Russian reinforcements are surging into Donetsk Oblast, staging for what many observes anticipate will be a major mechanized assault on the fortress city of Pokrovsk.

But Ukrainian forces aren’t just sitting around waiting for the attack. They’re positioning their own reinforcements around Pokrovsk. And they’re hitting the newly arriving Russian regiments at their assembly points in Donetsk City—potentially with a previously unknown cruise missile type.

That Ukraine can still surprise observers with a new missile type isn’t actually all that surprising. Forty-three months into Russia’s wider war, Ukraine has become a world-leader in deep-strike technology. By necessity.

On Monday, the Ukrainians targeted the defunct Topaz metallurgy plant on the eastern edge of Donetsk City, 50 km southeast of Pokrovsk. The plant is well-known as a staging base for Russian forces moving toward the Donetsk front line.

A barrage of aerial munitions pummeled Topaz. Photos and videos from the plant confirmed no fewer than three different types of munitions. Possibly more.

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Among other weapons, it seems the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces or special services struck Topaz with propeller-driven An-196 and, potentially, Morok attack drones. Meanwhile, the air force launched locally made Bars or Peklo cruise missiles as well as British-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles.

The missiles and drones zoomed in one after another, in quick succession. Imagery from the aftermath of the attack pointed to heavy damage. Other imagery may have revealed fragments of a new Ukrainian missile.

The potentially 3-m missile seems to have a simple fiberglass fuselage and wing and a dorsal pylon for what appears to be a K-450 miniature jet engine made by Taiwanese company KingTech.

The wreckage doesn’t match the Peklo’s sleeker profile. Nor does it match the admittedly few things we might know about the Bars. That first imagery of what may be a crashed Bars seems to point to a different engine type—a SW400 from Chinese firm Swiwin.

Is there a third Ukrainian cruise missile type in the class of the Peklo and Bars? Or did the designers of the Bars switch to a Taiwanese engine? We don’t know.

But we shouldn’t be shocked if the Topaz attack involved a new missile type.

Mass production

Ukrainian firms build long-range attack drones at a rate of at thousands per month—and the Ukrainian military and special services launch them at Russian air bases, factories and oil refineries as far as 1,000 km from the front line, on a roughly weekly basis.

Back in December, Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Ukraine would acquire 30,000 one-way attack drones in 2025. It’s evident actual deliveries will exceed that goal. Fire Point, the firm that builds the Flamingo, claimed it’s already churning out 100 FP-1 attack drones every day.

To add range and firepower to its escalating deep-strike campaign, Ukraine is also developing cruise missiles including the Peklo, the Bars, and the Flamingo. Hundreds of millions of dollars in financing from the United Kingdom and Germany are helping Ukraine ramp up production of these new missiles.

The Peklo and Bars may both range around 800 km, likely with small-ish warheads—possibly lighter than 100 kg. The Flamingo is in a whole different class. It reportedly ranges 3,000 km with a 1,100-kg warhead. All three types are jet-propelled—and thus fast—and probably navigate using a combination of satellites and internal inertial systems.

The Flamingo is a ground-launched weapon; the Peklo and Bars may be compatible with the Ukrainian air force’s upgraded Sukhoi Su-24 bombers, which also launch the Storm Shadow and SCALP-EG cruise missiles Ukraine has received from the United Kingdom, France, and Italy.

It’s unclear whether that fourth Ukrainian cruise missile type—if indeed that’s what we witness in the Topaz raid—launches from the ground or from the air.

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Ukraine is about to get more of its best long-range missiles and drones. A lot more, and fast.

At a meeting of Ukrainian and allied leaders on London on Tuesday, German and British officials separately announced major investment in Ukraine’s deep-strike capabilities.

Germany will spend an additional $350 million on long-range munitions for Ukraine. The U.K. will buy “thousands” of one-way attack drones for Ukraine over the next year.

Given that a single Ukrainian attack drone in the class of the Fire Point FP-1 might cost just $50,000—and a heavier Ukroboronprom An-196 might cost a couple hundred thousand dollars—the new German and British spending could put nearly 10,000 deep-strike drones on the tarmac by the fall of 2026.

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That’s … a lot of drones. And most of them are destined to strike Russian soil. “Ukraine is increasingly taking the war to Russia now,” American-Ukrainian war correspondent David Kirichenko wrote in a new essay for The Atlantic Council.

Back in December, Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Ukraine would acquire 30,000 one-way attack drones in 2025. But it’s clear this production will exceed that figure. Fire Point alone claims it’s building 100 FP-1s a day.

Ukraine’s homegrown deep-strike arsenal includes dozens of drone types including pilotless sport planes than can drop bombs and then return to base to reload. It also includes one of the most powerful ground-launched cruise missiles in the world: the new Fire Point Flamingo: a seven-ton behemoth that may range as far as 3,000 km with a 1,100-kg warhead.

Deepening strikes

After two years of escalation, Ukraine’s campaign of deep strikes targeting Russian air bases, factories, and oil refineries can now hold at risk targets thousands of kilometers inside Russia. But the heaviest strikes occur at a range no farther than 1,000 km from the border with Ukraine.

In this zone, no facility is safe. Russia’s air defenses are spread too thin to protect every possible target.

In a series of increasingly destructive raids on Russian oil refineries last month, Ukrainian drones throttled Russia’s refinery output by a staggering 24%. Besides costing the Russian economy billions of dollars, the hits on refineries have also led to gasoline shortages in some Russian regions.

Churning out many thousands of long-range drones and missiles a month at workshops spread across the country, Ukrainian industry is helping the Ukrainian military and special services match Russia’s own drone and missile strikes.

The Russians routinely launch hundreds of cruise and ballistic missiles and Shahed drones at Ukrainian cities, sometimes several times a week. The Shahed is Russia’s main deep-strike munition. Russian forces flung around 6,000 of the explosive drones at Ukraine in July alone.

It gets worse for the Russians. The aims of Russia and Ukraine’s respective deep-strike campaigns couldn’t be more different. Russia’s goal is to inflict terror on civilians. Ukraine’s goal is to inflict military and economic damage.

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What that means, in practice, is that Russia’s drone and missile campaign mostly targets Ukrainian cities in a country of just 603,400 square km. Ukraine’s drones and missiles target air bases, factories, and refineries in a country of 17 million square km.

Ukraine’s air defense problem is hard but simple. Ukrainian air defenses must contend with nearly daily raids involving potentially hundreds of drones and missiles, but they can concentrate around the biggest cities that are the Russians’ main targets.

By contrast, Russia’s air defense problem is hard and complex. “The Kremlin simply does not have enough air defense systems to protect thousands of potential military and energy targets spread across 11 time zones,” Kirichenko wrote.

Ukrainian strike planners already have a lot of options. And these options are only growing as more foreign financing flows into the expanding Ukrainian munitions industry.

It’s possible, as 2025 grinds toward 2026, that Ukrainian strikes on Russia will inflict more lasting damage than Russian strikes inflict on Ukraine. After all, civilian morale is a renewable resource. An oil refinery, by contrast, is a difficult thing to fix once it burns to the ground.

The Ukrainian army stood up the 156th Infantry Brigade in the spring of 2024. Not long after, the unit converted into a mechanized brigade with additional armored vehicles.

The brigade recruited and trained its thousands of troops through the fall and winter and, this summer, deployed to the front line in Sumy Oblast in northern Ukraine.

Now the 156th Mechanized Brigade is one of the growing number of Ukrainian units rushing south to Donetsk Oblast to meet a mass of Russian troops and tanks poised to strike at the fortress city of Pokrovsk for what Ukrainian drone operator Kriegsforscher described as a “last, final battle.”

