On September 2, a Russian drone struck near Train No. 53/54 (Odesa–Dnipro) at one of the stations on the Dnipro Railway, damaging the locomotive; no one was injured.
Asked about reports in Ukrainian and Western media that Russia could order a mass mobilization after September’s parliamentary elections, Vladimir Putin replied: “That’s complete nonsense. It’s an information attack on Russia,” RBC reported. He was speaking after the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek.
Ukraine’s military and foreign intelligence services say Russia’s General Staff has prepared a scenario for mobilizing an additional 600,000 people during 2026 and 2027—300,000 each year. Their briefing described a contingency, not an issued call-up, and did not say mobilization had begun. If activated, the agencies said, the recruits would primarily reinforce units fighting Ukraine and newly formed military units.
Ukraine’s intelligence services linked the scenario to mounting battlefield losses and a slowdown in contract recruitment. They said Russia lost roughly 240,000 personnel from January through July, including at least 140,000 killed or permanently lost, while recruiting about 232,000 contract soldiers. The figures could not be independently verified.
Russia’s military also rehearsed procedures for mobilizing residents of Kaliningrad Oblast in July, Ukrainska Pravda reported, citing The Wall Street Journal.
Reports of a possible draft have generated concern inside Russia. More than 20,000 people crossed into Georgia through the Verkhny Lars checkpoint in a single day amid fears of mobilization, as EP previously reported.
Ukraine’s warnings and Russia’s denials
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in August that Moscow planned to mobilize several hundred thousand people after the elections and roughly the same number in 2027, citing military intelligence. HUR deputy chief Vadym Skibitskyi later assessed that a call-up could provide troops for a northern offensive by February 2027, while stressing that the agency saw no preparations underway at the time.
Dmitry Medvedev, Vasily Nebenzya, and the State Duma’s defense committee have all denied plans for another mass draft. Russian officials issued similar denials shortly before Putin announced the 2022 call-up. RBC notes that the decree authorizing that mobilization was never formally revoked. No new call-up has been publicly announced or reported as underway.
Ukraine’s General Staff confirmed that Ukrainian forces struck the Novatek-Ust-Luga production complex in Russia’s Leningrad Oblast on 1 September, saying the target was hit and a fire followed. The scale of the damage remains under assessment.
Russian authorities initially acknowledged damage and a fire but did not identify the facility. Ukraine’s military intelligence later named the Novatek complex as the target, and the General Staff has now confirmed the strike and said the facility supports Russia’s armed forces. It did not explain how, nor say whether, production was disrupted.
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, HUR, was first to identify the target, saying on 1 September that its operators had struck the complex alongside Ukraine’s Defense Forces in a joint deep-strike operation. Key elements of the site’s oil-processing installation and other equipment were hit, and a large fire broke out, the agency said. The General Staff confirmed the strike the following day.
Video of the overnight attack on the port of Ust-Luga in Russia’s Leningrad region. pic.twitter.com/dXG5XTkhab
The Novatek complex at Ust-Luga separates stable gas condensate—a liquid produced during natural gas extraction—into fuel and petroleum components and handles their shipment through the Baltic port. Its design capacity exceeds six million tons a year, the General Staff said. The plant produces light and heavy naphtha, kerosene, a diesel fraction, and a marine-fuel component.
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Ukraine has repeatedly targeted the Ust-Luga port
Before Ukraine named the target, Leningrad Oblast Governor Alexander Drozdenko acknowledged infrastructure damage and a fire at Ust-Luga on 1 September, but did not identify the specific facility. HUR subsequently named the Novatek complex as the target and reported damage to key equipment.
The operation continued Ukraine’s campaign against Ust-Luga’s energy and port infrastructure. Ukrainian agencies confirmed the first strike on Novatek’s complex overnight on 24–25 March. Drones returned on 31 March, setting fuel-storage tanks ablaze, damaging a pier and pumping equipment, and temporarily halting port operations, followed by another reported attack on 7 April. Ukrainian drones last hit the port on 14 August, marking the sixth such attack there in 2026.
