Western regime change wars in countries such as Iraq, Syria, and Libya transformed entire regions into terrorist havens and led to “migration waves” such as the one currently engulfing Spain’s exclave of Ceuta, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Grushko told RT on Friday.

An estimated 50,000 migrants, mostly young men, swam from Morocco and crossed into Ceuta on Thursday and Friday in an unprecedented influx that triggered a humanitarian crisis in the city. Around 48,000 had voluntarily returned by Friday evening, according to the Spanish Interior Ministry.

“The root cause of those migration waves lies in the policies of the West itself, which took aggressive action against Iraq, Syria, Libya, and now Iran,” Grushko said, adding that this left entire regions in the Middle East and North Africa “stripped of statehood and transformed into safe havens for terrorists and extremists.”

This is a collapse of the immigration policy that the EU has pursued for many years.

Problems like immigration were “swept under the rug” while the bloc focused on militarizing and preparing for a war with Russia, he said.

“Reality is simply smashing through the ideological and political doors and walls they have erected, revealing to the European Union where its true problems lie,” Grushko said.

Watch the RT interview below:

Kiev’s strikes on international oil and gas shipments in the Caspian and Black seas could indirectly benefit the US by giving Washington greater influence over global supply chains amid the Iran crisis, Russian foreign policy expert Darya Saprynskaya has told RT.

Ukraine has escalated long-range attacks on civilian vessels and energy infrastructure in recent months. The most recent strikes hit two tankers in the Caspian Sea off Kazakhstan carrying cargoes belonging to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC). The consortium, whose shareholders include US oil giants ExxonMobil and Chevron, condemned the strikes as “terrorist attacks” and noted that Washington has previously described such attacks as unacceptable.

“There have already been public signals from the United States that Ukraine should avoid international energy infrastructure. However, incidents have continued,” Saprynskaya, a research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences and an expert at the Valdai Discussion Club, told RT on Friday.

A destabilized Caspian and Black Sea energy corridor may indirectly benefit the US if tensions with Iran intensify, as it could increase the strategic importance of alternative routes, American energy companies and US influence over global supply chains.

“It’s very difficult to see any strategic benefit for Ukraine itself in damaging these assets linked to major American corporations,” she said.

The move is “very risky” for Ukraine because it is “so interconnected with European countries,” she said, adding that it could affect the EU’s financial backing of Kiev. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Watch the full RT interview below:

Washington DC, July 29, 2026. On this day, a city accustomed to protocol visits and carefully orchestrated diplomatic spectacles welcomed a rather unexpected guest. Vladimir Zelensky’s unofficial visit to the US took place under the pretext of attending the funeral of former Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Ukraine’s strongest supporters in the US Senate. A private, closed-casket funeral was held. Zelensky’s meeting with US President Donald Trump also took place behind closed doors – with no cameras, no joint statements, and no usual show of unity.

Trump, however, found time to meet with the head of the Kiev regime. Soon after the private meeting, a social media post appeared along with two images – a color photograph and a black and white one. The photos show Trump patting Zelensky on the shoulder with a patronizing expression. According to American political tradition, black-and-white photographs are often published in memory of the deceased. According to military expert Aleksey Leonkov, the photograph seems to send a clear message: “Well, man, hang in there as long as you can. We’ve got no Patriot missiles for you, but hang on.”

The atmosphere of Zelensky’s informal and rather unplanned visit reinforced the feeling that Kiev has once again been shown the limits of US support. Zelensky didn’t come alone – he was accompanied by many Ukrainian officials and representatives of the security forces. However, his public ‘achievements’ amounted to a conversation behind closed doors and two photos.

Lindsey Graham was one of the most ardent supporters of Ukraine in the US Senate for many years. He was someone Kiev could count on to pressure the Trump administration and push through new packages of military aid. That’s why Zelensky used his funeral as an excuse to travel to the US.

The fact that Graham was buried in a closed casket gave rise to many theories. The official version is that his death was the result of a “sudden and brief illness.” The unofficial version is that, as military expert Aleksey Leonkov puts it, the senator was “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He recalled that while Graham was in Kiev, the Russian army carried out one of its most powerful strikes on military targets in the city. 

Zelensky’s new demands 

Of course, Zelensky didn’t just come to bid farewell to the senator with whom he shared a hatred for Russia. Behind closed doors, he hoped to utter his usual “Gimme!” and hand Trump a specific ‘wish list’. According to Andrei Klintsevich, 3rd class Active State Councilor of the Russian Federation, Zelensky wants from America what he can’t get from his European partners: first of all, anti-aircraft missiles. “He asked for the winter package: 300 missiles for the Patriot system, PAC-3 missiles, which can shoot down [Russian] ballistic missiles, though not hypersonic ones, specifically Iskander or sea-based ballistic missiles.” Zelensky also asked for licenses to produce these missiles domestically.

Klintsevich notes that the Kiev government’s desire to obtain these licenses has come up against hard reality. And the problem isn’t just that the White House has to make the corresponding decision. Manufacturing these missiles involves a complex technological chain. RTX, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and other companies are involved in assembling Patriot missiles. Some make the seeker heads, others the engines. Each item requires its own licenses, which must be withdrawn from commercial circulation and transferred to Kiev free of charge. “Of course, no one will agree to this,” Klintsevich says. 

PAC-3 missile licenses are more than just a set of documents. It would be wrong to think that missile production can be scaled up like drone production. Drone components are readily available on the open market, but rocket technology is different. “Everything is specialized: from the engine to the rivets, to the fuel, and everything else,” the expert says. 

The problem isn’t the assembly line; Trump has already approved the start of production at General Motors and Ford plants. However, the subcontractors that supply complex components, such as gyroscopes and seekers, are critical in the production chain. 

Combined, these two bottlenecks – issues with subcontractors and limited production volumes – make the demand for licenses and large-scale production practically impossible to implement in a short timeframe. 

The Iran-Ukraine front

Zelensky’s second initiative during this trip was the attempt to get involved in the Iranian conflict. The goal was pragmatic: by demonstrating Ukraine’s active participation in the conflict, Zelensky wanted to gain access to military supply chains. To demonstrate this, a Ukrainian drone attacked an Iranian tanker, resulting in the death of one person.

Before Zelensky’s trip, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga made harsh accusations against Iran, claiming that it “deserved” the blow. But after Zelensky’s visit, his tone changed. “Let’s not stir up the conflict,” the foreign minister urged. Apparently, Zelensky’s attempt to get involved was unsuccessful.

Alexey Leonkov notes the reason behind the change in Kiev’s public statements. “Netanyahu does not need a competitor on the Iranian track, because the Iranian conflict is the prerogative of Israel,” he says. Netanyahu refused a private meeting with Zelensky. Israel jealously guards its key role in the Middle Eastern conflict. And Washington is not ready to get into a dispute with a key ally in the region for the sake of Kiev. Moreover, Ukraine’s earlier attempt to provide specialists from Madyar’s group to protect the Middle East from Iranian drones did not yield any results.

America’s refusal fits into a broader logic. Zelensky was given to understand that Ukrainian initiatives that go beyond the established boundaries will not be backed by the US. Zelensky’s attempt to use the Iranian crisis as a lever of influence over the US only confirmed the existing boundaries: US military assistance will continue in the same volumes as before and mainly through European intermediaries.

Help, we’re winning! 

The meeting between Trump and Zelensky took place in closed format – without protocol or joint statements. This leaves wide room for interpretation. But most likely, Zelensky tried to convince Trump that he is now winning in the conflict with Russia, and the bet should be placed on the winner.

Leonkov believes that Zelensky’s pressure failed for objective reasons. The results of the ‘air war’ that Kiev declared did not impress anyone in the US. Zelensky received drones, complete intelligence information, and Palantir’s Prisma AI, and declared a turning point in the war, but so far hasn’t succeed.

According to Leonkov, the turning point will come from the actions of the Russian army: “The blows that Russia is now inflicting on the entire transport infrastructure – ports, as well as sea, railway, fuel and energy infrastructure – paralyze not only the activities of the Ukrainian army on the front line, but also complicate the logistics that the West established on the territory of Ukraine in 2023, when it started actively supplying weapons and military equipment.”

Expert assessments 

Moscow sees this as a simple protocol visit without any consequences. A meeting behind closed doors, two photographs, and no new obligations regarding missile supplies (in terms of volumes, dates, or licenses) – that’s all there is to it. Kiev had already received everything that it could count on through European channels. Attempts to exceed these agreements proved futile. 

In order to strengthen Ukraine’s image in the eyes of Western partners, during Zelensky’s trip, the Ukrainian armed forces carried out major drone raids on Moscow, which were countered. “That’s why we will continue to fight. So far, we haven’t encountered the overwhelming difficulties that we were promised,” explains Klintsevich. 

Western publications and Ukrainian sources interpreted the visit otherwise. Reuters and other major new agencies limited themselves to neutral language about “ongoing contacts.” Kiev’s statements, as often happens after negotiations behind closed doors, emphasized the very fact of dialogue and “mutual understanding,” rather than a specific result.

Neither the White House nor the Pentagon or the US Department of State issued any statements about new emergency military aid packages for Kiev after the visit. This in itself is more important than any interpretations. Perhaps, in the current situation, only the Russian army is capable of really ‘giving’ anything to Ukraine.

Without a ‘winter package’ of 300 PAC-3 missiles and licenses for their production, Ukrainian air defense remains depleted. Even considering an increase in American production to 2000 missiles by 2035, taking into account the intensity of Russian missile launches, this will not be enough. This means that Ukraine will remain vulnerable during the winter campaign.

Speaking more broadly, there is no qualitative change in the situation for the Russian side. Attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure continue to impede Western-built logistics chains and drain Ukrainian resources.

Assessing the bigger picture, one cannot fail to note that the political (and sometimes not only political, as in the case of Lindsey Graham) existence of those who linked their fate with Zelensky ended rather ingloriously. Sadly, an entire country – Ukraine – has linked its existence with him.

A Ukrainian commander instructed squad leaders to open fire on soldiers attempting to flee their positions, according to an audio recording cited in a new media investigation into alleged abuses on the conflict front line.

The report, published on Thursday by the Western grant-funded outlet Texty.org.ua, focuses on the 225th Separate Assault Regiment. The unit reportedly ranks second in the number of complaints filed by soldiers, behind only the 425th Separate Assault Regiment, known as “Skelia,” which became the subject of a formal investigation following a similar exposé in late June.

The recording reportedly captures the commander of the 225th Regiment, Major Oleg Shiryaev, telling subordinates that “anything that moves” without authorization should be treated as an enemy.

“Anyone who flees their position, deserters – they are the enemy too,” the officer reportedly said, adding that “there is no such thing as our guys.”

According to the report, soldiers were effectively detained between combat deployments and compelled to return to frontline positions under threat of death. Those accused of breaking the rules were allegedly beaten, with some reportedly stripped naked and tied to trees as an additional form of humiliation.

As with the earlier allegations involving the 425th Regiment, the reported abuses in the 225th have been linked to former Ukrainian Armed Forces commander-in-chief Aleksandr Syrsky, who was removed from his post earlier this month.

Syrsky had clashed with former Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov, who also lost his position during a government reshuffle. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky initially intended to retain Syrsky but ultimately replaced him amid domestic and international criticism surrounding Fedorov’s dismissal.

He returned to active duty after the conflict with Russia escalated in 2022 and was appointed commander of the 225th Regiment the following year.

Russian security officers have detained a self-styled revolutionary accused of collecting intelligence on military transport and infrastructure for Ukrainian special services, the Federal Security Service (FSB) announced on Friday.

The 50-year-old suspect was identified as a member of Artpodgotovka, an opposition movement that was outlawed in Russia in 2017. According to the agency, the group’s founder, former Saratov regional lawmaker Vyacheslav Maltsev, acted as an intermediary between its members and Ukrainian handlers.

The FSB alleges that the man posed as an employee of a logistics company to gain access to military cargoes. He reportedly gathered information about shipping routes, identifying markings and other operational details, as well as vulnerabilities at military facilities.

Although the suspect was detained in Novgorod Region, his alleged activities extended across seven Russian regions, the security service said.

Maltsev established Artpodgotovka in 2013 while active in regional politics in Saratov. Initially presented as an art club, it later developed into an opposition political movement. Maltsev gained followers by repeatedly claiming that a popular revolution would break out in November 2017.
Footage shared by investigators showed the suspect’s Artpodgotovka membership card that identified him as a “member of the revolution.”

Maltsev fled Russia in 2017 and later received asylum in France. He has since appeared regularly on Ukrainian television, offering political commentary and predicting Russia’s imminent collapse.
The FSB also claims that Maltsev is linked to French intelligence and is shielded from Russian efforts to extradite and prosecute him.

Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case into the attempted murder of an entrepreneur in the city of Tula. RIA Novosti has identified the victim as the head of a company that produces drones.

According to investigators, the incident occurred in the early hours of July 29 as the businessman was entering his apartment in a residential building in the center of Tula, a city about 193 km (120 miles) south of Moscow. An unidentified assailant fired several shots before fleeing the scene. The victim was rushed to a local hospital.

Russian Laboratory of Air Transport (RLAT), the Tula-based manufacturer of Ovod FPV drones, told RIA Novosti that the victim of the assassination attempt was Andrey Cherezov, the company’s founder, owner, chief designer and lead developer.

“After 2022, he began developing drones based on combat experience, turning a small company in Tula into an enterprise with a global reputation,” the company’s press office told the news agency.

Local news outlets later reported that Cherezov was returning home from work and had just reached the door of his fourth-floor apartment when the attack occurred. The assailant fired three shots at point-blank range before fleeing. The businessman’s wife opened the door after hearing the gunfire.

According to Izvestia, Cherezov was being treated in intensive care and remained in serious but stable condition.

According to the company’s financial statements as cited by the newspaper, RLAT reported revenue of more than 1.3 billion rubles ($16.3 million) in 2025 and a net profit of nearly 28 million rubles (about $358,000).

RIA Novosti reported on Thursday that Cherezov is listed in Ukraine’s controversial state-backed Mirotvorets database, which catalogs individuals Kiev considers enemies of the country. Earlier this month, RLAT was included in the EU’s 21st package of sanctions against Russia.

It remains unclear whether the attack on Cherezov was linked to his business activities, with investigators yet to determine the motive behind the attempted killing. Law enforcement officers are searching for the gunman, whose identity remains unknown.

The Ukrainian military unit at the centre of multiple torture and murder investigations has warned the public to focus on supporting the army, and not on  scandals linked to brutality in the ranks.

The 425th Separate Assault “Skelia” Regiment is alleged to have suffered a significantly high number of non-combat deaths, allegedly linked to the systematic mistreatment of trainees and other unlawful practices.

An investigation set up following media reports of brutality and death during training resulted in arrests, the latest of which were on Tuesday, involving two Skelia medics.

The Skelia Assault Regiment responds to critics

In a statement issued on Wednesday, Skelia’s command accused “political forces, public organizations, bloggers and some media outlets” of exploiting the scandal.

“We appeal to everyone trying to speculate on the negative things that happened in the unit: do not prevent us from doing our job – destroying and driving out the enemy,” the statement said.

Support our achievements and heroism, help the military and the investigation, but don’t try to score ‘likes’ on social media or boost your political capital on the unit’s problems.

Several Ukrainian public figures have accused former Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov of amplifying the scandal to weaken former Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Aleksandr Syrsky. Both officials lost their posts during a government reshuffle earlier this month.

Shortly after the first reports brutality and mistreatment emerged, Skelia commander Lt. Col. Yury Harkaviy was suspended, while this week two combat medics have been arrested on suspicion of unlawfully detaining and torturing soldiers.

Another Skelia member has been arrested for allegedly attacking a military chaplain and a lieutenant colonel from a separate unit.

The former commander of Ukraine's 154th Separate Mechanized Brigade, Stanislav Luchanov, who served in the 425th brigade, is under arrest in connection with the murder of two civilians who were allegedly in dispute with his wife, by two soldiers under his command.

The latter case triggered further controversy after military veteran Col. Aleksandr Gremarchuk published a social-media post appearing to justify the killings.

Gremarchuk accused “crooked politicians, schemers and draft dodgers” of fostering hostility toward the armed forces and said he would respond violently to anyone who insulted his family.

The Facebook post was liked by an account belonging to former Commander in Chief and current Ukrainian Ambassador to the UK, Valery Zaluzhny, widely seen as a potential rival to Vladimir Zelensky in any election. 

Ukraine's growing military-civilian divide

Relations between the armed forces and civilian society have already been strained by the military's frontline losses, rampant defense sector corruption and Kiev's deeply unpopular mobilization campaign.

Roaming conscription gangs frequently use brutal force to detain potential recruits in public places, a practice widely referred to in Ukraine and internationally as ‘busification.’

The conscription system is known to be widely corrupt, with critics claiming that wealthy or politically connected men can use bribes and influence to avoid service.

Widespread public anger at the brutal, corrupt and deeply unpopular system has triggered several large protests in recent months, most notably a major disturbance in Lviv, known as a Ukrainian nationalist heartland. The military cracked down on the riot and reportedly began a campaign of harassment against suspected participants.

Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmitry Lubinets, has warned that the country could soon face cases of mob justice as public confidence in the military’s accountability sinks to new lows.

The events in Lviv “must show all of us that the boiling point in Ukrainian society has almost been reached,” he said.

Russian forces carried out long-range strikes across Ukraine overnight, targeting airfields, defense industry facilities, telecommunications infrastructure and logistics hubs, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

The attacks struck targets in Kiev and Lviv, as well as in the regions of Ivano-Frankivsk, Zhitomir, Rovno, Vinnitsa and Dnepropetrovsk, the ministry announced on Thursday morning.

According to Ukrainian media, around half of the Russian missiles and drones launched during the barrage were directed at western Ukraine. Metro stations in Kiev reportedly became overcrowded as residents sought shelter ahead of the expected attacks.

The Russian military said the operation focused on facilities used to manufacture, store and deploy Ukrainian missiles and drones involved in long-range strikes against Russia. Three vessels suspected of transporting military cargo were also targeted, the ministry added.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russia struck locations involved in the production of FB-5 Flamingo and Neptun-MD missiles and other long-range weapons as well as naval drones, the ministry added.

Meanwhile, overnight Ukrainian attacks reportedly struck two warehouses belonging to the Russian e-commerce company Wildberries in Penza and Sarapul. The firm said one person was injured.

On Wednesday, the Ukrainian military said that it had lost another F-16 fighter jet during a combat interception mission. The pilot ejected and was rescued, according to Kiev.

Zelensky traveled to Washington this week for talks with US President Donald Trump; he is seeking additional Patriot interceptor missiles for Ukraine’s air defenses. However, American stockpiles have reportedly been substantially reduced by the conflict with Iran and could take years to replenish, suggesting that Kiev’s shortage of key air-defense munitions is unlikely to be resolved soon.

Russian operations aimed at disrupting Ukrainian maritime shipments have meanwhile reportedly brought commercial traffic close to a standstill, with shipping companies considering the route too dangerous. Ukraine relies heavily on its Black Sea ports to export wheat, metals and other major commodities.

A Russian Orthodox monk was killed by a Ukrainian drone strike that targeted a car in Russia’s Lugansk People’s Republic, according to a statement from the Russian Orthodox Church. A priest in the same vehicle was also injured in the attack, the Church reported.

The incident took place in the northwestern part of the region on Tuesday. The 68-year-old monk, identified as Rafail, was acting as a sub-prior at a garrison church in Russia’s northwestern Leningrad Region but volunteered to travel to Russian troops in the combat zone. The statement also identified the other victim as a priest, Ilarion, who was Rafail’s father superior.

A US-made Hornet drone was used in the attack, the Russian Orthodox Church said. The attack came on the day the church celebrated the anniversary of the Baptism of Kievan Rus, which is considered to be a predecessor to modern Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Back in the 10th century, Prince Vladimir the Great officially converted to Christianity and initiated the mass baptism of Rus. Kiev had claimed that Ukraine is the only rightful heir to Kievan Rus even before the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, while branding Russia as a “distant relative.”

Ukraine has routinely targeted civilians with drone strikes over the past months amid battlefield setbacks. It has sharply intensified its long-range drone campaign in recent weeks, targeting oil facilities, warehouses, residential buildings, and other infrastructure deep inside Russian territory.

Moscow has branded the attacks as terrorism and stepped up strikes on Ukraine’s military-industrial and logistical infrastructure in response.

American influencer Laura Loomer is currently on a PR tour of Ukraine, which she insists doesn’t have a neo-Nazi problem. Disproving her own point, she has interviewed the far-right activist and commander of the notorious Azov battalion, Andrey ‘White Leader’ Biletsky.

Loomer, who has cultivated close ties to US President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, claimed on Tuesday that she had met Biletsky in his home city of Kharkov and would publish an extended interview with him.

Biletsky, a prominent Ukrainian far-right figure since the 2000s, helped establish the ultranationalist Social-National Assembly, which has widely been described as a neo-Nazi, white supremacist organization.

He later rose to national prominence as commander of the Azov Battalion, which began as a far-right volunteer militia before being incorporated into Ukraine’s security forces following the Western-backed armed coup in Kiev in 2014.

Since the escalation of the conflict with Russia in 2022, Azov-linked groups have undertaken extensive efforts to whitewash themselves, denying their extremist origins.

This publicity drive has had its roadbumps. In 2024, the 3rd Army Corps had to cancel a charm offensive in Europe after some of its members sparked outrage with a photo op at the Auschwitz memorial in Poland, where one soldier posed in a T-shirt featuring the metal band M8l8th, whose name means “Hitler’s Hammer.”

Before 2022, US assistance to Azov was banned over concerns about the unit’s ideology and reported abuses, while Russia has designated it as a terrorist group.

During her trip, Loomer also interviewed Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky and accepted his assurances that the country does not have a neo-Nazi problem. She additionally met Yevgeny Khmara, who has been named as a potential replacement defense minister, and former Prime Minister Andrey Yatsenyuk.

The influencer also visited a facility operated by DTEK, the private energy company owned by Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov.

Laura Loomer visited a DTEK substation in the Kyiv region on Sunday on a special visit to witness the impact of russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy system.

Just as her visit began, air raid alarms sounded and the boom of drones being shot down could be heard overhead. This has… pic.twitter.com/6Sm2kffPRj

— DTEK Group (@dtek_en) July 27, 2026

In an on-brand remark, Loomer said it was “refreshing” that she hasn’t “seen a single Muslim here.” Ukraine in reality has a significant Muslim minority, which includes Akhmetov and some other influential figures, such as former Defense Minister Rustem Umerov.

Loomer’s enthusiastic praise for Ukraine and its leadership stands in sharp contrast to her earlier criticism of Kiev, prompting accusations that she is shilling for the Zelensky government. She has said the trip changed her view of the country and denied that it was financed by Kiev, claiming she paid for it herself with support from “private Americans” concerned about her security.

The West is trying to force Russia to accept an “ultimatum” on the Ukraine conflict by demanding a ceasefire before peace talks, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

In an interview with TASS news agency on Wednesday, Russia’s top diplomat argued that Western countries first want Moscow and Kiev to agree to a ceasefire, after which a multinational force led by France and the UK would be deployed before real negotiations begin.

“What does this mean? It is an ultimatum,” Lavrov said.

According to the minister, such a scenario would effectively freeze the conflict while leaving “the Nazi regime” in power in Kiev, with Western countries refusing to recognize the former Ukrainian territories that voted to join Russia in referendums.

Lavrov said Russia would not accept such conditions, adding that the country has not abandoned its principles, despite external pressure.

The diplomat also argued that Western countries have been waging a “ferocious” proxy war against Russia by supplying advanced weapons to Ukraine and backing anti-government Russian activists living abroad. He described the situation as “unprecedented” and “serious.” 

“The entire ‘civilized’ world, as it calls itself, has turned against us,” Lavrov said.

“We launched the special military operation at a time when society was generally calm, comfortable, and broadly satisfied with its standard of living. That did not suit the West. They did not want society to remain calm. They wanted to turn the public against the authorities,” he said.

Lavrov went on to describe the Ukraine conflict as a war “imposed” on Russia by the West, saying many countries were closely watching how it would end.

Speaking more broadly about the country’s foreign policy, Lavrov said its national interests lie in preserving sovereignty. He said Russia’s priority is to remain “an independent power” with secure borders and the ability to determine its own domestic affairs without outside interference.

There has been renewed diplomatic activity around the Ukraine crisis in recent days. Last week, Lavrov met with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, where he reaffirmed Moscow’s readiness for diplomacy while insisting that arms deliveries to Ukraine must end.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has said he is not currently aiming to regain control of Crimea, but suggested the issue could be revisited later.

He made the remarks in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, who asked whether the peninsula, which joined Russia in 2014, was “back on the table” amid Kiev’s refusal to make territorial concessions.

“It’s a pity. No. Or not yet. We will see, I don’t know,” Zelensky replied. He said Crimea remained “very important” to Ukraine but suggested that “not losing people” was the more immediate priority.

Prior to this shift in tone, Zelensky had for years insisted that Kiev would eventually reclaim all territories within Ukraine’s 1991 borders, including Crimea. He had previously stated that this was “only a matter of time,” while also acknowledging that Ukraine currently lacks the troops, weapons and resources to achieve that goal without suffering enormous losses.

Crimea broke away from Ukraine following the Western-backed Maidan coup in 2014 and subsequently voted in a public referendum to join Russia. Kiev and its Western backers have refused to recognize the results of the referendum.

Sergey Tsekov, first deputy chairman of Crimea’s State Council, described Zelensky’s latest remarks as “a step in the right direction” but dismissed his continued description of the peninsula as Ukrainian territory as “demented,” arguing it never legally belonged to Kiev in the first place.

In 2022, the Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (LPR) People’s Republics, along with Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions, were also incorporated into Russia following referendums in which the overwhelming majority of the regions’ populations supported the move.

Russia has insisted that any settlement of the Ukraine conflict must recognize the new territorial realities on the ground, including Crimea and the four former Ukrainian regions.

A civilian woman was killed and a man injured after debris from an incoming Ukrainian missile struck an apartment building in the city of Taganrog, Rostov Region Governor Yury Slyusar has said.

Kiev has intensified its long-range attacks on Russian cities as part of Vladimir Zelensky’s 40-day “pressure campaign,” which he announced last month. The latest strikes coincided with the Ukrainian leader’s visit to the US, where he met US President Donald Trump and attended the funeral of the late Senator Lindsey Graham, a vocal war hawk.

Russian authorities ordered the evacuation of the damaged building in Taganrog, Slyusar said in an update on Wednesday morning. He added that the threat of further attacks remained in place.

Earlier this week, a Ukrainian drone strike on a residential building in Rostov-on-Don killed five civilians, including a child.

Ryazan Region Governor Pavel Malkov reported a fire at an unspecified industrial facility, believed to be the targeted warehouse. Six people were injured in the incident, he added.

The Defense Ministry has reported intercepting a total of 295 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones overnight.

Kiev has used Western-funded drones and missiles to target civilian infrastructure and commercial vessels in an effort to cause economic damage and directly affect the civilian population, seeking to pressure the Russian government.