As recently as last month, the 156th Mechanized Brigade was helping to hold the line in Sumy alongside other brigades in the new 18th Army Corps. But with the defeat of its infantry-led incursion northeast of Pokrovsk in recent weeks, the Kremlin made a portentous decision.

Rather than give up on Pokrovsk, it doubled down—and surged reinforcements around the city for what’s shaping up to be a powerful, tank-led offensive.

The reinforcements had to come from somewhere. No fewer than five Russian marine and airborne brigades and regiments plus a tank regiment, an infantry regiment, and two motor rifle brigades have redeployed—or are in the process of redeploying—from Sumy to the sector around Pokrovsk.

These fresh forces, plus a motor rifle division redeploying from Kherson Oblast in the south, amount to the equivalent of an entire field army. They join the eight or so Russian field armies already laying siege to Pokrovsk and nearby towns.

Throughout 2025, Russian regiments have mostly attacked on foot or on motorcycle. Now it’s clear why. “Slowly but surely, it’s being proven that Russia was indeed holding back armor in the rear and reducing mechanized attacks to the bare minimum,” analyst Jompy noted.

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Russian commanders were saving their armored vehicles for something. That something, it seems, is the biggest—and potentially last for a while—mechanized assault on Pokrovsk, the last major strongpoint between the Russians and main Ukrainian “fortress belt” threading through Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in western Donetsk.

Russia’s largest armored assault in months

The coming clash “will be bigger, bloodier” than the infantry battles that were common around Pokrovsk earlier this year, Finnish analyst Joni Askola warned. It will fall on newly arriving units such as the 156th Mechanized Brigade to hold off a much larger Russian force.

The 156th Mechanized Brigade hit the road to Donetsk last month, according to Unit Observer. It joins the national guard’s 1st Azov Corps and adjacent units that rushed toward Pokrovsk in early August to block, and then roll back, that Russian infantry incursion that briefly threatened one of the two remaining main supply lines into Pokrovsk.

Other Ukrainian units currently in Sumy could follow the 156th Mechanized Brigade to Donetsk as more Russian troops quit Sumy and head south for the coming push on Pokrovsk. The next round of Ukrainian reinforcements could include the 80th and 95th Air Assault Brigades.

Compared to those elite air assault formations, the 156th Mechanized Brigade is a workmanlike unit. It rides in T-64BV tanks, BMP-1TS with new 30-millimeter autocannon turrets, M-113 tracked armored personnel carriers, upgraded BTR-60D wheeled APCs, Kozak armored trucks and M-109 howitzers. Many of these vehicles sport add-on anti-drone armor.

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Ukraine’s tank-killing strategy faces its biggest test

Expect the 156th Mechanized Brigade to dig in and prepare for tank attacks. The older Ukrainian brigades around Pokrovsk are skilled tank-killers, but the 156th Mechanized Brigade’s relatively green troopers should be able to pick up the standard tactics fairly quickly.

They took out those tanks with mines, artillery, anti-tank missiles and—perhaps most importantly—explosive first-person-view drones and grenade-dropping bomber drones. The Russians are betting that tank-led assaults can help them win the battle for Pokrovsk. The Ukrainians are betting they can blow up the tanks in the usual way.

Russia’s tank reserves running dangerously low

If the Russians can’t break through the reinforced Ukrainian defenses around Pokrovsk in the coming months, they might not get another chance anytime soon—at least not with tanks.

Russia’s Uralvagonzavod tank factory is building new T-90Ms—but it’s unclear how many. The factory’s output may have collapsed this year. Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s vehicle storage bases, once brimming with Cold War leftovers, are now mostly empty of usable vehicles.

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The Ukrainian air force lost important aerial jamming capacity when one of its precious few ex-French Dassault Mirage 2000 fighters crashed on 22 July. Fortunately for the air force, France is likely to at least double the number of supersonic, delta-wing Mirage 2000s it’s giving to Ukraine.

“France will announce that it is giving 20 Mirages instead of 10,” former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told Le Monde recently. At least one observer believes France will eventually give Ukraine more than two dozen of the 1980s-vintage, but heavily upgraded, jets.

The first of the single-seat Mirage 2000s arrived in Ukraine in February.

The French air force still flies two squadrons worth of Mirage 2000s—around 26 airframes. But newer Dassault Rafales are gradually replacing the Mirage 2000s, freeing up surplus jets for onward transfer to Ukraine.

The extra planes Kuleba mentioned would soften the blow from the July crash. “An aircraft equipment failure occurred” during an evening training flight, the air force reported at the time. The pilot ejected—and a search team quickly fetched him. “There were no casualties on the ground,” according to the air force.

It was yet another in a series of incidents that have depleted Ukraine’s inventory of newer Western-made warplanes. The service has also lost four of its ex-European Lockheed Martin F-16s since the fighters began flying combat sorties back in August. Three pilots have died.

More Mirage 2000s and F-16s are coming, but we don’t yet know exactly how many—or how fast. France may donate a couple of dozen Mirage 2000s. Meanwhile, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway have pledged at least 87 flyable F-16s. It’s possible that around 50 of the F-16s are already in Ukraine or in Romania, where NATO instructors train Ukrainian pilots.

Jets without jammers

Between its surviving ex-Soviet Sukhoi Su-24s, Su-25s and Su-27s, Mikoyan MiG-29s and the Mirage 2000s and F-16s, the Ukrainian air force probably still operates 125 or so fighters—roughly as many as it had before Russia widened its war on Ukraine in February 2022.

In all, the Ukrainians have written off nearly 100 jets. To sustain its Soviet-era fleet, the Ukrainian air force has taken delivery of surplus MiG-29s from Slovakia, Poland, and Azerbaijan and excess Su-25s from Croatia. Ukrainian technicians have also restored many grounded airframes and returned them to front-line service.

With the help of their allies, the Ukrainians have upgraded the ex-Soviet jets to carry new precision munitions, including cruise missiles and glide bombs. But the Western jets are even better equipped, especially when it comes to defensive systems.

The Americans have equipped the Ukrainian F-16s with underbelly AN/ALQ-131 electronic countermeasures pods. The AN/ALQ-131 is a new and critical capability for the Ukrainian air force, which entered the wider war in 2022 without an aerial jamming capability. That exposed Ukrainian jets to Russian missile fire—and resulted in heavy losses in the early months of the wider war.

In addition to the AN/ALQ-131s, the F-16s have the option of carrying the Pylon Integrated Dispensing System and the Electronic Combat Integrated Pylon Systems: PIDS and ECIPS.

PIDS ejects metal chaff and hot-burning flares to spoof incoming radar and infrared-guided anti-aircraft missiles. ECIPS houses passive defenses to complement the active chaff and flares, including the AN/ALQ-162 jammer for defeating radars on the ground and an AN/AAR-60 missile warning system for triggering the defenses.

The AN/ALQ-131 in particular can “give you a pocket of air superiority for a moment’s time to achieve an objective that has strategic importance and impact,” a US official explained.

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The Mirage 2000s are similarly equipped with a combination of Serval radar warning receivers, Sabre jammers, and Eclair chaff and flare dispensers. This electronic countermeasures suite was on the cutting edge of aerial warfare in the 1980s, but began to fall behind a generation later.

Recognizing this and appreciating the gravity of the Russian missile threat over Ukraine, the French defense ministry promised to install new electronic countermeasures in the Mirage 2000s before transferring them to Ukraine. It’s likely the ministry was referring to the mostly analogue Integrated Countermeasures Suite Mark 2 or the fully digital Integrated Countermeasures Suite Mark 3.

The Ukrainian air force has been taking full advantage of the F-16s and Mirage 2000s’ ability to fill Russian radar screens with electronic noise. The F-16s “act as ‘flying air defense’ with advanced missile warning tech,” the pro-Ukraine Conflict Intelligence Team analysis group noted.

