More than 100 drones were detected near Romania over the past 96 hours, with NATO fighter jets scrambled seven times in response to the increased aerial activity, Romanian Defense Minister Radu Miruță said, according to Antena 3 CNN.

The figures come as Romania faces a growing number of drone incidents linked to Russia’s war against Ukraine. Romanian forces have recently shifted from monitoring and escorting drones to actively destroying those that enter Romanian airspace, while NATO aircraft are increasingly being called on to respond to aerial threats along the alliance’s eastern flank.

NATO aircraft repeatedly activated

According to Miruță, Romanian authorities detected more than 100 drones in the vicinity of Romanian territory during the four-day period. NATO fighter jets participating in air-policing missions were activated seven times.

Miruță did not report how many of the detected drones entered Romanian airspace, nor how many were identified as Russian or Ukrainian.

Miruță said most of the drones were destroyed by Ukrainian air defenses outside Romania, but close enough for their debris to reach Romanian shores.

“[Russia’s war in Ukraine] is a real war, with real consequences. That is why we are taking every measure we can to limit the indirect consequences that are also being felt here,” Miruță wrote on Facebook.

The report comes shortly after Romania destroyed two Russian Gerbera-type drones that were found drifting in the Black Sea near the Neptun Deep offshore gas project on 11 August. Romanian military divers carried out controlled detonations after Ukraine confirmed the drones were not Ukrainian.

Romania has begun shooting down drones

The latest figures follow a significant change in Romania’s response to drone incursions.

In late July, Romanian F-16s shot down three drones over Romanian territory and territorial waters in three consecutive days. One of the drones was identified as a Russian Shahed-type attack drone, while investigations were conducted into the others.

The July incidents marked a shift from Romania’s previous approach of tracking or escorting drones that crossed into its airspace during Russian attacks on Ukraine. Four of the five drones shot down in EU and NATO countries at that point had been neutralized by Romanian military pilots, according to Miruță.

Romanian President Nicușor Dan called the repeated violations of Romanian airspace “inadmissible and intolerable” and Bucharest prepared a diplomatic protest to Moscow after one of the downed drones was identified as Russian.

Drone war reaches beyond Ukraine

Romania has repeatedly dealt with drones crossing its border during Russian attacks on Ukrainian territory, particularly in the vicinity of Ukrainian ports on the Danube and the Black Sea.

In June, a Ukrainian sea drone that had lost control, which Kyiv attributed to Russian electronic warfare, exploded near an oil terminal in the Romanian port of Constanța. No one was injured, but more than 1,000 people were evacuated from the area as a precaution.

The incidents have also extended beyond Romania. On 14 August, NATO fighter jets shot down a foreign drone after it entered Latvian airspace. Latvia said the drone had entered its airspace as a result of Russian electronic warfare activity.

The repeated incidents have made drone activity around NATO’s eastern border an increasingly regular consequence of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) plans to abolish special border zones along several boundaries with Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia, according to draft orders reviewed by the Russian outlet Agentstvo.

The proposed changes would remove restrictions that currently treat movement between Russia and occupied parts of Ukraine much like crossing an international border. The FSB says the move follows Russia’s claimed incorporation of the occupied Ukrainian territories into Russia.

FSB seeks to remove border zones

The draft orders, as reported by Ukrainska Pravda, would invalidate previous FSB orders establishing border zones along the boundaries between Russia’s Rostov and Voronezh oblasts and the occupied territories of Ukraine.

A similar change is planned for occupied Crimea, where the current border zone along the boundary with occupied Kherson Oblast would be abolished.

The existing rules effectively impose additional controls on people entering and leaving the occupied territories, making movement subject to procedures similar to those used at Russia’s state border.

In the draft orders, the FSB justifies the changes by referring to the alleged “admission into the Russian Federation” of the occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kherson oblasts.

Russia illegally claimed to annex those territories, along with Zaporizhzhia Oblast, in September 2022. The move has been rejected by Ukraine and the international community, and Russia does not control all of the territory it claims to have annexed.

Border zone would remain around Crimea's islands

The FSB proposal would not completely eliminate the border zone in occupied Crimea.

A restricted zone would remain “within the boundaries of the Black Sea islands belonging to the Russian Federation,” according to the draft. The FSB’s regional directorate would determine where and when people could enter the zone and would install warning signs.

The proposed changes would remove the existing border zones along Russia’s boundaries with occupied Ukrainian territories, while retaining a border zone around certain Black Sea islands in occupied Crimea.

Russia treats occupied territory as part of its territory

The planned changes reflect Moscow’s effort to incorporate occupied Ukrainian territories into Russia’s administrative and legal system.

In September 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed so-called “accession treaties” claiming to incorporate Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts into Russia. Russia’s parliament subsequently approved the claims.

The treaties purported to define the boundaries of the annexed territories according to the borders they had on the day Russia claimed to admit them into the Russian Federation, despite Russia not controlling the entirety of those regions.

Russia previously used similar measures to formalize its control over occupied Crimea after illegally annexing the peninsula in 2014.

A Ukrainian court has sentenced a Russian soldier to 12 years in prison for repeatedly raping a 57-year-old civilian woman for about two months in an occupied village in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office said on 14 August.

Ukrainian authorities and international monitors have documented hundreds of cases of conflict-related sexual violence by Russian forces in Ukraine, while warning that the true number is likely higher because many cases go unreported, particularly in occupied territories.

Woman was trapped with Russian soldiers

The 50-year-old Russian serviceman entered a village in the Pokrovsk district in September 2025 as part of a small infantry group, according to prosecutors. He and two other Russian soldiers occupied the basement of a private home where two local civilians were sheltering from Russian attacks.

During one of the attacks, the civilian man was killed. The woman was then left in the basement with the three armed Russian soldiers.

In early October, one of the soldiers began sexually assaulting her. The court found that the abuse became systematic and continued for about two months.

The soldier threatened to kill the woman if she refused. Two other Russian servicemen were present during this period, while the woman was effectively unable to leave the basement or protect herself.

The abuse ended in December, when Ukrainian forces captured the Russian soldier during fighting. The woman was freed.

Convicted Russian soldier had spent 32 years in prison

The convicted man is a resident of Russia’s Sverdlovsk Oblast who had spent a total of 32 years in prison for robbery and armed robbery before joining the Russian military.

He signed a contract with the Russian army while serving his sentence and was later deployed as a rifleman with the 114th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade of Russia’s 51st Combined Arms Army.

The defendant denied committing the crime in court. Prosecutors presented evidence that the court found sufficient to establish his guilt in the cruel treatment of a civilian.

He was sentenced to 12 years in prison, the maximum punishment under the provision of Ukraine’s Criminal Code used in the case.

Sexual violence as a weapon of Russia’s war

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office had recorded 401 cases of sexual violence against civilians allegedly committed by Russian military personnel since the start of the full-scale invasion as of June 2026.

The victims included 250 women and 151 men, including 23 girls and one boy.

Donetsk Oblast had the second-highest number of documented cases, with 92, behind Kherson Oblast’s 124. Ukrainian prosecutors had sent 64 indictments involving 81 people to court, while Ukrainian courts had issued 19 verdicts against 26 individuals. All those convicted received prison sentences.

The documented figures do not capture the full scale of the abuse. The Prosecutor General’s Office has noted that the actual number may be higher because these are cases victims have been able to report.

On 14 August, Ukraine's Military Intelligence (HUR) published data on 26 vessels via its War&Sanctions portal, noting that 18 ships face no sanctions from any of Ukraine's partner countries.

The agency said the ships carry Russian oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG), or agricultural products from occupied Ukraine. Euromaidan Press could not independently verify HUR’s vessel records.

Russia relies on maritime trade both to fund its war through energy exports and to sell crops taken from occupied Ukraine. Kyiv began building a dedicated system against Russia’s shadow grain fleet in April, modeled on its oil-fleet campaign. A US bill introduced this week would also target vessels, owners, insurers, and ports involved in sanctions evasion. HUR’s new list shows how many ships remain outside those restrictions.