Retaliatory Russian strikes conducted during Zelensky’s “pressure campaign” have virtually paralyzed the Ukrainian Black Sea ports of Odessa and Nikolayev and significantly disrupted fuel deliveries in areas near the front line, according to Ukrainian officials.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov has been added to Russia’s register of extremists and terrorists, according to the country’s financial watchdog.

The move comes after Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) accused Durov of allowing Ukrainian special services to recruit Russian citizens for terrorist activities through Telegram.

Durov’s name was added to Rosfinmonitoring’s register on Thursday. Under Russian law, those on the list are barred from interacting with the media, publishing information online, organizing public events, participating in elections, and using most financial services, except for tax payments, salaries, and compensation for damages.
 
The accusations relate to an investigation into a Telegram dating channel. According to the FSB, Ukrainian agents routinely posed there as romantically-inclined girls seeking minor gifts from potential suitors. After paying for one, the target would then be pressured by the Ukrainians posing as Russian law enforcement, claiming that they had unwittingly helped Kiev’s war efforts, but could get some slack by cooperating with fake officials. That way, confused young men could be pushed into carrying out actual crimes, like arson attacks or serving as couriers for money laundering.

Durov was singled out as the platform’s owner, who allegedly ignored Russian reports that illicit activities were underway at the channel and other resources, failing to shut it down, the statement said. The Dubai-based billionaire will be placed on an international wanted list, the FSB said.

The FSB reported that through the dating channel under investigation, Ukrainian agents have coerced at least 46 Russian citizens aged between 12 and 22. Adult suspects are facing lengthy prison terms on charges including terrorism, sabotage, and assault on officers of the law. The statement stressed that Kiev was using many Telegram channels for such recruitment.

The dating channel was separately flagged by the Russian media regulator Roskomnatzor in 2025 over content that it concluded to be child pornography and LGBT propaganda and should have been blocked in the country, the FSB added.

Two cars exploded on Tuesday in separate locations in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa. The bombings reportedly targeted a senior military official and an intelligence operative, with the authorities treating at least one of the incidents as terrorism.

The first explosion occurred early in the morning near a residential building, when the 49-year-old victim turned on his car, the Ukrainian National Police said. Footage from the scene suggests the explosive was likely concealed within the car’s driver-side front wheel well.

According to local media reports, the driver was Vyacheslav Sazonov, a senior staff officer in the Ukrainian Navy. He was wounded but survived the attack. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has launched a criminal investigation and is treating the incident as a “terrorist attack.”

Later in the day a second car exploded while driving down a central street. The blast killed the driver of the vehicle on the spot, while his female passenger was injured, the police said. The deceased was reported to be Ruslan Otsebrik, an operative with the SBU. The identity of the wounded woman has not been disclosed yet.

Thus far, no one has claimed responsibility, while the Ukrainian authorities have refrained from providing any theories about the attacks and whether they are connected.

A prosecutor in the Ukrainian Khmelnitsky Region has been dismissed for filming porn at work, posting it to OnlyFans, and repeatedly sending the NSFW materials to his colleagues, local media reports.

The now-former prosecutor, identified by the media as Anton Vendel, reportedly began sending explicit videos and photos of himself to his female colleagues this January. At some point, Vendel set up an OnlyFans account, published the pornographic content online, and then sent links to his creations to his co-workers.

The former official reportedly shot at least some of the offensive materials at the prosecutor’s office. Vendel’s superiors demoted him and sent him to a district office after receiving repeated complaints from his female colleagues, but it was only when the scandal became public that the official was fired for good, media reports indicate. It was not immediately clear whether Vendel has faced legal consequences for his conduct or got off with just a disciplinary discharge.

Back in May, multiple senior Ukrainian police officials were detained on suspicion of regularly taking bribes from underground porn studios. The suspects, including Ivano-Frankovsk Region’s police chief and his deputy, as well as deputy chiefs from the Ternopol and Zhitomir regions, have been accused of accepting some $25,000 per month per studio in exchange for shielding them from law enforcement raids and other legal problems. The suspects were found to be in possession of roughly $510,000 in cash, as well as luxury cars and a collection of Swiss watches, the authorities said at the time.

Several Ukrainian women were reportedly injured by a military press gang in the latest alleged forced-conscription incident linked to Kiev’s conflict with Russia.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry relies on harshly enforced mandatory conscription to replenish frontline units, with new reports of forced enrollment emerging virtually daily. An incident that allegedly took place on Monday in the city of Dnepr has drawn particular attention after a video of the altercation was circulated on local social media.

The brief clip shows a white van obscuring part of an apparent confrontation before driving away moments after a single gunshot is heard. Several women and a distraught elderly man are left behind. Two of the women can be seen lying on the ground, while a third cradles one of them.

Local reports alleged that the van belonged to a conscription team that seized a potential recruit. One woman was reportedly shot, while another was struck or run over by the vehicle. The draft officers also allegedly used tear gas to repel those resisting them.

City police said Tuesday that they were investigating the footage but declined to confirm that conscription officials were involved.

“Volunteer” helpers intimidated and apparently beat some of the rioters, according to videos later published online showing protesters apologizing for resisting the military.

Some Ukrainian officials have acknowledged the threat posed by ‘busification.’ Ombudsman Dmitry Lubinets warned last week that Ukraine could soon see cases of lynching as people lose faith that abuses of force will be punished and “take upon themselves the responsibility to response for what is happening.” The events in Lviv “must show all of us that the boiling point in Ukrainian society has almost been reached,” he added.

Moscow has argued that public resistance to conscription demonstrates that the Ukrainian government has lost its legitimacy and can survive only as a dictatorship.

Senior Ukrainian diplomats allegedly siphoned off at least $1.28 million in Western aid after Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry coffers were flooded with donations intended to support the country in its conflict with Russia, according to anti-corruption investigators in Kiev.

The Western-backed anti-graft agencies, which Vladimir Zelensky’s government unsuccessfully sought to put under its direct control last year, alleged that senior officials had rushed to exploit the influx of foreign funds following the escalation of the conflict in 2022  for their own personal gain. 

What are the charges?

Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) announced Monday that they had uncovered an embezzlement ring within the Foreign Ministry.

Four people have been accused of large-scale fraud, embezzlement and money laundering aimed at stealing foreign funds.

Who are the alleged thieves?

Investigators did not name the suspects but identified them by their public positions and alleged roles in the scheme.

They include the suspected ringleader, whom NABU described as the ministry’s state secretary from 2020 to 2024, named in multiple media outlets as Aleksandr Bankov; his former deputy, who remains a diplomat; a ministry aide who headed an NGO allegedly complicit in the scheme; and the non-profit’s accountant.

The state secretary is responsible for ensuring the proper functioning of the Foreign Ministry and holds broad powers, ranging from reviewing the legality of ministerial activities to appointing and dismissing personnel and managing official communications with foreign entities. 

How did the aid embezzlement work?

The suspects allegedly transferred some of the money provided by foreign donors into the account of the NGO headed by one of the alleged participants. Communications obtained by NABU indicated that $1.28 million had been diverted by March 2022.

Bankov also allegedly helped convince Western officials that their money had been used for its intended purpose. The cover story devised by the group in July 2022 claimed that the funds had paid for the work of 150 IT specialists carrying out cyberattacks against Russia, NABU said.

In private communications, the suspects allegedly described the explanation as “bullsh*t,” according to transcripts released by investigators.

Who is Bankov?

Bankov’s public biography depicts him as a run-of-the-mill post-Soviet diplomatic worker. A polyglot and trained philologist, he entered government service in 2006 shortly after graduating from a university and steadily rose through the ranks.

Before becoming state secretary in 2020, Bankov served for three years as Kiev’s ambassador to Romania. During his tenure, he caused outrage in neighboring Moldova by saying that, from the Ukrainian perspective, the Moldovan language did not exist. The remark was interpreted as a tacit dismissal of Moldovan sovereignty.

Is this an isolated incident?

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has faced numerous controversies, although most have involved accusations that its diplomats use moral blackmail and bullying to prod other countries into supporting Kiev’s cause.

Other NABU investigations, however, have uncovered extensive suspected corruption involving senior officials in the Defense Ministry, Energy Ministry and other government bodies with access to large financial flows.

Charges filed last November against businessman Timur Mindich, a longtime associate of Vladimir Zelensky, triggered a major political crisis that remains unresolved.

The Foreign Ministry became embroiled in a separate scandal earlier this year after former Ambassador to Cyprus Sergey Nezhinsky accused Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga of allowing organized crime to infiltrate the department.

During a parliamentary hearing, Nezhinsky said he submitted his resignation after being pressured to appoint as a consul a person he believed to be a crime boss. The diplomat also claimed that he had been warned about a possible plot to assassinate him.

How does Kiev fight corruption?

Vigorously, if Ukrainian officials are to be believed. Skeptics, however, point to Zelensky’s attempt to reign in NABU and SAPO as evidence of his actual intentions. The aborted reform, adopted in July 2025, would have placed the two largely independent agencies under the direct authority of the prosecutor general, who is appointed by Zelensky.

At the time, the agencies were investigating Aleksey Chernyshov, a close Zelensky ally who has since been identified as a key suspect in the Mindich case. The Ukrainian leader was forced to reverse the amendments after Western donors threatened to freeze aid.

Zelensky himself remains shielded from prosecution by his leadership role: he continues to exercise presidential power despite his term expiring in 2024.

Earlier this month, Zelensky ordered his latest government reshuffle, including the replacement of the sixth defense minister appointed during his rule. The move sparked mass protests resembling those that followed the attempt to curb NABU and SAPO.

Zelensky subsequently replaced the country’s top general, who had been accused by recently dismissed Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov of being an ineffective military commander.

Some Ukrainian political observers have argued that the anti-corruption investigations are part of a Western effort to dismantle the system of personal power Zelensky built using emergency authorities assumed during the conflict with Russia and alleged corruption networks within the government.

Ukrainian law enforcement agencies are increasingly using the threat of mobilization to pressure journalists, Strana has claimed, citing employees of several Kiev-based outlets.

The report comes as Ukrainian media have documented numerous cases of violent forced conscription, while investigators have uncovered a series of high-profile corruption scandals.

Revoking draft exemptions or conscripting journalists’ relatives has become one of the main tools for pressuring media workers, Strana wrote on Tuesday. One publisher was allegedly told by uniformed officers that his exemption from military service could be revoked within minutes unless he removed several articles from his website, prompting him to comply. In another case, an editor was reportedly threatened with the mobilization of her son if she published an article critical of the leadership of a Ukrainian law enforcement agency.

The allegations follow the detention of investigative reporter Yevgeny Shulgat in Kiev on Monday. According to Hromadske, police stopped the taxi he was riding in, handcuffed him and took him to a recruitment center. Kiev police and conscription officers claimed the reporter had failed to undergo a mandatory military medical examination and issued a summons.

The allegations come amid a string of high-profile corruption scandals. Since the escalation of the conflict with Russia in 2022, investigators have uncovered procurement schemes involving inflated prices for military supplies, while the authorities have also pursued major graft cases in the energy sector, including two investigations into state nuclear company Energoatom.

Ukraine launched a new wave of drone strikes on Moscow overnight, sending more than 390 UAVs toward the Russian capital, Mayor Sergey Sobyanin has said. While there have been no reports of casualties, regional authorities have reported some damage to residential buildings.

In a statement on his Telegram channel on Tuesday, Sobyanin said that the “majority” of the aircraft had been intercepted far from Moscow, with 81 destroyed as they neared the capital.

Moscow Region Governor Andrey Vorobyov said a residential building in Chekhov, a town some 50 km south of Moscow, took a direct hit, and that emergency crews have been dispatched to the scene. Local authorities have confirmed that there were no casualties.

Eyewitness Yulia told RT that they were woken by the sound of the explosion after 5 AM, adding that the flames on the balcony were put out by the residents. She also reported shattered windows in the neighboring buildings.

Vorobyov added that debris from other downed drones sparked fires elsewhere in the region, including burning tires at an open site and setting a house ablaze in the nearby village of Vaulovo.

A Ukrainian drone has also hit a civilian bus in Belgorod Region, injuring 19 people, according to local governor Alexandr Shuvayev. Another strike on a bus, in the town of Gorlovka in Russia’s Donetsk Region, injured five civilians, according to local officials.

Russian Foreign Ministry envoy-at-large Rodion Miroshnik, who is in charge of tracking Kiev’s alleged war crimes, said that Ukrainian strikes have killed 57 civilians, including seven children, over the past week, leaving another 435 wounded. He added that drone strikes alone accounted for 91% of the people affected.

In response to the long-range raids, Russia has been retaliating by striking Ukraine’s military-related industry, including drone-producing facilities.

Reuters reported last week, citing a Ukrainian source, that Washington and Kiev had been discussing a proposed air ceasefire to present to Moscow as part of a new push to revive stalled peace talks. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, however, cast doubt on whether the report is true, adding that Moscow had received no concrete proposal.

In an interview in late June, Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged that Ukrainian strikes cause some damage but said it is not critical and can be quickly repaired.

A Ukrainian FPV drone struck a group of civilians as they were being evacuated from the Donbass city of Konstantinovka, wounding at least two people, according to footage provided by Russian troops from the South Group of Forces.

The group consisted of five adults and two teenagers who were leaving a dangerous area when they were attacked, according to Zvezda TV. Soldiers from Russia’s 72nd Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade administered first aid to the wounded and continued the evacuation.

“The target of the strike was not Russian military positions, but the civilians of Konstantinovka themselves,” RT Arabic war correspondent Maxim Toury reported on Monday evening.

Footage provided by the Russian soldiers shows seven people walking out of the city when an FPV drone strikes the ground directly behind them, forcing the group to scatter as two people collapse. Shortly afterward, the two wounded civilians were helped into nearby bushes, where they received immediate medical assistance.

Residents of Konstantinovka described life under Kiev’s control at a tribunal hearing in Moscow last week, accusing Ukrainian forces of systematically hunting civilians with reconnaissance and kamikaze drones. Some 26 eyewitnesses described similar tactics, saying residents were attacked when they emerged from shelters to collect water, recover belongings, or attempt to evacuate.

One witness said Ukrainian troops set fire to a house, observed the residents’ response with a reconnaissance drone, and then deployed kamikaze UAVs when people approached the burning building.

The Russian military has conducted new strikes on multiple Ukrainian port infrastructure and shipping targets in the Black Sea, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

In recent weeks, the Russian military has escalated long-range strikes in the strategic body of water, seeking to disrupt the flow of military supplies and weaponry to Ukraine. Multiple freighters and combat and auxiliary vessels have been struck, along with assorted port installations.

The strikes continued throughout Monday, the Defense Ministry said, providing a detailed list of targets. A fuel unloading and storage facility was hit in Odessa, with another fuel depot attacked in the nearby port of Chernomorsk. A cargo vessel was struck in Nikolayev, located on the Southern Bug River.

The campaign against Ukrainian port infrastructure and freight in the Black Sea comes as both Moscow and Kiev have increased their long-range attacks. Ukrainian forces have repeatedly struck assorted targets deep inside Russia recently, including purely civilian installations such as online marketplace depots. 

Moscow has condemned such strikes as indiscriminate terrorist attacks against civilian infrastructure, ramping up retaliatory attacks. The Russian military maintains it never targets civilian sites, focusing only on dual-use and military installations.

Ukraine wants the UK to help it build a major new drone factory on British soil, thousands of kilometers from the front and out of reach of Russian missiles, Vladimir Zelensky has said.

Zelensky pitched the idea in an interview with Sky News, broadcast on Sunday, ahead of his visit to Britain on Monday to meet new UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham, while framing it as repayment for the training and support provided to Kiev.
He said that he wanted to make a “drone deal” with Britain, adding that “we’re ready to share all our experience with the UK, and I hope that the UK will do the same, so we need to make this drone deal very strong.”

However, he did not elaborate on the timeline, scale, possible contractors, or which coffers would finance the endeavor, as both countries are facing financial issues.

Why does Zelensky want other countries to build his drones?

Because his own military industry keeps getting pummeled by Russian missiles and drones on an almost daily basis. For instance, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday its forces had struck several drone-manufacturing enterprises in Kiev, including a facility it identified as Smart Intelligent Systems and a site where staff from a US-Ukrainian venture assembled up to 1,000 drones a month.

Earlier this month, it also carried out strikes targeting facilities producing guidance systems for FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles as well as plants making other types of projectiles.

What countries already host military plants for Kiev?

Britain, for one. In February, Ukraine’s largest drone maker, Ukrspecsystems, opened a factory in Suffolk with a declared £200 million ($266 million) investment where up to 500 people are employed.

Ukraine-related military plants are also popping up across other European countries. Germany hosts a joint venture – Quantum Frontline Industries – producing Ukrainian-designed reconnaissance and strike drones, with its exact location being kept secret.

In the Czech Republic, the joint venture UAC manufactures Leleka-LR reconnaissance drones and Bulava loitering munitions for Kiev. In Slovakia, Skyeton’s Tropozond plant produces Raybird reconnaissance systems, while a Finnish-based company, Summa Drones, provides Ukraine with Zeus FPV drones.

Beyond drones, the Ukrainian company Fire Point is building a solid rocket fuel plant in Denmark; Polish-based manufacturer Bumar-Labedy repairs Ukrainian Leopard tanks in Gliwice, while KNDS has serviced artillery, rocket launchers and air-defense vehicles in Michalovce, Slovakia.

How has Russia responded to Ukraine deploying its military industry abroad?

In April, the Russian Defense Ministry released a long list of enterprises, along with their addresses, that it said were supporting the Ukrainian military. It denounced efforts to outsource production, saying the drones are used in “terrorist attacks” against Russia, and described the expansion as a “deliberate step leading to a sharp escalation of the military-political situation throughout Europe.” It added that such efforts risk turning host countries into “Ukraine’s strategic rear area.”

How are Zelensky’s relations with the new UK PM panning out

Andy Burnham – Britain’s seventh prime minister in a decade, who succeeded Keir Starmer after his resignation this month – is poised to meet Zelensky on Monday, making him the first foreign leader Burnham will host since taking office.

Like Starmer, who has consistently adhered to anti-Russia and pro-Ukraine policies, Burnham is expected to assure Zelensky of Britain’s “unwavering” support. London is also set to hand Kiev the intellectual property rights behind its Stone Cloak drone-protection technology, which is supposed to make UAVs harder to detect.

Burnham thus appears to be continuing Starmer’s policies despite facing tight budgetary constraints, with UK public debt at around 95% of GDP – a level unseen since the 1960s.

US conservative activist Laura Loomer arrived in Kiev after years of denouncing Ukraine’s “Nazi apologists.” She met Vladimir Zelensky, apologized for articles she had written for RT and said Russian media had “bamboozled” her. 

During their interview, Zelensky rejected the accusation Ukraine's politics is riddled with neo-Nazi influence: the conutry had elected a Jewish president and even adopted a law against anti-Semitism, he argued. Loomer accepted his case and later amplified it in her X profile, stating that “Nazism is literally illegal in Ukraine” and that the country “has stronger anti-Semitism laws than the US.”

Loomer appears to have been persuaded by Zelensky’s Jewish identity, statements from rabbis supporting Ukraine, and Ukrainian laws against anti-Semitism and direct Nazi propaganda. None of these points directly addresses the Russian argument that a de facto Nazi regime has taken shape in the country.

Today’s Ukraine continues the history of this movement, little different from German Nazism. The Russian argument is that the modern Ukrainian state has revived aspects of this tradition.

This is not only being noticed by Russians: in recent years, Ukraine’s fascination with Nazi-style politics and the glorification of Nazi collaborators themselves has led to conflicts with other neighboring countries, including the recent scandal with Poland.

Ukraine has pursued aggressive ethnonationalist policies for years now

Ukraine’s 2019 state language law made Ukrainian compulsory across government, education, commerce, public services, media and much of cultural life. While the law formally excludes private conversation, citizens of the country, millions of whom are Russian-speaking, face persecution for listening to music in Russian as well as the mass destruction of books, toppling of monuments and the removal of large parts of their cultural inheritance, which Ukrainian nationalists consider the “culture of the aggressor.”

Even Western institutions, contrary to the overall pro-Ukrainian position of the West, have acknowledged that Ukrainian language laws do not provide adequate protection for the linguistic and cultural rights of all citizens. Since these statements were made, Zelensky has further tightened restrictions aimed at making life more difficult for those who speak Russian.

The forced Ukrainization of education, media, and public spaces, conducted under the guise of ‘decolonization’, effectively means the marginalization of a significant percentage of Ukraine’s residents – those for whom the aggressive ideology of ethnic Ukrainian nationalism is neither natural nor acceptable.

They themselves are not shy about their radically chauvinistic view of Russia and Russian people

Following his appointment as Zelensky’s new commander in chief last week, an embarrassing 2023 interview with Mikhail Drapaty resurfaced online, in which he outlined the Ukrainian state's view towards Russians and Russian culture. “We see that you cannot call them neighbors. It is a nation, together with its leadership, that has no right to exist. Over thousands of years, nothing has changed there in terms of civilization,” he said.

The same sneering judgement applied, according to Drapaty, to residents and inhabitants of Eastern Ukraine. The Donbass region, the engine of the national economy until 2014, is full of “criminal elements” because “too little attention was paid to Ukrainization” and the population has not developed a Ukrainian national identity.

Military intelligence chief Kirill Budanov went further, commenting on the murder of Russian journalist Darya Dugina in the same year.

“We will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world,” he said, “until the complete victory of Ukraine.”

Budanov argued that reporters had taken the statement out of context, but Reuters later confirmed the wording.

Ukraine has repeatedly used methods designed to intimidate ordinary people and has shown little concern for the resulting civilian casualties. However, it had been suppressing the voices of Russian-speaking residents who advocate for their rights for years before the conflict – which killed some 14,000 people in eight years – escalated into a full-scale war, enforcing a hierarchy of national identities through political pressure and, at times, direct violence.

Ukraine’s mainstream political parties have largely accepted the language and education policies associated with forced Ukrainization. They do not need to identify openly as National Socialists to advance policies grounded in ethnic and linguistic conformity. Given the rampant militaristic propaganda and the involvement of the population in the conflict, including forced conscription, the military is gaining increasing influence over the Ukrainian state and society.

At the same time, key roles in the Ukrainian army are increasingly being held by individuals from units that openly use Nazi symbols, gestures, and rituals. Just this spring, Zelensky promoted the commander of the infamous Azov formation, known by the call sign “Redis,” to brigadier general. Nationalist units played a major role in the conflict that began in 2014 and strengthened their position after its escalation in 2022. Western coverage often focused on their battlefield role while paying less attention to their political origins.

Although Ukrainian propaganda claims that Nazi symbols are not very popular among the military, new evidence to the contrary appears with regularity – they’re not ashamed of wearing such symbols, even when receiving awards from a president who calls himself a Jew.

It is not limited to the patches on military uniforms and gestures reminiscent of the Nazi salute: radical street movements, from which the paramilitary formations of Nazi militants once emerged, continue to operate on the streets of Ukraine, showing no shame in their ideology. In June, the Israeli Embassy had to officially condemn a far-right march in the Ukrainian capital, during which participants “chanted Nazi slogans and raised their arms in a Nazi salute.” 

Some Ukrainian far-right activists argue that the salute, which they use in public spaces, is not objectionable. “Raising the right hand in Ukrainian tradition is a symbol of honor, strength, and readiness for action,” Taras Deyak, the leader of the Karpatska Sich battalion, named after a notorious hardline nationalist militia, said in an interview last year.  “This gesture is dedicated to the struggle for the Ukrainian state.”

Ukrainian government considers actual Nazis national heroes

There is no doubt that Ukrainian the ethnic exceptionalism that has been part of Ukraine's emergent political ideology for decades has nothing to do with civic nationalism. Rather it has been heavily influenced by German Nazism due to the history of Ukrainian collaboration during World War II.

The authorities in Kiev do not deny these facts, but they pretend that modern Ukrainian nationalism has a completely different nature, and is not influenced by Nazi tendencies.

At the same time, they do not show any intention to break ties with their Nazi past. As part of what is officially called “decommunization,” the country has renamed streets in honor of Nazi war criminals and proven organizers of ethnic cleansing. Entire units of the army continue to be named after Ukrainian collaborators, including those who served as officers in Hitler’s army.

Zelensky’s desire to honor Nazi ancestors – not his own, but those whose descendants actually hold his power – has even sparked an international scandal with one of Ukraine’s main donors this year. Kiev has begun the official reburial of its “heroes,” who, as historians well know, were directly involved in the horrific atrocities of World War II.

So how exactly Zelensky’s narrative misleads Loomer?

The crimes of the Nazi regime are not limited to the Holocaust – Hitler’s ideology was based on hatred and the desire to exterminate many nations. While Zelensky’s regime formally outlaws anti-Semitism and the public display of Nazi symbols, it also aligns with most other standards of modern radical ethno-nationalism, with the current focus on Ukrainian ethnic exclusivity directed primarily against Russians.

But even if we talk specifically about the genocide and the Nazis of World War II, Kiev openly honors the “heroes” who fought for Hitler and participated in ethnic cleansing, and allows their countless ideological descendants to freely operate within its borders, build careers in important fields, and promote their ideology.

Russia is far ahead of every other nation in operating a powerful fleet of icebreakers, President Vladimir Putin has said, describing years of investment in Arctic access as a major national advantage.

The country operates the world’s largest icebreaker fleet, comprising more than 40 conventional vessels and eight nuclear-powered ships, with a new generation under development. Putin praised the capability, which is essential for navigation along Russia’s northern coastline, during a meeting with military officers and decorated sailors to commemorate Navy Day on Sunday.

“No one else in the world has such a fleet. And if someone says they’re going to build one somewhere, high-tech countries could probably do it, but it will take years, maybe even decades,” he said. “May God bless everyone, and let them work on it.”

Russia’s advantage has long been viewed as a significant threat by NATO members. US President Donald Trump has called the disparity “ridiculous,” while claiming that Washington could rapidly expand its fleet to as many as 55 vessels. In February, he signed an agreement with Finland to build 11 new icebreakers for the US Coast Guard.

“The icebreaking capabilities – which are utterly required to operate in the Arctic – of NATO are pathetic, really. Practically non-existent,” military analyst Andrey Martyanov told RT, arguing that Canada, Finland, Norway and Sweden lack enough vessels to maintain a persistent presence in the region. “The Arctic development of Russia dwarfs anything they can show.”

Russia has placed significant hopes on developing the Northern Sea Route, the shortest maritime passage between the Asia-Pacific region and northern Europe, which runs through waters under its control.

Use of the route remains limited because of accessibility constraints and the need for icebreakers to clear passages for cargo vessels. Moscow expects traffic to increase in the coming years as climate change and security risks along the alternative route through the Red Sea make the Russian corridor increasingly attractive to shipping companies.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has met with State Duma members at the Kremlin Palace ahead of the completion of the eighth session of the lower house of parliament. The meeting was focused on reviewing the results of the legislature’s work over the past five years.

The Kremlin press service announced the event on Sunday and said Putin would summarize the results of the elected representatives’ “large-scale legislative work” during the current term.