The arrival of the first F-16s back in August, and the first Mirage 2000s six months later, allowed the air force to organize complex strike packages mixing ex-Soviet and ex-European jets combining different offensive and defensive capabilities.

“Sometimes when we arrive, there are already F-16s waiting there, or sometimes Mirages,” a Ukrainian fighter pilot said in an official video from March. The F-16s and Mirage 2000s “either cover the whole package that is sent there to [strike] our enemies, or also strike [themselves],” the pilot said.

All that is to say, every F-16 or Mirage 2000 Ukraine loses costs it more than a single airframe. Without the critical jamming capability the ex-Western jets provide, Ukraine’s complex strike packages could unravel.

It’s fortunate, then, that France is poised to hand over more Mirage 2000s.

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This American-made missile is Ukraine’s cheap refinery smasher

Ukraine’s new Flamingo cruise missile appears to include older, cheaper and easy-to-acquire components. Leftover Soviet-made free-fall bombs as warheads. And, for propulsion, a simple jet engine borrowed from a military training plane.

The inclusion of off-the-shelf components that are readily available from manufacturers in Ukraine or allied countries is good news as the Flamingo’s builder, Fire Point, aims to ramp up production to as many as seven missiles a day by next month.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about the Flamingo, including its cost. Fire Point is under official investigation in Kyiv for possibly inflating the missile’s capability and price.

Regardless of the outcome of that probe, photos and videos of the massive, seven-ton missile hint at a reliable and affordable design. A close look at the fiberglass missile’s nose seems to indicate the warhead is actually two warheads: a pair of repurposed gravity bombs packed end to end.

The Flamingo seems to be based on the FP-5 missile design from U.K. firm Milanion. The firm claims the FP-5 ranges 3,000 km with a 1,000-kg payload. There isn’t a 1,000-kg Soviet-style gravity bomb in widespread use, according to missile expert Fabian Hoffmann. So “the payload could consist of two stacked FAB-500 unguided bombs,” each weighing 500 kg, Hoffmann wrote.

The evidence points to the FAB-500 M62, one of the most ubiquitous Soviet-era unguided dumb bombs. The Soviet air force left behind potentially thousands of the bombs when it left Ukraine in 1991. Many munitions companies continue to build new FAB-500s, including Bulcomers KS in Bulgaria.

Abundant bombs

It’s not for no reason that, when the Ukrainian air force recently developed a simple precision glide-bomb similar to the Russian UMPK, it used old FAB-500 M62s as the basis—and added pop-out wings and satellite guidance.

With end-to-end FAB-500s, a Flamingo should be able to strike with the equivalent of 550 kg of TNT, Hoffmann estimated. That “is substantially more than the long-range drones and mini-cruise missiles Ukraine currently employs.”

Satellite imagery from the aftermath of the first confirmed Flamingo raid, targeting a Russian intelligence and hovercraft base in occupied Crimea on Aug. 30, depicts a large crater and other damage that may confirm Hoffmann’s assessment.

The ramp-launched Flamingo depends on a simple rocket booster to get it off the ground—and, it seems, an Ivchenko AI-25TL turbofan engine to propel the giant missile as fast as 950 km/hr. The AI-25TL, which powers Aero L-39 jet trainers and other aircraft, produces 1,850 kg of thrust.

An L-39 weighs five tons, which is two tons less than a Flamingo weighs. But the L-39 must be maneuverable, where the Flamingo is expected to fly a simple course at steady speed under inertial and satellite guidance. The AI-25TL is more than adequate—and, more importantly, it’s in production in Ukraine with firm Motor Sich. It’s priced to move at around $40,000 per engine.

With a low-cost warhead and equally affordable engine, a Flamingo might cost less than $1 million. That’s quite low for a long-range heavy cruise missile. A Russian Kh-101 or American Tomahawk both cost several times as much.

The Flamingo could change the deep-strike math for Ukraine. The new missile “has so much range and such a big warhead that that’s one of the important ones that could really make a difference,” Finnish analyst Joni Askola said.

And if the missile really is as cheap as it appears to be, Fire Point may actually be able to ramp up production to seven missiles a day.

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The Ukrainian army’s 425th Assault Regiment is about to deploy ex-Australian M-1 Abrams tanks, making it only the second Ukrainian unit to do so. But even after the 69-ton M-1s arrive, the regiment’s most important assets may be the creativity, courage and sheer aggression of its infantry.

Consider the 425th Assault Regiment trooper who recently posed as Russian, fell in with two Russian soldiers—and then gunned them down from a few feet away. One of the regiment’s drones observed the cold-blooded ambush from overhead.

Russian and Ukrainian infantry often wear similar uniforms—and identify themselves with colored armbands. Further complicating the identity crisis, Russian sabotage groups have been known to dress in captured or copied Ukrainian uniforms when they infiltrate Ukrainian lines.

In any event, the victims mistook that 425th Assault Regiment Trooper for an ally. The Ukrainian trooper may have encouraged this misconception by speaking the right language. Most Russians speak Russian, of course—but then, so do many Ukrainians.

Recall that, in May 2024, a squad from the Ukrainian 3rd Assault Brigade captured a Russian radio during a bitter skirmish over a Russian-held gully somewhere north of Kharkiv. “We will now try to fuck them over,” the Ukrainian infantry leader said in the official video depicting the fight. “Who is a Russian-speaker?”

A Russian-speaking Ukrainian soldier hopped on the captured radio. “We’re 1st Company,” he transmitted—part of the same battalion as the Russians in the gully. The Russians shifted their fire to avoid hitting their “allies.”

“Let’s go,” the 3rd Assault Brigade infantry leader ordered. “Yell in Russian!” By the time the Russians realized the soldiers approaching them weren’t actually fellows Russians, it was too late. They were all but surrounded.

Blending in

There are entire regiments and brigades in the Russian order of battle that are manned by Ukrainians from occupied oblasts—Ukrainians who are likelier to speak Russian. One of these units, the 132nd Motor Rifle Brigade, was at the vanguard of the Russian 51st Combined Arms Army’s effort to extend a salient northeast of the fortress city of Pokrovsk, in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, last month.

These Ukrainians fighting for Russia “would better understand the area and potentially blend in,” noted Rob Lee, an analyst with the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. But that local knowledge didn’t save them when, early last month, the Ukrainian 1st Azov Corps and other units—including the 425th Assault Regiment—counterattacked.

A month later, the salient and the 132nd Motor Rifle Brigade have both been mostly eliminated. Now the 425th Assault Regiment is pushing back Russian forces around Myrnohrad, just east of Pokrovsk. Surprisingly, the one-man ambush may have taken place in Boykovka, 15 km north of Myrnohrad in a zone many observers assume is largely under Russian control.

The circumstances are hazy. Was the ambusher a member of Ukrainian sabotage group infiltrating Russian lines the way Ukrainians routinely infiltrate Ukrainian lines?

The increasing porousness of the front makes deadly cases of misidentification more likely. “There isn’t a coherent front line,” American analyst Andrew Perpetua explained. Instead, there’s a wide no-man’s land between areas of clear Russian and Ukrainian control. That no-man’s-land is largely depopulated except for scattered—and carefully concealed—underground fighting positions for a few harried infantry doing their best to hide from the ever-present drones.

It’s that porousness that allowed the ill-fated 132nd Motor Rifle Brigade march right past undermanned Ukrainian trenches and extend their brief-lived salient northeast of Pokrovsk last month. The same lack of contiguous defenses may explain why a very dangerous Ukrainian and his supporting drone were wandering around Boykovka looking for gullible Russians to kill.

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When a building is full of Russians, send in an FPV drone first!

Tiny first-person-view drones are everywhere all the time over the 1,100-km front line of Russia’s 43-month wider war on Ukraine. But most of them are surveillance and attack assets. They scan for targets over or near the front line—and then zoom in and explode.