The Defense Forces of Ukraine destroyed a Russian MiG-29 fighter jet near the Millerovo airfield in Russia’s Rostov region and a Ka-27 helicopter near the Yeysk airfield in Krasnodar Krai in strikes carried out on August 27 and 30.
Two people were injured after Russian drones attacked a private sports complex in the Obukhiv district of thr Kyiv region, sparking a fire on the premises.
Russian propagandists used the Matryoshka disinformation network to circulate a digitally altered front page of the Polish regional weekly Przegląd Regionalny warning of a “hungry fall and winter” in Ukraine, the country’s Center for Countering Disinformation reported.
The fake turns genuine anxiety over Russian attacks on warehouses and food logistics into an unsupported prediction of mass starvation. The Center said Matryoshka routinely disguises fabricated material as reporting by established Western outlets, lending Russian narratives borrowed credibility while creating the impression that foreign media consider Ukraine’s situation hopeless.
The fabricated Przegląd Regionalny front page claimed Russian strikes would push 63% of Ukrainians to the brink of famine over a “hungry autumn and winter.” No such article ran—the real front page of that issue looked entirely different, and the circulated image was built using graphics-editing software, the Center said.
The image spread through Matryoshka, a network that dresses invented content in the mastheads of recognized Western outlets. In this case, the campaign was meant to frighten Ukrainians and weaken public confidence, according to the Center.
Although it impersonated a Polish outlet, the Center described Ukrainians—not Polish readers—as the campaign’s target: the Polish masthead supplied an apparently independent foreign voice for a Russian narrative.
The fake works because the disruption it points to is real. Russian attacks on warehouses and food logistics had destroyed up to 90% of Ukraine’s modern food storage capacity, and suppliers were moving stocks and changing delivery routes and storage methods in response, Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyisaid on 28 August 2026, according to Interfax-Ukraine.
Supermarket chain ATB has temporarily capped purchases of certain essential goods at 6 units of any single product per customer, citing both Russian strikes and resellers buying in bulk.
What the fake predicts, though, is not what officials expect. Presidential defense-technology adviser Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov urged Ukrainians not to panic and said a systemic food shortage was not expected, ZN.UA reported.
How Russia spreads disinformation in Poland
Russia has repeatedly exploited Poland’s information space to turn political, economic, and security anxieties against Ukraine. Polish Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowskisaid Russian intelligence had offered Poles €3,000–€4,000 ($3,500–$4,600) to spread disinformation before the 2025 presidential election.
After Russian drones entered Poland that September, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the Kremlin was using real fears and emotions to fuel anti-Ukrainian sentiment. False claims about Ukrainians living off Polish taxpayers have also fed hostility as bilateral relations frayed.
Russian President Vladimir Putinsaid Moscow would “find a way to respond” if civilian “tragedies” followed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s warning that Ukrainian drone operations were making Russian skies unsafe. Zelenskyy told foreign airlines and insurers that the “safe moments” in Russian airspace were over.
Zelenskyy’s warning seeks to extend the cost of Russia’s war beyond damaged military and energy facilities to airlines, insurers, and travelers. It does not mean Russian airspace is legally or completely closed. However, carriers that continue flying over Russia face higher costs from repeated airport shutdowns during drone alerts, as well as the danger that military activity in Russian airspace could endanger civilian aircraft.
Putin spoke after a 1 September Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek, where Russia and China coordinate regional security. Zelenskyy’s warning amounted to “a bid for state terrorism” if he had made it publicly, the Russian president said, adding that Russia does not negotiate with “terrorists.” Putin also said Russian forces were preparing massive strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
In his evening video address, Zelenskyy said Ukraine did not threaten civilian aircraft but would keep striking Russian military targets and parts of the economy supporting the war. Ukraine’s Presidential Office head Kyrylo Budanovbacked the decision, saying long-range weapons would systematically strike military targets in Russia while the invasion continued.