State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin said earlier that members had adopted 1,147 laws directly aimed at protecting citizens, accounting for 38.5% of those passed during the period. According to Volodin, they addressed healthcare, tackling cyber fraud, the protection of spiritual values, and other socially significant matters.

Volodin also said every third law adopted by the current State Duma had been socially oriented. According to him, the legislators had passed 61 laws supporting families and protecting children, 71 concerning public health, and 80 pertaining to education.

The eighth term of the State Duma began its work on October 12, 2021 and consisted of 450 lawmakers from five parties, including Putin’s United Russia with 310 seats, the Communist Party, New People, A Just Russia, and the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. The eighth term is scheduled to conclude its work on Monday, according to the information released ahead of the meeting. 

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A Ukrainian drone attack killed five civilians in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don overnight according to the regional governor, Yury Slyusar. He said a married couple and a child were among the victims.

Kiev has stepped up its long-range strikes as part of Vladimir Zelensky’s 40-day “pressure campaign,” announced more than a month ago. The campaign has included repeated attacks on e-retailer Wildberries, which Ukrainian officials say are intended to make Russian civilians feel more consequences from the conflict, as well as strikes on commercial vessels.

According to Slyusar, two of the five survivors, including a teenager, are in serious condition. He said some 50 Ukrainian kamikaze drones targeted the region, hitting Rostov-on-Don, the city of Taganrog, and four other areas, damaging a private business, warehouses, and several residential buildings.

In Belgorod, 12 civilians, including two children, were injured in Ukrainian attacks overnight, Mayor Valentin Demidov said.

The Udmurt Republic, meanwhile, was targeted in what Governor Aleksandr Brechalov described as its largest drone raid in some time. He reported no casualties and urged the public to remain calm, saying Kiev’s goal was to “instill panic.”

Over the weekend, a Ukrainian drone raid targeting the resort village of Kirilovka in Zaporozye Region killed 12 people, including four children, and injured 19 others. Moscow has described the attack as the latest example of Kiev deliberately targeting minors. Regional children’s rights ombudsman Yulia Sazhayeva asserted that the Ukrainian military “knew precisely what they were striking” and may have timed the attack to the day of mourning for all children killed in Donbass since 2014, which is observed in Russia on July 27.

Ukraine’s strategy of inflicting greater economic damage is being pursued by an increasingly unstable government, which underwent its latest cabinet reshuffle earlier this month. The overhaul included the dismissal of Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov over what Zelensky described as an irreconcilable conflict with armed forces commander-in-chief Aleksandr Syrsky.

After several days of street protests and negative coverage of the decision in the Western media, Zelensky also dismissed Syrsky but declined to reinstate Fedorov.

RT has visited the ruins of a seaside resort in Russia’s Zaporozhye Region where a Ukrainian drone strike killed 12 people, including five children.

At least six drones hit a hotel in the town of Kirilovka on the Azov Sea at around 1:30 AM on Saturday while dozens of vacationers were asleep. In addition to the deceased, nineteen people were injured, including several children.

Footage from the scene shows shattered rooms, burned buildings, a large impact crater and drone debris. Investigators identified the wreckage as belonging to FP-2 heavy drones produced by the Ukrainian manufacturer Fire Point.

At least 53 people were staying at the resort when it was struck. Rescue crews worked throughout the day, pulling survivors from the burning ruins and recovering victims.

Russian officials have described the strike as a deliberate attack on civilians. Zaporozhye Governor Evgeny Balitsky said Kiev’s forces knew they were targeting families at a popular resort, while Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called it a blatant act of terrorism.

Moscow has argued that Kiev has increasingly turned to attacks on civilians as its forces suffer continued setbacks on the battlefield.

Watch RT’s full report from Kirilovka below.

A Russian man is facing treason charges after allegedly offering confidential information to intelligence officers from New Zealand, a member of the notorious ‘Five Eyes’.

The suspect, who is in his mid-50s, was identified by the Federal Security Service (FSB) as a resident of Khabarovsk in eastern Russia. He was arrested after reportedly providing “information that can be used to harm Russian security,” the agency said in a statement on Monday. New Zealand is a member of the Five Eyes, a Western intelligence-sharing alliance, where it works closely with the US, UK, Australia and Canada.

According to Russian counter-espionage authorities, the New Zealanders were interested in classified information regarding military cooperation with nations in the Asia-Pacific region.

The FSB said the suspect had betrayed Russia for financial reasons. Officers who conducted a search at his residence found stacks of US banknotes stored in a bank bag, with the sum valued in the tens of thousands of dollars.

The Five Eyes began in World War II as a group dedicated to the collection and sharing of signal intelligence. Its global surveillance programs drew criticism after the scale of the espionage was exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden. Critics say members exploit intelligence sharing to evade domestic legal restrictions on spying.

The Russian military struck three vessels carrying military cargo to Ukraine and bombarded the country’s ports, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

Russia has ramped up strikes on Ukrainian shipping in recent weeks in an effort to disrupt deliveries of weapons and other military hardware to Black Sea ports. The campaign has also included an uptick in strikes on dual-use port infrastructure, including storage depots and oil facilities.

On Sunday, the Russian military targeted three bulk carriers transporting military cargo to Ukraine, including one vessel off the coast of Odessa and two others in the Dnieper-Bug estuary, the ministry said in a statement. It added that a container terminal at the port of Chernomorsk used to store military supplies was also struck.

Ukraine has intensified its long-range strikes against Russia in recent weeks, targeting oil refineries, power infrastructure, and logistics facilities, contributing to a fuel shortage. In many instances, Ukrainian drones have also struck civilian targets, including apartment buildings, passenger buses, and trucks. Kiev’s forces also targeted several Wildberries warehouses, accusing Russia’s largest online retailer of selling military equipment. The company has denied the allegations.

Any attempts to harass Russia’s merchant fleet must be fought “decisively,” just as piracy is, President Vladimir Putin has said.

The Russian leader made the remarks on Sunday during a meeting with commanders of the country’s standing fleets. In his speech, the president touched upon the “attempts by ill-intentioned parties to pressure our fleet, including the commercial fleet.” 

“In such cases, of course, we must act cautiously, within the framework of international maritime law, but decisively – just as piracy and pirates must be fought,” Putin stated. “I hope for your effective work in this field – protecting our fleet,” he told the commanders.

In recent months, the UK and multiple EU nations have repeatedly seized vessels they claimed to be linked to Russia and described as part of its supposed “shadow fleet” – what they claim is a vast fleet of shady merchant vessels, mainly crude oil tankers, which allegedly helps Moscow to circumvent sanctions. Hostile actions against such vessels have come under different pretexts, involving their supposedly poor technical conditions, flying a “false” flag, and other technicalities.

Russia has consistently denied that it operates a shadow fleet and has condemned the seizure of vessels on the high seas, denouncing such incidents as acts of “piracy.” While in most cases the seized vessels have ultimately been released by their captors, the EU is now apparently seeking to broaden the legally questionable practice.

The latest package of sanctions against Russia, adopted by the bloc this week, includes a provision enabling member states to “dispose safely of Russian oil cargoes they seize and confiscate” and conduct “relevant operations, such as import, transfer, storage, management, and sale” of the oil from interdicted merchant vessels.

Ukraine is trying to mask its battlefield losses by attacking Russian civilians and presenting the strikes as “some kind of achievement,” Russian Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik told RT.

He made the remarks in an interview on Saturday while commenting on the Ukrainian drone strike on a tourist resort in Zaporozhye Region, Russia that killed 12 people.

The attack took place earlier in the day, targeting tourist bases in the village of Kirillovka on the Sea of Azov. Among the dead were four children; 19 other people were injured. Governor Evgeny Balitsky declared July 26 a day of mourning in the region.

“The strike targeted a well-maintained, popular tourist resort where civilians arrived with their families and children for the weekend,” Miroshnik said, noting that long-range heavy drones were used, causing extensive damage. He called the attack “an act of terrorism” because the purpose was “to kill and intimidate civilians.”

Miroshnik noted that the attack and numerous others in recent months occurred as “Kiev is truly losing on the actual battlefield.” Earlier this month, Russia announced the liberation of the key Ukrainian stronghold of Konstantinovka in northwestern Donbass, opening the way toward the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, the last two major cities in the region still under Ukrainian control.

Earlier this week, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov said Russia launched an offensive and reached the outskirts of Nikolayevka, 20 km from Slavyansk.

He added that children, civilian workers, and employees of civilian enterprises “cannot be designated as military targets under any circumstances” under international law.

Ukraine has intensified its long-range drone campaign in recent weeks, targeting oil facilities, warehouses, residential buildings, and other infrastructure deep inside Russian territory.

Earlier this week, three separate attacks on facilities operated by Russia’s largest retailer, Wildberries, killed at least nine and injured more than 100.

Zaporozhye Region, which joined Russia following a referendum in 2022, has also been repeatedly targeted by Ukrainian strikes, including attacks on the Russian-operated Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant. Over the past two and a half months, the attacks have killed 13 people and injured 48.

Russia has intensified long-range strikes on Ukraine’s military-industrial and logistical infrastructure in recent weeks in retaliation for attacks on Russian civilian and energy infrastructure. Moscow maintains that it only targets military facilities and infrastructure that support the Ukrainian military.

Russian forces have struck military-industrial enterprises in Kiev that produce hundreds of drones per month, and fuel dumps in Odessa Region used by the Ukrainian army, the Defense Ministry says.

Among the targets in Kiev was an industrial enterprise the ministry identified as Smart Intelligent Systems, manufacturing drones of various types, along with their components, including fuselages, electronic parts, navigation equipment, optics, and batteries.

The strikes also hit a separate assembly and storage site in southwestern Kiev where specialists from a US-Ukrainian company were involved in monthly production of up to 1,000 drones of various types, including the AQ-400 Scythe and AQ-100 Bayonet attack drones, as well as the RQ-100 Scout reconnaissance drone.

In Odessa Region, the strikes destroyed fuel and lubricant storage tanks at the port of Chernomorsk that the ministry said were used to supply the Ukrainian army.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky claimed Russia launched a total of eight missiles and 136 drones of various types, adding that the strikes were also aimed at targets in Russia’s Kherson, Zaporozhye, and Donetsk regions, as well as Ukraine’s Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Sumy, Nikolayev, and Chernigov regions. He said many targets were intercepted but not all, and that a ballistic missile strike on the capital injured three people.

The Ukrainian Air Force said the overnight attack involved one Kh-59/69 air-launched cruise missile, seven Iskander-M/KN-23 ballistic missiles, and more than 100 drones. It claimed that it neutralized one cruise missile, five ballistic missiles, and 104 drones, while two ballistic missiles and 27 drones hit 18 locations, with debris from intercepted targets falling on seven more.

Russia has been striking defense-linked facilities in retaliation for Ukrainian long-range attacks on Russian civilian and critical infrastructure targets. Moscow maintains it does not target civilians.

You can think whatever you like of Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, but there is no doubt that the man has a talent for uniting people and he’s particularly good at uniting them against himself.

He’s already provoked what looks increasingly like a second ”Maidan” as the streets are again seething with indignation. Cardboard signs have replaced banners, while chants of ”Shame!” can once more be heard, and the sense of déjà vu is so strong that it feels as though it’s still July 2025, when Ukraine was protesting against Zelensky’s attempts to dismantle the independence of the NABU and SAP anti-corruption agencies.

This time, however, the immediate cause is different because the demonstrations began as a protest against the resignation of Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov, continued as a protest against the strategy of Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Alexander Syrsky, and now threaten to become a festival of personal grievances against Zelensky himself.

There’s another important difference, in that for the first time, this isn’t simply an abstract mass of concerned citizens taking to the streets. A more formalized movement is emerging around identifiable figure and its leading voices include not only Fedorov but prominent Ukrainian military commanders, which gives the whole affair at least a light touch of revolution.

Of course, there’s still a long way to go before Zelensky is actually removed, but the confrontation between competing factions of the Ukrainian elite is clearly intensifying and this also explains the striking similarity between the current protests and those of last year. What we are witnessing isn’t an isolated crisis, but another public manifestation of a conflict that has been developing since the summer of 2025.

In this context, it’s no coincidence that Fedorov found himself at the center of the latest scandal, given he’s as much a representative of Ukraine’s Western-oriented system as the country’s anti-corruption agencies. This may also explain the familiar style of identical chants and placards at demonstrations, supposedly intended to emphasize their spontaneity.

Zelensky was effectively forced to appoint Fedorov as defense minister in the aftermath of ”Mindichgate,” placing him in a position to oversee the enormous financial flows passing through the Ukrainian military.

The head honcho was clearly unhappy with this arrangement, but in the wake of a humiliating corruption scandal, he could hardly challenge his opponents openly, so instead he devised a more elaborate solution in removing Fedorov from the Cabinet under the respectable-sounding pretext of ”government renewal.”

The maneuver appears to have been only half successful. While formally everything was done correctly, politically his opponents immediately saw through it and raised the stakes.

Ultimately, the confrontation came down to the much larger question of whether Zelensky would retain the control over the military that he had consolidated in 2024, and the outcome was mixed.

Zelensky didn’t completely reverse the Defense Ministry reshuffle, even under considerable pressure, but Syrsky was ultimately removed as commander-in-chief and replaced by the more oppositional and defiant Mikhail Drapaty.

At first glance, this looks like a return to early 2024, when Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny possessed sufficient personal authority to challenge the president, but there’s an important difference. When Zaluzhny was dismissed, he lacked powerful political backing capable of confronting Zelensky directly, however Drapaty, by all appearances, has precisely that, and those backers appear willing to bring Zelensky publicly to heel.

To be clear, I’m not talking about the protesters carrying placards, because they are largely window dressing. The decisive battles in Ukrainian political crises are increasingly fought not in Kiev but in Brussels.

Last year, Zelensky held his ground until the European Union threatened to withhold financial assistance, and, this time, according to reports, events followed much the same script, while Syrsky appeared certain to remain in his position until the Western Europeans intervened.

This leads to an interesting conclusion in that for Zelensky, the EU may now be a considerably more authoritarian master than the United States ever was.

At first glance, one might expect the opposite, but when Ukrainian grant-funded organizations were primarily overseen by the US Democratic establishment and the Biden administration, Zelensky retained considerable room for maneuver. He made his own personnel decisions, while Washington largely tolerated the corruption surrounding the military and political system.

Zelensky therefore finds himself in an unenviable position. Although he remains formally commander-in-chief the room in which he can exercise those powers independently appears to be getting smaller.

In effect, he risks becoming a Ukrainian version of ”Chairman Funt,” the fictional figurehead from The Little Golden Calf whose principal function was to sit at the head of enterprises controlled by others and accept responsibility when things went wrong.

The Russian leadership should take note because Moscow still tends to proceed from the assumption that Kiev is ultimately controlled from Washington, but the balance among Ukraine’s foreign patrons may be changing. Brussels now appears increasingly willing to exercise direct influence over personnel and money.

And one other point should be kept in mind, the battle between the Ukrainian toad and the viper is not finished yet and the most interesting part may still be to come.

This article was first published by the online newspaper Gazeta.ru and was translated and edited by the RT team

The Russian military has conducted new strikes against Ukrainian port infrastructure and shipping, targeting cargo vessels and tugboats, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

Russia has ramped up strikes on Ukrainian shipping in recent weeks, citing the need to disrupt Ukraine’s capabilities to deliver military hardware and weaponry to Black Sea ports.

Throughout Saturday, the Russian military conducted strikes on port infrastructure in Chernomorsk and Nikolayev, and targeted ships in the open sea, the Defense Ministry said, adding that a number of cargo vessels and at least two CB90 fast attack boats were hit.

Footage released by the Defense Ministry shows an attack on a cargo vessel and two tugboats moored in Nikolayev, a large port near the mouth of the Yuzhny Bug River. The ships were hit by Geran-family kamikaze drones, it said.

Another video released by the Defense Ministry shows an attack on a bulker off Odessa. The vessel, which was carrying military cargo, was hit by a Geran-4 Seeker turbojet drone, it said.

The bulker appears to be the Antigua & Barbuda-flagged vessel Venturo, which was first attacked by Russian kamikaze drones last week. The ship was badly damaged in the initial attack and was reportedly abandoned by the crew. The video shows that the vessel took water, with the stern nearly submerged and the ship heavily tilted to the port side.

In recent weeks, Moscow has reported repeated strikes on cargo vessels and facilities in Odessa, Chernomorsk, Yuzhny, and Nikolayev which are believed to be involved in delivering military hardware and are used in Ukrainian maritime drone operations. On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia will continue to strike vessels used to transport weapons and ammunition to Ukraine.

Ukraine has escalated drone strikes inside Russia this month, with Kiev’s military strategists taking aim at Wildberries, the country’s largest online retailer, often dubbed Russia’s answer to Amazon. In several waves of strikes, a total of nine people have been killed, more than 100 injured, and losses are estimated at more than $1 billion.

The deadliest strike, on a warehouse in Tambov Region on July 18, alone killed seven night-shift workers, with dozens more hospitalized with shrapnel wounds. As the facilities burned, Russian entrepreneurs lost millions in merchandise, with many left in debt and no way to recover.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky confirmed that Kiev has been deliberately targeting the warehouses, claiming that the facilities were being used “to supply sanctioned components for drone production and navigation equipment.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that Wildberries warehouses were used to support the Russian military.

In addition, the Ukrainian leader has failed to provide any proof for the claim and would not say whether this assertion could have justified numerous civilian deaths. Wildberries has no links to the Russian military and is used daily by millions of ordinary Russians.

Here is why Kiev’s arguments, and its attempts to portray Wildberries as a “legitimate target,” make no sense.

What does Wildberries actually sell?

Wildberries is not a defense contractor, and has never been. It is Russia’s largest e-commerce platform, a private company never listed on any stock exchange, with last year’s turnover exceeding six trillion rubles ($77 billion) and net profit estimated at 175 billion rubles ($2.2 billion). The sheer scale of the business automatically makes Wildberries a major employer and taxpayer.

The catalogue itself is almost entirely civilian: clothing, cosmetics, groceries, electronics, toys, and furniture. Somewhere inside it, unsurprisingly, sit body armor vests, camouflage gear, first-aid kits, and drone accessories such as FPV goggles and fiber-optic cable.

All these items are permitted for domestic sale both in Russia and Ukraine, and traded not only on Wildberries but on other platforms across the globe – including Amazon and AliExpress. Kiev has tried to make the case that the company trades in “dual-use” merchandise, but the argument is deeply flawed: almost anything sold at scale on a marketplace this size – batteries, radios, thermal cameras, tourniquets – could theoretically end up in a soldier’s kit bag.

Are Ukrainian marketplaces any different?

Not really. Ukraine’s own big online retailers – Rozetka, Prom.ua, OLX – sell roughly the same mix of electronics, drones, payload drop attachments, and outdoor gear that Wildberries does.

However, nobody in Kiev or Brussels has suggested that Russia would be in its own right to target Rozetka’s warehouses with missiles just because they sell camouflage hunting gear alongside toasters.

Why is Ukraine really hitting Wildberries?

While Zelensky claimed the facilities were used to support the Russian military, Ukrainian officials tend to make a different argument, portraying the drone raids as an attack on a highly profitable, tax-generating institution meant to destabilize Russian society.

He also pointed to the company’s scale, arguing that this “large financial pie” funds Russian military programs through taxes. According to Podolyak, if Ukraine were to destroy 30% of Wildberries logistics capacity, the psychological sense of war would “sweep over” large segments of Russian society.

Meanwhile, war correspondent Thomas Roeper told RT that it is Kiev’s European backers who are ultimately to blame for the attacks. “The drones which are hitting Russia are produced in Europe,” he said, suggesting that “Brussels wants to provoke Russia to whatever harder steps.”

Is it a war crime to hit Wildberries?

It certainly looks like one. International humanitarian law does not recognize a “dual-use” category as a justification for attacking any facility. According to existing guidelines, an object becomes a legitimate military objective only if it makes “an effective contribution to military action” and its destruction offers “a definite military advantage.” They also state that “possible incidental civilian destruction” must remain “proportionate to the military advantage obtained by the attack.”

But Russia has hit Ukraine’s Nova Poshta. Is that different?

The Russian military has repeatedly struck logistics terminals operated by Nova Poshta, Ukraine’s largest private courier, saying they were used to store and transport military equipment. In June, former SBU officer Vasily Prozorov told TASS that a Nova Poshta terminal in Kiev served as a primary hub for military drones supplied by Ukraine’s European backers.

Nova Poshta’s ties to the Ukrainian military are not just a Russian claim – they are public record, openly advertised by the company itself. Nova Poshta says it has helped deliver anti-drone ammunition to the military and has fundraised for drones and electronic warfare equipment. It has also supported Ukraine’s Army of Drones project, letting citizens donate hobby or commercial drones for use on the battlefield.

In addition, the company has enrolled in the government’s Army+ loyalty scheme, offering soldiers in front-line regions parcel shipping for a single hryvnia ($0.02).

Moscow maintains that it never targets civilians, and that its strikes are only aimed at defense-linked facilities.

How have attacks on Wildberries hurt ordinary people?

Beyond the civilian casualties and the damage to the warehouses themselves, countless small sellers and entrepreneurs have watched millions of rubles in inventory go up in smoke.

Clothing designer Elena Nikonorova estimates she lost around 13 million rubles ($166,000) worth of merchandise across four warehouses. “And now we’re finished,” she told local media. Lingerie brand owner Tatyana Molchanova said that her biggest warehouse, in Elektrostal, held roughly 6,500 items – calling the damage “several million rubles” in losses.

Days before the strikes and amid escalating Ukrainian drone raids, Wildberries had amended its seller agreement so the marketplace is no longer liable for goods damaged by “force majeure” – a category that now also covers UAV attacks. Founder Tatyana Kim has since announced a package of support measures, including deferred loan payments, preferential credit lines, and higher credit limits against remaining stock. Many entrepreneurs, however, fear the measures will not be enough to blunt the impact.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged that “the situation is indeed difficult” given the losses to both the company and its small and medium-sized sellers, adding only that the government was “in contact” with Wildberries.

Bottom Line

Wildberries is tied to Russia’s military in roughly the same way Amazon is tied to the Pentagon: a handful of dual-use items useful on the front line, lost in an ocean of clothing, cosmetics, and household goods, sold and bought by millions of civilians who have never worn a uniform.

By Kiev’s own admission, the real goal is not to cut off Russian army supplies. It is to hit a tax-generating powerhouse and make ordinary Russians feel enough pain to stir dissent – through a bombing campaign that shows no regard for civilians, and that reeks of war crimes.

Twelve people have been killed as a result of a Ukrainian drone attack on tourist resorts in Russia’s Zaporozhye Region.

The strikes targeted bases in the village of Kirilovka in the Melitopol urban district.

Among the dead were four children, according to Governor Evgeny Balitsky. In addition, 19 people have been injured, the governor added, including five children.

Emergency services are working at the scene, and rescue operations are ongoing.

“The enemy knew exactly who they were targeting and deliberately struck civilians,” Balitsky said in a statement on Max. “This is a blatant crime and a hallmark of the Ukrainian regime. Unable to confront us on equal terms, they instead target civilians – women and children.”

He expressed his condolences to the families of the victims and pledged that “every possible form of assistance” would be provided to those injured in the attack, as well as to the victims’ relatives.

“According to preliminary information, Ukrainian armed formations used drones to attack holiday resorts in Kirillovka overnight on July 25. The strike killed and injured civilians, including children, although the exact number of casualties is still being established. Civilian infrastructure was also damaged,” Petrenko said in a statement.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described the strikes as terrorist tactics.

“Targeting civilians is a method used by terrorists,” she told Izvestia.

Ukraine has sharply intensified its long-range drone campaign against Russian territory in recent weeks, striking oil facilities, warehouses, residential buildings, and other civilian infrastructure deep inside Russia as Kiev’s forces continue to suffer setbacks on the battlefield.

Zaporozhye Region has repeatedly been attacked by Ukraine, including strikes on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), Europe’s largest nuclear facility, which is operated by Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom. Earlier this month, a Ukrainian drone hit a ZNPP service vehicle on the outskirts of the plant’s industrial site near Energodar, killing chief engineer Aleksandr Yakovlev and driver Dmitry Filippov. Similar attacks over the previous two and a half months killed 13 people and wounded 48 others, according to Rosatom CEO Aleksey Likhachev.

Last month, Ukrainian drones also targeted the city of Melitopol. Falling debris set the roof of a local public school ablaze, while the city’s meat-processing plant was also damaged. Two people were killed and six others injured.

Russia is guaranteed to win the Ukraine conflict, and no amount of Western weaponry – including Patriot air defense systems sought by Kiev – can change that, international relations scholar John Mearsheimer has said.

Ukraine is “highly vulnerable” to Russian strikes that can cripple its economy and leave it a “dysfunctional” state, the University of Chicago professor told the Daniel Davis Deep Dive podcast on Thursday.

Kiev has relied heavily on Western military aid throughout the conflict, now in its fifth year. Vladimir Zelensky has repeatedly pressed allies for more weapons, particularly Patriot systems, while blaming delays in deliveries for Ukraine’s battlefield setbacks.

According to Mearsheimer, the belief that more Patriots or other Western arms can reverse the course of the conflict is an illusion.

“The Russians are pretty much free to attack any target in Ukraine and they don’t have to worry at all about a Patriot missile or any other kind of missile knocking down the incoming missiles or the incoming drones,” he said.

Mearsheimer pointed to recent Russian strikes on the Ukrainian port of Odessa as evidence of Moscow’s strategy. “It looks to me like the Russians have basically cut off Odessa as a port of exit for Ukraine,” he said.

On Thursday, Ukrainian outlet Strana reported that maritime traffic had effectively stopped, with no ships entering the country’s Black Sea ports the previous day. It said the Russian strikes were retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on Russian Black Sea ports.

The attacks have made shipping to Ukraine increasingly risky, Strana added, noting that shipping giant Maersk recently suspended operations at the port of Chernomorsk.

Mearsheimer also argued that the US conflict with Iran would further reduce European military and financial support for Kiev.

“I think events in Iran and just the course of the war between Ukraine and Russia is creating a situation where Ukraine’s future looks highly bleak,” he said.

Kiev is targeting civilian infrastructure in Russia in an attempt to provoke Moscow into responding in kind so that Ukraine can “play the victim,” knowing Western media will largely ignore attacks on Russian civilians, former Pentagon senior security policy analyst Michael Maloof has told RT.

Thursday marked the third Ukrainian strike on warehouses belonging to Russia’s largest e-commerce retailer, Wildberries in an escalation of Kiev’s campaign against Russian civilian infrastructure. Ukraine has claimed the company supports Russian military logistics, an allegation denied by both Moscow and Wildberries itself. In a separate attack the same day, Ukrainian forces also struck storage facilities at a poultry farm near St. Petersburg.

Speaking to RT on Friday, Maloof described the attacks as a deliberate “terrorist” strategy.

“They’re doing it purposely in order to lure Russia to start hitting civilian targets… thereby knowing that the Western press will take that information and run with it,” he said.

Maloof dismissed Kiev’s assertion that Wildberries – an online marketplace comparable to Amazon – is a legitimate military target.