Now at least one Ukrainian unit is finding a new use for the ubiquitous FPVs. The 225th Assault Regiment, holding the line outside Vorone in southern Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk Oblast with its M-2 Bradley fighting vehicles, has begun attaching FPVs to infantry squads to help the squads clear buildings of Russian troops.

“Clearing buildings is deadly—an enemy can be in every corner,” the regiment explained. When the infantry must enter a structure, they can send an FPV “to scout ahead.” “If the enemy is found,” the regiment explained, “the drone strikes, keeping our infantry safe.”

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It’s delicate work requiring extreme precision on the part of the distant drone operator, who wears a virtual-reality headset to see what the warhead-clutching FPV sees. An FPV explodes on contact with any surface, so an imprecise maneuver can endanger the drone’s human squadmates.

To guarantee an uninterrupted signal between the operator and their drone, the 225th Assault Regiment uses fiber-optic FPVs for clearance missions. Fiber-optic drones send and receive signals via kilometers-long optical fibers, making them impervious to radio jamming and the signal dead zones created by buildings or hills.

Drones as suppressive fire

The Ukrainians aren’t the only ones innovating with their smallest drones. The Russians have new ideas, too. FPVs are so dangerous—and so terrifying—that soldiers tend to duck into their trenches as soon as they hear the drones’ distinctive buzzing. For that reason, some Russian regiments use the drones as suppressive fire.

Suppressive fire is an infantry tactic that’s as old as gunpowder. Basically, it means shooting at the enemy with something—rifles, machine guns, mortars or artillery—with enough intensity to drive the enemy underground for as long as it takes friendly forces to “breach” the enemy’s defenses … and advance.

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Drones can suppress the enemy without even striking. “Soldiers begin to hide from the sound of UAVs alone and do not leave cover for a long time,” Russian blogger Unfair Advantage wrote.

“If the enemy is accustomed to being afraid of drones, then a UAV ‘carousel’—that is, the successive replacement of one strike UAV with another, can lead to the effect of suppressing positions, despite significant time intervals between strikes,” Unfair Advantage explained.

Infantry should begin their movement to contact with the enemy during an initial wave of drone attacks. “After the strikes are completed, the infantry takes cover and waits for the next wave of UAVs to arrive—or continues to move, but out of the line of sight of the defenders,” the blogger wrote. “This is repeated several times until the infantry reaches the immediate vicinity of the attacked position.”

There, the attackers wait for more drones before making their final push through the enemy positions. Drones should be overhead the whole time during the breach—”a mixed carousel of observation UAVs and attack UAVs,” Unfair Advantage advised.

To prolong the endurance of any turn of the UAV carousel, the operators can land some drones on the ground or on rooftops, idling their engines but keeping their cameras on—thus preserving the robots’ batteries. As long as at least one drone is audible by the defending infantry, the infantry should keep their heads down. They should, in other words, remain suppressed.

The respective new drone tactics belie deepening manpower problems on both sides of the wider war. More and more, both the Ukrainian and Russian armed forces are counting on robots to perform tasks most militaries still assign to human beings.

Ukraine’s manpower shortage is well-known. It’s possible Ukrainian brigades are short 100,000 trained infantry. But Russia has too few troops, too—despite generous bonuses and deceptive recruiting practices that lure or trap tens of thousands of fresh enlistees every month. Overall, Russian regiments probably have plenty of soldiers. But like Ukrainian brigades, they may specifically lack trained and experienced infantry.

Why risk them on a mission that a robot with a skilled operator can handle?

Desperate to staunch the bloodletting around Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, the Kremlin rushed in reinforcements. A lot of them.

But those reinforcements—the best of Russia’s available naval infantry and airborne forces—are already suffering heavy casualties in a sector they clearly do not understand. Attacking in armored vehicles along drone-patrolled roads just east of Pokrovsk on the evening of Aug. 28, the Russian 155th Naval Infantry Brigade was immediately spotted from the air by the Ukrainian state security service’s Ivan Franko Group.

The Ivan Franko Group attacked with its own explosive first-person-view drones—and also called in rockets from nearby High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems. The combined firepower “inflicted devastating losses on the enemy’s assault armored group, which ultimately could not reach the forward positions of the 79th [Air Assault] Brigade and was completely defeated,” the Ivan Franko Group reported.

The group counted five destroyed vehicles and two abandoned ones. “The enemy’s manpower losses as a result of the complex strike of FPV and HIMARS amounted to 50 to 100 men,” the group claimed. See the official video below.

It was a swift and bloody setback for Russia’s best effort to shift the battlefield momentum around Pokrovsk back in its own favor.

For more than a year now, a Russian force with at least eight corps and field armies, together overseeing dozens of regiments are brigades each with potentially thousands of troops, has been trying—and mostly failing—to capture a chain of Ukrainian cities stretching from Pokrovsk to Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine Donetsk Oblast.

The Russian 51st Combined Arms Army came close to closing a pincer around Pokrovsk and cutting off one of its two main supply routes in early August, when its 132nd Motor Rifle Brigade slipped thousands of troops past undermanned Ukrainian trenches northeast of Pokrovsk.

They marched 15 km toward the village of Dobropillya, which sits astride the T0515 road, Pokrovsk’s easternmost main supply route.

A brief-lived salient

But the Russians underestimated the strength of the Ukrainians’ reserves. Ukrainian commanders had made the deliberate decision to leave some trenches empty in order to buy time for certain brigades to rebuild. “It was a sacrifice,” American analyst Andrew Perpetua explained. “Sacrifice ground for time while refitting and then you can attack later.”

A dozen or so Ukrainian brigades, regiments and battalions, some fighting under the command of the national guard’s new 1st Azov Corps, assaulted the Dobropillya salient from both sides with drones, tanks, armed ground vehicles and infantry—and quickly destroyed the Russian 132nd Motor Rifle Brigade, likely inflicting thousand of casualties.

Rather than accepting defeat in the Dobropillya salient, the Kremlin scraped forces from Kherson Oblast in southern Ukraine as well as from the front stretching from Kursk Oblast in western Russia to Sumy Oblast in northern Ukraine—and sent them to Pokrovsk.

The reinforcements include no fewer than five Russian marine and airborne brigades, regiments and divisions including the ill-fated 155th Naval Infantry Brigade. The units that have been fighting around Pokrovsk learned the hard way, many months ago, that armored vehicles simply cannot survive on the roads threading toward the city. Their biggest successes have resulted from swift motorcycle assaults and hard-to-spot infiltrations by small groups of infantry.

The 155th Naval Infantry Brigade moved out in at least one tracked BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicle and other armored vehicles along with a few bikes, winding through a village—Malynivka—the has been under bombardment by Ukrainian air force jets lobbing American-made Joint Direct Attack Munition precision bombs.

Their inexperience and recklessness doomed them—and wasted the Kremlin’s first attempt to preserve what little is left of the Russians’ Dobropillya salient. But the Ivan Franko Group, for one, isn’t surprised. “The enemy will continue to try to carry out meaty assaults on our positions,” the group mused.

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Robot counterattack! Ukraine rolls gun-‘bots into brutal Pokrovsk battle.

For two years, Ukraine’s drone boats have hounded the Russian Black Sea Fleet—delivering explosive payloads to sink ships at sea and in port, firing guns and missiles to take down Russian aircraft and even launching tiny first-person-view drones at coastal air-defense sites.

Now Russia is striking back with its own drone boats. On Thursday morning, a Russian Orion surveillance drone spotted the Ukrainian navy’s Simferopol reconnaissance ship on the Danube River just outside Romanian waters. An explosives-laden Russian unmanned surface vehicle motored up to Simferopol—and struck the 179-foot-ship amidships.

