heaviest nights, and no single state air force can cover every substation, port, and factory across the country.

Ukrainian citizen Olena Arkhipova has been teaching other people how to keep someone alive since 2023. She was killed on the evening of 16 July, hurrying to a shelter with her three children when a Russian missile struck Odesa. The Ukrainian Red Cross Society (URCS) said her children survived and are receiving all necessary care. 

She was one of two people killed in the strike, which hit the Khadzhybeiskyi district and wounded at least eight others, including three children, according to Serhiy Lysak, head of the Odesa City Military Administration. 

Arkhipova raised three children on her own. She joined the Ukrainian Red Cross in 2023 as a first-aid instructor, and in 2026 also became an instructor in first aid for animals.

Arkhipova taught people whose job is to respond

She lived in Odesa and gave herself to helping others. She ran first-aid training for workers of Ukraine's State Emergency Service and the National Police, for adults and children, for anyone who wanted to learn skills that save lives. She was an active volunteer with the Odesa regional branch of the Ukrainian Red Cross.

Colleagues describe a person who came when called

"For colleagues and friends, Olena will forever remain a bright, sincere, responsible person who was always ready to come to the aid of others," the URCS said.

According to the organization, "she taught others to save lives and every day proved by her own example that humanity, care, and not being indifferent are capable of changing the world."

The organization offered condolences to her family, her friends, and the whole volunteer community.

Russians are paying sorcerers to enchant their cars into using less gas. Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) reports that as Russia's fuel crisis deepens, non-standard offers to reduce a car's gasoline consumption are gaining popularity.

In many regions, the agency said, drivers queue around the clock to fill just 10 to 20 liters, and quality is no longer even part of the conversation.

The Kremlin, "where officially everything is under control," is trying to hold the situation with norms, limits, schedules, restrictions, coupons, and other post-Soviet attributes, the SVR said. Ordinary Russians are left hoping for a miracle, which is where the wizards come in.

Sorcerers open price list

Prices on the black market run about $3.20 to $6.40 a liter. Against that, the SVR notes, the magic looks almost affordable.

For $19, a client can get a "wax pouring" to remove negative energy. For about $90, a runic array. For about $115, a search of the car's interior for "magic needles" was conducted.

"For advanced users," the SVR wrote, nearly $190 buys a "Bear Paw" amulet, and around $205 a full magic ritual with salt and a gold ornament. The last one supposedly reduces fuel consumption and even "attracts" gasoline or diesel into the tank.

There is one mandatory condition the sorcerers insist on: tell no one about the ritual, or the magic will not work. It is a clause that also makes the service impossible to disprove.

Crisis magic is standing in for

The rituals are a symptom. The disease is a fuel system Ukraine has spent 2026 taking apart.

Ukraine's General Staff reported that 42.74% of Russian oil refining was offline as of 4 July, with $13.5 billion in industry losses since August 2025. Rationing has reached Siberia, thousands of kilometers from the front, jumping region to region, even where no drone has struck. Russia has banned gasoline exports, permitted the sale of lower-grade Euro-3 fuel to stretch supply, and begun importing gasoline by sea, a first for one of the world's largest oil exporters.

Ukraine says it destroyed one of the Russian bombers that hits its cities. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said its long-range drones flew about 800 kilometers to the Engels military airfield in Russia's Saratov Oblast and struck a Tu-95 strategic bomber, tearing off its tail section entirely.

The claim is the confirmation Ukraine had not yet made this morning. EP reported earlier on 16 July that open-source analysts had identified a fire at Engels-2 following an overnight drone strike, with no confirmed aircraft loss. The SBU has now claimed a specific result: a Tu-95 with its tail section destroyed.

The damage is described as critical, and the account is the SBU's own and has not yet been independently verified by imagery.

The SBU said the operation carried out tasks set by the president to reduce the military-economic potential of the aggressor state, and framed each destroyed bomber as dozens of missiles never fired at Ukrainian cities.

Engels is base Ukraine keeps coming back to

Engels-2 is one of Russia's principal strategic aviation bases, home to the Tu-95MS and Tu-160 bombers Russia uses to fire Kh-101 and Kh-555 cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities, roughly once or twice a month in salvos of dozens of missiles. Russia had around 60 Tu-95 aircraft as of 2023, a Soviet-era fleet it can no longer build, which is what makes each loss matter.

Ukraine has struck Engels since December 2022, mostly hitting fuel depots and munitions storage. A March 2025 SBU drone strike destroyed nearly 100 air-launched cruise missiles at the base. An April 2025 strike on Engels destroyed one Tu-95MS and damaged two others. If today's claim holds, it is another confirmed bomber loss at a base Russia has repeatedly expanded and failed to protect.

Bomber-hunting campaign has bigger precedent

Ukraine's most spectacular strike on Russian strategic aviation was Operation Pavutynnia ("Spiderweb") on 1 June 2025, when SBU drones smuggled deep inside Russia struck bombers at airbases as far as Irkutsk in Siberia. Ukraine said that the operation hit over 40 Russian aircraft.

The Soviet Union built Russia's strategic bombers, and they are effectively out of production, meaning that a Tu-95 lost is a Tu-95 gone for good.

"Russia's strategic aviation can no longer feel safe even at its most remote military airfields," the SBU said.

The 800-kilometer reach it claimed for this strike is the argument: there is no longer a Russian airbase far enough back to be out of range.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Fedorov wrote in the same post confirming his departure that Ukraine had conducted a successful ballistic missile test on 14 July, developed within the Defense Ministry's zone of responsibility. "Symbolically," the same day the government fell, he said.

"Symbolically, on the day the government resigned, we conducted a successful test of ballistics developed in the MoD's zone of responsibility," he wrote.

Two ballistic tracks, and the clue points to Sapsan

Ukraine is running its ballistic missile development on more than one track. The reference points to a program that Ukraine has been careful to name for months.

Defense outlet Militarnyi noted that the phrasing suggests it is not the FP-7 or FP-9 ballistic missiles from the private firm Fire Point, and that Fedorov may have meant the Sapsan operational-tactical system, whose serial production reportedly began in 2025.

The Sapsan (also known as Hrim-2) was developed by the state design bureau KB Pivdenne and traces back to a pre-war export program for Saudi Arabia. Zelenskyy confirmed on 9 December 2025 that Ukraine had begun using domestically produced Sapsan missiles in combat.

It carries a 480-kg warhead, more than double the payload of US-supplied ATACMS, and reportedly reached 5.2 Mach in testing. Zelenskyy said Russians often mistake Sapsan strikes for Neptune cruise-missile attacks: "And let them keep thinking that."

The other track is Fire Point, the private firm behind the Flamingo cruise missile, which is developing the FP-7 and FP-9 ballistic missiles as a cheaper analog to ATACMS.

Fire Point's chief designer has put the FP-9 at 855 km range with an 800-kg warhead, priced at half what ATACMS costs. However, Fire Point is a private developer.

Program is already operating in combat conditions

Whatever Fedorov meant, Ukraine's ballistic missiles are past the stage of pure experiment. Russia's Defense Ministry announced on 30 June that it had shot down a Ukrainian long-range ballistic missile.

A successful test on 14 July is a data point on a curve that is already bending toward accuracy, not a lab result waiting years for deployment.

Ukraine burned the machine that lays minefields from kilometers away. Fighters of the Asgard battalion within the 412th Nemesis brigade struck a rare Russian Zemledeliye system on the Zaporizhzhia front, the brigade said.

The machine is built on a heavy KamAZ chassis with computerized controls that automatically map the minefields it lays, so losing one is a real blow to the occupation's engineering and logistics capacity.

The mines it scatters are the reason the machine matters. Remote mining is what makes Ukrainian supply routes too dangerous to drive.

Zemledeliye lays mines that keep killing Ukrainian robots

Ukraine has spent 2026 moving its frontline logistics onto ground robots specifically because approaches are mined and drone-hunted. Units near Novopavlivka use ground robots to resupply FPV teams because Russian drone activity and remote mining have made traditional supply routes too dangerous for soldiers. The 5th Assault Brigade lost one of two ground robots crossing mined and debris-strewn ground to reach a Russian position in June.

The Zemledeliye is one of the systems used to seed the ground. Killing it does not clear the mines already laid, but it stops the machine from laying more, and it is far harder for Russia to replace than the mines themselves.

Nemesis has been hunting Russian high-value systems all year

The 412th Nemesis brigade is one of the Unmanned Systems Forces units running Ukraine's deep- and mid-strike campaign against Russian air defense, logistics, and now engineering assets. A single week of Nemesis strikes in January destroyed an estimated $300 million worth of Russian air defense equipment. In April, a Nemesis mid-range drone struck the 9S32M1, a key component of Russia's S-300V air defense system.

The brigade was also among six Ukrainian drone units that hit Russian oil tankers, gas carriers, and a tug in the Black Sea on 15 July, part of the operation isolating occupied Crimea.

Exclusives

Russia bet 50 vehicles that the drones would miss. The drones did not miss.. Russian commanders had banned their own vehicles from these roads, knowing what the drones do to them. Then they lined up 50 and sent them anyway.

Russia’s fuel crisis has moved from the pump to the harvest.

How Ukraine came to build more weapons than it can fund. Its top defense-industry chief just resigned after a deadly blast at one of his company’s depots.

Russia plans to build 120 Banderol missiles in month. Analyst who found it in 2025 says weapon is “nothing outstanding”. Russia plans to build 120 Banderol cruise missiles a month, but the factory hasn't hit the target, says Ukrainian military adviser Serhii Beskrestnov.

Military

Russia built Crimea’s power grid on sanctioned Siemens turbines. Ukraine has struck cooling system of one in Balaklava. Ukraine's Special Operations Forces struck Sevastopol's Balaklava power plant, damaging the cooling system of a Siemens turbine that sanctions leave unrepairable.

The Azov Sea wasn’t enough—Ukraine’s drones followed Russia’s oil fleet into the Black Sea. Six drone units opened the new phase together, from Magyar's Birds to the Raid regiment that has been burning ships for days.

This Ukrainian female soldier flies one of war’s heaviest drones. She turns down promotion twice to keep doing it. "Tsyhancha" went from FPV operator to heavy bomber pilot in the 125th Brigade.

Intelligence and technology

You can’t jam what you can’t identify: Ukraine just fielded its first portable drone detector. Ukraine has gone the whole war without a portable, mass-produced drone-signature detector, while nearly every Russian soldier carries a Chinese "Bulat".

20,000 confirmed hits make General Cherry Ukraine’s top FPV drone maker. Ukraine's combat-driven drone market crowned General Cherry its top FPV manufacturer in June after more than 20,000 verified target hits.

Ukraine’s Navy just showed the Barracuda sea drone leading a three-drone strike—no crew in the fight. Ukraine's Navy has demonstrated what increasingly looks like the next stage of naval drone warfare: multiple uncrewed platforms carrying out different combat roles within a single coordinated strike, without exposing sailors to enemy fire.

Russia’s Arctic bases sit near-naked as air defenses vanish to guard Moscow and refineries burning inland. Satellite images show S-300 and S-400 batteries gone from long-held sites near Rogachevo and the nuclear-submarine city of Severodvinsk, RFE/RL says.

International

Brussels let Ukraine spend EU defense funds on Chinese drone components. The bloc does not turn out these parts in the volumes a front-line drone war burns through, so Kyiv looked east.

Latvia logs 111 straight days of migrants pushed across from Belarus—and blames its support for Ukraine. Lithuania and Poland together absorbed barely a tenth of the roughly 9,100 attempts recorded across the bloc's Belarus frontier since January.

Ukraine opened its captured Russian arsenal to allies. Hundreds of applications came in within month.

Humanitarian and social impact

From Russia’s contract to death in about month: Cameroon student and 23-year-old were found dead in Ukraine. Ukrainian intelligence identified two Cameroonians killed on the front weeks after signing Russian army contracts. HUR puts Cameroon's war dead at 106.

Russian drone tracked moving car on Kharkiv road and killed man driving it. A Molniya drone hit a Peugeot on the Zolochiv-Maksymivka road in Bohodukhiv raion. Prosecutors opened a war crimes investigation.