Russia’s grain shadow fleet

HUR divided the 26 vessels into three groups:

• oil tankers serving Lukoil, Rosneft, Surgutneftegas, Novatek, Tatneft, and Gazprom;
• dry-cargo ships using the occupied ports of Berdiansk, Sevastopol, Kerch, and Feodosia;
• LNG carriers moving gas from the sanctioned SAAM FSU floating storage unit, which holds LNG from the sanctioned Arctic LNG 2 project.

HUR highlighted three of the 18 vessels that are not facing partner sanctions. The bulk carrier LAMAR S repeatedly loaded wheat at the Avlita terminal in occupied Sevastopol in 2026 for delivery abroad, including to Syria, the agency said.

NAYA FALCON carried baking soda and granulated wheat bran from occupied Sevastopol to Egypt and Cyprus, HUR said. The agency linked the oil tanker GREGAL to UAE-based Cymare Navigation FZC, which it described as affiliated with Sovcomflot, Russia’s state-controlled shipping company.

Russia steals grain while striking Ukraine’s exports

Crops taken from occupied land are sold abroad as Russian produce, while Russia's attacks leave Ukraine’s legitimate harvest with fewer routes to market.

Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service said Russia sold more than 2 million tons of grain from occupied Ukraine as Russian produce in 2025. The agency said ship-to-ship transfers at Kavkaz helped conceal its origin.

Meanwhile, Russian attacks have squeezed Ukraine’s legitimate grain trade. Strikes on civilian ships brought the Black Sea corridor to a near standstill during the July harvest peak. Ten people died when Russian missiles hit the grain-laden Golden Leo on 19 July.

HUR called on Ukraine and its partners to synchronize sanctions and detain vessels that violate restrictions. It said the measures could curb Russia’s maritime logistics and war funding.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukrainian special services are conducting targeted operations against collaborators in Russian-occupied territories who assist Russia’s attacks against Ukraine and Ukrainians.

Speaking after a meeting of Ukraine’s top military leadership on 14 August, Zelenskyy said he received a separate briefing from Ukraine’s special services on the progress of these operations.

He specifically mentioned occupied Sevastopol, where Ukrainian officials have previously accused local collaborators of supporting Russia’s military operations.

“Responsibility for collaborators is inevitable,” Zelenskyy said.

Operations target those helping Russia

Zelenskyy did not identify the individuals targeted or provide operational details, saying only that the special services had reported on the implementation of “targeted operations” against collaborators in occupied territories.

He said the targets include people who participate in Russian attacks against Ukraine and Ukrainians.

The comments signal that Ukraine is continuing to pursue individuals in occupied territory who assist Russian forces, including through intelligence, military support, or other forms of cooperation.

Sevastopol explosion on 13 August

The statement comes shortly after an explosion in occupied Sevastopol on 13 August killed a Russian military officer.

Russian and Ukrainian sources have circulated claims that the victim was Robert Shageyev, reportedly a former Ukrainian Navy officer who joined Russia after the occupation of Crimea and later served in Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. 

His identity and the circumstances of the explosion have not been officially confirmed by Ukrainian authorities.

Russian sources had suggested Ukrainian involvement in the incident, but Ukraine has not publicly claimed responsibility.

Ukraine prepares for Russia’s next moves

The discussion of operations against collaborators was part of a broader meeting focused on Ukraine’s military preparations for the coming months.

Zelenskyy said the main issue was securing funding for Ukraine’s defense and security forces through the fall and winter. Officials identified funding gaps and additional requirements for expanding production of advanced weapons.

Among the priorities are faster production of Ukrainian strike weapons and new defensive systems, including jet-powered interceptor drones designed to counter Russian aerial threats.

Ukrainian intelligence also provided updated information about Russia’s plans, according to Zelenskyy. He said Ukraine is preparing countermeasures, including asymmetric responses.

The meeting also covered the effectiveness of Ukraine’s long-range and medium-range sanctions against Russia. Zelenskyy said the existing sanctions plan is being implemented and that priorities are being adjusted to ensure Ukraine has the capabilities needed to achieve its objectives.

Borka arrived as a kid about a year and a half ago, carried in by one of the men and left at the door of the unit's house in Donetsk Oblast, the battalion's chief sergeant, who uses the callsign Sheva, told ArmyInform, the Ukrainian defense ministry's information agency. Someone suggested keeping him, someone else joked about meat, and no one followed through. He has stayed ever since, through several redeployments and near-daily Russian drone activity. On one occasion, a Russian FPV drone exploded near the position. The soldiers relocated in a hurry, then realized they had left Borka behind and went back for him, Sheva recalled.

Borka is one of many animals Ukrainian troops have taken in and pulled out of front-line areas during Russia's war against Ukraine. Sheva casts the care as a deliberate contrast. "They are our lesser brethren. We are responsible for those we have tamed. We are not like the Russians," he said, adding that comrades have evacuated dogs, cats, and once even a cow from wrecked settlements.

Sheva, who volunteered with friends at the start of Russia's full-scale invasion and has fought on the Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, and Donetsk fronts, says Borka is no easy houseguest. Whoever feeds him is his favorite, and whoever is late feeding him, Sheva included, risks a headbutt. He once snapped his tether and walked straight into the house where the soldiers were resting, to their general shock. To burn off his energy, the unit built him a training station out of a stump with an old helmet hung on it, and in winter they put up a small insulated shelter that he keeps demolishing, and they keep repairing. They trade chocolate bars for hay and straw, and tell his story to people who then pitch in with food.

The plan is, eventually, to find Borka a permanent home in good hands. "No one is going to send Borka for meat," Sheva said. On the front, he added, any small distraction has value: a cat purring on your lap settles you, and Borka does something different. "He's the kind of guy who keeps us all on our toes."

A former fighter from the Akhmat forces, armed formations loyal to Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed ruler Ramzan Kadyrov, said he wants to fight for Ukraine after nearly a year in captivity.

Identified only as Magomed, he gave his account to Dmytro Karpenko, a Ukrainian journalist and blogger known for interviewing Russian prisoners of war, in a video published on 9 August 2026. Militarnyi, a Ukrainian military news outlet, reported on the interview on 13 August.

Magomed’s reported crossing reflects a divide that has placed Chechen fighters on both sides of Russia’s war. Since 2014, Kadyrov-loyal formations have fought for Moscow, while anti-Kremlin Chechens seeking independence from Russia have supported Kyiv.

Magomed’s account traces one fighter’s claimed passage from the first camp toward the second after Russians allegedly killed his brother. His account has not been independently verified.

The Chechen fighter said he had served near Svitlodarsk, Bakhmut, and Horlivka, including evacuating soldiers’ bodies.

Magomed also claimed two Chechens had crossed before him, prompting Russian commanders to check fighters’ phones and tighten surveillance.

According to Magomed, he later followed a Ukrainian drone toward Ukrainian positions with other Chechens. Ukrainian troops dropped medicine, water, and a radio to guide them. A Russian FPV drone attacked during the crossing and killed one Chechen, he alleged.

Ukrainian forces received the survivors and handed Magomed to the police brigade "Liut". His captivity began on 29 August 2025. Magomed also alleged that Russians killed his brother and called the death an epileptic seizure. Magomed said that drove him to fight Russia.

Militarnyi reported that Magomed had joined the International Legion, which is run by Ukraine's military intelligence. However, Karpenko’s video description says he wants to join the legion. Neither source explained the discrepancy.

What is Akhmat?

Akhmat, the unit Magomed belonged to, provides Russia with frontline troops and rear-area security. UK intelligence estimated in 2024 that around 9,000 personnel served in pro-Russian Chechen units in Ukraine.

Kadyrov’s reach has also expanded during the war. A later investigation found that his armed network had grown to 20 units across Russia’s military and security structures.

The Akhmat group's influence may extend beyond military operations. In January 2026, ATESH, a Ukrainian-Crimean Tatar partisan group, said Moscow planned to hand occupied Mariupol to Akhmat as a reward for Chechen leaders’ loyalty. The resistance organization claimed that arriving Chechen forces sought control of the city’s resources and industry.

Chechens also fight for Ukraine

On the other side, Chechens seeking an independent Ichkeria (the indigenous Chechen name for Chechnya) have fought for Ukraine since 2014.