Two of the vessel’s 29 or so crew died, Ukrainian navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk said Friday. Several sailors were missing or injured. A search was underway for the missing, Pletenchuk said.

It’s painful loss for the depleted Ukrainian navy, which lost most of its large vessels—including its sole frigate, scuttled by its crew in Odesa—in the first few days of Russia’s wider invasion in February 2022. Since then, the navy has evolved, trading big ships for smaller boats and drones.

But the navy still had Simferopol, a former trawler that Ukraine fitted with a Melchior radio intelligence station and other systems and launched in 2019. Simferopol could detect Russian radio transmissions from hundreds of kilometers away. But the lightly armed ship was vulnerable—and the Ukrainian navy knew it. It’s not for no reason that Simferopol had apparently spent much of the wider war hiding out on the Danube.

Three years hiding

For 42 months, the intel ship succeeded in avoiding missile attack. But then the Russians deployed their very first explosive drone boat—and chased down the once-lucky Simferopol. The USV may be the same type that Russian firm RoboCorp recently tested in Sevastopol, in Russian-occupied Crimea.

The exact specifications of the Russian USV are unclear. But if it’s anything like the Ukrainian state security agency’s own Maguara V5 USV, it might measure 18 feet from bow to stern, travel 800 km or so under satellite guidance and pack up to 300 kg of explosives. As the Simferopol strike demonstrated, that’s enough firepower to sink a medium-sized vessel.

Fast and low on the water, USVs are hard to detect and defeat. Russia has put in place a layered defense against Ukraine’s drone boats: patrolling with drones, jets, helicopters and boats and placing armed sentries on likely targets. As Russian USVs proliferate, Ukraine may need to duplicate these defenses—especially around Odesa, Ukraine’s strategic grain port.

And if the Russian USVs evolve the way the Ukrainian USVs have, they may begin striking with guns, rockets and FPV drones. They could even threaten Ukrainian aircraft.

In the spring of 2024, enterprising Ukrainian engineers kluged together a combination of sensors and R-73 and AIM-9X infrared dogfighting missiles borrowed from the Ukrainian air force—and mounted the resulting system on some of the security agency’s Magura V5s.

On 31 December, the air-defense Magura V5s claimed their first victims: two Russian Mil Mi-8 helicopters. six months later on May 2, separate formations of Ukrainian USVs attacked Russian navy anchorages in Crimea and in Novorossiysk, a port in southern Russia.

Russian drones detected the wakes and Russian warplanes sortied to attack the incoming USVs. The drone boats fired back with at least one AIM-9X—and shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-30 fighter. It was the first-ever shoot-down of a manned warplane by an unmanned warship.

But if Ukraine can do it, Russia can, too—now that it has its own drone boats.

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Ukraine’s missile crews are valuable targets now

A Ukrainian Neptune cruise missile battery tried to strike targets in southern Russia’s Krasnodar Krai region on Thursday. The strike failed as Russian S-300 air-defense missiles rose to intercept the incoming Neptunes—and then the Russians struck back.

A surveillance drone spotted a truck-mounted Neptune launcher, apparently the same launcher that targeted Krasnodar Krai. An Iskander ballistic missile streaked down, damaging if not destroying the Ukrainian launcher.

The hit on the Neptune battery underscores the risk to Ukrainian forces as they induct new and harder-hitting drones and missiles and escalate their deep strike campaign bombarding Russian factories, air bases, oil refineries and other strategic targets.

Russian troops and key war-industry workers are in growing trouble as the Ukrainian munitions strike farther and harder. But the Ukrainian missile and drone crews aren’t immune to harm. Russia is responding to Ukraine’s deep strike campaign with a counter deep strike campaign.

It’s unclear what the Ukrainian Neptune battery was trying to hit in Krasnodar Krai. There’s no shortage of targets, including air bases, air-defense sites and others. In any event, Russian surface-to-air missile batteries were ready, for once.

While the Russians “can’t defend everywhere,” according to retired US Army general Mark Hertling, they managed to defend Krasnodar Krai on Thursday. Four S-300 long-range SAMs spiraled into the air, swatting down the salvo of Neptunes.

It’s hard to say whether the Neptunes in the attempted raid were the standard 300-km version of the made-in-Ukraine missile or the new 1,000-km “long” version. The Ukrainian navy used standard Neptunes, which are capable of anti-ship and land-attack strikes, to sink the Russian navy cruiser Moskva in April 2022.

Since then, Ukraine has expanded its deployment of the subsonic missile, which packs a 150-kg warhead and may feature satellite and inertial navigation and a radar or infrared seeker. And it has added an even more powerful missile: the Flamingo, which ranges a staggering 3,000 km with a massive 1,000-kg warhead. Its guidance and seeker may be similar to the Long Neptune’s.

Ukraine strikes back

With scores of cruise missiles and thousands of one-way attack drones a month, “Ukraine is increasingly taking the war to Russia now,” American-Ukrainian war correspondent David Kirichenko wrote in a new essay for The Atlantic Council. Drone and missile attacks on Russian oil refineries in recent weeks have throttled Russia’s refining by as much as 14%.

Russia is also waging a deep strike campaign, of course—and with more drones and missiles. But Russia’s drone and missile attacks mostly targets Ukrainian cities in a country of just 233,000 square miles. Ukraine’s drones and missiles target military and industrial targets in a country of 6.6 million square miles.

Between them, the Long Neptune, the Flamingo and Ukraine’s best attack drones should be able to hold at risk roughly half that area.

Ukraine’s air defense problem is hard but simple. Ukrainian defenses must contend with nearly daily raids involving potentially hundreds of drones and missiles, but they can concentrate around the biggest cities that are the Russians’ main targets.

By contrast, Russia’s air defense problem is hard and complex. “The Kremlin simply does not have enough air defense systems to protect thousands of potential military and energy targets spread across 11 time zones,” Kirichenko wrote. In that context, the successful interception of the Neptunes streaking toward Krasnodar Krai may have been an outlier.

And it makes sense for the Russians to target Ukraine’s best cruise missiles “left of the boom.” to borrow a US Army term. It’s better to blast a missile launcher, and kill or injure its crew, than to risk missing a missile after it launches.

Ukrainian missileers should know they’re being hunted. Every time they roll out for a launch, Russian drones will be looking for them—and Russian ballistic missiles will be ready to take aim.

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Ukraine’s missiles could cut off the $ 9 billion Putin uses to pay soldiers

Ukraine is escalating its attacks on Russia’s oil refineries, hitting 10 of them in recent days and throttling the Russian oil industry’s refining by more than a million barrels per day. That’s 14% of output.

But refineries can be repaired. And Russia’s sprawling oil sector has excess capacity that could help it compensate for damage from Ukrainian raids. “Russia has a lot of these inactive refineries, and Russia is able to switch to some of them if needed,” Finnish analyst Joni Askola noted.

To make lasting dent in Russia’s most important industry, Ukraine needs to strike more often with more damaging weapons. At present, most oil raids and other deep strikes are carried out by slow, propeller-driven drones ranging fewer than 1,000 km with warheads weighing just 50 kg or so.

The drones that Ukraine has been using are just not enough because they’re quite easy to shoot down and also their warheads are quite small, as well,” Askola pointed out. It’s crucial for Ukraine to get more and better munitions “with enough range, but with a bit bigger warheads.”

The harder-hitting munitions are coming. Ukrainian companies have developed at least two new cruise missiles—the 6,000-kg Flamingo and the approximately 1,000-kg Long Neptune—that could extend the reach and effect of the oil raids. The Americans are helping, too, with a mysterious new cruise missile called the Extended Range Attack Munition.

The enormous Flamingo, traveling as far as 3,000 km with a 1,000-kg warhead, would hit the hardest and farthest targets. Right now, Ukrainian firm Fire Point is building one Flamingo a day. It aims to ramp up production to seven missiles a day by October.