Political and legal developments

“Our state became further from victory”: Ukraine’s top volunteer, whose fund bought 286,000 FPV Drones, just lost his defense post. Serhii Sternenko, whose foundation delivered 118,000 FPV drones to the front, is out as defense adviser after Fedorov's exit.

Ukraine’s reformist defense Minister is out after six months. Earlier, his audit exposed $7.2 billion in defense overspending. Mykhailo Fedorov, the drone-warfare architect who became Ukraine's youngest defense minister, is leaving after six months, having opened his tenure with an audit that found $7.2 billion in overspending.

Russia fired its missile at ammo that was stored next to civilian homes. Now Ukraine’s top defense-industry chief is out. Herman Smetanin left Ukroboronprom days after a Russian strike on one of its ammo depots — stored next to homes in breach of the law — destroyed five streets in Vyshneve.

New developments

A nationwide bomb-shelter overhaul is underway in Belarus as Moscow pushes Minsk toward its war against Ukraine. Belpol documented shelter modernization at government offices, telecom sites, factories, utilities, and the National Bank, framing it as another stage of Minsk's war readiness.

A month’s worth of Russia’s oil exports is stuck at sea—135 million barrels loaded but not delivered. Bloomberg's vessel-tracking and price data put the four-week value of Russia's seaborne crude exports back near $1.7 billion, down from a weekly spike near $2.5 billion on the chart earlier this year.

Read our earlier daily review here.

One of Ukraine's biggest drone-fund volunteers is no longer a defense adviser. Serhii Sternenko said he is out as an adviser to the defense minister, which reduces his ability to improve the army's drone situation.

His departure follows the exit of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, whom Sternenko called "the best defense minister in our entire history."

As of 15 July, the foundation has purchased 286,566 FPV drones and helped bring down more than 12,675 aerial targets.

He was appointed a Defense Ministry adviser on 22 January 2026, days after Fedorov took over, specializing in drone combat strategy. He has survived four assassination attempts since 2014, the most recent a shooting in May 2025 that Ukraine's Security Service tied to Russian intelligence.

"It's a shame that today our state became significantly further from victory," Sternenko wrote. "It's a shame that they weren't even allowed to begin real reforms, though a lot was still changed."

Sternenko blames "artificial delays"

Sternenko listed what was in progress when the door closed. New tender requirements for FPV drone procurement were near completion, he said — rules that would let the army get the best equipment and build infrastructure for deeper strikes.

"I hope they are ultimately approved," he wrote.

He named what stopped the rest.

"A lot did not work out, including because of bureaucratic obstacles and artificial delays by those who cause army reform inconveniences," Sternenko said.

Among what he did achieve, Sternenko listed helping unify ground control stations for fiber-optic drones and lifting several individual brigades to much higher positions in the overall rankings.

Among his regrets: not managing to help his country more in a full-scale war.

His foundation will keep supplying troops with top equipment, he said, "but, of course, on a smaller scale."

Three departures, one direction

Sternenko's exit completes a cluster. In two days, Ukraine has lost Ukroboronprom chief Herman Smetanin, Defense Minister Fedorov, and now Fedorov's drone adviser. All come from the part of the state that runs weapons and procurement, and all during a Cabinet reshuffle that is replacing Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal's government.

The anger online has been directed at the loss of Fedorov above all. Many Ukrainians also call him the best minister and say he gave them hope despite an imperfect record.

Meanwhile, Russia's Telegram channels call Fedorov's resignation a good thing for Russia. They recalled Fedorov's cutting off Starlink terminals, which slowed its logistics on the front, and the expansion of drone use.

Ukraine's youngest-ever defense minister is leaving after six months. Mykhailo Fedorov confirmed his departure on social media on 15 July, publishing a summary of what his team managed to do and what it did not.

The decision angered many Ukrainians, who are criticizing it widely.

"It was a great honor to serve the Ukrainian people as Minister of Defense," he wrote.

Fedorov is not a minor figure. He built Ukraine's "Army of Drones" program from volunteer workshops into production of roughly 200,000 drones a month, created the Brave1 defense-tech cluster, and secured Starlink for Ukraine days after the full-scale war by tweeting at Elon Musk.

He became the defense minister on 14 January 2026 at 34, with a mandate to turn the army into a machine-first, manpower-light force.

Earlier, he began with an audit that uncovered about $7.2 billion in overspending and put ministry officials through a lie detector tests, The Economist reported. His departure is the second at the top of Ukraine's defense-industrial structure in two days, following the exit of Ukroboronprom chief Herman Smetanin.

The warning sign came a week earlier. When Zelenskyy flew to the NATO summit in Ankara on 7 July — the biggest defense event of the month, where Trump promised Ukraine a Patriot license — Fedorov was not in Ukraine's delegation.

Reformer under fire

Among the results the outlet credits to him: moving part of procurement onto open tenders, which cut the price of 155mm artillery shells by 16% almost immediately.

Reforms that size make enemies. An official who exposes billions in overspending, subjects a ministry to polygraphs, and strips margins out of arms contracts by opening them to competition is removing money from people who were used to receiving it.

Fedorov's own scorecard

The summary Fedorov published is his own account of his tenure, a list of claimed results rather than an independent audit. By his telling, the Defense Ministry team:

Cut off Russian access to Starlink, sharply reducing Russia's ability to wage effective drone warfare. Took over a ministry with no budget, moved money forward from year-end allowances, and invested it in mid-strike, fiber-optic FPV, cheap reconnaissance, ground robots, interceptor drones, and deep-strike drones — buying more drones in four months than in all of the previous year.

Launched "Logistics Lockdown" as a separately funded program that, Fedorov says, cut Russian supply lines and began the isolation of Crimea, and continued the Drone Line financing that underwrites drone buys for the Unmanned Systems Forces.

Introduced 70% prepayment for purchases through the eBaly system on the Brave1 Market. Ran the first tenders for long-range artillery and hundreds of thousands of drones, which he says saves the state budget billions of dollars. Bought thousands of pickups, buggies, and ATVs for the army through a tender for the first time.

Integrated Pavlo Lazar into the Air Force and introduced an after-action review of every massed attack. Over that period, Fedorov says, drone interception rose from 83% to 91% and cruise-missile interception from 47% to 87%. Contracted PAC-2 GEM-T missiles for Patriot for the first time and applied for PAC-3 European loan.

Started a baseline drone-supply system so that, from July, every combat brigade and corps receives predictable drone deliveries without manual intervention, and launched grant programs for explosives and missile producers.

Began an unpopular transformation of military service: fixed-term contracts for all with defined service periods and deferrals, one of the world's highest infantry pay scales, an open foreign-recruitment market, and new tools to bring back soldiers who went AWOL.

Exit without stated reason

Fedorov did not say why he is leaving, and Zelenskyy had not announced a replacement or a new post for him at the time of publication. His confirmation followed reports that a wider Cabinet reshuffle is underway, with Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal's government facing replacement.

His tenure had results independent of his own account. Ukraine's Defense Ministry codified 1,000 weapons samples in the first half of 2026, with the domestically made share rising to nearly 90% from 69.6% a year earlier. Ground robots ran 16,676 logistics and evacuation missions in June, up 122% since January. The counter-logistics campaign against Crimea that he funded is still running nightly.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's defense-industrial machine is scaling faster than at any point in the war. It is doing so while losing, in two days, both the head of its state arms conglomerate and the minister who ran its procurement.

Ukraine's Special Forces said they hit the turbine equipment that keeps the lights on in occupied Crimea for the Russian armed forces. Also, resistance took part in the mission which struck the Balaklava thermal power plant in Sevastopol overnight on 14 July.

Balaklava is one of two plants that together supply about 90% of Crimea's electricity, and the damage sticks because of the turbines' origin.

Balaklava and the Tavrida plant in Simferopol were opened by Putin in 2019 to end Crimea's dependence on mainland power, and both were built around Siemens turbines transferred to Crimea and installed in breach of EU sanctions.

Illegal Siemens turbines 

Those Siemens units remain under sanctions and out of proper service, so Russia cannot simply replace a damaged turbine — each hit compounds the last.

The turbines reached Crimea in 2017 through the Russian firm Technopromexport, and German prosecutors charged five Siemens staff over the deal in 2024.

Crimea's grid is occupation's weak point

Occupied Crimea is a military-logistical hub for the Russian army, and stable electricity is what keeps it running. Communications nodes, command centers, radar stations, electronic warfare, air defense, repair plants, the Black Sea Fleet, and military airfields all depend on the grid.

Hitting the generation on the peninsula degrades both the offensive and defensive capacity of Russian forces there and slows the tempo of their rear supply.

Ukraine has spent the past three weeks proving the point.

This was not Balaklava's first hit. A Ukrainian drone strike on 24 June blacked out all of occupied Sevastopol, with the plant as its primary target. The 14 July operation names a more specific wound: the cooling system of a single turbine, the component Russia can least afford to lose.

A sustained campaign has hit Balaklava and Tavrida repeatedly, blacked out Sevastopol and Yalta, and pushed the occupation to declare a peninsula-wide state of emergency on 26 June.

Russia is already cannibalizing itself to keep power on

The strikes are landing on a grid that cannot be quickly rebuilt, and Russia's workarounds show it. The partisan movement ATESH reported that occupation authorities have begun stripping transformers from idle Northern Crimean Canal pumping stations to patch substations destroyed by Ukrainian strikes.

Before Russia's 2014 annexation, Crimea drew more than 80% of its electricity from mainland Ukraine. The grid Moscow built to replace that link is the one Ukraine is now taking apart, one turbine at a time.

Two men from Cameroon signed Russian army contracts and died within about a month. Ukraine's Defense Intelligence (HUR) published the identities of both, saying their bodies were found on the Lyman and Zaporizhzhia sectors of the front.

The two are recent entries in a recruitment pipeline that has pulled at least 27,000 foreign nationals from more than 130 countries into Russia's army, a pipeline the European Parliament voted 479 to 17 in March 2026 to classify as human trafficking.

By the count of HUR's "I Want to Live" project, Russia has cost the lives of at least 106 Cameroonian citizens since the full-scale war began.

One was student. One had been in Russia two months

Both men were from Douala, Cameroon's largest city. Both signed as infantry soldiers. Both were sent to a training center briefly and then to the front. Both were killed in what HUR calls "meat assaults", the frontal infantry attacks Russia uses to find Ukrainian firing positions with human bodies.

Ngouloure Ibrahim Nkite, born 10 March 2003, arrived in Russia on 9 February 2026. He signed a one-year rifleman's contract in the city of Oryol on 4 April. After a few weeks at a training center, he was sent to occupied Luhansk Oblast. He was killed around 12 May near Lyman in Donetsk Oblast. He was 23, and he had been in Russia for three months.

Tapindjeu Namekong Loique, born 15 April 2001, was a student at Michurinsk State Agrarian University in Tambov Oblast when he was recruited. He signed his rifleman's contract in Vologda on 25 March 2026. Like Nkite, he spent little time in training. He was killed around 23 April near Huliaipole in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. He was 25.

From contract to death, each man lived roughly a month.

Pattern HUR is documenting

Meanwhile, Ukraine says Russia plans to open eight new cultural centers in Africa to funnel young people toward the war, part of what it calls "a war for the minds of Africans." Ukraine counts more than 1,780 Africans from 36 countries fighting for Moscow.

HUR published the two men's names alongside its standard message: that the only way for a foreign national in the Russian army to survive is voluntary surrender, through the "I Want to Live" project.

Russian soldiers for many years have carried a device Ukrainian soldiers have not. Ukraine has lacked a portable, mass-produced, relatively cheap device capable of recognizing drone signatures, Ukrainian Defense Ministry adviser Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov said.

"I haven't tested the range yet, but it recognizes signatures well. Even MESH," he wrote.

It can also control electronic warfare and see analog video. The one thing that disappointed him was the upper frequency band, because the front is already saturated with video transmitters up to 8 GHz.

"I'll say right away: this solution is intended for mobile equipment or stationary points," Beskrestnov said.

You cannot jam what you cannot identify. A detector that reads a drone's signature is the first step in the chain that ends in bringing it down.

