On 22 May, a mechanized battalion of Ukraine's 3rd Assault Brigade—backed by at least two more brigades, the 60th Mechanized and the 66th, attached to the 3rd Army Corps for the operation—attacked Russian positions around the village of Nove, 15 km north of the town of Lyman in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast. Russian drones were heavily jammed that day. Roughly five Ukrainian vehicles were hit, most by fiber-optic drones—the only kind still able to fly.

Nobody outside the Ukrainian army reported it for three months. The first fragmentary accounts surfaced in late August; the full picture only this week. By then the 3rd Army Corps had taken back somewhere between 150 and 240 sq km and wrecked Russian plans for a northern siege of Sloviansk, one of the last two big free cities in Donetsk. Observer Thorkill, writing in Polish, called it a success on an operational scale.

The presence of that Ukrainian armor around Nove, which at the time anchored the right flank of a 100 sq km salient held by regiments of the Russian 20th Combined Arms Army, was an ominous sign for the Russians. After months of careful preparation by the 3rd Army Corps, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) were strong north of Lyman. Russian forces were weak.

This has effectively been a 20-month operation. Ukrainian forces spent that stretch building one of the biggest bunny-ears situations of the war: russian forces pushed in deep enough that abandoning the position became politically and institutionally difficult, but never wide… pic.twitter.com/QxhzWv2v8V

— Vitaly (@M0nstas) September 8, 2026

"The moment AFU could start moving vehicles through the area, the battle was basically over," mapper Vitaly wrote three months later. "Vehicles didn't win it, they showed up because the conditions that had made vehicle movement impossible were already gone." Ukrainian drones were everywhere. And Russian drones, effectively jammed by electronic warfare, could barely fly.

Not everyone reads those months the same way. Thorkill, who tracked the sector throughout, puts the breakthrough at 17 to 18 August, and writes that for most of July and early August the 3rd Corps' attacks were repelled by the Russian 144th Motor Rifle Division. On that account the slow months were not a steady advance. What turned them, he says, is not clear: someone on the Ukrainian side made the difference north of Kolodiazi. He is candid about the limits of what can be seen. Some sources say the Russians withdrew, others deny it, others say they were partly cut off. What he can confirm from satellite imagery is that Ukrainian forces retook Serednie and Zelena Dolyna.

Overextended and pummeled by drones, the Russians barely clung to their salient north of Lyman, which sat between the Nitrius and Zherebets rivers. They were especially exposed at its western edge, where they had pushed across the Nitrius. The Russians had hoped the salient would be a "base for an offensive on Lyman, which could have allowed further offensives to Izium and Sloviansk [and] threatened the northern supply road to Donbas," according to mapper Clément Molin.

The main offensive axis comes from Nove and goes all the way south. We know there are two main support axes, one east and on west. The one east is recent and there are very few proofs, we just know that they nearly reached the Zherebet river.

The one west is known, but there is… pic.twitter.com/t7LG4BGHzO

— Clément Molin (@clement_molin) September 8, 2026

Instead, the salient became a trap as the Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps relentlessly—but quietly—exploited the fragility of the Russian 20th Combined Arms Army. The Russians have now been pushed back toward the Zherebets, leaving behind their uncounted dead ... and their ambitions for a quick northern march on Lyman and then Sloviansk and neighboring Kramatorsk.

It had taken Russian forces 18 months to set the conditions for a push toward Sloviansk from the north. In the three months beginning with that mechanized assault around Nove, the Russians "apparently lost 1.5 years of progress in the area," Vitaly concluded. Estimates of the ground retaken vary: Molin puts it at more than 200 sq km, the AKM Mapping account at 151, and Konrad Muzyka of Rochan Consulting at around 240.

The appearance of Ukrainian armor around Nove in late May was a strong indication that the 3rd Army Corps had the momentum. But that doesn't mean the Corps' eventual victory in the battle for the Lyman salient was a foregone conclusion. On paper, the Russians have a manpower and firepower advantage in Donetsk.

A bridgehead too far

The 20th Combined Arms Army advanced too far, too fast. And the terrain favored the Ukrainian defenders, who could pluck at the Russians' supply lines from entrenched positions until the time was right for a counterattack.

"Russia putting itself inside a deep, narrow pocket only made the final phase easier," Vitaly explained. "Once AFU had enough control over the surrounding movement, every new Russian mission sent into the area walked into a reinforced perception trap—troops committed to hold positions that existed far more convincingly in reports than as a functioning front."

The silence

What kept the trap working was that nobody talked about it. The Ukrainian general staff said nothing. Pro-Ukrainian analysts, who normally map every advance within hours, held their tongues until late August. So did the Russians.

Observer Andrew Perpetua, who has followed Ukraine's other quiet operations around Kupiansk and in southern Donetsk, called this one tighter still. The Lyman operation "seemed even more protected since even the most in the know and honest Russian reporters seem to be missing it. Or at least silent about it," he wrote. "It was honestly shocking to watch how out of the loop the Russians really were, which I think is in large part due to the collective action of OSINT to avoid speaking about the situation."

Perpetua's reading is that the lying is heaviest exactly where Russian forces are being pushed back. Nearby Sviatohirsk is the case in point. Vladimir Putin recently announced its capture. On 7 September, the commander of the 3rd Army Corps, Brig. Gen. Andrii Biletskyi, walked around the town on camera.

The 3rd Army Corps cut across the salient around three weeks ago, reaching the northern edge of Kolodiazi and trapping an unknown number of Russian stragglers between the Ukrainian vanguard and the old Russian bridgehead. Most of the encircled Russians appear to have escaped. "There is a large area where there may still be Russian soldiers," Molin warned. "Most of the villages westwards have been cleared, but not the treelines."

On 24 August the Ukrainians mounted a second mechanized attack, so the operation has not stopped. But the 3rd Army Corps is likely shifting from attacking to consolidating and defending—and clearing out the Russian stragglers that, left alone, could sow chaos in the new gray zone that was once a Russian salient.

Russian channels have started to admit the problem. Rybar wrote of "problems near Lyman," conceding that Ukrainian units have been attacking southward from Ridkodub for months and that Russian forces "do not even control the airspace immediately near the front line." The fighting continues, but on Ukraine's terms, for now.

How much it changes is the one thing the analysts do not agree on. "This is one of the most important victory for Ukraine in 2026," Molin wrote, a victory that "will delay the offensive on northern Donbas." Thorkill, in the same post that called it an operational-scale success and rated it larger than the 7th Rapid Reaction Corps' gains near Velyka Novosilka in July, ends on the opposite note: it will not, he writes, affect in any way the situation of Ukrainian forces on the direction that matters most at present, the Kramatorsk agglomeration.

A Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship cruise missile struck the Russian missile frigate Admiral Essen in the port of Novorossiysk in southern Russia overnight on 8–9 September, the Ukrainian navy claimed. Satellite imagery published by the Ukrainian open-source group Exilenova+ shows fires and apparent damage consistent with the claim. How badly the ship is hurt is unclear.

But if the navy is correct and one of its truck-launched Neptunes hit Admiral Essen, it would be a major victory for Ukraine—and a major loss for Russia. Pummeled by Ukrainian missiles and drones, the Russian Black Sea Fleet has lost or had damaged around a third of its combat strength, by Ukraine's own reckoning. No more than eight of the surviving vessels carry launchers for launching the fleet's best missile: the Kalibr cruise missile.

Taking out those eight Kalibr shooters—two frigates, three corvettes, and as many as three submarines—is a top priority for Ukraine. Preserving the Kalibr ships is one of Russia's top priorities as it escalates its bombardment of Ukrainian cities, factories, warehouses, and power plants.

And the frigate wasn't the only ship in the target set. Ukraine's general staff confirmed hits on three vessels—Admiral Essen, the minesweeper Zheleznyakov, and the landing ship Pyotr Morgunov—along with fuel-oil storage at the port. Exilenova+ reads the imagery as showing two more Kalibr carriers hit: a Kalibr-armed Buyan-M corvette knocked out of action, and fresh damage to sister frigate Admiral Makarov.

To be clear, it's evident the Ukrainians have already hit Admiral Essen and Admiral Makarov. A Ukrainian drone raid targeting Novorossiysk on 12 August resulted in what appeared to be direct hits to the forward missile cells on both ships.

Admiral Essen and Admiral Makarov can launch as many as eight of the 2,500-km Kalibrs at a time from these 3S14 cells. Damage the cells, and the frigates can no longer threaten Ukraine. At least until the Russians can effect repairs. Ukraine's military intelligence directorate described this week's damage as a fire on Admiral Essen's deck superstructure—not its missile cells.

Novorossiysk. Probable defeat of the Russian frigate, missile carrier - "Admiral Essen" by "Neptune". pic.twitter.com/C3yUSxyVFR

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) September 10, 2026

Hitting one of the frigates with a 900-km/h Neptune's 260-kg warhead, as opposed to the much lighter warhead on a much slower drone, could do more than temporarily sideline the ship. It may cause irreparable damage, effectively removing the vessel from the Black Sea Fleet's dwindling order of battle.

Recall that a pair of Neptunes from a much earlier batch of the increasingly powerful missile sank the Russian missile cruiser Moskva in April 2022, initiating the ongoing battle over the Black Sea that has seen the Russians gradually lose irreplaceable ships—and gradually pull back surviving vessels into Novorossiysk's protected basin.

Unsafe haven

Novorossiysk, 350 km from the southern front line, is safer for Russian ships than are, say, the ports of occupied Crimea. But it's not actually safe. Ukrainian drones and missiles routinely target the port and the dozens of ships moored inside.

Most of the Ukrainian munitions miss or get shot down. Undeterred, Ukrainian deep strike forces have only intensified their strikes. Launching more Neptunes would represent another escalation. Drones damage. Neptunes destroy.

