The US plan to sell Türkiye F-35 stealth fighter jets has stalled, blocked by a Russian missile system Ankara bought years ago, Semafor reported. Lawmakers in Washington won't clear the deal while Türkiye keeps the hardware. The lone buyer in talks hasn't budged, and destroying the system is now on the table.

Russia has long used arms exports to pull buyers into its orbit, and the war it started raised the price of those ties—leaving governments that bought Russian air defense to clash with the supplier that sold it.

The Russian system is in the way

US sanctions law bars Türkiye from the F-35 program while it retains the Russian S-400, Semafor reported. That system is a long-range air defense, built to shoot down planes and missiles. Ankara already paid for six of the jets. They have sat in the United States since Washington expelled Türkiye from the F-35 program in 2019. US President Donald Trump announced plans to sell the jets more than a month ago, and nothing has moved since.

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No buyer, no easy exit

One way out is to sell the S-400 to another country. Türkiye reportedly opened talks with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) last month, but they don't appear to have progressed. American lawmakers insist Ankara must give up the system entirely first.

Republican Senator Rick Scott told Semafor that Türkiye shouldn't get the jets unless it becomes a true partner—"so if they have the S-400, they cannot have the F-35." Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch, a longtime opponent, said the process is "at a standstill."

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Israel and Congress are the live block

The sharper obstacle sits in Washington, Semafor reported. A vote to sell would pit Israel against a NATO ally, and many of Trump's own allies want the S-400 scrapped completely. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned the jets could "destroy the power balance in the Middle East." The outlet said AIPAC, the leading pro-Israel lobby in Washington, is pressing Congress to keep the block.

Selling it still runs through Moscow

Any resale carries its own catch: Russia must approve the transfer of the S-400, giving the Kremlin a reason to block it. The only option that bypasses Moscow is to disable or destroy the system outright. Türkiye earlier tried to return the systems to Moscow, hoping to thaw relations with Washington. It didn't work.

The Trump administration says Ankara hasn't met all the conditions to buy the jets, and the State Department wants the S-400 issue settled with guarantees first.

The United States and Ukraine are working together to put fresh missiles into Ukraine's aging Soviet-era S-300 air defenses, retired US Army colonel Robert Hamilton told PBS NewsHour. These long-range systems shoot down aircraft, but the missiles that feed them have been depleted. The effort—retrofitting old rounds or building a newer variant—would revive launchers Ukraine already owns.

Ukraine's air defense runs on a shrinking supply of interceptors, with Russian ballistic and drone strikes outpacing what allies can ship. The chokepoint is production capacity, not willingness—and Hamilton frames the S-300 rebuild as one of the slower-burn fixes that ease the strain on scarce Western systems rather than replace them.

A working system near the end of 2026

Hamilton, who heads the Delphi Global Research Center, said the joint effort should come online near the end of 2026 and could turn out "100 or a couple of hundred" anti-aircraft missiles a year. He described the work as an effort to "essentially retrofit or upgrade the old S-300 missiles or a newer variant of the S-300" and give the system better capabilities.

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In September 2024, then-US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced at the Ramstein contact group that Washington, in partnership with several European companies, was working with Ukraine to "design and build a substitute" for the Soviet S-300 and the R-27 air-to-air missile used by fighter jets. He never spelled out what that substitute would be.

Why Ukraine's S-300s ran law

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine held roughly 25-30 S-300PT/PS battalions in varying states of readiness. As the missiles ran out, Kyiv came to lean on Western air defense systems and interceptors while Russia keeps launching mass strikes.

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Anything Ukraine can build or rebuild on its own soil is a supply that no foreign stockpile or political fight can cut off.

That same logic is pushing Kyiv toward co-producing Patriots with US firms and fielding its own ballistic interceptor—a race to turn air defense into a domestic industry before the next winter of strikes.

Polish prosecutors have identified the cruise missile that crashed in eastern Poland during Russia's mass overnight attack on Ukraine yesterday, according to Ukrinform. Investigators traced the weapon to a recent Russian production run and dated its manufacture, with a Ukrainian expert helping confirm the find. 