Detection is now harder half of drone war

Knowing a drone is there has become the difficult part. Russia has pushed toward drones that are hard to detect and impossible to jam, such as low-flying Molniyas with small radar signatures, fiber-optic drones that emit no radio signal at all, and now AI-guided variants with no operator link.

Ukraine shot down an AI-equipped Molniya over Zaporizhzhia for the first time on 9 July with no antenna, no operator, and no emissions for a detector to catch. Against that class of threat, the answer has shifted from electronic warfare to kinetic interception: a bullet or an interceptor drone rather than a jamming signal.

But most Russian drones still emit something. A soldier who can read a signature knows what is overhead, which frequency it uses, and whether the jammer in his kit can touch it. That is what the Bulat gave Russian troops, and what Ukrainian troops have been improvising without.

Detector is one piece of wider Ukrainian catch-up

Ukraine has been building the detection layer quickly, mostly through private firms. Ukrainian company Kara Dag pioneered acoustic and infrared systems to spot fiber-optic drones that jamming cannot stop. Another Ukrainian detector-maker's technology is now drawing interest abroad as drone warfare spreads beyond Ukraine.

Russia wants to build four Banderol, a hybrid of a kamikaze drone and a cruise missile, a day. The production plan for this year is 120 Banderol a month, Ukrainian Defense Ministry adviser Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov said on social media. By his estimate, the factory has not yet reached that rate.

The Banderol is generating an alarm disproportionate to its nature, according to the assessment of the man who flagged it in 2025.

"Lately a lot has been written about the Banderol missile, though I talked about it more than a year ago," Beskrestnov wrote.

His verdict is that the missile is "nothing outstanding." A budget cruise missile with a small warhead."

It is made by the sanctioned Russian firm Kronshtadt, which was reported to be facing imminent bankruptcy in August 2025, with 40 lawsuits totaling $7.76 million filed against it in three months.

Banderol flies off drone that Ukraine keeps shooting down

The Banderol launches from air platforms. Right now, it is launched from the Orion drone, and launches from an Mi-8 helicopter have also been worked out, Beskrestnov said.

That launch method is a vulnerability. Big drones are too easy a target over the front, and in the enemy rear, whether it is an Orion or a Bayraktar, Beskrestnov said.

What missile actually does

The Banderol carries an OFBCh-150 warhead with 50 kg of explosive. Beskrestnov loosely compared its destructive capability to a Shahed.

It can fly up to 500 km, though Ukraine's Defense Forces have recorded strikes at a maximum of 300 km. It usually cruises at 400 to 2,000 meters and drops to 200 meters before impact. It maneuvers actively and needs just 2.5 km of space to turn around. It is guided by satellite navigation and is vulnerable to electronic warfare, but has a backup autonomous navigation system.

Russia's strike arsenal has been expanding as the Kremlin finds ways around sanctions, with the Banderol joining Kh-101, Kh-555, KAB glide bombs, and Shaheds in its combined attacks on Ukrainian cities.

Russia wants to build four Banderol, a hybrid of a kamikaze drone and a cruise missile, a day. The production plan for this year is 120 Banderol a month, Ukrainian Defense Ministry adviser Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov said on social media. By his estimate, the factory has not yet reached that rate.

The Banderol is generating an alarm disproportionate to its nature, according to the assessment of the man who flagged it in 2025. 

"Lately a lot has been written about the Banderol missile, though I talked about it more than a year ago," Beskrestnov wrote.

His verdict is that the missile is "nothing outstanding." A budget cruise missile with a small warhead."

It is made by the sanctioned Russian firm Kronshtadt, which was reported to be facing imminent bankruptcy in August 2025, with 40 lawsuits totaling $7.76 million filed against it in three months.

Banderol flies off drone that Ukraine keeps shooting down

The Banderol launches from air platforms. Right now, it is launched from the Orion drone, and launches from an Mi-8 helicopter have also been worked out, Beskrestnov said.

That launch method is a vulnerability. Big drones are too easy a target over the front, and in the enemy rear, whether it is an Orion or a Bayraktar, Beskrestnov said.

What missile actually does

The Banderol carries an OFBCh-150 warhead with 50 kg of explosive. Beskrestnov loosely compared its destructive capability to a Shahed.

It can fly up to 500 km, though Ukraine's Defense Forces have recorded strikes at a maximum of 300 km. It usually cruises at 400 to 2,000 meters and drops to 200 meters before impact. It maneuvers actively and needs just 2.5 km of space to turn around. It is guided by satellite navigation and is vulnerable to electronic warfare, but has a backup autonomous navigation system.

Russia's strike arsenal has been expanding as the Kremlin finds ways around sanctions, with the Banderol joining Kh-101, Kh-555, KAB glide bombs, and Shaheds in its combined attacks on Ukrainian cities.

A Ukrainian female soldier flies one of the war's heaviest drones and has twice turned down a promotion to keep doing it. "Tsyhancha" went from FPV operator to piloting the Heavy Shot bomber in the 125th Separate Heavy Mechanized Brigade, which told her story on social media.

She decided to enlist, watching friends and acquaintances who were already defending Ukraine. At the recruitment center, they offered her drones, and that is where the path began. She flew FPVs first, then moved to strike wings, but she always wanted the heavy bomber.

"First I learned to fly FPV. Then we got onto strike wings. But I always wanted to be a 'bomber.' Now I work on Heavy Shot," she says.

Heavy bombers are the reusable half of Ukraine's drone war. Where an FPV explodes once, a heavy bomber drops its payload and flies back for more, and the crews use them to hit Russian positions at night and to run supplies into the front. Ukraine's most famous heavy bomber, the Vampire, topped the battlefield kill rankings in 2025 with 2.5 million combat missions.

Intuition matters more than theory

Technical skill can be learned, she says. What carries a mission is the ability to decide fast.

"You can learn all the theory, but if you can't instantly find a way out of a non-standard situation, it will be very hard. Intuition plays the biggest role," she says. 

She has not chased rank. She reveals she has repeatedly refused a sergeant's post, even when it came bundled with training in Britain.

"I didn't come here to be a boss. I came here to do the job," she explains. 

Olivier that didn't make it

Heavy drone crews do more than strike. They regularly run water, ammunition, and other necessities to forward positions. One run is stuck in the whole unit's memory.

Before a holiday, the soldiers decided to deliver Olivier salad to the infantry. Mid-flight, they had to drop the cargo as an emergency measure. 

"We ran after the package, and it was already flattened on the road. We gathered it all up, laughing, and said: 'Now send us your Olivier too,'" she recalls.

On serving in a men's unit, she says she has never felt any discomfort over it.

"I like my unit and my colleagues. I'm always sure of my people," she says. 

She is one of a growing cohort

Tsyhancha is part of a shift that is tracked throughout the war. More than 70,000 women serve in Ukraine's military, roughly 5,500 in combat roles. 

Women now fly Ukraine's heaviest drones in units across the front. In March 2026, a pilot with the callsign "Harley Quinn" flew the Vampire into Russian lines at night for the 77th Airmobile Brigade. Ukraine's National Guard stood up its first all-female FPV strike crew in the Zaporizhzhia sector, building its own munitions and running its own attack missions.

Kateryna "Meow" Troian flew over a thousand combat missions for the 82nd Air Assault Brigade before Russian forces killed her near Pokrovsk in June 2025. 

The head of Ukraine's state defense conglomerate is out. Herman Smetanin announced on social media that he is leaving the post of director general of Ukroboronprom, the state joint-stock company that groups roughly 100 enterprises producing missiles, drones, armored vehicles, and ammunition. The resignation follows the Vyshneve tragedy.

The depot belonged to one of Ukroboronprom's enterprises. Russia fired the missile, but the depot should not have been where it was.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 11 July that the directors of two state enterprises had stored weapons and ammunition next to residential buildings in defiance of both the law and a decision of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief's Staff.

"There was a direct ban on this — both under the law and under the Staff's decision — and all of it was violated," Zelenskyy stressed.

Ukroboronprom fired two enterprise directors before its chief left

After the tragedy, Ukroboronprom dismissed the heads of two state enterprises, along with other officials whose action or inaction may have caused the grave consequences, according to UNIAN. The company said all those responsible would bear criminal liability under Ukrainian law. The SBU has identified the officials who allowed the storage to take place.

Zelenskyy signaled the accountability would not stop at the enterprise level.

"It is a large structure, it includes dozens of enterprises, one of which is situated at that depot in Vyshneve," he said.

Days later, the person at the top of that structure was gone.

Smetanin led Ukroboronprom twice

Smetanin had headed Ukroboronprom on two separate occasions. He was first appointed director general of the joint-stock company on 28 June 2023. From 5 September 2024 to 17 July 2025, he served as Ukraine's Minister for Strategic Industries. In July 2025, he returned to Ukroboronprom as acting head, and in August 2025, he took charge of the defense-industrial group for the second time.

His exit leaves Ukroboronprom without a director general at a moment when Ukraine's defense industry is scaling faster than at any point in the war.

Vyshneve strike was part of Russia's largest attack on Kyiv in months

The depot detonation did not happen in isolation. Russia struck Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast with a massive combined barrage overnight on 6 July, firing 68 missiles and 351 drones, including 23 Iskander-M and S-400 ballistic missiles and six Zircon or Oniks missiles. Air defenses downed 363 of 419 targets, but not one ballistic or Zircon missile was intercepted. The attack killed 11 people in Kyiv.

Foreign defense companies want to look inside Russia's weapons. More than 300 applications have been submitted to TrophyLab, Ukraine's portal for research on captured enemy equipment, Ukraine's Defense Ministry said. Ukrainian arms manufacturers and military units have also applied.

Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said every seized missile, drone, and vehicle is now known to the free world. Within a month, the applications are in the hundreds.

Registered researchers can request an actual sample or a fragment of captured equipment for their own analysis. Fedorov said that the step significantly shortens the development cycle for countermeasures.

Ukraine's intelligence services fill database

The database is populated by units of Ukraine's Defense Forces, the Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR), the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), and specialized scientific institutions.

The platform gives engineers, scientists, and defense technology manufacturers from Ukraine and partner countries access to drawings, technical documentation, and analytical materials on Russian weapons.

Every applicant is vetted before access.

They are screened for possible links to Russia, whether they fall under Ukrainian or international sanctions, and for compliance with other requirements. Registration runs through trophylab.mod.gov.ua.

West is buying what Ukraine learned hard way

TrophyLab is one instrument in a wider transfer of Ukrainian battlefield knowledge into the allied defense industry.

Earlier, the Pentagon started talks to purchase Ukrainian interceptor drones, having concluded that no American manufacturer can match their price, delivery timelines, and battlefield-proven reliability.

Ukraine's Cabinet set new rules in May 2026 for handling captured Russian equipment, allowing state customers to export trophy weapons under Ukraine's international treaties without additional authorization.

Russia's weapons are being taken apart in Ukraine, and the blueprints are being handed to the people building the systems that will have to stop them next.

A Russian drone killed a man driving his car in Kharkiv Oblast. The strike hit a Peugeot on the Zolochiv-Maksymivka road near the village of Berezivka in Bohodukhiv raion on the evening of 14 July, killing the 61-year-old driver, the Kharkiv Oblast Prosecutor's Office said on Telegram. The drone was preliminarily identified as a Molniya.

The precise hit on the moving car suggests that the Molniya was piloted in real-time.

In October 2025, a Russian Molniya drone hit a car in the Kupiansk district, wounding a 37-year-old volunteer, and an FPV drone killed two men in another car in the same raion two hours later. Both were classified as war crimes.

Molniya is cheap, common, and now flies itself

The Molniya is among the cheapest weapons in Russia's arsenal. It is a low-cost kamikaze drone built close to the front, reliable and ubiquitous. Russia launches up to ten a day on the Zaporizhzhia axis alone.

Ukraine shot down an AI-equipped Molniya over Zaporizhzhia for the first time on 9 July. The AI variant has no antenna, no operator link, and no emissions for a detector to catch, making electronic warfare useless against it. Ukraine's answer is kinetic interception. Defense Ministry adviser Serhii Beskrestnov has warned that a fiber-optic Molniya is already in testing, which would emit no radio signal at all.

