An American activist who spent years repeating Russian talking points told her followers she had been wrong about Ukraine. Laura Loomer, a far-right blogger and ally of US President Donald Trump, shared her impressions with hundreds of thousands of followers after visiting the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra and the Dormition Cathedral, damaged by a Russian drone strike. 

The visit is the public face of a documented reversal. Loomer long echoed Kremlin narratives and criticized US aid to Ukraine, and after a fact-finding trip to Kyiv in July 2026, she acknowledged she had been "propagandized by Russian media."

"I was living in a media echo chamber, and I was propagandized by Russian media on social media to believe those things. So I came to Ukraine to see the country for myself," she wrote.

The Lavra tour, alongside senior Ukrainian officials, was the culmination of that trip, which also took her to the mass graves in Bucha and through Russian strikes on the capital.

"Putin droned Jesus Christ. The Woke Reich and Russia don't want you to see this video..." Loomer wrote on X, attaching a four-minute clip recorded inside the Lavra's main cathedral.

Ukrainian officials welcomed visit

Loomer toured the Lavra with Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture Tetiana Berehna and First Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Serhii Kyslytsia.

The National Reserve said she was shown the Tower of St. John the Recluse, the Mystetskyi Arsenal building, and the Dormition Cathedral, all of which were damaged in the 15 June Russian attack, and was briefed on the restoration.

"It was interesting to sit down and talk to LauraLoomer and then to go to Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra on Wednesday," Kyslytsia wrote, thanking Loomer for "taking the initiative and traveling to Ukraine at this time."

Berehna framed it as a matter of witness.

"Russia is destroying Ukraine’s cultural heritage while Ukrainians simply want to live, create, raise children, and build our future. Thank you, Laura, for visiting Ukraine," she said.

Dormition Cathedral lost most of its roof

The site Loomer filmed carries a specific loss. The Dormition Cathedral lost more than 80% of its roof in the Russian attack, and over a dozen sites across the National Reserve were damaged.

The cathedral is not incidental to the war on heritage. The Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the holiest places in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, founded in 1051.

A Russian strike damaging it is the kind of event Ukraine has documented across its cultural landscape: nearly 2,000 heritage sites damaged or destroyed since 2022, according to Ukraine's prosecutor general.

Russia's strike at the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra prompted condemnation from European foreign ministers. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said that "For us French, this would be equivalent to bombing Notre-Dame or the Basilica of Saint-Denis." 

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsakhna said Russia had "once again demonstrated its barbarity and contempt for humanity's shared heritage," describing the Lavra as a UNESCO World Heritage site and "one of Christianity's holiest monasteries" that had "been a place of worship for nearly a thousand years."

Engineers from the diving detachment of the National Guard's "Omega" Special Purpose Center have developed their own uncrewed surface vessel in partnership with a Ukrainian IT company, Ukraine's Interior Ministry announced on 19 July. The drone is built for combat missions in southern Ukraine and serves as a platform for First-person view (FPV) drones, carrying them closer to targets before they strike. The developers plan to adapt it for intercepting aerial targets to strengthen coastal defense.

A frontline fighting unit designing and building a naval drone with a Ukrainian tech partner rather than through a centralized procurement process is the pattern that increasingly defines Ukraine's war: the people using the weapons are now making them.

Carrying the drones, then killing them

The Omega commander, call sign "Krava," said the vessel works as a delivery platform: it brings FPV drones close to the target, and the drones destroy the enemy. Photos released by the Interior Ministry show the drone equipped with a Japanese Suzuki engine and a satellite communication terminal.

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The unit's stated next step—adapting the platform to intercept aerial targets—would place it inside the fastest-growing category of Ukrainian naval innovation. In April 2026, an uncrewed Ukrainian boat shot down a Russian Shahed drone with an interceptor launched from its deck—what Ukraine called a world first. Pushing air-defense capability offshore onto unmanned platforms means Russian drones launched from occupied Crimea face a threat layer over open water, before they reach Odesa and the coast.

Ukrainian special forces from the National Guard's "Omega" Center destroyed a Russian Su-24M frontline bomber in occupied Crimea, the National Guard announced on 17 July. The unit said the aircraft was preparing for a combat mission against Ukrainian territory when its drones struck.

The first drone hit the Su-24M's nose section, the second struck the fuel tanks, destroying the aircraft, according to the Omega unit's account. There was no independent confirmation of the strike, and Russian officials had not commented on damage at Saky by the time the unit posted its claim.