Even if one or more Neptunes finally took Admiral Essen out of action this week, there's more work left to do. The Russians normally fire fewer than 10 Kalibrs as part of the mix of missiles and drones they hurl at Ukrainian cities once a week or so.

A single frigate can fire eight Kalibrs at a time. So can a single corvette. A submarine might fire four Kalibrs. Even with Admiral Essen off the board, the carriers that may still be combat-capable can put 16 to 20 Kalibrs into the air at once, per Defence Express. Before 2022 the theoretical figure was 76.

Ukraine's navy puts the number in the same range. On 21 August, spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk counted three surface ships and two submarines able to fire Kalibrs, with both frigates excluded as damaged. He also noted the fleet used its missile carriers once in August, down from three times in July, and now fires from inside protected harbors rather than putting to sea.

But more and better Neptunes may be coming to Novorossiysk. More Kalibr shooters may burn. Ukrainian missile-maker Luch Design Bureau has steadily improved the Neptune with greater range and payload while also increasing production. An open-source tally published by Ukrainska Pravda counted 26 verified Neptune hits on Russian land targets between 2023 and mid-2026.

Ukraine seems determined to eventually reduce the Black Sea Fleet's Kalibr capacity to zero. It will take time and many more strikes, of course. How soon the Ukrainians can send more Neptunes to Novorossiysk may determine how many more Kalibrs blast Ukrainian cities.

Kramatorsk and Sloviansk are the last two big cities in the Donbas that Russia does not hold, and taking them has been the main Russian objective in eastern Ukraine since 2022. Ukraine is now moving forces north from the southeast to defend them.

The 46th Airmobile Brigade began that move in July. The first outside confirmation came this week.

Shifting north to plug a gap between two Ukrainian corps, the brigade could protect adjacent units as they retreat a short distance from what's left of Chasiv Yar—a battleground since the spring of 2024—and straighten the Ukrainian line where the 11th and 19th Corps meet. Both corps now sit under Biletskyi's new force grouping, according to Unit Observer—a command relationship no Ukrainian outlet has reported and which open sources cannot independently confirm.

Zooming out, the reshuffle around Kostiantynivka runs alongside a wider effort to redistribute Ukrainian troops along the 1,200-km gray zone threading through southern, eastern, and northern Ukraine. Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi took over as commander-in-chief on 22 July, arriving with a mandate to unwind the Soviet-inherited command model Ukraine has fought this war with, and a reputation for favoring decentralized command. The 46th began moving before he did, in early July, according to Unit Observer, so this redeployment is not his. But the 33rd Assault Regiment was partially reassigned to Biletskyi's corps after the handover.

The best-case scenario is that the redeployment helps stabilize the front 16 km south of Kramatorsk, delaying the Russian siege of that city and Sloviansk to the north. In the worst case, the 46th Airmobile Brigade and its thousands of troops are too few and too late to make much of a difference as the Center Group of Forces and its tens of thousands of troops grind through Ukrainian defenses on their slow march toward Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

The 46th Airmobile Brigade spent years fighting in southeastern Ukraine. But it's arguably no longer needed along the southern end of the gray zone after a Ukrainian counteroffensive that kicked off in February halted and then rolled back Russian forces, stabilizing what was once Ukraine's most vulnerable flank.

Free to fight elsewhere, the brigade began its move north toward Kostiantynivka and Chasiv Yar two months ago. The move happened almost entirely in secret. "Strict OPSEC measures have become the standard for the Ukrainian armed forces in 2026," mapper Unit Observer noted, "with units delaying posts up to several months to avoid giving away their relocation along the front line."

That discipline is now visible across the whole Ukrainian effort. The southeastern counteroffensive that freed up this brigade ran for six months with very few videos and small teams. Ukraine's Swedish radar planes flew combat sorties for half a year before the defense ministry said so. A brigade crossing the front unremarked for two months is the same practice, applied to ground forces.

Since May 2022, Donbas has been the main military objective pursued by Russia , which concentrated its firepower and forces in the industrial region

The battle for Donbas has now been going on for 13 years, while Russia hopes to capture the last remaining cities (Kramatorsk,… pic.twitter.com/0fk3DTqGDS

— Clément Molin (@clement_molin) September 4, 2026

Confirmed moves

Recent videos confirmed the deployment. The 46th Airmobile is now in position just north of the ruins of Kostiantynivka and just west of the ruins of Chasiv Yar, which lie 11 km northeast of Kostiantynivka. Sitting astride the juncture between two Ukrainian corps, the 11th and 19th, the brigade is set to play a crucial role in the ongoing Ukrainian defense of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

According to Unit Observer, the 46th Airmobile Brigade's move "will likely support the gradual retreat of elements of the 24th Mechanized Brigade remaining between Chasiv Yar and the village of Stinky," 6 km west of Chasiv Yar. The 24th Mechanized Brigade has fought long and hard in and around Chasiv Yar to hold back a much larger Russian force. But incremental Russian advances north and south of the 24th Mechanized Brigade's positions have put the brigade at risk of partial encirclement.

It's a dangerous position for the weary brigade. If it could fall back to the west a few kilometers, it could eliminate the risk to its flanks—and straighten and shorten the overall Ukrainian line. It's possible the 46th Airmobile Brigade's job is to safeguard the short retreat.

The command and control process is deceptively complex, and the confusion is exactly the kind Drapatyi is trying to engineer out. Ukraine's new corps are supposed to be its highest front-line commands, coordinating the brigades, regiments, and battalions fighting in the same sectors. But in the areas where two corps meet, it may be unclear which corps is in charge.

Ukraine's answer has been to add a layer above the corps. On 26 August, Zelenskyy announced that two reinforced groupings would take over the defense of Donetsk Oblast, commanded by Denys Prokopenko of the 1st National Guard "Azov" Corps and Andrii Biletskyi of the 3rd Army Corps, both named Heroes of Ukraine.

The 3rd Corps' zone of responsibility has grown daily since the start of the year, its deputy commander Lt. Col. Rodion Kudriashov told NV, and he framed the new groupings as Ukraine scaling up what already works.

The grouping formalizes an arrangement that had already grown up in practice. The 46th Airmobile Brigade fits the same logic. It belongs to neither the 11th nor the 19th Corps—it is an 8th Air Assault Corps unit—but it is a brigade that works, freed by an offensive that worked, arriving in the sector that matters most. It is also arriving into a corps run by its own former commander: Brig. Gen. Valeriy Skred, recently given the 19th, led the 46th through 2022 and 2023.

Only time will tell whether the reshuffling of Ukrainian forces will bolster the defense of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. And even if the redeployments do stiffen the Ukrainian line south of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, they do nothing to stiffen the line north of the twin cities.

Russian troops are closing in from that direction, too. Fortunately for the Ukrainians, there's a separate plan for that northern sector. A carefully planned series of Ukrainian counterattacks has quietly cut across a salient of Russian troops marching on Sloviansk.

The Ukrainian attacks may compel the Russians to pull back a short distance. That could give the defenders of Sloviansk more space and time to prepare for the coming siege.

The Ukrainian air force's Swedish-made Saab ASC 890 radar early warning planes have been flying combat sorties since March, the Ukrainian defense ministry has revealed—six months of operations Kyiv kept quiet. Sweden donated the pair of planes as part of a $1.25-billion aid package Stockholm announced in May 2024.

It is the first airborne radar Ukraine has ever operated. It is not the first one Ukraine has built. The Antonov An-71 flew from the Sviatoshyn factory airfield in Kyiv on 12 July 1985, a radar plane designed and assembled in the city it would have defended. The airframe worked—one prototype logged 362 flights. The radar, built by VEGA in Moscow, never did. Funding died with the Soviet Union. Of three prototypes, one was scrapped, one sits in storage at Antonov, and one is in the State Aviation Museum in Kyiv, the only An-71 in any collection anywhere.

The two twin-propeller ASC 890s with their top-mounted radars are a powerful addition to Ukraine's aerial arsenal. Cruising at around 6 km, the radar planes can detect and track aerial targets out to 450 km—roughly 350 km against fighter-size targets in heavy jamming—and hold 1,000 airborne and 500 surface tracks at once. Their Link 16 radio data links relay target data to the air force's Lockheed Martin F-16s, Dassault Mirage 2000s and Saab Gripens.

But there's a problem, one the Russians know all too well. Radar early warning planes are big, slow and the opposite of stealthy. Radiating electromagnetic energy from high altitude, they're easy for enemy forces to locate. Hitting them is harder given how far from the front line a radar plane typically flies. But a missile with sufficient range could do the job.

And that's why Ukraine's ASC 890 crews should worry. The more they fly and contribute to Ukraine's air defense operations, the harder the Russians may try to shoot them down.

The risk isn't theoretical. The Russian air force went to war with as few as seven of its own Beriev A-50U radar early warning planes. The lumbering aircraft tracked Ukrainian warplanes and helped vector Russian fighters to intercept.

The Ukrainians fought back. A Ukrainian drone damaged an A-50U on the ground in Belarus in February 2023. In January 2024, a long-range Ukrainian missile—reportedly a American-made Patriot—shot down an A-50U over the Sea of Azov in southern Ukraine. Six weeks later, in February 2024, another Ukrainian missile, an ex-Soviet S-200, struck a third A-50U in the air in the same area.

The Russians learned the hard way that the A-50Us can't survive within the roughly 250-km range of Ukraine's best air defenses. The A-50Us redeployed deeper into the Russian interior. Today they mostly patrol the likeliest routes for incoming Ukrainian cruise missiles targeting strategic industries along the Volga River.