The Long Neptune, ranging 1,000 km with a 150-kg warhead, is for closer and less durable targets. It’s unclear how many of the missile the Luch Design Bureau can build.

Smallest missile

The American ERAM is the smallest of the bunch. It weighs just 1,100 kg and ranges at least 400 km. But in the short term, it may also be the most numerous. The administration of the former US President. Joe Biden launched the ERAM program in 2024, and the administration of the current US President. Donald Trump recently gave final approval for Ukraine to receive 3,350 of the small missiles. Deliveries should start in the coming weeks.

We don’t know much about the ERAM except that, in contrast to the ground-launched Flamingo and Long Neptune, the American munition is air-launched. The Ukrainian air force’s ex-Soviet Sukhoi and MiG jets, ex-European Lockheed Martin F-16s, and ex-French Dassault Mirage 2000s are all compatible with an array of precision munitions.

It’s possible the ERAM is broadly similar to the Powered Joint Direct Attack Munition developed by US defense giant Boeing. The PJDAM takes a standard satellite-guided bomb and adds pop-out wings and a tiny Kratos-TDI-J85 turbojet engine. At the low cost of just $30,000, a 220-kg PJDAM ranges as far as 500 km. Most of the PJDAM’s weight is explosive fill, making it much more damaging than Ukraine’s current deep-strike drones.

It would make sense for the US to provide Ukraine with an ERAM based on the PJDAM, as Ukraine already possesses freefalling JDAM bombs and gliding JDAMs with pop-out wings. Adding a small engine to the same basic munition shouldn’t significantly change its compatibility. Any Ukrainian jets that can carry JDAMs should also be able to carry ERAMs.

To strike Russian refineries with the same intensity that Russia strikes Ukrainian cities, Ukrainian forces need to launch hundreds of munitions several times a week. They can’t all be Flamingos and Long Neptunes, which might cost hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece. Nor should they all be the cheaper, but lighter, attack drones that are most common today.

Cheap but powerful, the ERAM is the middleweight missile Ukraine needs to intensify attacks now. The wrinkle is that the US Defense Department under Trump has reportedly barred Ukraine from striking Russia with certain American-made long-range munitions, extending similar bans put in place by Biden.

It’s unclear whether that policy would also ban deep strikes with ERAMs.

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This American-made missile is Ukraine’s cheap refinery smasher

Escalating drone and missile strikes on Russia’s oil refineries have disrupted 17% of Russian refining. And it’s about to get worse for Russia’s battered oil industry as new, harder-hitting Ukrainian cruise missiles come on-line in greater numbers.

Ukrainian forces have struck 10 Russian refineries in recent days, reducing output by 1.1 million barrels per day, according to Reuters. Some Russian oblasts are also experiencing gasoline shortages and rising prices.

The oil industry accounts for 20% of Russia’s gross domestic product. If Ukraine can inflict lasting damage on the energy sector in Russia, everyday Russians are sure to notice. A souring national mood could “have an impact—and will maybe bring us a bit closer to an end of the war,” Finnish analyst Joni Askola said.

What’s most ominous for the Russians is that most if not all of the recent strikes have involved Ukrainian drone types, such as the Ukroboronprom An-196, that have small warheads weighing just 50 or 60 kg.

A 50-kg warhead delivered by a propeller-drive attack drone motoring along at just 400 km/hr isn’t likely to inflict lasting damage to a target as expansive as an oil refinery, Askola explained. Moreover, current Ukrainian attack drones rarely fly farther than 1,000 km—meaning many Russian refineries are beyond reach.

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Ukraine’s Fire Point builds 100 attack drones every day, all day—aimed at Russia

That’s changing. The new Flamingo cruise missile, from Ukrainian manufacturer Fire Point, ranges 3,000 km at a top speed faster than 900 km/hr with a massive 1,000-kg warhead. The new Long Neptune cruise missile from Ukraine’s Luch Design Bureau is probably just as fast but somewhat smaller, delivering a 150-kg warhead out to a distance of 1,000 km. Both jet-propelled missiles probably navigate with a combination of satellite and inertial guidance

The Flamingo and Long Neptune are in front-line service in limited numbers. Production is scaling up fast, however. Fire Point hopes to build as many as seven Flamingos a day starting in October, potentially signalling a vast expansion of Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign—and a lot more damage to Russian refineries.

“Flamingo has so much range and such a big warhead that that’s one of the important ones that could really make a difference,” Askola said. “But there is also the ground-to-ground version of the Neptune missile that is kind of ready now.” Ukrainian firms are also developing at least two new types of ballistic missile that could add to the destruction.

“If Ukraine can combine drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles on the same place when they’re striking, then it will be hard for Russia to shoot them down or to protect the places,” Askola said. “Hopefully Ukraine can develop as many systems as possible and then scale up on the best ones and hopefully get some results.”

Squeezing the oil economy

Kyiv’s goal should be to permanently throttle Russian refining, with knock-on effects on state revenues—and on gasoline prices. The Kremlin sustains high levels of military recruitment—up to 30,000 fresh troops a month—with generous enlistment bonuses as high as 400,000 rubles ($4,500). That’s as much as many Russians earn in four months.

“Until now, a big part of the population has benefited from the war because if someone from your family goes to fight for the war, you earn way more money,” Askola noted. But the bonuses are a drain on government finances, which are also under strain from Ukraine’s refinery raids. Some oblasts are already cutting back.

The combined effect of shrinking bonuses and rising gas prices could turn more Russians against the war. “Again, it’s something that’s not going to change anything in the short run,” Askola said. Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin “is not going to collapse tomorrow because people suddenly don’t like the war. But in the long run, it will still have an impact.”

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Ukraine’s Flamingo missile is for blasting Russian factories

Ukrainian forces are battling a Russian assault on the village of Vorone, just east of the town of Velykomykhailivka in southern Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Luckily for them, they’re rolling into the fight in American-made M-2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles—some of the best IFVs in Russia’s 42-month wider war on Ukraine.

A video that circulated online on Monday depicts two of the 33-ton, 10-person Bradleys—belonging to the 225th Assault Regiment—rolling along a paved road in or near Vorone, firing left and right with their 25-millimeter auto-cannons at Russian infantry clinging to positions in the treelines along the road.

The Russian 5th Tank Brigade recently claimed it captured Vorone. But the 225th Assault Regiment obviously isn’t ready to give up the village.

The M-2 excels at that kind of fighting evident in Vorone. Even Russian engineers, who have inspected several captured Ukrainian Bradleys, have praised the American-made vehicle. Compared to Russian-made fighting vehicles, the M-2 boasts superior firepower owing to “the accuracy of the 25-millimeter M242 automatic cannon,” the Russians wrote in an April report.

Донеччина. Дорога під контролем — Bradley штурмового батальйону 225-го ОШП косять посадки, де сидить противник.

The road is under control — Bradley IFVs of the assault battalion of the 225th Assault Regiment are clearing out the tree lines where the russians are hiding. pic.twitter.com/zSdsJsQcVW

— 225 Окремий штурмовий полк (@225_oshp) August 25, 2025

The Bradley is one of Ukraine’s best vehicles for close combat, but it’s in short supply. The Ukrainian army has six battalions that ride in M-2s. On paper, each has 31 Bradleys. But the army only got, for free, somewhat more than 300 M-2s from the administration of former US Pres. Joe Biden before the administration of Pres. Donald Trump throttled US aid to Ukraine.

Of those 300-plus M-2s, the Ukrainians have lost no fewer than 108: 95 destroyed and 13 captured. Crews have abandoned others in places where Ukrainian engineers couldn’t recover them. Dozens are badly damaged. Between them, those six Bradley battalions need 186 vehicles. If there isn’t already a shortfall, there could be soon.