Russia's terror documented

Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office has documented over 11,000 Russian FPV attacks on civilians since 2024, with 2,010 recorded in the first four months of 2026 alone.

The road between Zolochiv and Maksymivka is a public road in a Ukrainian oblast. A man was driving home on it. 

Earlier, a Russian FPV drone killed a 57-year-old hospital worker walking along a road in the same oblast — the last resident of the border village of Tokarivka Druha.

Exclusives

Ukraine's premier listed a record year to the parliament that dismissed her. No one in Kyiv has said why. Her own farewell leaves out the name that would explain it.

Hungary swapped its pro-Russian prime minister. Yet it is still slowing Ukraine's path to the EU.. Hungary has allowed two stages of Ukraine's EU talks to open while holding up the other four. Péter Magyar is no Viktor Orbán, but years of anti-Ukraine politics might still make blocking Kyiv safer than helping it.

The US Army's former commander in Europe is "withholding applause" for Trump's Patriot pledge—and expects no interceptors before winter.. Ben Hodges is pretty certain Ukraine will build no Patriot interceptors for three to six months. Until then, Ukraine will remain dependent on allied supplies—amid a global interceptor shortage.

A $50 computer just flew Russia's newest jet drone into a Ukrainian grain ship—and jamming couldn't stop it. Russia's fast, highly autonomous Geran-4 one-way attack drone is the weapon of choice for strikes on Ukrainian grain ships.

Russia has the oil. It no longer has the gasoline—so Russians are learning to make their own. Ukraine's drone campaign has cut Russian refining to its lowest level since March 2005—and the diesel Russia can no longer sell is driving world fuel prices to multiyear highs.

Russia stalled bankruptcy reform for six years—then passed it in two days. Russian companies owe more than the country produces in a year, and a reform frozen since 2020 was cleared by parliament in two days.

Military

Ukraine sank Russian ship that shot at its sailors in 2018 with Sargan-3000 naval drone. The satellite image confirms the destruction of the Russian border patrol ship Izumrud at the mooring wall.

Consequences of own destruction: Russia is stripping canal it killed to fix Crimean substations Ukraine keeps hitting. ATESH says Russia has begun removing 10-40 MVA transformers from Northern Crimean Canal pumping stations, idle since Moscow destroyed the Kakhovka dam.

116 Russian ships in nine days: One big export tanker needs 12–15 small ones to fill it. Ukraine is burning the small ones. Three drone units carried out the latest overnight strikes under operation MoLoChKa, whose name reads like Ukrainian slang for dairy products.

A plant making 150 products from gasoline to polyethylene caught fire 1,300 km from the war zone—Ukraine hits two refineries overnight. Fires broke out at the Afipsky refinery's tank farm area, the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat complex, and, likely, the Rosneft-Opt depot next door, monitoring channels and Astra report.

Ukraine put armed robot on Russian-held ground. Naval drone was landing craft. Ukraine's 123rd Brigade delivered a ground robot to the Russian-held Kinburn Spit aboard an unmanned surface vessel and landed it to fight.

Intelligence and technology

Ukraine kills Russian radars with drones, then strikes through gap. France flew both in one package on jet Ukraine gets in 2028. Dassault and Harmattan AI say a Rafale F4 controlled a drone carrying the new NAMIB system, which found a simulated enemy radar dozens of kilometers away.

Denmark sent Ukraine something essential that keeps F-16 parts airworthy.

Ukraine is building a flight school under fire—and the simulator delivery shows how fast. Scarce jets, contested skies, no fixed base that can stay hidden. Ukraine's answer: train pilots on Ukrainian soil, in equipment that moves.

Europe's answer to the Patriot costs $700,000 a shot—and no foreign government can switch it off. Ten nations joined the coalition. Ukraine has the missile. Germany has the seeker Ukraine still needs to sign for. Nobody has an intercept yet — and the clock says 12 months

Russia's ex-space chief calls for "systematic zeroing out" of the Starlink satellite constellation. Senator Dmitry Rogozin claims cutting Ukraine off from SpaceX's network would end the war within two to three weeks — and that Russia knows several ways to do it.

International

Ukrainian pilots opened the Bastille Day flypast from French fighter jets. Macron's last parade as president had no American aircraft and one deliberate message. Ukraine flew it

Hungary votes to remove Orbán-loyal president as Magyar dismantles Fidesz system. The constitutional amendment targets Tamás Sulyok and caps lawmakers' tenure at 12 years. Magyar's break with Orbán remains sharper at home than on Ukraine.

Two months in office, three blows to Ukraine: Bulgaria's premier stacks Coalition of the Willing exit on aid freeze and sanctions blocks. Since May, Radev has stopped state military aid, defended two prominent Russians from EU blacklists, and now removed Bulgaria from the group backing Kyiv against Russian aggression.

Warsaw refuses to lift its embargo on Ukrainian agricultural products. The new EU-Ukraine trade agreement should erase all unilateral restrictions from November, yet Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary hold on to their own bans.

Humanitarian and social impact

Polish man approached passerby in Łódź and hit him twice in head. Police say he took him for Ukrainian. Police in Łódź are searching for a man who fractured a passerby's nose and jaw after mistaking him for a Ukrainian.

Political and legal developments

Ukrainian new state award's second criterion contributes to security of all Europe. 271 MPs backed a new state award for services to Ukraine's EU accession, a day before the EU is due to open Ukraine's sixth negotiating cluster.

Ukraine votes to dismiss its PM. She hasn't accepted the exit job offered. Three sources say the outgoing premier is not considering the Washington posting used to justify her removal.

Olenivka officials and Taganrog jail land on EU sanctions list for abuse of Ukrainian prisoners. Brussels adopted the listings under two human-rights regimes, targeting the command chains of detention facilities in occupied Ukraine and inside Russia.

"Incredible legacy for him": Days after Graham's death, Trump says he's ready to move on his Russia sanctions bill. Trump supports the sanctions package the late Senator Lindsey Graham spent two years trying to pass. The Senate needs a new lead sponsor.

Ukraine's Supreme Court refused to lift Zelenskyy's sanctions on opposition leader. The Supreme Court rejected Poroshenko's challenge to sanctions that freeze his assets and strip his state awards. He says the judges were pressured.

Read our earlier daily review here.

Ukraine sank a Russian ship that shot at its sailors. The Ukrainian Navy said it destroyed the Russian second-rank border patrol ship Izumrud or "Emerald" with a Sargan-3000 naval drone.

What did Izumrud do in 2018? 

On 25 November 2018, Izumrud opened fire on Ukrainian Navy vessels in the Kerch Strait, wounding Ukrainian sailors. Ukraine's General Staff published intercepted radio communications from the attack showing that Izumrud, hull number 354, was the ship that fired.

The Berdiansk's captain radioed that he was undertaking no illegal action and was leaving for open sea. The answer was a salvo from Izumrud's 30mm gun, followed by lethal fire.

The captain and two crew members were wounded by shrapnel. Russia seized the tugboat Yany Kapu and the armored boats Berdiansk and Nikopol and took 24 Ukrainian sailors prisoner.

"The satellite image confirms the destruction of the Russian border patrol ship Izumrud at the mooring wall. We continue to reduce the Russian aggressor's potential at sea," the Navy said.

What Izumrud did in 2018

In 2018, the Ukrainian ships were sailing from Odesa to Mariupol. Russia closed the Kerch Strait without lawful notice, blocked the passage under the bridge with a cargo vessel, and moved it aside to let its own ships through.

The FSB border guard ship Don rammed the tugboat, Yany Kapu.

Bellingcat later found the tug was intentionally rammed at least four times over the course of an hour. Russian intercepts captured the crews discussing how to do it. When the Ukrainian boats turned back and crossed into neutral waters, Izumrud opened fire.

Year after annexation 

Russian special forces boarded the vessels. The 24 captured sailors were paraded on Russian state television, making forced confessions.

They were held for nearly a year. Russia returned the ships in November 2019, with the ramming damage on Yany Kapu clearly visible and the bullet holes on Berdiansk painted over with black rectangles.

Izumrud was launched in 2014, the year Russia annexed Crimea. Project 22460, 62.5 meters long, 630 to 750 tons, up to 27 knots, with a helicopter pad. It served in the FSB's coast guard.

Russia has started removing the transformers from the Northern Crimean Canal, which historically supplied up to 85% of the Crimean Peninsula's fresh water. ATESH partisans say occupation authorities have begun hauling them to electrical substations damaged by Ukrainian strikes. The claim has not been independently verified.

So the occupation is cannibalizing its own infrastructure — pulling equipment off one facility to plug the hole in another. The units being taken are not junk: 10- to 40-MVA transformers that once fed large pumping stations, including NS-355 on the Connecting Canal. That class of equipment fits almost any substation.

The pumping stations are available for stripping because the canal has not worked since June 2023. Russia blew up the Kakhovka dam, and the Dnipro level at the intake fell below critical levels, and the flow of Dnipro water into Crimea stopped. The pumps have sat idle ever since.

Russia is dismantling the consequences of its own destruction to repair the damage from Ukrainian strikes.

Transformers are going where war needs them

Russian command now prioritizes facilities that feed the defense industry, rail junctions, air defenses, radars, and command posts, per ATESH.

Moving transformers from dead pumping stations to those substations is an attempt to restore power fast, without waiting for foreign deliveries or long production runs.

ATESH calls it a dead end. The stock of equipment that can be pulled from other sites keeps shrinking, and every new Ukrainian strike opens a new hole with nothing left to fill it.

Ukraine has been burning Crimean substations for three weeks

The claim lands in the middle of a sustained campaign. Ukrainian drones have hit Crimean power infrastructure night after night since late June.

Ukraine struck 37 energy facilities across occupied southern Ukraine between 1 and 5 July, targeting electrical substations and transformers in Crimea and parts of Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, according to Unmanned Systems Forces Commander Robert Brovdi.

Occupation authorities declared a peninsula-wide state of emergency on 26 June. They have shut children's camps, halted civilian fuel sales, and imposed rolling blackouts.

A Polish man in Łódź beat a passerby he thought was Ukrainian. The victim was Polish. Police are now searching for the attacker, who approached a local resident talking on the phone near the city center on 11 July, struck him, and told him his place was not in Poland, Polish broadcaster RMF24 reports.

Polish support for taking in Ukrainian refugees has fallen from 94% in March 2022 to 48% by early 2026, with 46% opposed — the highest opposition since the invasion began, per Euromaidan Press reporting.

Victim was hospitalized

The victim's account indicates the attacker took him for a Ukrainian, Łódź police spokesperson Maksymilian Jasiak said.

The man was hit at least twice in the head and hospitalized with a broken nose and jaw injuries. He filed a police report the next day. Officers have seized CCTV footage. The legal classification of the crime and the attacker's motive will be determined after his arrest.

Beating happened on Volyn anniversary

The assault took place on 11 July, the anniversary of the 1943 Volhynia massacres, and the date Ukrainian intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov had named days earlier as the trigger for the hardest phase of the Poland-Ukraine rupture.

The rupture began on 26 May, when Zelenskyy signed a decree naming a special operations unit "Heroes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army" (UPA)

UPA is a contested figure in Polish-Ukrainian historical memory. Ukrainian historiography presents UPA as anti-Soviet and anti-Nazi independence fighters. Polish historiography emphasizes UPA's association with the 1943-44 Volhynia massacres.

Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped Zelenskyy of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honor, amid the clash. Zelenskyy returned it by post, and former Ukrainian presidents renounced theirs. 

Poland and Ukraine’s memory war has spilled into the streets. Its consequences might be disastrous.

Polish sentiment has turned violent before

Earlier, on a Warsaw bridge in May 2026, a 16-year-old Ukrainian refugee, Artem, had his skull fractured. He had fled Russian missiles in Zaporizhzhia. Weeks later, Lublin's city hall took down the Ukrainian flag.