In April 2026, Ukrainian intelligence said Shamanbat, a Ukrainian special unit that includes Free Ichkeria fighters, helped conduct drone and artillery strikes on Akhmat positions. The agency claimed the operation killed dozens of Akhmat personnel and wounded about 80.

Meta has filed a patent for its AI smartglasses that uses facial recognition to automatically detect who is in the frame, creates a video clip whenever one of those people does something — like picking an item up or walking around — and then generates a highlight reel of what just happened, according to a copy of the patent published Thursday. One example given is the system capturing highlights from a dinner party and then serving those up to the user.

The patent gives new, granular insight into what Meta may be planning around its highly controversial push into facial recognition in combination with its AI glasses, which have already been widely lauded as “pervert glasses.” 

Starting in September, Belarusian 10th-graders will be split by gender for new practical training: boys will take a 10-hour drone-piloting course, girls an expanded tactical medicine block, Deputy Education Minister Alyaksandr Kadlubai said, according to BelTA. The changes fall under the "pre-conscription and medical training" classes already taught in Belarusian schools.

The update fits a broader pattern of militarizing education in Belarus since the 2020 protests and Alyaksandr Lukashenka's subsequent crackdown. Military-patriotic clubs, formalized under a 2022 presidential decree, have spread through Belarusian schools, sending children as young as elementary school age through weapons training and field exercises. This year, Radio Svoboda says that 10-day military field camps have become mandatory for 10th-graders, and kindergartens have opened groups with a military-patriotic focus.

Kadlubai singled out cooperation with a Minsk-based military unit, No. 5448, home to a police brigade of the interior troops, saying the ministry aims to "scale this experience across the whole of Belarus."

"We've strengthened the practical component," Kadlubai said. "We've shifted the balance toward practical classes and increased their volume."

While Belarus drills its own children, Russia indoctrinates Ukraine's

Belarus is not a neutral bystander to Russia's war. Alyaksandr Lukashenka's government let Russian forces stage the February 2022 invasion from Belarusian soil, and Kyiv says it keeps expanding the logistics routes, training grounds, and artillery positions Russia could use for future operations.

And what its ally teaches at home, Russia imposes by force on Ukrainian children under occupation. From 1 September 2026, occupation authorities roll out a curriculum built around loyalty to the Russian state — a compulsory Russian "identity" subject, a split-off military-training course, and behavior graded from the second grade as "exemplary," "acceptable," or "unacceptable." It already reaches more than 582,000 children in nearly 2,000 schools.

A Kyiv court has sentenced an unemployed man to 15 years in prison with confiscation of his property for carrying out arson attacks on behalf of Russian intelligence, Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) said on 13 August. The man was recruited while looking for "easy money" on Telegram channels and carried out two arson attacks in Kyiv before fleeing to Odesa, the SBU reported.

Russian intelligence increasingly recruits Ukrainians through Telegram for arson and sabotage. It targets people seeking quick money and treats them as disposable operatives, paying small sums for a single task and discarding them once they are caught.

The Russian agent carried out two arson attacks

According to the SBU, the man first set fire to a relay cabinet belonging to a railway signaling system. Russia intended the attack to disrupt freight logistics, including supplies to areas near the front.

The agent later burned a volunteer’s SUV used to deliver humanitarian aid and evacuate civilians from areas affected by Russia’s war. He carried out the attacks at night, using a flammable mixture and filming each incident on his smartphone before sending the footage to his Russian handler.

The SBU arrested him in Odesa in July 2025, where he had attempted to hide after carrying out the attacks. Investigators seized his phone, which contained evidence of his cooperation with Russia.

A court found him guilty on two counts — sabotage committed under martial law, and intentional destruction of property by arson — both carried out as part of a group acting on prior conspiracy. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison with confiscation of his property.

Easy money, hard time: other Telegram recruits jailed too

The case follows several similar convictions. In a May case, an agent received 15 years for burning a railway relay cabinet near a Dnipro station in an attempt to disrupt frontline logistics. The SBU said the unemployed local, recruited through Telegram, filmed the arson and reported it to his handler, then was caught before he could carry out a planned series of attacks on the city's critical infrastructure.

In June 2026, another agent was sentenced to 15 years for preparing to burn an electrical substation in Kropyvnytskyi.

In July, SBU investigators reported that a GRU agent in Zaporizhzhia received 15 years for preparing explosives for Russian-organized attacks.

Police arrested a man in Texas early Wednesday morning for saying “bullshit” at a public city meeting a week earlier.

Police in Fort Worth, Texas pulled over local radio host and political activist EJ Carrion just outside of his home and arrested him for "tumultuous behavior” related to a Commissioner's Court meeting on August 4, according to a copy of the arrest report obtained by 404 Media. Video of the alleged crime on YouTube showed Carrion saying the word “bullshit” while talking about polling center reductions during the meeting before walking away from the microphone.

Carrion told NBC DFW that he had been out with friends late Tuesday night and came home around 3 AM on Wednesday morning. He pulled into his cul-de-sac when the cops pulled him over for not using a turn signal. They told Carrion they had a warrant for his arrest.

According to an arrest report obtained by 404 Media, Carrion is charged with two counts of disrupting a meeting or procession, a misdemeanor in the state of Texas. “On or about the 4th day of August 2026, in the county of Tarrant, state of Texas, [Carrion] did intentionally hinder an official proceeding [...] by noise or violent or tumultuous behavior,” the record said.

Tarrant County is the home of the city of Fort Worth, where. Carrion and other residents have been fighting a long battle with city officials over a plan to reduce the number of polling places by almost 50 percent ahead of the November midterms. During the last election, the city had 316 polling places. The county’s election administrator wants to cut that to 176.

Carrion is a local celebrity — a podcast host, political activist, and EdTech entrepreneur — who has used his platform to speak out against the plan. He’s attended many public meetings of the Tarrant County Commissioners and spoken against the proposed polling plan several times.

“You said you were all about cooling the temperature and yet you vote for this extremist bullshit,” Carrion said. “All of you are bullshit.” Carrion then turned around and walked away from the mic.

“Remove him immediately from the room,” Tarrant County judge Tim O’Hare said.

“I’m walking out, small man,” Carrion shouted over his shoulder as he walked away.

“You are disrupting the meeting, we are now in recess,” O’Hare said. This exchange was, apparently, what caused Tarrant County to issue a warrant for Carrion’s arrest.

Things did not calm down after Carrion left. Thirty minutes after his comments, a woman took the mic and criticized how the meetings worked. “People are removed for clapping. People are removed for speaking out. People are treated like a disruption instead of the reason this government exists,” she said. “You keep telling us not to ‘California my Texas’ while in reality you keep Russia my Texas. You three boys from the GOP—”

“Alright, hang on, that’s it,” O’Hare cut her off. “We’re going to clear the chambers now.” Off camera, someone called something out to O’Hare.

“Take that one, remove him from the building,” O’Hare said, pointing off camera.

An hour after that, the chamber cleared, O’Hare ordered the arrest of another speaker for touching the microphone. Former Texas State representative Lon Burnham spoke out against the polling plan and the Commission. “For the last couple of years now all we have seen is total disrespect for the public,” he said. A previous speaker had been removed for touching the microphone and Burnam picked it up during his own speech.

“Set the microphone down, Mr. Burnam,” O’Hare said. “I’ve asked you to set the microphone down. Please remove him.” The judge placed the meeting in recess again and Tarrant county officers physically dragged Burnam out of the chambers and charged him with two counts of public disruption — the same charges faced by Carrion.

O’Hare is an elected official who presides over the Tarrant County Commission with four other elected representatives. Commissioner Roderick Miles Jr. questioned Carrion’s arrest in a public statement on his Facebook page. “I am deeply disturbed by the circumstances surrounding the arrest of Efrin ‘EJ’ Carrion earlier this morning,” Miles Jr. said in the statement.

“Government must exercise extraordinary restraint when speech at a public meeting leads to involvement with the criminal justice system. Residents should never have to wonder whether speaking forcefully to their elected officials could result in a warrant, an arrest, or an encounter with law enforcement,” he said. “Because once that fear takes hold, the damage reaches far beyond one person.”

