A conscription officer was fatally stabbed in western Ukraine on Friday night, marking the latest violent incident linked to the country’s controversial mobilization campaign during the conflict with Russia.

The altercation took place in the city of Lviv as a group of draft officials were conducting routine document checks, the regional police department said. A 25-year-old local man allegedly “attacked and stabbed” a 55-year-old officer, who succumbed to his injuries in an ambulance, it said.

A police officer accompanying the draft officials fired two shots, wounding the assailant in the leg. The suspect was hospitalized, police said, without providing details about what provoked the attack.

Video from the scene shows an agitated man standing across from an officer, separated by a half-open gate, as three onlookers stand nearby. The man suddenly rushes through the gate at the officer, who steps out of frame. A gunshot is heard, after which the man falls to the ground, apparently clutching his leg. As he sits up and continues to move, the officer shoots him again at close range. The man, however, continues to crawl toward the officer before getting to his feet and struggling with him out of frame.

У Львові чоловік поранив ножем працівника ТЦК, після чого поліцейський вистрілив у нападника. pic.twitter.com/fsFdJHAvf9

— Олег Володарський (@volodarskijo) August 21, 2026

Police released an image of the knife allegedly used by the suspect.

Men aged 25 to 55 are subject to mobilization in Ukraine, while those aged 23 to 60 are generally barred from leaving the country.

In multiple cases, family members and bystanders have clashed with officers in an effort to prevent recruits from being sent to the front line.

DETAILS TO FOLLOW

Kirill Budanov, the head of Vladimir Zelensky’s office, has been drawn into a widening corruption investigation involving senior Ukrainian officials, Ukrainskaya Pravda reported on Thursday.

According to the outlet, Budanov’s name appears in case materials concerning his former deputy Irina Mudraya, who was fired by Zelensky this week after anti-corruption investigators searched her home.

The case centers on efforts to raise and legalize about $3.3 million in bail money for former Energy Minister German Galushchenko – a key figure in a $100 million corruption case involving state nuclear operator Energoatom and linked to Zelensky’s longtime business associate Timur Mindich.

The outlet reported that Zelensky tasked Budanov with organizing the bail effort, with businessmen and former lawmakers brought in to help find the money. The funds were eventually paid through little-known companies with opaque ownership.

Recordings released by investigators show Mudraya repeatedly referring to instructions from “the leadership,” which the outlet said could mean either Budanov or Zelensky himself. In one conversation, she quoted a senior official as saying that corruption should be “systematized and controlled” rather than fought.

The case is but the latest of several major graft investigations to reach Zelensky’s inner circle. His former chief of staff Andrey Yermak has also been accused of laundering more than $10.4 million through a luxury property scheme outside Kiev.

Other recent investigations have targeted former ministers, diplomats, and senior officials. Foreign Ministry figures have been accused of stealing about $1.3 million in Western aid, while separate cases have involved alleged embezzlement in the energy and defense sectors.

The heads of the Western-backed National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) recently warned that graft remains entrenched at the highest levels of government. SAPO chief Aleksandr Klimenko said the state has repeatedly demonstrated that it has “no political will to fight corruption properly.”

Corruption has also complicated Ukraine’s EU ambitions. A senior European diplomat recently told the Financial Times that admitting a country ranked 104th globally for perceived corruption would make a “mockery of the entire project.”

Moscow has long argued that the scandals reflect systemic corruption in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said earlier this year that corruption “permeates the entire Ukrainian power structure, including Zelensky’s inner circle and Zelensky himself.”

The Kremlin has condemned Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s apparent support for the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage and his opposition to prosecuting the alleged perpetrators.

Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov was responding to Tusk’s claim that those behind the September 2022 blasts should not be ashamed and that those who built the pipelines should be. Nord Stream was designed to carry Russian gas to Germany under the Baltic Sea.

“If Mr. Tusk supports and endorses such acts of terrorism, it can only provoke astonishment and incomprehension,” Peskov told reporters on Friday, describing the blasts as “an act of terrorist sabotage against Europe’s critical energy infrastructure.”

“I will not change my mind here, and I believe that those who built this pipeline should be ashamed, not those who disabled it,” he told reporters.

Tusk’s remarks followed Wednesday’s arrest in Croatia of Ukrainian national ‘Vladimir Z.’, previously identified in the media as Vladimir Zhuravlyov, under a European arrest warrant. He had been detained in Poland in September 2025, but a Warsaw court refused to extradite him to Germany and ordered his release the following month.

German legal magazine LTO reported that Zhuravlyov was arrested in the Croatian city of Pula while on the set of ‘Snake Island’, a Hollywood thriller about the alleged Ukrainian plot to destroy Nord Stream. The film, starring Sean Penn and Adrien Brody and directed by Doug Liman, reportedly began shooting in Croatia earlier this month. It is unclear why Zhuravlyov was on the set.

Moscow has rejected claims that a small group of Ukrainian divers could have carried out the sophisticated operation independently, arguing that an attack of such complexity in NATO-controlled waters would have required state support and Western intelligence involvement.

Former Ukrainian servicemen switch to the Russian side once they get out of the “information bubble” set up by Vladimir Zelensky’s government and see the reality of the conflict for themselves, a high-ranking officer from a unit comprised of ex-Kiev troops has said.

Earlier in August, Russia announced the creation of the Ukrainian Volunteer Brigade out of several smaller formations of Ukrainian nationals who left the ranks of Kiev’s forces and are now fighting for Russia.

In its report on Thursday, RT Russian shared the stories of some members of the newly-formed brigade.

Some decided to join Russian troops because they changed their views after being captured, some because they never wanted to be in the Ukrainian military, but were forcefully mobilized, and others because they supported Moscow from the start.

The Ukrainian Volunteer Brigade will perform different tasks on the front line. It includes reconnaissance units, an FPV-drone strike squad, and teams handling the evacuation of civilians, among other kinds of troops, the report read.

Highly-motivated troops

A fighter with the callsign ‘Zhak’, who serves as deputy commander for political affairs at the separate battalion ‘Maksim Krivonos’, which also joined the brigade, told RT that the soldiers in his unit have high morale.

“If those people simply didn’t want to fight, they could’ve gone to the detention center after being captured, sit there safe and warm, eat three times a day and wait to be exchanged in a prisoner swap,” said the officer, who was born in Ukraine’s Kharkov Region but has been fighting for Donbass since the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014.

The people “in Ukraine… live in a very harsh, aggressive information bubble. But when they find themselves here [in Donbass], when they see the Alley of Angels in Donetsk – they see a completely different picture, and a lot changes in their minds,” Zhak explained.

The Alley of Angels is a monument to hundreds of children killed in Ukrainian attacks on Donbass over the past 12 years.

Our own command ‘wanted to destroy us’

Another member of the brigade, called ‘Hunter’, said that he used to be a research fellow at an agricultural academy in Kiev and was never interested in politics. He was recruited into the Ukrainian military in 2023 after his request for a draft deferment to finish his PhD was denied, he said.

According to Hunter, his company was tasked with controlling “a rather pointless” position in a wooded area that was under constant Russian shelling. When the size of the unit fell from more than a hundred to 20 and then 13 troops, he asked his commanders to order a retreat, but was told to stay put and await reinforcements.

But after a week, no additional troops had arrived. Hunter and his fellow servicemen decided to surrender as soon as Russian forces began storming their trenches.

However, when they left their positions with their hands in the air, the Ukrainian military started firing at them, Hunter noted. “Artillery, mortars and kamikaze-drones were deployed. They didn’t even spare cluster munitions, which surprised me greatly. Our own command wanted to destroy us,” he said.

‘Patriotism ran out’

Another soldier of the Ukrainian Volunteer Brigade, nicknamed ‘Bely’, told RT that he served as a paratrooper in Kiev’s military and used to be a passionate patriot of Ukraine, despite being born in Donbass. When Ukraine sent its armed forces to the east of the country in 2014, he abandoned his home in what is now Russia’s Lugansk People’s Republic, leaving his wife and son behind, and moved to the city of Dnepropetrovsk (Dnepr), he said.

According to Bely, his marriage fell apart because his spouse was pro-Russian and wanted him to join the self-defense forces in Donbass. But instead he signed another contract with the Ukrainian military in 2016, fighting against the units of the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics.

Bely said he then lost the will to serve, but the Ukrainian Army refused to discharge him after the escalation between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022. When he surrendered to the Russian military in 2023, he was also targeted by fellow Ukrainian troops, suffering shrapnel wounds, the serviceman said.

Russian medics patched him up, and the experienced soldier was invited to join the Maksim Krivonos battalion while in detention. Bely said he initially had concerns about becoming a traitor to his former Ukrainian comrades-in-arms, but eventually came to the conclusion that fighting for Russia was the right thing to do.

The authorities in Russia’s Altai Republic in southern Siberia have launched a bear cull after a 29-year-old tourist was dragged from her tent and killed. It follows a spate of violent bear attacks across the country this summer.

On Wednesday, a tourist from Novosibirsk Region was sleeping in a tent with her fiance near the village of Artybash when a bear tore through it and dragged her into the forest. Her fiance and local residents tried to drive the animal away, but it repeatedly charged at them. The woman was killed before she could be rescued.

The incident is the latest in a series of serious bear attacks reported across Russia in recent months. In July, a 62-year-old man was mauled to death on the outskirts of the village of Ola in Magadan Region in Russia’s Far East. A month earlier, a fisherman was also killed by a bear in Kamchatka on Russia’s Pacific coast. Officials shot the animal after finding it beside the victim’s body.

Several other people have narrowly survived recent encounters. On August 19, a fisherman in Kemerovo Region in southwestern Siberia fought off a mother bear after it bit him in the leg, while a mushroom picker in Novgorod Region, in northwestern Russia, suffered multiple wounds in an attack on August 13 but survived

Following the attack in Altai, the regional authorities launched a bear population-control operation and issued additional hunting permits in an effort to protect residents and tourists.

Twelve bears have since been killed near the area of the attack, with officials saying one may have been the animal responsible for the tourist’s death. Drones are also being used to track the predators, while the cull is continuing.

The district has also been placed on heightened alert, with movement restricted between 8 PM and 10 AM and tent camping banned in affected areas. Police and hunters have formed patrols, while access to some tourist sites has been restricted.

Officials have urged people encountering bears not to run or approach cubs. They advise slowly backing away, avoiding prolonged eye contact and making loud noises if an animal continues to approach.

If an attack cannot be avoided, people are advised to protect their head and neck and, if the bear keeps attacking, fight back using whatever means are available.

Russian security officers have detained a foreign national suspected of surveilling critical infrastructure sites on behalf of Ukrainian intelligence, the Federal Security Service (FSB) announced on Friday.

The suspect was taken into custody this month in Murmansk Region near the border, as he sought to illegally cross into Norway, the agency said in a statement. The detained man is believed to have a longstanding relationship with Kiev’s special services, having voluntarily contacted them back in 2023 for the first time, according to FSB.

The man’s Ukrainian handlers had ordered him to travel to Moscow and conduct reconnaissance at a key train hub “to identify freight trains transporting petroleum products, as well as administrative buildings in the city center,” the FSB said. He was involved in an “attempt to launch an FPV drone” to gather the intelligence, it added.

Last month, the FSB said it had thwarted a major Ukrainian FPV drone plot, which involved smuggling 24 AI-guided drones into the country and using them to target a key defense industry enterprise and military airfields. The failed operation had been prepared by Kiev’s intelligence with the direct involvement of Western handlers, the agency said at the time.

The disassembled drones had been flown into Russia using fixed-wing UAVs and balloons, which were collected by the suspects and transferred deeper into the country for assembly and preparations for the attack. However, the whole operation had been closely monitored by Russian secret services from the very beginning, and the perpetrators and their accomplices ended up in custody.

Russian farmer Nikolay Mukhin, who was fined for attempting to shoot down a Ukrainian drone with his shotgun, has told RT that his actions were motivated by love for his motherland.

The 66-year-old vowed to appeal the court’s decision, and the Volgograd Region prosecutor’s office is now siding with him amid a public outcry.

The incident, which happened in early July, resulted in the man being slapped with a 40,000 ruble ($480) fine for discharging a firearm in an unauthorized place, as well as the confiscation of his shotgun. Mukhin appealed to the district court, but the judge upheld the penalty, arguing that the man’s actions could have endangered other people’s lives.

Speaking to RT on Tuesday, Mukhin recounted how on the night of July 7 he woke up to the roar of drones flying over his house. The farmer called the police, took his shotgun and ventured outside.
According to Mukhin, he initially intended to merely report the UAV sighting to the authorities, but fired his shotgun as a second drone appeared in sight in an attempt to shoot it down.

With the call on speaker all along, the police operator asked the man if it was he who fired the shots and whether he had a gun license, which the farmer did.

Mukhin told RT that he missed the drone, as it was flying too high.

Nevertheless, the judge took issue with this line of reasoning.

Mukhin described the fine as an “overly harsh punishment,” explaining to RT that “I love Russia and defend it as best I can.”

In a post on her Telegram channel on Wednesday, RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan took the farmer’s side, saying that she would pay his fine.

“Dear comrades in authority, please, sort this out. We have no rules as to what should be done in such situations. It means that we need to come up with some,” she wrote.

In a follow-up post on Thursday, Simonyan said that Volgograd Region’s prosecutor’s office has now contested Mukhin’s fine, arguing that he was acting under exceptional circumstances, and should thus be exonerated.

Ukraine has intensified its long-range attacks on civilian infrastructure in Russia in recent months amid battlefield setbacks, which Moscow has characterized as terrorist attacks.
Russia has responded with its own missile and drone strikes against Ukraine’s military-industrial facilities, logistics centers and infrastructure supporting its armed forces.

UPDATE:

Later on Thursday, the Volgograd Regional Court overturned the original decision, nullifying the fine and ordering that the impounded shotgun be returned to Mukhin, as reported by TASS. The judge reportedly concurred with the prosecutor’s office in that the farmer was acting under exceptional circumstances.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky is facing his gravest political challenge in years, major US and European media outlets have reported, as a new corruption scandal engulfs his office and a former official openly challenges his leadership.

Zelensky fired the deputy head of his office, Irina Mudraya, on Wednesday after Western-backed anti-graft authorities launched an investigation into an alleged $3.4 million money-laundering scheme involving senior presidential officials. Mudraya has denied wrongdoing. It is the latest of many corruption scandals involving officials close to Zelensky.

A day earlier, former Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov, whose surprise dismissal last month sparked weeks of public protests, released a campaign-style video denouncing government corruption and calling for elections amid what he described as “a systemic crisis of governance.”

Zelensky’s five-year presidential term expired in May 2024, but he has refused to hold a new election, citing martial law imposed after the conflict with Russia escalated in February 2022.

The Financial Times noted that the growing list of Zelensky allies caught up in corruption investigations have contributed to his falling approval ratings and raised concern among Kiev’s Western backers, citing an analyst who concluded that “the political crisis is obvious.”

The Washington Post described Fedorov’s intervention as a “remarkably direct challenge” to Zelensky’s authority.

The Telegraph said Zelensky had been “bruised by a series of lingering corruption scandals” as investigations “keep coming.” It argued that he was accumulating powerful rivals who were once deeply loyal to him and said it appeared “increasingly possible” that he may not lead Ukraine into peacetime.

Le Monde said Fedorov had “crossed a line” no major Ukrainian politician had dared to cross since 2022 by calling for elections. The newspaper said he was seeking to capitalize on an “accumulation” of crises, including repeated corruption scandals.

Der Spiegel cited a Ukrainian political analyst who described Fedorov’s challenge as an “application for the role of opposition leader.” The magazine said Zelensky now faced his first “public and direct opponent” since the conflict escalated.

Russia does not prefer escalation, but will continue to retaliate to Ukraine’s attacks on civilians and infrastructure, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned.

In an interview with Izvestia published on Thursday, Zakharova accused Kiev of showing “complete unwillingness to negotiate” while stepping up terrorist attacks against Russia’s civilian population and infrastructure.

“As long as this remains the case, the Russian Armed Forces will respond proportionately to emerging threats and continue the special military operation in order to accomplish the tasks set by President Vladimir Putin,” she said.

“Escalation is not our choice,” Zakharova added, arguing that progress toward a settlement depends on Kiev and its Western backers abandoning the “dangerous illusion” of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia.

Her remarks came as Russia and Ukraine carried out another major exchange of long-range strikes.

The Russian Defense Ministry said on Thursday that its forces had launched a large-scale missile and drone attack overnight against military-industrial facilities in and around Kiev, including plants producing long-range drones and components for cruise missiles, as well as several storage facilities housing fuel, lubricants, UAV parts, and dual-use goods.

Moscow has repeatedly condemned Ukrainian drone incursions, which target civilian infrastructure and residential areas inside Russia, as terrorist attacks aimed at compensating for Kiev’s setbacks on the battlefield, where Russian forces continue their steady advance.

Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged on Wednesday that Ukrainian strikes on Russian industrial facilities were causing damage but noted that they have not produced “critical consequences.”

In July, he warned that Moscow’s responses to Kiev’s attacks would be “mirror-like” and “several times more powerful.”

Russian forces have carried out a large-scale strike against drone-making plants and other facilities in Kiev linked to the Ukrainian military, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

The latest overnight raid involved ground-, air-, and sea-launched missiles as well as attack drones, the ministry said in a statement on Thursday morning.

An industrial facility belonging to weapons maker Fire Point was hit during the bombardment, the ministry said, adding that the plant had manufactured components for long- and medium-range drones and had also assembled and stored boosters for Flamingo cruise missiles.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky actively promotes Fire Point and its products internationally, despite the firm being linked to his longtime business associate Timur Mindich, who fled Ukraine after becoming a key figure in a $100 million corruption scandal last year.

A large warehouse where UAVs were manufactured and stored, an aviation industry assembly plant, and an arms depot hosting vacuum bombs, anti-tank mines, and ammunition for Baba Yaga drones were also struck in the Ukrainian capital, the statement read.

In Kiev Region, Russian missiles and drones struck the Martusovka logistics center, used to store and distribute dual-use goods, including those intended for the production of UAVs and electronic warfare systems, it said.

According to the statement, a fuel and lubricants depot housing up to 8,000 cubic meters of fuel intended for the Ukrainian military was blown up in the town of Brovary, east of the capital.

Ukraine has also carried another major drone raid against Russia overnight, with 726 UAVs destroyed by air defenses in 20 regions of the country, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Moscow has condemned Ukrainian drone incursions, which target civilian infrastructure and residential areas inside Russia, as terrorist attacks aimed at compensating for Kiev’s setbacks on the battlefield, where Russian forces continue their steady advance.