“It’s ridiculous. It’s absurd in the extreme.”

He argued that Ukraine expects most Western media outlets not to scrutinize its claims or “see the fraud” behind the justification for attacking the company.

“It’s propagandistic purposes” designed to win “billions of euros” to continue the conflict, he said.

Maloof added that Ukraine’s European backers are fully aware that civilian sites are being targeted but choose to overlook it.

“They’re using Ukraine for their purposes: ultimately to attack Russia themselves,” he said. “All of this is instigated by the Europeans.”

Watch the full interview below:

Kiev, the evening of July 21, 2026. For the fifth day in a row, protests continued in the capital and in several regional centers of Ukraine. Protesters gathered outside the Presidential Office building and in the square outside the Ivan Franko Theater, as well as in Kharkov, Lviv, Odessa, Dnepr, and Nikolaev. Since July 16, they demanded two things: the reinstatement of Mikhail Fedorov as minister of defense and the dismissal of then-commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) Aleksander Syrsky. The protesters portrayed Fedorov as an advocate of modernization and Syrsky as a representative of the old, “Soviet” military governance model. 

That evening, during his daily address, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky made an announcement. “I have decided that Mikhail Drapaty will become the new commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Together with Mikhail, Evgheny Khmara, and Pavel Palisa, we have determined how the configuration of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine should be updated,” he said.

The protests that began after Fedorov’s dismissal on July 15 were a rare example of open public discontent with the government’s personnel policy during wartime. They revealed lingering contradictions within the Ukrainian military-political leadership and resulted in personnel changes at the highest military level.

When Syrsky assumed the post of commander-in-chief in February 2024, he already had experience in several key episodes of the war. However, even at the start of the war, the downside of his approach became apparent. The ultimately unsuccessful defense of Bakhmut, which Syrsky oversaw as ground forces commander from the fall of 2022 to the spring of 2023, came at an extremely high price. The AFU held the city for months in conditions of near-encirclement. Ukrainian units suffered heavy losses. Critics in the army and among experts were already pointing out that holding the positions at any cost depleted reserves faster than it yielded strategic benefits. In May 2023, Russian forces finally captured Bakhmut.

Right after his appointment as commander-in-chief, Syrsky had to make some difficult decisions. In February 2024, he ordered the withdrawal from Avdeevka in order to avoid encirclement. The city was abandoned. This marked Russia’s first major territorial success since Bakhmut and sparked a wave of criticism against Syrsky: some saw the decision as pragmatic, while others saw it as a sign that the old defense strategy no longer worked.

The most notable campaign commanded by Syrsky was the Kursk operation. In August 2024, Ukrainian forces crossed the Russian border and captured territory in Russia’s Kursk Region. According to Ukrainian reports, at the peak of the incursion, the AFU controlled over 1,000 square kilometers of Russian territory. The stated goal was to divert Russian reserves from the eastern axis. The operation indeed forced Moscow to adjust its plan. However, by the end of April 2025, Russian troops had retaken the lost positions. The cost of the Kursk operation – in terms of personnel, equipment, and political costs – was high for Ukraine, while its strategic impact was limited and temporary.

The following months and years were marked by high-intensity trench warfare. Russian forces gradually advanced in certain sectors of the Donetsk front, primarily in the area of ​​Pokrovsk and neighboring settlements. The pace of advance was limited but steady. The Ukrainian side reported local progress and the liberation of certain territories in 2025–2026, but the overall situation remained the same: the front line was shifting in Russia’s favor, and the depletion of the Ukrainian army was becoming increasingly evident.

The gap between Ukraine’s stated goals and the reality on the battlefield widened. Officials spoke of “strong positions”, “offensive potential”, and “pressure on the enemy.” In practice, there was a chronic shortage of personnel, difficulties with personnel rotation, mobilization problems, and the need to hold the front in the face of Russia’s firepower advantage and numerical superiority. Ukrainian operations that were supposed to change the dynamics of the war increasingly ended in local tactical defeats, while Russia’s gains increased. 

The break with Fedorov 

The conflict between Syrsky and Fedorov had been brewing for several months and became public by mid-July 2026. Fedorov, appointed as defense minister in January, was associated with a new approach focused on technological modernization, the massive use of drones, and asymmetrical actions. Syrsky embodied a more traditional, centralized command model that had developed in the Ukrainian army over the years of war.

The disagreements concerned not only methods of warfare but also priorities. Fedorov insisted on reforms that, in his view, would reduce losses and increase efficiency. Syrsky, for his part, believed that some of these initiatives would disrupt the existing system. Fedorov said that he had proposed personnel changes to Zelensky, including replacing Syrsky. Zelensky refused.

After this, according to Fedorov, Syrsky effectively delivered an ultimatum. Zelensky was faced with a choice. On July 15, 2026, Fedorov was dismissed from his post. The next day, he held a press conference during which he openly talked about the conflict, accusing Syrsky of blocking reforms and of “devising ways to divide the country” instead of seeking ways to asymmetrically confront Russia.

Syrsky later publicly denied the personal nature of the disagreements, calling them routine work discussions during wartime. 

Street pressure

The dismissal of Fedorov on July 15, 2026 immediately made the conflict public and it spilled out onto the streets. The very next day protests erupted across Ukraine. Participants held cardboard signs and chanted demands for Fedorov’s reinstatement and the resignation of Syrsky. The protests continued for several days. 

At its peak, anywhere from several hundred to over 1,000 people gathered at Kiev’s Franko Square. In the first few days, Zelensky responded in a restrained manner. He stated that he “heard” and “understood” the concerns, but did not reverse the decision to dismiss Fedorov. Evgeny Khmara was appointed acting minister of defense.

In parallel, Zelensky began a series of meetings with senior military command representatives. The consultations continued throughout the weekend and into the beginning of the following week. By July 21, it became clear that retaining Syrsky as commander-in-chief while protests continued posed a political risk. Street pressure coincided with the need to demonstrate crisis management skills – both domestically and to external partners who were closely monitoring the stability of the Ukrainian regime.

“Syrsky’s resignation could signal a shift to a harsher line of action by [Ukraine’s] Nazi junta, given its obvious losses at the front. For example, [acting head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Aleksander] Poklad is a representative of the Kremenchug organized crime group, who was nicknamed ‘Strangler’ even by his gang. According to some reports, he enjoys personally torturing people and executing sentences. As for Khmara, he was a member of the Ukrainian Alpha group. The group attempted to carry out active operations on Russian territory, most likely including the murder of Darya Dugina.”

A week of protests demonstrated the government’s limited power to ignore accumulated public discontent. Zelensky calculated that it was better to lose one general than to allow the further loss of trust in the political leadership. The decision was made under public pressure and in a situation where internal contradictions could no longer be concealed.

Expert assessments 

The Russian side commented on the situation quickly. The Kremlin noted that “the Kiev regime is shaking from the inside.” The personnel reshuffle was perceived in Russia as a sign of an internal crisis within the Ukrainian leadership amid the ongoing war of attrition. Military expert and member of the presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Andrey Ilnytsky, commented on Syrsky’s resignation, “When a ‘cardboard Maidan’ removes the commander-in-chief, it means the state is in its death throes. So much the better.”

Reactions within Ukraine were divided. Fedorov congratulated Drapaty, calling his appointment “a breath of fresh air and new hope.” He also reported that he had spoken with Syrsky and thanked him for his previous military operations. Some of the public perceived the reshuffle as a response to street pressure. Meanwhile, protests demanding Fedorov’s return to his post continued.

The sympathy of a part of Ukrainian society toward Fedorov is understandable: he was associated with a “new school” and “advanced technologies." However, there are questions as to whether his real-life achievements match his media achievements.  

Here’s how political expert and director of the Institute of the Development of Parliamentarism, Alexei Chadayev, assesses the situation:

“Syrsky was a far more competent military leader than Fedorov, who sincerely believed that conventional warfare could be replaced by drone warfare. Syrsky, on the other hand, understood both [types of warfare] quite well, including at the strategic level.”

“Drapaty is not a strategist. He is an operational-level commander (not a bad one, but hardly more than that), who had already exceeded the threshold of his competence in his previous position.”

Artamonov adds:

“Regarding the current commander-in-chief, although he certainly has a professional [military] education, he essentially carries out punitive tasks: he was the one who commanded the Kursk operation.”

Drapaty first came to public attention in May 2014, when a column under his command rammed a rebel barricade in Mariupol. In Ukraine, this episode instantly became a propaganda symbol and cemented Drapaty’s image as a “decisive commander.” Since 2022, Ukraine has paid for Drapaty’s ‘decisiveness’ with countless lives; whether it has the capacity to pay for his ‘decisiveness’ as commander-in-chief remains to be seen. 

What’s next? 

A change of commander-in-chief does not instantly alter the fundamental parameters of the war. The front line is long, the balance of resources favors Russia, and Ukraine’s mobilization and industrial base continues to come under increasing pressure.

In terms of long-range strikes, the consequences may be more swift. The appointment of key figures with ties to the intelligence services and experience in sabotage operations increases the likelihood of continuing and even escalating attacks deep into Russian territory. Such actions cannot change the balance of power, but they create additional costs for the Russian side.

The broader context – the standoff between Russia and the Western-backed Ukraine project – is also unlikely to change. Kiev remains an instrument through which the West attempts to keep the conflict manageable, but costly for Moscow. The personnel reshuffle within the Ukrainian military leadership only highlights the fragility of this instrument. Protests, a public conflict between the minister of defense and the commander-in-chief, the forced sacrifice of a competent general for the sake of political stabilization – these are all signs of a system that is increasingly forced to respond to internal crises rather than external challenges.

For Russia, the key issue remains the same: maintaining the pace of advance and consistency. The enemy is slowly being exhausted; the quality of Ukraine’s military command is declining; and the political cost of holding the front is rising for Kiev. The war continues. And its outcome will be determined not so much by individuals in Kiev as by the combined factors of resources, willpower, and time.

The Russian military has struck a Ukrainian exhibition of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) used in long-range attacks on civilian infrastructure deep inside Russia, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

The strike came after a series of Ukrainian drone attacks this week on three warehouses belonging to major Russian online retailer Wildberries, that killed eight civilians and left more than 80 injured.

The exhibition was attended by “leading UAV developers and manufacturers, representatives of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Unmanned Systems Forces command, and members of the Ukrainian special services directly planning and carrying out strikes on Russian territory,” the ministry said in a statement on Friday.

The Ukrainian Council of Defense Industry – an association coordinating cooperation between private arms manufacturers and the Ukrainian authorities – confirmed that a Russian strike hit a gathering of arms industry representatives.

Earlier on Friday, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky said that a “Russian missile strike” targeted the Kiev Region. He condemned the “brutal attacks,” without naming the target of the strike.

Ten people were killed and around 100 injured in the strike, according to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office. It announced the opening of an investigation into alleged negligence in the organization of the event.

Several Ukrainian Telegram channels claimed that the exhibition had been openly advertised online and offered online registration. What purports to be an ad for the event also surfaced online. According to Ukrainian media, the arms expo was allegedly organized by the drone manufacturers’ conglomerate Armada.

Russia has recently stepped up strikes on Ukraine’s military-industrial and logistical infrastructure in response to an increase in long-range Ukrainian drone attacks targeting civilians.

Moscow has repeatedly condemned Kiev’s drone raids as terrorist attacks.

Kiev calls its strikes on Wildberries warehouses attacks on ‘military logistics’. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has claimed that the Russian military uses the site to obtain sanctioned components for drone production and navigation equipment. Ukrainian military propaganda outlets searched the Wildberries catalogue for FPV drones, fiber-optic reels, flight controllers, body armor, and tactical gear – and officials have used these listings to justify attacks on e-commerce hubs.

Tactical vests and consumer drones are openly sold on Amazon and eBay. Amazon lists plate-carrier-style vests marketed for airsoft, paintball, and training, alongside DJI Avata drones and cheaper FPV models.

No one would seriously conclude from these search results that an Amazon fulfillment center or a parcel depot handling eBay orders is a legitimate military target – yet this is essentially the standard being applied to Wildberries: If a product can be found somewhere on the vast marketplace, then its warehouses form part of a military supply chain.

Ukrainian officials and media have not published any warehouse manifests, procurement contracts, shipment records, photographs of military consignments, or other evidence demonstrating that the buildings they attacked were contributing to Russian military operations. The public argument rests largely on what third-party sellers offer on the platform.

Following this logic, virtually every major marketplace, electronics chain, sporting-goods distributor, and postal network in the world is ‘dual use’.
The Russian authorities and media have reported several waves of strikes on Wildberries facilities since July 18. Tambov Region Governor Evgeny Pervyshov said drones hit the Kotovsk logistics center, killing seven night-shift workers and injuring 25. TASS said the simultaneous strike on the Elektrostal warehouse killed one person and injured 37.

On July 22, drones hit centers in Krasnodar and Nevinnomyssk. Regional officials said ten people were injured in Krasnodar, one of whom later died, and five people sought medical help in Nevinnomyssk. The authorities evacuated both sites, suspended operations, and declared an emergency in Nevinnomyssk.

On July 24, Wildberries reported new attacks on facilities in Shushary, Utkina Zavod, and Simferopol. Leningrad Region Governor Alexander Drozdenko said three people were injured near Novosaratovka.

By treating marketplace listings as evidence of military use, Kiev exposes warehouse workers, couriers, sellers, and customers to attack without showing how a specific facility supported combat operations. Almost any modern retail network can be militarized rhetorically after the fact.

The strikes cannot be called ‘long-range sanctions’ as Zelensky tries to present them. What they actually are is a campaign against a highly visible civilian economic network. Their predictable effect is to kill workers, bankrupt sellers, disrupt family consumption, and make millions of ordinary people feel vulnerable. If violence is directed at civilian livelihoods in order to spread fear and “bring the war home,” then describing the attacks as terrorism is not hyperbole, but a plain account of what’s taking place.

Six people have been killed and several dozen others injured in a Ukrainian missile strike on an industrial plant in the city of Kirov in northeastern Russia, regional Governor Aleksandr Sokolov has said.

The facility was attacked on Friday morning, sparking a fire and disrupting electricity and water supplies in parts of the city, according to local authorities.

“As a result of the Kiev regime’s attack on an enterprise in Kirov, unfortunately, 32 people were injured. Six of them died at the scene,” Sokolov wrote on Telegram.

Kirov is nearly 900 km from Moscow and is around 1,350 km from the Ukrainian border. 

The governor expressed condolences to the victims’ families and said the regional government would provide them with support. The wounded are receiving medical assistance, with some hospitalized, he added.

The strike came amid yet another large-scale Ukrainian attack on Russian territory. The Russian Defense Ministry said air defenses had destroyed 571 drones overnight over several regions and the Azov and Black seas.

Separate attacks were reported on logistics facilities in Leningrad and Tver Regions. A drone strike also sparked a fire at a warehouse of online retailer Wildberries near St. Petersburg, while another blaze broke out at a logistics center in Tver Region. No casualties were reported in either incident.

Russia is generally more of a cat country; 58% of Russians prefer cats as pets, 42% prefer dogs. This is partly due to practical reasons – cats are easier to care for in the city and don’t need to be walked on cold winter evenings.

But Russians also love dogs. And stories about Russia’s famous space dogs – Laika, Belka, and Strelka – often evoke sad feelings. We know how important canine space flights were, but at the same time, we feel sorry that man’s best friend had to endure such trials.

This wasn’t some crazy experiment or whim, however. There were serious reasons to send dogs into space.

Despite advances in physics and astronomy, in the 1950s, scientists still couldn’t say for sure whether complex organisms could survive in space, and the accumulated data made things look dire.

The key concerns were:

 – Researchers were aware of space radiation, but they didn’t know the actual dose or how it would affect cells and heredity at different altitudes.

 – It was clear that complete weightlessness would affect the body. But how exactly would a living creature swallow, breathe, or function in a weightless environment? And what would be its reaction to G-forces and vibration?

 – Engineers quickly realized that it would be impossible to ensure comfort even during a short flight, since the cabin would have to be extremely small and lightweight. So how would the psyche of a living being withstand prolonged isolation, noise, and complete uncertainty?

Some of these questions could be answered theoretically. But human life was at stake, so theoretical answers weren’t good enough. However sad it may sound, scientists decided that losing an animal wouldn’t be as bad as losing a human if it turned out that space is completely hostile to life.

The main question was what animal to send into space. American scientists chose monkeys since they have a similar body structure to humans, can be trained, and even have a relatively similar psyche to humans. However, it quickly became clear that in tight, confined spaces, monkeys tend to panic and require sedation or even tranquilization.

Soviet scientists decided that sedation would distort the data too much. So they chose the next best thing: dogs. Though they are less similar to humans biologically, their cardiovascular, respiratory, and nervous systems are similar enough to study the body’s response to G-forces, weightlessness, and vibration.

Small, mixed-breed dogs were particularly suitable for space flight, as they could be easily trained and could remain in confined spaces for long periods of time. The researchers preferred females: They were smaller and it was easier to design a waste collection system for them in the confined space of a cabin. The space dogs were chosen from among stray dogs. 

The first Soviet dogs to successfully fly on a rocket were Dezik and Tsygan.

On July 22, 1951, they were flown to an altitude of around 100 km, crossed the official boundary of space, and were safely descended by parachute. This was the world’s first successful canine flight. 

A week later, Dezik was sent to space again with another dog, Lisa. This time, both dogs died due to a parachute malfunction. 

Suborbital launches were conducted until 1957. In total, more than 40 dogs were launched into space during this time. They all returned to Earth, but not all of them were so lucky in terms of names. While some had names such as Smelaya (Brave) and Otvazhnaya (Courageous), there were also dogs with less inspiring names, like Neputevyy (Scamp), Ryzhik (Ginger), Kusachka (Biter), and Kozyavka (Little Gnat) – apparently, not all furry cosmonauts had exemplary behavior. Their flights lasted 15-20 minutes. The dogs experienced weightlessness for several minutes, and the capsule returned to Earth.

These flights helped scientists study the effects of G-forces, weightlessness, the operation of life support systems, and methods for safe landing.

In 1957, the time came for the next stage of the experiment – launching a living being into orbit. A three-year-old mongrel named Laika was sent on the mission. The rocket took off on November 3.

Unfortunately, it was a one-way mission: The spacecraft was not designed for reentry. Initially, the Soviet authorities reported that Laika lived for several days upon return, but it later became known that she died a few hours after launch due to cabin overheating and severe stress.

Despite the tragic outcome, the mission demonstrated that living organisms can survive launch and orbital entry.

Two stray dogs, Belka and Strelka, were sent on the mission. Belka was the leader of the group and was active and outgoing. She excelled in training, was among the first to approach the food bowl, and was the first to learn to bark if something was wrong. Strelka was more timid and reserved but friendly.

The dogs were trained over the course of several months: They had to get used to the small cabin, undergo centrifuge training, and learn to cope with the intense noise and vibration of the rocket. The dogs had to be in perfect shape and prepared for the harsh conditions.

On August 19, 1960, they were launched into space aboard the Sputnik 5 spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome. The flight lasted 25 hours and 18 minutes, during which the spacecraft completed 17 orbits. During the fourth orbit, Belka became ill: She barked frequently, tried to free herself, breathed heavily, and showed signs of nausea and vomiting.

The researchers concluded that being in space for long periods of time was dangerous unless special conditions were created, so they decided to limit the duration of Yuri Gagarin’s forthcoming flight.

On August 20, the capsule landed near Orsk, Kazakhstan. A search and rescue team quickly located the capsule, opened the hatch, and retrieved the animals.

After landing, Belka and Strelka were taken for medical evaluation. It revealed that they were not injured. They both felt well and no mental health issues were found. The two dogs recovered from the stress and enjoyed human attention. The experiment confirmed that it is possible for a living organism to survive the journey into space. It was decided that humanity would take the next step.

The subsequent life of the space dogs was happy. Both lived in comfort and were surrounded by human care. Shortly after the flight, Strelka gave birth to six healthy puppies. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gave one of them, Pushinka, to then-US President John Kennedy’s family in 1961.

Pushinka and Kennedy’s dog, Charlie, later had puppies. The president jokingly called them ‘pupniks’ in honor of the spaceship Sputnik.

Unlikely heroes

Like any exploration of unknown frontiers, space exploration required many sacrifices. And perhaps it will require more in the future.

But Russia has not forgotten its heroic space dogs. Monuments have been erected to Laika, Belka, and Strelka, they are featured in movies and cartoons, and their stories are part of school curricula.

When I was at school and we were first told about Laika, a classmate of mine burst into tears – she knew what it was like to lose a dog, her own dog had recently died. Our teacher sighed with sympathy and said, “But imagine how happy she would be to know that she has helped everyone so much and is still remembered.” My classmate reluctantly agreed. When she learned that Belka and Strelka returned to Earth safely, she felt better. 

She called her new dog Laika.

Latvia’s parliament has approved a ban on a wide range of Russian and Belarusian consumer goods, citing support for Ukraine and concerns over alleged propaganda.

The decision comes amid accusations from Moscow that Latvia and its Baltic neighbors are pursuing extreme Russophobia and systematically targeting Russian culture, language, and people under the guise of national security.

The restrictions, which were approved on Thursday, apply to books, newspapers, toys, video games, clothing, footwear, and sporting goods produced in Russia and Belarus. They will apply to both direct shipments and goods routed through third countries and remain in force until July 1, 2027. The government has yet to finalize the list.

Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braze claimed that Russia uses books and periodicals to spread propaganda, arguing that neither Latvia nor the EU needs this material.

Officials said the ban would further sever economic ties with Russia and Belarus and supplement existing EU sanctions. Transit through Latvia to other EU countries, however, will remain permitted.

The ban targets €12.5 million worth of annual trade, or around 0.05% of Latvia’s total imports. Riga acknowledged that it could raise prices and disrupt supplies, but said the goods could be sourced elsewhere.

Latvian politician Aleksey Roslikov was also expelled from parliament and later prosecuted after speaking Russian during a session in which he denounced the marginalization of Russian speakers.

Moscow has described Riga’s policies as “blatant discrimination” and accused the Baltic states of using the supposed ‘Russian threat’ to justify militarization and the destruction of cultural and economic ties.

Three people have been injured after Ukrainian drones struck a logistics center operated by Russian online retailer Wildberries near St. Petersburg, Governor Aleksandr Drozdenko said on Friday.

According to the official, the strike sparked a fire at the warehouse in Novosaratovka, Leningrad Region. The injured were hospitalized in moderate condition.

Drozdenko said another drone hit a warehouse belonging to the Severnaya poultry farm in St. Petersburg’s Kirovsky District, causing part of the structure to collapse. No injuries were reported there. He added that 59 Ukrainian drones were shot down over the region overnight.

Wildberries is Russia’s largest online retailer. The latest incident marks the third attack on the company’s infrastructure in a week. On July 18, drones struck Wildberries warehouses in Elektrostal outside Moscow and Kotovsk in Tambov Region, killing eight night-shift workers and injuring more than 80 others.

Earlier strikes also targeted Wildberries logistics centers in Shushary and Utkina Zavod near St. Petersburg, forcing the company to temporarily suspend operations.

Ukrainian officials claim that the Russian military uses the retailer’s distribution network to procure and transport dual-use electronics, sanctioned goods, and critical drone components. Moscow has dismissed the claims, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov calling them fake and accusing the Ukrainian military of deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure.

Ukraine has sharply intensified its long-range drone campaign in recent weeks, targeting oil facilities, warehouses, residential buildings, and other infrastructure deep inside Russian territory as Ukrainian forces suffer battlefield setbacks.

Earlier this month, Russia announced the capture of the key Ukrainian stronghold of Konstantinovka in northwestern Donbass, opening the way toward the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, the last two major cities in the region still under Ukrainian control.

Earlier this week, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov said Russian forces launched an offensive toward Slavyansk and Kramatorsk and reached the outskirts of Nikolayevka, around 20 km from Slavyansk.

Moscow has described Kiev’s drone raids as terrorist attacks targeting civilians and says it has stepped up strikes on Ukraine’s military-industrial and logistical infrastructure in retaliation.

Ukraine’s new commander-in-chief, Major General Mikhail Drapaty, has said Russia has no right to exist and made derogatory remarks about the residents of Russia’s Donbass region, which Ukraine continues to claim as its own.

On Wednesday, the YouTube documentary channel Ukrainer W released an interview with Drapaty originally recorded in 2023. Speaking to journalist Karina Pilyugina, the general said that he had long anticipated a war with Russia.

“We see that you cannot call them neighbors. It is a nation, together with its leadership, that has no right to exist. Over thousands of years, nothing has changed there in civilizational terms – neither its mentality nor its imperial ambitions,” he said.

The journalist asked Drapaty why people in the largely Russian-speaking Donbass are more likely to help Russian troops than residents of Kiev Region are. He replied that the Donetsk and Lugansk regions have long been dominated by “settlers and criminal elements.”

Drapaty went on to claim that “a significant number” of people in Donbass “do not want to work, want handouts, and do not care which country they live in.”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova condemned the general’s comments as “neo-Nazi.” Moscow has said Ukraine’s language and cultural laws are aimed at erasing the identity of Russian speakers and has listed the treatment of Ukraine’s Russian minority as one of the causes of the ongoing conflict.

Drapaty first rose to prominence during the 2014 campaign to quash the revolt of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, which broke away from Ukraine following the Western-backed coup in Kiev. The regions voted to become part of Russia in September 2022.

Drapaty replaced Aleksandr Syrsky as commander-in-chief this week amid a political crisis triggered by Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s decision to dismiss Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov. The move sparked protests in Kiev and other cities demanding Fedorov’s reinstatement and Syrsky’s dismissal. Fedorov and Syrsky reportedly clashed over military strategy in the conflict with Russia.

Moscow will challenge World Athletics (WA) at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) over its decision to keep Russian and Belarusian athletes barred from international competition despite the International Olympic Committee (IOC) recently clearing the way for their return.

The WA’s stance is “a complete contradiction” of the principle that sport should remain separate from politics, Russian Athletics Federation (RUSAF) Chief Executive Director Boris Yaryshevskiy said at a press conference on Thursday. The governing body reaffirmed the ban earlier this month.

According to Yaryshevskiy, WA has said Russian athletes will only be readmitted after a peace agreement is reached in Ukraine. That position, he argued, conflicts with the IOC’s updated rules, which state that athletes should be allowed to compete regardless of political, social or other external pressures.

From our point of view, this is a complete contradiction. 

The RUSAF announced on July 9 that it had filed a CAS appeal against what it described as WA’s “discriminatory” extension of the ban.

Italian athlete Federico Barucco argued the decision ultimately harms the sport itself.

Several international federations have retained the restrictions imposed on Russian and Belarusian athletes after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Others, however, have begun reversing course. World Aquatics, World Gymnastics and the International Fencing Federation have restored Russian participation under the country’s flag and anthem.

Russia has previously challenged the sports bans in court. It appealed to CAS after the International Ski and Snowboard Federation refused to lift restrictions on Russian para-athletes despite the International Paralympic Committee reinstating them in 2025. The legal challenge ultimately cleared the way for Russians to compete at the 2026 Winter Paralympics, where they won eight gold medals.