No retreat

Ukraine's ASC 890s can't retreat the way Russia's A-50Us have done. Russia is big. Comparatively, Ukraine is small. The Russian air force's best R-37M air-to-air missiles, fired by Sukhoi Su-35 and Mikoyan MiG-31 fighters, fly as far as the ASC 890's radar detects. To be useful, the Ukrainian radar planes must operate inside the envelope of the R-37M.

It's apparent how the ASC 890s can help the Ukrainian war effort. They can detect and track incoming Russian drones and cruise missiles, giving ground- and air-based defenses time to get into position to intercept. The Swedish-made planes could work alongside F-16s to stage complex aerial ambushes like the kind the F-16s pulled off with help from a ground-based Patriot battery back in July. That ambush took out a Russian Su-35.

So far Ukraine has won that gamble. The ASC 890s have flown combat sorties for six months without a loss—and for most of that time, nobody outside the Ukrainian air force knew they were flying at all. The silence may have been part of the protection. It has now ended.

But each sortie is a gamble. As long as the Russian air force can push Sukhois and MiGs armed with R-37Ms close to the disputed gray zone in Ukraine, the ASC 890s could be targets. Nor is the R-37M the only threat: analysts have flagged Russia's S-300V4 surface-to-air system and its Krasukha-4 jammers as risks to the Swedish planes. Ukraine's ground-based Patriots and S-200s and air-launched AIM-120 missiles could push the Sukhois and MiGs farther back, but all of those missiles are in short supply.

But even a more favorable aerial environment wouldn't fully protect the ASC 890s. Ukrainian drones and missiles have destroyed or damaged several Russian A-50Us on the ground at their airfields. Between missions, the ASC 890s are just as exposed to Russian drones and missiles.

Russia is launching more of its best jet-propelled attack drones and miniature cruise missiles at Ukrainian ports, cities, warehouses, and power plants. The speedy Geran-3, Geran-4, and Geran-5 drones and Banderol missiles can zoom right past Ukraine's ground-based guns and slower interceptor drones, so the Ukrainian air force is deploying more supersonic fighters to chase down the Russian munitions.

But there's a problem. The Ukrainian jets are running short of the missiles that work best against them.

A deepening shortage of infrared-guided AIM-9 missiles and radar-guided AIM-120 missiles for the Ukrainian air force's ex-European Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters has been reported elsewhere. Less well known is what has been happening to the Soviet-era missiles carried by Ukraine's older Mikoyan MiG-29 fighters.

The F-16 is probably the most numerous Ukrainian fighter type, with around 50 in service. But the MiG-29 is a close second. Despite steep losses of MiG-29s in the 55 months since Russia widened its war on Ukraine, Ukrainian aviation brigades may still fly dozens of the classic Soviet-made fighters. MiG-29s are daily sights in the sky over the port of Odesa in southern Ukraine as the twin-engine fighters chase down Russian missiles and drones.

The missile shortage spreading to F-16s really concerns me.
Because at the same time out of nowhere we are seeing Ukrainian MiGs flying combat sorties with older R-60 missiles and not R-73s.

Here’s a recent video of an R-60 being used against a banderol cruise missile : pic.twitter.com/UMhtXW2o2p

— capt. Wild Bill Kelso (@_wild_billkelso) September 4, 2026

The MiG-29 can carry the full array of Soviet-style air-to-air missiles in the Ukrainian inventory including the infrared-guided R-60 and R-73 and the radar-guided R-27. But the missile of choice for intercepting the 500 km/hr Gerans and 700 km/hr Banderols is the more modern R-73. The $300,000 heat-seeking missile is maneuverable and accurate at the close ranges that are typical of fighter-on-drone engagements. Its one known weakness is cloud: a Ukrainian pilot said in 2022 that the R-73 tracks poorly through it, which is part of why pilots sometimes fall back on the cannon.

Ukraine went to war in 2022 with substantial stocks of R-73s and surely received additional copies from allies. While Ukrainian industry built some components for the 1980s-vintage missiles, they were and still are assembled in Russia—so the supply is finite. And the rate of expenditure rose sharply as Ukraine pushed the R-73 into roles it was never built for: onto ground-based launchers, after the 9M33 missiles for its Soviet Osa air defense systems ran short, and even onto some of its robotic boats.

Down to the 1970s stock

The sign of that pressure is the return of the R-60—a missile designed in the 1970s and considered obsolete when Russia widened the war. Last month an R-60 was visible in the wreckage following the crash of a Ukrainian MiG-29. And this week, video circulated of a MiG-29 downing a Banderol with one at extremely low altitude.

Ukraine's air force had enough R-73s in 2022 that nobody expected to see R-60s again. Continuous interception of Russian cruise missiles and Shahed-type drones changed that, Militarnyi reported. Nor is this improvisation: since November 2025 Ukraine has been running a program to modernize the R-60, replacing analog seeker components with digital ones to sharpen its infrared sensitivity, and adapting it for ground launch. Ihor Fedirko of the Ukrainian Council of Defense Industry called it a temporary way to put otherwise unusable missiles to work.

It's not that the R-60 isn't suitable for downing a Geran or Banderol. It's that it's less suitable than an R-73. "I don't think Ukraine would be using R-60 missiles unless it had nothing else left," one close observer of the Ukrainian air force noted.

The only other alternative is for a fighter to use its gun. But that's risky, as the pilot must fly dangerously close to a drone or missile before opening fire; the resulting explosion could take out both the interceptee and the interceptor.

In the same way Russia is exhausting Ukraine's long-range surface-to-air missile batteries by firing more ballistic missiles than Ukrainian forces can intercept with their dwindling supply of Patriot missiles, Russia may also be exhausting Ukraine's fighters and their limited stocks of short-range air-to-air missiles.

As the Ukrainian missiles run out, more of the Russian missiles and drones get through—and strike their targets.

I’m not a missile expert but the missile on the left looks like an R-60. Perhaps Ukraine was trying to burn through some old R-60s it had and one malfunctioned.
It could also just be An R-27 but I don’t know.
The missile on the right looks to be an R-73 pic.twitter.com/yyZ0tSmaf4

— capt. Wild Bill Kelso (@_wild_billkelso) August 11, 2026

The problem is going to get worse before it gets better. Russian industry is ramping up production of both the jet-propelled Geran models and the Banderol, and jet output overtook piston output in August. The Russians launched a reported 1,500 jet Gerans in July and 2,500 in August. Interception rates for the fast drones specifically ran as low as 50% in July, though they may have ticked up to 60% or even 70%.

But that's still too low considering that Ukrainian air defenders usually shoot down 90% of slower propeller-driven Geran-1s and Geran-2s. "Nobody wants interception rates in the 60s/70s," explained Michael Bohnert, an analyst for the RAND think tank in California.

New models of faster interceptor drones, which several Ukrainian manufacturers are scrambling to deliver to front-line forces, may help restore the 90% kill rate for even the fastest Gerans. But "jet-interceptor output has been behind jet-drone output," Bohnert noted. So it's likely that, for a few months at least, the Russians will have the numerical edge, and the Ukrainians will have no choice but to continue sortieing F-16s and MiG-29s to reinforce ground-launched air defenses.

But what happens when the fighters run out of even their oldest missiles?

Ukraine has lost a quarter of its German-designed Leopard 1A5 tanks. But it could get many more of the nimble, 40-ton tanks. And some could have brand-new turrets that make them lighter, faster, farther-shooting, and more survivable.

The hulls are 1980s West German. The refurbishment is done in Germany, the air defense turrets are built in Rome, the tank turrets are designed in Belgium, and one of the two programs is paid for out of frozen Russian assets. Ukraine's newest armored vehicles are being assembled from the leftovers of a war Europe spent forty years preparing for and never fought.

In 2023, a German-Danish-Dutch consortium pledged 170 Leopard 1A5s to Ukraine. The 1980s-vintage tanks have come from German, Danish, and Belgian surplus stocks.

Refurbished in Germany by tank-maker Rheinmetall and fitted with add-on anti-drone armor in Ukraine, the first 135 or so Leopard 1A5s now equip at least five units: the 44th Mechanized Brigade, 5th Heavy Mechanized Brigade, the 425th Assault Regiment, the 142nd Mechanized Brigade, and the 13th National Guard Brigade.

Losses have been heavy. The Russians have struck no fewer than 37 of the four-person tanks, destroying at least 30 of them. The 44th Mechanized Brigade, which is fighting a defensive action south of the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast, has been hit the hardest. The brigade has written off around half of its original allotment of 31 or so Leopard 1A5s.

Another 35 Leopard 1A5s from the 2023 pledge should eventually reach Ukrainian units, potentially making good those losses.

But Kyiv is diverting some of those initial 170 Leopard 1A5s to a pair of conversion programs that are reinforcing Ukraine's air defense while also re-equipping the ground forces with a new generation of tank.

The first conversion program, overseen by Rheinmetall, plucks the old turrets with their 105-millimeter cannons off some Leopard 1A5s and drops in a new turret with a faster-firing 35-millimeter anti-aircraft gun. Effectively a next-generation Gepard, the resulting Skyranger 35 is a mobile, armored drone-killer that can post up between Russian drone launch sites and Ukrainian cities in order to down incoming Geran drones before they can strike.

Its revolver cannon fires 1,000 rounds a minute out to 4 km, using airburst ammunition that scatters tungsten pellets in the path of an incoming drone. An unnamed EU country is paying for the systems out of proceeds from frozen Russian assets, and Rheinmetall builds them at its subsidiary in Rome. Germany's own army has ordered 19 and is discussing hundreds more; Ukraine's arrived first.

The first imagery of a Skyranger 35 in Ukrainian service circulated online this week, with the 1020th Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment.

It seems that Ukraine's 1020th Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment which belongs to the Ground Forces has taken delivery of the first Skyranger 35 SPAAGs mounted on a Leopard 1 chassis made by @RheinmetallAG.