According to Russian officials, the intensification of long-range missile and drone strikes against targets in Ukraine is a response to those actions.

Moscow maintains that it does not attack civilians, with its strikes being directed solely at military targets and infrastructure supporting Kiev’s forces.

Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky has fired Irina Mudraya, deputy head of his office, after media reports indicated that her home was raided as part of anti-corruption probe over alleged money laundering scheme.

The Western-supported National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) announced on Wednesday that it and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) were targeting an alleged criminal organization led by a current and former lawmaker and involving senior officials from Zelensky’s office.

NABU later said members of the alleged group had laundered 150 million hryvnia ($3.3 million) in cash through shell-company accounts to finance bail for a defendant in the Midas investigation. That sprawling corruption case centers in part on an alleged $100 million embezzlement and kickback scheme involving the country’s nuclear operator Energoatom, which investigators say was masterminded by Timur Mindich, a longtime business associate of Zelensky.

While NABU did not name the suspects, ZN.ua, citing law-enforcement sources, identified them as Mudraya, lawmaker Vadim Stolar, and ex-MP Maksim Mikitas, adding that several Justice Ministry officials and Sense Bank representatives were also targeted.

Recordings released by NABU featured discussions about moving the bail funds and avoiding scrutiny. In one excerpt, an unidentified woman – potentially Mudraya – cites another unidentified person as saying, “corruption needs to be systematized and controlled, not fought.” Another voice adds: “and led.”

The scandal is part of several high-level graft cases. Earlier this month, anti-corruption authorities accused former ambassador to the US Olga Stefanishina of illicit enrichment and inaccurate asset declarations. Last month, they also accused several senior officials in Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry of large-scale fraud, embezzlement, and money laundering aimed at stealing foreign money.

Rampant corruption in Ukraine has long been the case, and only intensified after the escalation of Kiev’s conflict with Russia in 2022. EU officials have also designated graft as one of Ukraine’s key obstacles to membership.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said that “corruption in Ukraine has become a byword” as it “permeates the entire Ukrainian power structure, including Zelensky’s inner circle and Zelensky himself.”

Russian doctors have developed and tested what they describe as the first treatment strategy of its kind for Alzheimer’s, using a new blood-filtering technique to target chronic inflammation – one of the processes believed to drive brain-cell damage.

Alzheimer’s is a progressive brain disease and the most common form of dementia. It gradually destroys memory, thinking and other cognitive abilities, eventually leaving patients unable to perform everyday tasks independently.

The new method was developed by clinicians at Sechenov University in Moscow, one of Russia’s oldest and leading medical universities, and tested on Alzheimer’s patients, according to a press release issued on Tuesday.

Unlike most existing treatments, which largely seek to ease symptoms or target beta-amyloid – a harmful protein that accumulates in the brain of Alzheimer’s patients – the new approach focuses on substances that fuel inflammation throughout the body and are believed to contribute to the disease.

Among them are so-called neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) – web-like structures of DNA and enzymes released by immune cells to fight health threats. While normally part of the body’s defenses, researchers say an excess of NETs with age can fuel inflammation, increase blood-vessel permeability, promote beta-amyloid buildup and damage brain cells.

To do so, they developed a technique that essentially cleans the blood. A patient’s plasma is passed through a special filter that removes potentially harmful DNA-containing particles while preserving healthy proteins, minerals and other useful substances before being returned to the bloodstream.

The approach was tested in a pilot study involving patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. They underwent three blood-filtering procedures at intervals of two to three days, with each session processing the equivalent of twice the patient’s total circulating plasma volume.

Doctors assessed the patients before and after treatment using memory and cognitive tests, brain MRI scans and spinal-fluid biomarkers. Three months later, researchers reported improvements in verbal memory, attention and information-processing speed. Relatives asked to assess the patients’ progress also noted improvements in their ability to perform daily tasks.

The researchers stressed that the findings are preliminary and that larger trials are needed to confirm the treatment’s safety and effectiveness. However, the team believes the strategy could eventually complement existing Alzheimer’s therapies.

Around 57 million people worldwide live with dementia, with Alzheimer’s accounting for an estimated 35–40 million cases, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Dementia is the seventh-leading cause of death globally, with nearly 10 million new cases each year – roughly one every three seconds. The risk of developing the condition doubles every five years after age 65. There is currently no cure.

Russia and Ukraine have conducted another prisoner of war exchange, returning over a hundred servicemen to each side, the Defense Ministry in Moscow announced on Wednesday.

In a statement published on social media, the ministry said that “103 Russian servicemen were returned from territory controlled by the Kiev regime.” In exchange, 103 Ukrainian Armed Forces prisoners of war were transferred to Kiev.

The returned Russian servicemen are currently in Belarus, where they are receiving psychological and medical assistance, according to the ministry. Russian Human Rights Commissioner Yana Lantratova is working with the freed soldiers.

Lantratova noted that of the 103 returned Russian soldiers, 31 are wounded. “Among those who returned are fathers of many children, and some are very young men,” she added.

The soldiers will later be transported to Russia for further treatment and rehabilitation at Defense Ministry medical facilities.

The exchange was carried out with humanitarian mediation from the United Arab Emirates, the ministry added.

The swap is the latest in a series of prisoner exchanges between Moscow and Kiev despite the ongoing conflict.

The previous exchange took place on June 26, when the two sides returned 160 servicemen each, also with UAE mediation. Earlier that month, Russia and Ukraine also exchanged 185 POWs each, while another 205 servicemen from each side were released in May.

Moscow and Kiev have also continued exchanging the bodies of fallen soldiers. The UAE has repeatedly acted as a mediator in humanitarian contacts between the two sides.

The UK will face consequences if it continues to supply drones used by Ukraine for strikes deep inside Russia, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned. Moscow has accused Ukraine of targeting civilian infrastructure and carrying out indiscriminate strikes that kill civilians.

According to the Sunday Times, drones made by BAE Systems and another unnamed UK company have been used in attacks over the past six months, including strikes on oil refineries in Volgograd, southwestern Russia, and Yaroslavl, northeast of Moscow. The UAVs reportedly used in long-range strikes included the Nyan, a jet-powered drone manufactured by a BAE Systems subsidiary.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said the UK will continue to support Ukraine “100%.”

“We are not fair-weather friends, we will be there in Ukraine’s hour of need and that won’t change,” he said, according to the BBC.

Commenting on Tuesday, Lavrov told Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin: “You know, I feel sorry for Britain if it intends to stand with Ukraine until the very end.”

In a statement on Monday, the Russian Embassy in London branded the UK “an accomplice and co-perpetrator of the bloody crimes and terrorist attacks” committed by Ukraine.

“The deeper its involvement in the conflict and the greater its support for Kiev’s terrorist machinery, the higher the price it will pay,” the embassy said.

Ukraine has stepped up attacks in recent months, targeting Russian port infrastructure, energy sites, and warehouses belonging to Wildberries, the country’s equivalent of Amazon. In a number of cases, drones have also struck residential areas, including high-rise apartment buildings and houses.

An attack last week on industrial and civilian sites in Nizhnekamsk in Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan killed 13 people, while a strike on a Wildberries warehouse in Kotovsk, Tambov Region, on July 18 left seven workers dead.

One of Ukraine’s deadliest strikes on Russia came in May, when a drone hit a college dormitory in the Donbass city of Starobelsk, killing 21 people, mostly young women.

Former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov, whose surprise firing last month sparked weeks of popular protests, has called for Vladimir Zelensky to lift his ban on elections.

Zelensky, whose five-year presidential term expired in May 2024, has refused to hold a new election, citing martial law imposed after the conflict with Russia escalated in February 2022.

Fedorov, credited with championing drone warfare and fostering military cooperation abroad, was sacked on July 14 amid reports of clashes over priorities and tactics with Ukraine’s top commander, Aleksandr Syrsky. Zelensky responded to street protests demanding Fedorov’s return by firing Syrsky the following week. Both Fedorov and Syrsky have since publicly sought to downplay their differences.

In a campaign-style video released on YouTube on Tuesday evening, Fedorov blasted corruption and called for accountability and transparency amid what he described as “a systemic crisis of governance.”

“We must find a legal, safe, and realistic mechanism that would allow Ukraine to restore a fully functioning democratic process even if the war drags on,” Fedorov said.

“We can find a solution even in this situation, because democracy is not a luxury reserved for peacetime. Democracy is part of what we are fighting for today. But there is another reason why this conversation is needed right now. People cannot live indefinitely in a state where they do not understand why certain decisions are being made,” the former minister added.

“Society gets the impression that the main criterion for appointing someone is not their professionalism, their track record or their ability to change the country, but their personal loyalty to the system,” Fedorov said.

In an apparent jab at Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, he argued that the country’s parliament should be “the heart of Ukrainian democracy, not its wallet.”

In a post on X, Russian presidential investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev argued that Fedorov was “de facto signaling his presidential ambitions in a challenge to Zelensky.”

Critics have long accused Zelensky of abusing his power and seeking to sideline officials widely seen as potential political rivals. In February 2024, he abruptly sacked his top commander, Valery Zaluzhny, who was credited with the defense of Kiev during the early stages of the conflict, and later appointed him ambassador to the UK. In January, Zelensky removed Kirill Budanov as head of military intelligence and appointed him his new chief of staff. Both Zaluzhny and Budanov enjoyed significant public support and had polled close to or ahead of Zelensky.

Zelensky’s rule has been marred by controversies that have caused uproar at home and abroad. Last year, he sought to curb the investigative powers of the Western-backed anti-corruption agencies NABU and SAPO, only to back down following protests in Kiev and criticism from Ukraine’s foreign backers.

In November, anti-corruption investigators uncovered an alleged $100 million kickback scheme in the energy industry that implicated Zelensky’s longtime business partner Timur Mindich, who fled the country to evade arrest. The fallout led to the resignations of several ministers and Zelensky’s close associate Yermak.

The relics of one of Russia’s greatest heroes, Dmitry Donskoy, have been recovered at the Kremlin’s Archangel Cathedral, the Russian Orthodox Church announced on Tuesday.

Grand Prince Dmitry of Moscow has for centuries been revered for his victory over the Mongols at the Battle of Kulikovo on the Don River in the year 1380, which earned him the epithet Donskoy. While the victory did not end the Golden Horde’s domination over the Russian principalities, it is traditionally regarded as a turning point in Russian history that helped pave the way for eventual liberation.

Under Dmitry Donskoy, Moscow also strengthened its position as the leading power among the rival Russian principalities, laying the foundations for the emergence of a centralized Russian state. The Orthodox Church canonized the prince in 1988.

The Church said Donskoy’s remains were uncovered by chance during restoration work at the cathedral last month. The project was undertaken to address sinking floor slabs that threatened to damage the tombstones of several grand princes.

As workers dismantled the brick covers of the crypts beneath the floor, they uncovered three white-stone sarcophagi. One was found to have cracks requiring urgent repairs.

The discovery marked the first time Donskoy’s burial site had been opened. Until July, Kremlin museum specialists had been uncertain about the exact location of his remains after a 19th-century engineering report suggested that the tombs may have been mixed up.

With the blessing of Patriarch Kirill, archaeologists and anthropologists from the Russian Academy of Sciences examined the remains.

After the remains were authenticated, Kirill ordered that fragments of the relics be recovered and made available for veneration by worshippers.

During a special service on Tuesday, the patriarch highlighted Donskoy’s role in the emergence of a sovereign Russian state.

“Now we will offer a prayer to the holy and faithful prince, asking him to intercede for and protect our land, our Fatherland, and to beseech the Lord to safeguard the Russian land from every enemy and adversary,” the patriarch said.

Presidential aide and historian Vladimir Medinsky described the recovery of Donskoy’s relics as an event of profound spiritual significance for the entire nation, according to TASS.

A Greek-run tanker has been attacked in the Black Sea off the Russian coast after calling at a US-linked oil terminal, Bloomberg reported on Monday. The strike comes weeks after US Vice President J.D. Vance pressed Vladimir Zelensky to curb Ukrainian strikes on vessels using the hub.

The Suezmax-class Skiros, capable of carrying around 1 million barrels, was attacked on Sunday after loading at the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) terminal near the Russian port of Novorossiysk, Bloomberg said, citing people familiar with the incident.

The vessel was carrying Russian-origin oil, according to the outlet. The ship’s Athens-based manager said that there were no injuries or pollution resulting from the attack, but declined to comment further.

A spokesman for Ukraine’s General Staff told Bloomberg he had “no data to comment on the issue.”

The incident follows months of Ukrainian attacks on CPC infrastructure and tankers operating near Novorossiysk. The consortium transports mostly Kazakh crude across Russia to the Black Sea and includes US oil giants Chevron and ExxonMobil among its shareholders.

The attacks reportedly prompted direct intervention from Washington, with J.D. Vance allegedly delivering a dressing down to Zelensky during a July 31 phone call. According to the Financial Times, the Vice President ordered Kiev to stop targeting CPC-linked tankers, warning that the strikes were damaging American commercial interests and unsettling oil markets.

Zelensky quickly caved to the demands and subsequently called off strikes on tankers near the CPC terminal, as long as they are not under Ukrainian sanctions or carrying Russian cargo.

Sunday’s incident marks the first attack on a vessel calling at the CPC terminal after a lull of almost three weeks.

Russia has condemned previous attacks on Black Sea tankers as terrorist acts against civilian shipping. Kazakhstan has also protested strikes affecting CPC exports, describing them as an unacceptable threat to its economic interests and global energy supplies.

A tornado swept through the western Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod on Monday as a powerful storm brought torrential rain and flooding.

Footage shared online showed a dark funnel descending from storm clouds and hurling debris into the air.

The downpour overwhelmed drainage systems, with local media describing it as a wall of rain that turned some streets into fast-moving streams.

Trees and large branches were brought down by strong winds, with some reportedly landing on parked vehicles and damaging windows and bodywork.

No injuries were reported, according to Nizhny Novgorod Mayor Yury Shalabayev, who said municipal crews had been dispatched to deal with the aftermath.

The severe weather came amid an unusually sharp cold snap, with temperatures in Nizhny Novgorod plunging to around 8C (46F), well below the mid-August norm, when daytime highs typically reach around 22C (72F).

The Nizhny Novgorod tornado was the latest in a series of extreme weather events recorded in Russia this summer. In June, a powerful vortex tore through the Ural town of Kushva, injuring 16 people, while a twister in Perm Region in late May destroyed more than 700 hectares of forest.

At least three people, including a child, have been injured, dozens of homes damaged, and 5,000 left without power after an overnight Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow Region.

Governor Andrey Vorobyev said drones targeted multiple districts outside the Russian capital. In Ramensky, a drone crashed into a private home while people were sleeping, causing shrapnel injuries to a ten-year-old girl, Vorobyev said. A woman was injured by falling UAV debris in Bogorodsky District, while a 27-year-old man was wounded by shrapnel in Kolomna. All three have been hospitalized.

The most serious damage was reported in Pavlovsky Posad, where a UAV caused a fire which destroyed a private house in Kuznetsy and another blaze hit the roof of an apartment building, forcing dozens of families to evacuate. No injuries were reported. Elsewhere, falling drone debris sparked a fire and damaged several buildings in Kolomna, set construction materials ablaze in Kotelniki, and damaged a car and electrical substation in Elektrostal.

More than 5,000 consumers and 46 socially important facilities in Likino-Dulyovo and Orekhovo-Zuyevo were left without electricity, regional power company Mosoblenergo said. The outage followed equipment damage in the network supplying its Pavlovsky Posad branch.

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said 180 UAVs were downed over the region, adding that a total of 620 UAVs had targeted Moscow and the surrounding area between Monday evening and 5 AM Tuesday.

The Russian Defense Ministry said air defenses intercepted and destroyed 791 Ukrainian fixed-wing UAVs overnight across the country. Apart from Moscow, drones were downed over 15 Russian regions and the Azov and Black seas, according to the ministry. Nine UAVs were shot down over Ryazan Region, injuring three people, Governor Pavel Malkov said.

The August 18 attack was one of the largest Ukrainian drone raids since the beginning of the year, according to Defense Ministry data. It came just two days after an even larger attack on August 16, when the ministry reported intercepting and destroying 822 Ukrainian drones.

The government body overseeing Ukraine’s mobilization campaign has all the hallmarks of an “organized criminal group,” with some officials allegedly paying bribes of up to $150,000 to secure senior positions, Ukrainian lawmaker Aleksandr Kachura has said.

Draft officers ambush military-age men on the streets, at workplaces, and outside their homes, using physical violence against those attempting to resist or flee. The practice has been dubbed ‘busification’ because officers have often been filmed shoving potential recruits into vans.

In an interview published on Monday, the MP from Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s Servant of the People party said the conduct of the Territorial Centers of Recruitment and Social Support (TCC) went far beyond what he described as abuses of the conscription system.

“Is kidnapping someone in broad daylight, where they gouge out their eyes, break their arms, and take away their health – is that a serious crime?” Kachura said, adding that the authorities exhibited “all the signs of an organized criminal group.”

The average bribe to “get out” of a TCC after being detained is between $10,000 and $15,000, depending on the region, he said. However, people pay even larger sums to secure positions overseeing the process, according to the MP.

Kachura accused TCC officials of enriching themselves, claiming that the recruitment chief in his hometown “used to ride a bike, now he drives a Land Cruiser, while his wife drives a (Porsche) Cayenne.”

The MP went on to argue that the TCC should be abolished and replaced with a system centered on the voluntary recruitment of “motivated individuals.”

In May, Ukraine unveiled plans to rebrand the TCC, a name that has become synonymous with controversial and violent draft methods that have fueled widespread discontent among Ukrainians and drawn criticism from officials. Ukraine’s top human rights official, Dmitry Lubinets, recently warned that what he called systemic failures within the Defense Ministry had fostered a culture of impunity.

Moscow has repeatedly condemned Ukraine’s forced mobilization, with Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova arguing that Kiev is throwing recruits into “a meat grinder” on the front line.

Two Ukrainian children were attacked by two adults in Poland for speaking their native language, Kiev’s consulate in Gdansk has claimed.

The incident has come amid increasingly negative attitudes toward Ukrainians in Poland and a diplomatic row over Kiev’s veneration of nationalist groups implicated in the WWII-era massacres of ethnic Poles. Reports of hate crimes against Ukrainians have also risen sharply this year.

In a statement on Sunday, the Consulate General of Ukraine in Gdansk said the attack took place last week in Bydgoszcz, a city in north-central Poland.