Miles Jr. called on his fellow commissioners to make the Commissioners Court a place where residents could feel safe to speak their mind. “There must be a line the government does not cross,” he said. “The authority entrusted to us does not belong to us. It belongs to the people [...] this must stop. And I will not be silent when the public trust, the safety of our residents, and their rights to be heard are at stake.”

Carrion’s arrest is the latest in a growing trend around the country. People are angry at their local politicians — often about surveillance cameras and data center contracts — and have been showing up at public hearings in huge numbers to tell them. In February, cops in Oklahoma arrested a farmer for speaking a little too long during a data center meeting. In July, police arrested a person in Kansas for clapping during the public comments portion of a data center meeting.

Carrion and the Fort Worth Police Department did not return 404 Media’s request for a comment.

Russia's economy grew 1.3% in the second quarter of 2026, the state news agency TASS reported on 12 August, citing preliminary estimates from the state statistics agency Rosstat — a figure that, if accurate, would end a slump that had opened the year with the country's first quarterly contraction since 2023.

And it comes from a state agency months after Putin dressed down his economic team in April and demanded "concrete measures" to restore growth — the print then beat the government's own economists in exactly the direction he wanted.

The quarter may have brought a real if shallow rebound, or the state's statisticians may have produced the figure the president wanted. Either way it matters, because Russia's economy is what pays for its war, and its strength sets the ceiling on how long the Kremlin can keep fighting.

Barely growing all year

Even taken straight, the rebound is thinner than it looks. The first quarter had closed 0.2% down, and across the whole first half of the year output rose just 0.6%, half of last year's pace and close to seven times slower than the wartime boom of 2023 and 2024. The quarterly figure jumped. The underlying trend barely moved.

The weakness had been building for over a year. War spending drove the 2023–24 boom and overheated the economy; to curb the resulting inflation, the central bank raised its key rate to 21%, choking lending and investment. It has cut rates since, to 14% in July, but money is still tight and inflation is rising again as Ukrainian strikes push up fuel prices.

Growth the war paid for

As The Moscow Times set out, reviewing the data and the economists reading it, most of the quarter's growth rested on one-off factors: more working days than a year earlier, a temporary oil-revenue spike during the Iran war, and a budget that lifted spending 16%, a third of it on the army and weapons. The split underneath is the tell.

Military plants kept raising output; civilian industry kept shrinking, down 3.2% from a year earlier by the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting (CMASF), a Russian forecasting institute, according to its estimate.

Rosstat also billed the quarter as its strongest in six, and said it had beaten the forecasts of both the economy ministry, which had projected 0.9%, and the central bank, which saw 0.8%.

Few expect it to last

Russia will "remain in a state of stagnation" for the foreseeable future, said Liam Peach of Capital Economics, citing high interest rates and the fuel crisis.

Ukraine's long-range drones are adding to the strain. Their strikes have cut Russian oil refining to its lowest level in more than two decades, draining fuel supply and pushing prices up at home, and forcing Moscow, an oil giant, to import gasoline from as far as Morocco.

Russia's glide-bomb strike on Kramatorsk killed one person and wounded 18, the head of the Donetsk Oblast Military Administration, Vadym Filashkin, reported on the morning of 14 August. The Donetsk Oblast Prosecutor's Office has opened a war-crimes investigation into the attack.

Russian forces dropped eight FAB-250 aerial bombs fitted with universal glide and correction modules (UMPK) on the city on the evening of 13 August, hitting residential areas including apartment buildings, the prosecutor's office reported. An apartment building and a car were damaged. Filashkin said the strikes also hit the nearby settlement of Bilenke.

The strike on the residential area was another instance of Russian forces using guided aerial munitions against civilian areas. Under international humanitarian law, civilian objects may not be deliberately targeted.

The toll rose overnight. Filashkin first reported at least one killed and 15 wounded on the evening of 13 August. By the next morning, the prosecutor's office had documented 17 of the wounded — seven men and 10 women aged between 47 and 85 — with blast and traumatic brain injuries, shrapnel wounds, cuts to the head, arms and legs, and abrasions and bruises. Filashkin's later update put the number of wounded at 18.

"Russia again turned an ordinary evening in the city into deadly danger. This is not an accident or a mistake — this is how the enemy wages war against our people," Filashkin said.

Deliberately directing attacks against civilian objects may constitute a war crime under international humanitarian law. The prosecutor's office has opened a pre-trial investigation under Part 2 of Article 438 of Ukraine's Criminal Code.

"In total, over the past day, Russians shelled populated areas of Donetsk Oblast 37 times. 624 people, including 90 children, have been evacuated from the front line," Filashkin reports.

Repeated pattern of glide-bomb strikes on Donetsk Oblast

Russian forces regularly use FAB-250 bombs equipped with UMPK to strike populated areas in Donetsk Oblast and other frontline regions.

On 11 August 2025, Russian aircraft dropped FAB-250 bombs equipped with UMPK on a residential quarter in Bilozerske, Donetsk Oblast. Two civilians were killed, a 43-year-old man and a 34-year-old woman, while seven others were injured, including a 16-year-old boy. Eight apartment buildings and six vehicles were damaged. A pre-trial investigation was opened under Part 2 of Article 438 of Ukraine's Criminal Code.

On 18 September 2025, Russian forces struck civilians with a FAB-250 bomb equipped with UMPK in Kostiantynivka, Donetsk Oblast. Five residents aged between 62 and 74 were killed; three men and two women were outside at the time of the strike. The facades of four apartment buildings were damaged.

On 25 June 2026, Russian forces dropped three FAB-250 bombs equipped with UMPK on Druzhkivka, Donetsk Oblast. A 56-year-old woman was killed, and four others were injured: a 68-year-old man and three women aged 51, 58, and 67, sustaining blast injuries and shrapnel wounds.

Russia dismissed the idea of a Black Sea ceasefire on 14 August, Reuters reported, a day after the agency disclosed that Ukraine had proposed a mutual halt to attacks on civilian targets there.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Moscow saw no grounds for measures that would give Kyiv a temporary reprieve.

Russia’s dismissal comes after its strikes drove shipowners from Odesa as Ukraine’s wheat harvest peaked. More than 90% of Ukraine’s farm exports leave through three deepwater Odesa ports. Reuters reported that Ukraine’s 12 August operation at Novorossiysk targeted a naval base and warships, although nearby grain terminals also suspended operations.

Russian forces, by contrast, have repeatedly struck foreign-flagged ships and Ukrainian port infrastructure. The disruption is stranding Ukrainian crops and raising concerns over global food supplies.

Zakharova accused Ukraine of deliberately destabilizing civilian shipping but did not mention Russia’s attacks, Reuters said. She was responding to Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who said Ankara had proposed a Black Sea moratorium to both sides.

Zakharova also said Moscow had received no formal proposal from Türkiye and ruled out reviving the 2022–23 Black Sea grain deal, calling it one-sided.

Ukraine’s harvest has nowhere to go

Reuters said Ukraine’s grain exports had fallen 76% year on year so far in August. Ukraine’s Agriculture Ministry projects agricultural exports could nearly halve, from 64.4 million to 29.6 million tonnes. It expects silos to fill by October as grain backs up.

World Grain, citing the US Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service, reported that corn exports could fall 39% and wheat exports 26%. The US agency expects unsold corn stocks to rise more than tenfold.

The ministry has asked the EU for €220 million to subsidize farm loans and help producers finance autumn sowing. Reuters separately reported, citing unnamed sources in both countries, that Kyiv and Chisinau were discussing a rail route to Romania’s Constanța port. Kyiv estimates it could carry only 10% of Ukrainian grain exports.

Russia turns ports into targets

After Russia refused to extend the UN- and Türkiye-brokered grain deal in 2023, Ukraine opened its own maritime corridor. It remained operational until this summer’s escalation.

Russian forces repeatedly struck foreign-flagged vessels in July. On 19 July, Russian missiles hit the Guinea-Bissau-flagged, Turkish-owned Golden Leo as it left Odesa carrying corn. The attack killed 10 people, Ukraine’s Navy and Sea Ports Authority said. Ag Bull Trading reported that the attacks brought the corridor to its first full stop since it opened in August 2023.

Russia’s dismissal leaves Ukraine’s corridor officially open while Russian attacks continue to drive shipowners away.