Poland's General Staff has reported large-scale Russian operations aimed at undermining Polish-Ukrainian ties, creating an atmosphere of fear and anxiety about Ukrainian claims in Poland. Anti-Ukrainian messaging in Poland's information space doubled between August and November 2025 compared with the same period a year earlier.

Poland is the main hub for weapons reaching Ukraine. Breaking the two countries apart has been a Russian objective since 2022.

Ukraine's Parliament has reported that it has established a new state award for European integration. 271 MPs voted for bill No. 15359 establishing the Order of Europe.

The order can go to Ukrainian citizens and foreigners for outstanding personal service in supporting Ukraine's strategic course toward full EU membership, for significant contributions to helping Ukraine strengthen its resilience in defending its independence and the security of all Europe, and for strengthening international cooperation in the interests of democracy, peace, good neighborliness, and friendly relations between peoples.

Ukraine scored 9 out of 100 on reform plan it signed with Brussels

Ukraine has completed 9 of 100 possible points in the first three months of the 10-priority reform plan it agreed with the European Commission in December 2025, according to an assessment by Transparency International Ukraine and the New Europe Center.

Monitors found zero progress on prosecutor reform.

In July 2025, Zelenskyy signed legislation subordinating Ukraine's main anti-corruption agencies to political control in the same week that Brussels had quietly scheduled the opening of Ukraine's first negotiating cluster. The law was reversed after mass protests.

Award's second criterion is one that Europe is actually watching

The order's three criteria include contributions to Ukraine's resilience in defending its independence and the security of all of Europe. That is the argument Ukraine now makes in Brussels and Paris: that its army, its drones, and its defense industry are a European asset, not a European charity.

Italy's defense minister called this week for a continental defense architecture including Ukraine. France agreed this week to license a continental defense architecture to help Ukraine build Aster missiles. Ten countries have also joined Ukraine's anti-ballistic coalition.

A French Rafale flew a drone that went hunting for an air-defense radar. Dassault Aviation and Harmattan AI said in a 13 July press release that a Rafale F4 conducted its first joint operation with a drone carrying NAMIB, a new electronic reconnaissance system built to find enemy air defenses, according to Defense Express.

There is an unresolved question underneath. Which Rafale variant Ukraine gets is not settled, and the aircraft may be secondhand F3Rs that would need upgrading to the F4 standard. NAMIB was demonstrated on an F4.

During the trials, the drone located a simulated hostile radar station several dozen kilometers away, passed the coordinates to the Rafale pilot, and the pilot ran a simulated strike.

Six and half months from start to first flight

NAMIB is a joint development by Dassault and Harmattan AI. Its specifications have not been disclosed. It can be integrated on different types of drones, such as quadcopters, long-range fixed-wing platforms, and others.

Development started in January 2026. The first joint operation flew on 13 July. That is roughly six and a half months.

The project sits inside a strategic partnership the two companies announced in the same month, under which Dassault integrates Harmattan AI's combat artificial intelligence into the Rafale with an eye toward the F5 standard.

The drone-control demonstration is arguably the more significant half of the announcement: a fighter pilot directing an unmanned aircraft as part of a strike package is the architecture every major air force is now building toward.

Ukraine has been killing Russian radars hard way

Ukraine has been dismantling Russian air defense with drones, one radar at a time.

Ukraine's General Staff reported 24 radar systems damaged in Crimea alone between March and May 2026, and 25 air defense systems hit in April, including components of the Tor, Buk, Osa, Pantsir, S-300, and S-400 systems.

A company commander with the 413th Unmanned Systems Regiment told Euromaidan Press that in some sectors the Russians are "losing the concept" of layered air defense as the layers get picked off, opening blind spots.

That campaign is working, but it is slow. The Lasar's Group operation earlier this month killed a Buk-M3 with strike drones first, and only then did the Air Force fly into the corridor that opened.

US President Donald Trump will support the Russia sanctions bill Lindsey Graham spent two years trying to pass. A White House official told CNN on Monday that the president backs the bipartisan package, days after Graham's sudden death.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune froze it to give Trump room to negotiate an end to the war, and the White House opposed it, arguing it would undercut diplomacy. Trump repeatedly panned the legislation and pushed for discretion to impose sanctions himself rather than be told to do so by statute.

Trump answers on bill himself 

Asked directly by CNN's Kaitlan Collins whether he would sign it, Trump said: "Yeah, we're talking about it."

Graham announced the breakthrough on 10 July. He and Blumenthal said they had reached an agreement with the administration after extended negotiations. He died the next day, at 71, having just returned from Kyiv, where he met Zelenskyy on 10 July. 

Thune says it was what Graham cared about most at end

Thune said the White House had been working closely with Graham on the measure and that he was hopeful it would pass.

"It'll take Democrats and Republicans here in the Senate to do that, but I'm hopeful we can make it happen," Thune said.

In Graham's last days, the sanctions package was "the thing that he cared the most about in terms of an accomplishment, and it would certainly be an incredible legacy for him."

Blumenthal, who traveled to Kyiv with Graham repeatedly since July 2022, said he planned to speak with Thune about timing.

"It should be seen as a fitting tribute to Sen. Graham to do it quickly in his memory," Blumenthal said. "It's exactly what we were talking about when I last spoke to him over the weekend."

The bill now needs a new lead Republican sponsor. Finding one is on Blumenthal's agenda with Thune.

Leverage is higher now than when bill was written

The sanctions target the countries buying Russian energy. China and India together take roughly 85% of Russian crude exports.

They would land on a Russian oil sector that Ukraine has already broken open. Ukraine's General Staff reported on 4 July that Ukrainian strikes have idled 42.74% of Russia's oil refining capacity, resulting in $13.5 billion in industry losses since August 2025.

A law that taxes buyers arriving while the refineries burn is a different instrument from the same law would have been a year ago.

Zelenskyy said last week that there is now no Russian oil refinery that Ukrainian weapons cannot reach.

Exclusives

One Russian ship every 112 minutes for a week: Ukraine hits 14 more vessels as total tally nears 100. The Unmanned Systems Forces put July's running total at 91 vessels, with the live scoreboard still updating as reports get verified.

Military

Ukraine says Russia's Alabuga workers, including minors, are now inside Zaporizhzhia's reactor complex, turned into military base. Ukrainian intelligence says Russia has placed armor in ZNPP turbine halls, machine-gun nests on reactor roofs, and drone control points staffed by Alabuga workers.

Fires at both ends of Russia's fuel chain: a Lukoil depot in Stavropol Krai and a ferry port facing Kerch. The governor confirmed the blaze in the industrial zone and evacuated a street; satellite data showed the oil transshipment complex at Port Kavkaz alight.

Ukraine hits 15 Russian vessels as drone blockade of Crimea spreads across Azov Sea. Thermal anomalies flared from occupied Mariupol to Kerch as Ukrainian drones struck ships, power links and the air defenses guarding Russia's routes into the peninsula.

Every primary unit at a Rosneft refinery is burning — 100% of its crude processing capacity. The plant turned 8.5 million tons of oil a year into gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. Analysts say it now turns out nothing.

Intelligence and Technology

Ukraine approves more than two new drone systems a day this year. Almost all of them are now homemade. Ukraine's Defense Ministry codified 413 unmanned aerial systems in the first half of 2026, up 73% on 2024.

France licenses Ukraine to build missile for system that has already downed Russian jet. Macron announced a license for Ukraine to build Aster missiles for its SAMP/T systems, as well as for Rafale fighter jets to fly in Ukrainian skies by 2028-2029.

Ukraine's new grant list reads like map of war: exoskeletons, dugout-busters, lasers, and humanoids. Ukraine's Brave1 defense cluster opened new grants, including the BraveTech EU program for exoskeletons, evacuation drones, torpedoes, and anti-dugout munitions.

New York Times: Russian spies used Japan to source technology for war. A little-known GRU unit allegedly operated through an Aeroflot office near Japan's national police headquarters, according to NYT's reporting. They used business and logistics ties to obtain equipment for Russia's war machine.

Russia builds three ballistic missiles per day: Japan's entire annual Patriot output would cover only one mass strike on Kyiv, expert says. Ukraine needs 2,000 PAC-3 interceptors per year to defeat Russian ballistic missiles, Ukrainian analyst Oleksandr Kovalenko says.

International

Zelenskyy wants FREYJA flying within 12 months. Ten nations just joined European Anti-Ballistic Missile Coalition for first time. Zelenskyy told the first meeting of the European Anti-Ballistic Coalition that Ukraine is finishing its interceptor and hopes to see FREYJA working within 12 months.

Italy wants continental defense alliance, including Ukraine. Kyiv already out-produces all of NATO on drones. Italy's defense minister says European defense must extend past EU borders to Britain, Norway, Türkiye, and Ukraine as Washington looks to the Indo-Pacific.

EU says Russia's Venice pavilion could cost Biennale €2 million grant. Its commissioner is daughter of FSB general. The European Commission officially recommended terminating the €2 million grant to the Venice Biennale after Russia's pavilion reopened.

Humanitarian and Social Impact

He was saving 99 goats' worth of bride price. Russia sent him to die in Ukraine instead. A captured Kenyan told a Ukrainian journalist he signed what he believed was a security guard contract and learned he was in the Russian army only when they handed him a uniform.

100,000 dolphins killed in the Black Sea because of Russia's war, Ukrainian scientist warns: "We may lose a unique ecosystem". Researchers say documented strandings represent only a fraction of the true toll because an estimated 95% of dolphin carcasses sink before they can be counted.

Political and Legal Developments

Their father died defending Ukraine. A former Ukrainian brigade commander is now suspected in the murder of his two sons. Investigators suspect the former commander of the 155th Separate Mechanized Brigade ordered the abduction and killing of the two brothers of a fallen serviceman.

Russian who helped Ukraine's military faces deportation after decade under false identity. Ruslan Puptaiev says he fled persecution in Russia and built a new life in Ukraine under a false identity. After authorities uncovered his real identity, he was detained for deportation, though the European Court of Human Rights has temporarily blocked his return to Russia.

New Developments

Russia wants to run grain through its Syrian naval base—one berth for cargo, one for warships. Syrian officials say the commercial berth would take Russian grain, feed, oils, timber, steel, coal, rice and sugar—while Syria's port authority insists no such project exists.

Read our earlier daily review here.

Ukraine's Supreme Court refused to lift the sanctions imposed by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the opposition leader who ran against him. The Cassation Administrative Court rejected Petro Poroshenko's lawsuit on 10 July, per Interfax Ukraine. Two of the five judges on the panel filed dissenting opinions.

The decision drew condemnation from the International Democrat Union, the global alliance of center-right parties, which called it a politically motivated attempt to suppress the opposition. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko warned that persecuting opposition leaders could threaten Ukrainian democracy.

Poroshenko has opposed Moscow consistently since 2014, and his foundation has delivered tens of thousands of drones to the army, including 500 FPV drones to an air defense regiment on the day the sanctions were announced.

Poroshenko says judges were blackmailed

The ruling was the result of pressure on the court, Poroshenko said on the day of the decision.

"The judges of this panel of five were blackmailed, including their relatives, with the opening of criminal cases if the wrong decision was taken," he said.

Poroshenko claimed he had plans to file a statement with law enforcement and provide journalists with materials for a journalistic investigation.

"Society has the right to know how Ukraine is being cut off from membership in the European Union," said Poroshenko.

His lawyer, Illia Novikov, said the pressure came from the Security Service on the instructions of Bankova, the seat of the President's Office.

"I will release new information that we have not published before... We had information that pressure was being applied to the court ... Now the time has come to name these people. According to our information, they are SBU officers Eduard Rudiuk and Vitalii Solodzhuk," Novikov said.

Novikov said he would ask their leadership to check whether the two men tried to pressure the court. He said four hearings had been disrupted since 5 January 2026, each of which could have been the last in the case, and argued the disruptions bought time to lean on the panel. The two dissenting opinions, he said, show two judges did not yield.

Poroshenko says the clusters will not open in July

Poroshenko said the ruling is blocking Ukraine's EU accession.

"Those who are trying to build authoritarianism in Ukraine instead of democracy have got what they wanted. Seven clusters will not be opened for us," he stressed.

He added that "the reason is today's decision."