The claimed strike fits a broader Ukrainian effort to make Russian air operations from occupied Crimea increasingly costly. Repeated drone attacks on Saky have forced Moscow to defend rear airbases once considered beyond Ukraine's reach while risking aircraft used in strikes on southern Ukraine.

Combat divers, now flying drones 200 kilometers deep

The detail that distinguishes the operation is the unit behind it. Omega is the National Guard's special-purpose center, and the strike was carried out by its combat divers—naval special operators—using strike drones against a target deep in occupied territory.

Ukraine's National Guard has increasingly fielded long-range strike drones through its assault corps, including the "Azov" and "Khartiia" Corps, which the command says now operate at ranges exceeding 100 kilometers against Russian logistics, ammunition depots, command posts, air defenses, and aircrafts

Saky's month under fire

The strike is the latest in a sustained campaign against Saky, one of Russia's main aviation hubs in occupied Crimea, from which aircraft launch missile and guided-bomb attacks on southern Ukraine. Ukraine's Security Service struck the airfield on 24 June, again on 3 July, when it reported at least seven aircraft destroyed or damaged. Saky hosts Su-24 tactical bombers and Su-30SM fighters and lies roughly 200 kilometers from the nearest Ukrainian-controlled territory.

Each Su-24M strike removes an aircraft Russia uses to bomb southern Ukraine—and forces Moscow to divert more resources to defending its rear airbases against a threat that now comes from multiple Ukrainian services, using cheap drones, at growing depth.

Latvia has hardened security at key energy and water sites after intelligence flagged a Russian threat, Reuters reported. Its prime minister has asked NATO for more troops and air defense, warned of election meddling, and rebuked the European governments still shielding Russian gas.

Guarding the dam and the gas

Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs told Reuters that the country had raised its guard. He named a hydroelectric station above the capital and a large underground gas store. Asked to be specific, he pointed to the Incukalns gas facility, the wider energy sector and its companies, and the dam.

Undersea cables in the Baltic have already been damaged in suspected sabotage around the New Year. Russia recently closed seven rail crossings on its NATO borders without explanation. The Kremlin has brushed the warnings aside, calling them "scare stories."

Kulbergs cast the danger as growing. With Russia stalled in Ukraine, he said, its leaders want "a quick win, so the potential hybrid threat is larger than before." He added: 

"Anything is possible."

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An election under threat

Latvia, a NATO and EU member that borders Russia, ranks among Kyiv's firmest backers and Moscow's sharpest critics. That standing places it among Moscow's likeliest targets before an October national election.

His government is bracing for possible Russian meddling in the vote. Moscow denies the election-interference charges that Western capitals level at it. It has separately accused Latvia of opening air corridors for Ukrainian drones, showing no evidence.

Kulbergs turned his fire on the EU governments blocking the bloc's 21st sanctions package, singling out Bulgaria. One holdout is enough to keep the whole package stalled. The measures would sanction 250 people and entities and tighten the screws on Russian LNG.

Vetoing parts of it, he argued, carries a share of the blame for dead Ukrainian soldiers and civilians. Failing to move on Moscow's shadow fleet and its LNG sales, he said, keeps feeding the "Russian war machine."

Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) struck two sanctioned Russian oil tankers with naval drones in the Black Sea, the SBU said. The vessels belong to the shadow fleet Moscow uses to sell crude around Western sanctions, and Russian aircraft tried and failed to stop the attack.

Two tankers, one sanctions-busting job

The SBU, working with the Navy, hit the ocean-going tankers Louise 1 and Banda — both under Ukrainian sanctions — with Mamai naval drones. 

Louise 1 had moved Russian crude through the G7 and EU embargo, loading at Baltic and Black Sea ports with its transponder switched off. In 2026 alone, it carried nearly 3 million tons of Russian Urals crude, the SBU said.

Banda had run Russian crude out of four ports: Ust-Luga, Kerch, Novorossiysk, and Nakhodka.

As the drones closed in, Russian aircraft fired machine guns and dropped bombs at them, without success, the SBU said. 

The service calls each shadow-fleet tanker a legitimate target and a working part of Russia's war machine. Every strike, it says, cuts the oil money paying for the invasion.

A week earlier, the SBU's Sea Baby drone hit the sanctioned tanker Blue in Ukraine's waters off occupied Yalta. Ukraine has spent 2026 turning cheap drones into kinetic sanctions on Russia's tanker fleet. Sea Baby drones have wrecked shadow-fleet tankers across the Black Sea since late 2025.

The air campaign running alongside it

The naval strikes run in parallel with an aerial-drone campaign by the Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS). On 16 July, SBS operators struck 11 more shadow-fleet vessels — five oil tankers, a gas carrier, three dry-cargo ships, and two tugs.