Drones have pushed armored vehicles off the roads to Ukraine's front line, a Ukrainian brigade commander told RBC-Ukraine. Denys Perch, who commands the 107th Territorial Defense Brigade, says the drone-saturated belt has grown so deep that pickups no longer reach forward positions. The one enemy weapon his jammers can't touch is the fiber-optic drone.

The war has become a contest over who can pull people off the battlefield fastest, as cheap drones make any human movement near the front a target. Ukraine keeps out-inventing Russia at the front, but Russia copies each advance and floods the line with it at state scale.

When armor becomes the target

Until recently, armored vehicles still drove supplies to logistics hubs near the front. That is now almost impossible. Perch says that when a large, armored machine appears, Russian forces treat it as a prize target and swarm it with dozens of drones and munitions. Perch would sooner park his armor than seat soldiers inside it.

A kill zone that keeps widening

On the busiest sectors, Perch says, the kill zone—the drone-ruled strip around the contact line—now runs 15 to 20 kilometers deep. Some positions take three days to reach on foot. Where troops once drove most of the way and walked the last stretch, they now walk it all.

Robots take the drive

Under Perch, the brigade climbed, by his account, from around 22nd to third among Ukraine's Territorial Defense forces on the military's strike-results leaderboard, the home-guard units now fighting on the front. Ground robots—unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs)—do the work that armor cannot. They haul supplies and evacuate the wounded, though the robot often can't be brought back. His brigade runs over 1,500 logistics missions a month by heavy bomber drones alone, and still more by first-person-view (FPV) drones and robots. Russia hunts those bombers, he says, with interceptors that scramble the moment they hear one take off, so his crews mix high and low flight to slip past. Perch expects robots to move from supply runs into combat, hitting Russian troops in their rear.

The drone his jammers can't touch

Both armies now field fiber-optic drones—machines guided by a hair-thin glass thread instead of radio. No signal means nothing to jam. Ukraine learned to block radio and digital drones, cutting their controls and video, Perch said. The glass-fiber ones his electronic warfare cannot reach, because there is no radio link to attack. His brigade still has no counter to them, Perch said, and he wants a technical fix that stops them.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said authorities had detained a Russian citizen recruited by Moscow to kill a man in Warsaw. The target holds US and Ukrainian passports, the Associated Press (AP) reported on 13 August. Tusk said Polish security services stopped the alleged attack “at the last minute.” 

Since 2022, AP has mapped about 200 acts of sabotage, arson, and disruption across Europe that officials have linked to Russia. European governments say the campaign aims to intimidate Ukraine’s supporters and disrupt military aid, while Ukrainian authorities report similar recruitment tactics inside Ukraine.

The suspect was detained on 7 August and remanded for three months, Warsaw police said. Tomasz Siemoniak, the minister overseeing Poland’s intelligence services, said the operation involved US services.

PM Tusk called it the first Russian-ordered attempt of its kind against a US citizen in another NATO country. He said the target was “inconvenient to the Putin regime,” without explaining why.

In their bulletin, Reuters reported that Russia’s Warsaw embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Moscow denies conducting a sabotage campaign in Europe.

Russia has already gone after a German arms CEO and critics of the Kremlin

European authorities had already reported plots against arms-industry figures supplying Ukraine. CNN reported in 2024 that US and German services foiled a plot against Rheinmetall chief Armin Papperger. 

Former Bellingcat investigator Christo Grozev said an intelligence insider told him he was on Russia’s kill list. He also warned Putin critic Garry Kasparov that a Russian agent trained in assassination had infiltrated exile groups to approach him.

Russia has also been accused of targeting Kremlin opponents abroad. In June, Kremlin critic Robert Kuzovkov was shot dead in Poland. Tusk said the killing resembled a political assassination, but Warsaw has not attributed it to Russia.

Russia uses disposable agents, not career spies

The alleged recruitment in Warsaw resembles tactics reported elsewhere in Europe. German investigators identified a former Ukrainian bricklayer and an untrained Romanian woman as the suspected operatives surveilling Stefan Thumann, head of Bavarian drone maker Donaustahl. German intelligence later classified the case as a suspected planned assassination.

Ukrainian authorities have reported similar recruitment at home. The SBU said an FSB-directed foreign pair killed Colonel Ivan Voronych in Kyiv in July 2025. Both suspects later died in a shootout with law enforcement.

Ukrainian police say Russian recruitment can escalate from surveillance and simple deliveries to arson, terrorism, and murder. Since the start of 2026, police and the SBU have registered 31 terrorist attacks and prevented another 14.

Russia's defense ministry posted photographs of attack drones in flight on its Telegram channel, captioned "like snow on your head," and told Ukrainians that "in winter, you'll get a freeze." The ministry attached the threat to its own earlier claim of strikes on Ukrainian port infrastructure and vessels.

The post puts in writing what Russia has done to Ukrainian civilians through every winter of the full-scale war: strike the power and heating grid to leave homes cold and dark. What is new is not the tactic but the candor — a ministry that usually insists it hits only military targets openly advertising the coming assault on the systems that keep civilians warm. And the taunt lands as Ukraine heads into the season more exposed than at any point in the war: President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told CNN this week that the country holds about 1% of the Patriot interceptors it needs to get through winter.

The winter campaign Russia is advertising

Since late 2022, Russia has systematically struck Ukraine's electricity, gas, and heating infrastructure, causing rolling blackouts and cutting heat and water during freezing weather. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly called the campaign "energy terrorism," and grid operators say the strikes have shifted toward knocking out entire energy districts rather than staging single mass barrages. This summer Russia widened the target set again: on 13 August a Russian drone set port infrastructure alight in Odesa Oblast and damaged a civilian vessel at a Mykolaiv port, the national rail operator and regional officials reported — the same kind of strike the ministry's post was boasting about.

Ukraine enters winter short of the weapon that stops ballistic missiles

The threat is heavier because Ukraine cannot reliably stop the missiles that would carry it out. Zelenskyy told CNN that selling Kyiv 5% of current US Patriot stocks would carry it through winter and 10% would let it "destroy all the Russians' ballistic missiles" — but that he holds 1%. On 5 August, Russia fired 28 ballistic and anti-ship missiles at Kyiv and Ukraine intercepted none, killing 17 people. July was the deadliest month for Ukrainian civilians since April 2022, according to the UN.

Europe is scrambling to add generation before the cold sets in. Finland said on 13 August it would fund a €28.5 million ($33.2 million) power plant project for Ukraine, one of several efforts to keep the lights on when the strikes resume. Ukrainian officials have warned that the coming winter could be more difficult than any before it.

Bulgaria's interest in buying Poland's retiring MiG-29s has pushed Warsaw and Kyiv closer to finalizing their long-stalled swap, Polish officials say.

Poland and Ukraine are in the final stage of negotiating a deal to transfer Poland's aging MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine in exchange for drones and Ukrainian drone-warfare know-how, with the jets potentially shipping within weeks, Polish outlet Wirtualna Polska reported, citing sources in the Polish Armed Forces and Defense Ministry. The report follows months of on-and-off talks that Poland's own officials have repeatedly declared both close to done and dead.

Polish Deputy Defense Minister Cezary Tomczyk said on Polsat News that Bulgaria's competing interest in the jets has "livened up" Warsaw's discussions with Kyiv. Bulgaria has told Poland that if Ukraine will not commit, Sofia would buy the jets itself, Tomczyk said.

"I hope it will be soon," Tomczyk said when asked when Poland intends to sign the agreement with Ukraine. He said Poland has laid out the technologies and know-how it wants from Ukraine in return, calling the exchange in both countries' interest. "Today I cannot say with 100% certainty that this matter will be finalized, but we hope so."

According to Wirtualna Polska, the deal covers Soviet-era jets Poland's air force is retiring as it phases in Western aircraft, in exchange for a large batch of Ukrainian drones of various types and the transfer of Ukrainian combat know-how. The outlet reports Poland wants data on strike-drone communications links, control principles, footage of strikes on targets, and physical samples of the hardware itself.