A contract for the delivery of the Skyranger 35 SPAAGs was signed in H2 of… pic.twitter.com/VRWhGx1LCa

— GAU (@deaidua) September 3, 2026

Old tank, new turret

The second conversion program won't produce combat-ready vehicles for another year or so. This program will swap out the turrets on 31 Leopard 1A5s. The new turret, produced by John Cockerill Defense in Belgium, is unmanned: the commander and gunner move down into the hull alongside the driver, and an autoloader replaces the human loader. That drops the crew from four to three and takes everyone out of the part of the tank most likely to be hit.

A spokesperson from Cockerill confirmed to me at Eurosatory that the company has been contracted to deliver 30 C3105 turret to Ukraine to be mounted on the countries Leopard 1 main battle tanks.

The first five systems will be delivered in June of 2027 with the remainder to be… https://t.co/uAAIUR1ZDr pic.twitter.com/mnLxXSJBcb

— Jeff2146 (@Jeff21461) June 15, 2026

The new turret is welded from ballistic aluminum instead of steel, shaving three tons off the tank's 40 and freeing weight for reactive armor, anti-drone netting, or electronic warfare kit.

As a bonus, the 105-millimeter gun in the multi-million-dollar Cockerill 3105 turret also elevates far higher than the gun in the existing turret—42 degrees, against roughly 20 on the original. That confers greater range when a tank functions as artillery, firing its cannon at targets over the horizon: Cockerill says no other Western main battle tank can shoot indirectly the way this one does, and Ukrainian trials reached 10 km from a covered position.

Kyiv has ordered 30 of the turrets and holds one more it bought for testing last year. Some time in 2027, that is a battalion of new medium tanks: a cutting-edge turret on a chassis built when Leonid Brezhnev was alive.

To provide hulls for the 31 Cockerill-converted Leopard 1A5s while also sustaining the Skyranger 35 program, Ukraine must make a choice. Combined, the two programs need potentially 50 or more tank chassis, but just 35 Leopard 1A5s from the initial 170-tank pledge are still in the queue for delivery to Ukraine.

Ukraine's ground forces are already short on tanks; taking Leopard 1A5s from the five brigades and regiments that operate the type could deprive those units of desperately needed firepower. Fortunately for Ukraine, there are still hundreds of old Leopard 1A5s in warehouses in Europe and farther abroad—and Rheinmetall is pulling the Skyranger hulls from storage rather than from Ukraine's active fleet.

French historian Stevius made a count and concluded "the stocks in Europe are far from exhausted." As recently as 2022, German firm Flensburger Fahrzeugbau Gesellschaft held 99 Leopard 1A5s. Rheinmetall held 88 of the tanks in 2022 and, in 2023, bought 50 more from OIP Land Systems in Belgium. That's 237 tanks: 67 more than the Europeans pledged to the Ukrainians in 2023.

Some of those 67 excess Leopard 1A5 hulls are unusable owing to rust and other wear and tear. Even so, there should be enough Leopard 1A5s left in Europe to feed the Skyranger and Cockerill conversion efforts. And once those run out, there are still some ex-Italian and ex-Greek Leopard 1A5s that Ukraine could acquire.

And if it can secure the financing, Ukraine could convert those additional tanks—or even some of its existing ones—into faster, farther-firing Leopard 1A5s with Cockerill C3105 turrets. Cockerill has already proposed doing the whole active fleet, around 100 tanks.

In August, Russian gains ticked upward in key sectors along the 1,200-km front line of Russia's 55-month wider war on Ukraine.

The coming winter could slow Russian advances as the trees lose their leaves and infantry infiltrators have nothing to conceal them from overhead drones. But for the next month or two, the trees will still have their leaves, and the infiltrators will still have their cover.

And that means, as fall wears into winter, Ukraine may lose yet more ground in the north and especially in Donbas region in the east, where Russia enjoys a substantial manpower and firepower advantage. "Russian forces still hold the operational initiative and are slowly capturing ... Donetsk Oblast as well as border zones in Sumy and Kharkiv Oblasts," mapper Thorkill warned.

The Russian gains belie a greater truth, however. In the middle of the fifth year of wider war, the situation on the ground only changes along the margins even as thousands die.

According to Thorkill's tally, the Russians occupied just under 220 square km of Ukrainian soil in August. That's 25% more territory than they captured in July. "The situation has deteriorated sharply in the Donbas in August," mapper Clément Molin explained.

Un été difficile en Ukraine , en cause, des décisions politiques contestables.

Après un printemps bien géré par Kyiv (aide financière de l'UE, bonne situation au front, frappes réussies à l'arrière), l'été a vu un nombre de mauvaises nouvelles pour l'Ukraine.

La décision… pic.twitter.com/gFe7zJqS39

— Clément Molin (@clement_molin) August 30, 2026

To be fair, the Russians are advancing much more slowly than they did a year ago. "Compared to August 2025, Russian gains are down by nearly half," Molin noted. That's cold comfort to Ukrainian civilians and defenders in the areas where the Russians are still gaining ground, however. And the sheer proximity of the most aggressive Russian formations to the most vulnerable Ukrainian settlements means it might not take much more effort on the part of the Russians to turn these settlements into battlegrounds.

The Russians' main effort is still directed at the last big free cities in Donetsk. Inching forward at great cost from several directions, Russian forces are slowly closing a pincer around Kramatorsk and Sloviansk and the tens of thousands of civilians who still live in the adjacent cities.

Thorkill's map places the forwardmost Russian forces in Mykolaivka, just 4 km east of Sloviansk. This is the middle joint of the Russian pincer. The pincer's southern claw is a zone of disputed control stretching along the road between the ruins of the city of Kostiantynivka and the battleground town of Oleksiievo-Druzhkivka.

If the Russians can march through Oleksiievo-Druzhkivka, they can lay siege to the town of Druzhkivka, a few kilometers to the northwest. If they can capture Druzhkivka, they can turn north and assault Kramatorsk, a mere 6 km away.

Podsumowanie sierpnia 2026 r. wojny rosyjsko-ukraińskiej.

W sierpniu 2026 r. według wyliczeń rus konta tg Creamy_Caprice (wykres poniżej), rus wojska zdobyły niecałe 220 km kw. Był to wzrost dynamiki ich zdobyczy terenowych w stosunku do lipca (176 km kw) o 25 proc. Według… pic.twitter.com/N56TsXJrOv

— Thorkill (@Thorkill65) September 2, 2026

Ukrainian counterattacks

The most fragile part of the claw is to the north. Bucking the overall trend of Russian gains in August, Ukrainian forces counterattacked in several sectors the same month. Most dramatically, a clutch of Ukrainian mechanized and air assault brigades extended a slow advance through the town of Nove, mostly cutting across a 100-square-km salient of Russian forces around 25 km northeast of Sloviansk.

The Nove counterattacks offer some hope that targeted Ukrainian action may slow the Russian march on Sloviansk and Kramatorsk from the north. Meanwhile, a reshuffling of Ukrainian units south of Kramatorsk could improve Ukrainian defenses against an assault on the twin cities from the south.

As new Ukrainian commander-in-chief Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi gradually addresses some of the imbalances in the Ukrainian ground forces, certain key units are getting help. Most notably, the 425th Assault Regiment is now subordinate to the 1st Azov Corps, which is responsible for the defense of Kramatorsk.

Keenly aware that the Russians intend to slowly infiltrate front-line settlements with small teams of infantry rather than rushing them with masses of easily-droned armored vehicles, the 1st Azov Corps has assigned the aggressive 425th Assault Regiment "to clear enemy infiltrators from the brigades’ areas of defense," the corps stated.

Infiltrators aren't the only problem, however. The Russians' favorite tactic combines small teams of infantry with massive aerial firepower in the form of precision-guided KAB glide bombs flung by supersonic Sukhoi Su-34 fighter bombers.

"Glide bombs hurt," Ukraine's 4th National Guard Brigade reported. "It's about 200 kg of explosives flying your way. And you can't really shoot them down like you can shoot down drones. They can collapse fortified buildings, bunkers, and entire urban blocks much more effectively than artillery."

After the dust settles from the glide bomb impacts, Russian infantry "infiltrate through the damaged areas, using the ruins for cover and concealment," the national guard brigade explained.

The same lack of long-range air defenses that exposes Ukrainian cities to relentless Russian bombardment also deprives front-line forces of protection from the Su-34s and their glide bombs. And so the Russians can keep bombing and keep infiltrating as long as the trees offer some concealment for the infantry.

The clock is ticking. The Russians will aim to position their forces for more direct assaults on Kramatorsk and Sloviansk no later than next year. The Ukrainians will aim to slow down the Russians, trading a little space for more time. Time Drapatyi may use to institute further reforms in the Ukrainian ground forces.

Zooming out and taking the long view, no one should expect major changes on the map of Russia's wider war as the fifth year of fighting grinds toward the sixth. Yes, the last two big free cities in the Donbas are in trouble. But "the overall situation remains unchanged since October 2023," Thorkill wrote.

The Russians slowly advance. The Ukrainians slowly fall back. And losses deepen on both sides.

Desperately short of missiles for its roughly 10 Patriot air defense batteries, Ukraine has just a few options as colder weather looms—and the Russians prepare to fire even more hard-to-intercept Iskander ballistic missiles at Ukrainian cities and power plants.

The Iskander is a unique threat, and Ukraine is uniquely vulnerable. The Patriot is one of just a few systems that stands any chance of hitting an incoming Iskander as the Russian missile barrels in at six or seven times the speed of sound. And the Patriot is, or was, the most plentiful anti-ballistic interceptor. It usually takes two or three of them to bring down one Iskander.