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Shares in Aeroflot, Russia’s national airline, fell to an intraday low of 30.36 rubles at about 20:40 Moscow time, down 5.11%, Meduza reported, citing Moscow Exchange data. The timing does not establish that Zelenskyy’s speech alone drove the decline.
Wall Street Journal correspondent Yaroslav Trofimovposted a chart of the decline on X, writing, “Aeroflot shares after Zelensky’s warning.”
European and US carriers already avoid Russian airspace, but airlines from China, Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates, and other Gulf states continue using it, Reuters reported. Aviation-risk firm Osprey Flight Solutions assessed that daily attacks deep inside Russia were nearly certain through 2026 and warned of possible misidentification.
Andrii Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, said it was “strange” to hear terrorism accusations from “the leader of a terrorist organization masquerading as the Russian state.” Putin’s reaction showed Moscow feared pressure on its airspace, he argued.
Previous closures of Russian airspace due to Ukrainian attacks
Russian airports were repeatedly shut during Ukrainian drone alerts well before Zelenskyy’s warning. On 6 July 2025, Moscow airports canceled 171 flights while airports in five other cities suspended operations.
As of the morning of September 2, Russian attacks have caused power outages in five regions, with the situation in the Odesa region being the most critical.
Ukraine’s air defense neutralized 141 out of the 174 weapons used by Russian forces to attack Ukraine overnight on September 2. Hits by enemy missiles and combat drones were recorded at 16 locations.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SSU), together with the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU), foiled a terrorist attack that Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) was preparing against one of the leaders of a Russian opposition political nationalist movement who had traveled to Ukraine for Independence Day.
Russia’s total combat losses since the beginning of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, have reached approximately 1,491,030 personnel, including 1,390 over the past day.
The number of people injured in the Russian strike on Odesa has risen to eight. A 24-story residential building, office buildings and two educational institutions were damaged.
Ukraine’s Defense Forces have narrowed the Russian bridgehead on the western bank of the Oskil River and complicated Russian logistics for its advance toward Kupiansk.
Russia is sending jet-powered drones against Ukrainian cities in growing numbers—no longer only the Iranian Shahed-238 it fields as the Geran-3, but the newer, faster Geran-4 and Geran-5. The fear everyone voices is their speed, but speed breaks the cheap layer, not the missiles.
Ukraine's expensive air-defense missiles already routinely shoot down cruise missiles, and to them, a fast drone is just one more target. The strain falls on the cheap layer instead—the interceptor drones Ukraine built to down thousands of Shaheds a month for a few thousand dollars each, a fraction of a missile's price.
Those were designed to catch slow drones, and against jet speed, they struggle. If that layer breaks, the cost of defending Ukraine's skies climbs—and the Defense Ministry has already started paying to keep it from breaking.
The shift is not marginal, and it continues to accelerate. Russia had sent more than 2,500 jet-powered Shaheds against Ukraine by 30 August, against roughly 1,500 in July, informal presidential adviser Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov wrote—the drones, he noted, were launched practically straight from the factory. Russia fired roughly 1,400 jet-powered drones since the start of 2026 to June, and air defenses recorded about 180 in all of 2025, Colonel Oleksandr Zaruba of Ukraine's State Research Institute said.
Geran-5 (above) and Geran-4 (below). Image: TurDef
A record month, and the weapon built to beat it
Ukrainian interceptor drones destroyed more than 33,000 Russian drones of all types in March 2026—roughly double the February total and a record for the cheapest layer of Ukraine's air defense, then-Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said.
Russia sent Shaheds—cheap, propeller-driven, long-range, lumbering in at about 185 kilometers per hour (115 mph)—in mass raids meant to swamp Ukraine's defenses. Ukraine adapted, with mobile fire teams, electronic warfare, and layered engagement, then added interceptor drones that destroy incoming drones for a fraction of a surface-to-air missile's cost.
As Ukraine got better at catching propeller drones, Russia reached for speed—jet-powered versions that fly more than three times faster than the Shaheds Ukraine spent three years learning to intercept.