That brought the 6–16 July total to 147 vessels: 117 in the Sea of Azov and 30 in the Black Sea.

"The goal: paralysis of the logistics of oil, fuel, and cargo that bypasses sanctions," commander Robert "Madyar" Brovdi wrote. 

Ukraine's strikes on Russian refineries are pushing Moscow to export crude it can no longer process at home, Bloomberg reported. Buyers are not taking it fast enough, so Russian oil is piling up on tankers at sea. The value of those exports keeps sliding, and tanker loadings dipped in the week to 12 July.

Ukraine's refinery strikes are forcing crude onto the water

Ukraine has stepped up its strikes on Russia's refineries. Yesterday, it hit the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat plant far inside Russia, and the Afipsky facility near the Black Sea. The wave of attacks has driven Russian refining runs to their lowest in more than 21 years this month. That deepens a domestic fuel crunch and squeezes the global market. With less crude to process at home, Moscow is likely diverting more into exports as its own production falls. Russia pumped 8.93 million barrels a day in June — about 830,000 below the level it promised the OPEC+ producer group.

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The oil is piling up faster than buyers take it

Soaring exports are not being matched by deliveries. So Russian crude is stacking up on tankers, loaded but not yet discharged, Bloomberg wrote. The total has climbed back near its start-of-2026 highs — about 135 million barrels by Sunday.

Cargoes are building up near Egypt in the Mediterranean and east of Singapore. Five Urals tankers are anchored off Egypt, and another five have halted near Singapore, a gathering point for shadow-fleet ships hauling sanctioned oil. A growing share of the oil at sea is on vessels that seem to be sitting idle rather than sailing.

Fewer tankers, and less money for the same oil

Russia shipped 3.98 million barrels of crude a day in the week to 12 July, down from 4.08 million. Year-to-date volumes remain above every annual average since 2022, yet the four-week export value fell $200 million to $1.68 billion a week. Urals prices have nearly halved since mid-April.

Russia sent 4 million barrels of oil a day toward Asia. Only about half was openly bound for India and China, while 1.9 million barrels a day remained undeclared, likely until tankers crossed the Arabian Sea. Türkiye took 160,000 barrels a day, and Syria 40,000.

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

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

IAEA experts denied access to reactor halls

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

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

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

Plant has one power line left and 21 blackouts behind it

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

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

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

Cooling pond is two meters below its minimum

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

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

Rosatom is forcing staff onto its contracts

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

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

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

Ukrainian Special Operations Forces struck the Omsk oil refinery almost 2,500 km from Ukraine's border — far beyond the Ural Mountains — the first time the war has reached the Siberian plant, and the last of Russia's 11 biggest gasoline producers to come under Ukrainian fire, the General Staff reported. The attack capped an overnight wave on 6 July that set oil facilities burning from Russia's Baltic coast to occupied Crimea. Air-raid sirens sounded in Chelyabinsk Oblast for the first time since the full-scale war began.

Special Operations Forces close the list of Russia's gasoline giants

Ukraine's General Staff said Special Operations Forces units hit the Omsk refinery in Omsk Oblast, recording an impact and a subsequent fire, with the damage still being assessed. Preliminary data pointed to the ELOU-AVT-11 primary oil processing unit, which has a design capacity of 8.4 million tons of crude a year.

The General Staff called Omsk the most powerful refinery in Russia, processing over 21 million tons annually with one of the country's highest refining depths at about 99%, and the last of Russia's 11 largest gasoline producers to be struck by Ukrainian forces. The plant makes high-octane gasolines, Euro-5 diesel, and TS-1 and RT jet fuel, along with petrochemicals and industrial oils — and supplies the Russian occupation army, the General Staff noted.

Astra's analysis, meanwhile, noted that other assessments rank the plant below the Kirishi and Achinsk refineries, and confirmed this was the first attack on the facility ever.

Earlier, Ukrainian Telegram channel Exilenova+ reported that the first hit landed on the AVT-11 unit — the heart of the plant. At least two spots burned, and footage suggested nobody vented the system pressure before the strike hit two primary processing units. NASA FIRMS satellites recorded fires at both the AVT-10 and AVT-11 units.

The Omsk plant accounts for roughly 10% of all Russian oil refining, and by various estimates covers over 50% of the Siberian Federal District's motor fuel needs. Dnipro OSINT confirmed that modernized FP-1 drones hit the technological columns of the ELOU-AVT-11 unit more than 2,500 km from the border.