Poland's Defense Ministry has said the process picked up pace after Rustem Umerov took over as head of Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tasking him with negotiating drone agreements. A source involved in the talks told Wirtualna Polska that Ukrainian drone maker Fire Point has offered to supply Poland with 1,500 long-range drones, plus a matching batch if war breaks out — an offer the source said Poland regards cautiously, since a company citing force majeure in wartime could leave Warsaw without the hardware it was promised.

A deal that has collapsed and revived for a year

Poland and Ukraine signed a bilateral security agreement in July 2024 that raised the prospect of transferring a squadron of at least 14 Polish MiG-29s. By early 2026, Warsaw had narrowed the offer to six to eight jets. In June, Poland froze the transfer, with Deputy Defense Minister Tomczyk citing Ukraine's refusal to share its drone and counter-drone technology. Talks restarted in July after Kyiv sent Warsaw a letter with concrete proposals, and by 31 July, Poland said Ukraine had returned with a specific list of drones it would hand over — a proposal Poland's ministry was still reviewing.

Poland's ambassador to Ukraine, Vasyl Bodnar, told Ukrainska Pravda's Yevropeiska Pravda that dialogue continues but that several obstacles still stand in the way of the transfer.

Why this matters

The MiG-29 remains a core part of Ukraine's air force even as it shifts to F-16s, Mirages, and incoming Gripens — Ukrainian pilots already fly the Soviet-era jets and have adapted them to carry Western precision weapons, so a new batch could enter service without the delays a Western aircraft transition requires. Poland's own hesitation reflects the same trade-off every one of its allies faces: what it gives up in hardware, it wants back in the operational knowledge Ukraine has built fighting Russia's drone war for four years — knowledge with no equivalent on any NATO training ground.

Serafim Hordiienko enlisted at 19 in 2022, fought as a mortarman near the front line, then moved into drone warfare as it grew central to Russia's war on Ukraine. In an interview with RBC-Ukraine, he pushed back on the idea that unmanned systems are phasing out infantry, arguing the two perform separate functions neither can absorb.

The debate is live inside Ukraine's own military. Ukraine's Third Army Corps has said it plans to replace roughly 30% of its infantry with ground robotic systems by the end of 2026, and other officers have called full infantry replacement an eventual goal. Hordiienko's account, shaped by his own shift from rifle-and-mortar combat to drone operations, argues against that trajectory ever completing — infantry holds ground; drones strike and surveil; neither substitutes for the other.

"Different functions of war"

Hordiienko compared infantry and drones to two halves of a single system rather than competing tools. Infantry cannot operate without supporting fire and reconnaissance, he said, and drones — while efficient at surveillance and strikes — cannot hold territory the way ground troops can. If war is still fought over front lines and captured ground, he argued, only infantry can perform that function; drones deliver cost-effective damage but do not occupy space.

He traced Ukraine's drone advantage not to hardware alone but to the system around it — production, battlefield communication, and rapid adaptation to frontline needs. Ukrainian manufacturers he named, including Skyeton, Ukrspetssystems, DeviRO, and Firepoint, built reconnaissance and strike capabilities under resource shortages that Russia's more centralized, state-linked defense industry did not face in the same way, he said.

The end of romanticized war

Hordiienko dates a turning point in how Ukrainian soldiers relate to the war to the 2023 Zaporizhzhia counteroffensive. Before it, he said, volunteers who joined in 2022 operated in an emotionally charged, maximalist mode — young men competing to reach combat before the war, as they assumed, ended quickly. After the counteroffensive stalled, he said, that gave way to a more systematic, mechanized phase he calls "a war of military machines."

He illustrated the shift with a sword-and-shield framework: each side develops a new method of attack, the other adapts a defense, and the balance resets every few months. The side that adapts and scales fastest gains the advantage, he said — a dynamic he sees as running through the drone war specifically.

Hordiienko enlisted through an unusual path. He and three other volunteers, all under 21 and already carrying combat experience from the war's opening months, could not sign standard military contracts because of their age. They were enlisted only after Ukraine's then-commander-in-chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, issued a personal order on their behalf.

What newer recruits are owed

Speaking about troops mobilized later in the war — arriving without the volunteer surge's initial urgency — Hordiienko said commanders now owe recruits honesty rather than appeals to abstract duty. He described his approach as a direct exchange: a commander sets out the conditions of service, and the soldier meets specific obligations in return, with consequences if either side breaks that arrangement. Motivation, in his account, rests less on invoking "fighting for Ukraine" and more on concrete terms of service, fair treatment, and — where the national cause doesn't land for a given recruit — the practical case that military service builds expertise, particularly in drone and other technical specialties, that carries into civilian life.

A NATO fighter patrolling Baltic airspace shot down a drone over Latvia early Friday, the Latvian Armed Forces said, in the second Baltic-region drone incursion this week.

The interception happened over Balvi Municipality, near Latvia's borders with Belarus and Russia. Latvian officials said the drone entered the country's airspace after being knocked off course by Russian electronic warfare systems — not as a deliberate strike on Latvian territory. Russia has regularly bombarded Ukraine's Baltic-facing neighbors with stray drones since intensifying its own long-range strike campaign, and on 12 August, Romania detonated two Russian drones that washed up near its Black Sea gas field.

Latvian forces reported an "airspace threat" in four districts bordering Belarus and Russia shortly after 04:00, and announced the drone's destruction roughly 30 minutes later. Ieva Bērziņa, a representative of Latvia's Joint Armed Forces Staff, said the crash site had been located but its exact position was not being disclosed, and that debris may be scattered over a wide area because the drone was shot down at high altitude.

The incident coincided with a large-scale drone attack on Russian targets in Leningrad Oblast overnight.

This is not the first time drones have crossed into the Baltic states during Russian strikes on its own territory. In May, a drone that entered from Russia damaged fuel tanks at an oil depot in Rēzekne, about 40 kilometers from the border. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in March that Russia was deliberately steering Ukrainian drones toward Baltic airspace using electronic warfare, adding that Moscow later uses the resulting incidents in information operations targeting the region.

Latvia is weighing the purchase of Brazilian-made A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft for counter-drone missions, funded through more than €1 billion the government has earmarked for stronger air defense.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the results on 12 August after a briefing from Commander-in-Chief Mykhailo Drapatyi, Chief of the General Staff Ihor Skybiuk, and Airborne Assault Forces Commander Oleh Apostol.

Kyiv says the operation recaptured 745 km² and 26 villages across Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. The Airborne Assault Forces and attached units carried it out. The goal was to stop Russian forces from advancing further and push them beyond the administrative border of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. The President's Office put Russian losses at at least 9,550 killed and over 6,600 wounded. Ukrainian forces are continuing to build on the gains. The operation also added to Ukraine's prisoner exchange pool.

Since its 2023 counteroffensive stalled, Ukraine has mostly defended while Russia grinds forward, making any sustained Ukrainian advance rare. With Western aid uncertain and its own troops stretched, Ukraine rarely gets to trade defense for offense on its own land.

A reversal Russia paid for across the front

Ukraine has spent most of the past year on the defensive. The Oleksandrivka counteroffensive broke that pattern. For over six months, Ukrainian forces pushed forward rather than holding ground, and they did it in Ukraine's own Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, not on Russian territory.

The operation also hurt Russia elsewhere. Every unit Moscow sent to defend in the Oleksandrivka direction was a unit it could not use to attack other parts of the front, the US-based think tank ISW assessed. Russian recruitment is declining, which makes that tradeoff harder to absorb.

The numbers across the whole frontline tell the same story. Between late January and 12 August, Russian forces seized roughly 383 km² but lost about 234 km², according to ISW. The net Russian gain was far smaller than in previous seasons.

How Ukraine clawed the ground back

The counteroffensive began on 29 January, according to ISW. Texty reported it ran in two stages: January to May and May to August. It was one of two mutually reinforcing Ukrainian drives in the Oleksandrivka and Huliaipole directions. Both aimed to push Russia from Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and disrupt preparations for Russia's 2026 offensive.

Kyiv says the following 26 villages were liberated: Tolstoi, Novokhatske, Hrushivske, Zirka, Zelenyi Hai, Piddubne, Myrne, Tsehelne, Pryvillia, Zlahoda, Krasnohirske, Pryvilne, Novohryhorivka, Stepove, Kalynivske, Berezove, Novomykolaivka, Voskresenka, Oleksandrohrad, Yalta, Rybne, Maliivka, Sichneve, Ternove, Novoheorhiivka, and Zaporizke. The settlements span all three oblasts.