Iranian-designed Shahed-136 drone hulls at a Russian drone factory. Photo via TWZ
By August, Ukraine's military intelligence said Russia had stopped building the Geran-3 and shifted to the newer jets, producing roughly 3,000 of them a month.
Conventional air defense already handles this
The worry centers on velocity: a jet drone flies several times faster than a propeller-driven or electric one, reducing the time defenders have to detect, identify, and hit it. But the fear aims at the wrong place, said Oleksii Kolesnyk, director of the Ukrainian firm Reactive Drones.
"A jet-powered UAV is, in many ways, similar to a cruise missile. For conventional air defense, jet-powered drones are simply another aerial target," he told Euromaidan Press.
Ukraine's surface-to-air systems routinely intercept cruise missiles. A fast drone is standard work for them—though Zelenskyy said in late August that the jets are the hardest to intercept, and that combat aircraft now mainly protect against them.
The strain lands on the interceptor drones
An interceptor drone, unlike a ground-launched missile, has to chase its target down and ram it, which worked against slow Shaheds. Against something near cruise-missile speed, the geometry breaks.
The problem exists almost only for interceptor drones, Kolesnyk said—they were never designed for these speeds. At jet velocities, guidance, target tracking, and the final homing onto the target all hit technical ceilings, and faster interceptors alone will not fix it.
"New technical solutions will be needed," he said.
Interceptor drones are why Ukraine can answer mass raids without firing a missile worth hundreds of thousands of dollars at each incoming drone. Break that math, and the affordability of Ukraine's whole air defense shifts.
The Defense Ministry's answer
Through the defense-tech accelerator Brave1, Ukraine backed 12 technologies under the EU4UA Defence Tech grant program, offering up to €150,000 each for high-speed interceptors capable of reaching 450 kilometers per hour (about 280 mph) or more.
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That push has since produced candidates. By late August, Ukraine had four interceptor systems built to run down the jets, all already in field testing, Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara said, and the Alexa Spatium had entered service. Ukraine now wants to bring them up to standard and build them in the thousands.
Not a revolution, but an evolution with a long history
Colonel Oleksandr Saienko, a former Ukrainian brigade commander, rejected the idea that any of this is new.
"This is better described as an evolution of unmanned systems rather than a completely new stage of warfare," he said.
Jet drones long predate this war. "The first jet-powered UAVs appeared back in the 1970s," he said, pointing to Soviet reconnaissance drones beginning with the Tu-143 and continuing with the Tu-141 and Tu-243—platforms Ukraine itself later flew in the Donbas war and the full-scale invasion. What has changed is scale, and the problem the drones now solve: arriving before the defender can react.
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Saienko's warning points past the engine.
"The decisive advantage will not belong to whoever simply has a jet engine. It will belong to whoever integrates these platforms into an effective reconnaissance-strike system, protects them against electronic warfare, manufactures them at scale, and keeps costs manageable," he said.
His frame is the kill chain—detect, identify, decide, engage—and every gain in speed compresses that cycle. "If a target is flying at 500 to 700 kilometers per hour, even a delay of several dozen seconds may make interception impossible," he said, adding: "Radars must see sooner, command systems must classify automatically, and operators get less time—until automation becomes a requirement."
Why hasn't every drone gone jet-powered
Speed solves one problem and creates several. "They are simply another category of strike UAV," Kolesnyk said.
"One solution does not replace another."
Oleksii Kolesnyk, Reactive Drones.
Compact turbojets are expensive and hard to source for smaller drones. Bigger airframes have to be reinforced to take the loads and vibration, which adds weight and cost. Fuel burn climbs far above that of the electric or piston drones built for endurance, and higher speed leaves less room for navigation errors.
So, jet drones fill a niche rather than taking over the whole strike fleet. "They are most effective at ranges of roughly 200 to 600 kilometers," Kolesnyk said—fast strikes on high-value or time-sensitive targets, where getting there quickly matters more than flying cheaply or far.