But the 225th Assault Regiment is clearly willing to risk some of its Bradleys if that means blunting the Russian 5th Tank Brigade’s advance.

Over-extended Russians

It’s clear the Russians have pushed too far, too fast in recent weeks. And it’s clear why. Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin was desperate to project strength in the lead-up to his Aug. 15 summit with US Pres. Donald Trump in Alaska.

To Russia’s 700,000-person army of occupation in Ukraine attacked aggressively, some might say recklessly, all along the 1,100-km front line—ultimately breaking through Ukrainian lines northeast of the fortress city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.

That effort backfired. The Russian 51st Combined Arms Army failed to support its infantry marching through undermanned Ukrainian trenches outside Pokrovsk, leaving the Russian salient vulnerable to counterattack.

“Russia way over-extended,” American analyst Andrew Perpetua explained. Sensing Russian weakness in several other eastern and southern sectors in addition to Pokrovsk, the Ukrainians counterattacked in recent days. In Vorone, however, the 225th Assault Regiment and its Bradley crews are apparently still trying to just halt the Russians.

Still, that’s consistent with Ukraine’s overall strategy right now. Kyiv’s priority, Perpetua wrote, is “stability.” “Stabilize the front, retake certain positions, reinforce others. Widen the gray zone in others.”

To protect them as they push back against Russian attacks, some Ukrainian units have been adding even more additional armor to their M-2s. A recent photo of a Bradley operated by the 33rd Assault Regiment, holding the line against Russian incursion in northern Ukraine, might depict the most heavily-armored M-2 in Ukrainian service.

It boasts its normal aluminum armor and side-mounted explosive reactive armor blocks. The Ukrainians added a telescoping anti-drone screen, metal anti-drone grills along the hull and rubber mats on the hull front and beside the driver’s hatch. Incredibly, there are also tiny mesh installations plugging the gaps between the metal racks for the side-mounted explosive blocks and the aluminum hull.

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Russia lost a brigade near Dobropillya—more brigades are coming

Ukrainian firm Fire Point is building 100 FP-1 attack drones every day. That’s … a lot of drones.

Building thousands of FP-1s and other long-range attack drones a month, Ukraine is coming close to matching Russia’s own production of Shahed attack drones.

Meanwhile, Fire Point is also building new Flamingo cruise missiles (also known as FP-5s), adding reach and punch to Ukraine’s escalating campaign of deep strikes targeting air bases, factories, oil refineries and other strategic facilities inside Russia.

“Ukraine is increasingly taking the war to Russia now,” American-Ukrainian war correspondent David Kirichenko wrote in a new essay for The Atlantic Council.

The FP-1 production ramp-up, first reported by the Associated Press, is just part of Ukraine’s deep strike build-up. With German financing, Ukrainian industry is also churning out An-196 attack drones, pilotless sport planes modified to drop bombs and Bars “cruise missile drones,” among many other strike munitions.

More drones than expected

Back in December, Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Ukraine would acquire 30,000 one-way attack drones in 2025. But the accelerating ramp-up means Ukraine will almost certainly exceed that target—by a lot. FP-1 production alone could exceed 36,000 units this year.

Russia’s sprawling drone factory in Yelabuga, 1,200 km from Ukraine, assembles around 5,000 Shahed attack drones every month. The 200-kg drones, each ranging thousands of kilometers under satellite navigation, have become Russia’s most important strike munitions as Ukrainian raids have destroyed much of the Russian air force bomber fleet with its air-launched cruise missiles.

The Shaheds are priced to move at as little as $50,000 per copy, compared to millions of dollars for just one of Russia’s best Kh-101 cruise missiles. The low price translates into bigger deliveries and denser swarms of Shaheds clouding the skies over Ukrainian cities.

There are so many Shaheds over Ukraine on a nearly daily basis that Ukrainian air defense crews struggle to intercept them in ways that don’t deplete Ukraine’s munitions stocks and shatter its finances. “The Kremlin is willing to lose many Shaheds—about 75% of attacks fail—because mass waves are designed to exhaust air-defense systems,” noted “Alchemist,” the head of the Night Watch electronic warfare team in Kyiv.

Now Ukraine can vex Russia with the same problem. As drone deliveries rise and efficiencies increase, the cost goes down. An FP-1 now costs just $55,000. It’s possible the An-196 and other Ukrainian deep-strike munitions are also dropping in price. The result should be a beneficial cycle of increasing orders that further reduce costs as efficiencies accumulate.

The bottom line: Ukraine is already pummeling Russia with thousands of drones a month and inflicting more damage, more widely. “Based on my observations and the data we have collected with the team over the past two months, there has been a noticeable increase in the effectiveness of hits,” reported “Tatarigami,” the head of the Frontelligence Insight analysis group in Ukraine.

Worse is coming for Russia: more Ukrainian drones and, soon, many more of the new Flamingo missiles. Where an FP-1 might motor 1,000 km with a 50-kg warhead, a Flamingo jets a whopping 3,000 km with a 1,000-kg warhead. Fire Point told the Associate Press it aims to ramp up to building seven of the giant missiles every day no later than October.

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Ukraine just solved the hardest math problem in modern air defense – with a 1970s German gun

After three weeks of hard fighting, the Ukrainian 1st Azov Corps and adjacent units have squeezed and cut up the 15-km salient that Russian infiltrators carved out of Ukrainian territory near the the village of Dobropillya, northeast of the fortress town of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.

But Russian reinforcements are rolling in, opening a new—and unpredictable—phase in the battle for the Dobropillya salient. “The enemy’s penetration near Dobropillya remains a dynamic section on the front line where neither side can seize the initiative,” the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies noted.

It’s more apparent than ever that the Russian penetration toward Dobropillya, which sits astride one of two main supply roads into besieged Pokrovsk, was bigger and more dangerous than some analysts initially concluded.

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Robot counterattack! Ukraine rolls gun-‘bots into brutal Pokrovsk battle.

“Let’s start by describing what this absolutely is not: a breakthrough,” US analyst Andrew Perpetua asserted on Aug. 12. In fact, it was a breakthrough, albeit one that mostly moved at a walking pace.

Over a period of several months, the Russian 51st Combined Arms Army redeployed almost all of its brigades northeast of Pokrovsk, including the 1st, 5th, 9th, 110th and 132nd Motor Rifle Brigades. While the 132nd Motor Rifle Brigade slipped past empty Ukrainian trenches and marched on Dobropillya, the other four brigades attacked toward Rodynsky, at the bottom of the eventual salient.

Heavy Russian losses

The scale of the Ukrainian response, and the resulting spike in Russian losses, underscored the seriousness of the situation for Kyiv. If it had captured Dobropillya, the 132nd Motor Rifle Brigade would’ve cut the T0515 road, leaving the Ukrainian garrison in Pokrovsk dependent on just one other road threading into the town from the northwest—a road that itself is in danger of being overrun.

In addition to the 1st Azov Corps, Ukraine redeployed elements from the 79th and 82nd Air Assault Brigades, 1st and 425th Assault Regiments, 25th Assault Battalion, 2nd Battalion of the 92nd Assault Brigade, 32nd and 93rd Mechanized Brigades, 38th Marine Brigade, 14th National Guard Brigade and the Birds of Magyar drone brigade.

It’s a powerful Ukrainian force. And in the first few weeks of its counterattack, it enjoyed a decisive advantage in troops, tanks, armed ground robots and drones. The 132nd Motor Rifle Brigade’s troopers had marched toward Dobropillya “only with weapons in their hands,” Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

Between Aug. 4 and 20, the Ukrainian corps killed, wounded or captured nearly 1,600 Russians, according to the the Ukrainian general staff in Kyiv. That’s nearly the entire front-line strength of the 132nd Motor Rifle Brigade.