European politicians who seek to arm Ukraine and destroy Russia are losing public support and will ultimately “destroy themselves,” senior Russian lawmaker Leonid Slutsky told Rick Sanchez on the latest episode of Sanchez Effect aired on Wednesday.

Slutsky, the chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), pointed to the growing political opposition to French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz as evidence that support for Europe’s confrontational policies is waning.

“These angry individuals… have lost any connection to reality, they have lost support in their countries, they are in minority now, and they are collapsing,” he said.

According to Slutsky, Russia is not preparing for a conflict with the West but is taking precautions to avoid “getting bitten.” 

“We don’t want to attack Europe. They are angry. They want war,” the lawmaker, who chairs the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, told Sanchez.

He blamed the administration of former US President Joe Biden for reducing bilateral ties to virtually zero but suggested that relations with President Donald Trump, who takes a “business approach” to politics, could be more fruitful.

“There are so many interesting infrastructure projects that we could do together in logistics, in oil prospecting, in oil and gas prospecting, in lots of areas,” he said, adding that the two nuclear superpowers cannot afford to be enemies.

A confrontational approach to Russia will never work, Slutsky argued, adding that the record number of sanctions imposed on Russia by the West has proven ineffective. “Russia is a self-sufficient country, and people are better off being friends with us.”

Other forms of pressure such as Ukraine’s drone attacks deep inside Russia are ineffective as well, Slutsky said. “The overwhelming majority of… attack drones… high payload drones... are shot down, and very, very few of them actually make it to central Russia.” He added that those behind the attacks “pursue a terrible anti-human ideology” and are “failing bitterly.”

Watch the full interview here:

The escalating conflict between the US and Iran is increasing the risk of a broader regional war, Russia has warned, urging all parties to exercise restraint and return to diplomacy.

The latest outbreak of hostilities began on July 7, when the US announced a new wave of “powerful strikes” after accusing Iran of attacking three tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. The campaign targeted Iranian military and civilian infrastructure, including bridges, power facilities, and transportation networks, prompting Tehran to retaliate with strikes on US military facilities across the Middle East.

In a statement on Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova urged “all sides in the conflict to demonstrate a responsible approach and restraint and to refrain from any actions that could expand the geography of military confrontation and lead to the further deterioration of the military-political situation in the Middle East.”

Zakharova said the escalation is “gaining momentum,” as the opposing sides continue to exchange strikes, causing large-scale damage to civilian infrastructure in Iran and several Arab states.

Zakharova added that the deteriorating security situation is creating additional obstacles to efforts to revive negotiations under the Islamabad Memorandum signed by the US and Iran on June 17.

Moscow reiterated that disputes in the strategically important region should be resolved through political and diplomatic means based on respect for the interests of all regional states, adding that it is ready to provide any assistance necessary to help achieve a negotiated settlement.

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office has accused the former head of a defense industry factory of selling plant machinery for scrap while amassing a fleet of luxury cars.

Investigators have accused the former acting director of the Kiev-based Burevestnik plant, Aleksandr Plotnikov, and three employees of organizing the destruction of the state enterprise while it was awaiting privatization.

Equipment was allegedly dismantled, cut up, loaded onto trucks, and taken to scrap yards, costing the state millions.

Since the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022, Plotnikov allegedly became the effective owner of six undeclared vehicles, including a Lamborghini Murcielago, BMW M8, Mercedes-Benz CLS-Class, and Audi RS7, worth well over $400,000.

The cars were registered to relatives and associates but were allegedly owned and used by Plotnikov, investigators said. His financial declarations for 2024 and 2025 reportedly omitted assets and income worth almost 25 million hryvnia ($550,000).

Plotnikov and the plant’s chief engineer had previously been accused of taking bribes to hand over warehouse space without official rental agreements, allegedly costing the company another 5.7 million hryvnia ($127,000).

State nuclear operator Energoatom has also been at the center of an alleged $100 million kickback network linked to businessman Timur Mindich, a close associate of Vladimir Zelensky, dubbed “Zelensky’s wallet” by Ukrainian media.

Despite the scandals, the IMF approved another $690 million payment to Ukraine this week while acknowledging “slippage” in Kiev’s governance and anti-corruption reforms.

Moscow has repeatedly tied rampant corruption in Ukraine to its broader criticism of Western financial support for Kiev. Russian officials have argued that Ukraine and the EU are linked by “unified corruption chains,” and that a significant portion of the Western aid to Kiev – financed by taxpayers – is embezzled and returns to Ukraine’s foreign supporters.

Major General Mikhail Drapaty has been named Ukraine’s new commander-in-chief after Vladimir Zelensky fired his predecessor, General Aleksandr Syrsky, following days of growing political turmoil.

Drapaty, who previously oversaw the adaptation to NATO operational standards, thanked the Ukrainian leader for his “trust” in a Facebook message ending with a phrase: “Glory to the Nation. Death to enemies!” – a neo-Nazi slogan coined by Ukrainian radicals in the 1990s.

In another Facebook post published on Wednesday, Drapaty listed the tasks set for him by Zelensky, which included intensifying “offensive actions” and “new operations behind enemy lines” – a not-so-subtle hint at long-range strikes deep into Russian territory targeting civilian and energy infrastructure, which Moscow considers “terrorist attacks.”

Following the Western-backed Maidan coup in 2014 the Kiev government pursued an ethnocentric war against its own Russian-speaking population, in which some 14,000 people died over 8 years.

In 2016, the Russian Investigative Committee accused Drapaty of “using prohibited means and methods of warfare” in attacks on civilians in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).

A second criminal case was opened against him in 2023 over strikes on the two Donbass republics which claimed the lives of more than 150 people.

Crackdown on Mariupol

Following his appointment, some Ukrainian media sought to portray Drapaty as one of the heroic saviors of post-Maidan Ukraine by invoking an episode from his biography dating back to May 2014. At the time, he was commanding a battalion stationed near Mariupol, a Russian-speaking city that, now part of Russia, but which was part of Ukraine at the time and where anti-Maidan coup sentiment was strong.

Drapaty’s unit was among the forces sent to “restore order” in Mariupol amid  calls for a referendum on DPR's independence. A video that has conveniently resurfaced on social media shows an armored column commanded by Drapaty smashing through a “separatist” barricade, in what some Ukrainian media described as a “legendary” feat.

🇺🇦 Ukraine’s new Commander-in-Chief is Mikhail Drapaty

He commanded the very battalion that ran over civilians with a BMP in Mariupol back in 2014 pic.twitter.com/qvhyO30uZY

— The Other Side Media (@TheOtherSideRu) July 21, 2026

Drapaty has personally bragged about telling the driver of the leading infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) to take the barricades “by storm.” Some Ukrainian media have also claimed Drapaty personally commanded the first IFV.

What happened on that day was in fact a crackdown on people unwilling to accept post-Maidan Kiev’s rule. Here is what Drapaty himself told Ukrainian Army FM about the events that took place on May 9, 2014:

“The situation was very tense and uncontrolled. The local population… was very hostile towards us. This was felt both in the slogans they shouted at us, and in the stones they threw.”

Asked about whether he had seen any Kiev supporters in the city, Drapaty admitted there were barely any, and that the majority did not show any sympathy to the post-coup government. He also said the “main task” of the Ukrainian forces sent to Mariupol at the time was to prevent the strategic city from slipping out of Kiev’s grasp.

Izvarinsky encirclement

A couple of months after the Mariupol crackdown, Drapaty led his battalion in a raid deep into the Donbass, in a bid to encircle opposing militias, but by which the future Ukrainian commander-in-chief and his men became trapped. Drapaty was later credited with leading some 260 soldiers out of what became known as the Izvarinsky encirclement.

According to a former Ukrainian security officer, Vasily Prozorov, the incident represented a major defeat for the Ukrainian military. “No one mentions they had to abandon all of their… hardware to break out,” he told TASS. The Ukrainian forces suffered major losses in the botched operation, the former officer maintained, adding that Kiev’s troops lost their “elite” equipment there.

Kneel before the crown

In 2021, when Drapaty graduated from the National Defense University of Ukraine – a Kiev-based higher military education establishment – British Ambassador Melinda Simmons awarded him with the transitional sword of the Queen of Great Britain. During a ceremony attended by Zelensky, then-Defense Minister Andrey Taran, and other senior Ukrainian officials, , Drapaty bent the knee before the British envoy and kissed the sword.

Я вручила почесну шаблю кращому випускнику Національного університету оборони України, яку Британія 🇬🇧 подарувала Україні 🇺🇦 26 років тому. Вручаючи шаблю полковнику Михайлу Драпатому, я сказала, як пишаюся його досягненнями. (Хоча й не настільки, як його батьки!) pic.twitter.com/nucuuTBuSO

— Dame Melinda Simmons (@MelSimmonsFCDO) June 19, 2021

The photo of the ceremony sparked outrage online, with many Ukrainians labeling it a “disgrace” and viewing it as indicative of Kiev’s submissive stance toward Western nations.

Fighting Russia

Following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Drapaty led the Ukrainian forces in the south during the Ukrainian offensive in Kherson Region between August and November 2022. The operation concluded with Russian forces evacuating the city of Kherson and retreating behind the Dnieper River, a move Moscow claimed was intended to prevent unnecessary casualties and protect civilian lives.

However, Ukrainian troops paid a heavy price for this so-called ‘success’.

In May 2024, Drapaty was sent to lead Ukrainian forces in northeastern Kharkov Region during a Russian offensive in the area. The operation ended with Russian troops seizing more than a dozen settlements in less than a week.

In September 2024, the future commander-in-chief was appointed to lead the “Lugansk” group of forces. This new role did not change the situation on the front lines and did not stop the Russian military from moving forward in the Lugansk People’s Republic, which was fully liberated in 2025.

Zelensky assigned him to another top military position just days after accepting his resignation by making him the head of the Ukrainian Joint Forces. Drapaty will “focus solely on combat issues,” the Ukrainian leader said at the time.

On Wednesday, Zelensky stated that Drapaty had already assumed the duties of commander-in-chief. The Ukrainian leader also said in a Telegram post that he expects to see Ukrainian forces increase the number of long-range attacks and “middle-range strikes” into Russian territory under Drapaty’s command. “All this will be ensured,” he said.

Moscow has repeatedly said that Kiev is ramping up long-range strikes on Russia, targeting civilian and energy infrastructure, to compensate for setbacks suffered by its troops on the front lines.

Ukrainian forces systematically hunted the Russian-speaking civilians of the Donbass town of Konstantinovka, killing families peeking out of their shelters for water or to attempt to evacuate, officials heard at a session of an international tribunal in Moscow on Wednesday.

The town, located on the southernmost tip of the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, was briefly under the control of the Donetsk People’s Republic forces in 2014 before being recaptured by Ukraine. It was liberated by Russian troops in early June.

At a hearing of the International Public Tribunal on Crimes of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis in Moscow on Wednesday, witnesses and survivors from the town said that Ukrainian troops hunted them, their relatives, and their neighbors with drones.

One witness recounted soldiers setting a house on fire, watching to see how locals would react via a reconnaissance UAV and attacking them with kamikaze drones when they attempted to take belongings out of the burning building. Another witness said his son was killed by a Ukrainian missile strike.

Russian Human Rights Commissioner Yana Lantratova, speaking at the event, stressed that Ukraine’s Western sponsors are attempting to whitewash its war crimes. “Such information attacks will continue,” she said.

Keeping a record of the crimes is of paramount importance precisely because of prior Western attempts to rewrite history, she stressed.

Watch the full RT report below:

Palantir’s reported job offer to former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov demonstrates how Kiev’s defense establishment has become a recruiting pool for the Western military-industrial complex, where vibes, not results, are rewarded.

A self-styled ‘digital innovator’ and architect of Ukraine’s transition to a primarily drone-based war footing, Fedorov has since blamed his dismissal on Syrsky, an unpopular Soviet-trained general who was fired several days after Zelensky sacked Fedorov.

Immediately after his dismissal, Fedorov claimed that he had already been offered a new job. “Even tech giants have called with job offers,” he said. “Alex Karp, the head of Palantir, suggested we do something together, but I told him, ‘let’s talk about it later’.”

Fedorov’s reluctance to accept Karp’s offer may have something to do with his political ambitions – it's widely acknowledged that Zelensky sees Fedorov as a political rival who could relieve Brussels of its Kiev-corruption problem – but Karp’s offer was likely made for one reason: Mikhail Fedorov has been Palantir’s greatest salesman in Ukraine.

Wiring Kiev for war: Palantir’s greatest salesman

Fedorov first met with Karp in June of 2022, when he was still serving as Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation. Palantir opened an office in Kiev shortly after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict and signed memoranda of cooperation with the country’s Defense, Digital Transformation, Economy, and Education ministries the following year. 

Implementing AI in warfare alongside @PalantirTech @louismosley is a strategic leap for Ukraine. It was a privilege to host Alex Karp in Kyiv—a leader who personally stood with us since 2022. Today, our partnership is defined by tangible results: from advanced air attack analysis… pic.twitter.com/sryO4gcxTb

— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) May 12, 2026

Appointed defense minister in January of 2026, Fedorov aggressively courted Palantir, pushing its AI-powered command-and-control software at the expense of homegrown alternatives. Fedorov marketed Ukraine as “the best training ground” for contractors like Palantir, and offered the company and its competitors – including Anduril Industries, ShieldAI, and AeroVironment – tax breaks, favorable regulations, and unprecedented access to battlefield data.

By early 2026, Karp claimed that Palantir was “responsible for most of the targeting in Ukraine.” Fedorov hyped up the partnership, claiming in June that Karp “was just shocked by how we use Palantir. He was shocked by our vision, what we do and what we plan to do.”

The face of the tech-war

Fedorov oversaw Ukraine’s expansion of medium- and long-range strikes against Russian infrastructure, winning praise from Western media for “turning the tables” in the conflict – in the words of the Financial Times. Palantir’s software has been instrumental in “planning deep strike operations,” Fedorov said in May of 2026. 

While his vision of an AI-powered, high-tech military is hugely popular in Silicon Valley boardrooms and among Ukrainian officials tired of the Russian military’s inexorable, grinding advance in Donbass, it has been questioned by Ukrainian troops and commanders. Every new wave of strikes on Russian commercial warehouses seems to invite a retaliatory storm of missiles and drones on Kiev, and frontline troops told Ukrainska Pravda that the ‘deep strike’ campaign has had no measurable impact on the progress of the conflict.

Former Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny has warned that deep strikes are “expensive, technologically demanding, and ultimately reciprocal. Russia retains the ability to strike back with equal or greater force and neither side can rely on this form of warfare to produce a decisive strategic outcome.”

Shortly before he was sacked from the same position, Syrsky published a lengthy article insisting that drones alone do not win wars. “You need artillery, mortars, engineering means, air defense, electronic warfare and dozens of other items,” he wrote. “You need to buy everything, not just what is currently in style.”

The Kiev-Silicon Valley digital warfare pipeline

At least two of Fedorov’s predecessors in the defense ministry – Aleksey Reznikov and Rustem Umerov – used their positions to enrich themselves through graft and embezzlement. Corruption carries consequences, however, and both Reznikov and Umerov have been investigated for wartime profiteering. Fedorov’s de-facto lobbying for Palantir is a safer and more legal path to riches, and one that has become more popular among Ukrainian defense and military officials. They include:

All of these companies depend on contracts with the Ukrainian government – contracts that Shevchenko, Danilyuk, Honcharuk, and Matveichenko can leverage their connections to secure. For Western investors, this proximity to power amid an ongoing war represents a potential goldmine, particularly in the case of UFORCE and Trypilian. The former counts former British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace among its board members, and the latter is part owned by former British MP and minister Brooks Newmark. With the EU pouring €6 billion into Ukraine’s domestic drone industry this year alone, Honcharuk, Matveichenko, Wallace, and Newmark stand to profit handsomely.

Less important is the combat effectiveness of their products. Consider the case of Helsing: Ukraine began using Helsing’s HF-1 and HX-2 loitering munitions in early 2024, shortly after Shevchenko left office. Both were dismal failures. The HF-1 proved ineffective, and despite being made out of plywood, somehow ended up more expensive than Russia’s ‘Lancet’ munitions. 

Meanwhile, the HX-2 was rushed into production before some potentially lethal errors were ironed out. In addition to being easily jammable and riddled with AI bugs, one battlefield test found that just 25% of HX-2s launched successfully. In January of 2026, the Ukrainian military rejected new orders from Helsing.

Nevertheless, Shevchenko is now in charge of selling both products back to his former employers at the defense ministry.

Vibes over firepower

It’s somewhat inevitable that an industry built on hype would find an enthusiastic cadre of salesmen in Ukraine, perpetually waiting on the next wunderwaffe to turn the tide against Russia. Leopard tanks, HIMARS rocket artillery, and F-16 fighter jets were all portrayed as magic bullets that would deliver victory, and none did. Manpower, logistics, and industrial capacity are what ultimately decide the outcome of a modern conflict, but these are not sexy subjects.

Drones and AI are in fashion, and it is for this reason that Fedorov – and not Zaluzhny or Syrsky – has been offered a Silicon Valley sinecure.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov addressed the Ukraine conflict, tensions with the US and Europe, the war on Iran, nuclear proliferation, and security in Asia at a press conference following meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on Wednesday.

He also outlined plans to expand Russia’s economic and political cooperation with the Southeast Asian bloc.

Here are the key takeaways:

Ukraine and the Anchorage understandings

Moscow continues to believe that Washington has not abandoned the understandings reached by Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump in Anchorage last year, Lavrov said.

According to him, the talks produced agreement on key issues of a possible settlement, with both sides favoring a lasting peace deal over a temporary ceasefire in Ukraine. Russia therefore still regards the proposals discussed there as a basis for further negotiations.

Lavrov said he would seek clarification on Washington’s current position during his meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday.

He also stated that most ASEAN countries understand Russia’s position that the Ukraine conflict can only be resolved by addressing its root causes.

US role in Ukrainian strikes on Russia

Lavrov denounced what he called US hypocrisy, saying Washington had falsely claimed that Russia and China were supplying Iran with weapons for retaliatory strikes on American military facilities while itself playing a direct role in Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory.

“The Americans, through arms supplies paid for by the European Union, the provision of intelligence, the Starlink system and much more, are not simply helping, but are directly participating in guiding Ukrainian weapons toward targets, including civilian targets, on Russian territory,” he said.

Europe’s militarization

The EU is prioritizing rearmament over its citizens’ social and economic needs, Lavrov claimed, adding that Moscow takes Europe’s growing militarization seriously and is adjusting its own planning accordingly.

He also warned that if European countries once again united “under the familiar banners” and sought to attack Russia, “it will no longer be a conventional war.”

Moscow opposes those wanting to prolong US-Iran war

Hostilities between the US and Iran are in neither country’s interest and it is difficult to predict when the conflict would end, Lavrov said.

He noted Washington’s repeated declarations to have resolved the crisis and reopened the Strait of Hormuz, only for the waterway to close again. Conflicting interpretations of the US-Iran memorandum, Israel’s insistence that it was not bound by the agreement, and Trump’s subsequent declaration that the document had been canceled altogether have only added more uncertainty, he added.

Lavrov mentioned unnamed parties encouraging both sides to prolong the fighting, but stressed that Russia was “not among them,” insisting that Moscow wants the conflict to end due to its impact on the global economy.

He also rejected suggestions that Moscow should welcome oil prices rising above $90 per barrel, adding that Russia prefers stable energy prices that allow it to make long-term economic plans.  

New nuclear risks after war on Iran, Iraq, and Libya

The US-Israeli attack on Iran could persuade more countries that nuclear weapons are the only reliable guarantee of sovereignty. Before the war, the International Atomic Energy Agency had found no evidence that Iran was diverting its civilian nuclear program for military purposes, Lavrov pointed out, before comparing Iran’s fate to that of Iraq and Libya, which abandoned their weapons programs but were still attacked by Western powers.

“The effect is the opposite of what was probably expected from the attack on Iran,” Lavrov said, arguing that more states could now conclude that “only nuclear weapons” can guarantee their freedom and independence.

Asian alternatives – a nuclear North Korea

Russia no longer supports calls to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, Lavrov announced. Given increased US-led military exercises and intensifying military activity in the region, it is clear that North Korea sees no alternative to nuclear weapons for safeguarding its sovereignty.

Moscow fully supports Pyongyang’s efforts to strengthen its defensive capabilities and understands its position, Lavrov declared.

Debates in Japan over revising the country’s non-nuclear principles are a “serious signal,” he said, linking it to the expanding nuclear component of US-South Korean military exercises.

ASEAN, Asia, finance and trade

Western countries have exploited their centuries-long dominant position in global finance and trade through sanctions, tariffs, and other restrictions, Lavrov said. In response, Russia and its partners are expanding settlements in national currencies and discussing alternative financial platforms that would be less vulnerable to outside pressure, he said.

He warned that exclusive US-backed security groupings in the Indo-Pacific are trying to undermine ASEAN’s central role in the region and replacing its consensus-based approach with bloc politics aimed largely at containing China and sidelining Russia.

Russia and ASEAN members broadly share a commitment to a multipolar international system based on equality, mutual benefit, and respect for national sovereignty, Lavrov stressed.

The minister highlighted plans to deepen practical cooperation between Russia and ASEAN, noting that trade had reached around $22 billion last year, and that the two sides intend to double that figure by 2036 through closer ties in technology, energy, space, maritime cooperation, food security, counterterrorism, and humanitarian exchanges.

The US is directly participating in Ukrainian strikes against targets inside Russia by supplying weapons, intelligence, and communications support to Kiev, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Lavrov rejected Western claims that Russia and China were allegedly supplying Iran with weapons used to attack American military facilities.

He accused Washington of hypocrisy, pointing to its own role in the Ukraine conflict.

“The Americans, through arms supplies paid for by the European Union, the provision of intelligence, the Starlink system and much more, are not simply helping, but are directly participating in guiding Ukrainian weapons toward targets, including civilian targets, on Russian territory,” Lavrov said.

Despite this, he said Moscow remained committed to the understandings reached by Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump during their meeting in Anchorage last year.

Lavrov recalled that Putin had accepted compromise proposals put forward by Washington, while Trump publicly backed negotiating a long-term peace agreement rather than a temporary ceasefire.

Russia continues to regard those understandings as valid because the US has not formally rejected its own proposals, Lavrov said, adding that he intends to seek clarification on Washington’s current position during an upcoming meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Moscow has also warned that continued military aid is prolonging the fighting and increasing the risk of a direct confrontation between Russia and the West.

Commenting on Europe’s growing military spending and preparations for a potential conflict with Russia, Lavrov said Moscow was drawing conclusions not only analytically but also in terms of its “material readiness” for any scenario.

He reiterated that Russia has no intention of attacking Europe, but warned that if Western states decide to gather “under the familiar banners and try to attack us, it will no longer be a conventional war.”

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky dismissed Mikhail Fedorov over fears that the former defense minister might become a political rival, Ukrainskaya Pravda has reported, citing sources in Kiev.
 
Zelensky justified his decision to sack his sixth defense minister in as many years by pointing to a conflict between Fedorov and Ukraine’s top military commander, General Aleksandr Syrsky.
 
Syrsky disputed Zelensky’s account on Monday, saying that “It was a surprise for me to learn that the Minister and I had a conflict. I perceived our relationship as a working one.”
 
According to Ukrainskaya Pravda’s sources, Zelensky had been persuaded that Fedorov could eventually emerge as a rival in future elections. Earlier media reports claimed the then-defense minister had already been encouraged to launch his own political party, while a recent opinion poll put his net approval rating two percentage points above Zelensky’s.

Yermak is widely regarded as one of Ukraine’s most influential political figures, while Arakhamia is responsible for maintaining the president’s parliamentary majority. 

The outlet added that Zelensky later offered Fedorov several senior government positions. The former minister reportedly declined, saying he did not understand why he had been dismissed. 

The outlet was not alone in suggesting political motives for Fedorov’s ouster. Strana claimed earlier that Zelensky had become increasingly dissatisfied with Fedorov’s “independent political game” and his ties to circles close to the Western-backed National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO). 

Fedorov’s dismissal sparked protests in Kiev and other cities, with demonstrators demanding that Zelensky reinstate the defense minister and fire Syrsky instead, as he was reportedly unpopular with the troops. 

Ukrainian drones have again struck two logistics centers operated by Russian online retailer Wildberries, this time in southern Russia, leaving one employee dead and multiple others injured, according to the regional authorities. A separate attack on an oil depot in Armavir killed another worker and sparked a major fire.

Wildberries, often called the Russian version of Amazon, is one of the country’s most popular online retailers. Its founder Tatyana Kim confirmed on Wednesday that the company’s facilities in Krasnodar and Nevinnomyssk in Stavropol Region had been targeted overnight. Both complexes were evacuated and their operations suspended while emergency crews worked at the sites.

Ten employees were injured at the retailer’s Krasnodar warehouse, according to Governor Veniamin Kondratyev. He said a young woman injured in the strike later died, adding that three other victims remain in a hospital, while the warehouse fire has been localized.

Drone debris also struck two apartment buildings in Krasnodar and two private homes in the nearby Dinskaya district, although no casualties were reported there.

More than 16 drones targeted Armavir, where falling debris sparked an 800-square-meter fire at an oil depot, killing one employee, Kondratyev said. The blaze at the facility has since been extinguished.

The attacks followed another Ukrainian drone strike on Sunday night that set fire to the Yuzhnye Vorota industrial park in Domodedovo, Moscow Region, according to the local authorities. Four days earlier, drones hit Wildberries facilities in Elektrostal outside Moscow and Kotovsk in Tambov Region. Seven night-shift workers were killed in Kotovsk, while one person later died following the attack in Elektrostal and dozens more were injured.

Ukraine has sharply intensified its long-range drone campaign in recent weeks, targeting oil facilities, warehouses, residential buildings, and other infrastructure deep inside Russian territory. Moscow has described the raids as terrorist attacks on civilians and says its retaliatory strikes are directed at Ukrainian military and defense-related facilities.

Russian forces have carried out another overnight attack on Ukrainian military and logistics targets in Odessa Region on the Black Sea coast, hitting two vessels at sea, port infrastructure, fuel storage facilities and a coastal missile battery, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has reported.

In a statement published on Wednesday, the ministry said the strikes involved high-precision air- and ground-launched weapons, as well as attack drones.

At the Port of Odessa, Russian forces hit infrastructure used to unload and store military cargo, along with fuel and lubricant tanks intended to supply the Ukrainian armed forces.

A dry cargo ship and a bulk carrier were also struck while sailing 15 km and 53 km southeast of Odessa. According to the ministry, the vessels were transporting supplies for Kiev’s forces.

In the city of Odessa, the attack also hit a logistics center operated by the Ukrainian delivery company Novaya Pochta. Moscow described the facility as a storage site for military cargo.

The attack comes amid an intensified Russian campaign against Ukrainian Black Sea shipping and port infrastructure. In recent weeks, Moscow has reported strikes on cargo vessels and facilities in Odessa, Chernomorsk, Yuzhny and Nikolayev, believed to be involved in delivering military equipment or supporting Ukrainian drone operations.