Where Kyiv's map and ISW's diverge

ISW described the results as evidence that Ukrainian forces can still carry out significant tactical advances and bring back limited mechanized maneuver on parts of the frontline.

It assessed that the success was likely the result of several factors working together: better Ukrainian operational planning, a campaign to suppress and destroy Russian air defenses, deeper strikes against Russian supply lines, Ukraine's advantage in tactical drones, and the 01 February Starlink cutoff that hit Russian forces in Ukraine.

Geolocated footage from 11 August showed Ukrainian forces holding positions southeast of Ternuvate and Vozdvyzhivka. Russian sources had claimed advances in those areas. ISW assessed those claims were likely largely exaggerated.

ISW's own mapping recorded roughly 627 km² of Ukrainian gains across the Oleksandrivka and northern Huliaipole directions combined. Even that two-direction total falls below Kyiv's 745 km² for the Oleksandrivka direction alone. ISW noted its conservative methodology likely underestimates Ukrainian advances.

The Airborne Assault Forces Command added that some flag-raisings over liberated villages were done at a "safe distance" from actual positions for operational security. This suggests forces had moved beyond the settlements they publicly named.

At least 437 civilians were killed and 2,610 injured across Ukraine in July, the highest monthly death toll since May 2022, according to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU), which published the figures on 12 August. The toll was 30% higher than June and 70% higher than July 2025.

The deadliest single attack came on 2 July, when Russia launched 74 missiles and nearly 500 long-range drones at Ukraine, mainly targeting Kyiv. Ukrainian air defenses downed 524 of 570 aerial targets, but the 46 that got through — including 25 ballistic missiles — killed 30 people and destroyed a nine-story apartment block in the capital's Darnytskyi district. Russia fired at least 429 missiles at Ukraine over the course of the month, more than double June's total.

A trend that keeps getting worse

"Every month this year the number of killed and injured civilians has increased," HRMMU head Danielle Bell said. "That trend accelerated sharply in July. The number of civilian casualties in July was the highest we documented in a single month since March 2022."

Child casualties also hit a new high: 17 killed and 166 injured, the worst toll since April 2022. Over the first seven months of 2026, HRMMU verified 12,477 civilian casualties — 1,839 killed and 10,638 injured — a 44% increase over the same period in 2025 and more than double the 2024 figure.

Long-range weapons still the top killer, but glide bombs surged

Long-range missiles and drones caused 38% of all July casualties (183 killed, 967 injured), most of them far from the front line in cities. Casualties from aerial glide-bomb strikes jumped 143% compared with June — from 45 killed and 308 injured to 105 killed and 753 injured — making glide bombs the second-leading cause of civilian harm. Short-range drones near the front line killed 111 people and injured 710, the highest monthly toll from that weapon since 24 February 2022.

Kyiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Sumy took the heaviest losses among the 14 regions where casualties were recorded. HRMMU also verified 25 killed and 50 injured in Russian-occupied territory, cautioning that shrinking access to information there means the real toll is likely far higher.

Attacks on Black Sea shipping and port infrastructure in Odesa and Mykolaiv oblasts also intensified, with at least 39 strikes — 20 of them on vessels — killing 19 port and crew personnel and wounding 25.

Since the full-scale invasion began on 24 February 2022, the UN has verified at least 16,874 civilians killed and 51,173 injured.

Ukrainian drones struck a Wildberries logistics warehouse in Russia's Tver Oblast overnight into 14 August, damaging a wall for the third time in two weeks, regional governor Vitaly Korolev said. No one was hurt, and Wildberries said the goods stored there survived.

The Emmaus facility, built on a roughly 77,000-square-meter footprint about 150 km from Moscow, has become a fixture in a Ukrainian long-range drone campaign against Wildberries, Russia's largest online retailer, now in its fifth week. Since 18 July, Ukraine has hit more than 20 of the company's logistics sites, according to Russian outlet Agentstvo, part of a declared operation President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on 25 June to pressure the Kremlin toward ending the war.

What happened in Tver

Korolev said drone debris damaged the wall of the Wildberries warehouse building in the Kalininsky district overnight, and that the resulting smoke was "promptly extinguished." No warehouse staff were injured, he said. Wildberries confirmed "minor damage" to the logistics complex and said the fire's aftermath was "promptly eliminated," adding that "the goods were not affected."

It is the third reported strike on a Wildberries facility in the Emmaus area in under two weeks. Drones first hit the site on 4 August, damaging a wall, and returned on 6 August, damaging the facade — though Tver governor Korolev did not confirm at the time whether the two strikes hit the same building. Ukrainian monitoring channel Supernova+ has said the repeated, inconclusive strikes mean Ukrainian forces are likely to keep coming back until the hub is disabled.

A campaign built on repetition, not precision

The Tver hub is a minor player in a campaign that has concentrated on Wildberries' largest distribution centers — Koledino outside Moscow, Khryastovo in Vladimir Oblast, Oleksin in Tula Oblast — each spanning well over 100,000 square meters and each hit with enough force to halt operations for days. By contrast, all three Tver strikes have caused only minor structural damage with no confirmed disruption to the warehouse's operations.

That gap matters for how the campaign is read. Euromaidan Press has reported that Ukraine has concentrated its drones on roughly two dozen hubs that move most of Wildberries' goods, while hundreds of smaller depots — Tver likely among them — remain largely untouched or only lightly damaged. Measured against the whole network, the physical loss looks modest; measured against the major hubs Ukraine has targeted, more than half are out of action.

The financial pressure has outpaced the physical damage. Wildberries has been scouting storage space in Kazakhstan beyond the reach of Ukrainian drones, and the Kremlin has been weighing state loans to keep the company solvent, at a point when Russia's federal deficit had already outrun the full-year shortfall the Treasury had budgeted. Ukrainian officials and Estonian military intelligence say Wildberries' warehouses store and move military-linked goods, including body armor and drone parts sold on the platform — a claim Wildberries denies.

On the evening of 12 August 2026, NASA displayed a map on which Crimea was marked as Russian. It happened during the live broadcast of a total solar eclipse: on the graphic, the peninsula was separated from mainland Ukraine by a border line and presented as part of Russia.

Crimea is a Ukrainian region that Russia occupied after its illegal annexation in 2014. Ukraine and the overwhelming majority of the world's states do not recognize that annexation, and no cartographic error changes the peninsula's status under international law. Each uncorrected map treats as ordinary what international law still calls an illegal occupation.

What happened during the broadcast

The US agency streamed the total eclipse, whose path crossed Greenland, Iceland, and Spain, live to a global audience. The error appeared on one of the visibility maps NASA showed during the broadcast: on it, Russia's border was drawn along the land boundary between mainland Ukraine and the peninsula, creating the impression that Crimea belongs to Russia.

Additional images from the August 12 Solar Eclipse are on our Flickr feed. Check them out! A few more frames may be added later too. https://t.co/CwbEoWw3Eq pic.twitter.com/mZRukcYnZd

— NASA HQ PHOTO (@nasahqphoto) August 12, 2026

Not the only case

In December 2024, FIFA eventually apologized for a map it displayed during the qualifying draw for the 2026 World Cup that left occupied Crimea outside Ukraine's borders. The graphic was meant to show pairs of teams that cannot be drawn against each other for geopolitical reasons, among them Spain and Gibraltar, Kosovo and Serbia, and Ukraine and Belarus. It marked out Ukraine but drew the country without the peninsula. Ukraine's Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi objected, Kyiv called the omission an unacceptable error, and football's world governing body pulled the image.

On 24 September 2024, the British broadcaster Sky News published an investigation into a scheme for supplying sanctioned goods to Russia through third countries, Georgia among them. The report was accompanied by three maps of vehicle-transport routes into Russia, on each of which Crimea was marked as Russian territory, Detector Media reports. The maps have since been edited, and Crimea is now marked as part of Ukraine.