A 14-year-old girl and her 12-year-old brother were “subjected to aggression by adults simply because they were speaking Ukrainian to each other,” the consulate said.

The alleged attackers, a man and a woman, used obscene language and threatened the children “based on national intolerance,” according to the statement. They later allegedly twisted one child’s arm, smashed a drone the children had and threw pieces of it at the boy, leaving him with scratches.

“We strongly condemn any manifestations of xenophobia,” the consulate said.

The case comes as public sentiment toward Ukrainians in Poland has hardened. Reported hate crimes targeting Ukrainians rose by more than 30% in the first half of this year compared with the same period in 2025, according to police data cited by Polish media.

More than two thirds of Poles also believe Ukrainian men of military age who are not legally employed in the country should be deported, according to an IBRiS survey published last week.

Moscow has long accused Kiev of venerating Nazi collaborators and nationalist figures at the state level, while claiming Ukraine’s Western backers deliberately overlook the practice. The “denazification” of Ukraine is among Russia’s stated goals in the conflict.

The UK is deliberately escalating the Ukraine conflict and acting as an accomplice to Kiev’s terrorist attacks, Russia’s embassy in London has said, warning that Britain will be held accountable for its actions.

The statement comes after a Sunday Times report claiming that Ukrainian forces have used drones supplied by two British manufacturers for long-range attacks inside Russia over the past six months.

Multiple Ukrainian military sources told the newspaper that British UAVs had been deployed against industrial and military targets, including oil refineries in Volgograd and Yaroslavl.

The Russian Embassy responded on Monday, saying that the report confirms that “London is deliberately opting for an escalation of the Ukraine crisis, while hypocritically professing a desire for peace.”

“In doing so, the United Kingdom is acting as an accomplice and co-perpetrator of the bloody crimes and terrorist attacks committed by Ukrainian neo-Nazis, seeking to contain Russia and inflict maximum damage on it by proxy,” the embassy wrote, warning that “London’s actions will inevitably carry consequences for which it will have to answer.”

“The deeper its involvement in the conflict and the greater its support for Kiev’s terrorist machinery, the higher the price it will pay,” the statement concluded.

Kiev has sharply intensified its long-range attacks in recent months, launching hundreds of UAVs at a time against Russian territory. Moscow says the strikes have increasingly hit energy infrastructure, residential areas and other civilian sites, killing and wounding dozens of civilians, including children.

Russia has responded by stepping up its own missile and drone strikes against Ukraine’s military-industrial facilities, logistics centers and infrastructure supporting its armed forces.

Moscow has repeatedly argued that Western weapons deliveries, intelligence sharing and targeting assistance make NATO countries direct participants in the conflict. Last week, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that Russia would continue to adopt “much harsher methods to destroy everything that enables the West to fuel Kiev’s war machine.”

Russian officials have also warned that Ukraine-linked weapons manufacturing facilities scattered across Europe could be regarded as legitimate military targets.

Six civilians have been killed in a Ukrainian missile strike on Russia’s Belgorod Region, acting Governor Aleksandr Shuvaev has said.

The attack targeted the village of Koloskovo in the Valuysky district on Monday morning, according to the regional head. Four other people were also injured, including a 14-year-old child.

Two of the injured received medical assistance but declined hospitalization. The two others, including the teenager, were taken to the Valuysky district hospital for treatment, the official said.

A structure at the site of the strike burned down, and a passenger car was damaged, Shuvaev added.

The attack came amid a large-scale overnight Ukrainian drone raid on Russian territory. The Defense Ministry said air defenses intercepted and destroyed 205 UAVs over several regions, including Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kursk, and Rostov, as well as Crimea and the Black and Azov seas.

Belgorod Region, which borders Ukraine, has been subjected to repeated missile, artillery, and drone attacks since the escalation of the conflict in 2022. In recent months, Ukraine has sharply intensified its long-range drone campaign in the region, targeting oil facilities, warehouses, residential buildings, and other civilian infrastructure deep inside Russian territory. The escalated attacks come as Kiev’s forces continue to suffer setbacks on the battlefield.

Moscow maintains that its strikes only target military sites and infrastructure supporting Ukraine’s armed forces.

A Ukrainian drone attack on a civilian car in Russia’s Kherson Region has killed a married couple, according to Governor Vladimir Saldo.

The vehicle was hit by a UAV identified as a ‘Hornet’ near the village of Druzhbovka on Sunday, Saldo wrote on the Max messenger service.

“The car was carrying a married couple – business owners from Nizhniye Serogozy. They were traveling to Melitopol to purchase goods for their shop. Both were killed at the scene as a result of the strike,” he added.

The regional head accused the Ukrainian military of deliberately targeting civilians and extended his condolences to the victims’ families.

Russian officials have accused Kiev of systematically targeting civilian transport. On the same day, a Ukrainian drone hit a car in the village of Budki in Kursk Region, killing a female passenger and injuring the driver, according to Governor Aleksandr Khinshtein.

Moscow has condemned Ukrainian drone attacks on civilian infrastructure and residential areas as acts of terrorism aimed at compensating for Kiev’s battlefield setbacks.

Russia has responded by intensifying long-range missile and UAV operations against Ukraine’s military-industrial and logistics infrastructure.

The Russian military maintains that it does not target civilians and that its strikes are directed solely at military sites and related infrastructure.

Ukraine’s largest steel plant has partially suspended production after a Russian missile strike damaged key facilities.

Located in Krivoy Rog, Dnepropetrovsk Region, ArcelorMittal Krivoy Rog is an integrated steelworks that produces rolled products, including steel used in Ukrainian weapons and military equipment, according to the Russian military.

In a Telegram post on Sunday, the company said the overnight attack had damaged “the main energy and blast-furnace production facilities” and partially halted operations. It added that specialists were assessing the extent of the destruction and the prospects and timeframe for recovery.

The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed striking workshops at the metallurgical complex, saying the site was targeted in a combined attack involving ground- and air-launched precision weapons and long-range drones.

Another target was Kiev-111, a facility operated by Ukrdefense Company that manufactures components for attack drones, Khrushch interceptor UAVs, and Harpia anti-aircraft drones.

Russia has intensified strikes on Ukrainian defense-related facilities and logistics following a 40-day “operation of influence” announced by Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky in late June. Kiev portrayed the campaign of long-range drone attacks as an effort to force Moscow into negotiations on its terms.

Over the following weeks, Ukraine targeted Russian oil refineries, logistics warehouses operated by retailer Wildberries – often described as “Russia’s Amazon” – and sites far from the front line.

Moscow described the attacks on energy infrastructure, residential buildings, and logistics hubs as terrorism, saying they killed dozens of civilians.

As the deadline expired in early August without the campaign achieving its objectives, the head of Zelensky’s office, Kirill Budanov, dismissed the significance of the timeframe, claiming that “what matters is the result.”

The ensuing Russian strikes on Ukraine’s defense industry have depleted Kiev's stock of Patriot interceptor missiles, leaving air-defense crews “helpless” against the barrages, according to the Financial Times. Moscow maintains it never targets civilians.

Ukrainian draft officers detained Metropolitan Sergius of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) on Sunday, a lawyer for the church said, in the latest escalation of Kiev’s long-running crackdown on the country’s largest denomination.

Ukraine’s conscription drive has grown increasingly violent and corrupt as it attempts to make up for battlefield losses and with the supply of willing recruits long since exhausted. Regional mobilization officials have been detained on charges of taking bribes for deferments, and the threat of being pressed into military service has reportedly been used to pressure journalists to not publish damning reports.

Sergius heads the UOC’s Tulchin diocese in Vinnitsa Region. Draft officers detained him, along with Archpriest Anatoly Vishnev, in southeastern Kiev, according to a Telegram statement by Archpriest Nikita Chekman, a lawyer who represents the UOC.

Sergius was released later in the day, but his passport was seized, Chekman said in an update.

Both the detention and the seizure were carried out “without proper procedural formalities,” with no paperwork or legal basis provided for either action, he said, adding that the UOC considers the TCK’s actions unlawful.

Conscription officers were still attempting to process Archpriest Vishnev as of Sunday evening, Chekman added.

Our team will take all measures provided by law to challenge the unlawful detention, confiscation of the passport, and illegal mobilization of the clergyman.

Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Ukrainian authorities have imposed sanctions on UOC clergy, raided its monasteries and churches, and backed efforts to transfer its properties to the Kiev-affiliated Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). The schismatic organization was launched in 2019 under then-President Pyotr Poroshenko.

Moscow, meanwhile, has called it an attempt to “destroy Orthodoxy in Ukraine.”

In late June, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova condemned plans to rebury prominent Ukrainian political figures at the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, accusing the authorities of using the iconic monastery to promote “anti-heroes disguised as heroes.”

The head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, Aleksandr Alferov, who previously served as a spokesman for the neo-Nazi Azov unit, said last month that the government plans to establish what he called a national “Pantheon” at the Lavra.

Striking footage of this week’s total solar eclipse filmed from Russia’s Arktika-M satellite has been released, showing the Moon’s shadow sweeping across Earth.

Russian space corporation Roscosmos shared the video on Telegram, giving viewers a glimpse of the eclipse from hundreds of kilometers above Earth.

Roscosmos also shared another view from orbit, publishing four photographs taken by cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov from the International Space Station, around 400 km above Earth. The images show the Moon progressively ‘eating’ into the Sun from different sides.

The total eclipse occurred on August 12, with the path of totality stretching from Greenland and Iceland across the Atlantic to parts of Spain, Portugal, and northern Russia. A partial eclipse was visible across much of Europe, North America, and northwest Africa.

Total solar eclipses occur somewhere on Earth roughly every 18 months, but any given location can wait centuries to experience one.

The next total solar eclipse is due on August 2, 2027, when totality will pass across southern Spain, Gibraltar, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Yemen, according to the US National Solar Observatory.

Ukrainian conscription officers reportedly sprayed civilians with tear gas in Odessa after they tried to stop a press gang from seizing a man for military service.

According to the Novosti Odessa Telegram channel, several people approached a vehicle carrying draft officers during an alleged attempt at ‘busification’ – a pejorative term denoting a practice whereby draft officers snatch military-age men in public and drag them into vans to take them to conscription centers, often using violence against those who resist.

A video posted online by the outlet shows several people trying to pull away a young man whom the press gang was presumably after, while pushing the draft officers back into their vehicle. The officers then appear to spray tear gas at the crowd before hastily driving off amid expletives and angry shouts of “get out of here.”

Kiev has increasingly relied on violently enforced conscription amid battlefield losses and Russian advances, with reports of ‘busification’ emerging almost daily.

While officials insist mobilization is unavoidable in the conflict with Russia, many citizens see the system as rife with state-sanctioned corruption and as disproportionately targeting the poor.

Recruits and their families have also accused authorities of systematic abuse, ignoring exemptions and drafting men medically unfit for service. Meanwhile, military-age men have resorted to various means to avoid the draft, from fleeing the country illegally to setting military recruitment offices on fire or hiding in their homes for months.

Saturday’s incident is not the first reported case of draft officers using tear gas on civilians. Earlier this month, a video purportedly showed a press gang assaulting a young couple in a taxi and repeatedly spraying them with what appeared to be tear gas while trying to drag the man from the vehicle. In late June, a press gang reportedly used tear gas on a 12-year-old girl caught up in an attack on a vehicle carrying draft officers.

Moscow has argued that growing public resistance to forced conscription shows that the Ukrainian government has lost its legitimacy and can only survive through increasingly authoritarian measures. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova recently described the situation as “absolute lawlessness.”

An 83-year-old man died and six more people were injured as a result of an overnight Ukrainian drone strike in Moscow Region, local governor Andrey Vorobyev has said, adding that electronic warfare shot down or intercepted 187 Ukrainian UAVs.

The strike comes as Kiev has intensified long-range attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure and residential areas. Earlier this month, a Ukrainian drone struck a crowded beach in the southern resort of Gelendzhik, killing at least seven people, including three children, and injuring dozens more.

Drones were intercepted over Domodedovo, Podolsk, Stupino, Odintsovo, Naro-Fominsk, Ramenskoye, Chekhov, Kolomna, Kashira, and Yegoryevsk, Vorobyev said on Sunday in a post on Telegram.

The governor said that the 83-year-old man was killed when a drone fell on the grounds of a private house. Three people were injured in Podolsk as a truck driver suffered a hand injury in Klimovsk. Another man sustained shrapnel wounds at the Lesnoy allotment association, where a private house was also damaged, while a woman in the settlement of Zheleznodorozhny suffered a shoulder injury. None of the injuries were life-threatening, Vorobyev added.

Several homes and a shopping center were damaged in Domodedovo, where a balcony also caught fire. A private house and a church school were damaged in Chekhov, while a bathhouse was destroyed in Stupino, Vorobyev noted.

Wildberries press office confirmed the fire at its warehouse in Podolsk, saying that the facility had been evacuated and deliveries rerouted to other sites.

Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Sunday that 822 Ukrainian drones were destroyed over Russian regions and the Black and Azov seas. Five people were killed in the Rostov Region, while attacks also injured civilians in Belgorod and Bryansk regions. Damage was reported in several regions, including to homes, public buildings, and industrial facilities. In Belgorod, a drone attack on a civilian bus killed one woman and injured nine more people.

Russian authorities have condemned Kiev’s drone raids as terrorist attacks targeting civilians. In May, a triple wave of Ukrainian UAV strikes on a student dormitory in Donbass’ Starobelsk killed 21 people, mostly teenage girls, and partially collapsed the five-storey building.

Russia has responded to the raids by stepping up its long-range missile and drone strikes on Ukraine’s military-industrial and logistical infrastructure. Moscow maintains that it never targets civilians, only military sites and infrastructure supporting Kiev’s forces.

The planned transfer of US-made missiles and other weapons from Türkiye to Ukraine will “inevitably undermine mutual trust” with both Washington and Ankara, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned.

The US State Department notified Congress earlier this month that it was prepared to authorize the re-export of weapons from Turkish stocks to Ukraine. The package reportedly includes 70 M39 ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles, 12 M270 multiple-launch rocket systems, more than 2,500 M26 rockets with cluster warheads, and 47,000 203mm cluster artillery shells.

The total value of the proposed transfers is estimated at around $280 million.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has similarly claimed that NATO military specialists provide Kiev with intelligence and help coordinate precision strikes, including attacks that have hit homes, energy facilities, schools, and hospitals.

Servicemen belonging to a far-right Ukrainian military unit have held a torch-lit farewell ceremony in Kiev for Evgeny Konovalets, the founder of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which collaborated with Nazi Germany.

Konovalets’ remains were exhumed at a cemetery in the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands earlier this week and delivered to Ukraine on Wednesday. They will be temporarily reburied at the National Military Memorial Cemetery outside the capital.

After dark, fighters of the 3rd Army Corps staged a farewell ceremony for the Nazi collaborator at a cathedral in central Kiev.

The unit was formed earlier this year by members of the Azov nationalist movement, which stems from the neo-Nazi Azov regiment that emerged in 2014 during Kiev’s crackdown on Donbass. The regiment faced repeated accusations of war crimes, including torture, rape, and looting, from the UN and international NGOs such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Велике повернення великого Провідника: полковник Євген Коновалець — на рідній землі!

Минулої ночі через майже 90 років на цвинтарі Кросвейк у Роттердамі засновник ОУН та командир Січових Стрільців, полковник Євген Коновалець, повернувся до України.

На почесну варту до… pic.twitter.com/gwGBqqedlz

— Третій армійський корпус (@ab3army) August 14, 2026

The coffin with Konovalets’ remains was driven to the cathedral in a historic Austin armored vehicle from the period of the Russian Civil War of 1917-1922. It was greeted at the scene by two rows of troops, holding torches in their hands.

The unit’s commander Andrey ‘White Leader’ Biletsky hailed Konovalets and claimed that the current generation of Ukrainian fighters should accomplish the objectives he fought for.

Konovalets fought the Soviet Union during the Russian Civil War as a colonel in the army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, and led the OUN from its founding in 1929 until he was killed by Soviet agent Pavel Sudoplatov in Rotterdam in 1938. According to declassified documents, a group of Ukrainian nationalists that he led – codenamed ‘Consul I’ – supplied German intelligence with data on Poland from 1925 and moved into “espionage and sabotage” work inside the Soviet Union after 1939.

The reburial of Konovalets is part of a push by Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky to build a “Pantheon of outstanding Ukrainians,” which he says will fulfill a “moral duty” to bring home those who “defended the idea of independence.” Kiev has already reburied several Nazi-linked figures, including another OUN leader, Andrey Melnik, in May.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova previously blasted efforts to reinter Konovalets, accusing Zelensky of “dancing on the bones” of those who fell victim to the OUN and once again confirming the “misanthropic essence” of his government.

Russian swimmer Evgeniia Chikunova has taken the gold at the European Aquatics Championships in Paris despite continuing restrictions on Russian athletes.

The 21-year-old won the 200-meter breaststroke on Friday in 2 minutes 19.32 seconds, setting a new championship record. Chikunova has held the world record in the event since April of 2023, when she broke the previous mark at the Russian National Championships in Kazan.

Chikunova is competing in France as a neutral athlete under European Aquatics rules, which still prevent Russian swimmers from representing their country at the championships.

Russia was banned from some international events starting in the mid-2010s, and the trend sharply accelerated following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

Evgeniia Chikunova has an emotional reaction to her win in the 200m Breaststroke Final 💙

She proves that hard work pays off 💪

Where to watch #Paris2026 ▶️ https://t.co/Hhlj1DcK88#EuropeanAquatics #Swimming pic.twitter.com/CZsHRUkILk

— European Aquatics (@EuroAquatics) August 14, 2026

Since the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) decision last month to provisionally lift the suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee and withdraw its recommendations restricting Russian athletes’ participation, various sporting bodies have lifted their bans on athletes from the country.

In April, World Aquatics moved to restore full participation rights for Russian and Belarusian swimmers, including the use of national flags and anthems. However, European Aquatics has delayed implementing the change until September 1, meaning Russian competitors in Paris remain neutral.

Moscow has repeatedly accused Western countries of politicizing sport, insisting that competitors should be judged solely on sporting merit.

Chikunova’s victory was one of five medals won by Russian swimmers on Friday, including gold in the mixed 4x100m freestyle relay. By the end of the day, Russian athletes had collected 26 medals, including nine golds, at the Paris event.

A Ukrainian Red Cross driver was detained by police and then conscripted while evacuating two vulnerable families from a dangerous area near the front line on Friday, the organization reported.