"And apart from the foreign policy cluster, unfortunately, with high probability the clusters will not be opened in July," Poroshenko claimed.

He said four foundational documents had been adopted in the past week, including a European Parliament resolution stating that applying sanctions to the opposition leader is illegal, extrajudicial, and unconstitutional, and an OSCE Parliamentary Assembly decision recognizing extrajudicial sanctions against Ukrainian citizens as unlawful.

Poroshenko will appeal to the Supreme Court's Grand Chamber and then to the European Court of Human Rights, which accepted his case in May 2026. His lawyers have filed a second complaint in Strasbourg over the length of the proceedings, as Ukraine's administrative code allows two months for such a case. This one took eighteen.

Ukraine codified 413 unmanned aerial systems in the first half of 2026. Almost all of them are Ukrainian-made, Ukraine's Defense Ministry said. That is more than 30% above the same period in 2025 and more than 73% above the same period in 2024.

Front-strike drones also grew substantially. The codified systems span aerostat, fixed-wing, and copter reconnaissance, fixed-wing and copter strike drones, FPVs, bombers, interceptors, signal relays, target drones, and deep-strike platforms.

The named systems include Halka, Skyriper Minotaur, Hor Elks, Beshket, Shturm, Bababoom, Zorro, Blinc, Optoslon, Chumak, Sokil, Hydra, Kruk, Dzyha, Kharyok, Buran, Bilyi Vovk, and Sichen.

The drone figure sits inside a broader codification surge. Ukraine's Defense Ministry authorized 1,000 weapons samples in the first half of 2026, of which 892 were made in Ukraine — a domestic share of nearly 90%, up from 69.6% in 2025.

Category list is ecosystem, not weapon

Relay drones, target drones, and interceptors appearing on the same codification list as strike platforms describe an air war that now needs its own supporting infrastructure. Relays extend control range.

Target drones train the interceptor crews. Interceptors are the answer to the Shahed.

Ukraine's interceptor lineup has filled quickly. The Defense Ministry is procuring 8,000 Octopus interceptors, a Shahed-killer with automatic terminal guidance developed inside the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Germany funded 15,000 units of the STRILA interceptor. Wild Hornets' Sting has destroyed more than 600 aerial targets. The Talion, codified on 1 July, can kill a drone or be one.

Ukraine's military received twice as many interceptor drones in the first four months of 2026 as in all of 2025, and Ukrainian interceptors destroyed a record 33,000 Russian UAVs in March 2026 alone.

Fiber-optic drones lead because Russia cannot jam them

The prominence of fiber-optic systems in the codification list reflects the electronic-warfare stalemate on both sides of the front. A fiber-optic drone spools out a hair-thin cable behind it and takes its commands down the wire. No radio signal means nothing to jam.

Ukraine aims to build seven million drones in 2026, roughly double its 2025 output. 

Russia is operating Shahed drone control points inside Europe's largest nuclear plant. Ukraine's Defense Intelligence says Russian forces have deployed control points for Gerbera-Seeker and Geran-Seeker kamikaze drones at the occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), staffed with workers brought in from the Alabuga special economic zone, including underage students. 

All six ZNPP reactors are in cold shutdown. Russian occupying forces have parked military equipment directly in the turbine halls of reactor units 1, 2, 5, and 6, turned basements and bomb shelters into weapons depots, and installed machine-gun nests and missile systems on the roofs of the reactor buildings, per Ukrainian intelligence.

IAEA experts denied access to reactor halls

Ammunition and equipment are stored beneath the technical passages and overpasses that connect the reactor units to other buildings.

Some technical facilities near the shoreline of the former Kakhovka reservoir have been mined. A Rosgvardia contingent of 1,500 troops guards the plant.

IAEA experts do not have full access to the reactor units or the special technical facilities. Inspections are conducted along pre-agreed plans and routes, which Ukrainian intelligence says makes an objective assessment of the situation difficult or impossible. Russia has restricted IAEA access to reactor halls since at least 2024.

Plant has one power line left and 21 blackouts behind it

ZNPP had 10 external power lines before the occupation. One works now. The plant suffered another blackout on 3 July 2026 — the 21st since the full-scale war, per Ukrainian intelligence.

A nuclear plant in cold shutdown still needs electricity. Cooling systems for the reactors and the spent fuel storage run on it, and when off-site power fails, the plant falls back on diesel generators trucked in through a war zone. Europe's largest nuclear facility has been living on that margin since 2022.

The 17th blackout came in June 2026, the fifth of that year alone, and more than 500 missiles and drones were recorded inside the 30-km surveillance zones of Ukrainian nuclear plants during 2025

Cooling pond is two meters below its minimum

Russian occupiers are not maintaining the required water level in the cooling pond. As of July 2026, it stands at 12.86 meters, compared with a minimum of 15 meters.

Russia destroyed the Kakhovka Dam on 6 June 2023, which severed the plant's original water supply.

Rosatom is forcing staff onto its contracts

ZNPP employed roughly 11,000 people before the full-scale war. About 7,500 remain, including 500 workers from an outsourcing company that holds no license to work at the station.

All staff are being forced to sign contracts with Rosatom under threat of dismissal, according to the Ukrainian intelligence. Personnel brought in from Russia lack the qualifications to service the plant, because ZNPP differs substantially from Russian nuclear facilities.

Ukraine has proposed amending the IAEA statute to disqualify states that deliberately undermine nuclear safety from the agency's governing bodies. Russia sits on the IAEA Board of Governors.

France will license Ukraine to build Aster missiles. President Emmanuel Macron announced the license at a joint briefing with Zelenskyy, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer after the Coalition of the Willing meeting in Paris.

He also confirmed Ukraine will acquire Rafale fighter jets.

"The first aircraft should already be flying in Ukrainian skies in 2028-2029," Macron said.

The Aster license is the more immediately consequential of the two announcements. Aster missiles arm the SAMP/T system, which Ukraine already operates and which has already shot down a Russian Sukhoi jet in combat.

SAMP/T is the European system closest to the Patriot in role, as it can engage aerodynamic targets out to 150 km and intercept ballistic missiles at 25 km.

Aster plans to expand to 300 missiles per one year

It is built by the EuroSAM consortium of MBDA France, MBDA Italy, and Thales, which means the license does not run through an American supply chain. The bottleneck has always been production: Aster output runs at roughly 80-100 missiles per year, with a plan to reach 300 per year by 2028.

The announcement comes six days after Trump promised Ukraine a Patriot production license at the NATO summit in Ankara — a promise Lockheed Martin and RTX had not been told about, with no timeline and no named manufacturer. Macron welcomed Trump's decision at the Paris briefing.

Zelenskyy thanked Macron directly.

"Thank you, Emmanuel, personally, for the readiness to grant licenses. This is a serious step forward. This will help a great deal. Licenses for Asters and SCALPs are important decisions," he said.

Rafales arrive in 2028, at earliest

Macron said the meeting demonstrated accelerated fulfillment of commitments made in recent months and named two areas of concrete progress: air defense assistance and the modernization and acquisition of Rafale strike aircraft by Ukraine.

Ukraine locked in a commitment to 100 French Rafales in February 2026, alongside 150 Swedish Gripen aircraft. Macron's 2028-2029 date is the first specific delivery window a French leader has attached to that commitment. It is also a reminder of what the aircraft cannot do: nothing about the Rafale addresses the ballistic missiles hitting Kyiv this month.

License lands the same week as the FREYJA coalition convenes

"We also decided to grant licenses for our missiles, and to create opportunities to draw on our forces and expertise to develop new anti-ballistic capabilities, and it is exactly in this vein that the flagship FREYJA project is working, which many manufacturers will join," Macron said.

The Anti-Ballistic Coalition held its first meeting this week, with ten countries — Ukraine, France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Spain — plus NATO, the EU, and European defense companies.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine is finishing work on its own anti-ballistic missile as its contribution to the system and hopes to see FREYJA operating within 12 months.

Zelenskyy thanked Britain and Germany for what he called consistently tangible steps to protect life in Ukraine, and said new defense pacts for Ukraine are coming.

Ukraine is finishing its own anti-ballistic missile. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at the first meeting of the European Anti-Ballistic Coalition that Ukraine will contribute a missile to FREYJA, a joint European missile defense system.

Ten countries have joined the Coalition — Ukraine, France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Spain — along with representatives of NATO, the European Union, and leading European defense companies.

"Ukraine can provide its part — the anti-ballistic missile. We are now completing work on it. Others have radar and other critical components. It is important that we combine our efforts," he said.

Four days ago, Zelenskyy told journalists that eight countries might join. Zelenskyy coordinated positions with French President Emmanuel Macron in a call before the meeting.

Zelenskyy set a timeline for his expectations for the new air defense missile. 

"I hope that within the next 12 months we will see FREYJA in operation," he revealed.

Zelenskyy divides work: Ukraine builds missile, partners build rest

Europe needs a modern, reliable, and more affordable system of protection against ballistic missiles, and partner countries are capable of building one together, Zelenskyy claimed.

He argued FREYJA should receive political support as a joint European initiative aimed at strengthening the security of the entire continent.

The division of labor Zelenskyy described aligns with the program's technical structure. Freya recycles a Soviet S-300 interceptor and relies on a German infrared seeker co-developed with Diehl Defense, and Kyiv munitions firm Fire Point is transforming its FP-7 ballistic missile into an air-defense missile under the initiative.

Radars and command systems come from partners. The Ukrainian company Fire Point aims to begin serial production in August 2026, building airframes and storing them until German seekers arrive.

Demand is rising faster than supply

Russia is betting on ballistic strikes against Ukrainian cities, and the missile programs of Russia, Iran, and North Korea are compounding the global threat.

Europe has all the technological preconditions to become a world leader in producing modern anti-ballistic systems without political dependence on other states, he said.

Russia produces roughly 800 ballistic missiles a year, compared with about 600 American PAC-3 interceptors, and a single Iskander can require two or three interceptors to bring down. Ukraine's Ministry of Defense reported an 89% interception rate against Russian air threats in June but only 40% against ballistic missiles.

Europe's future defense architecture must reach past the EU's borders. Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto told La Stampa that it should be genuinely continental and include partnerships with Britain, Norway, Switzerland, Moldova, the Western Balkans, Türkiye, and Ukraine, Türkiye Today reports.

Crosetto's argument rests on two premises. European governments can no longer plan capability development on 10- to 15-year horizons because the security environment changes far faster than that.

And Europe must reckon with signals that the US will gradually reduce its military presence on the continent as Washington reorients toward the Indo-Pacific.

Remarks came after NATO summit in Ankara, which papered over cracks between allies

"Governments can no longer limit themselves to planning capabilities that will be available in ten or fifteen years, when the situation will have completely changed," Crosetto said.

The remarks came three days after the NATO summit in Ankara, where allies pledged roughly €140 billion ($160 billion) in military aid to Ukraine over 2026 and 2027. NATO's former deputy commander Richard Shirreff told Euromaidan Press that the summit papered over the cracks between Europe and America rather than closing them.

Strategy document names satellites, undersea cables, and hybrid warfare

Crosetto's statements draw on an Italian Defense Ministry strategic document setting defense priorities for the 2027-2029 budget cycle. It identifies satellite communications development as a key task, stresses the need to strengthen protection of undersea critical infrastructure, and gives substantial weight to cybersecurity and countering disinformation.

"A national and European center for countering hybrid warfare needs to be created," Crosetto said.

Such a structure would allow more effective sharing of information and tools between allies against cyberattacks, propaganda, information manipulation, and other hybrid threats.

Ukraine already supplies Europe more than it receives in some domains

Crosetto's inclusion of Ukraine in a continental defense architecture reflects a shift already underway. Ukraine signed drone agreements with Estonia, the Netherlands, and Denmark in July 2026 as European states tap Kyiv's battlefield-tested weapons technology. Ukraine produced roughly 4 million drones in 2025, exceeding the combined output of all NATO members, and aims to produce 7 million in 2026, according to Bloomberg. 

Ukraine's Brave1 defense innovation cluster has opened new grants for exoskeletons and anti-dugout munitions. Both categories address specific frontline gaps that Ukrainian companies have been experimenting with informally through 2025 and 2026, according to Ukraine's Defense Ministry.