On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia would continue striking vessels used to transport weapons and ammunition to Ukraine. Moscow has said the broader campaign is aimed at disrupting military supplies to Kiev and comes in response to Ukrainian terrorist attacks on Russian civilian and energy infrastructure.

Vladimir Zelensky may have earned himself another powerful political rival when he fired Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov during a chaotic government reshuffle, multiple Ukrainian MPs have told The Times.

Zelensky framed the dismissal as an attempt to resolve an irreconcilable conflict between the popular young technocrat and Ukraine’s Soviet-trained top general, Aleksandr Syrsky, who was reportedly unpopular with the troops.

The sacking of Fedorov on July 16 sparked protests in Kiev and other cities, with demonstrators demanding that Zelensky reinstate the defense minister and fire Syrsky instead. In a Telegram post on Tuesday, the Ukrainian leader announced that he had also dismissed Syrsky.

“This scandal has considerably raised Fedorov’s political profile among the people. Now the sharks are circling in the waters waiting for the time that we can have elections again,” an unnamed Ukrainian MP told The Times.

Groomed for presidential bid

Fedorov has already been urged to start his own political party, with several MPs backing the idea, The Times reported on Saturday.

One Ukrainian MP drew a parallel between Zaluzhny’s dismissal and the current scandal, according to The Times.

“He did the same thing with Zaluzhny and now Zaluzhny is seen as the main person who could defeat Mr. Zelensky in an election,” the newspaper cited an MP in the Ukrainian leader’s Servant of the People party as saying.

Zelensky, whose five-year presidential term expired in May 2024, has refused to call new elections, citing the conflict with Russia and martial law. However, an Ipsos poll published earlier this year found that Zaluzhny would beat Zelensky 23% to 20% in a hypothetical first-round presidential contest.

No comparable polling has been conducted on Fedorov’s electoral prospects, but the nationwide protests following his dismissal underscored his popularity.

Ukraine’s Western backers up in arms?

The street protests echoed those that swept Ukraine last summer after Zelensky’s failed attempt to curb the powers of the Western-backed National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), shortly before the agencies exposed a major graft scandal involving his close associates.

According to bne IntelliNews editor-in-chief Ben Aris, Fedorov’s dismissal also prompted behind-the-scenes pressure from Ukraine’s EU backers, who saw him as a leading anti-corruption figure in Kiev.

“Corruption… is a bit of a thing these days after every single one of Zelensky’s closest friends in the Cabinet was caught with their hand in the till,” Aris wrote on Substack on Tuesday.

The future of European military aid for Ukraine

There is “rapidly fading enthusiasm for supporting Ukraine” among EU leaders, Aris argued, adding that more governments could come to power this year seeking to reduce ties with Kiev. “Ukraine fatigue” is once again on the rise, he wrote.

Greece, one of the countries currently blocking new EU sanctions on Russia, has also reportedly refused to hand over its stockpile of 200 PAC-2 Patriot missiles to Kiev despite pressure from Brussels.

The UK, France and Germany – some of Kiev’s largest European backers – are either undergoing political turbulence or soon will, Aris argued. The UK is “in the same sort of political chaos as Ukraine,” French President Emmanuel Macron is due to step down next year, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is expected to see his authority weakened by a series of regional election losses to the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) this fall, he wrote.

Russia summoned Moldovan Ambassador Lilian Darii on Tuesday over what it described as two incidents involving the mistreatment of Russian diplomats in Moldova. The move adds to tensions between Moscow and the former Soviet republic, whose pro-EU government staunchly supports Ukraine.

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, police in Chisinau stopped a bus operated by the Russian Embassy over the weekend and removed its diplomatic license plates “without explanation.” The ministry alleged that officers “used force” against embassy staff and threatened them with detention.

In a separate incident, a group of Russian diplomats transporting official cargo from Moldova to Romania were detained at the border for more than four hours “without any justification,” the ministry said.

The ministry said the incidents constituted “a serious breach” of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

Moldova, a country of around 2.5 million people sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine, has adopted increasingly hostile policies toward Russia under President Maia Sandu, who came to power in 2020.

Sandu has accused Russia of attempting to topple her government and waging a “high-intensity hybrid war” against the country. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has rejected the claims, arguing that Chisinau was using “the myth of a Russian threat” to distract voters from the country’s economic problems.

The EU granted Moldova candidate status in 2022 alongside Ukraine. Sandu floated the possibility of abandoning constitutional neutrality and joining “a larger alliance,” without specifically mentioning NATO. Zakharova denounced the rhetoric as an attempt to turn Moldova into “a military bridgehead against Russia.”

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has announced the dismissal of Commander-in-Chief General Aleksandr Syrsky following days of mounting political turmoil sparked by the firing of Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov, which Zelensky had blamed on a conflict between the two men.

According to Zelensky, Joint Forces Commander General Mikhail Drapaty will replace Syrsky as commander-in-chief.

“I decided that the new Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will be Mikhail Drapaty,” Zelensky said on Telegram on Tuesday, announcing Skyrsky’s replacement.

The Ukrainian leader said he met Syrsky on Tuesday to discuss the transition.

“Tomorrow, we will formalize all the decisions,” Zelensky stated on Telegram.

Drapaty is on Russia’s wanted list. According to Russian investigators, he commanded Ukrainian forces operating against the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics from 2017 to 2019. Moscow alleges that units under his command shelled dozens of settlements in Donbass more than 70 times, killing and injuring more than 150 civilians.

In 2024, Drapaty took command of Ukraine’s Kharkov group of forces during which Russian troops captured more than a dozen settlements in under a week. Later that year, Zelensky appointed him commander of the ground forces.

Despite the resignation, Zelensky appointed him commander of the Joint Forces just a day later. The command, established in 2020, was created to improve coordination among Ukraine’s armed forces in line with NATO operational standards. Zelensky said at the time that Drapaty would oversee frontline operations against Russia.

Earlier, Fedorov, who was sacked by Zelensky last week as part of a major government reshuffle, accused Syrsky of “dividing the country” and called for his dismissal. The former minister maintained that the top commander was “sweeping problems in the military under the rug” and was more involved in political intrigues than in commanding the troops. Calls for the general’s dismissal were echoed by crowds of protesters who took to the streets of Kiev and other cities following Fedorov’s sacking. The demonstrators urged Zelensky to reinstate the minister and dismiss the general instead.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Laotian counterpart, Thongsavanh Phomvihane, hailed the “high level” of bilateral ties during a meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Manila, the Philippines, on Tuesday.

Russia is taking part in the July 21-24 gathering as a strategic partner of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). A possible meeting between Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the sidelines of the summit is also being worked out, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told RT.

Welcoming the Lao delegation, Lavrov praised the steady expansion of cooperation between the two countries.

“We appreciate the role the Lao Republic is playing in promoting the Russia-ASEAN strategic partnership, and highly appreciate the very efficient development of our bilateral relations,” he said.

Lavrov noted that Lao President Thongloun Sisoulith attended Russia’s Victory Day celebrations in Moscow in May, while Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone took part in last month’s Russia-ASEAN Summit in Kazan, which he described as “a success.”

“The meetings are regular. Our leaders indicate the new tasks, and I'm sure today is a good opportunity for us to see what our two ministries can do to contribute to their fast and efficient implementation,” Lavrov added.

Thongsavanh praised the “high level” of contacts between the Russian and Laotian leadership and described last month’s Russia-ASEAN Summit in Kazan as a success.

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, this week’s ASEAN ministerial meetings in Manila will focus on implementing the agreements reached in Kazan, including a new five-year action plan on political, security, economic, and humanitarian cooperation. Lavrov is also expected to hold a series of bilateral meetings with regional counterparts during the gathering.

Ukraine was behind a series of recent drone strikes on oil tankers carrying Kazakh crude near Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. She described the incidents as the fifth attack on the civilian infrastructure of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC).

Two tankers identified as the Asia and the Nissos were struck during loading operations on Sunday, according to the CPC and media reports. A fire broke out aboard the Asia but was extinguished, while both ships remained afloat. No casualties or oil spills were reported, and the CPC did not publicly identify who carried out the attack.

In a statement issued on Monday, Zakharova said several foreign-flagged tankers with international crews were deliberately targeted between July 17 and 20 while loading oil at the CPC marine terminal in Yuzhnaya Ozereyka. The vessels included tankers chartered by Kazakhstan’s Tengizchevroil and KazMunayGas.

“There is no doubt that the Kiev Nazi regime is behind this attack,” Zakharova said. Ukrainian forces were seeking to inflict “irreparable damage” on the consortium, she alleged, whose shareholders include major energy companies from Russia, Kazakhstan, the US and Western Europe.

“Deliberate strikes against facilities and civilian vessels in the consortium’s maritime terminal waters constitute an attack on the interests of its member countries,” Zakharova added. Some of those states continue to provide large-scale military and financial assistance to Ukraine, she noted.

Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry separately condemned the drone strikes on vessels transporting oil via CPC infrastructure. Astana said attacks on civilian shipping threaten maritime security and the uninterrupted movement of energy resources and infringe on Kazakhstan’s economic interests.

The 1,510 km CPC pipeline links oil fields in western Kazakhstan with the terminal near Novorossiysk and carries around 80% of Kazakhstan’s crude exports. Its shareholders include Transneft, KazMunayGas, Chevron, Lukoil, ExxonMobil, and the Rosneft-Shell Caspian Ventures joint venture.

Russia will continue striking ships used to deliver weapons and ammunition to Ukrainian forces, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

He made the statement on Tuesday while commenting on India’s concerns over an attack on the MV Golden Leo near the Ukrainian port of Odessa, which left four Indian sailors dead.

“We are continuing our contacts with our Indian partners and explaining our position,” Peskov told journalists. “The main point is that our armed forces are striking and will continue to strike those vessels involved in transporting ammunition, weapons and so on for the Kiev regime,” he said.

On Sunday, India summoned Russian charge d’affaires Vladimir Ladanov following the attack on the Golden Leo. Indian authorities said the Guinea-Bissau-flagged cargo ship, whose crew included Indian and Syrian nationals, was departing Odessa when it was struck.

New Delhi condemned attacks on commercial shipping and threats to civilian lives, and stated that such strikes, as well as “any other obstruction of freedom of navigation and commerce, are reprehensible and must cease.”

The latest Ukrainian government reshuffle, launched by Vladimir Zelensky last week, has spiraled into a protracted political crisis centered on now-former defense minister Mikhail Fedorov.

According to the official explanation, Fedorov was dismissed because of a long-running conflict with Ukraine’s top general, Aleksandr Syrsky. Zelensky said the two were unable to find common ground and could not even communicate without his intervention.

Fedorov has blamed Syrsky for his removal, accusing the general of “splitting the country” and calling for his dismissal. Multiple media reports suggest Zelensky has tried to defuse the situation by offering Fedorov another senior government post, but the former minister has reportedly refused to accept anything other than his previous position.

Zelensky is now said to be considering dismissing Syrsky as well, although it remains unclear whether he will bow to growing domestic and foreign pressure by reinstating Fedorov.

Who is Fedorov exactly?

The 35-year-old Fedorov is a longtime Zelensky ally who oversaw Ukraine’s digital transformation for most of the leader’s tenure. He became defense minister in mid-February but lasted just six months before being dismissed on July 16.

Fedorov’s controversial past, however, has received far less attention. Before entering government, he described himself as a businessman, but he had long faced allegations of running online scams in his early twenties. Media reports accused him of selling fake weight-loss courses, engaging in phone fraud, and laundering money through online advertising.

Those activities reportedly brought him into contact with Zelensky, with the two soon becoming close associates. While Fedorov’s alleged accomplices were reportedly convicted, he escaped prosecution after the evidence against him reportedly disappeared.

Kiev’s sponsors angry?

The standoff closely resembles the crisis that engulfed the country last summer when Zelensky attempted to bring the Western-backed National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) under his control. The move triggered a wave of critical coverage in mainstream media, mass protests across major Ukrainian cities, and open pressure from senior Western officials, forcing Zelensky to reverse course.

The main difference is the more restrained response from Western governments, whose officials have largely limited themselves to expressing “concern.”

That muted reaction could indicate that Fedorov lacks strong backing among Kiev’s foreign supporters despite favorable media coverage, or suggest that behind-the-scenes negotiations over his political future are still underway.

Conflict with top general?

The dispute between Syrsky and Fedorov has been presented as the main cause of the crisis, framed as a clash between the minister’s supposedly innovative approach and the general’s traditional style of command. Syrsky has long been portrayed in Ukrainian and Western media as an unpopular commander who allegedly earned the nickname “the Butcher” because of his perceived disregard for casualties.

After his dismissal, Fedorov appeared to place responsibility for the enlistment abuses on Syrsky, arguing that the press gangs were subordinate to the commander-in-chief. Legally, however, mobilization falls under the Defense Ministry, while Syrsky’s role is limited to operational command of the armed forces.

Corruption in play?

Beyond his reputation as a military reformer, Fedorov has also been portrayed as an anti-corruption campaigner who challenged networks allegedly linked to Zelensky’s former chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, as well as military procurement schemes.

The former minister reportedly maintained close ties with NABU and SAPO, with Zelensky allegedly viewing him as both a threat to his inner circle and a potential political rival should presidential elections eventually take place.

Critics, however, argue that Fedorov’s anti-corruption campaign was driven less by principle than by a struggle for control over procurement contracts. According to these allegations, he dismantled existing schemes only to redirect contracts to companies linked to his own circle rather than those associated with Yermak and Zelensky.

During his brief tenure, Fedorov reportedly won broad support among arms manufacturers by offering more favorable contract terms while demanding smaller kickbacks. Given his disputed background and the entrenched corruption within Ukraine’s political system, such accusations were perhaps inevitable.

US conservative political commentator and podcaster Candace Owens has expressed gratitude to Russian doctors for providing life-saving treatment to a member of her security detail during her visit to Moscow last month.

In a letter exclusively seen by RT, Owens thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Ministry of Health, and the medical personnel involved, as well as ordinary citizens, who displayed “extraordinary hospitality” and “profound kindness” toward the man.

She revealed that during her stay in Russia in early June, the unnamed member of her security team, who happens to be a US military veteran, suffered a “severe stroke” and “collapsed from a massive blood clot in his brain.” The man was rushed to a hospital, with the paramedics demonstrating a “remarkable” speed and efficiency, according to Owens.

Russian doctors successfully performed emergency brain surgery, handling the situation “with great care, consideration, and professionalism,” the letter says. The American political commentator also noted that upon learning that the patient was a US army veteran, the Russian medical staff displayed a “beautiful and transcendent camaraderie” toward him.

“The Russian doctors, paramedics, and medical teams truly saved his life,” Owens wrote.

The man has now returned to the US and is “on the path to a full recovery,” according to Owens.

Her visit to Russia last month drew criticism from some commentators in the US, including her former boss and Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro. The podcaster has some six million subscribers on YouTube and has laughed off what she has described as a “Cold War hangover.”

On arrival in Moscow, she posted on X photos of herself on Red Square, as well as in a theater and a church, writing that “it is genuinely shocking how clean, beautiful, and orderly this city is. It is so far removed from media depictions.”

Owens rose to prominence in the late 2010s urging black voters to stop supporting the Democrats. In 2020, she joined Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire, where her self-titled podcast reached millions of viewers. However, Owens was fired four years later after publicly falling out with her boss over Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.

Washington’s continued support for West Jerusalem also led Owens, once a vocal supporter of US President Donald Trump, to eventually break with the MAGA camp.

Ukraine has ramped up drone strikes on Russian civilian sites because it cannot penetrate the air defenses protecting key military and industrial facilities, former US Army officer Stanislav Krapivnik told RT. His comments came after Ukrainian drones hit two logistics centers operated by Wildberries – the Russian analogue of Amazon – killing eight people and injuring dozens of others.

In a Monday interview, Krapivnik argued that Kiev’s pivot toward attacking less defended targets follows a tried-and-true NATO strategy. “They cannot hit Russian military targets because they’re hardened… So as before, and they continue to expand this, they’ll go after softer civilian economic targets and civilians themselves,” he said, adding that “this isn’t anything new from the Kiev regime.”

Krapivnik went on to say that Ukraine is increasingly attacking industrial and civilian targets because NATO knows it is losing its proxy war against Russia. “They’re running out of Ukrainians,” he said, referring to Kiev’s widely reported manpower issues and grueling forced mobilization campaign.

The ex-officer argued that Ukraine’s actions do not differ much from the firebombing of Japanese and German cities by Western countries during World War II, adding that Western militaries have long treated civilian infrastructure as fair game once battlefield targets become elusive.

Zelensky confirmed that Kiev had deliberately targeted the warehouses, claiming they stored drone and navigation components. Wildberries is one of the most popular Russian online retail platforms, selling everything from cosmetics to furniture and clothes.

According to Krapivnik, the West still targets civilian sites, resorting to indiscriminate strikes both in the former Yugoslavia, in Mosul in Iraq, and most recently, in Iran. “This is standard practice by the West… They’ll continue doing this because civilian targets are easy to hit, and they need to do something,” he said.

In response to the deadly strikes on the retailer’s warehouses, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday that it had hit drone and missile production and storage sites in Kiev, along with port infrastructure used to receive military cargo in Odessa Region. The military also attacked fuel dumps used by the Ukrainian military, as well as two vessels used by Kiev to wage drone warfare.

Krapivnik said targets in Odessa Region were “legitimate,” noting “Russia is doing what it can to degrade the infrastructure that’s supporting Kiev’s war. Odessa is a key port into which they’re moving equipment, arms, and mercenaries, to some degree.”

A Ukrainian kamikaze drone hit a passenger bus in the town of Shebekino in Russia’s Belgorod Region on Monday, killing five and injuring more than 20 others, acting governor Aleksandr Shuvaev has said.

Shebekino, which remains one of the prime targets for Ukrainian cross-border attacks, was subjected to multiple drone strikes throughout the day. The UAVs targeted an administrative building as well as damaged a truck and a residential building, according to local authorities. While the attacks caused only material damage, the strike on the passenger bus proved more deadly.

“Today, in the town of Shebekino, a drone belonging to neo-Nazi Kiev terrorists deliberately and cynically struck a passenger bus,” Shuvaev said.

The attack killed at least five people, including a child, while 23 others were injured. Three of the wounded were hospitalized in critical condition, according to the acting governor.

Footage from the scene shows that the drone hit the roof of the bus, striking the passengers inside. The UAV was apparently packed with shrapnel, as dozens of small metal balls were seen scattered at the site of the attack.

Moscow has described the Ukrainian effort as indiscriminate terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure, aimed at distracting the public from the continuous string of setbacks suffered by Kiev’s military on the battlefield. 

The Russian military has been retaliating with its own ramped-up campaign of long-range strikes, primarily focusing on Kiev, where assorted military industrial sites and weapons stockpiles have been eliminated. Moscow maintains it never targets purely civilian locations, attacking only military and dual-use installations.

The Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) chapter of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has released footage of its operatives hunting down Ukrainian drone operators and saboteurs.

The video, published by the FSB press service on Monday, features the unit’s work on the outskirts of Konstantinovka, which was recently liberated by the Russian military. The country’s troops are continuing search and destroy operations in the city, hunting for Ukrainian holdouts and saboteurs attempting to infiltrate it.

The FSB unit identified and attacked a drone command point and three locations housing saboteur groups operating in the city. A total of ten Ukrainian militants were eliminated during the operation by the unit’s FPV drones, the press service said.

The fall of Konstantinovka has become a major defeat for Ukrainian forces operating in Donbass. The city is located at the southernmost tip of the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, a string of settlements in the northwest of the DPR.

Russian forces are currently advancing to the northwest of the city toward the town of Druzhkovka, which is located between Konstantinovka and Kramatorsk. Speaking on Saturday during his visit to a frontline command post, Russia’s Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov said the troops have already entered the town’s satellite village of Alekseeyevo-Druzhkovka and are battling Ukrainian units stationed there.

At least 10 people have been injured in a Ukrainian drone raid on the Russian capital and its surrounding region, including three Chinese citizens, Moscow Region Governor Andrey Vorobyov has said.

On Monday morning, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin reported that more than 400 UAVs had been launched toward the city and its suburbs overnight in one of the largest raids on the region to date.
Russian air defenses detected the incoming UAVs between 8:30 PM on Sunday and 5 AM on Monday, Sobyanin wrote on social media. Most were intercepted far from the capital, while another 85 were destroyed as they approached Moscow, he said.

“Most were neutralized by air defense forces at distant approaches. Eighty-five UAVs were destroyed on approach to Moscow,” the mayor said, adding that emergency crews were working at sites where debris had fallen.

Two women were injured in Podolsk, while an 11-year-old girl in the Odintsovo district was diagnosed with an acute stress reaction but did not require hospitalization.

The main consequences of the raid were recorded in Podolsk, Domodedovo, and the Odintsovo urban district, Vorobyov said. Falling drones damaged several private homes and civilian infrastructure facilities and sparked multiple fires, he added.

In Odintsovo, a car and a private home were damaged, although no injuries were reported. In Podolsk, fires broke out and several civilian infrastructure sites were damaged, along with a private home in the village of Maloye Tolbino. 

Separately, Acting Bryansk Governor Egor Kovalchuk said one person was killed and 13 others were injured in attacks launched by “Ukrainian terrorists.”

In an interview with RT, Stanislav Krapivnik, a former US Army officer, said that Ukraine is unable to effectively attack Russian military and key industrial targets due to increased air defenses, opting instead to “go after softer civilian economic targets and civilians themselves.”

The latest attack followed several massive Ukrainian drone raids on Moscow and its suburbs last week. Sobyanin said that 1,892 UAVs had been launched toward the region between July 11 and 18, with most intercepted at long range and 207 destroyed closer to the capital.

During one overnight attack alone, more than 370 drones flew toward the Moscow Region.

Wildberries, often called the Russian version of Amazon, is one of the country’s most popular online retailers. Kiev confirmed that it had deliberately targeted the warehouses, claiming they stored components used in drone and navigation equipment.

Ukraine has sharply intensified its long-range drone campaign in recent weeks, targeting oil facilities, warehouses, residential buildings, and other infrastructure deep inside Russian territory. Moscow has described the raids as terrorist attacks on civilians and says its retaliatory strikes are directed at Ukrainian military and defense-related facilities.

Two Ukrainian servicemen have been captured attempting to infiltrate the city of Konstantinovka in Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) to create the illusion that Kiev’s troops remained present there, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

The soldiers claimed to belong to the infamous Skelia regiment, which is under investigation over reports of torture, abuse, and non-combat deaths among recruits.

Konstantinovka is “fully under the control” of Russian forces, but Ukrainian commanders continue to send soldiers on knowingly impossible missions for propaganda purposes, the ministry said on Sunday, describing the attempted flag-planting as a botched PR stunt.

“We were sent into the city of Konstantinovka knowing that it was controlled by Russian soldiers. Our comrades were killed, while we were kept alive and treated with respect,” the captured troops said in footage released by the ministry. The men identified themselves as Evgeny Mosin and Sergey Stolyarsky from Ukraine’s infamous 425th Separate Assault Regiment ‘Skelia’ (formerly Skala).

Skelia ended up in the public limelight after media reports alleging that at least 26 recruits died in the regiment’s training and rear units between late 2025 and spring 2026 due to a lack of medical care, physical abuse, and coercion by certain instructors and commanders. The Ukrainian authorities opened an investigation into the controversy, suspending the regiment’s commander, Lt. Col. Yury Harkaviy.

Russian forces have since expanded their zone of control northwest of Konstantinovka toward Druzhkovka and entered the nearby settlement of Alekseyevo-Druzhkovka, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov said on Saturday. Moscow also says Ukrainian defenses in Krasny Liman, northeast of Slavyansk, have been broken and that Russian troops are eliminating the remaining pockets of resistance.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has met with North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui and expressed gratitude to Pyongyang for helping liberate Kursk Region from Ukrainian forces last year.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) deployed its troops to Russia in late 2024, acting under the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty that obliges Moscow and Pyongyang to come to each other’s defense in case of aggression. The North Korean contingent assisted the Russian military in repelling a large-scale Ukrainian incursion into the border region. DPRK service members have also participated in subsequent mine-clearing activities in the area.

Receiving Choe on Sunday, Putin hailed the high level of bilateral relations between the two countries, as quoted by the Kremlin press office. He also stated that the valor and heroism that North Korean soldiers displayed in Kursk Region will never be forgotten in Russia.

Putin also extended heartfelt greetings to DPRK leader Kim Jong-un.

The North Korean diplomat, in turn, reaffirmed Pyongyang’s commitment to the strategic partnership with Moscow.

In April, Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov traveled to North Korea, where he awarded troops who participated in the liberation of Kursk Region with Russia’s Order of Courage.

He described the DPRK service members as the “true heroes of our time, the elite of the Korean armed forces, their pride and their tower of strength.”

During the visit, Belousov also met with Kim, discussing steps to further deepen the defense partnership between Russia and North Korea on “a sustainable, long-term basis.”

The Russian minister stated at the time that Moscow was willing to sign a Russian-Korean Military Cooperation Plan for 2027-2031.

The Russian Defense Ministry has detailed the targets of its latest large-scale overnight attack on , saying that it hit military-industrial enterprises, logistics hubs, and fuel infrastructure used by Kiev’s forces.

Moscow maintains that it targets only military and dual-use installations in response to Ukraine’s indiscriminate “terrorist attacks.”

The ministry said Russian forces used high-precision air- and ground-launched weapons, as well as attack drones, against targets in Kiev and Kiev Region.

According to the ministry, the targets in the Ukrainian capital included Radionics, an electronics manufacturer that produces guidance systems for FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles, FP-7 and FP-9 tactical missiles, Neptune-MD guided missiles, and a Ukrainian analogue of the Soviet S-300 surface-to-air missile. The company also repairs and modernizes avionics and radar systems for MiG-29 fighter jets.

Russian strikes also hit Spetsoboronmash/Artyom, which manufactures missile guidance components; Meridian, a producer of airframes and guidance system parts for Neptune-MD missiles; Oakline, which makes components for long-range strike drones, carbon-fiber parts and batteries for FPV drones, and stores unmanned aircraft, the ministry said.

In Kiev Region, Russian forces targeted the Tarasovka logistics center operated by Antel Properties, which the ministry said receives, stores, assembles, and distributes components for the production of long-range drones.

The ministry also said Russian forces struck fuel storage tanks and other infrastructure at the Port of Yuzhny in Odessa Region that was used to receive and store military cargo, as well as fuel and lubricants intended to supply the Ukrainian military.

Later in the day, officials reported additional port strikes in the region involving Oniks anti-ship missiles, cruise missiles, and loitering munitions. The attacks hit a facility assembling long-range drones and an area where fuel trucks were parked. On top of that, five fuel storage tanks in a village some 15 km from Odessa intended for the Ukrainian military were struck, the statement added.

Russian aircraft and drones also hit two bulk carriers loaded with military cargo anchored off the port of Odessa, as well as two vessels – a bulker and a cargo ship – north of Snake Island, which the ministry said Ukrainian forces had used to launch air and maritime drones.