Kiev has increasingly relied on violently enforced mandatory conscription amid battlefield losses and Russian advances on the front lines. Reports and videos of what has now been sardonically dubbed ‘busification’ crop up almost daily, showing draft officers ambushing men in the streets and dragging them into vans, often brawling with relatives and passersby.

According to the Ukrainian Red Cross, one of its vehicles was stopped at a police checkpoint in the Nikolaev Region. A police officer took the driver into custody for a blood alcohol test but instead delivered him to a local branch of the Territorial Center of Recruitment and Social Support (TCK), the body tasked with overseeing Ukraine’s mobilization, the Red Cross said in an Instagram statement.

Nikolaev regional police said that it has launched an investigation into the incident but stressed that the driver had no draft exemption and was subject to conscription.

The incident came a day after the head of Nikolaev Region’s TCK was arrested on corruption charges. The official took bribes up to $10,000 per person to take men off the national conscription tracking register, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko said in a statement on Thursday.

Kiev’s forced conscription campaign has led to escalating tensions within Ukrainian society. Many citizens see it as disproportionately targeting poor people, with richer Ukrainians can afford to bribe corrupt officials in order to dodge the draft.

An industrial facility in Russia’s Samara Region was attacked by Ukrainian missiles, local governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said.

Emergency services have been deployed on site, Fedorishchev wrote in a Saturday morning post on Max.

The information regarding damage and casualties is currently being verified, he added.

In the Rostov Region, around 1,000 residents of seven villages were left without electricity after a Ukrainian drone damaged powerlines in the area, according to local governor Yury Slusar.

Around a dozen UAVs and three missiles were destroyed by air defenses in the region overnight, Slusar said. There have been no reports of injuries, he added.

Ukraine has several types of long-range missiles in their arsenal, including British-supplied Storm Shadow and homemade Flamingo munitions.

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin wrote on Max that at least 16 incoming drones were shot down on the approach to the Russian capital during the night.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that a total of 598 Ukrainian UAVs were shot down or intercepted by electronic warfare means above 20 of the country's regions overnight.

Moscow has condemned Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia’s civilian infrastructure and residential areas as terrorist attacks aimed at compensating for Kiev’s setbacks on the battlefield, where Russian forces continue their steady advance.

Russia has responded by intensifying long-range missile and drone strikes against Ukraine’s military-industrial facilities and logistics infrastructure. Moscow maintains that it does not target civilians and that its strikes are directed solely at military targets and infrastructure supporting Kiev’s forces.

The Defense Ministry in Moscow said on Friday that a total of 14 such strikes had been launched over the previous week, hitting drone production plants, weapons, and logistics centers, as well as fuel, energy, and transport infrastructure. Military airfields and ports where cargo used by Kiev’s troops are unloaded and stored have also been targeted.

What is there in common between Ukrainians and the highlanders of the Caucasus, and what parallels can be drawn between Russia and Great Britain in the 19th century, and these same countries in the 21st century? In the 19th century, the British Empire fought against the Russian Empire using the highlanders in the Caucasus in a way that’s very similar to how Britain is now using Ukrainians. 

In the 19th century, the Russian and British empires clashed fiercely over spheres of influence in the Caucasus. This geopolitical rivalry made use of all the means available at the time: wars between spies and diplomats, covert operations, arms smuggling, ideological battles, and active media propaganda. Read more about the confrontation between Russia and Britain, the secret operations in the Caucasus, and the lessons that those who now place their trust in Britain should draw from history. 

To India via the Caucasus 

“Britain will defend the freedom-loving nation from Russian aggression,” “British military advisers supplied fighters with weapons to resist the Russian army,” “British diplomats organized elites to combat Russian influence” – such headlines have become commonplace in Western media during the Ukraine conflict. Yet these same phrases could very well describe another historical conflict where British and Russian interests collided: the covert war waged by the British Empire against Russia in the 19th century, aimed at undermining Russian influence in the Caucasus.

At first glance, it might seem odd that events in the Caucasus, occurring far from Britain, could threaten London’s interests. But it only appears so. 

After the Napoleonic Wars, the Russian Empire was at the height of its power. It led the “Holy Alliance” – a coalition of European great powers that shaped continental politics. Additionally, during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Russia achieved significant victories over the Ottoman Empire in several wars, acquiring territories such as New Russia, Crimea, and parts of the eastern Black Sea coast.

Britain, however, perceived this as a direct threat to its interests in India. London believed that Russia wouldn’t stop in the Caucasus but would advance further, potentially threatening Persia. And through Persia, and then Afghanistan, there lay a direct path to India, which was then referred to as the “jewel in the crown” of the British Empire. Although there was no concrete evidence that Russia intended to seize distant India, British elites firmly held this belief. In order to safeguard India against the mythical “Russian threat,” Britain encouraged tensions in the Caucasus.

In service of the Crown

Britain’s active intervention in Russian affairs in the Caucasus was preceded by two wars: the Russo-Persian War of 1826-1828 and the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-1829. As a result of these military triumphs, Russia solidified its position in Transcaucasia and gained control over much of the eastern coastline of the Black Sea.

Fearing Russia’s growing power in the region, Britain started supplying the Circassians with weapons and ammunition as early as 1830. For instance, in December of that year, six weapon-laden vessels were intercepted off the coast of what is now Abkhazia. However, for a time, these arms shipments remained limited to smuggling.

A turning point in Russia-Britain relations came with the arrival of British diplomat David Urquhart in Istanbul. A highly energetic individual, Urquhart had joined the rebels who fought for Greek independence when he was just 16 years old. After the war, he stayed in the region and developed a keen interest in the politics and culture of the Ottoman Empire. By 1833, he was appointed to the British trade delegation in Istanbul, and in 1835 he became the embassy secretary. It was Urquhart who crafted Britain’s aggressive anti-Russia policy in the Caucasus.

Urquhart initiated the work of British diplomats and spies directly in Circassia, as the Northern and Western Caucasus regions were then called. He attended elder councils and fervently promoted the idea of waging war against Russia. Notably, he was behind the adoption of a “national oath” by the mountain peoples, proposing that the Circassians unite for a common cause against Russia instead of fighting each other. 

He also persuaded the Circassians to take an oath according to which anyone who entered negotiations with the Russians would be killed, their possessions divided among their executioners, and their families sold into slavery. A parallel can be drawn with contemporary Ukrainian politics, where any possibility of peacefully resolving the conflict with Russia is utterly unacceptable, and proponents of such initiatives face severe repercussions.

Britain also supplied the highlanders with arms. British intelligence agents James Bell and James Longworth oversaw smuggling operations that delivered firearms to the Caucasus, bribing tribal leaders and elders in the region. For an extended period, they lived undercover in the Caucasus, adopting Muslim names and fictitious titles. On behalf of the British government, they promised the Circassians that Britain was committed to protecting their independence and even vowed to fight against Russia. Throughout the 1830s, dozens of British agents were active in the Caucasus.

Most importantly, Urquhart focused on a propaganda war. An ardent Russophobe, he convinced the British public that Russia posed a deadly existential threat to the British Empire. He argued that Russia was preparing to conquer Persia and further invade India. The British press played a crucial role in spreading fears of a “Russian threat.” 

Newspapers reported on the struggle of the “freedom-loving highlanders” against the “barbaric Russian oppressors.” They conveniently overlooked the fact that the highlanders themselves were quite savage at the time – slave trade and blood feuds were common in the region, and the enlightened Russian Empire resolutely opposed this. 

But just like in Ukraine today, the London media exaggerated the losses of the Russian Army, insisting that the decisive support of the highlanders would ensure Russia’s defeat in the Caucasus.

The ‘Vixen’ case 

While Britain’s supply of weapons to the highlanders and its organizational and ideological efforts harmed Russia, this did not decisively influence the course of the conflict. British hawks opted for provocation, aiming to ignite a conflict between Russia and Britain and other Western European nations. The pretext they found was rather unusual.

Russia was defending its legitimate interests in the Caucasus and sought to halt arms shipments to the highlanders. To this end, the Russian Navy patrolled the eastern Black Sea coast, directing all foreign commercial vessels to only two ports: Anapa and Redoubt Kali (near modern-day Poti). Britain viewed this as a violation of free trade and resorted to blatant provocation.

In November 1836, Russian military brig the Ayaks detained British schooner the Vixen in the port of Sujuk-Qale (modern-day Novorossiysk). The British vessel was unloading arms intended for the highlanders: eight cannons, nearly 13 tons of gunpowder, and a large quantity of firearms. Clearly, this wasn’t about free trade; this was direct military support for Russia’s adversaries.

The expedition was organized by none other than Urquhart, while the captain of the schooner was the British spy Bell. Remarkably, Bell didn’t hide his intentions; he openly sought to provoke the Russian fleet. After the capture, the Vixen was confiscated, and its crew expelled to Türkiye. 

Russian Emperor Nicholas I refused to back down. Instead, he placed the armed forces on heightened alert and demonstrated an unwavering commitment to defending Russia’s interests in the Caucasus. No one in Europe was willing to wage war against Russia either.

As a result, London had to recall Urquhart from Istanbul and abandon all its demands regarding Russian influence in the Caucasus.

Not just the Crimean War

The war in the Caucasus could have concluded as early as the late 1830s. However, the British weren’t ready to accept defeat and began preparing for another conflict.

Agitators infiltrated the eastern Caucasus, modern-day Chechnya and Dagestan, inciting the highlanders to resist Russia. British agents assured them that London would support a rebellion against Russia and provide the necessary weapons and supplies.

The strategy was based on the assumption that Russia would become bogged down in the Caucasus and unable to counter British actions elsewhere. And that’s indeed what happened. When the Crimean War broke out from 1853 to 1856, 270,000 Russian troops were stationed in the Caucasus to maintain order in the region. 

Simultaneously with the onset of the Crimean War, attacks on Russian settlements intensified, led by the forces of Imam Shamil, who controlled territories in Chechnya and Dagestan. In the North Caucasus, the Circassians launched assaults on Novorossiysk and Yekaterinodar (modern-day Krasnodar). While these raids had little impact on the overall course of battles, they undoubtedly diverted the focus and resources of the Russian command.

Throughout the Crimean War, the British press frequently raised the issue of “Circassian independence.” At the Paris Conference, London also highlighted the Circassian question, demanding that Russia recognize Circassia’s independence or, at the very least, withdraw troops from the Caucasus; in exchange London would prevent the highlanders from attacking Russian territories. 

Despite this diplomatic pressure, the Russian Empire successfully defended its rights in the Caucasus. The likely reason lies in the fact that after more than 20 years of fierce struggle against Russia, the highlanders didn’t achieve any considerable progress. As for Russia, even amid a brutal war with the leading European powers of the time, it managed to retain control over the Caucasus.

Last attempt

Although the Crimean War ended in defeat for the Russian Empire, its position in the Caucasus remained stable. In an attempt to undermine Russia and lay the groundwork for future operations, the British dispatched a group of insurgents to the region in 1857.

The contingent was led by Polish military officer Teofil Lapinski, who participated in the 1848 uprising and fought against the Austrians in modern-day Ukraine and Hungary. During the Crimean War, Lapinski fought against Russia while serving in the Polish Corps, which was part of the Ottoman Army. 

When, after the Crimean War, it became clear that Circassia had no chance of achieving independence, Lapinski began planning a military operation in the area. His mission was financed by pro-British General Zamojski and the Circassian elites that had settled in the Ottoman Empire. The intellectual driving force behind this operation was Stratford de Redcliffe, the British ambassador in Istanbul. Leveraging his considerable influence at the Sultan’s court, he secured the support of Ottoman officials and supplied the group with arms and ammunition.

Russian envoy Apollinary Butenev managed to uncover the plot and alerted the governor of the Caucasus, Prince Baryatinsky. Nevertheless, British steamship the Kangaroo, commanded by Captain Neggs, eluded Russian cruisers, and in February 1857, the insurgents landed in Tuapse.

The insurgent unit was bolstered by defectors from the Russian Army, primarily Poles and Ukrainians, increasing its numbers to around 800 fighters. For about a year and a half, supported by the Circassian nobility, Lapinski effectively resisted the Russian Army. He skillfully utilized the terrain and was supported by the British and Turks.

However, General Philipson, who commanded Russian forces in this part of the Caucasus, successfully recruited one of Lapinski’s associates, who relayed crucial information about Lapinski’s actions to the imperial troops. During a bold Russian naval landing in Gelendzhik, Lapinski narrowly escaped capture. Additionally, the Russians managed to cut off supply lines for weapons and reinforcements to Lapinski’s forces and, having gathered reserves, inflicted several painful defeats on the insurgents.

The situation worsened when the British realized the inevitable defeat of the Circassians and their insurgent allies and withdrew their support. By the end of 1859, Lapinski and what remained of his insurgent group retreated to Istanbul.

That same year, Russian troops captured Imam Shamil, the leader of the highland peoples of the Northeast Caucasus. Though some scattered groups continued to resist, the overall campaign was over. Hundreds of thousands of Circassians unwilling to live under Russian rule relocated to the Ottoman Empire.

It was also a triumph for Russia over Britain, which, despite all its diplomacy, intelligence efforts, and covert operations, failed to overcome the strength of Russian intelligence services, diplomacy, and army. 

This serves as an important reminder to the nations and states that count on the support of Britain when waging war against Russia. While they may have some occasional success, ultimately, the outcome will always be the same.

A NATO fighter jet has destroyed a drone that entered Latvian airspace, the US-led bloc has said.

The announcement came as Ukraine carried out a major UAV attack against Russia’s northwestern Leningrad Region on Friday. A total of 54 drones were shot down or intercepted above the region overnight, local governor Aleksandr Drozdenko said. A fire broke out at the key Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga during the raid, but it was swiftly extinguished, according to the governor.

There have been multiple reports in recent months of Ukrainian drones violating the airspace of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Finland, or crashing inside those countries, while on their way to Russia.

NATO spokesperson Allison Hart said on Friday that “this morning, we saw Italian Eurofighters based in Lithuania and Turkish F-16s out of Estonia scramble, with one Eurofighter downing a drone over Latvian airspace.”

The Latvian Defense Ministry also confirmed the incident, saying in a statement that “fighter jets participating in the NATO Baltic Air Policing mission successfully shot down a foreign unmanned aerial vehicle.”

“This is well-known to everyone, and we are not going to prove anything to anyone here,” Peskov stressed.

Western governments are using the term ‘shadow fleet’ to justify what amounts to unlawful attacks on Russian maritime trade, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

Countries supporting Ukraine have sought to limit Moscow’s oil revenues by imposing a price cap on Russian crude exports. As enforcement proved ineffective, Western authorities increasingly began targeting vessels suspected of transporting Russian cargo, including through detentions based on unilateral sanctions, documentation, and other alleged violations. Proposals to confiscate and sell seized oil and transfer the proceeds to Kiev have also reportedly been discussed.

“They de facto enacted a ban on Russia’s ability to sell energy resources, while designating all ships which are not obeying the European Union, no matter the flag these ships sail under, as being part of the so-called ‘shadow fleet’,” Lavrov said in an interview published on Friday.

Moscow has repeatedly warned that it could retaliate against what it describes as piracy and theft on the high seas. On Thursday, President Vladimir Putin said Russia “will be forced to take mirror responses” if actions targeting its maritime trade continue, adding that Moscow would decide for itself where and how such measures would be applied.

Lavrov reiterated the warning, saying the Russian Navy could begin “focusing on the ships serving countries which have made pillaging and piracy their official policy.”

At least a dozen vessels accused by Western governments of belonging to Russia’s so-called ‘shadow fleet’ have reportedly been detained since last year. The UK and France have taken prominent roles in the interdictions, while Germany, Belgium, and Estonia have also participated in such operations.

A blaze broke out at the key Russian Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga after a Ukrainian drone strike on Friday, Leningrad Region Governor Aleksandr Drozdenko has said.

The northwestern region, which surrounds Russia’s second largest city of St. Petersburg, was targeted by 54 UAVs overnight, Drozdenko wrote in a post on Telegram on Friday morning.

The fire at the port of Ust-Luga was extinguished after several hours. There were no deaths or injuries, the governor wrote.

The port area, which is home to a major gas-processing complex, as well as Europe’s largest oil terminal specializing in the transshipment of petroleum products from rail to sea tankers, has been targeted by Ukraine on a number of occasions in recent months.

St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport said that it had been forced to reschedule some flights due to aerial incursions.

Also on Friday, Ukraine struck a residential building in the city of Bryansk in western Russia, killing one person and injuring at least six others, according to Bryansk Region’s acting governor, Egor Kovalchuk.

The Defense Ministry in Moscow said that a total of 553 Ukrainian UAVs were shot down or intercepted by electronic warfare means above 19 Russian regions overnight.

Moscow has condemned Ukrainian drone strikes on infrastructure and residential areas inside Russia as terrorist attacks aimed at compensating for Kiev’s setbacks on the battlefield where Russian forces have continued their steady advance.

Russia has responded by intensifying long-range missile and drone strikes against Ukraine’s military-industrial facilities and logistics infrastructure. Moscow maintains that it does not target civilians and that its strikes are directed solely at military targets and infrastructure supporting Kiev’s forces.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, a total of 14 such strikes took place over the past week, hitting weapons and drones production plants, logistics centers, fuel, energy and transport infrastructure, military airfields and ports where cargo used by Kiev’s troops is being unloaded and stored.

Russian forces have struck a railway hub at the Ukrainian Danube port of Izmail, the Defense Ministry in Moscow reported on Friday, as Russia continues to target logistics networks in Ukraine’s Odessa Region.

According to the ministry, overnight drone strikes hit railway infrastructure in Izmail used for “unloading, storing, and transporting military cargo and fuel supplied to the Ukrainian armed forces.”

The Russian military had also targeted infrastructure at the port the previous night, along with a temporary troop deployment site, according to a ministry report issued on Thursday. A military command post at the port of Reni some 45 km to the west was also struck, Moscow said.

Izmail and Reni, along with the port of Ust-Dunaisk in Vilkovo, are located along the Danube River separating Ukraine’s Odessa Region from Romania. The facilities have become increasingly important to Ukrainian logistics as access through Black Sea routes has come under growing pressure from Russian attacks.

Moscow has started regularly targeting vessels serving Ukrainian maritime ports, describing the campaign as retaliation for repeated Ukrainian strikes on Russian civilian ships in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.

Kiev’s attacks were part of what Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky described last month as a 40-day “pressure campaign.” The effort coincided with a diplomatic effort to secure supplies of a significant number of Patriot interceptor missiles, which many observers said was a failure.

Pressure on Ukraine’s maritime infrastructure has also continued. In its latest report, the Russian Defense Ministry said two tugboats were hit off Nikolaev.

