Drones attacked Russia's Khanskaya military airfield in the Republic of Adygea overnight on 4 October, Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi reported. Local reports, footage, and satellite fire data point to a blaze near the base, which trains Russian military pilots and also serves combat aviation. Neither side has reported the extent of the damage.

Ukraine is pressing its long-range campaign against the bases, refineries, and depots that keep Russia's war going, and Kyiv is vowing to hit harder as Russia escalates its strikes on Ukrainian cities. Airfields are part of that target list: in August, Ukraine struck one in Krasnodar Krai in the same overnight wave that hit Russia's second-largest refinery.

Hours of drone alerts, then a fire

Locals reported an attack and a fire at the airfield, Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ wrote, sharing footage of the blaze. Drone warnings for the area began at 01:42 and lasted until 05:34, Militarnyi said. Over that time, Russian monitoring channels reported drones and active air defenses in the region and around the airfield.

NASA's FIRMS fire-detection data from geostationary orbit also showed a fire in the airfield's area, Militarnyi noted. It also published a video of a Ukrainian drone flying toward the base.

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A pilot school that also serves combat aviation

The airfield lies 6 km northwest of Maykop and 3 km east of the village of Khanskaya, about 500 km from Ukrainian-controlled territory, according to Militarnyi. Before the war, it was used mainly for training flights and hosted L-39 trainer jets.

The 761st Training Aviation Regiment was based there until it was disbanded in 2009, when the 272nd Training Aviation Base was formed in its place. The base, military unit 55661, belongs to the Krasnodar Higher Military Aviation School of Pilots. Ukraine's General Staff said in October 2024 that Su-34, Su-27, and Su-35 jets, which Russia uses in its war against Ukraine, were based at the airfield, Militarnyi wrote. In March 2026, the General Staff said Russian forces actively use it for operational-tactical aviation.

Ukraine has struck the base before

Ukrainian drones attacked the airfield as early as October 2024. On 25 December 2025, Ukraine's General Staff said its forces had hit the Maykop airfield and started a fire. That was the same night Ukraine hit the port of Temryuk. Drones attacked the base again on 29 December, when Russian authorities claimed to have repelled the attack. Ukraine struck the airfield once more in March 2026.

Ukrainian drone makers are getting another shot at a Pentagon contract, this time for bomber drones. Seventeen companies, including Ukrainian firms and Western partners fielding Ukrainian designs, will test bomber drones at Camp Grayling in Michigan in October, the next stage of the Pentagon's Drone Dominance program, Defender Media reported.

The Phase 2.5 Bomber Qualifier is the latest round of the Pentagon's drive to buy combat-tested drones at scale, and Ukrainian makers are again in the field, some through US-registered partners, because Pentagon rules bar direct sales from foreign firms.

This time, the target is bombers, the drones that drop munitions on what is below them.

Seventeen makers head to Michigan

The contest runs at Camp Grayling, a Michigan training range, and organizers call it the hardest and fastest-paced stage of the program yet. Each company must bring at least six fully built systems.

The testing splits into two parts: a Bomber Qualifier, which the makers conduct themselves, and a Bomber Gauntlet run by US soldiers. Organizers have not published details of a third mission. Winners of the wider program earn Pentagon supply contracts.

Ukrainian bombers make the list

The invited firms include UFORCE USA Services, Grim Tech, Gurzuf Defence, UA Defense Tech, Skycutter, and UDD Tech Corp. Which models they will bring is not yet clear.

UFORCE is known for its Nemesis bombers. Grim Tech showed a light bomber, the Grim-18, at the MSPO defense expo in Poland this month, and Gurzuf builds heavy bombers, including the Ayudag-6, which recently set a Ukrainian payload record for multirotor drones at 130 kilograms.

A second try after a US sweep

In the program's last phase, the Pentagon picked five winners in each of two categories, and all were American, though a Ukrainian firm had reached the second round and, by industry accounts, Ukrainian designs were incorporated into some Western entries. For Ukraine's makers, the bomber round is another chance to turn battlefield-proven hardware into a US contract.

A gunman on a motorcycle shot a Russian Aerospace Forces officer twice in Saratov Oblast on the morning of 3 September, Radio Svoboda reported. Telegram channels identify the wounded man as Nikolai Varpakhovich, the major general who commands Russia's heavy bomber division at Engels. Ukraine's security service and prosecutors named that officer a suspect three days earlier over the missile strike on Kyiv's main children's hospital.

Ukraine's services have pursued senior Russian officers in the rear, sometimes unofficially claiming the operation and sometimes saying nothing at all. Bombings have killed at least three generals in and around Moscow since December 2024, and a fourth died in a Moscow restaurant blast whose target Russia has never established. Nobody has claimed the Engels shooting yet, and Ukrainian officials have not commented on it.

Two shots outside Engels, then the motorcycle was gone

The attack happened in Probuzhdeniye, a settlement next to the city of Engels in Russia's Volga region. The Russian Telegram channel Shot said the officer was leaving a shop when an unknown man on a motorcycle fired twice, hitting his face and his body. Another Russian channel, Mash, reported that the gunman rode up to a detached house, that one bullet struck the abdomen and the other the head, and that surgeons removed both. The accounts of the spot and the wounds do not match.

The officer's driver was hit as well, got away, and called an ambulance himself. The attacker wore a helmet and fled, and doctors in Saratov operated before preparing the officer for a flight to Moscow. 

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Russia confirms a shooting and leaves the name out

The regional branch of Russia's Investigative Committee stated that someone had attempted to kill a serviceman and that the victim was hospitalized. Investigators stated they had recovered cartridge cases and bullets at the scene and opened a case for attempted murder and illegal weapons trafficking. They released no name.

The  Telegram channel Dosye Shpiona, possibly linked to the Ukrainian special services, named the victim as Nikolai Varpakhovich, commander of the 22nd Heavy Bomber Aviation Division of Russia's long-range aviation. Meduza noted that no official source has confirmed this. Agentstvo reported that Varpakhovich comes from Ryazan, served earlier as deputy head of the 43rd flight-crew training center, and has lived in Saratov Oblast since at least 2024, with documents listing an apartment in Engels and a house in Probuzhdeniye.

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Ukraine named him a suspect on 31 August

The SBU and the Prosecutor General's Office announced an in absentia suspicion against Varpakhovich on 31 August. Investigators say he issued the combat order for the strike that hit Kyiv's Okhmatdyt children's hospital on 8 July 2024, killing two people and injuring 32. Russia's Defense Ministry claimed that day's missiles went at military-industrial sites and airbases.

It was his second notice this year. Ukraine charged him in June over a 2022 cruise-missile strike on an Odesa apartment block that killed eight, and prosecutors had notified his division's commander of suspicion back in June 2023.