Prosecutors trace the missile to a Moscow-area plant

Marcin Kozak, spokesman for the District Prosecutor's Office in Lublin, spoke at a media briefing on Friday, a Ukrinform correspondent reported on 31 July. He said the fallen weapon was a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile. Investigators reached that conclusion after examining the impact site in Lublin Voivodeship and the fragments recovered there. The same work let them date the weapon's manufacture and trace where in Russia it was built.

"Preliminary work examining the site and the traces found — that is, elements of the aerial object — allows us to state unequivocally what object we are dealing with," Kozak said. "This is a Kh-101 missile, manufactured in the second quarter of 2026 at one of the enterprises in Moscow Oblast."

That places the weapon's origin at a plant in the Moscow area, the region ringing the Russian capital. A Ukrainian expert arrived in Poland yesterday evening and joined the identification.

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How the missile crossed into Poland

Yesterday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk confirmed that a Kh-101 had crossed into Polish airspace during the overnight barrage. It came down about 50 kilometers from Lublin, leaving behind a crater where its warhead exploded. Poland put its air defenses on alert and scrambled military aircraft as Russia's missiles neared the border. Air raid sirens sounded in Lublin around 03:50 local time, and crews later found the crater and scattered debris around 95 km into Poland.

The Russian missile either strayed into Poland or was deliberately directed there during Russia's mass attack on Ukraine overnight on 30 July. Russia sent missiles and drones across the country, and several areas reported hits and fires. Its strikes hit Lviv, Kyiv, and Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, where the barrage also killed civilians in central Ukraine.

After the missile fell, two disinformation campaigns spread through Poland's information space, one aimed at Ukraine and the other at the Polish government.

Tusk also signaled that Warsaw would soon weigh sending Ukraine more missiles for its Patriot air defense systems.

Ukraine struck deep inside Russia on the morning of 24 July 2026, hitting a defense plant in the city of Kirov with a Flamingo cruise missile, according to monitoring channels. The target builds ejection seats for Russia's fighter jets, along with anti-aircraft missiles and other aviation gear. The Ukrainian company that makes the Flamingo indirectly confirmed the strike.

A Flamingo missile hits Kirov

Ukraine's Defense Forces struck the Avitek plant in Kirov on the morning of 24 July, some 1,200 km from Ukraine. Residents woke to explosions and a fire, Russian news Telegram channel Astra reported. Monitoring Telegram channel Exilenova+ published videos of a thick black column of smoke rising over the city, and wrote that a missile may have hit the plant. 

Astra, citing open-source analysts, identified the burning site as Avitek, and Russians filming the strike said the hit landed on the factory. 

Fire Point confirms the strike

Denys Shtilierman, co-owner and chief designer of Ukrainian missile maker Fire Point, confirmed the strike on X, posting a flamingo emoji beside a cited tweet. 

He later posted footage of the launch. 

Monitoring channels noted that the missile hit one of the plant's central buildings.

What the Avitek plant makes

Avitek — formally the Vyatka Machine-Building Enterprise — belongs to Russia's Almaz-Antey air-defense concern, according to tracker OSINT Varta. It is the country's only serial producer of ejection seats for every fighter and attack aircraft in Russia's fleet. The plant also turns out anti-aircraft guided missiles, target missiles, and air-target simulators, plus winches and beam holders for warplanes.

The works supplies engines for Tor air-defense systems and parts for the Kh-101 and Kh-59 missiles that Russia fires at Ukrainian cities. It also builds, repairs, and modernizes the K-36DM ejection seats used in the Su-34 and Su-57 jets. Ukraine's military intelligence project War & Sanctions lists Avitek as a maker of surface-to-air missiles tied to Tor production. 

Where the Flamingo has struck before

Ukraine's Flamingo campaign has widened through the summer. 

• On 27 June, the missile destroyed parts of two buildings at the Titan-Barrikady plant in Volgograd, a launcher maker inside Russia's Roscosmos space corporation, after at least five Flamingos struck the site that day. 

• On 10 June, the missiles hit the VNIIR-Progress plant in Cheboksary, which makes satellite-navigation antennas for the Russian army.

• On 1 July, drones hit the Mayak plant and a physical-measurements institute in Penza, both involved in equipping the Su-57. 

• The day before the Kirov strike, one of Russia's Su-57 stealth fighters crashed near Moscow, possibly downed by its own side's air defenses.