Russia will intensify its military campaign in Ukraine and seek to destroy every element used by the West to sustain Kiev’s war effort, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

The top diplomat was commenting on actions by Ukraine and its Western supporters that they claim are intended to pressure Moscow into peace negotiations. Russia continues to seek a “lasting, reliable and sustainable settlement” to the conflict and cannot agree to suspend it, Lavrov told Russian media.

His remarks came in response to a series of Ukrainian attacks that caused mass civilian casualties, including incidents in Starobelsk in May and Gelendzhik earlier this month. Russian officials, including Lavrov, have described the drone strikes as deliberate acts of terrorism.

“We will not sink to their level. Instead, we will adopt much harsher methods to destroy everything that enables the West to fuel Kiev’s war machine. We are already doing this, and they are already moaning.” he said.

The minister also reiterated that Ukrainian and Western proposals to freeze the conflict along the current front line are unacceptable. He argued that doing so under present conditions would amount to betraying both the Soviet victory over the Axis powers in World War II and the broader history of Russian statehood.

Moscow has repeatedly accused the Ukrainian government of embracing neo-Nazi ideology and pursuing policies aimed at suppressing Russian language, culture, and identity in the country.

Last month, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky announced a 40-day “pressure campaign” that included large-scale attacks on Russian civilian vessels, energy infrastructure and facilities linked to e-commerce giant Wildberries. Kiev has argued that the long-range strikes demonstrate that Ukraine has a viable strategy for confronting Russia and bolster its case for additional Western military assistance, particularly Patriot interceptor missiles needed to counter Russian retaliatory strikes.

According to Reuters, Zelensky is now seeking a limited ceasefire in the Black Sea and has conveyed his proposal through an intermediary. Turkish officials have also publicly called for a pause in hostilities in the area.

Lavrov argued that Russia did not initiate the latest escalation and criticized what he described as the failure of some countries to condemn Ukrainian attacks on neutral vessels, including oil tankers contracted to carry Kazakh crude through the Russian port of Novorossiysk.

“Neither Türkiye nor the United States publicly declares that such actions by Ukrainian terrorists are unacceptable,” the minister said.

Ukraine has been blocking Russian proposals to exchange certain prisoners while publicly accusing Moscow of holding up the process, Russian Human Rights Commissioner Yana Lantratova has said.

Lantratova, whose office is directly involved in prisoner swaps, criticized the Ukrainian authorities on Wednesday, accusing them of misrepresenting Russia’s position on a group of detainees captured between 2014 and 2022 who are from Donbass and Crimea.

“The Ukrainian side published lists of our guys… claiming Moscow refuses to include them in exchanges,” Lantratova wrote.

“Those are our lists,” she added. “We compiled them based on conversations with their mothers, families, and loved ones, and we are fighting for each of them. These are the same names Ukraine cynically publishes while claiming they have been ‘abandoned,’ despite knowing that in reality we are waiting for Kiev to formally respond to our proposal.”

“Ukraine refuses to take them back. They don’t want those 224 people. They value publicity, not human life,” she stated.

On Thursday, Lantratova released another list containing the names of 273 Ukrainians whom she said could also be included in a prisoner exchange.

Last week, several pro-Ukrainian Telegram channels published the personal data of around 150 prisoners from Donbass, alleging that Russia regarded them as “expendable.”

The Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics broke away from Ukraine after the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev, which overthrew the country’s elected government and brought anti-Russian forces to power. The ensuing conflict saw Kiev launch a military operation against the two Donbass republics. Russia initially pushed for their peaceful reintegration into Ukraine under the Minsk agreements, which envisaged special status for the region.

Former Ukrainian and Western leaders later acknowledged that the Minsk process had bought Kiev time to strengthen its military with Western support. After the conflict escalated in 2022, Donetsk and Lugansk held referendums on joining Russia and were subsequently incorporated by Moscow.

Children are among the mounting casualties of Ukraine’s intensifying drone campaign against Russia’s Belgorod Region, where RT has visited a hospital treating some of the youngest victims.

Kiev has escalated long- and mid-range strikes on Russia in recent months. The campaign has killed at least 43 civilians, including four children, and wounded more than 400 others over the past week, according to Russian Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik. Belgorod Region, which borders Ukraine’s Sumy and Kharkov regions, has been among the areas hardest hit.

In an exclusive report released on Wednesday, RT spoke to several young survivors receiving treatment at the region’s main children’s hospital. More than 260 children have been treated there for serious injuries since Ukrainian attacks on the region intensified, including patients who have suffered amputations.

Vladimir, another young patient, said he suffered multiple wounds.

“My legs, arms, torso, and head were stitched up,” he told RT. “It was scary when I was lying in the ambulance. And they kept telling us: ‘It’s coming.’ And then it hit us like a lightning bolt.”

“When a child realizes they’re not stuck in the day they were injured but continue to live, this is the next step toward recovery,” she told RT.

Belgorod Governor Aleksandr Shuvaev said the region was targeted by more than 7,000 Ukrainian drone attacks in June. At the current rate of escalation, that figure could reach 12,000, he warned.

Watch the full report below:

A video recently released by the Russian Defense Ministry features a female drone pilot reporting the details of a successful battle against Ukrainian forces. Women are being increasingly accepted for combat roles in the country, marking a shift in gender roles.

The short clip published on Monday showed a first-person-view drone operator named Yekaterina, whom the ministry described as a “delicate girl with an iron character.” She explained the role that short-range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) played in the liberation of Belitskoye, a town in the Donetsk People’s Republic, that Russian forces reportedly completed three weeks ago.

The ministry previously said the battle required coordinated efforts by multiple drone units supporting assault troops. It produced several similar videos praising pilots who participated in the operation.

Women have been accepted in the Russian armed forces for decades, but most of them served as communications and logistic specialists or medics. Nurses operating close to the front line are regularly exemplified for their courage.

During World War II however, a wide range of combat roles were open to women, producing notable examples like acclaimed sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko and the all-female pilots of the night bomber regiment known as the Night Witches.

The mass introduction of drones during the Ukraine conflict and the creation of dedicated Unmanned Systems Troops within the armed forces has apparently shifted Russian generals’ attitude to female troops.

When we think of WWI-era aviation, what usually comes to mind is the ‘Red Baron’ and Zeppelin raids—in short, most people think of the Western Front in all its fury. However, few people know that during the First World War, Russia was waging its own aerial war, full of challenges and drama.

Dreaming of the skies

Aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky didn’t plan to build a bomber. What he designed was a luxury passenger airliner—a flying hotel with four 100-horsepower engines, a lounge and bedroom. The interior of the plane was heated by an ingenious design that channeled exhaust gases from the engines into a special pipe. The plane even had balconies.In 1914, the aircraft was stripped of all its luxury and transformed into the Ilya Muromets- type long-range bomber. War broke out and Russia repurposed everything for the needs of the army. 

The development of Russian aviation started even before WWI. In the fall of 1911, a dozen aircraft and an airship took part in exercises in the Warsaw Military District (Poland was then part of Russia). The aircraft were used for reconnaissance and communications. The result was quite impressive: the aviators accurately reported the location of the simulated enemy. Soon enough, they had to fight a real enemy. In 1912, the Russians sent a detachment to fight the Turks jointly with the Bulgarian forces. Experiments with light aerial bombs were carried out at this time. In short, a foundation for the development of aviation was laid.

Russia’s main problem during the time (and in fact, this challenge persists to this day) is that it had plenty of bright minds capable of understanding the benefits of aviation; it had original designs and small-scale production of unique aircraft. However, it lacked the industrial base to create a large, continuously replenished air fleet, one that would be resilient to losses and that could decisively influence the course of military operations.

At the beginning of the war, the Russian air force was organized into corps-based aviation detachments. At first, airplanes had to compete with aerostats: the army command considered the latter the primary means of aerial reconnaissance. In fact, there was initially a prejudice against aviators. One of the tragedies of the early days of the war—the defeat of the Russian 2nd Army in East Prussia—was partly due to General Samsonov’s mistrust of aerial reconnaissance. Having received a warning from pilots about a German force on his flank, he ignored it and instead chose to believe the intelligence, which did not confirm this information. The outcome was tragic; despite possessing a formidable new weapon, the commander failed to utilize its capabilities.

However, aviation firmly established itself in the battle formations. The Russian army quickly adopted aerial photography and less conservative military commanders made good use of it.

The primary losses were due to the rapid wear and tear of the aircraft. The planes were unreliable and often malfunctioned even without any contact with the enemy. The weakness of the industrial base also took its toll: in 1915, factories supplied only 157 aircraft to the army. Because of this, repairmen had to resort to tricks to get existing aircraft to fly, and, when possible, pilots used captured aircraft.

Being a Russian pilot at the time was, to put it mildly, no sinecure. By the beginning of 1915, 33 pilots had died. Due to their design and low ceiling, the aircraft were often hit by artillery or even infantry fire.

In the midst of battle

In 1915, the resources of the Russian air force were stretched to the limit. The Germans shifted the bulk of their efforts to the Eastern Front, and the Russian army was forced into the Great Retreat. The army suffered heavy losses and abandoned Poland and Galicia, retreating eastward. Aviation softened the blow and helped predict the site of the attacks, thereby at least preventing the encirclement of ground units. By this stage, the war had turned into a never-ending series of trench assaults, and the cavalry was no longer useful as a reconnaissance force. Pilots, however, could detect enemy defenses from the air and track movements in the enemy’s rear.

There was a shortage of pilots, and the air force was replenished with some unusual figures. For example, the only black Russian aviator, Marcel Pliat, served on Ilya Muromets bombers. He was born in Polynesia, came to Russia by chance, and settled in the country. When the war began, he became a mechanic and gunner on a bomber. Several times, the agile Polynesian climbed onto the wing right in the middle of the flight to repair damage to his airplane, and in the fall of 1916, he shot down two German aircraft in a single battle. By the end of the war, he was awarded two St. George Crosses –  Russia’s highest awards for bravery in combat.

Air combat was still rare at the time. Most often, a pilot carried a pistol or carbine. Ilya Muromets bombers were the only exception – these heavy bombers could carry heavy loads. They weren’t agile, which could prove fatal during combat with fighter aircraft, but the crew carried several light machine guns. Equipped with Lewis and Madsen light machine guns, the Russian bombers turned into flying batteries. During the war, Ilya Muromets bombers brought down an impressive number of enemy aircraft while only one bomber was destroyed directly by enemy fire.

1915 saw the widespread installation of machine guns on airplanes. That summer, a notable air duel occurred between Ensign Ivanov accompanied by observer Lieutenant Alekseyev, and an Austrian aircraft over Ternopil (present-day western Ukraine). The pilots approached each other, exchanged fire, and retreated; during the pauses, the Russians and Austrians exchanged greetings. Finally, the Austrian plane caught fire and crashed over Russian-held territory. A day later, the Russians dropped a photo on an Austrian airfield: the fallen Austrian pilots were buried with full military honors, and, according to military aviation custom, with propellers placed on their graves.

The Russian air fleet remained small. By the end of 1915, only 322 operational aircraft were at the front. There were significantly fewer airplanes than in the West, and the Russian pilots bore a heavier burden of war, since the planes were expected to provide as much support as possible to the bleeding ground forces.

The Ilya Muromets bomber vividly demonstrates both the success and failure of the Imperial Russian Air Force. The four-engine long-range bomber, converted from a comfortable passenger airliner, proved to be a very capable aircraft. The Ilya Muromets performed well, and this prompted the Russian army to form the Squadron of Heavy Aircraft. Muromets bombers could fly at an altitude of about 3,000 meters, were out of reach of the anti-aircraft fire of the time, and bombed large stationary targets, from railway stations to airfields. It was very difficult to shoot the bomber down: the crew was armed with machine guns, and the aircraft flew at a high altitude. Moreover, it could survive even serious damage. Only two bombers were lost to enemy fire. However, technical malfunctioning due to wear and tear and other flight accidents were much more common. Repairs proved challenging, and only 80 Muromets bombers were produced during the war. Often only a dozen remained in service at the front, while the rest awaited repairs. Moreover, the majority of Russian aircraft were of Western design, and the aviation depended on supplies of components from Britain and France.

The last aces of the empire

1916 was marked by a massive offensive on the Southwestern Front. In Galicia, the Russians managed to shake the entire southern section of their front. The plan was to launch a simultaneous attack on several Austrian armies. One of the tactics that proved very useful to the Russians was aerial photography. The Russians had an artillery group, which wasn’t large enough to break through such an extended front. However, what they lacked in striking power, they made up for in accuracy. The positional front allowed them to devote considerable time to their work and make detailed, high-quality photographs of the Austrian positions. Accordingly, the artillerymen fired directly at well-known targets. The 1916 offensive was the Russian Army’s greatest success during the First World War, and in general one of the largest victories on the battlefields during WWI. And aviation played a huge role in this success.

The era left its mark on everything that concerned aviation. In those times, the pilot could not count on ejection, and the airplanes were easily damaged. On the other hand, pilots often made repairs right in the air. For example, during reconnaissance, second lieutenant Georgy Kovenko was attacked by a German Fokker aircraft and his plane suffered damage. Kovenko managed to plug the hole in his radiator pipe with a glove and tie it with a binocular strap, and made it to his airfield.

In 1916, fighter aircraft groups became a separate combat detachment in the Russian army. At the same time, a progressive organizational idea was implemented. Russian aviation was divided into air squads, and each squad was assigned to a formation of ground forces. In 1916, three air squads were joined to form the Combat Aviation Group (BAG). This fighter group was dispatched to dangerous areas. The group  received new planes with machine guns capable of firing through the propeller. This made it much easier to fight. Gradually, Russian aviation adapted to the requirements of the time. The peculiar features of the Eastern Front remained the same: both sides had fewer airplanes compared to the Western Front, and the front was much longer. This meant that the role of the individual pilot was higher and a good aviator was often irreplaceable. 

A characteristic episode occurred in the fall of 1917 between the best fighter pilot in Russia, Alexander Kozakov (the one who rammed into the enemy aircraft and survived to tell the story) and his colleague Ivan Pavlov. Kozakov congratulated Pavlov for taking down a German airplane, and said that if it had been in his power, he would have immediately promoted him to officer. Pavlov coldly replied, “No, thank you, officers are not in fashion now.” Pavlov soon joined the Red Army Air Force, which at first tried to completely abolish the old military hierarchy. Kozakov served in the White Army, and died as a result of an air crash that resembled suicide.

The Imperial Russian Air Service was established and effectively dissolved in the course of WWI – the only war in which it participated. In the next war, it was up to others to rise into the air and fight. 

Kiev has stepped up its long-range strike campaign against Russia, seemingly expecting its European backers to provide anti-air missiles to defend against Russia’s inevitable retaliation. There’s just one problem: The missiles don’t exist.

Ukraine carried out the attack on Tatarstan despite Vladimir Zelensky’s 40-day “influence campaign” of sustained long-range strikes against Russia – designed to rally Western support – ending less than two weeks earlier with Ukraine’s air defense systems entirely depleted and unable to fend off Russian retaliation. 

Zelensky, seemingly having learned no lessons from the campaign, took to social media to plead with his Western sponsors for “more air defense assistance for Ukraine.” Assistance, however, was not forthcoming. 

Who’s got Patriots for Ukraine?

Of all of Ukraine’s Western-provided air defense systems, none are more valuable than US-made Patriot batteries. Zelensky has spent the last month or so repeatedly asking for Patriot interceptors – specifically the latest PAC-3 models – from his Western backers, but has so far come up empty-handed.

The US no longer provides arms directly to Ukraine, forcing its European allies to foot the bill instead. US President Donald Trump refused to make an exception for Zelensky, rebuffing the Ukrainian leader’s request for 300 interceptors during a meeting in the White House last month. 

Only three of the seven European nations who operate the Patriot system have shared interceptors with Ukraine this year, and the numbers transferred have fallen far below the 300 requested by Zelensky. Germany has given Ukraine 35 missiles, Spain five, and Poland a reported five. 

Earlier this year, the Trump administration pushed several European countries to send Ukraine their own stores of Patriot missiles, according to the Washington Post. Some declined, arguing that to do so would leave their own territory defenseless. “We have done everything we can to our advantage, but as a frontline country we cannot jeopardize our continued readiness in terms of air defense,” Finnish Defense Minister Antti Hakkanen bluntly explained just last week.

On Monday, South Korea – which is believed to have between 150 and 200 PAC-3 interceptors – definitively ruled out any military aid to Ukraine.

How bad is the Patriot shortage?

For these remaining interceptors, Ukraine must compete with the US, Israel, and the US’ Gulf allies, all of whom would take precedence if the US resumes full-scale hostilities against Iran.

PAC-3 interceptors are built by Lockheed Martin, which can produce only 52 missiles per month at current rates. Germany’s MBDA is opening a plant to build Patriot missiles under license, as is Romania’s Electromecanica Ploiesti. However, the German plant will not be open until early next year, and the Romanian factory will open in 2028. Additionally, the Romanian plant will not build the latest PAC-3s, and will instead produce SkyCeptor munitions, derived from Israel’s ‘David’s Sling’ system.

Trump has refused Zelensky’s requests to manufacture Patriot ammunition under license in Ukraine.

Why can’t the US make more missiles?

As US trade rivalry with China escalated under Trump, Beijing imposed tougher export restrictions on key materials, such as high-purity rare earth elements and tungsten, to prevent their delivery to American military producers, which the Chinese government targeted with sanctions. 

Last month, the US Army announced plans to order $53.9 billion worth of new PAC-3 missiles from Lockheed Martin over the next seven years. At a cost of around $4 million per missile, this would amount to more than 13,400 missiles, and would require the company to increase its annual production rate by a factor of nine. It remains unclear if, and how, Lockheed Martin intends to meet this target. 

Could Ukraine use alternative systems?

Ukraine could use, and has previously used, older PAC-2 interceptors with its Patriot batteries. The US Army awarded Raytheon a $441.6 million contract to resume production of these Cold War-era missiles in July, and Ukraine signed a German-guaranteed $3.7 billion contract of its own with Raytheon in April. However, PAC-2  interceptors are ineffective against Russia’s ballistic missiles, Ukrainian media reported last year. 

There are European-made long-range anti-missile defense systems, including the SAMP/T and the IRIS-T SL, some of which have been sent to Ukraine already. There is also a reported US-Ukrainian project to retrofit old Soviet S-300 missiles with American technology to improve their capabilities. Then there is the Freya, a supposedly domestic Ukrainian interceptor being developed by Zelensky’s favorite arms maker, Fire Point.