Then came Iran. Coalition forces fired an average of 225 interceptors a day during the first four days of the war against Lockheed Martin's production rate of 1.7 a day, the Foreign Policy Research Institute calculated—a 132-to-one gap between use and manufacture. Lockheed built 620 Patriots in all of 2025. And every Patriot the Americans fire at an Iranian missile is a Patriot Ukraine won't be able to fire at a Russian missile.

Ukrainian batteries have so few missiles that air defenders can do little more than watch as the 3.8-ton Iskanders and other heavy Russian missiles barrel in. "This is a really heartbreaking sight when you have equipment but you're not able to intercept any missile," Dmytro, the chief engineer of Ukraine's Patriot fleet, told CNN. "Ballistic missiles are flying over your head and you are not able to do anything with it, and behind you, there are civilians." He first ran out of interceptors in December 2025.

Across the 39-day campaign, CSIS estimates 1,060 to 1,430 Patriots were expended—more than half the US prewar inventory. At Lockheed's rate, replacing them takes three years.

And a Patriot cannot be conjured. A single PAC-3 MSE takes about 24 months to build, its solid rocket motor 30. In January the Pentagon signed a seven-year deal for Lockheed to reach 2,000 Patriots a year—by 2030, by which point the Russo-Ukrainian war will be eight years old. Far too late to save Ukraine from the coming hard winter.

The Ukrainian air force has two other batteries that can intercept ballistic missiles, both French-Italian SAMP/Ts, and they are short of missiles too. France agreed in November to send eight next-generation SAMP/Ts over two years—a schedule, not a stockpile.

Winter looms

The interceptor crisis will only worsen as winter looms and the supply of electricity for residential heating once again becomes a matter of life and death for millions of Ukrainians. Iskanders "could hit all significant non-nuclear electricity generation," Jakub Janovsky, a Czech military analyst, explained to Euromaidan Press. The Kremlin has cut production of several other missile types—including, as Euromaidan Press reported this month, the Kinzhal—to pour more into the Iskander.

"I wanted to secure 300 missiles for the Patriot systems as part of the winter package. The request from our Air Force is for 360," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told journalists on 23 August, in remarks posted to X. "But when only 600 are produced a year, 360 is not easy to obtain." He has asked Washington for 5% or 10% of the US stockpile, and says Ukraine will pay. By his own account it holds about 1%.

Russia could have up to 1,300 ballistic missiles a year. Right now, they have 600–630. We have an approximate understanding of the volume they are counting on from today and through the end of winter. Roughly speaking, they could have 100 ballistic missiles a month. But they are…

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) August 23, 2026

What are Ukraine's non-Patriot options?

Its own ballistic interceptor

Frantic for air defenses, Ukraine is developing its own. In May, Kyiv munitions-maker Fire Point unveiled Freya, a pan-European anti-ballistic project built around the FP-7.x—a 7.25-m composite interceptor derived from the company's FP-7 surface-to-surface missile. Cued by European radars and guided in the final moments by an infrared seeker from Germany's Diehl Defence, it is meant to cost around $700,000 a shot against a Patriot's $3.8 million.

Fire Point had run at least five tests by the end of July, and co-founder Denys Shtilerman told the Financial Times mass production could begin as early as this month. But the first attempt at intercepting an actual ballistic target is planned for around July 2027—a winter away, and then some. Infrared guidance is also reckoned less reliable than radar, since spoofing can mislead the seeker.

Sanctions on the Iskander supply chain

Sanctions may seem attractive, and there is a narrow chokepoint. Ammonium perchlorate makes up 45% to 52% of the Iskander's solid fuel, and Russia has exactly one plant that makes it—the state-owned ANOSIT—according to the Economic Security Council of Ukraine.

That plant depends on imported sodium chlorate, a chemical Russia lost the ability to make when the USSR collapsed. Russia bought more than $40 million of it in 2024 and the first half of 2025, 61% from China and most of the rest from the Farg'onaazot chemical plant in Uzbekistan. The largest Russian importer, Pioneer Trade, sells on to firms that supply the Iskander's designer, its cluster-warhead maker, and the Votkinsk plant that builds the missile.

But Russia gets around sanctions by buying through third parties. And while the European Union already restricts the export of sodium chlorate to Russia, neither Farg'onaazot nor any of the Russian importers moving it is under blocking sanctions. Even where the bans hold, they just "make things more costly and less convenient," Janovsky told Euromaidan Press. "They can't stop things from happening if the other side really wants to do something."

Deep strikes against the Iskander supply chain

Ukraine has already tried this one. The main Iskander factory is in Votkinsk, 1,400 km from the border, and on the night of 20–21 February Ukrainian Flamingo cruise missiles hit it. Zelenskyy said every missile launched reached the plant. Satellite imagery confirmed damage to a workshop where Iskanders and Oreshniks are assembled; local officials reported two shops damaged and 11 people injured.

Iskander production rose anyway. So the question is not whether Ukraine can reach Votkinsk—it can, and did—but whether it can launch enough munitions at once to inflict damage that lasts. "Ukraine can try a massive saturation strike with hundreds of drones and dozens of cruise missiles to overwhelm local defenses and wreck enough of the factory complex to at least temporarily disable the production," Janovsky said. That might take essentially the entire Ukrainian deep strike force—and if it failed, Russian industry would get a months-long reprieve.

Kill the launchers before they shoot

This is the hardest one. Russian crews keep their Iskander launchers 140 to 150 km behind the front line, beyond the reach of Ukraine's HIMARS, and move them to firing positions along forest roads—sometimes for five hours—to stay out of satellite view. Once in position, a launcher needs about 16 minutes to send its first missile and four for the second, then it leaves. Twenty minutes, in the open, somewhere in a forest, a hundred and fifty kilometers away.

Ukraine is trying anyway. On 23 August, Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces had struck an Iskander launcher near the border, and described a dedicated program to hunt the launch sites. Euromaidan Press could not independently verify the strike. He was explicit about why the program exists. "When our anti-ballistic missile stocks are at a minimum, there is another tactic," he said. "It is more difficult, and we developed it."

All options but one arrive after the cold

Option	When it delivers
Patriots from allies	Ukraine's air force asked for 360; Zelenskyy sought 300 for the winter package. Output is 600 a year, and CSIS says about half of it goes to allies and partners
Lockheed's expansion to 2,000 a year	That rate is not reached until 2030
Freya / FP-7.x interceptors	First attempt at intercepting a ballistic target planned for around July 2027
Sanctions on the supply chain	The chemical is restricted; none of the companies moving it is designated
Deep strike on the Votkinsk factory	Tried in February. Workshops hit, production still rose
Hunting the launchers	Now—one strike claimed on 23 August, not independently verified

Unable to shoot down all the Iskanders, Ukraine may have no choice but try everything all at once: sanction the suppliers, attack the supply chain, hunt the launchers, and scurry to deploy homemade interceptors. All while continuing to beg for every available Patriot.

A rare armored vehicle has made a surprise appearance in the Ukrainian order of battle. A recent official photo depicts a three-person, 49-ton T-64BM alongside tankers from the Ukrainian army's 57th Motorized Brigade. The brigade holds the line in northern Ukraine around 30 km northwest of Kharkiv.

What's unusual is that the 57th Motorized Brigade was known to operate the lighter T-64BV tank, the standard tank in Ukrainian service. Moreover, the Ukrainian army doesn't have many T-64BMs. There were around 80 in the Ukrainian inventory on the eve of the wider Russian invasion in February 2022, and at the time all but a handful belonged to the 1st Tank Brigade and the 12th Independent Tank Battalion.

Both units had a single T-64BM battalion with around 31 tanks.

In 54 months of hard fighting, the 12th Independent Tank Battalion and 1st Tank Brigade—the latter now reorganized into the less tank-heavy 1st Heavy Mechanized Brigade—has lost around a quarter of their T-64BMs. Even if the units cannibalized a few T-64BMs from training grounds, today they'd both struggle to field a full battalion of T-64BMs.

1⃣Naissance du T-64BM "Bulat"

Le T-64BM "Bulat" ("acier damassé" en ukrainien) fait partie des projets de modernisation du parc de chars soviétiques vieillissant dans les années 1990.
Le bureau Morozov propose en 1999 une version revalorisée du T-64B en y ajoutant des éléments… pic.twitter.com/S41m4JMFun

— STEVIUS (@Stevius21) August 26, 2026

Given the thin supply, where did the 57th Motorized Brigade's T-64BMs come from? It's a question that vexes French historian Stevius. And it may point to a growing shortage of the best tanks in the Ukrainian armed forces as losses deepen and years of combat take their toll on vehicles' material condition. "The use of a few specimens from training units to fill the gaps ... would tend to show that the Ukrainians have practically exhausted their stock of tanks that they can bring back to operational condition," Stevius noted.

Overall, the Ukrainians have lost no fewer than 1,400 tanks, according to a tally by the Oryx open-source intelligence collective. That's more tanks the the Ukrainian armed forces had in their inventory in 2022. The Ukrainians have largely made good their losses by restoring old stored T-64s and T-72s while also accepting donations of hundreds of surplus tanks from foreign allies.

But even with the restored and donated tanks, there's still a shortfall. It's fortunate, then, that tanks are growing less important by the day as tiny drones—which are lethal to tanks—fill the sky over the 1,200-km disputed gray zone in Ukraine.

Up-armored T-64

The $2.5-million T-64BM is a better-protected variant of the standard T-64, which the tank factory in Kharkiv produced first for Soviet forces and, later, for Ukrainian forces. To produce a T-64BM, the Kharkiv Tank Plant swapped in the 125-mm main gun from the newer T-80 tank, tweaked the fire controls and added slabs of Nozh modular armor on the front of the hull, the turret face and the roof.