But a few Russian survivors are still clinging to positions in Zolotyi Kolodyaz, at the top of the salient, and now the Russian 51st Combined Arms Army is deploying additional forces at the bottom of the salient.

Despite heavy losses and the near-destruction of its initial penetration toward Dobropillya, the 51st Combined Arms Army isn’t defeated—and probably won’t give up. The army “will try to advance as deeply as possible to Dobropillya,” CDS predicted.

And if it manages to finally capture the village, CDS predicted the 51st Combined Arms Army could “sharply worsen the prospects for the defense of not only Dobropillya and Pokrovsk, but also Druzhkivka and Kostyantynivka” on the other side of the salient.

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Russian infiltrators near Pokrovsk are about to get the tank treatment

Russian infantry slipped past Ukrainian defenses around the city of Kupiansk, in Kharkiv Oblast, on or before Tuesday. A Ukrainian tank, presumably from the 116th Mechanized Brigade, rolled right up to the half-demolished building the Russians were sheltering in—and blasted them at point-blank range.

It’s the latest instance of Ukrainian tanks engaging, and defeating, under-supported Russian infantry in a close fight. But it’s an ominous development for Ukraine. The brutal, zero-distance skirmish took place in Kupiansk, a town with a pre-war population of 25,000 and a key strongpoint anchoring Ukrainian defenses just 90 km east of Kharkiv and its millions of residents.

Russian infantry weren’t supposed to appear inside Kupiansk, some 6 km from what most mappers consider the “front line” in Kharkiv Oblast.

The problem, of course, is that the front isn’t really a line anymore. “The reality is that there isn’t a coherent front line,” American analyst Andrew Perpetua explained.

Instead, there’s a wide no-man’s land between areas of clear Russian and Ukrainian control. That no-man’s-land is largely depopulated except for scattered—and carefully concealed—underground fighting positions for a few harried infantry.

Drones are everywhere all the time. Indeed, the drones—their relentless surveillance and attacks—are why the infantry are so spread out and scared. And why the front line is so indistinct.

This new reality defies the traditional language of wartime reporting. Terms like “front line,” “encirclement” and “breakthrough” have largely lost their meaning. Especially considering Ukraine’s desperate manpower shortage. Kyiv’s roughly 130 combat brigades may be short around 100,000 trained infantry.

Thin front line

“The front line is so thinned out that full-scale encirclements in the traditional sense are unlikely to occur again,” the pro-Ukraine Conflict Intelligence Team observed. “Instead, the opposing forces are more likely to ‘slip’ through each other’s positions.”

“The front line is actually relatively porous, and there are often fewer than 10 soldiers defending every kilometer of the front, depending on the terrain,” noted analyst Rob Lee from the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. “Many Ukrainian brigades have adopted a different approach to defense where their infantry deliberately try to avoid engaging.”

Instead of actively fighting, the infantry watch for approaching Russians—and relay the coordinates to nearby drone teams. Where in previous conflicts, drones spotted targets for the infantry, in this conflict the roles are reversed.

The porous front line makes infiltration easier and exploitation harder. To “advance,” Russian regiments can “take two men dressed in cloaks to hide their thermal signature,” Perpetua explained. “They are led by a drone through a specified path, the drone ensuring their security and camouflage.”

“These infantry move up into positions and lie in wait, being resupplied by Molniya [drones],” Perpetua added. “They ambush opportunistically, and kill anyone—namely civilians—who threaten to give away their position.”

“Russia then moves up another pair and another pair and another pair to accumulate forces in exacting, specified positions,” Perpetua wrote. “The entire operation is directed from above, the people involved have no initiative. In some cases, once a route has enough of these small rifle teams, they push forward a larger group of light infantry.”

That Ukrainian tank may have interrupted the Russians in Kupiansk before they could accumulate enough troops secure a lodgement. “Ukrainian defense forces defending in the city have counterattacked the enemy that had penetrated the area several times and pushed the enemy back,” the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies reported.

But the Russians have been probing Kupiansk for a while now—and they’re sure to continue as they leverage their manpower advantage over Ukraine’s depleted brigades. “Provided current dynamics of combat operations are maintained, the enemy will be able to capture Pokrovsk by autumn, Kostyantynivka and Kupiansk by the end of the year,” CDS predicted.

In the late 1970s, Soviet officials tapped the Kirovsky Design Bureau in Saint Petersburg to develop a reconnaissance and command vehicle for nuclear warfare: a sealed, self-contained and thickly-armored turret-less tank with remote cameras and its own oxygen supply.

The Ladoga recon and command vehicle wasn’t just nuke-proof. It was also weirdly cozy.

Kirovsky produced just a handful of the tracked vehicles—maybe four or five. One spent some time in the irradiated zone around the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, in northern Ukraine, following the plant’s catastrophic meltdown in 1986. Aside from another that ended up in a museum, the Ladogas then simply disappeared.

Until March 2024, that is—when a Ukrainian drone spotted, and struck, what appeared to be a Ladoga rolling toward Ukrainian lines near the Kreminna Forest in eastern Ukraine. Seventeen months later, another—or the same—Ladoga appeared at a repair yard somewhere in the Russian occupation zone.

It’s possible half the Ladogas Kirovsky produced—and the majority that aren’t on display or badly irradiated—have made their way to Ukraine.

It’s no secret why. The Kremlin is struggling to generate enough combat vehicles—either through new production or by fetching older vehicles from long-term storage—to make good the loss of new fewer than 22,500 vehicles and other heavy equipment along the 1,100-km front line of Russia’s 42-month wider war on Ukraine.

The “de-mechanization” of what was once arguably the world’s leading mechanized military helps to explain why some very strange vehicles have showed up along the front line. Armored vehicles are much less important in Russian doctrine as front-line regiments have shifted to harder-to-detect infantry and motorcycle assaults.

Vehicular oddities

The de-mechanization of the Russian military doesn’t mean Russia is losing wider war on Ukraine. It does mean the Russian military may struggle to exploit its battlefield victories against manpower-starved Ukrainian brigades. Russian infantry might find gaps in Ukrainian defenses. But there are precious few Russian armored vehicles on hand to rush through the gaps—and drive deep behind Ukrainian lines.

At the same time, unarmored Russian attacks are vulnerable to armored Ukrainian counterattacks. It’s telling that, after a brigade of Russian infantry marched through empty Ukrainian trenches northeast of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine a few weeks ago, the infiltrators clung to their 15-km salient only as long as it took a powerful Ukrainian force to mobilize its tanks and other heavy forces for a devastating counterattack.

To whatever extent Russian troops still ride under armor, they increasingly ride in vehicular oddities that, pre-war, resided in museums—or were totally unimaginable. The Ladoga may belong to both categories. It combines the armored hull of a T-80 tank with a 1,250-horespower gas-turbine engine and a voluminous crew compartment seating four or so people in padded armchairs.

The Ladoga has a mast-mounted television camera and a full suite of radios that would have allowed the vehicle to work in a doomsday command role. Imagine Soviet leaders speeding to safety inside a Ladoga, directing their own nuclear forces as NATO’s own nukes rain down.

Now imagine some Russian colonel commanding his battalion from a Ladoga’s cozy interior during an attack on Ukrainian forces around Kreminna or Pokrovsk. Or, equally likely, Russian infantry using the Ladoga as an improvised assault vehicle.

The tiny force of Ladogas got a workout around Chernobyl but never performed its primary role in an atomic apocalypse. Surely no one at Kirovsky imagined an aged Ladoga or two would eventually find a way to the front line of a non-nuclear war in 2024 and 2025.

But then, it’s hard to imagine the engineers in Saint Petersburg 50 years ago could anticipate Russia losing 22,500 armored vehicles in just three and a half years in a war with, of all countries, Ukraine.

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Russian infiltrators near Pokrovsk are about to get the tank treatment

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