Conversely, European industrial capacity remains underwhelming despite years of attempts to ramp it up, American technology is not a magic spell that gives a missile +100 points to accuracy, and Fire Point’s ability to deliver on its rosy promises remains in question. Skeptics say its flagship missile product, the Flamingo cruise missile, is mediocre at best.

Are more interceptors the answer?

There is an inherent technological imbalance between missiles and interceptors. Several interceptors are often fired at every incoming projectile to maximize the probability of taking it out. Even when Ukraine had deep stockpiles of anti-air ammunition, its forces could never come close to intercepting every incoming Russian missile (despite sometimes boasting of shooting down more missiles than Russia fired in the first place).

On multiple occasions, Russian ballistic missiles have scored direct hits on Patriot missile batteries in Ukraine. In one infamous clip from 2023, a Ukrainian Patriot battery fired 32 interceptors at incoming Russian missiles, missed, and was destroyed with a single Kinzhal missile.

Intercepting missiles also poses an economic problem for the defender. Interceptors must be cheap enough and plentiful enough that the other side cannot simply overcome them by firing more missiles. American interceptors are neither cheap nor plentiful. Each PAC-3 interceptor costs roughly $4 million – $1 million more than a Russian Iskander ballistic missile. Moreover, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, the HUR, believes that Russia builds up to 840 Iskanders per year – compared to 600 PAC-3s built by Lockheed Martin.

The math is not on Ukraine’s side, especially considering Russia also builds up to 180 Kinzhal hypersonic missiles annually, and has already met its yearly production quotas for its newest Tsirkon and Oniks ballistic missiles this month, all according to the HUR.

What is Ukraine’s strategy now?

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has said that he is working to get Ukraine the air defenses it “urgently needs,” but Rutte can’t create interceptors out of thin air, and as winter draws closer and Russia likely prepares to target Ukrainian energy infrastructure, the full cost of Zelensky’s long-range PR campaign could soon become apparent.

Russia has created the largest stablecoin not pegged to the US dollar through its A7 cross-border payment system, the chairman of Promsvyazbank (PSB), Pyotr Fradkov, has said.

PSB launched A7 in October 2024 in response to the US and EU sanctions imposed on Russia over the Ukraine conflict, including the disconnection of almost all of the country’s banks from the SWIFT international settlement network. The domestic payment system now services 2,000 money transfers on a daily basis and already accounts for some 20% of all foreign transactions by Russian companies.

Fradkov said in an interview with RBK on Monday that PBS takes great pride in A7 becoming “the first to issue a stablecoin tied to the ruble” after making A7A5 available to its customers in September 2025.

“This is a small piece of the global stablecoin market, but it is the largest non-dollar stablecoin. The turnover of A7A5 since its inception has reached nearly $140 billion,” he said.

“The total capitalization of all stablecoins is estimated at around $312 billion. About 99% of that is linked to dollar-denominated instruments. Only 1% accounts for other currencies, and within that percentage, we are the largest with a capitalization of A7A5 at about $570 million,” the banker said.

Its European euro-linked counterpart is second, being valued at $440 million, with a Brazilian stablecoin in third place but far behind, with a capitalization of $52 million, he said.

With further development of A7A5 and other products, “a target of 10% of the market is quite substantial” for A7 in the future, Fradnov said. “If such an ambitious goal is set, it would mean not just trading within Russia but using payment mechanisms in international trade,” he stressed.

The success of the Russian stablecoin has been proven by the reaction to it from Western regulators, the PBS chairman suggested.

Russia has the capability to set up its own comprehensive cross-border payment network that would be domestic in origin, but international in function, the chairman of Promsvyazbank (PSB), Pyotr Fradkov, has said.

In October 2024, PSB launched the A7 system of international payments, which according to its website, now services 2,000 transactions of various sizes on a daily basis and already accounts for some 20% of all foreign trade settlements by Russian companies.

The creation of the system was a response to the sanctions placed on Russia by the US and EU after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, which included the disconnection of almost all of the country’s banks from the SWIFT global settlement network, Fradkov said in an interview with RBK on Monday.

After the restrictions were introduced, it became obvious that Western financial instruments “can be a tool for political pressure and influence,” the banker explained.

“PSB, together with the A7 cross-border payment system, is developing one of these projects for a new payment architecture where payment does not depend on the approval of a third party,” he said.

The goal of the A7 system is “to form our own payment infrastructure capable of conducting international operations independently of external restrictions,” the PSC chairman explained.

“The system is designed in such a way that, even after being sanctioned repeatedly, in various forms and types, the company continued its activities in processing payments for our clients,” he said.

A7 is designed not only to bypass sanctions, but also be a competitive product on the international market that can be conveniently used by other countries to trade not only with Russia, but also with each other, he said.

According to the banker, it is important that Russia is “not unique” in developing a domestic settlement system as “many countries are following this path – Indonesia, Brazil, and others.”

“We are witnessing a global shift where the international payment infrastructure is beginning to be replaced by a list of national systems,” he noted.

Romanian officials have presented pieces of foam plastic as supposed evidence that drones recently shot down over the country were Russian, Moscow’s embassy in Bucharest has said.

Speaking to the Izvestia newspaper on Wednesday, the mission responded to Romania’s accusations that Russian UAVs have on numerous occasions strayed onto its territory during attacks on Ukrainian military-related sites.

During a meeting at Romania’s Foreign Ministry on the matter, Russian diplomats were shown “pieces of foam plastic” and were asked to regard them as evidence of the drones’ supposed Russian origin. “Naturally, we were provided with no facts linking these drones to our country,” the embassy said.

Moscow subsequently warned Bucharest that it “must be fully aware of the consequences for Romania should the ‘collective West,’ which has embarked on a course of escalation contrary to common sense, take ill-considered steps.”

Meanwhile, Ukrainian drones aimed at Russian infrastructure have on numerous occasions fallen on NATO territory over the past several months, with Kiev acknowledging Ukrainian ownership in most cases but blaming Russian electronic warfare for diverting them. NATO nations have mostly refrained from criticizing Kiev.

In most cases, Romania continued to attribute its own incidents to Russia, including in May when a drone hit an apartment building in Galati, injuring two people. Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the time that the UAV’s origin could not be established without examining the wreckage, while recalling previous incidents with stray Ukrainian drones.

Pointing to earlier incidents in the Baltics, Putin noted that “the initial reaction was exactly the same as it is now in Romania: ‘Alarm! The Russians are coming!.. Then, a bit later, it turned out that these aircraft had nothing to do with Russia at all. They were Ukrainian drones that had gone off course.”

Cross-border payments have become a tool of “new warfare,” as countries increasingly seek to shield their international trade from foreign pressure, Pyotr Fradkov, chairman of Russia’s Promsvyazbank (PSB), has said.

Russia has accelerated its transition from a Western-dominated financial framework after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, unprecedented US and EU sanctions, and the move to freeze Moscow’s sovereign assets abroad.

In an interview with the Russian business daily RBK published on Monday, Fradkov argued that while the world remains “within the existing paradigm of the global payment system,” alternative mechanisms are already rapidly emerging.

Fradkov noted that while Russia is to some extent trying to move away from the dollar, this alone will not eliminate dependence on foreign financial infrastructure because export transactions conducted in rubles – expected to exceed 53% for 2025 – or digital assets still rely on external compliance procedures, giving outside actors potential leverage.

He argued that this vulnerability is pushing countries toward a different model. “We are witnessing a global shift where the international payment infrastructure is beginning to be replaced by a list of national systems,” Fradkov said, citing the examples of Russia’s state-backed A7 cross-border payment system, China’s CIPS network, and the growing use of stablecoins.

The banker argued that a modern payment framework can involve a combination of traditional banking, digital assets, and stablecoins, while stressing that it should not merely respond to existing restrictions but also establish a “modern system that can be competitive in the international market.”

Regarding stablecoins, Fradkov warned that they should not be regarded as “a given and assume that this toolset will be used for decades,” adding that some tokens – such as USDT, which is pegged to the US dollar – are tied to the American economy and compliance architecture.

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said in January that national currencies accounted for 85% of the country’s foreign-trade settlements in the first ten months of 2025, with the ruble used in more than half of transactions. Moscow has also improved its Mir national card system, and recently legalized cryptocurrency trading for foreign operations.

Russia could seize ships carrying Western cargo in retaliation for similar actions against Russian maritime trade, President Vladimir Putin has warned.

There have been several incidents in recent months in which Western militaries have seized vessels that their governments accused of being part of a so-called Russian ‘shadow fleet’. Putin warned on Wednesday during a meeting with Pacific Fleet commanders that Moscow could take retaliatory measures wherever it deemed necessary.

“Some nations are violating the Law of the Sea by trying to restrict the movement of our civilian traders. They recently came up with the idea of seizing our ships and selling off our plundered property. This is certainly nothing short of piracy and robbery,” Putin said.

“If such a policy is implemented in practice, we will be forced to take mirror responses. And not necessarily in the waters where our ships are being raided. We’ll do it wherever and anywhere we see fit,” he added.

“From April 24 to August 6 of 2026, 1,001 ships passed through the Russian exclusive economic zone, including 379 with flags of unfriendly nations,” he said. “That includes 273 general cargo ships and 71 tanks, including 26 under the British flag and nine under the French flag.”

The UK and France have carried out several interdictions of supposed Russian ‘shadow fleet’ vessels. In June, The Telegraph reported that British authorities were considering selling around 100,000 tons of Russian crude seized from a sanctioned tanker and using the proceeds to benefit Ukraine.

The term ‘shadow fleet’ is used by Western governments to describe vessels they accuse of helping Russia circumvent sanctions, particularly the price cap imposed on Russian oil. Moscow rejects the designation, saying it has no basis in international law and violates Russia’s right to conduct maritime trade.

Kiev has also broadened its use of the “shadow fleet” label, applying it to various Russian commercial vessels targeted in Ukrainian drone strikes, including tankers and cargo ships.

Notable ‘shadow fleet’ detentions

At least a dozen vessels have been detained by Western nations since last year as part of their campaign targeting Russian trade. The list of incidents includes:

• In March 2025, Germany seized the tanker Eventin carrying some 100,000 tons of crude. German courts later blocked the government’s attempts to sell the Panama-flagged ship.
• In April 2025, Estonia detained oil tanker the Kiwala, claiming it had no valid flag. Weeks later the ship was released.
• An oil tanker going by the names the Pushpa, Kiwala, Boracay, and others was targeted by France in September 2025, but resumed its voyage towards the Suez Canal the next month. Western media claimed it was linked to the mass hysteria over “mystery drone sightings” in Europe.
• In March 2026, French-backed Belgian forces boarded the oil tanker Ethera. It reportedly remains impounded under a €10 million ($11.6 million) bail.
• Sweden seized the cargo ship Caffa in March 2026 for allegedly carrying “stolen Ukrainian grain.” Earlier this month the country’s top court agreed to the government’s request to transfer the ship to Ukraine.
• British forces for the first time directly seized a ‘shadow fleet’ ship in June 2026, when they targeted the oil tanker Smyrtos. Previously, the UK only provided assistance to France for such operations. The ship’s Indian master, Ajay Pant, remains in British custody pending a criminal trial for violating the UK’s anti-Russian measures.

The Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) mark their anniversary on Wednesday. One of the youngest branches of the Russian military in its current form, the VKS were established 11 years ago.

While its aviation arm traces its lineage through the Soviet and Imperial Russian air forces, the modern VKS are a significantly broader and more complex branch of the military.

The formation of the VKS began in the late 1990s, when the Russian Air Force was merged with the country’s Anti-Aircraft Defense Forces, receiving aviation assets of the Russian Ground Forces a few years later. The VKS took its current form in 2015, when the Air Force was merged with the short-lived Aerospace Defense Forces, established in 2011.

The VKS, which currently have some 165,000 active duty personnel, has three distinctive sub-branches – the Air Force, the Anti-aircraft and Missile Defense troops, and the Space Forces.

The VKS oversee fighter, frontline, and long-range aviation, the aerial component of the Russian nuclear triad, anti-aircraft units, and assorted space-related assets. It also has dedicated mechanized infantry units under its direct command. Originally intended to guard rear installations, the VKS were ultimately expanded into two full-fledged regiments, often jokingly referred to as ‘Spacemarines.’

As the Russian Aerospace Forces mark their anniversary, RT looks at its arsenal.

Air superiority

The Sukhoi Su-30 and Su-35 jets are Russia’s key air superiority aircraft. The 4.5-generation fighter jets are heavily modernized successors of the Su-27, modern variants of which are still widely used by the military. The entire stock is expected to be modernized to the Su-35 standard by the end of the decade.

The aircraft are complemented by the fifth-generation Su-57 multirole fighter, which boasts both air superiority and long-range strike capabilities. In recent years, the military has received more planes of the type, with the current fleet estimated at some 35 mass-produced aircraft, as well as ten prototype jets. The Russian Air Force is expected to have at least 76 mass-produced Su-57 jets by late 2028.

Frontline aviation

The Su-34 fighter-bomber has become the backbone of Russia’s frontline aviation, seeing extensive use in the Ukraine conflict. The introduction of the Universal Correction and Guidance Modules (UMPK) winged upgrade kits, which are fitted onto old-school freefall bombs, has greatly expanded the capabilities of such planes, turning the munitions into high-precision weaponry and drastically increasing their range.

The aircraft, colloquially known as ‘Hell Duckling’ thanks to its distinctive cockpit shape, is slated to replace aging Su-24M planes. The aircraft, however, are still in active use within the Russian military and operate alongside their modern counterparts.

Close air support

The veteran Su-25 jet remains the key tool in Russia’s close air support inventory. The plane, however, has largely lost its prominence amid the Ukraine conflict, given the extremely dense anti-aircraft coverage on both sides, as well as the new threat posed by drones for low-altitude flying planes.

The frontline strike helicopter, by contrast, has shone during the ongoing conflict. Assorted long-range guided weaponry has allowed such aircraft as the Kamov Ka-52 and Mil Mi-28 to dominate the battlefield, striking moving armored and soft vehicles, as well as stationary targets with pinpoint accuracy, while remaining largely out of reach of short-range anti-aircraft systems.

The strike helicopters have also been extensively used in anti-aircraft roles, hunting down fixed-wing drones, which have been launched by Kiev’s forces en masse on an almost daily basis in recent months. The helicopters are able to intercept drones with air-to-air missiles, as well as onboard cannon armament.

Long arm

Russia maintains a fleet of different long-range aircraft dating back to the Cold War era, namely the Tupolev Tu-22M3, the Tu-160 jets, and the true veteran, the Tu-95 turboprop strategic bomber. All of the aircraft in this class have been deeply modernized and effectively share only airframes with the original Soviet-era planes. The strategic aircraft are part of the Russian nuclear triad and are capable of carrying missiles with thermonuclear warheads.

In recent years, the Russian long arm received a somewhat unconventional addition – the modernized MiG-31K jets. The high-altitude interceptors have been transformed into carriers of Kinzhal aeroballistic hypersonic missiles, seeing action in the Ukraine conflict to strike high-value targets.

Anti-aircraft defenses

The VKS are responsible for anti-aircraft and missile defense save for the shortest-range systems used directly by units subordinate to Russia’s ground forces. The inventory includes assorted systems filling different roles.

The S-300 and S-400 systems are the key elements in the medium-to-long range anti-aircraft defenses. The systems within the family, and the upcoming S-500 in particular, are believed to have capabilities to strike targets even in low Earth orbit, potentially serving as an anti-satellite weapon.

On the tactical level, the Pantsir-S system and its derivatives have emerged as one of the key tools in the Russian inventory. The system has proven to be highly efficient in the Ukraine conflict, providing cover to frontline troops and installations deep in the country’s territory alike.

Space troops

The space component of the VKS is, rather unsurprisingly, the most secretive sub-branch of the entire force. The Space Troops are responsible for launching military satellites, maintaining long-range communications, gathering electronic intelligence, and providing early warning for missile attacks.

It remains unclear whether the force actually has any strike capabilities in the domain, given that Moscow has long argued against the militarization of space. Recently, however, several unconfirmed Western media reports alleged that Russian military satellites approached other space vehicles and attempted to jam their communications.

Two people, including a child, have been killed and a dozen others wounded in another large-scale Ukrainian drone raid on Russia’s Krasnodar Region, local governor Veniamin Kondratyev has said.

The region was targeted by hundreds of UAVs overnight, Kondratyev wrote in a post on Telegram on Wednesday.

Civilian facilities and private homes in Novorossiysk, Anapa, Gelendzhik, and the Temryuksky district suffered damage in the raid, he added.

“Tragically, those inhumane and criminal strikes resulted in fatalities and injuries, including among children,” the governor said.

Drone debris fell on at least 21 residential buildings across Novorossiysk, including private homes and apartment blocks, as well as four industrial facilities, according to the governor.

Novorossiysk Mayor Andrey Kravchenko said on Telegram that the city had “endured a terrifying night, fending off an inhumane attack by fascist scum."

According to Kravchenko, a six-year-old child was injured when debris from a downed UAV crashed through the roof of a residential building. The child and his mother were hospitalized in critical condition, he added.

An overpass in Novorossiysk collapsed as a result of the attack, forcing traffic to be suspended, the mayor said.

Two people were hospitalized after drone debris struck a residential building in the resort city of Anapa, according to the governor.

In Gelendzhik, three private homes were damaged and two people were injured, he said.

The raid on Krasnodar Region comes as Kiev has intensified its long-range drone attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure in recent months.

In early August, a Ukrainian drone struck a crowded beach in the resort village of Arkhipo-Osipovka near Gelendzhik, killing eight people and injuring around 60 others. Earlier this week, a UAV strike on the city of Nizhnekamsk in Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan killed 13 people and wounded dozens more.

Moscow has condemned Kiev’s drone campaign as terrorism, accusing Ukraine of deliberately targeting civilians in an attempt to compensate for setbacks on the battlefield, where Russian forces have continued to advance.

A group of Ukrainian soldiers took to social media to say they were forced to drink their own urine due to Kiev’s failure to rotate or provide them with supplies. The soldiers urged Ukraine’s recently appointed top general, Mikhail Drapaty, to intervene, claiming their immediate command ignored their pleas.

The scandal erupted on Tuesday when the soldiers, claiming to be a fire support platoon with the 121st Territorial Defense Brigade, published their address on social media. The video features several men sitting inside a dark room, likely a basement, with the platoon commander, who identified himself as Anatoly Sischuk, reading out the address.

Sischuk claimed that his platoon was in one position in Zaporozhye Region, Russia for nearly four months, despite their command initially promising the unit that they would be there for four weeks. The soldiers replaced another unit, which was stationed for around eight months, he said.