The problem was, and still is, that the add-on armor weighs three tons. "The weight of the Nozh armor modules unbalances the tank toward the front and strains the shock absorbers," Stevius explained. Even replacing the T-64's 700-hp diesel engine with a more powerful 850-hp model didn't fully compensate for the added weight. That "results in the T-64BM Bulat suffering from underpowering, regularly causing engine overheating," Stevius pointed out.

Still, the type fought hard in the initial Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine starting in 2014. And eight years later, T-64BMs with the 1st Tank Brigade successfully defended the city of Chernihiv from invading Russian forces. "The faster autoloader on the T-64 allowed Ukrainian tank crews to achieve significant damage against surprised Russian units," Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, Jack Watling, Oleksandr Danylyuk and Nick Reynolds wrote in a 2022 report for the Royal United Services Institute in London.

As the war ground on and drones replaced heavy vehicles as the main means of attack and defense for both sides, the T-64BMs lost some relevance. Yes, both sides still deploy tanks—but mostly as mobile artillery firing at targets located by drones many kilometers away.

The lighter usage of tanks belies the shortage of functional tanks owing to combat losses and wear and tear, however, especially on the Ukrainian side. A sweeping reorganization of Ukrainian force structure last year eliminated many tank battalions, but the tank shortage persisted even after the unit reduction.

Stevius is stumped. "The presence of a T-64BM Bulat in the 57th Motorized Brigade, which until now has only used T-64BV, is therefore a surprise because their number is insufficient to equip both two or even one tank battalion of the 1st [Heavy Mechanized Brigade] and the ranks of the 12th Independent Tank Battalion," Stevius mused.

The likeliest explanation is the most worrying. The Ukrainians stripped tanks away from training units while also compelling front-line battalions to go into battle with fewer tanks. All in order to make sure all the tank units have at least a few tanks.

On Monday, a small team of Russian infiltrators reportedly slipped 10 km behind the line of contact between Russian and Ukrainian troops just north of Kostiantynivka in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast.

Sneaking into the town of Druzhkivka, 10 km north of Kostiantynivka along the H20 highway, the Russians reportedly ambushed, captured and executed a group of three or four unarmed Ukrainian drone operators.

It's possible the drone operators had just arrived in Druzhkivka when the Russians appeared. According to analyst and mapper AMK Mapping, Ukrainian drone operators pulled out of the village of Oleksijevo-Druzhkivka—which lies between Kostiantynivka and Druzhkivka—owing to the increasing threat from Russian KAB glide bombs. "It's likely that Russian forces monitored the withdrawals of Ukrainian drone operators and sent in [an infiltration group] after the new position was identified," AMK Mapping concluded.

The atrocity underscores the Russian military's new approach to ground warfare as Russia's wider war on Ukraine grinds through its 54th month. An army that once counted on its own artillery to suppress enemy artillery in order to allow mechanized forces to advance now uses precision bombs, small cruise missiles, tiny drones, and, yes, some artillery to suppress the Ukrainian drone teams that represent the main obstacle to a swift Russian advance.

Yesterday, a group of Russian DRGs was able to infiltrate from Kostyantynivka for at least 10 km behind Ukrainian lines, and kill 3-4 Ukrainian drone operators in the city of Druzhkivka. The drone operators were unarmed in their positions at the time of the ambush, not expecting… pic.twitter.com/KNxN0JelwL

— AMK Mapping (@AMK_Mapping_) August 25, 2026

And when the Russian firepower manages to suppress Ukrainian drone operators, allowing small teams of infantry to advance, the infantry's objective is often to take out the same drone operators whose suppression was a necessary pre-condition of any successful assault.

In short, the Ukrainians largely defend with drones. That means the Russians are fixated on first striking the drone teams in order to prevent them from launching their tiny lethal robots—and then, when they can, assaulting the drone teams' positions in order to capture or kill them. Or capture then kill them, as reportedly happened in Druzhkivka.

The Russians have learned the hard way that they can't advance without first finding and attacking Ukrainian drone operators. That hard experience has driven a profound transformation of the Russian way of war in just the last few years.

Precision suppression

As 2025 wore into 2026, Ukrainian forces finally deployed enough $500 drones to effectively halt any sustained Russian advance along the 1,200-km gray zone stretching across eastern and southern Ukraine. Between February and July, the Russians captured around 260 sq km of Ukrainian soil, according to a tally by the Black Bird Group. That's barely a fifth as much ground as they seized in the same six months in 2025.

Realizing they couldn't just fire an artillery barrage and then roll out the tanks the way they used to, the Russians have mostly parked their thousands of armored vehicles. Now they advance in small teams of lightly equipped infantry that, Russian commanders reason, stand a better chance of avoiding detecting and destruction by drones.

"Broadly speaking, current Russian military theory appears to emphasize restoring the ability to maneuver," Sidharth Kaushal and Sam Cranny-Evans wrote in a new study for the Royal United Services Institute in London. But the infantry infiltrators who do most of the maneuvering these days don't march out without support. A lot of it.

In the early months of the wider war in 2022 and 2023, the Russians counted on artillery—lots of artillery—to support the maneuver forces. But massed artillery is just as exposed to drone attack as massed tanks are, so Russian fire support has had to evolve, too.

Today, the Russians still fire artillery from fewer but more spread-out guns. But they also launch their own drones, small cruise missiles, and—perhaps most important—KAB glide bombs to force Ukrainian defenders, including drone teams, into their dugouts before the infantry dash across the gray zone. "Russian theorists appear to see the solution in highly mobile units designed to exploit lower-risk tunnels created by
precision strike," Kaushal and Cranny-Evans explained.

https://twitter.com/kriegsforscherD/status/2091923015604850800/

It's explosive choreography requiring careful communication between the infantry, the artillery, drone teams and the air force. "Sustaining momentum in the face of adversary precision strike is a considerable challenge," Kaushal and Cranny-Evans wrote. But a necessary one as the Russian military "contemplates how it can break the current positional deadlock" in Ukraine "and avoid future ones."

But when it works, it works to catastrophic effect for Ukrainian defenders. As those unfortunate, murdered drone operators found out.

The suppress-then-advance method, but with precision munitions and small teams of infiltrators, works for both sides, of course. The Ukrainians can do it, too—and they recently did in some unspecified sector of the gray zone.

On the same day the Russians executed those drone operators, fellow Ukrainian drone pilot Dmytro Putiata reported a small Ukrainian mechanized advance. "At one of the direction at the front line, one of the Ukrainian brigades used four [infantry fighting vehicles] during the attack," Putiata wrote. "They have managed to break through up to three km; dismounted infantry and all of the vehicles managed to retreat."

They break through with the help of friendly drones units that suppressed Russian troops along the assault route, Putiata explained. "How did they manage not to be targeted by drones? The battlefield was prepared for that."

Ukraine secret eastern counteroffensive seems to have been even more successful than some observers reported. It's possible that, in the sector just north of the town of Lyman in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast, the Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps is just a few kilometers short of encircling two Russian regiments.

That doesn't mean the Russian units can't escape. After all, there isn't a contiguous line of Ukrainian forces—nor a contiguous line of Russian forces for that matter—anywhere along the 1,200-km disputed gray zone that threads across eastern and southern Ukraine.

But the closing pincer around elements of the Russian 2nd and 144th Motor Rifle Divisions could strain the Russians' logistics and compel the Russians to reconsolidate in order to preserve their combat power—by retreating east. That would take a lot of pressure off Lyman and, by extension, also take a lot of pressure off Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the last two big free cities in Donetsk.

Lyman, which lies 15 km northeast of Sloviansk—the northernmost of the free cities—is the main obstacle between at least six Russian regiments and Sloviansk. The Russians have been inching toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk from several directions for months now, racing against the coming winter to position forces for a possible siege of the twin cities next year. Winter in Ukraine punishes any attacker by depriving them of the leafy tree canopy that can conceal infiltrating troops during warmer months.

According to the most recent map from analyst and mapper Thorkill, one of the more reliable observers of unit-level action in Ukraine, the Ukrainian 3rd Assault Brigade is just a few kilometers away from linking up with the 60th Mechanized Brigade in or around the village of Kolodyazi.

Sytuacja w rejonie Nowego (Łyman), część II.

Jednym z odcinków frontu w Donbasie, na którym wojska ukraińskie prowadzą obecnie działania zaczepne, jest rejon Kateryniwka - Nowe – Zełena Dolyna, na północ od Łymanu. Od połowy maja 2026 r. pozycje rosyjskiej 144 Dywizji Strzelców… pic.twitter.com/AIvInwHGX3

— Thorkill (@Thorkill65) August 25, 2026

Galloping advance

If true, that means the 3rd Assault Brigade and adjacent units from the 3rd Army Corps have carried out one of the more successful Ukrainian counteroffensives in memory. In April they first exploited gaps in Russian defenses north of the village of Nove. In May and June they advanced toward the village. In July they captured it.

After that, the attacking Ukrainians kept pushing south into the right flank of a 10-km-by-10-km salient that advancing Russian regiments created as they maneuvered around Lyman from the north, aiming to surround the town instead of directly assaulting it on their way toward Sloviansk.

Leaving their flank exposed, the Russians trying to encircle Lyman found themselves at risk of encirclement, instead. If the 3rd Assault Brigade or 60th Mechanized Brigade—together possessing thousands of troops, on paper—can march through Kolodyazi, they will have closed a ring of loose Ukrainian control around at least two Russian regiments, also with potentially thousands of troops.

Emphasis on loose control. Again, there aren't enough Ukrainian forces on the ground north of Lyman to prevent any "encircled" Russians from retreating back to the east. But that retreat would represent a major victory for the Ukrainian defenders north and east of Sloviansk. "The fall of this salient [north of Lyman] would significantly delay the fall of Lyman," analyst and mapper AMK Mapping predicted.