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Ukraine didn't drop first-person-view (FPV) drones when fiber-optic ones arrived, and jam-resistant drones didn't replace the rest. Each capability added a layer rather than erasing the previous one. Saienko expects the same. "The emergence of jet aviation did not eliminate piston-engine aircraft. The same principle applies," he said. Cheap propeller drones are ideal for mass attacks, while jet platforms handle speed.
The next fight is over reaction time
Jet drones force defenders to decide faster, and that is the harder demand. A slow propeller drone is a wasteful target for an expensive missile. A cruise missile demands an instant answer. A jet drone sits in between—and an operator has to sort which weapon meets which target in seconds, while holding scarce interceptors back for the worst threats. Every misjudgment costs something.
"The challenge is no longer only interception—it is detecting, identifying, and assigning the target quickly enough," Saienko said.
Both experts reach the same conclusion from opposite ends: Kolesnyk through the technical limits of the interceptor drone, Saienko through the entire defensive network. Both land on automation—AI-driven target recognition, distributed sensors, and fast data sharing to shrink the gap between spotting a target and hitting it. The winner won't necessarily fly the fastest aircraft. It will process information faster than its opponent.
Over four days at the end of August, Russia fired about 800 jet drones at Ukraine, Ukraine's president said—a type most of Ukraine's cheap interceptors still cannot catch. And the problem won't stay Ukraine's alone. Drones from the same broad Shahed family have already strayed into NATO airspace and turned up in other wars. The interception race Ukraine is running now is one everyone will eventually run.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov that “nothing is possible until the war is over” during their 31 August meeting, a source familiar with the exchange told Reuters.
Siluanov’s return marked the first in-person G20 appearance by Russia’s finance minister since 2022, raising European concerns that Moscow was being treated as a normal partner again. Bessent’s response indicated that renewed contact would not bring economic relief while the war continues, although Washington announced no new sanctions or steps to enforce existing ones.
Bessent and Siluanov met on the sidelines of a G20 finance meeting, a forum of major economies, in Asheville, North Carolina. A US official said the talks focused on President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine. Russia’s Finance Ministry said it discussed Russian-American financial cooperation and work within the G20.
The condition also covered agreements in other areas, Reuters’ source said. Reuters did not specify what form of economic relief Bessent meant. Asked why Washington received Siluanov, White House spokesman Kush Desai said to AFP that the administration was working with Russia to end the bloodshed.
Siluanov last joined a G20 finance meeting virtually in April 2022, prompting Western officials to walk out.
Europe warns against normalization
European officials were preparing further sanctions against Moscow, and German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil said they wanted Washington’s cooperation. He called Siluanov’s reception a “quite troubling” signal and said relations with Russia could not be normalized while the war continued, Reuters reported.
Klingbeil said European officials agreed that dialogue could help deliver a frank message to Moscow. They nevertheless refused to join the customary group photograph with Siluanov, which organizers ultimately took without him.
US eased Russian oil sanctions during Iran war
Washington sanctioned major Russian oil companies in October 2025. After the US-Israeli war with Iran disrupted supplies through the Strait of Hormuz, however, the Treasury issued temporary licenses allowing Russian oil already at sea to reach buyers.
Bessent defended the relief as a way to prevent a sharper oil price spike, while senators warned that it increased Moscow’s war revenue, Euromaidan Press reported. The waiver briefly lapsed in mid-May before Bessent extended it for another 30 days, despite telling European allies he would not do so, according to Politico.
The licenses were intended to stabilize global supplies but also kept revenue flowing to Moscow. Washington has not announced a new Russia-related enforcement measure or timetable following Bessent’s meeting with Siluanov.
The Ukrainian military has debunked a Russian false claim about the alleged capture of Mohrytsia in the Sumy region; our soldiers recorded a video showing the Ukrainian flag flying in the village.
Russian forces have damaged the Orlivka international ferry crossing on the border with Romania for the fourth time since the start of the full-scale invasion.
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