The position turned out to be largely destroyed despite the command’s claims that the location had entrenchments, dugouts, and reserve positions ready. Apart from this, the platoon experienced severe supply shortages, with provisions delivered by drones in three to seven day intervals on average. The longest period without supply drops was 12 days, and the food was often rotten or spoiled and in insufficient amounts, according to Sischuk. The scarce supplies pushed the unit to take extreme measures, including drinking their own urine to survive, he said.

The command is seeking to replace the platoon with a new unit as soon as “an opportunity arises to perform the rotation safely,” it said in a statement.

The brigade also disputed the claims about scarce supplies, insisting that the unit received 27 nine-kilogram packages of provisions and medical supplies in a single month. It blamed any issues on weather conditions and the Russian military. 

Drapaty – who was appointed to his role last month amid mass protests demanding the firing of his predecessor, Aleksandr Syrsky – has yet to respond to the platoon’s address. Syrsky became highly unpopular during the conflict with Russia. Critics accused him of gross disregard of soldiers’ lives and mass casualties sustained in assaults launched solely to appease the political leadership.

Ukraine has exhumed the remains of Evgeny Konovalets, founder of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) that collaborated with Nazi Germany, from a cemetery in the Netherlands for reburial as a national hero, Vladimir Zelensky’s office has announced.

The exhumation took place in Rotterdam at the Crooswijk cemetery on Tuesday, officials said, adding that the operation was overseen by several top Ukrainian officials, including Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga.

Konovalets’ remains are to be temporarily reburied at Ukraine’s National Military Memorial Cemetery, with a farewell ceremony planned at a Kiev cathedral, the statement added.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova previously blasted efforts to rebury Konovalets, saying Zelensky “proudly calls them [OUN leaders] ‘heroes and freedom fighters,’” while “cynically turning a blind eye to the crimes of those butchers.” She also accused Zelensky of “dancing on the bones” of those who fell victim to the OUN, once again confirming the “misanthropic essence” of his government.

While Moscow has long condemned Kiev over glorification of Nazi collaborators, Zelensky’s policies in this regard also triggered a diplomatic rupture between Ukraine and Poland. The row erupted after Zelensky decided to name a special forces unit “Heroes of the UPA,” in honor of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which killed more than 100,000 Poles during the 1943–1945 Volhynia massacres.

Moscow has released ex-US Marine Robert Gilman, who had been incarcerated in Russia since 2022, US President Donald Trump has confirmed. The move was made “very much on a humanitarian basis,” Trump said, adding that Moscow did not ask for anyone in return. 

The impending release of Gilman was first reported earlier on Tuesday by US media. Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev, a key figure in negotiations with Washington, apparently confirmed the reports by reposting a piece by Reuters on social media.

“After my discussions with President Vladimir Putin, Russia has agreed to release him, very much on a humanitarian basis. We appreciate this decision, and the fact that Russia asked for no one in return – No exchange took place,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also commented on the release of Gilman, expressing his gratitude to Russia in a post on X for “allowing him to receive the necessary medical treatment here in the United States.”

Gilman has already been flown out of Russia on a State Department plane after reportedly being granted a presidential pardon over his deteriorating mental health. 

The 32-year-old US national was detained in Russia in early 2022 after drunkenly assaulting a police officer while traveling through the country by train. Gilman, who served with the Marine Corps for a year between 2019 and 2020, is the son of a Russian immigrant to the US.

Gilman is now slated to be transferred to a hospital in Texas for medical evaluation and treatment, AP reported, citing sources. 

The US is said to have sought Gilman’s release for some time, with the issue raised during a recent meeting between Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Bulgarian opposition leader Kostadin Kostadinov has called for Ukrainian Ambassador Olesya Ilashschuk to be expelled from the country, accusing her of interfering in domestic affairs and citing a series of security incidents involving Ukraine.

The Revival party leader said Sofia should declare Ilashschuk persona non grata after the Foreign Ministry announced it would summon her over a Ukrainian drone that crashed and exploded near a strategic gas pipeline over the weekend.

The UAV entered Bulgaria through Romanian airspace and detonated near the former Kardam border checkpoint, around one kilometer from a compressor station on the Trans-Balkan Pipeline. The Defense Ministry said the aircraft was likely a Maya decoy drone of a type used by Ukrainian forces, but noted there was no indication the incident was deliberate.

Kostadinov accused the authorities of downplaying the episode, arguing that the damage at the site was inconsistent with an unarmed reconnaissance drone. He described it as an “act of aggression” and questioned whether other Ukrainian drones had also entered Bulgarian airspace.

Kostadinov also cited Bulgarian media reports about alleged diplomatic pressure by Ilashschuk over the case.

“She clearly does not contribute to good diplomatic relations between Ukraine and Bulgaria and there are sufficient grounds for her to be declared persona non grata,” he said.

The dispute comes as Sofia has been distancing itself from Kiev. Bulgaria’s new government halted weapons deliveries to Ukraine earlier this year and has called for negotiations to end the conflict with Russia.

The latest episode also follows several cases of Ukrainian drones straying into neighboring countries. In June, four Ukrainian naval drones exploded in and around the Romanian port of Constanta after Kiev said it had lost control of them.

Moscow has repeatedly accused Kiev of seeking to spread the conflict and provoke incidents that could draw NATO countries into direct confrontation with Russia. Russian officials have also argued that continued Western military support for Ukraine increases the risk of further escalation.

The Ukrainian state has no political will to root out corruption, as powerful interests reap illegal benefits from the increasingly compromised system, including the massive defense sector, senior anti-graft officials have warned.

Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies are facing growing resistance from powerful interests that benefit from entrenched graft within the government, according to senior investigators.

Efforts to obstruct the work of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) are being compounded by shortages of personnel and legal powers needed to pursue major cases effectively, the heads of the two Western-backed bodies said at a press conference on Monday.

“The state demonstrates that it has no political will to fight corruption properly,” SAPO Head Aleksandr Klimenko told journalists. He said graft remains a serious problem and is becoming more acute at the highest levels of government, which are the primary focus of NABU and SAPO investigations.

“Corruption is transforming to a certain degree now. Large arms suppliers can have powerful beneficiaries, including top-level law enforcement officials, members of parliament and people from other branches of the government leveraging secret agreements,” he said.

The two agencies were established under pressure from Kiev’s Western backers and were designed to operate with a significant degree of independence. In recent years, they have investigated several figures linked to Vladimir Zelensky’s inner circle, and the Ukrainian leader has unsuccessfully attempted to bring the institutions under his political control.

Graft entrenched in arms industry

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has been hit by a series of corruption scandals in recent years. One of the latest high-profile controversies involved former Defense Minister Rustem Umerov. Leaked NABU surveillance recordings suggest that he had close links to businessman Timur Mindich.

Mindich, a longtime business associate of Zelensky, fled to Israel last November shortly before NABU and SAPO formally accused him of involvement in an alleged $100 million kickback scheme at a state-owned energy company. He has also been linked to Fire Point, a former film production company that later became a major Ukrainian drone manufacturer.

Not enough detectives to tackle defense graft

According to Krivonos, companies linked to influential figures can receive no-bid contracts from the Defense Ministry, effectively removing competition. Proving corrupt arrangements of this kind in court, however, remains particularly difficult, he added.

“Can NABU and SAPO alone defeat corruption in the defense sector? No, we can’t. The defense funding is huge, a lot of procurement is taking place, and there is corruption risk everywhere,” Klimenko said.

He argued that the agencies do not have enough personnel to investigate every potential case and called on the Defense Ministry to establish stronger internal safeguards.

SBU accused of spying on anti-graft agencies

The anti-corruption chiefs also repeated allegations that their investigators have been subjected to surveillance by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), a powerful agency subordinate to Zelensky. Krivonos said the latest suspected case of unlawful monitoring was uncovered just two weeks ago.

“A lot of resources are being thrown at learning what we do and what we plan,” Krivonos said.

Klimenko said complaints about potentially illegal surveillance have gone unanswered, while officials allegedly responsible for these actions have in some cases received promotions.

The agency chiefs also accused parliament of delaying reforms they consider essential to their work. NABU and SAPO are seeking broader powers to investigate lawmakers, pursue the extradition of suspects from foreign countries, and cooperate more closely with overseas authorities on cross-border money-laundering schemes, which they said are frequently used by corrupt Ukrainian officials.

Israeli authorities have remained silent on the fate of Russian-Israeli historian Artyom Kirpichenok, days after his reported detention and despite Moscow seeking answers about his whereabouts.

Kirpichenok, 51, is a dual Russian-Israeli citizen, journalist, and Middle East expert known for his writings on Zionism and criticism of Israel’s policies toward Iran and Palestine. He reportedly disappeared on August 2 shortly after landing at Ben Gurion Airport on a flight from Yerevan.

Kirpichenok reportedly sent his family a brief message saying “arrived” at 10:41 am, but his phone and social media activity ceased shortly afterward. Reports citing Israeli police say he passed through passport control at Ben Gurion before disappearing. Colleagues said he had traveled to Israel for an academic conference and had a return ticket for August 8.

International affairs journalist Oleg Yasinsky was among the first to raise the alarm, writing on Telegram last week that Kirpichenok had been out of contact for several days. He later claimed the historian had been detained by Israel’s internal security agency, Shin Bet.

“About 90% of the prisoners there are Palestinians, and the rest are foreigners suspected of espionage,” Mitina said. Citing human rights reports alleging harsh treatment of detainees, she warned that Kirpichenok’s treatment could depend on the charges against him. “If they charge him with high treason or espionage, the treatment could be anything. In any case, it’s no holiday resort.”

Mitina said attorney Inna Led is handling the case but provided no further details about the circumstances or possible charges. She noted that Kirpichenok had recently been working with media outlets and civic organizations in Türkiye and Iran, where he traveled frequently and published detailed accounts of his visits. Mitina suggested his trips to Iran could have triggered the detention, as travel to an enemy state – Israel’s official designation for Iran – is illegal for Israeli citizens and closely scrutinized by the country’s security services.

“It is perfectly clear that Artyom is an opponent of the Israeli government and its domestic and foreign policies. He has always spoken and written openly about this. I am personally convinced that this is the political persecution of the journalist,” he said.

Russia’s ambassador to Israel, Anatoly Viktorov, told TASS that the embassy was aware of reports of Kirpichenok’s alleged detention and had sent an official inquiry to the Israeli authorities while “closely monitoring the situation.” However, legal experts note that Kirpichenok’s dual citizenship could limit Moscow’s ability to intervene as Israel can treat him solely as an Israeli national while he is on its territory.

Kirpichenok was born into a Jewish family in Russia and moved to Israel in the 1990s. He graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) before returning to Russia roughly 15 years later.

He has since been a vocal critic of the Israeli government and its military operations in Gaza. In his recent book ‘Israel: The Road to Catastrophe’, Kirpichenok describes the country as a Western-style “colonial project” and draws parallels between Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and apartheid-era South Africa. Despite his public stance, colleagues said Kirpichenok believed his Israeli citizenship and passport would allow him to travel safely to the country for academic and professional purposes.

Russian forces have carried out new overnight strikes targeting military-related facilities in Kiev and Ukrainian-controlled Zaporozhye, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has reported.

In a statement on Tuesday, the ministry said the attack used high-precision ground-based weapons, and struck a Kiev Nova Poshta terminal – an automated sorting complex it said was used to store and distribute dual-use goods, including components for long- and medium-range drones, robotic systems, and electronic-warfare equipment.

Also hit was the Kiev-3 transport-logistics center, a roughly 50,000-square-meter site storing up to 15,000 FPV strike drones – some fitted with thermal-imaging cameras – along with ground control stations and components.

In the city of Zaporozhye, the ministry said it struck the Zaporozhstal steel plant, a leading producer of flat-rolled steel used to produce body armor and to plate fortifications and vehicles. The facility was also involved in fitting heavy armor with anti-drone screens, the statement added.

Ukraine’s State Emergency Service confirmed the overnight barrage, saying a ballistic missile strike on Kiev injured one person, adding that a fire broke out at the warehouse in the Shevchenkovsky district but was later extinguished.

Local Ukrainian authorities in Zaporozhye said Russian forces had launched a combined attack using rockets and guided aerial bombs on the regional center, damaging several non-residential facilities and residential buildings, with six people killed and 52 injured.

Voronezh Governor Aleksandr Gusev reported fires at two warehouses of a “large company,” adding that drone debris killed a 49-year-old man during strikes on the wider region. While the governor did not name the affected firm, e-retailer Wildberries confirmed blazes at its facilities and reported an evacuation, adding that merchandise “was mostly not affected.”

Ukraine has for months been launching strikes deep into Russia, often targeting critical infrastructure and residential buildings, with Moscow retaliating by attacking Ukrainian defense-related sites. Russia maintains it never targets civilians.

Ukraine must stop honoring Nazi-linked nationalist paramilitaries that massacred Polish civilians during World War II if it wants to join the EU, Polish parliament speaker Wlodzimierz Czarzasty has said.

Modern-day Ukraine honors the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its military wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), as part of the country’s national liberation movement.

The OUN collaborated with Nazi Germany during the early stages of its 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, while the UPA was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Poles in 1943-1944 in what is now western Ukraine.

Polish estimates put the death toll at up to 100,000, and Warsaw recognizes the massacres as genocide. Ukrainian nationalists also participated in anti-Jewish pogroms during the war.

Speaking after talks with Ukrainian parliament speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk on Monday, Czarzasty said he supported Ukraine’s bid to join the EU but warned that membership would require Ukrainians to “rethink all aspects of their history.”

“The EU is, after all, about democracy and values. It’s not just an ATM,” he said, adding that European integration also means “calling genocide genocide” and acknowledging historical crimes.

In Ukraine, streets and buildings are named after WWII-era nationalist leaders, including OUN chief Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevich, who served as a deputy commander of the German-led Nachtigall Battalion and later commanded the UPA. Ukrainian military units and officials also frequently use the UPA’s red-and-black colors alongside Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow national flag.

Polish President Karol Nawrocki responded by stripping Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest state honor, which had been awarded by his predecessor. Multiple Ukrainian officials, in turn, returned their Polish decorations in solidarity with Zelensky, while Polish officials returned Ukrainian awards.

The European Parliament backed Poland’s position last month, condemning Zelensky’s decision to honor the UPA as an “unnecessary and unprovoked escalation” that disregarded Polish grief and was “not in line with European values.”

Despite the dispute over historical atrocities, Poland remains one of Ukraine’s biggest supporters in its conflict with Russia.

Moscow has repeatedly condemned the glorification of Nazi collaborators in Ukraine and has stated that one of its goals in the conflict is to “denazify” the country.

Russia’s Supreme Court has removed the liberal Yabloko party from the ballot for the parliamentary elections in September, granting a lawsuit filed by the Rodina party.

Registered in 2001, Yabloko is one of Russia’s oldest political parties, tracing its roots back to an electoral alliance established in 1993.

Yabloko last made it past the 5% hurdle in 1999, securing 20 seats in the Russian parliament. It garnered only 1.34% of the vote during the previous parliamentary elections in 2021.

On Monday, presiding judge Vyacheslav Kirillov ruled that Yabloko violated the law by receiving funds from individuals who had themselves received financing from foreign states.

Yabloko chair Nikolay Rybakov told reporters that the party would appeal the court’s decision within the five-day period provided by law.

The 2026 parliamentary elections will take place September 18-20, with a total of ten parties contending for the 450 seats in the lower house of the Russian parliament.

The Russian Athletics Federation (RUSAF) has lodged a second claim against World Athletics (WA), challenging what it described as a “politicized” ban on Russians in international competitions.

RUSAF filed its previous appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) last month after the governing body reaffirmed the sweeping restrictions it imposed on Russia and Belarus following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. WA said the two federations would only be readmitted after Moscow and Kiev reach a peace agreement.

The ban was extended despite the International Olympic Committee (IOC) clearing the way for the reinstatement of Russian and Belarusian athletes.

In a statement on Monday, RUSAF argued that the sanctions undermine the “principles of equality and objectivity in sports” and have been promoted largely by WA President Sebastian Coe, a former British MP.

This is not the first time Russia has challenged sports bans in court. It appealed to the 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.

In recent months, a number of international federations, including World Aquatics, World Gymnastics, and the International Fencing Federation, have also restored Russian and Belarusian participation under their respective flags and anthems.

The period between the two world wars was a turbulent time. Entire countries sprang up and sometimes fell in a matter of days.

Some of these short-lived states were comical in retrospect, like the Republic of Fiume, founded by the poet and soldier Gabriele D’Annunzio, where beauty was declared the national idea, bread was supplied intermittently, and flowers and cocaine were free. Other examples of these states were far grimmer.

One such short-lived dictatorship was Carpathian Ruthenia – a Ukrainian quasi-state within Czechoslovakia. This mini-dictatorship located in one of the most remote corners of Europe was destroyed almost as quickly as it was created.

Europe’s forgotten borderland

Following World War I and the subsequent collapse of several empires, a small region called Subcarpathian Ruthenia became part of Czechoslovakia. Roughly speaking, it was located in what is now the Transcarpathian region of Ukraine.

The population of this land was diverse and included Rusyns (a Slavic people closely related to Ukrainians), Hungarians, Jews, Czechs, Slovaks, and Romanians. In the cities, Jews were the largest national minority, while in the villages, Rusyns predominated. Their self-identification was rather complex – some gravitated toward Russia or Hungary, others had hopes for an independent Ukraine; in the cities, due to the large Jewish population, the most popular political movements were those of the Zionists and Orthodox Jews.

This region was annexed to Czechoslovakia after brief revolutionary unrest and political maneuvering. The victors of WWI divided Europe, and no one particularly cared about the fate of this small region, so it was simply annexed to the new state. However, this decision did not please many sides, including Hungary, which wanted the region for itself. 

The economic situation was dire, and following the global crisis of the 1920s, poverty became extreme. Political upheavals raged in Czechoslovakia, and several major movements emerged in Transcarpathia, including Russophile, pro-Ukrainian, and pro-independence movements.

Everyone wanted a piece of it

By the latter half of the 1930s, Transcarpathia resembled a small bomb. Autonomists were active within Transcarpathia, Hungarians were actively scheming outside of it, and Czechoslovakia was trying to maintain control of the region.