Situational update on the Lyman direction:

The Ukrainian counterattacks north of Lyman are now entering their fourth month, as they come closer and closer to cutting off the Russian salient. Two pincers have been formed, which are both dangerously close to cutting the Russians… pic.twitter.com/mu2kZ4S3Jv

— AMK Mapping (@AMK_Mapping_) August 26, 2026

No one expects the Russians to halt their offensive toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. But in potentially taking two steps forward and one step back in their northerly march on the free cities, the Russians sacrifice time. Time the Ukrainians can use to stiffen their defenses in Sloviansk and Kramatorsk and evacuate more of the tens of thousands of civilians who remain in the cities despite the constant danger from Russian drones and bombs.

The possible extent of the Ukrainian gains north of Lyman—a 10-km march since April—is impressive given Russia's overall advantage in manpower and firepower in the east. Equally impressive is the operational security, or OPSEC, that cloaked the offensive until now. Sure, there were a few videos of action around Nove that hinted at a major Ukrainian action.

But the units involved exercised surprising discipline, and prevented too much information from leaking. "Someone in the 3rd Corps responsible for [OPSEC] is actually trying to do their job diligently and has quite effectively cut off information," Thorkill noted. The secrecy may have facilitated the Ukrainian advance by delaying any sense of panic among the Russian commanders who are responsible for reinforcing the Lyman salient, but who also tend to ignore bad news as long as possible because they know it could reflect poorly on them.

News of the counteroffensive is now available for all to see, even if official Ukrainian sources have yet to confirm it. That may mean time is running out for the 3rd Army Corps to close its pincer before the Russians retreat or reinforce. AMK Mapping has already seen some evidence of a "partial withdrawal from the most vulnerable positions in the salient.

Russian forces are fighting against time to close a pincer around the last free cities in eastern Ukraine. The deadline: the coming winter, which will strip the leaves from the trees and leave any attacking force exposed to overhead surveillance and attack.

But in one key sector, Ukrainian forces are spoiling the coordinated Russian operation to partially surround Sloviansk and neighboring Kramatorsk. With admirable operational security, or OPSEC, a clutch of Ukrainian brigades under the 3rd Army Corps hasn't just blunted the advance of the Russian Center Group of Forces—it has pushed the Russians back.

This Ukrainian counterattack along the axis through the town of Lyman, ongoing since May, has largely escaped widespread notice. Yes, there is some scant video evidence of Ukrainian attacks. And yes, a few analysts have adjusted their maps to account for apparent Ukrainian advances, especially in the direction of Nove, a Russian-occupied village 15 km north of Lyman, which itself lies 15 km north of Sloviansk.

Ukrainian forces have been conducting for weeks two unnoticed counter-attacks in two directions of the frontline.

With barely any geolocation, the Ukrainians kept a good level of OPSEC and the russians have been reluctant to publish videos from these areas.

In the Ivanivka… pic.twitter.com/hNJy4YhkxG

— Clément Molin (@clement_molin) June 10, 2026

But for the most part, Ukrainian and Russian sources have avoided talking about Lyman. "The Ukrainians kept a good level of OPSEC and the Russians have been reluctant to publish videos from these areas" depicting their retreats, analyst and mapper Clément Molin noted in June, just a few weeks after the Ukrainians attacked toward Nove.

Molin, for one, expects the OPSEC to lift in the coming days. "By the end of the month, we should have an official update on the good results of a Ukrainian offensive that has largely remained secret," he wrote on Monday.

April offensive

The Ukrainians' limited counteroffensive around Lyman apparently kicked off on in mid-April. One of the first attacks that left any real evidence occurred on 22 May, when a small Ukrainian mechanized force—perhaps from the 60th or 66th Mechanized Brigade, the 77th Air Assault Brigade, or the Presidential Brigade—attacked in armored trucks and M-113, Stryker, and BTR-4 armored personnel carriers. Heavy bomber drones flew top cover.

The Russian 144th Motor Rifle Division fought back with its own drones. Interceptor drones took aim at the bombers. First-person-view and heavy bomber drones blasted at least one BTR-4, hitting it before and after it dropped off its infantry passengers. Drones struck some of the disembarked Ukrainian infantry.

How many Ukrainian troops survived and entrenched in new positions on 22 May is unclear. Regardless, the Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps wasn't done with Nove. Attacks continued. And sometime after the 22 May assault on Nove, "the Ukrainians managed to consolidate their gains," Molin concluded after scrutinizing a few videos and some satellite imagery.

By early July, Ukrainian forces had succeeded in "operationally encircl[ing] the Russian forces defending the village of Nove," according to analyst and mapper Thorkill. "Fierce fighting is currently underway to expel the Russians from that locality," Thorkill reported at the time.

Sytuacja w rejonie Nowego (Łyman).

Jednym z odcinków frontu w Donbasie, na którym wojska ukraińskie prowadzą obecnie działania zaczepne, jest rejon wsi: Nowe – Zełena Dolyna, na północ od Łymanu. Od połowy maja 2026 r. pozycje rosyjskiej 144 Dywizji Strzelców Zmotoryzowanych… pic.twitter.com/2EJQgz4eps

— Thorkill (@Thorkill65) July 8, 2026

The aim of the Ukrainian counterattacks is obvious. The 3rd Army Corps intends to put pressure on the northern right flank of 10 km-by-10-km salient jutting into the battleground north of Lyman. The Russian 144th Motor Rifle Division has been pouring troops into the salient, clearly intending to surround and isolate Lyman instead of directly assaulting it—all in order to clear a path toward Sloviansk.

Salients are risky for both sides, however. The farther the Russians extend their Lyman salient, the more exposed they are on their flanks. The Ukrainians know this. And even if the 3rd Army Corps can't fully cut across the salient in order to surround the Russians inside of it, the corps can at least take advantage of the salient's exposed flanks.

Capturing Nove, on the very northern edge of the salient, could allow the Ukrainians to bring to bear more artillery and drones on the Russians south of Nove. The 3rd Army Corps doesn't have to fully encircle the Russian troops closest to Lyman in order to hammer them with withering firepower.

Just how successful the 3rd Army Corps has been in its local counteroffensive could become clearer very soon. That won't spell lasting relief for Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, however. Fighting against the clock as summer begins turning into fall and then winter, the Russians are slowly advancing toward the twin cities from several directions.

The siege of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk is coming. Perhaps not this year, but surely by 2027. To fully safeguard the twin cities, the Ukrainians would need to duplicate their success north of Lyman along several other directions.

That's a big ask of a Ukrainian force that's overall still outnumbered and outgunned.

Russia is now building its TOS-1A thermobaric rocket launchers with factory armor wrapped around the rocket tubes. The tracked TOS-1A and its flame-producing 220-mm rockets are a powerful and terrifying weapon. But the launcher is also extremely vulnerable to Ukraine's drones and artillery. The add-on armor may be the only way the launchers can survive.

The TOS-1A is a T-72 with the turret swapped out for 24 thermobaric rockets, and the newest ones arrive inside a welded steel shell that lifts open when the tubes elevate. Russia is armoring the launcher the way it armors the tanks it's built from. What happens when the armor fails is not the same.

The TOS-1A adds a 24-round launcher onto the hull of a T-72 tank. The system's MO.1.01.04M rocket travels as far as 6,000 m with a payload of fuel that, once ignited, burns as hot as 3,000 degrees Celsius. The fuel can spread across the ground and into buildings and bunkers, allowing even a single TOS-1A to scorch a wide area.

It's not for no reason that the TOS-1A is one of Russia's preferred siege weapons. TOS-1As rolled into action early in Russia's wider war on Ukraine. In one of their first actions, in May 2022, TOS-1As staged on hilltops overlooking the city of Lyman, in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast, rained fire down on the front-line city. A few days later, Russian troops temporarily occupied Lyman.

Thinking back to May 2022. Watching Russian TOS-1 heavy thermobaric artillery devastate Lyman from the hill across the Siversky Donets. May 23 - the full assault would be launched a day or two later. pic.twitter.com/PPEyMukZGO

— Neil Hauer (@NeilPHauer) July 3, 2026

The best day the TOS-1A ever had came at Bakhmut. In early April 2023, Russian crews fired across the Bakhmutka River at entrenched Ukrainian positions and opened a 300-m gap in the line, US Army analysts later reconstructed. Wagner mercenaries poured through and covered 1.25 km in a single day. At Pavlivka, thermobaric fire breached the Ukrainian line and the settlement eventually fell—though it took five months and cost Russia two wrecked naval infantry brigades.

With its origins firmly in the 1970s, the TOS-1A was designed for a different era, however. An era where rocket launchers could, with a little support, safely approach to within a few kilometers of the enemy. Artillery is an ever-present danger, of course. But artillery can be suppressed—usually by other artillery.

The era of relative safety for the TOS-1A ended as tiny explosive drones began filling the sky over Ukraine in 2023. Even the tiniest of these tiny drones has the range to hit a TOS-1A before the TOS-1A can get into position to fire its rockets. Worse, the TOS-1A's thermobaric rockets are extremely volatile—and tend to explode in massive fireballs when struck.

"Nasty weapons—and also great targets" for anti-tank missiles and other munitions, is how Czech analyst Jakub Janovsky described the TOS-1A in the war's opening days, before the drones even arrived.

The launcher has a weather problem, too. Its rockets carry an oxidizer premix, which means crews can't fire them in the rain or from high ground.

A Russian TOS-1 thermobaric rocket launcher was completely destroyed by the Unmanned Systems Forces today. After getting hit, the TOS-1 cooked off and burnt down. pic.twitter.com/zQievlm5Vx

— Woofers (@NotWoofers) April 18, 2026

Deep losses

The Russians started losing TOS-1As almost immediately. Retreating from Kyiv Oblast on 1 April 2022, they left behind at least three launchers—two of them knocked out by Ukrainian Stugna-P missiles, one captured intact. Then the losses began piling up.