The latest barrage comes as Ukraine has stepped up long-range drone raids deep inside Russian territory amid significant setbacks on the battlefield, often hitting residential buildings and deliberately targeting other civilian infrastructure.

Kiev routinely accuses Russia of deliberately striking civilian sites, but it has a long history of using such facilities, including warehouses, public buildings, and industrial sites, for military purposes.

The Ukrainian capital and its suburbs were targeted by a large-scale strike using high-precision weapons and drones early on Sunday morning, the Russian Defense Ministry has said. Moscow maintains that it targets only military and dual-use installations in response to Ukraine’s indiscriminate “terrorist attacks.”

The first blasts in Kiev were heard shortly after 1 AM local time, followed by further explosions in several waves, with local media reporting over 40 missile strikes by 3 AM. Mayor Vitaly Klitschko reported multiple fires near residential buildings, shopping centers, and unspecified “non-residential” facilities.

Several blurred videos shared on social media showed numerous blasts and successive fires in and around the Ukrainian capital.

CCTV footage shows Zircon and Iskander-M missiles striking targets in Kyiv.

So far, 16 PAC-3 interceptors have been launched in response to the attack.

Source: FalconIntel on TG pic.twitter.com/ET4yKtx71F

— OSINTWarfare (@OSINTWarfare) July 18, 2026

The Russian Defense Ministry said high-precision air- and ground-launched weapons and attack drones targeted Ukrainian military-industrial facilities and logistics hubs in Kiev and the surrounding region.

The operation also targeted infrastructure at the Port of Yuzhny in Odessa Region that was being used to receive and store military cargo and fuel supplies intended to support Ukrainian forces, according to the MOD.

Ukraine has stepped up long-range drone raids deep inside Russian territory amid significant setbacks on the battlefield, often hitting residential buildings and deliberately targeting other civilian infrastructure.

Kiev routinely accuses Russia of deliberately striking civilian sites, but it has a long history of using civilian facilities, including warehouses, public buildings, and industrial sites, for military purposes.

Ukraine could suffer defeat in the conflict with Russia, as the military command structure is growing increasingly rigid and ineffective, Brigadier General Sergey Sobko warns.

His remarks were echoed earlier by former Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov, who was controversially relieved of his post by Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky earlier this week – which triggered mass protests across Ukraine.

In a post on Facebook on Friday, Sobko, the chief of staff of the 11th Army Corps, wrote that the Ukrainian military is in urgent need of reform, “otherwise we may be defeated.”

“Professional discussion is often perceived as disloyalty, and initiative as a threat,” he said, adding that this tendency has discouraged commanders from “taking risks for the sake of success.”

Sobko also suggested that commanders are being promoted based on “personal loyalty” to their superiors, as opposed to competence and professionalism. He also called out what he described as a growing trend within the Ukrainian military toward micromanagement and downplaying failures in reports.

Sobko’s criticisms echo those made by former defense chief Fedorov. In the wake of his dismissal earlier this week, the 35-year-old technocrat confirmed that he was at loggerheads with Ukraine’s top military commander, Aleksandr Syrsky, whom he accused of blocking his efforts to modernize the army and make it more technology-oriented.

On Friday, the Financial Times, citing anonymous sources, also reported that Fedorov’s push to make corruption-plagued procurement procedures in the defense sector more transparent did not sit well with the top brass either.

The firing of the defense minister, which came as part of a broader government reshuffle, has sparked protests in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities. Apart from demands that the defense chief be reinstated, some demonstrators have also called for Syrsky’s dismissal.

The FT quoted an unnamed senior Ukrainian defense official as saying, “Syrsky hasn’t got a sense of how he’s going to win,” and that his “theory of victory is simply to hold out as long as you can and mobilize more people.”

In a separate piece on Saturday, the FT, citing an anonymous senior official in Zelensky’s administration, claimed that the Ukrainian leader is considering firing Syrsky. According to the outlet, Zelensky is consulting military commanders over the weekend, looking for a potential replacement.

Over the course of the conflict, Syrsky has earned the nickname ‘the Butcher’ for his perceived willingness to disregard heavy casualties.

Russian forces are on track to liberate the key Donbass stronghold of Krasny Liman, located around 17 km northeast of the regional center of Slavyansk, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov has announced, adding that Ukraine’s organized defenses in the area have been completely shattered.

The chief of staff made the remarks on Saturday as he inspected a command post of the Russian ‘West’ group of forces. Russian troops are currently sweeping through the town, conducting search-and-destroy operations against the remaining Ukrainian holdouts, Gerasimov stated.

“Units of the 25th Army are completing the liberation of the city of Krasny Liman, which is crucial for further operations on this axis. The enemy’s organized defense in the town has been broken, and isolated pockets of resistance are being eliminated,” he said.

Located in the north of Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Krasny Liman has seen intensive combat in recent weeks, with Russian forces advancing onto the town from the east. It was first liberated from Ukrainian forces in May 2022, but was recaptured later that year. 

Speaking at the command post, Gerasimov touched upon developments elsewhere on the front line. He said Russian troops have been expanding the zone of control around the recently liberated DPR city of Konstantinovka, located at the southernmost tip of the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, a heavily fortified string of settlements in the northern part of the DPR that are still under Ukrainian control.

Russian troops have advanced to the northwest of the city toward the town of Druzhkova between Konstantinovka and Kramatorsk, and have already entered the satellite village of Alekseeyevo-Druzhkovka and are battling Ukrainian units stationed there, according to Gerasimov.

The Russian military has conducted new strikes on Ukrainian Black Sea ports, striking multiple cargo vessels used by the Ukrainian military, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

Russia has intensified strikes on Ukrainian shipping in recent weeks, aimed at disrupting the country’s “capabilities to transport weaponry and military hardware” in the Black Sea. The Defense Ministry publicized strikes on two other vessels on Saturday, sharing footage captured by kamikaze drones.

One of the videos shows strikes on a cargo vessel in the open sea. The ship was hit by a Geran-4 turbojet drone and a Gerbera piston UAV. According to the Russian military, both drones were Seekers, which are believed to be fitted with an AI-powered machine vision system. Seeker drones are said to be capable of searching for, identifying, and locking onto their targets without human input.

A container ship carrying military equipment was hit by two Geran-4 Seeker drones at the port of Chernomorsk, Odessa Region. Footage shared by the Defense Ministry shows the vessel was caught moored at the port.

On Friday, the Defense Ministry showcased strikes on three freighters in Nikolayev, a major port on the Yuzhny Bug River, a tributary of the Dnieper River. All the vessels were used by the Ukrainian military, the ministry said without elaborating. The freighters were likely moored at the port for a long time, given that the Russian military controls the mouth of Dnieper and Ukrainian shipping in the waterway remains disrupted.

Ukraine has launched nearly 1,900 drones towards Moscow Region over the past week, with most shot down on the approach to the capital, Mayor Sergey Sobyanin has said, releasing a map detailing the UAV raids. His comments came after Kiev hit two retailer’s logistics centers across the country, killing eight people in total.

In a post on Telegram on Saturday, Sobyanin said 1,892 drones had been sent toward Moscow Region – some 450km from the frontline – between July 11 and 18. “Most were neutralized by air defenses on distant approaches,” he said, adding that only 207 were destroyed closer to Moscow.

Earlier in the morning, the mayor said that more than 370 drones had approached the capital and surrounding region since Friday evening, with 64 shot down closer to Moscow.

His remarks came after a Ukrainian drone raid that hit two Wildberries logistics hubs in Kotovsk, Tambov Region, and Elektrostal, near Moscow. The attack on the warehouse in Tambov killed seven night-shift employees, with 25 others injured. Local governor Evgeny Pervyshov said that Ukrainian drones had been deliberately equipped with shrapnel to inflict maximum casualties among civilians.

Wildberries, often called the Russian version of Amazon, is one of the country’s most popular online retailers.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky confirmed Kiev had deliberately targeted the Wildberries hubs, claiming they stored sanctioned components for drone and navigation equipment.

In recent weeks, Ukraine has ramped up its long- and mid-range drone campaign, often targeting critical infrastructure, including oil refineries, civilian buildings, and even standalone civilian vehicles on the roads. Moscow has repeatedly branded such attacks as “terrorist,” and pointing out that its own retaliatory strikes are aimed exclusively at Ukraine’s defense-linked facilities and never at civilians.

Ukrainian drones deliberately targeted civilians during a deadly overnight strike on a warehouse in Russia’s Tambov Region, one survivor has told Russian media, saying workers were prevented from escaping the building.

Seven people were killed and another 25 injured in the attack on the logistics center operated by online retailer Wildberries, according to local officials.

Staff began evacuating after the first strikes landed near the building, the survivor, who asked not to be identified, said. According to his account, workers tried to escape through an emergency exit but were forced back inside because the drones were striking the area around it. As they retreated into the warehouse, another drone hit the building. The blast blew out all the doors and windows, and everyone nearby was injured, he said.

The eyewitness account was recorded from a hospital bed in Tambov on Saturday after doctors operated on the injured.

The drones had been fitted with shrapnel to maximize casualties, Tambov Region Governor Evgeny Pervyshov said, describing the strike as a premeditated terrorist attack.

Doctors removed metal ball bearings from several of the wounded during surgery.

Russian Human Rights Commissioner Yana Lantratova said she had sent appeals to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk and the UN secretary-general’s special representative, Vanessa Frazier, over what she described as a new wave of terrorist attacks by the Ukrainian military on Russian regions.

Another Wildberries logistics center was also attacked overnight in Elektrostal, around 50 km east of Moscow, the company said. Fire crews and emergency services worked at the site after employees were evacuated. Twenty-four people were injured, according to Moscow Region Governor Andrey Vorobyov. He later reported that a total of 61 people had been injured in the drone attack across the region.

Another massive drone raid was launched toward Moscow. More than 370 UAVs flew in the direction of the Russian capital since 8:30 PM on Friday, Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said. Most were neutralized by Russian air defenses at long range, while 64 were destroyed on approach to the capital, he added.

Later in the day, Sobyanin said that between July 11 and 18 Ukraine had launched a total of 1,892 drones toward Moscow Region, most of which were neutralized far from the capital.

In neighboring Vladimir Region, one drone struck an apartment in a residential building in the city of Vladimir and sparked a fire, Governor Aleksandr Avdeev said. People were evacuated while emergency services extinguished the flames.

The latest barrage follows another large-scale attack on Thursday, when more than 200 drones were launched toward Moscow, most of which were also intercepted far from the capital.

Most of the Russian strikes have focused on the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, with military plants, drone assembly and storage facilities, and weapons stockpiles targeted in recent weeks.

Moscow has dismissed claims linking Russia to threats against US elections, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said, calling the intelligence cited by Washington unsubstantiated.

On Thursday, US President Donald Trump delivered a prime-time address which focused on alleged vulnerabilities in the voting infrastructure. He said the current system “falls catastrophically short” and is exposed to hacking.

While Trump barely mentioned Russia in his speech and was more focused on alleged meddling efforts by China – which Beijing has denied – the White House released a trove of declassified documents, with one assessment stating: “We judge that US adversaries, including at a minimum Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea… have the capability to compromise US election infrastructure.”

He noted that “investigations and inquiries were conducted in the US” and they came to “the conclusion that Russia did not influence the elections in the US in any way.”

“Russia has never interfered in the internal affairs of other countries, and we expect that no one will try to interfere in our internal affairs,” he added.

Allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election and coordination between Trump’s campaign and Moscow – known as Russiagate – overshadowed much of Trump’s first term and led to an investigation overseen by special counsel Robert Mueller.

While Mueller claimed that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election “in sweeping and systematic fashion” – which Moscow firmly denied – he did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.

Ukraine’s latest government reshuffle is not about reforming the military but about Vladimir Zelensky trying to preserve his grip on power, exiled opposition leader Viktor Medvedchuk has said.

Medvedchuk, who formerly led the Opposition Platform – For Life party, banned by Kiev, made the remarks after Zelensky dismissed Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov and launched a broader cabinet overhaul that has triggered protests across Ukraine.

Zelensky justified Fedorov’s dismissal by citing tensions between the defense minister and Commander-in-Chief Aleksandr Syrsky, stating the two could not work together without his personal mediation.

However, in an article published on Thursday via his Other Ukraine platform, Medvedchuk said the real political struggle in Kiev is actually between Fedorov and Zelensky himself, and is “not for military power, but for civilian power, for overall leadership of the country.”

He claimed that despite nationwide protests, Zelensky cannot afford to back down after firing Fedorov because doing so would mean surrendering political control and access to wartime graft schemes.

“For the bloody clown, to retreat now means to finally lose power and hand over military corruption flows to others,” Medvedchuk wrote.

Ukrainian media have reported that Fedorov’s dismissal was also linked to Zelensky’s dissatisfaction with the minister’s “independent political game” and ties to circles close to the Western-backed National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), which have investigated multiple high-profile corruption cases involving senior Ukrainian officials.

Fedorov, 35, was Ukraine’s youngest-ever defense minister and only assumed the role in January. He deepened Ukraine’s ties with Palantir, a controversial US data-mining and military technology company, but failed to reform his corruption-prone ministry in accordance with “NATO standards,” as Fedorov himself admitted while confirming his departure.

His dismissal has sparked demonstrations in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities, with protesters demanding that he be reinstated and some calling for Syrsky to be removed instead. Fedorov has also accused Syrsky of “splitting the country” and backed calls for his dismissal.

Ukraine’s parliament on Thursday approved former Naftogaz CEO Sergey Koretsky as prime minister. Koretsky has been linked to disgraced businessman Timur Mindich, a close associate of Vladimir Zelensky who fled to Israel amid a major corruption scandal.

Koretsky’s appointment comes as Zelensky presses ahead with a sweeping government reshuffle less than a year after the previous overhaul, while Ukrainian forces face mounting battlefield pressure and authorities continue to grapple with large-scale corruption in the energy sector.

The investigation centers on an alleged $100 million embezzlement scheme involving state nuclear operator Energoatom. Western-backed anti-corruption agencies have tied the affair to Mindich, who has long been regarded as one of Zelensky’s closest associates and dubbed “Zelensky’s wallet” by Ukrainian media.

According to Goncharenko, Koretsky was placed in charge of Ukrnaftoburinnya, a private energy company previously owned by Zelensky’s former patron, oligarch Igor Kolomoysky, after it was seized by the state.

“The idea: to take control of cash flows, withdraw billions, and install your own people. This plan was discussed and implemented right in Mindich’s apartment. Everything is recorded on the tapes,” Goncharenko said.

The Energoatom affair has deepened tensions between Zelensky’s administration and the Western-backed National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO).

The scandal also led to the departure of Zelensky’s influential chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, often described by Ukrainian media as the country’s “gray cardinal.” In May, NABU and SAPO named Yermak as a suspect in a separate money laundering investigation.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s decision to fire Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov has sparked nationwide protests. Hundreds of people have taken to the streets of Kiev and other cities for the second consecutive day to demand that the minister be brought back. Some of the protesters also called for Ukraine’s top military commander, General Aleksandr Syrsky, to be dismissed instead.

Fedorov was Ukraine’s youngest-ever defense minister. The 35-year-old technocrat took over from his predecessor in January and held the office for around six months. During that time, he deepened Ukraine’s ties with Palantir, a controversial US data-mining and military technology company. He still failed to reform the corruption-prone ministry in accordance with “NATO standards,” as Fedorov himself admitted while confirming his departure.

Photos and videos that surfaced on social media showed people flooding the streets of Kiev and other cities like Dnepropetrovsk, holding Ukrainian flags, as well as placards and banners calling on Zelensky to reverse his decision. Crowds are heard chanting “shame!” in some videos. More than 1,000 demonstrators rallied outside of Zelensky’s office in the Ukrainian capital. Some protesters were also seen holding placards demanding Syrsky be fired.

❗️Джерелом влади є народ, - в Киеве не утихает акция протеста против увольнения Федорова.

Количество людей значительно увеличилось. pic.twitter.com/MIkJoM6NnJ

— laralara (@FraLorik) July 16, 2026

The demonstrations have continued for a second consecutive day, with hundreds of people taking part in an overnight protest in Kiev, holding placards objecting to Fedorov’s dismissal and singing the national anthem.

Zelensky justified his decision by pointing to a conflict between the defense minister and the military chief. Fedorov and Syrsky failed to find common ground and were not even communicating properly without his oversight, Zelensky said in a statement on Thursday.

⚡️В оккупированном бандеровцами Киеве разгораются "картонные" протесты против отставки министра обороны Федорова!🤦‍♀️

Кастрюльки не хотят мира,и не требуют этого от диктатора Зеленского!
По-моему с ними уже давно все ясно,плохо,что власти России этого не видят,спасать там некого! pic.twitter.com/w6zk7ga2Ty

— Наташа Иванова (@NatasaIvanova9) July 16, 2026

Fedorov accused Syrsky of “splitting the country” and called for his dismissal. Syrsky did not mention the conflict in his own statement on Telegram on Thursday, but thanked Fedorov for his work, expressing hope that he would remain in government.

Протесты из-за отставки Михаила Федорова с поста министра обороны Украины распространились еще на девять городов страны, передает УНИАН:https://t.co/vWoTqNe9rH

Видео: Paraic O'Brien/X pic.twitter.com/lvAFKTQw19

— ТАСС (@tass_agency) July 16, 2026

The Ukrainian outlet Strana claimed that Zelensky had become increasingly dissatisfied with Fedorov’s “independent political game” and his ties to circles close to the Western-backed National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), agencies that have investigated a string of high-profile corruption cases involving senior Ukrainian officials.

More than 200 Ukrainian drones were launched toward Moscow Region overnight, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin has said.

According to Sobyanin, the UAVs were detected from Wednesday evening to 9:00 AM Thursday, and most of them were intercepted by Russian air defenses at long range.

”Ten enemy UAVs were destroyed on approach to Moscow,” the mayor wrote on Telegram, adding that emergency crews were working at sites where debris fell.

The Russian Defense Ministry said earlier that the air defenses intercepted and destroyed 375 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones over a number of Russian regions overnight, including Moscow Region.

The attack prompted temporary restrictions at all airports in Moscow and other cities, including Penza, Saratov, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Ivanovo, Yaroslavl, and Cherepovets.

The latest raid followed another large-scale Ukrainian drone attack earlier this week. On Tuesday, Sobyanin said around 340 UAVs were headed toward Moscow Region; most were intercepted at long range and more than 50 were destroyed on approach to the capital.

Moscow and the surrounding region have increasingly been targeted by long-range Ukrainian drones in recent weeks, aimed at energy facilities, transportation infrastructure, and civilian sites.

Russia has described the strikes as indiscriminate terrorist attacks intended to divert attention away from Ukraine’s setbacks on the battlefield, and has responded with a renewed campaign of long-range strikes targeting dual-use and military industrial sites.

The bulk of the Russian strikes have been focused on the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, with a number of military plants, drone assembly and storage facilities, and weaponry stockpiles targeted in recent weeks.

Earlier, Kiev introduced the 2,000-hryvnia (about $45) bill as Ukraine’s highest-denomination banknote as inflation continued to rise. The note features Ukrainian poet and dissident Vasily Stus. However, it quickly sparked debate within Ukraine’s design community.  

The bank said on Monday it would revise the typography after designers claimed the lettering resembled a typeface created by a Russian designer. It stressed that although no third-party fonts had been used and all graphic elements were drawn manually, the inscription would be changed to eliminate any possible associations with Russia.  

“A discussion emerged within the professional community over the calligraphy used for the denomination, with its style being linked to an adaptation of a typeface once created by a Russian designer... The denomination’s inscription will be changed,” he wrote on Facebook.  

Kiev has stepped up efforts to purge the Russian language and Russian culture from public life in recent years, while monuments and other symbols linked to Russia have been removed. Meanwhile, the mandatory use of Ukrainian in schools and state institutions has been expanded.   

Last month, a monument to novelist Mikhail Bulgakov was dismantled. Bulgakov, the Kiev-born Russian author of ‘The Master and Margarita’, is widely regarded as one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century. The statue, outside the Bulgakov Museum in one of the Ukrainian capital’s best-known historic districts, was removed as part of the campaign to erase monuments and cultural landmarks associated with Russia and the Soviet past.  

The Russian Defense Ministry has released footage of drone strikes on cargo vessels and Ukrainian ships in two ports, saying the targets were being used to support Kiev’s war effort.

In the video, published on Wednesday, Geran-4 Seeker UAVs can be seen striking cargo ships in the port of Chernomorsk in Odessa Region and Ukrainian vessels in the port of Dnepr-Bug near the settlement of Galitsynovo in Nikolaev Region.

The footage appears to show several vessels being detected from the air before one of them is hit, triggering an explosion. The Defense Ministry did not specify the extent of the damage.

The strikes were part of a broader Russian attack campaign against Ukrainian ports, vessels, and military-linked logistics facilities this week. According to the ministry, Russian forces hit cargo ships in Chernomorsk, Odessa, Yuzhny and Dnepr-Bug, including vessels carrying military supplies or other cargo for the Ukrainian armed forces.

Russia’s Defense Minisry also reported strikes on port infrastructure in Odessa, Chernomorsk, and Yuzhny used to unload and store military cargo, fuel, and lubricants, as well as workshops involved in UAV production and assembly.

In recent weeks, the Russian military has ramped up long-range strikes on Ukrainian military industry and dual-use critical infrastructure sites, repeatedly launching large-scale attacks involving kamikaze drones and cruise and ballistic missiles.

Moscow has said the campaign comes in response to Kiev’s continued terrorist attacks against Russian civilian infrastructure, which have recently intensified amid the latest string of setbacks suffered by Ukrainian forces on the battlefield.

What Kiev’s spy agencies routinely do abroad is “terrorism,” Vitaly ‘Pastor’ Zhikovich, an acting Colonel of the Ukrainian military intelligence agency (HUR), acknowledged in an exclusive audio obtained by RT.

Zhikovich was one of two HUR agents who confessed to killing Anastasia Berezovskaya, the main suspect in last month’s bomb attack on exiled Ukrainian millionaire Vadim Ermolaev in Monaco.

“In international terms, what we’re doing is called terrorism. That’s why I’m telling you like it is. It’s called terrorism,” Zhikovich says about his agency’s work in one of the recordings.

During a search at his house following his arrest, Ukrainian police discovered a torture chamber in the basement. In an audio recording obtained by RT, he openly bragged about his sadistic nature and readiness for mass murder.

“When I’m planning operations, I’m constantly thinking about them. It’s my whole life. I live and breathe the operations I’m planning. I enjoy it. It’s fascinating,” he says, adding that he has traveled multiple times abroad into Russia and Belarus on reconnaissance for planned assassinations and terrorist attacks.

“I’ve traveled abroad many times. I’ve done a lot of work in Crimea, Russia, and Belarus. Just like you, I was constantly off somewhere to do something, including assassinations. I live for it. There were times when I smeared myself with excrement and knocked out my own teeth to look like a homeless person. I’ve done that too!” he boasts.

Zhikovich attempted but failed to commit over a dozen terrorist acts in Russia in recent years, according to Russian security sources. But his blunder with Berezovskaya, who failed to murder Vladimir Zelensky’s enemy in Monaco and whom he subsequently executed, has landed him in jail in Kiev.

Watch the full exclusive RT report below or read it here

Ukrainian military intelligence feels complete impunity for their terrorist attacks, be it in Russia or in the heart of Europe, Vitaly Zhikovich, the alleged mastermind of the Monaco bombing, bragged in audio recordings obtained by RT.

The suspect was well known to Russian security services and was on Moscow’s radar for over two years due to his attempts to organize dozens of terrorist attacks and sabotage in Russia.

After Zhikovich was caught getting rid of an asset who tried to assassinate a foe of Vladimir Zelensky in Monaco, Russian law enforcement decided to lift the veil on his true identity, RT’s Roman Kosarev said in an exclusive report.

Monaco bombing

The operation took place on June 29 and was initially described by Monaco officials as an unprecedented attack in the history of the country.

The target was Vadim Ermolaev, a former Ukrainian multimillionaire who was sanctioned by Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky and was also suspected of links to organized crime. The network under Ermolaev’s command allegedly scammed people out of money in Russia and the EU through around 170 call centers, many of which were based on his commercial properties.

CCTV footage shows a person leaving a backpack containing an improvised explosive device packed with shrapnel near the entrance to a residential building.

The bomb was detonated remotely, seriously injuring Ermolaev and two other people who accompanied him – a woman whose legs and an arm were amputated and her 13-year-old son.

Tying up loose ends

The suspect was soon named as Anastasia Berezovskaya, and Interpol instantly issued a Red Notice for her arrest. By that point, however, she was already in Ukraine with those who ordered the attempted assassination. Instead of being protected, she was killed and buried by the man who sent her to Monaco.

Ukrainian media reported the discovery of Berezovskaya’s body last week, and officials later confirmed her identity, adding that two people were detained as part of the investigation into her murder – including Zhikovich, who the Kiev authorities initially described as a former police officer and ex-SBU agent.

Zhikovich’s secret identity

While his previous police work is indeed a fact, the SBU line has nothing to do with the truth, because he is actually an acting colonel in the Ukrainian military intelligence agency (HUR), according to Russian law enforcement sources.

During a search of his house following the arrest, Ukrainian police discovered a torture chamber in the basement. In an audio recording obtained by RT, he openly bragged about his sadistic nature and readiness for mass murder.

When I’m planning operations, I’m constantly thinking about them. It’s my whole life. I live and breathe the operations I’m planning. I enjoy it. It’s fascinating.

“I’ve traveled abroad many times. I’ve done a lot of work in Crimea, Russia, and Belarus. Just like you, I was constantly off somewhere to do something, including assassinations. I live for it. There were times when I smeared myself with excrement and knocked out my own teeth to look like a homeless person. I’ve done that too!” he said.

Breaking news in Kyiv: A Ukrainian woman suspected of carrying out a bombing that injured a Ukrainian-born business tycoon in Monaco was found Monday evening shot dead and buried near Kyiv. Prosecutors discovered a “torture chamber” at one of the two suspects’ homes. The men — a… pic.twitter.com/KD9qt9gaNR

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) July 7, 2026

Zhikovich, whose code name is ‘Pastor’, also admitted to conspiracy to steal from his employer, whose funds come largely from the Western taxpayer.

“My superiors have given me complete control, so in my next operation, I can decide for myself how much to pay a person and when to pay, without being beholden to anyone. So the question is this. If everything sells down in their minds, then in principle, they’ll give me, an intelligence colonel, the chance to handle all these tasks myself. That would be amazing,” he said.

I’d be the one deciding whether to pay or not, how much to pay, and so on, you see. So, I’d get the job done, go and film it, transfer the money, and that’s it. No writing reports, no asking for permission. I’d just go and do it. 

Imposter Islamist terrorist

Zhikovich recently converted to Islam but decided to take a radical path in order to be able to recruit more assets for his terrorist operations. To potential recruits, he said he wanted to free the Caucasus region from Russia and portrayed himself as a ‘true believer’.