Ukraine's Defense Ministry announced 53 new technological priorities across nine directions in the updated Brave1 grant program. Grants range from $12,000 to $192,000, depending on the full development cycle, from idea validation to finished-product testing.

Why does Ukraine need exoskeletons?

Anti-dugout munitions address a different tactical gap

Russian forces have built extensive reinforced field shelters across the frontline zones, and standard Ukrainian FPV warheads at 2 to 3 kilograms do not defeat these positions.

Precision-delivered munitions designed to penetrate reinforced dugouts would let Ukrainian infantry break Russian positions at standoff distance rather than closing to grenade range through saturated Russian FPV zones. Ukraine's larger-scale answer to fortified positions is the Vyrivniuvach guided bomb, which entered combat use on 18 May 2026.

What is Brave1? 

Brave1 has become the central hub of Ukraine's wartime defense innovation ecosystem. As of June 2026, the cluster had processed over $235 million in procurement orders, registered more than 3,600 developments, secured 300 NATO-codified items, and disbursed $50 million in defense innovation grants.

The grant expansion sits alongside a growing network of bilateral defense innovation partnerships. Brave1 already runs Brave Germany, Brave France with $22 million from the French Defense Innovation Agency, Brave NATO through the UNITE program, and Brave Prime for global industrial alliances joined by Airbus in July 2026.

Brave1 also plans humanoid robots and laser air defense

Brave1 will soon announce additional grant competitions totaling over $2.4 million for breakthrough technologies, including humanoid robots, aerobuggies, anti-KAB (glide-bomb) systems, laser air defense, and Ukrainian radars.

The humanoid robot funding continues the world-first Ukrainian program that opened for grants earlier in July 2026. Ukraine became the first state to fund combat humanoid robots as a separate defense procurement category, treating them as a distinct line rather than as commercial adaptations.

Anti-KAB systems address one of Ukraine's most difficult tactical problems. Russia has deployed KAB glide bomb attacks at rates of thousands per month, giving its air force a standoff strike capability. Laser air defense targets the persistent cost gap between Ukrainian air defense interceptors and Russian missile production. Ukrainian radars aim to replace foreign radar systems with domestically produced ones.

The detailed grant program and technological priorities are available at grants.brave1.tech.

The European Commission officially recommended terminating the €2 million grant to the Venice Biennale due to the reopening of Russia's pavilion. European Commission Vice President Henna Virkkunen announced the recommendation on X.

The Russian pavilion opened at the 61st Venice Biennale in April 2026, following its absence in 2022 and 2024. Its commissioner is Anastasia Karneeva, daughter of a senior figure at the Rostec state defense corporation and a former FSB general, and is financed by the oligarch Leonid Mikhelson's Novatek company.

Ukraine sanctioned Karneeva and four other Russian cultural figures at the pavilion in April 2026 as "cultural propagandists" spreading Russian state narratives. Over 20 countries condemned Russia's participation. Seventy-one Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe delegates from 29 countries called for the pavilion's cancellation. 

Russia's culture: genocide

The largest Russian attack on Kyiv's cultural institutions occurred in May 2026. It damaged the National Art Museum of Ukraine (NAMU), the National Philharmonic of Ukraine, the National Music Academy of Ukraine, the National Center "Ukrainian House," the National Library of Ukraine named after Yaroslav the Wise, and the Kyiv Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet for Children and Youth.

The National "Chornobyl" Museum sustained significant damage. Numerous architectural monuments were affected, including the Kyiv Contract House and the Post Station.

Three UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Ukraine and their buffer zones have suffered damage. Damage in the historic center of Odesa is among the documented cases.

The EU's recommendation escalates from the April 2026 warning that the Commission could freeze the grant.

"The Commission officially recommends EACEA to terminate the €2 million grant to the Venice Biennale. This follows a thorough assessment of the replies from the Biennale to justify the re-opening of Russia's pavilion," Virkkunen wrote.

Ukraine called on the Biennale leadership to maintain the principled position it held from 2022 to 2024, excluding Russia.

 Italian government opposes EU action

The European Commission's recommendation runs against the Italian government's position on Russian participation. Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini criticized Brussels' position and did not object to Russia's participation.

Veneto regional president Alberto Stefani called the EU's actions "unacceptable," arguing that art should "facilitate moments of cultural dialogue, which can become opportunities to forge connections, especially when official diplomacy cannot find solutions."

The Biennale replied to Italian Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli that there had been "no violation of the rules" in admitting Russia and that "the sanctions against the Russian Federation were fully observed."

Ukraine needs a minimum of 2,000 PAC-3 interceptors per year to defeat Russian ballistic missiles. Ukrainian military-political analyst Oleksandr Kovalenko from the Informational Resistance group said on Espreso TV that Ukraine's requirement is 2,000 PAC-3 per year, against Russia's production of the 9M723 ballistic missile for the Iskander-M complex at 3 per day, or more than 1,000 per year.

"We need at least 2,000 anti-missiles of the PAC-3 type just to intercept the 9M723 production. That is why PAC-3 production is very important for us," Kovalenko said.

Just one mass strike takes annual Japanese production

Kovalenko noted that 70 PAC-3 interceptors, the annual Japanese output, cover just one massed strike on Kyiv when Russia launches 20 to 30 ballistic missiles.

Ukraine's Patriot ask has received three positive signals from Trump in three weeks. Trump announced at the NATO summit in Ankara on 8 July that the US will give Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriots, though Lockheed Martin and RTX Corporation had not been informed.

However, the production of Ukraine's Patriot systems will face years of supply chain and security constraints.

Russia produces three Iskander-M ballistic missiles per day

Russia's monthly ballistic missile production exceeds Lockheed Martin's monthly PAC-3 production, Defense Express analyst Oleh Katkov says.

Each Russian ballistic missile typically requires two to three PAC-3 interceptors to intercept, meaning the effective Ukrainian requirement climbs beyond the raw Russian production count.

Kovalenko's 2,000 figure treats 1,000 annual Iskander-M plus a two-to-one intercept ratio as the minimum floor. It does not include Russia's Kinzhal, Zircon, or S-400 ballistic-profile launches, all of which also require Patriot interceptors.

Real Ukrainian PAC-3 needs likely exceed 2,000 per year when the full Russian ballistic threat is counted.

Ukraine already burns through about 60 Patriot interceptors per month on what its Air Force calls a "starvation ration" against Russian ballistic strikes. Ukraine's Ministry of Defense reported an overall interception rate of 89 percent for Russian air targets in June 2026, but only 40 percent for ballistic missiles specifically.

Ukraine's Freya anti-ballistic program runs in parallel

Launching PAC-3 production in Ukraine will take substantial time, Kovalenko said.

"We need to invest in PAC-3 production, but in addition, we must develop our own anti-ballistic program," he stresses. 

Ukraine's Freya interceptor program is the parallel track. Zelenskyy said this week that eight European countries could join Ukraine's Freya project, with Sweden and Germany already committed as partners.

Ukraine's Fire Point aims to begin serial production of Freya in August 2026, with the first ballistic intercept targeted for the end of 2027.

Kovalenko's assessment implies Ukraine cannot afford to wait for either PAC-3 licensing or Freya to solve the ballistic gap alone. Both tracks need to move at maximum speed simultaneously, and neither is currently sized to Kovalenko's 2,000-per-year requirement.

Ukraine is the first state to fund combat humanoid robots as a separate category in defense procurement. Ukraine's Brave1 defense cluster has opened a grant competition for developing domestic bipedal humanoid robots designed exclusively for military tasks, Tech Times reports.

The decision creates a doctrinal precedent that other armed forces will have to respond to, regardless of whether the first grant recipients fire a single shot.

Brave1 CEO Andrii Hrytseniuk framed the move as a strategic response to global trends in humanoid development.

"We see how quickly the humanoid robotics industry is developing worldwide, in China and the United States. We see that such robots have value for strengthening our military capabilities. That is why we are moving in this direction," Hrytseniuk said.

Only humanoid robot tested in real combat conditions

Ukraine is designing systems for combat environments without GPS access, under electronic warfare pressure, where a robot may end up buried in rubble or in a flooded trench.

The only humanoid robot tested in real combat conditions in Ukraine so far is the Phantom MK-1. Its limitations include low payload capacity, no water protection, short autonomous work time, and high technical complexity.

Ukraine's Brave1 grant reflects those limitations. Instead of asking developers to build a fully autonomous combat robot at once, the program allows them to start with simpler platforms that can be improved and expanded with new functions.

Ukraine's ground robot ecosystem runs on wheels, tracks, and four legs

The theoretical advantage of humanoid robots lies in their human-like body structure. It lets them work in human-designed environments: use stairs, pass through narrow corridors, operate inside buildings, interact with equipment designed for people, all without changing the infrastructure.

On a factory floor, bipedal robots operate on level, predictable surfaces. On a battlefield, they have to cross mud, rubble, shell craters, and blast effects.

Ukraine's ground robots that are actually winning battlefield missions are wheeled, tracked, and four-legged. These configurations succeed because of simplicity, lower cost, and quick replacement ability.

Ukraine's Defense Forces received 1,028 ground robotic complexes worth 487 million UAH ($11.7 million) through the DOT-Chain Defense marketplace by mid-2026.

Ukraine's Defense Ministry codified 67 new ground robot models in the first half of 2026 alone, none of them bipedal. Ukrainian forces captured a Russian position for the first time using only drones and ground robots in April 2026.

Brave1 methodology starts simple and iterates on battlefield

Brave1 has applied its staged development approach to FPV drones, ground robotic complexes, interceptor drones, and other military technologies. Systems go from experimental development to practical battlefield application through rapid testing and feedback. The bipedal humanoid category is now on the same track.

A military humanoid must withstand impacts, dirt, radio interference, extreme temperatures, and enemy attacks. Repair happens directly in field conditions.

Ukraine's Defense Ministry adviser Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov flagged in May 2026 that ground robots operate in a much more challenging communication environment than aerial drones. Terrain, urban infrastructure, tree lines, and cover constantly interfere with the control signal, and a robot that loses its link drops out of the mission.

The connectivity constraint that already limits wheeled and tracked robots will apply doubly to a bipedal system trying to balance itself on unpredictable terrain.

The Brave1 grant does not commit Ukraine to deploying humanoid robots in the near term. It commits the state to funding domestic developers who will attempt to build systems for a battlefield where wheels, tracks, and four legs currently dominate, and where a bipedal humanoid must earn its place against faster, cheaper, and more replaceable competitors.

Australia is testing a reconnaissance drone that Ukraine has hardened for combat use. The Australian Army tested the Vector AI reconnaissance drone during Southern Jackaroo exercises at the Townsville training ground in Queensland, Defense-Blog reports.

Quantum Systems produces roughly 80 Vector reconnaissance drones per month at its Ukrainian facility. Thousands of hours of combat flight in Ukraine helped adapt the platform to real battlefield threats such as electronic warfare and air defense. The version Australian troops tested at Townsville already reflects Ukrainian combat feedback rather than pure test-range design.

24/7 operator support for Ukrainian drone pilots from Australian office

Quantum Systems already provides 24/7 operator support for Ukrainian drone pilots from its Australian office. The Southern Jackaroo's appearance formalizes the direction of Ukraine-battle-tested drone technology into Australian military use.

Australian troops used the drone for deep reconnaissance, target detection, and data transmission for follow-up strikes by drones and artillery against simulated enemy positions.

Vector AI incorporates Ukraine's electronic-warfare lessons

The Vector platform has been operational in Ukraine since May 2022. Quantum Systems representative Oleksandr Bereshnyi said in October 2025 that Vector drones face constantly changing jamming conditions on the front. 

"What worked last week might not work next week," Bereshnyi said.

Quantum Systems has been integrating advanced electronic-warfare countermeasures into the Vector platform: CRPA antennas resistant to interference, edge-computing AI systems for navigation and target recognition, and enhanced data transmission channels. All the developments came in response to Ukrainian battlefield conditions.