Today, 54 months into the wider war, the Ukrainians have destroyed, damaged or captured no fewer than 36 TOS-1As. 27 of them burned. Ukrainian crews turned at least one captured launcher on its former operators, firing it near Kreminna during the 2023 counteroffensive.

The losses are a problem for the Russians. US Army analysts estimated Russia's prewar TOS-1A fleet at 48 launchers, only a portion of which ever went to Ukraine. Documented losses now stand at 36, and Oryx counts only what it can see in a photograph. How much of that gap Russian factories have refilled isn't public.

What the losses did not do was change the war. For all its ferocity, the TOS-1A has had little to no effect on the conflict's outcome, US Army analysts concluded—and they name the short reach as the reason. A weapon that has to park within 6,000 m of the enemy is a weapon the enemy can find.

Armor, not range

The Russians got to work improving the TOS-1A and building more copies. The Omsk transport machinery plant, Omsktransmash, has turned out fresh batches for the defense ministry in September 2022, November 2022, November 2024 and again in November 2025, its parent concern Uralvagonzavod announcing each handover. It's unclear just how many replacement launchers the Russians acquired, but it's safe to assume they number in the dozens.

They also changed how they use the thing. Russian units now move single launchers up to the line under covering artillery fire rather than travelling in groups, reducing the likelihood of detection, the same US Army analysts reported. And the latest copies are up-armored against drones, with a shell of additional armor protecting the 24 launch tubes and their highly flammable rockets.

That isn't a brand-new idea. An earlier drone-protection variant was showcased in April 2024, and a different, serially produced kit went onto the batch shipped in November 2025. What circulated this month is fresh footage of the up-armored TOS-1As working out at a training range in Russia's Saratov Oblast.

Footage of Multiple Russian TOS-1A Obr.2022 at a Training Ground in the Saratov Region - Summer 2026 pic.twitter.com/LAOAVraai1

— Wilson (@WillKnowler) August 9, 2026

The add-on armor is apparently factory-standard at this point, and it's a purpose-built enclosure rather than the improvised slat and mesh Russian regiments tend to weld onto their tanks before sending them across the drone-patrolled gray zone. The function is the same: put something between the drone and the thing that matters.

The best up-armored "turtle tanks" have been known to absorb dozens or even scores of drone impacts. A TOS-1A crew should hope the launcher's new armor is equally tough. After all, the consequence of a turtle tank losing its shell and taking a direct drone hit is often immobilization: the tank throws a wheel or a track or loses power and simply can't move anymore.

Armor is the cheap answer, and it isn't the real one. The real one is a launcher that doesn't have to park 6,000 m from a Ukrainian drone operator.

Uralvagonzavod says a modernized TOS-1A on a T-80 chassis is nearing the end of trials, with better accuracy, more automation and a longer reach. How much longer, the company hasn't said. Analyst Alexey Tarasov expects a new launch module able to take longer-range rockets, perhaps carrying the system to roughly the 15 to 20 km of the wheeled TOS-2. Until then, the crews get a steel box.

It had better hold. The earlier, cruder answer didn't: a TOS-1A wearing a field-built metal cage burned anyway when a Ukrainian FPV drone found it. And if a TOS-1A's armor fails, the next drone hit could trigger 24 rockets each weighing 217 kg and packed with concentrated fuel that's primed to explode.

The Ukrainian military from the 92nd separate assault brigade destroyed the Russian 220-mm heavy flamethrower system TOS-1A "Solntsepek" using an FPV kamikaze drone pic.twitter.com/wEBz2H1T5y

— MilitaryNewsUA (@front_ukrainian) September 2, 2023

The Russian navy still has enough missile-armed warships in its battered Black Sea Fleet to sustain Kalibr cruise missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, if recent launches are any indication.

Overnight on 19 August, an unscathed Russian corvette lobbed eight Kalibrs at Ukraine. Seven were intercepted. The eighth struck the Antonov Aircraft Plant in Kyiv, according to the open-source monitor OSINT Warfare, in an attack that killed 15 overall. Ukrainian commanders had hoped that wouldn't be possible. A week earlier, they thought they had knocked the Kalibr shooters out of the fight.

Overnight on 12 August, Ukrainian drones and missiles targeted the Black Sea Fleet's main anchorage in Novorossiysk in southern Russia. Russians on the ground recorded fireballs billowing into the night sky, seemingly indicating significant damage to the port or its moored warships, potentially including the Black Sea Fleet's seven or eight surviving frigates, corvettes, and submarines that are compatible with the 2,500-km Kalibr.

The Ukrainian general staff in Kyiv claimed its forces had struck three Kalibr carriers—the frigates Admiral Makarov and Admiral Essen and a Buyan-M corvette—as well as a lightly armed guard ship. But the uncertainty was, and still is, high. Even the general staff stressed its munitions had inflicted "varying degrees" of damage "according to preliminary information."

"Information is being clarified," the general staff stressed.

Footage shows eight 3M14 Kalibr cruise missiles being launched from a Buyan-M-class corvette at the Novorossiysk Naval Base in Russia’s Krasnodar Krai. https://t.co/fiQ0qhUhZ0 pic.twitter.com/GShALhfh4a

— OSINTWarfare (@OSINTWarfare) August 19, 2026

When the sun rose over the following days, commercial satellites snapped high-resolution photos of Novorossiysk, helping analysts assess damage from the 12 August strikes. The photos were hard to interpret. Yes, there were dark patches on the hulls of the two frigates and single corvette, but the discoloration didn't necessarily indicate drone or missile damage—to say nothing of confirming serious damage.

The pro-Ukraine Conflict Intelligence Team concluded Admiral Makarov and Admiral Essen "sustained damage in the area of their launchers," potentially impacting the ships' ability to fire Kalibrs.

A later battle-damage assessment by OSINT account Absolutely Reliable Source said both frigates had suffered critical damage. It assessed that direct hits on Admiral Essen destroyed its eight-cell 3S14 vertical launch system for Kalibr missiles, while strikes on Admiral Makarov caused an internal detonation and burned out its 3S14 launch cells. The account said both ships had lost their strike capability and would require extensive repairs.

Uncertainty

Caution was prudent. In the first three years of Russia's wider war on Ukraine, Ukrainian forces succeeded in destroying or damaging around two dozen of the roughly 85 large ships in the Black Sea Fleet. Perhaps most notably, a pair of Ukrainian Neptune cruise missiles holed and sank the Russian missile cruiser Moskva in April 2022.

But the strikes mostly missed the Kalibr carriers. Yes, the Ukrainians took out a Kalibr-armed Improved Kilo-class submarine in September 2023 and a Karakurt-class corvette, also armed with Kalibrs, in November 2023. But that left at least seven Kalibr shooters in the Black Sea Fleet. Eight if the Russians have managed to repair the Improved Kilo that apparently suffered some damage from a Ukrainian one-way unmanned attack submarine back in December.

It wasn't for a lack of trying that Ukrainian forces failed to eliminate, or even seriously dent, the Black Sea Fleet's Kalibr capacity prior to the 12 August raid on Novorossiysk. On 22 May, Fire Point FP-1 drones operated by the Ukrainian 414th Separate Unmanned Strike Aviation System Brigade motored the roughly 430 km to Novorossiysk and spotted a warship moored to a pier.

The 414th Brigade believed it was Admiral Essen—and also believed it may have hit the ship. "The frigate Admiral Essen … entered the strike zone," the brigade crowed. "Damage level unknown."

In fact, it seems the ship the propeller-driven FP-1 barreled toward, and potentially struck with its warhead, wasn't Admiral Essen. The vessel in the FP-1's video feed, relayed via satellite or a mesh radio network, appeared to be a derelict Krivak-class frigate. Not Admiral Essen.

It was yet another near miss. Earlier, on 6 April, FP-1s dove down on Admiral Makarov. The Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces posted footage from the FP-1s' forward-facing thermal cameras that indicated the drones got close to Admiral Makarov. But the footage didn't point to an obvious hit.

Overhead satellite imagery from later on 6 April seemingly told a more complete story. The drones may have left a scorch mark on the frigate's bow, but there was no sign of structural damage. If the 12 August raid really did inflict meaningful damage on Admiral Makarov and Admiral Essen and a Buyan-M, it represented a profound reversal for Ukrainian forces. After trying and trying again for months, they'd finally hit some of the ships that really mattered among the survivors of the Black Sea Fleet.

The problem for the Ukrainians is that, even if three Kalibr shooters are temporarily out of the fight, there are still four, possibly five, Kalibr shooters left. And that's enough to sustain frequent attacks on Ukrainian cities. A single Buyan-M corvette can fire eight Kalibrs at a time. And eight, as it turns out, is a typical number of Kalibrs in the mix when Russian air, sea, and ground forces launch their combined drone and missile barrages.

The Black Sea Fleet reminded everyone of that uncomfortable fact overnight on 19 August. A Buyan-M corvette at Novorossiysk fired eight Kalibrs—exactly one magazine—into a barrage that also carried Onyx and Zircon missiles, Iskander-M and KN-23 ballistic missiles, three dozen air-launched cruise missiles, and 168 drones. Ukrainian air defenses stopped seven of the eight Kalibrs. They could not stop the ballistic missiles, and the eighth Kalibr got through to the Antonov plant, which had already been hit that night by Iskanders and Zircons.

If the attack on 12 August actually did eliminate or even just temporarily sideline three Kalibr carriers, it still represents a partial victory for Ukraine. It's likely no fewer than four shooters remain. And given how long it took Ukrainian deep strike forces to maybe damage Admiral Makarov and Admiral Essen and that Buyan-M, the Black Sea Fleet may be able to continue blasting away at Ukrainian cities for many months to come.