Omsk Oblast Governor Vitaly Khotsenko claimed that several drones reached the city's northern industrial hub while air defenses kept repelling the attack, without naming the refinery. Half an hour earlier he had claimed drones were destroyed over the oblast.

Yaroslavl's Slavneft-YANOS burns again

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) confirmed its drones attacked the Yaroslavl refinery and the Yaroslavl oil-pumping dispatch station the same night, with explosions and smoke recorded at the plant. Exilenova+ reported the refinery hit, with NASA FIRMS data confirming the fire.

Yaroslavl Oblast Governor Mikhail Yevraev claimed a drone attack on the region and blocked traffic toward Moscow near the plant from roughly 04:00 to 07:33, never naming what burned. Astra's OSINT analysis showed smoke rising over the Slavneft-YANOS site.

Ukrainian drones have struck it repeatedly this year — on 28 June, 19 May, 8 May, and 26 April, among other dates. The repeated hits helped push gasoline rationing into St. Petersburg by June. The refinery sits over 700 km from Ukraine's border.

Baltic ports and Kaluga hit the same night

The SBU also confirmed a successful strike on the oil-loading terminal of the Vysotsk sea port in Leningrad Oblast, disabling two oil-loading stenders and hitting three tanks with petroleum products. Ukrainian drones already set a fire near Vysotsk in April. The SBU's drones struck the Pervyi Zavod refinery in Kaluga Oblast too, sparking a fire.

The General Staff added hits on the NOVATEK-Ust-Luga complex near Slobodka and the permanent base of Russia's 26th Missile Brigade near Luga in Leningrad Oblast. Ukraine has battered Russia's Baltic export network since March, at times halting up to half of the petroleum exports flowing through it. Leningrad Oblast Governor Alexander Drozdenko claimed 56 drones were downed by 08:40, admitting infrastructure damage at the Luga training ground and near the Ust-Luga and Vysotsk ports.

Kerch terminal hit, first siren in Chelyabinsk

In occupied Kerch, the overnight strike hit TES-Terminal-1 — one of the largest light petroleum transshipment complexes on the Crimean peninsula, the General Staff reported. The city's port and military infrastructure have taken repeated Ukrainian strikes within the campaign to isolate the occupied peninsula.

Editor's note: This is a developing story and is being updated.

Explosions were reported in Moscow overnight on June 26, prompting airport closures, with Russia's Defense Ministry claiming 50 Ukrainian drones were downed across the country.

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said emergency services were at the sites where two drones were downed.

According to the Shot Telegram channel, which appears to be close to Russian security forces, debris from a downed drone struck a residential building.

"Alarms went off everywhere," a local resident told the channel.

Ukraine's military regularly strikes military targets deep within Russia in an attempt to diminish Moscow's fighting power as it continues its war against Ukraine.

Russia's Defense Ministry later claimed 50 Ukrainian drones had been downed across the country, two of which were "flying towards Moscow."

The Kyiv Independent could not independently verify these claims.

Kaluga airport and Moscow's Vnukovo airport had flight restrictions imposed amid the drone attack, Artyom Korenyako, a spokesperson for Russia's state aviation agency Rosaviatsia, said early on June 26.

"The airport is temporarily not accepting or sending flights. Aircraft crews, air traffic controllers, and airport services must take all necessary measures to ensure flight safety," he said.

The restrictions were later lifted.

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The Kyiv IndependentTim Zadorozhnyy

Ukrainian drones have forced at least 217 temporary airport closures across Russia since Jan. 1, independent Russian outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe reported on May 14, citing data from Russia's state aviation agency Rosaviatsia.

The figure already surpassed the combined total for all of 2023 and 2024, underscoring Kyiv's growing ability to put pressure on Russia, even in areas far from the border with Ukraine.

According to Serhii Bratchuk, spokesperson for the Ukrainian Defense Army's Southern Division, the surge in disruptions reflects a strategic shift in Ukraine's drone campaign.

"Moscow is the biggest aviation hub in the Russian Federation — flights go everywhere, not only across Russia, but worldwide," he told the Kyiv Independent last month.

"This is about the potential disintegration of Russian regions and the weakening of internal control."

Ukraine has also had remarkable success using first person view (FPV) drones — on June 1, Ukraine launched a game-changing drone attack on four key Russian military airfields, damaging 41 planes, including heavy bombers and rare A-50 spy planes.

Kyiv claimed it disabled 34% of Russia's strategic bomber fleet in what is seen as one of the most daring operations during Russia's full-scale war.

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The Kyiv IndependentThe Kyiv Independent news desk