Vector AI is a convertiplane with 2.8-meter wingspan

The Vector AI has a 2.8-meter wingspan and uses a convertiplane design. It takes off and lands vertically without a runway, then transitions to horizontal flight to cover long distances like a fixed-wing aircraft.

The drone uses AI-based data processing to create real-time terrain maps and independently detect and track objects.

Russia is hiding fuel in grain trucks on occupied Ukrainian territories. The National Resistance Center reports that Russian forces have started transporting fuel in plastic tanks placed inside grain carriers, covering the tanks with grain and tarpaulins for camouflage.

The tactic fits a documented pattern. Ukraine's Azov Corps documented in June 2026 that Russian forces have been loading military cargo onto civilian-marked vehicles at bases or depots on Russian territory.

Ukrainian aerial reconnaissance documents the moment military green crates are loaded onto "civilian" vehicles, then tracks those vehicles.

Ukraine's mid-range strike campaign, dubbed "Logistics Lockdown" by Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, has forced Russia into a fuel-supply crisis across occupied territories. Occupied Crimea halted all civilian fuel sales in June. Fuel rationing has spread to 25 Russian regions and six occupied Ukrainian territories.

Civilian trucks now serve Russian military logistics

The Russian tactic of hiding fuel in grain trucks fits a broader pattern of civilian-transport misuse throughout the war. Russian forces have used civilian buildings, including schools, kindergartens, and hospitals, as human shields for military assets. The grain-truck disguise adds moving civilian vehicles to the list.

Ukraine's counter-logistics campaign accepts the targeting risk that it creates. Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces Commander Robert "Madiar" Brovdi declared Russian truck drivers moving cargo through the land corridor to Crimea legitimate military targets on 8 July.

Brovdi said over 360 Russian truck drivers had been hit in that week alone. The National Resistance Center's grain-truck report indicates that Russia is now trying to move military fuel using vehicles that look identical to civilian grain transport vehicles.

Russia's fuel scarcity drives desperate transport measures

Russia has been in a documented fuel crisis since Ukraine escalated refinery strikes in spring 2026. Ukraine's General Staff reported that 42.74 percent of Russian oil refineries were offline as of 4 July, with $13.5 billion in industry losses since August 2025.

Russia has invested $9.7 billion in subsidies for April-May 2026 to keep fuel moving. It imposed a full gasoline export ban through ethe nd of July and began importing fuel by sea. Occupied Sevastopol reduced its working kindergartens from 74 to 24 in late June because of fuel and electricity constraints.

The US government paid nearly $3 million in compensation to victims of "Havana Syndrome". The BBC reports that these are the first payments to US intelligence agencies personnel in connection with the mysterious neurological illness that American and Canadian diplomats and their families have reported since 2016.

A 2024 joint investigation by The Insider, CBS 60 Minutes, and Germany's Der Spiegel linked the syndrome to personnel of the Russian GRU military unit 29155. The investigators found Havana Syndrome symptoms during the same periods and at the same locations that were visited by Unit 29155 personnel.

There is no direct evidence of an "acoustic weapon" being deployed by GRU officers, per the investigation. But the pattern maps onto Unit 29155's documented history of poisonings, assassinations, and sabotage across Europe.

Payments imply that Havana Syndrome requires compensation

The US intelligence community concluded in 2024 that it was "very unlikely" a foreign state used a new type of weapon or its prototype to harm American diplomatic personnel and their families. But now, the payments imply that Havana Syndrome is a real and treatable injury requiring compensation. 

GRU Unit 29155 is Russia's most notorious unit for sabotage and assassination. UK intelligence attributed to Unit 29155 the 2018 Novichok poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, the 2014 Vrbetice ammunition depot explosions in Czechia that killed two, the 2015 poisoning of Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev, and the WhisperGate cyberattacks on Ukraine in 2022. Investigator Christo Grozev estimated the unit's assassination subdivision comprises about 70 Russian short-term undercover agents.

Havana Syndrome went public in 2016 in Cuba

Havana Syndrome first became publicly known in 2016, when American diplomats in Cuba's capital reported feeling ill and hearing piercing sounds at night. Similar cases were subsequently registered globally, from Washington to China.

In 2017, the US government withdrew more than half its staff from the Havana embassy after numerous complaints of dizziness, nausea, and difficulty concentrating. Canada also received similar reports from its Havana embassy staff, leading to a sharp reduction of Canadian personnel at the mission in 2019.

Speculation about a "mysterious sound weapon" used by a foreign state has persisted through the eight years of documented cases. Multiple hypotheses have been advanced: pulsed microwave radiation, sonic devices, pesticide exposure, and mass psychogenic illness. 

US Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), Ukraine's most consistent Senate ally, died on 11 July after a short and sudden illness, according to a statement on Graham's official X account. He was 71. 

His last foreign visit was to Kyiv on 10 July, where he met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss the US-Ukraine cooperation on Ukrainian drone production. Graham said it would be a "huge mistake" for the US not to develop cooperation with Ukraine in this area.

Graham unveiled the tariff legislation in January 2026 alongside President Donald Trump aboard Air Force One, describing it as a tool that would allow the president to impose tariffs ranging from 0 to 500 percent on any nation buying Russian crude.

The bill previously secured commitment from 72 senators. Sanctions were among the issues Graham discussed with Zelenskyy on 10 July, at a moment when Ukrainian strikes have taken over 40 percent of Russian oil refining capacity offline. Passage would give the sanctions maximum leverage.

Graham built his record in Ukraine over more than a decade. He was one of the few US senators who insisted on sanctions against Russia after Russia's 2008 war on Georgia. That initiative did not gain wide support, according to the BBC. 

After Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, Graham publicly diverged from the Obama administration's Ukraine policy.

"The Obama Administration would not provide the Ukrainian government the weapons it needed to continue the fight. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration and our NATO allies sold Ukraine out. Putin is winning, we are losing," Graham said.

Graham built his Ukraine record over multiple Kyiv visits

Graham has made multiple visits to Kyiv since Russia's full-scale war in 2022. In July 2022, he and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal made their first wartime visit to Kyiv, visiting bombed Borodianka and Bucha.

Anton Herashchenko, who accompanied the visit as adviser to Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi, remembered "tears in the eyes of Lindsey and Richard when they looked at photos of victims of Russian killers."

"Lindsey clearly understood that the interests of the US are the maximum weakening of Putin. Therefore, he used all his influence so that Ukraine received Patriot, F-16, ATACMS, and much more powerful American weapons," Herashchenko wrote.

Graham returned to Kyiv with Blumenthal on 30 May 2025 to promote the tariff bill and reaffirm bipartisan support for Ukraine.

Graham's role during the Trump-Zelenskyy tensions of 2025 was complicated. After the 28 February Oval Office confrontation between Zelenskyy, Trump, and Vice President JD Vance, Graham called for Zelenskyy's resignation. Zelenskyy rejected the demand.

But by November 2025, as Trump-brokered peace talks intensified, Graham warned that any Ukrainian surrender to Putin would "haunt us all."

He continued to advocate for Ukraine within the Trump team, even during the coldest moments of the Trump-Zelenskyy relationship.

Graham was Washington's fiercest anti-Putin voice in Republican politics. His death leaves the 500% tariff bill without its principal Senate architect at the moment his announcement suggested it might finally pass.

Ukrainian pilots will co-pilot French Mirage 2000B fighter jets in the Bastille Day parade flyover. 25 Ukrainian troops will also march at France's 14 July national holiday parade on the Champs-Élysées alongside French forces and representatives of 34 other Coalition of the Willing countries, in Ukraine's first participation in France's Bastille Day parade, Ukrinform reports. 

The parade opens with Patrouille de France accompanied by two French Mirage 2000B two-seaters. French pilots will fly the aircraft, but Ukrainian pilots trained in France will serve as co-pilots.

The Mirage 2000B jets used in the flyover are the same aircraft Ukrainian pilots trained on. Ukraine's Air Force reported near-perfect 98 percent effectiveness of its Mirage 2000s against Russian drones and missiles in November 2025, per Euromaidan Press. The Mirage's Magic 2 missile achieved nearly 100 percent success against aerial targets.

The Bastille Day appearance sits within a growing Franco-Ukrainian air cooperation. France delivered the first Mirage 2000-5F to Ukraine in February 2025 and, by early 2026, was considering transferring all 26 of its Mirage 2000 aircraft to Ukraine.

Ukrainian pilots trained at the Nancy and Cazaux air bases in France for approximately six months on two-seater Mirage 2000B trainers before transitioning to the single-seat combat Mirage 2000-5F.

Ukraine gets maximum foreign quota with 25 servicemembers

Ukrainian Senior Lieutenant Yaroslav says the participation is a great honor and responsibility, and an opportunity to represent the Ukrainian people and Armed Forces marching alongside the troops of other states. He said Ukrainian troops are marching for those on the front line and in memory of those killed in combat.

"Because thanks to their courage, Ukraine continues to fight, so we march for everyone who is now on the front line. And in memory of those who fell in battle. And we remember every hero," Yaroslav says.

Preparation for the parade lasted several weeks. Every day, participants worked on a drill step to demonstrate military discipline. The final rehearsal on 11 July specifically tested whether the orchestra's march would remain audible during the fighter jet flyover above Paris.

Ukrainian troops will close the international section of the parade opening. Coalition of the Willing forces will march in a pedestrian formation, with 503 service members in total in the international contingent.

Coalition of the Willing gathers 35 countries at the parade

The Coalition of the Willing is a European planning body established to develop security guarantees for Ukraine in the event of a potential ceasefire. Ukraine, plus 34 other coalition countries, will be represented at the Bastille Day parade.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be on the presidential tribune alongside other heads of state and government. Almost 6,700 military personnel will march down the Champs-Élysées on 14 July. According to French officials, this is the largest number of participants in the parade's history.

Russia's new "Geran-4 Siker" Shahed variant uses machine-vision AI for targeting. The system enables the drone to autonomously recognize and track ground targets during the terminal phase of flight, thereby increasing targeting accuracy, according to UNIAN, citing Russian propaganda outlets.

The 300 km/h speed cited by Russian propaganda for the Siker variant is lower than HUR's 500 km/h max-speed assessment for the base Geran-4 and aligns more closely with cruise-speed estimates for the platform.

Even at 300 km/h, the Geran-4 Siker sits at the upper edge of Ukraine's cheap interceptor-drone speed envelope, and the machine-vision system adds a targeting capability that electronic-warfare countermeasures cannot easily defeat in the last seconds of flight.

Alabuga makes drones with 294 foreign components

The drone is produced in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, the Republic of Tatarstan. This place is Russia's main Shahed factory.

The Alabuga Shahed contains 294 imported parts, including approximately 120 from China and Taiwan and 100 from the US, according to Ukrainian Presidential Envoy for Sanctions Policy Vladyslav Vlasiuk, cited by Euromaidan Press.

Jet-powered variants require additional foreign inputs, including turbojet engines and propellant systems, making them more expensive per unit and more sanctions-vulnerable to produce at scale.

Russia's transition from gasoline Shaheds to jet-Shaheds began in earnest in 2026. The Ukrainian interception rate on gasoline Shaheds reached 90 percent in June, per the Ministry of Defense. Russia has responded with jet-Shahed variants that outrun Ukraine's cheap interceptor fleet.

Ukraine's Bullet interceptor got chemical accelerator to catch jet-Shaheds

Ukrainian defense companies General Cherry and STRIX integrated a chemical accelerator into the Bullet counter-drone interceptor in June 2026, specifically to chase down jet-Shahed variants.

The chemical-energy booster addresses the speed gap that opened when Russia introduced jet-powered modifications of the Iranian-designed Shahed-136.

Ukraine has also fielded AI-driven autonomous interceptor drones. In June 2026, Ukrainian Defense Forces tested the combat use of an AI-driven autonomous drone interceptor against a Russian Shahed in Kharkiv Oblast, automating 95 percent of the engagement, from launch to destruction.

The AI-versus-AI dynamic on both sides of the drone war is now direct: Russia's Geran-4 Siker uses machine vision to find targets in the terminal phase. Ukraine's interceptor drones use AI to find and destroy the Geran-4 Siker.