The Polish broadcaster TVN showed a map of Ukraine on which occupied Crimea was marked in a separate color during the entertainment show The Floor. The episode aired on Polish television, and the broadcaster published its video on its website in 2025.

Behind Putin's sacred Crimea stood Sevastopol's airfields

Explaining the annexation, Putin spoke not of the military but of sacred things. In his December 2014 address to the Federal Assembly, he called Crimea a place of "enormous civilizational and sacral significance," comparing the peninsula to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Europe rejected that mythology: just ten days after the sham referendum, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 68/262 by a vote of 100 to 11 and declared the annexation illegal.

But behind Moscow's "spiritual" rhetoric lay a different purpose for Crimea. Sevastopol, its airfields, and its logistics turned the peninsula into a springboard for the 2022 invasion, and it is largely for this reason that Ukraine's forces are now focused on striking Crimea. Robert "Madyar" Brovdi, commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces on 10 August said that the strikes are the first phase of a campaign meant to render the peninsula unusable for Russian troops.

"Crimea is one of the key conceptual pillars on the path to ending the war," Madyar told the Associated Press.

Ukrainian drones struck Russia's Ust-Luga port overnight on 14 August, sparking a fire at the Baltic Sea terminal — the sixth attack on the facility since March, according to Russian and Ukrainian reporting.

Leningrad Oblast Governor Alexander Drozdenko said air defenses shot down 51 drones over the region and that "damage was recorded" at the port, with a fire breaking out and firefighters responding. By morning he raised the regional tally to 54 drones destroyed. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin separately claimed 10 drones downed approaching the Russian capital overnight, with no casualties reported in either city. Drozdenko did not specify which facility inside the sprawling port complex was hit or the scale of the damage.

Ust-Luga is Russia's largest Baltic Sea port and, as of January 2026, handled nearly half — 47.4% — of the Baltic basin's total cargo turnover, according to industry data cited by Censor.NET. Its oil terminals ship crude and refined products, including naphtha, fuel oil, and jet fuel, and serve as the endpoint of the Baltic Pipeline System-II.

Sixth strike since March

Ukrainian forces have hit Ust-Luga repeatedly through 2026. The first major strike came overnight on 24–25 March, when long-range drones hit the NOVATEK gas condensate complex; Euromaidan Press reported the SBU and Special Operations Forces both claimed the operation. Follow-up strikes hit the port again on 27 and 29 March, and a fourth wave on 31 March damaged a mazut storage tank and two NOVATEK fuel tanks, according to Euromaidan Press's own coverage. A fifth strike reached the wider St. Petersburg port area on 3–4 July.

Drone strikes on Ust-Luga forced the terminal to cut oil-export operations by roughly half in September, Reuters reported at the time, dropping throughput to about 350,000 barrels per day after Ukraine also struck the Unecha pumping station that feeds the port.

Wednesday's strike came two days after Ukrainian drones hit Russia's Sheskharis terminal at Novorossiysk on the Black Sea — the country's largest oil-export hub after Primorsk and Ust-Luga — and follows a late-July strike on the Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal, also on the Black Sea. Combined, Ust-Luga and Primorsk normally move about 40% of Russia's seaborne oil exports, according to Reuters figures cited by The Moscow Times.

© Reuters

Ukrainian drone operators overwhelmed US Army troops at a training exercise in Germany this year, the Wall Street Journal reported. The drill showed how far American forces still trail on the cheap front-line drones that dominate Russia's war on Ukraine, despite billions in Pentagon spending.

Drones now decide who moves and who dies along Ukraine's front, and Western armies are scrambling to master a way of fighting Kyiv rewrote under fire—some even copying its tools and procurement wholesale.

The dust gave them away

The exercise, Combined Resolve, ran in April and May. Around 3,500 US personnel, mostly from the 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, tried to seize a position defended by an opposing force reinforced with Ukrainian drone troops of the 412th Regiment of Unmanned Systems Forces, or Nemesis. The Ukrainian operators "eliminated" the attacking armored brigade, US officials briefed on the drill told the Journal.

Heavy vehicles kicked up dust that reconnaissance drones caught at once. Explosive-dropping and first-person-view drones, flown straight into their targets, did the rest. Kills came so fast that US vehicles had to be "re-spawned" as fresh units to keep the drill running, a US official told the Journal.

Years of fighting Russia made the difference

Ukrainian crews have fought Russia for nearly four and a half years, repairing and adapting drones on the move, while US operators have never had to fix and arm them under fire, one person present told the Journal. Midway through, the Ukrainians switched sides and coached the Americans on attacking with drones. Eliot Cohen of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said mastering drones is now vital for the US military, and that so far it has not.

Not everyone agrees on why. Some US officers say drones dominate only because the front barely moves, and that maneuver warfare would revive the tank, the Journal noted. Ukraine's former commander-in-chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, argues drones have frozen maneuver for now, the reason the eastern front barely shifts.

Not the first Western army to lose

It keeps happening. Ukrainian drone teams beat British, Estonian, and other NATO troops, including Americans, at a Baltic exercise in May 2025, and outdid Swedish-led NATO forces this spring, the Journal reported. Back in 2023, a US officer training Ukrainians realized the lesson ran the other way.

What Washington is doing about it

The Trump administration, despite friction with Kyiv, has been reaching out to Ukraine, the Journal reported. It is testing Ukrainian drones it may buy, and used counter-drone tools proven in this war to defend its troops against Iran's drones. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in May that he was sending more Americans to study drone warfare in Ukraine. By Washington's own reckoning, no US maker can match Ukraine's combat-forged drones.

Japan is considering new sanctions on Russia after President Vladimir Putin made his first visit to the disputed Kuril Islands on 13 August, a senior Japanese Foreign Ministry official told reporters, according to Kyodo News.

Putin traveled to Iturup — Etorofu in Japanese — the largest of the four Russian-held islands Japan claims as its own, days after overseeing Russian Pacific Fleet exercises in the Far East. It is the first time a Russian president or prime minister has set foot on the islands. Tokyo summoned Russia's ambassador and lodged a formal protest, calling the visit "totally unacceptable." Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said the islands are "an inherent part of Japanese territory both historically and under international law."

The Institute for the Study of War assesses that the Kremlin is likely using the visit to deter Japan from adopting a more assertive defense posture, and to discourage EU seizures of Russian shadow-fleet vessels — tying a Pacific island dispute directly to the pressure campaign around Russia's war on Ukraine.

An 80-year-old dispute, reopened on Tokyo's clock

Russia and Japan have never signed a peace treaty ending World War II, entirely because of the Kurils. The Soviet Union seized the four southernmost islands — Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan, and the Habomai islets — in the war's final weeks, expelling the Japanese residents. Japan calls them the Northern Territories and has never dropped the claim.

Putin's visit lands as Tokyo's posture toward Moscow hardens. Japan's 2026 Defense White Paper, published earlier this month, named Russia as one of the country's principal threats — a paper Putin criticized directly on Wednesday, saying the islands became Russian territory "as a result of World War II" and accusing Japan of imposing "unprovoked sanctions" over what he called the "Ukraine conflict."

The timing cuts against the diplomatic track Tokyo pursued for years. Under former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Takaichi's political mentor, Japan met Putin 27 times seeking a peace treaty, and in 2018 the two sides agreed to accelerate talks on a 1956 declaration that would have returned Shikotan and the Habomai islets after a treaty was signed. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine froze those talks in 2022, and Putin's visit closes even the pretense that they might resume soon.

Ukraine has already staked out a position in the dispute: Kyiv's parliament in 2022 recognized the islands as Japanese territory, and President Zelenskyy signed a decree affirming Japan's sovereignty over its "Northern territories" — a reciprocal gesture in the broader alignment between Kyiv and Tokyo against Moscow.

What Japan is weighing

A Foreign Ministry official said only that Tokyo is "considering what step to take going forward," with an additional sanctions package under consideration. No specifics on scope or target have been announced.

The precedent for a symbolic response exists: in 2010, then-President Dmitry Medvedev became the first Russian head of state to visit the islands, traveling to Kunashir — a visit that also drew formal protest without derailing bilateral contact entirely. Putin's visit as president is a harder marker, arriving alongside Russia's sustained war footing rather than a peacetime dispute.