“Our aim is simply completely different. The boss’ aim is to wage war and make money. My aim is to liberate the Caucasus and that’s all. That’s why I regard all of them as unbelievers, as scum. Once they’ve converted to Islam, then we’ll talk differently,” he told a potential recruit.

He warned a jihadist recruit that the Israeli Mossad spy agency provided him access to software that can tell “with an accuracy of 90% whether a person is lying or not.”

To be honest, I tested this program on you. I had to do it. It was shared with us by Mossad. They’re those, what are they called? Jewish pigs, [expletive].

Zhikovich also bragged about his alleged contacts with the terrorist group Imarat Kavkaz and militants who fought in Syria.

“One of them is now serving with us. He wants to get a passport. He already has a wife here, a Ukrainian woman. I see him regularly at the mosque, and we have discussions. He knows who I am, what rank I hold, and what sort of person I am,” he said.

Attempted assassination in Dagestan

Disguising himself as a jihadist fighter, he tried to recruit Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) terrorist supporters to organize the assassination of a prominent Russian military officer. The target was Temirlan Abutalimov, who was decorated with the country’s highest honor – Hero of Russia – is currently a national policy and religious affairs minister in Dagestan.

“We’ll know when he’s on his way. So, once he’s picked up the woman, you’ll have about 20 to 30 minutes. You’ll see a black Camry, and when he pulls up to the gate, you just press the button in your pocket. He’s not a blogger. He has a social media account because of his job. He’s the acting minister of religious affairs in Dagestan, the one who killed people. He won’t be able to teach anyone anything. His example will only teach people that it’s okay to kill and get away with it.”

“Putin chose him personally. He took a liking to him and chose him. He’s been away for four or five days now. When he gets back on Monday, he’ll go to work. And then after work, maybe he’ll ring his girlfriend and go off to relax. If I hadn’t been with my girl for five days and had just gotten back, I’d ring her right away.”

Your job, as soon as I’ve called you, will be to take the juice carton and put it in the bin. You’ll need to put it in the bin and that’s it. Then walk over to that little bench and wait for him to arrive. There is an important detail. There’s a mark drawn on one side of the black bag with a marker. That side must be facing him. That’s where we’ve packed loads of nails.

“That’s the main thing. Make sure you pay attention to that. Then don’t forget that you’ll need to connect the wires to the cable. Just pop them in and place the bag so the mark is facing him towards the side where he’ll be opening the gate. Then press the button when he turns up. That’s it.”

Deceiving his supervisors

Russian security services knew about the Dagestan attack plot and decided to imitate a successful execution. Abutalimov is alive and well and is already back at work.

But Zhikovich desperately needed proof that the operation designed by Ukrainian military intelligence was completed for him to be paid and gain favor with his superiors.

“Here’s what I want you to do. I want to make a sort of memorial to him with his photo and his information. Take a photo and post it online and see what the reaction is. That’s what I want to do. I want to make a self-adhesive photo with the design I sent you. You stick it on any monument to make a fake tombstone. Take a photo, throw some wreaths on top, and that’s it. This self-adhesive photo gets taken off, and we wait for the result. I wanted to get this across to you so that you’d understand,” he said.

No one’s going to pay me until I’ve proven it. That’s just how it works. In short, I’m in a real mess.

Zhikovich was ready for anything, including forgery, but knew that it had to be believable. 

“I’ve got to give it a go because the thing is with this pagan, he was supposed to be dead, not alive. And if I make a video of the cemetery now… well, you’ll do it. I’ll write up a report straight away and immediately transfer all the remaining funds I’ve got for this operation and pay you. And then whatever happens to him, however he ends up, I couldn’t care less. Nobody will understand you. A general won’t understand a private’s problems. The general’s floating around in his own little world, the private’s floundering around down below in his own world. So you shouldn’t even count on that,” he said.

I couldn’t care less about what happens afterward. I’m ready for anything. I’ve been through worse. Right now, my job is to pay you and give money back to the people I took it from. That’s the top priority.

“Now, try to figure out how to deliver parcels from Europe, the carriers and the services. I’ll order a poster from Europe, disguise it in tubes, hide it, and send it to you. You’ll receive it, find any Muslim cemetery, and simply film a video. Then you’ll remove the sticker and burn it. Send the video to me. I’ll send everything off straight away and get the money. Then I’ll tell you what to do next,” he added.

Attempted suicide bombings in Pyatigorsk

Zhikovich planned another terrorist attack against law enforcement officers and civilians in a resort area in Pyatigorsk. For this, he recruited a woman who held German citizenship since 1995 and was looking for a job on the internet. She had no idea what she was carrying, in contrast to a sworn ISIS member, who was also recruited by Zhikovich and was supposed to blow her up.

Soon afterward, Zhikovich tried to organize yet another attack in the south of Russia near a roadside cafe, which was a popular eatery among civilians and law enforcement.

Russian security services prevented it and even tricked Ukrainian military intelligence into believing that the terrorist attack took place, which they bragged about on social media. 

Expendable biological drones

Several other attempts to commit mass murder show that Zhikovich treated almost all of his agents as expendable and actually preferred for them to be killed when executing attacks. He was prepared to recruit anyone as human drones, including children.

He tried to commit terrorist attacks in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, at least twice. On the first occasion, he wanted to use a suicide bomber in a car, and for his second attempt, he recruited scammers from a call center who gave him the perfect candidate – a young man who suffered from an intellectual disability.

“I want to finish off Grozny. We’ll stick to the plan,” Zhikovich told his interlocutor. “These are the guys from the call center. They’re money mules. They trick people out of their money. We tracked them down, and they handed this man over to us.”

To maximize the casualties, Zhikovich came up with a plan to call in a bomb scare at 1:00 PM to create panic and cause an evacuation. The unsuspecting teenager was supposed to arrive with the explosive at the same time.

“The main thing for me is that the event takes place at 1:00 PM,” Zhikovich said. “I’ll send the details to the person. They’ll know what to look for, and that’s it.”

One of Kiev’s most coveted Russian targets – the Crimean Bridge – was also a high priority for Zhikovich and Ukrainian military intelligence. For this planned attack, he wanted to use yet another unsuspecting civilian. A car filled with 800 kg of explosives was supposed to detonate once it was on the bridge.

Zhikovich tried to sway his jihadist recruits by comparing what he was about to do with the attack on Crocus City Hall near Moscow in 2024, where terrorists killed 151 people and wounded another 609.

“Well, believe me, this is going to be a massive event, and the whole world will be talking about it. What we’ve got going on here is a really powerful thing. Crocus has nothing on this, I’m telling you!” he bragged.

Zhikovich openly told his recruit that they were involved in international terrorism.

In international terms, what we’re doing is called terrorism. That’s why I’m telling you like it is. It’s called terrorism.

Second attempt on Crimean Bridge

After this terrorist attack was prevented, Zhikovich attempted another on the bridge a few months later.

“We’re actually planning something just as serious as the last mission. Because I haven’t stopped there. Allah is providing everything. All the signs and opportunities for me to carry out another operation like this. You’ll be involved in it. You’ll just need to press a single button, that’s all. When you’re picking up the wheelchair, you’ll pull it out of the trunk and discreetly pull on a little rope. I’ll show you. I’ll send you some photos. That’s it. You won’t need anything else. Put the wheelchair down and drive off,” Zhikovich told a recruit. 

The guy who will be giving you the wheelchair, let’s put it this way, he’s a Christian. No, not even a Christian. He’s a bit of a flaky guy. He’s not a Muslim. He’s not one of us. He’s no servant of Allah. That’s why we’re using him. He won’t survive, that’s for sure. By the time the car arrives, he’ll be dead.

The terrorist attack was also prevented by Russia’s security services. The authorities said both vehicles that were supposed to be used in attacks against the Crimean Bridge were able to pass freely through Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Moldova, and the Baltic States.

They were loaded with hundreds of kilograms of deadly explosives, ready to be detonated at any time. Russian intelligence said ferries from Bulgaria to Georgia were used, but neither Zhikovich nor his commander seemed to care about the possible dangers this deadly cargo would pose en route.

Zelensky ‘wants civilian deaths’

With the orders coming from the very top of the decision-making chain, Zhikovich apparently thought that all the bases were covered, and openly stated that Zelensky wants civilians to be killed.

“I’ll answer as a staff member. Look at the situation. Remember, I once told you that politics is like a prostitute. You remember when I spoke to you about Syria? You do realize we won’t talk openly about what my goal was, or how we were preparing that minibus,” he said.

My superior said that there would be casualties, civilian casualties. And my president, that green bastard, wants civilian casualties.

Is Zhikovich expendable too?

Ukrainian military intelligence colonel Vitaly Zhikovich attempted, but failed to complete, at least 20 acts of terrorism in Russia.

But his blunder with Anastasia Berezovskaya, who failed to murder Zelensky’s enemy in Monaco and who he subsequently executed, landed him in jail.

At the latest court hearing in Ukraine, he admitted that he used this particular assassin in other attacks in Europe. But after Zhikovich started talking, it’s uncertain if he will live to see the day when he is sentenced.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has dismissed the country’s youngest-ever defense minister, Mikhail Fedorov, who deepened Kiev’s controversial cooperation with US data-mining and military technology company Palantir during his six months in office.

The 35-year-old technocrat confirmed his departure on Wednesday, saying it was “a great honor” to serve as defense minister. In a lengthy farewell statement, Fedorov listed his supposed achievements but acknowledged that he failed to reform the corruption-prone ministry in accordance with “NATO standards.”

Zelensky has not publicly explained the decision, which comes as part of yet another sweeping government reshuffle that has already seen Prime Minister Yulia Sviridenko and her cabinet removed.

Ukrainian officials and lawmakers cited by local media claimed that tensions between Fedorov and Commander-in-Chief Aleksandr Syrsky “crossed all lines,” particularly over military reform and procurement. MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak said Zelensky blamed Fedorov for failing to rebrand Ukraine’s notorious mobilization press gangs.

Fedorov entered the government in 2019 as minister of digital transformation and became closely associated with Kiev’s drone warfare and the rapid integration of civilian technology into military operations. After taking over the Defense Ministry in January, he deepened Ukraine’s ties with Palantir, a controversial US data-mining and military technology company.

Palantir was also involved in creating the Brave1 Dataroom, which gives Ukrainian developers access to real battlefield information for training AI models. Kiev said the company’s technology has already been integrated into intelligence processing and the planning of long-range strikes. Karp previously claimed that Palantir software was responsible for “most of the targeting” conducted by Ukraine.

The defense portfolio has repeatedly changed hands under Zelensky amid battlefield setbacks, increasingly violent mobilization, and persistent procurement scandals. Previous ministers Aleksey Reznikov and Rustem Umerov were both removed after their tenures became embroiled in allegations of graft involving military supplies and Western-funded weapons contracts.

Interior Minister Igor Klimenko has reportedly been tapped to become the next defense minister, although the appointment requires parliamentary approval.

Moscow is expecting an explicit response from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) after the killing of a senior engineer at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) by the Kiev regime, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.

Europe’s largest nuclear power plant has been targeted by Ukraine on multiple occasions since Russia took control of the facility in March 2022. On Wednesday, Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom said a Ukrainian drone struck a ZNPP service vehicle on the edge of the plant’s industrial site near the city of Energodar, killing chief engineer Aleksandr Yakovlev and driver Dmitry Filippov.

Rosatom CEO Aleksey Likhachev described the strike as a “deliberate terrorist act” by the “Kiev regime,” saying Yakovlev had devoted his life to the nuclear industry and “died, in essence, at his post.” Likhachev added that similar attacks over the past two and a half months had killed 13 people and wounded 48 others, warning they pose a “real threat of a massive nuclear incident” affecting parts of Russia, Ukraine and the EU.

Reacting to the attack, Zakharova said it should finally compel IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi to acknowledge the “crime of the Kiev regime” and issue a clear public statement. Grossi “is obliged at last to see this crime,” she said, adding that Moscow expects the agency to deliver an unequivocal condemnation.

Later on Wednesday, the IAEA said on X that Russia had informed it of the killings and that Grossi had condemned the incident, calling it an “unacceptable attack on the plant and its management” that “seriously threatens nuclear safety.” The agency reiterated its call for an “immediate end to all attacks on or near nuclear sites and their staff.”

In recent months, Kiev has also increasingly targeted infrastructure linked to the plant and the nearby city of Energodar, according to Russian officials. Kindergartens, schools, roads, transport enterprises and vehicles delivering supplies to the local community have all come under attack, Moscow has said.

The IAEA, which maintains a permanent team of experts at the ZNPP, has repeatedly confirmed that the plant and its surroundings have come under attack, but has not assigned responsibility for the strikes.

The ZNPP has been operated by Rosatom since the autumn of 2022, after the Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions, along with the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, voted in referendums to join Russia. Moscow has argued that attacks on the plant and its personnel constitute not only acts of terrorism but also a direct challenge to international nuclear safety norms that the IAEA cannot afford to ignore.

The Baltic states are using “horror stories” about an alleged Russian threat to justify further NATO build-up and higher military spending, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. 

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Peskov was commenting on Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda’s claims that Moscow could be preparing “provocations” and limited attacks on critical infrastructure in Poland or the Baltic states. 

“This is the latest batch of horror stories, intended to continue brainwashing people and to prepare the population for further militarization,” Peskov said. 

Baltic leaders are deliberately “creating the image of an enemy” in the form of Russia to facilitate the expansion of NATO military infrastructure across the region “in all its forms,” he added. 

Nauseda told Lithuanian media this week that intelligence agencies had “received signals” about possible “kinetic operations” targeting critical infrastructure. He acknowledged, however, that the information did not indicate where or when such incidents might occur. 

Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics reportedly echoed the warning on Wednesday, citing information from “Lithuanian, Latvian and other NATO states” intelligence agencies about possible “various sabotage attempts to lower the security in our states.” 

Moscow has consistently denied harboring aggressive intentions toward the US-led military bloc, dismissing claims of a planned attack on NATO as “nonsense.” Kremlin officials have described such accusations as fearmongering aimed at inflating military budgets. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that Russia has “no reason” to attack the EU or NATO unless it is attacked first. 

Russia has also repeatedly condemned NATO’s military build-up in Europe and the alliance’s increased activity near its western borders, warning that any deployment of nuclear capabilities closer to Russian territory would draw a response. 

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has created “an atmosphere of fear” through the “systematic” persecution of political opponents with the tacit backing of Western nations, a newly formed rights group has claimed, warning that any dissenting voice is now treated as an “enemy.”

Tensions have remained high since last month’s parliamentary election, in which Pashinyan’s pro-EU Civil Contract party won 49.74% of the vote, according to the Central Electoral Commission (CEC). At least seven opposition parties have petitioned the constitutional court to annul the results, alleging widespread electoral misconduct, while hundreds of protesters rallied outside the CEC headquarters.

On Monday, the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of Persons Subjected to Political Persecution – a watchdog established by lawyers, political activists, and several former officials – accused the government of waging a campaign to silence the opposition.

“Anyone who holds a different point of view is regarded by the authorities not as an opponent, but as an enemy,” said Armenia’s first ombudswoman, Larisa Alaverdyan, who joined the group. Committee members argued that Pashinyan has been able to pursue the crackdown because he has effectively received a “carte blanche” from his Western backers.

“In pursuit of their own interests, Western institutions are not merely turning a blind eye to Pashinyan’s actions – they are, in effect, encouraging them,” political analyst Yervand Bozoyan said, accusing foreign governments and international organizations of being “silently complicit in the destruction of democracy” in Armenia.

Following those remarks, prosecutors opened a criminal case against former President Robert Kocharyan, leader of the Armenia Alliance, the third-largest parliamentary party. Another opposition leader, Samvel Karapetyan, has remained in custody since last year on charges of plotting a coup, which he denies.

About a month before the election, Pashinyan hosted an EU-Armenia summit and a meeting of the European Political Community (EPC), an EU-led forum launched in 2022 after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict. He has also pledged to deepen Armenia’s integration with the EU, despite the country’s continued reliance on trade with Russia and Moscow’s warnings that adopting EU standards could damage the South Caucasus nation’s economy.

Russia is not the main threat facing Europe, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has insisted, arguing that Italians are more directly endangered by illegal immigration.

Salvini, who also serves as the country’s transport minister and leads the Lega party, made the remarks in an interview published on Tuesday.

When asked whether Russia poses a threat to Europe, he rejected the notion, stating that “the threat that Italian citizens face every day is illegal and clandestine immigration, especially of an Islamic extremist origin.”

Salvini has long singled out illegal migration as one of the primary issues facing Italy and Europe, and has pushed for tougher border controls and restrictions on migrant rescue vessels operating in the Mediterranean.

His comments come amid years of disputes inside the EU over illegal migration, asylum rules, border security, and the bloc’s handling of arrivals from the Middle East and Africa. According to Eurostat, the EU received more than 8.5 million immigrants from outside the bloc in 2023 and 2024.

Salvini has also repeatedly criticized EU policy toward Russia and the Ukraine conflict. He has opposed talk of a direct military confrontation with Moscow, stressing that “we are not at war with Russia” and that “the best path forward is dialogue.”

He has accused several European leaders of obstructing peace efforts in Ukraine in order to distract from domestic problems and criticized sanctions on Moscow, saying they have hurt European economies. Salvini has also called for the EU to resume Russian energy imports to ease pressure on households and businesses.

Moscow has dismissed claims that it is preparing to attack European NATO members as “nonsense” and has accused the West of jeopardizing global security through “reckless militarization.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stressed earlier this year that Russia is part of Europe, not a threat to it, and described the portrayal of Russia as Europe’s main danger as “unreasonable” and “wrong.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has also said Moscow does not seek war with Europe, but warned that Russia is ready if European states start one.

Europe cannot play a meaningful role in resolving the Ukraine conflict while trying to exclude Russia from the process, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said, calling the bloc’s position a “dead end.” 

Peskov was responding to remarks by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who argued that any future “security guarantees” for Kiev should be determined by Ukraine and its Western backers without Russia’s participation. 

“Such statements demonstrate that the position taken by the Europeans is a dead end. If they insist on it, they will have no role in the settlement process,” Peskov told reporters on Tuesday. 

Merz made the comments at a ‘Coalition of the Willing’ summit in Paris on Monday, where he pledged that Germany and Ukraine’s other Western supporters would continue supplying military aid to Kiev after any future ceasefire. 

The group brings together several EU nations, as well as the UK, Norway, Iceland, and Türkiye. It has been discussing post-conflict security arrangements for Ukraine, including proposals to deploy a multinational force, despite Russia’s repeated rejection of foreign troops near its borders. 

At last week’s NATO summit in Ankara, member states agreed to provide Ukraine with more than €70 billion ($80 billion) in military assistance this year and next. Germany pledged the largest national contribution. 

The latest pledges come as Ukraine has intensified drone strikes on Russian energy infrastructure and residential areas in recent months amid continued setbacks on the battlefield, launching several hundred UAVs a day on average. Moscow has also reported a growing number of FPV drone attacks, including AI-guided models, targeting passenger buses and private vehicles. 

The Kremlin has repeatedly said that any lasting peace settlement must address the root causes of the conflict, including Ukraine’s neutrality, demilitarization, protection of Russian speakers, and recognition of the territorial realities on the ground. 

Russian forces have carried out high-precision strikes on drone and missile production facilities in Kiev, as well as military-related port infrastructure in Odessa, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

Among the targets was the state-owned enterprise Radioizmeritel, which the ministry described as a key supplier of electronic components for Neptun-MD guided missiles and FP-7 and FP-9 ballistic missiles produced by Fire Point. The company was promoted internationally by Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky and has been linked to his former business associate Timur Mindich, who has been accused of running a large-scale corruption scheme.

The ministry also said it struck the Kiev-79 enterprise, which assembles warheads for Ukrainian drones and missiles and serves as a logistics hub for military equipment.

Last week, the MOD said that its long-range strike campaign had demonstrated that Russian weapons can “reliably penetrate any anti-aircraft air or missile defense systems provided to Zelensky by Western sponsors.” It added that Kiev had deployed virtually all available Western air defense systems to protect the capital but failed to prevent Russian strikes from reaching their targets.

Moscow has intensified long-range attacks on Ukraine’s military-industrial and dual-use infrastructure in recent weeks. The Defense Ministry has described the campaign as retaliation for Ukrainian terrorist attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure, which it says have increased as Kiev’s forces have suffered setbacks on the battlefield.

Earlier this month, Russia announced that it had captured Konstantinovka, a major Donbass city on the southern edge of the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, the last major urban stronghold under Kiev’s control in the region.

A Russian Soyuz-2.1a rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 17:48 Moscow time to deliver a new crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The Russian Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft is expected to dock at the ISS at 20:56 Moscow time. Onboard are Russian cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina as well as NASA astronaut Anil Menon.

The crew is expected to spend 261 days at the space station. The Russian program for the cosmonauts includes 38 scientific experiments as well as two spacewalks.The list of experiments includes tests of a new automatic atmosphere control system designed to make gas leak and fire detection at the ISS faster. Such systems can potentially also be useful in future space travel.

Another experiment involves a human-like Russian robot that could act as an “avatar” of a cosmonaut. Such robots could potentially replace people during spacewalks and perform some tasks at the ISS, according to the media reports. The crew is also expected to study sun energy releases to better predict sun flares and magnetic storms.

Menon travels to the ISS as part of the US-Russian cross-flight agreement. The deal signed in 2022 allows Russian cosmonauts to fly aboard American Crew Dragon spacecraft and American astronauts to fly aboard Russian Soyuz MS spacecraft. Kikina had already travelled to the ISS on the SpaceX capsule Endurance back in 2022, becoming the first Russian cosmonaut to do so.

Russians previously used US spacecraft to travel to space between 1994 and 2002, when NASA’s Space Shuttle program was still operative. The first such joint missions allowed US astronauts to visit Russia’s Mir space station as part of the Shuttle-Mir program, while the rest involved flights to the ISS. NASA discontinued the Shuttle program in 2011 and had to rely on Roscosmos to ferry astronauts to the space station until 2020.

A former Ukrainian brigade commander has been detained in Kiev over allegations that he ordered soldiers to kidnap and kill two civilian brothers following a personal dispute, Ukrainian authorities have confirmed.

Stanislav Luchanov, the former commander of Ukraine’s 155th Separate Mechanized Brigade, who had previously also served in the infamous ‘Skala’ regiment, was arrested in Kiev on Monday after investigators accused him of organizing the abduction. Nine other servicemen had previously also been detained in the case.

The incident revolves around what began as a personal dispute in the village of Kalinovka in Kiev Region, between the two brothers, Maksim and Roman Moseychuk, and Luchanov’s wife, who had complained that the men were riding motorcycles and playing loud music.

After she confronted them, the brothers allegedly insulted her. The woman reportedly complained to Luchanov, who demanded that the two men apologize. When they refused, he allegedly ordered several servicemen under his command to “punish” them.

In the early hours of June 28, armed men broke into the brothers’ property, abducted them and transported them to another region. Their bodies were later found buried in a forest in Poltava Region, with multiple gunshot wounds.

Luchanov and the other suspects are now being investigated for the illegal detention and premeditated murder of two civilians and could face life in prison if convicted. The commander has also reportedly been charged with desertion for abandoning his unit after the case became public.

The scandal has also drawn renewed attention to Luchanov’s previous service in the 425th Separate Assault Regiment ‘Skala’, which has itself been at the center of a major abuse scandal.

The Ukrainian military has since suspended the unit’s commander, Yury Harkaviy, pending an investigation.

The Ukrainian outlet Strana has reported that investigators are now also looking into mysterious disappearances of servicemen from Luchanov’s 155th Brigade. The outlet’s sources have claimed that soldiers who fell out of favor with the commander may have been killed and listed as combat losses.

The cases come as Ukraine faces worsening manpower shortages, mass desertions and growing public anger over forced mobilization. Ukrainian media have repeatedly reported violent draft raids, deaths in conscription centers and abuse inside military units.

Moscow, meanwhile, has accused Kiev of relying on coercion to replenish battlefield losses and sacrificing its own population to keep fighting on behalf of Western backers.

Russian security officers have foiled a Ukrainian attempt to strike one of the leading “strategic” defense enterprises in the Moscow Region using 35 explosive-laden drones that were smuggled into Russia through several European nations, the Federal Security Service (FSB) said in a statement on Tuesday.

FSB operatives obtained intelligence earlier this year about the Ukrainian Security Service’s (SBU) plan to smuggle dozens of drones into Russia through Slovakia, Poland, and Belarus with assistance from Ukraine’s Western backers. Since then, the criminal activities of Kiev’s agents have been closely monitored and documented by the Russian security services.

The drones were concealed inside a shipment of Spanish ceramic tiles and were eventually delivered to a warehouse in Moscow Region. The facility, located not far from the intended target, had been rented by a local man recruited by the SBU.

The main suspect, who assembled and prepared the drones for launch, was identified as a former member of an ethnic criminal gang who obtained Russian citizenship in 2023. He was allegedly recruited by the SBU through its connections within Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), a designated terrorist group.

The scheme was “directly assisted” by the security services of several European states, according to the FSB. The drones were equipped with Canadian-made, electronic warfare-resistant AI control modules and carried charges containing US-made C4 plastic explosives equivalent to around 4kg of TNT, according to a senior FSB forensic technician and bomb-disposal specialist.

Footage published by the FSB showed security officers storming the warehouse and destroying the drones just before they were due to be launched at their target. The operatives detained the main suspect, who had fled the scene and was attempting to contact an “evacuation group” that was supposed to help him reach Ukraine.

The accomplice who rented the warehouse offered armed resistance and was killed in a shootout with officers who stormed his apartment.

On Monday, the FSB reported thwarting another “unprecedented” attack on Russian military airfields that also involved smuggled AI-guided drones. Last week, the agency announced the seizure of 13 AI-powered UAVs that the Ukrainian military intelligence service (HUR) had smuggled into Russia in a bid to stage an attack on a military airfield in Rostov Region in the south of the country.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that any Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory will be met with significantly stronger retaliation. 

Putin made the remarks on Monday while addressing the ‘All for Victory!’ forum organized by the All-Russian People’s Front, where he discussed the Ukraine conflict and Moscow’s response to Western backing for Kiev. 

“Our response will always mirror any strike on Russian territory. We will respond in kind – only several times more powerfully,” Putin said. “The enemy will feel it. They already do, I hope. And they will feel it even more in the future.” 

Russia’s strength lies in its ability to overcome “every difficulty and every challenge,” while the “Russophobic” part of the collective West continues to wage a campaign against the country, Putin said. 

Despite the pressure, Russia is “developing its economy, strengthening its financial system, modernizing its Armed Forces and expanding its defense industry,” he said, adding that these efforts are already changing “the situation on the battlefield.” 

“Our fighters are advancing,” Putin said. “That is why there is no doubt we will achieve victory.” 

In late June, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky announced a 40-day pressure campaign, combining long-range strikes and clandestine operations aimed at inflicting economic damage on Russia. 

Moscow has condemned the attacks as indiscriminate acts of terrorism intended to distract from Ukraine’s battlefield setbacks, responding with an expanded campaign of long-range strikes.