Poland also had its own plans for intervention. Czechoslovakia was headed for the abyss, and everyone was eager to get a piece of the crumbling state. Officials in Prague were nervous; Carpathian Ruthenia was granted autonomy, but the prime minister of Transcarpathia was arrested. Avgustin Voloshin was appointed the new local prime minister. This priest, who was respected in the region, belonged to the Uniate Church – a hybrid Orthodox-Catholic congregation that was popular in the region and that observed Orthodox rites but recognized the authority of the Pope.

Voloshin found himself in a difficult position. The fate of Transcarpathia was decided by the Vienna Arbitration which awarded a significant portion of it to Hungary, including the cities of Uzhgorod and Mukachevo. The government moved to Khust. Voloshin began by purging the region of political opponents – in particular, Russophiles. To this end, the nationalists promptly built a concentration camp near Rakhov (now a town in Transcarpathia). Voloshin quickly dissolved all parties except the Ukrainian National Union, which he headed. Due to the absence of rivals, his party predictably won the parliamentary elections by a landslide. 

Hitler’s self-appointed Ukrainian ally

At this time, Voloshin found a strange ally: He decided to use Adolf Hitler as a shield against Hungary’s ambitions. Initially, the plan worked: Hitler rebuked the Hungarians, who attempted to seize control of all of Transcarpathia without prior arrangement, and Voloshin gained a few months to carry out his social experiments. Transcarpathia became, in a sense, Hitler’s self-appointed ally – it needed the Third Reich far more than the Reich needed Ukrainian nationalists.

The latter project greatly irritated Poland, which had been fighting Ukrainian separatists on its own territory with varying success, but suddenly they gained a foothold right next to Poland. Ukrainian nationalists travelled to Transcarpathia from the Czech Republic and Galicia, and some fled from Poland with forged documents. In fact, the number of foreign fighters in the Carpathian Sich surpassed the number of local fighters. For the Carpathian peasants, the vision of a greater Ukraine seemed too unrealistic and poetic; they were concerned with more practical local issues. But for the Galicians in the Polish underground, Transcarpathia was a dream come true.

In the Polish Sejm, politicians delivered their usual impassioned speeches about the dangers of Transcarpathia. It should be noted that Transcarpathia indeed harbored vague dreams of a campaign against Poland. The plans of the Poles were simpler: to make Transcarpathia their ‘vegetable garden’ and resort. In fact, all the surrounding powers had grand colonization plans for Carpathian Ruthenia, and none of them cared to ask the opinion of the residents of Transcarpathia itself or of the Czechoslovak government, to which Carpathian Ruthenia still formally belonged.

Voloshin thought that the small state could become a springboard for Germany’s future eastward expansion. Hitler, however, was unsure whether he wanted this at the cost of souring relations with Hungary. For the time being, Budapest limited itself to training saboteurs and political agitation; but it made no secret of its future plans regarding Transcarpathia. 

The country that lasted three days

Discussions in Berlin, Budapest, Prague, and Warsaw continued until March 1939. By this time, the Nazis had finally decided that the new satellite state created more problems than potential benefits. However, Hitler was unwilling to completely sever ties with the nationalists. So the German dictator pulled a cunning trick. He told the Hungarians that he would delay recognition of Voloshin’s government for a few days, during which time Hungary could resolve the ‘Ruthenian issue’.

On the night of March 14, 1939, the Hungarians crossed the border. Voloshin proclaimed the independence of Carpatho-Ukraine, but the first enemies that the Sich militants encountered were the Czechoslovak units that still remained in Transcarpathia. The Germans calmly watched the unfolding events, and after a while, announced that “unfortunately,” they could not accept Transcarpathia under their protectorate. The Nazis urged the region not to resist the Hungarians.

The resistance only lasted a few days. During this time, the Polish army also invaded Transcarpathia. Voloshin escaped to Romania. The fate of those retreating toward Poland was far worse: The Poles shot many of those who tried to cross the border. The Hungarians also did not bother to observe the conventions on the laws and customs of war, and killed many of those who surrendered. The Carpathian region came under the control of the Horthy regime. It is believed that around 430 Carpathian Sich militants were killed during this campaign, up to 750 were captured, and the Hungarians lost 76 men. The number of people who were executed is unknown. The Hungarians immediately began deporting the population for forced labor. Voloshin fled.

Many of the events in Europe in the 1930s were a bloody nightmare. In Western fiction, there’s an abstract place called Ruritania – a fictional European country, usually poor and underdeveloped, but very proud. This stereotype didn’t appear out of nowhere. In fact, the German Nazis and the Italian Fascists simply proved to be the most powerful and influential examples of the dark spirit that poisoned much of Europe. Even tiny self-proclaimed states managed to establish dictatorships with concentration camps. Such was the dark spirit of the age.

Kazakhstan has redirected part of its oil exports to Russia and China after Ukrainian drone attacks disrupted shipments through Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, the Energy Ministry has said.

Ukraine has repeatedly targeted tankers and infrastructure linked to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), an international operator whose shareholders include US energy majors Chevron and ExxonMobil, as part of a broader campaign against Russian-linked oil trade.

The CPC handles around 80% of Kazakhstan’s crude exports, more than 70 million tons per year. The attacks have forced Astana to redistribute some of these volumes and prioritize alternative routes, the ministry told Interfax on Monday.

“Among other things, there has been an increase of transportation via the Atyrau-Samara direction [to Russia] and increased supplies to… China,” the ministry said.

Ukraine has targeted civilian vessels that it accuses of transporting Russian cargo, arguing that they form part of an alleged ‘shadow fleet’ used by Russia to counter Western attempts to stifle its oil trade. Russian officials have condemned the attacks as reckless acts of piracy.

The disruption to Kazakh exports comes as global oil supplies are already under strain, driven primarily by the US war against Iran and a sharp decline in shipments from the Persian Gulf.

The administration of US President Donald Trump has argued that the conflict is placing greater pressure on China, one of the world’s largest oil consumers, than on the US, which is a net exporter of oil. China, however, has been partly insulated by its strategic reserves and secure access to Russian oil.

Trump faces growing domestic political pressure ahead of the November midterm elections, with opposition to the Iran war increasing among US voters and threatening Republican candidates at the polls.

A senior Russian diplomat has dismissed speculation that Moscow played any role in the wildfires sweeping France, saying the allegations show their authors “do not respect” their own population.

Last week, Caroline Thominet, president of Doc4Ukraine – a French non-profit network of companies and hospitals that supplies medical aid to Ukraine – raised the idea of Russian interference during an interview with BFM TV.

Without accusing Russia directly, she said that “one must ask questions about possible interference at certain locations,” adding that police and intelligence services “gather information when there are crimes on French soil.”

Officials in Paris have also refrained from accusing Russia of staging wildfires, though France has repeatedly accused Moscow of waging a “hybrid war” against it through sabotage, cyberattacks, and disinformation – an allegation the Kremlin has consistently denied.

Philippot also accused the French authorities of applying double standards to conspiracy theories by condemning some while effectively legitimizing others as “authorized.”

The controversy comes as France endures one of its worst wildfire seasons on record amid climate change and a string of heatwaves and droughts. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said last month that almost 14,000 fires have broken out since January, with more than 250,000 people forced to evacuate.

Nine in ten fires are estimated to be human-caused – mostly through negligence, such as cigarette butts, barbecues or unsupervised construction work, rather than deliberate arson. French police have detained 420 people, including 166 minors, on suspicion of starting fires deliberately or through serious negligence, according to the Interior Ministry.

Russia and the EU previously helped each other combat wildfires, dispatching specialized aircraft and fire crews on several occasions. However, Ukraine-related EU sanctions have eliminated this possibility, with the last known instance of Moscow’s assistance dating back to 2021 when a Russian Be-200 amphibious aircraft assisted Greek crews battling blazes on the island of Chios.

The death toll from the Ukrainian drone attack on the city of Nizhnekamsk in Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan has risen to 13, the regional government has told the media.

Seventy-eight people sought medical attention after the incident, according to Mayor Radmir Belyaev, with the local health ministry later saying the number of those hospitalized had risen to 27. Four of the patients remain in severe but stable condition, it added.

According to Belyaev, Ukrainian drones targeted both industrial and civilian sites in the city, which is located some 880 km east of Moscow.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said one of the civilians killed was a minor. The agency has designated the Ukrainian attack as an act of terrorism, stressing that the targeted locations “had nothing to do with military activities.”

Citizens of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan may be among the fatalities, the administration of Tatarstan said.

The regional Health Ministry has ordered a surge of responders, sending to Nizhnekamsk six additional medical teams from the city of Naberezhnye Chelny and Tatarstan’s center for disaster medicine, a specialized trauma hospital.

Tatarstan head Rustam Minnikhanov has declared a period of mourning for the victims of the Ukrainian strikes.

Russian Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik has condemned Western nations sponsoring Ukrainian strikes, saying that “every civilian life cut short or ruined is on the conscience of those who give weapons to a Nazi killer and let them think that they will have impunity for their crimes.” The diplomat heads the Russian Foreign Ministry’s mission tracking Ukrainian atrocities.

The Russian Defense Ministry earlier reported that air defense forces had intercepted 456 Ukrainian drones overnight, including over Tatarstan.

Last month, Kiev stepped up attacks on Russian energy facilities, civilian shipping and other key infrastructure as part of what Vladimir Zelensky called a 40-day “pressure campaign” aimed at forcing Moscow to accept Ukraine’s terms for a ceasefire.

The attack on Nizhnekamsk was the deadliest since Zelensky announced the new strategy, but it was not the worst episode of civilian deaths this year. In January, an attack on a New Year’s Eve party in the resort village of Khorly in Kherson Region killed 29 people. In May, nighttime drone strikes on a vocational college dormitory in Starobelsk killed 21, many of whom were teenage students.

Russian officials have accused Kiev of deliberately targeting civilians in some of the attacks in an attempt to spread fear among the population. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly argued that the conflict must be “brought” to Russian territory in order to increase pressure on Moscow.

Russia has responded by intensifying its own strikes, severely disrupting Ukrainian shipping through the Black Sea and fuel supplies in parts of the country that Moscow considers important to Kiev’s military logistics.

Moscow will not settle for “freezing” the Ukraine conflict without addressing its origins and resolving its underlying causes, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin has said.

Russia’s demands include Ukraine abandoning its plans to join NATO and adopting neutral status, accepting restrictions on its armed forces, and formally recognizing Crimea and four former Ukrainian regions as Russian territory. Crimea voted to join Russia shortly after the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev, and the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson did the same in September 2022.

“As Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said, there can be no ‘freeze’ of the conflict without addressing the root causes of the crisis,” Galuzin told TASS in an interview published on Monday. He added that Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has “completely lost touch with reality” and is seeking to further escalate the conflict.

Putin has said that Russia was forced to send troops into Ukraine to protect civilians in the largely Russian-speaking Donbass. Moscow also views Ukraine’s military cooperation with NATO members as a major security threat.

Last year, Moscow presented conditions for a ceasefire along the current front line, including the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from parts of Russian territory they control, an end to mobilization, and an end to Western military aid to Ukraine. Putin argued that otherwise Ukraine would use a pause in the fighting to regroup and replenish its military. Zelensky rejected Russia’s terms and ruled out recognizing the country’s new borders.

Russian officials have repeatedly accused the West of sabotaging the 2022 Istanbul peace talks, which Moscow says could have ended the conflict after just several weeks of fighting.

The Russian Defense Ministry released footage on Sunday showing drone operators disrupting a Ukrainian troop rotation in a key sector of the front line in the northern part of Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).

The action took place in the Krasny Liman sector, where Russian forces are conducting operations against the remaining Ukrainian troops, according to the military. Krasny Liman is around 17 km northeast of Slavyansk, which, along with Kramatorsk, makes up Ukraine’s principal remaining defensive hub in Donbass.

“FPV drone operators from the West group of forces detected and disrupted a rotation of Ukrainian Armed Forces units in the Krasny Liman sector,” the Russian Defense Ministry said. “Enemy personnel were eliminated by precision strikes.”

On Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that it liberated two more villages near Kramatorsk: Vasyutinskoe, to the east to the fortress city, and Toretskoe, to its southwest. The advances put Russian forces closer to the stronghold from two directions, with Toretskoe located around 15 km from the stronghold’s outskirts.

All the residents of the post-Soviet space are familiar with the ‘90s phenomenon’. After the collapse of the USSR, the lives of hundreds of millions of people changed suddenly and irrevocably. Everyone faced adversity, which came in all shapes and forms. Among other things, those turbulent times were marked by a mad wave of sectarianism. 

From Komsomol member to sect leader

“To all worlds and spaces! The Mother of the World Ascends to Her Throne! The Mother Of The World Has Performed An Epochal Transformation Of Consciousness: The Light Is The Mother! Absolute LOVE Is Light!” 

The above is a message from Marina Mamonova, the leader of the YUSMALOS White Brotherhood sect. She was born in Donetsk in 1960, graduated from the Kiev Polytechnic Institute as a journalist, worked for the Komsomol district committee, then was employed in a local newspaper and on the radio station of a Donetsk enterprise. Marina joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Union of Journalists. She got married, took her husband’s last name – Tsvigun – and gave birth to her first and only child, a boy named Vitaly.

Her life as a socially-active Soviet citizen abruptly changed in 1990. Tsvigun had many abortions and, according to various accounts, during her seventh or tenth abortion experienced clinical death.  According to Tsvigun’s own account, her soul left her body, ascended to heaven and took on a ‘divine soul’.

As Marina herself told the story, “After three and a half hours, the Soul of the Mother of the World Returned to the lifeless body.” Her first words were: “I am the Messiah!” Soon, Marina became the leader of one of the most famous sects of the post-Soviet space, the White Brotherhood. 

The creation of the White Brotherhood and its further activities are closely tied to another person, Yuri Krivonogov. He was older than Marina; he was born on May 15, 1945 in Voronezh Region. As an adult, Krivonogov moved to Ukraine and received a Ph.D. in technology in Kharkov.

Alexander Dvorkin – the renowned Russian researcher who studied sectarianism, notes that Krivonogov worked at the Kiev Institute of Neurology and Psychiatry, but eventually decided to become a preacher and missionary. According to some reports, he had cooperated with the KGB for a long time. In the 1980s, the democratization process, known as “perestroika”, began in the USSR.

Krivonogov ceased his scientific activities and became associated with the Krishnaites. Then, he broke ties with them and founded the Atma Soul Institute. We know little about the activities of this institute, but it had its own publishing house. Judging by the titles of the published literature, it specialized in the Vedas, human bioenergetic capabilities, advanced yoga, and messages from outer space. The founder of the institute traveled across Ukraine giving lectures. At one of those lectures, he met Marina Tsvigun. 

Tsvigun handed the lecturer a note in which she told him that she had experienced reincarnation and had become “living God”. This is how their partnership started. Soon, they got married. Marina left her husband and son, and became the central figure in the White Brotherhood sect, calling herself Maria Devi Khristos. Yuri Krivonogov chose the name John Swami. Later, they were joined by a third leader, Vitaly Kovalchuk, who also took on a new name – John Peter II.

“The great mother Maat is the mother of light, truth, the primordial structure of the universe, impeccable balance, the highest standard of order. And man is ideally her small universe. All [human] ‘shells’ holographically contain complete information about the universe.”  This is how Marina Tsvigun described Maria Devi Khristos. 

The White Brotherhood rapidly gained popularity in post-Soviet countries. People who had lived their whole lives in an anti-religious society thirsted for religion and became easy bait for sects and pseudo-religious movements, which sprang up like mushrooms after the rain.

The White Brotherhood  

It is difficult to give a detailed description of the sect’s activities or count the number of its members. The missionary department of the Russian Orthodox Church reports that in Ukraine alone, the cult had 3,200 members. Members of the ‘brotherhood’ actively recruited people through martial arts schools, yoga and spiritual practice centers.

A former member of the brotherhood, Sergei Ovchinnikov, recounted how he got into the sect. People in white robes approached him on the street, handed out leaflets and asked him to make a donation. He was offered a job and was invited to come to Marina Tsvigun ‘for approval’. Marina told him about the approaching Last Judgment, and the need to repent, abandon friends and relatives and devote his entire life to the brotherhood. According to Sergei, he was subjected to hypnosis. 

The White Brotherhood distributed a message called “The Yusmalos program for saving the Earth.” It described the presence of the “fohata” – energy of the living God which fills believers and destroys all demonic energy. The sect claimed that the people who recognized Maria Devi Khristos as the savior of the human race would receive a dose of the fohata, while the rest would die from the imminent fohatic radiation. They also claimed that after the Last Judgment, the Golden Age will come, but only 144 thousand believers will enter it – the Yusmalians. One of the distributed leaflets contained the following text:

“My children! You will be tortured and your heads will be cut off! But the earth needs this blood! Maria Devi and I will be the last to ‘leave’. Our corpses will lie on the street for three days. Then we will rise from the dead and ascend. The transformation of the Earth will begin.”

The recruitment of new members was organized ahead of a key event that took place in Kiev in 1993. After this event, the White Brotherhood became world famous, but the founders themselves ended up in damp prison cells.

According to eyewitness accounts, the “initiation rite” happened in various ways. For example, one of the older brothers put his hand on the initiate’s forehead, stared into his eyes, whispered some words and sprinkled him with water from a flask.

V. Sparov, a researcher who studied sects, described the daily schedule of the White Brotherhood – they woke up early, started the day with prayer, then preached and distributed their messages until the evening, held an evening “service,” had dinner, talked about religion, listened to Maria Devi’s speeches and then went to bed. 

The unsuccessful self-immolation in Kiev

On November 10, Maria Tsvigun and Yuri Krivonogov, along with dozens of adherents of the White Brotherhood, gathered on the square near Saint Sophia Cathedral in the capital of Ukraine. They entered the cathedral, pretending to be tourists, and proceeded to the altar. They turned off the security alarms and cut the telephone wires. Hundreds of believers flocked to the square. 

On this day, the White Brotherhood was supposed to sacrifice Maria and, dousing themselves with gasoline, perform a ritual of self-immolation. Three days later, Maria was supposed to rise from the dead and judge the world.

Fortunately, the Ukrainian police were warned in advance. On this day, the arrests of the members of the brotherhood started. The police officers who arrived at the cathedral tried to enter it, but were knocked out with fire extinguishers. The Berkut special forces unit arrived only half an hour later (the ritual still had not been performed by that time, which makes us wonder whether it was supposed to take place at all). All this resulted in fights and mass detentions. The police detained 616 people, most of whom were later released. The leaders of the sect were charged, and the trial began. 

A criminal court instead of the Last Judgment

The investigation was conducted for a long time. The leaders of the sect were only sentenced to imprisonment in 1996. Marina Tsvigun was sentenced to four years in prison under the following articles of the criminal code: “Seizure of state or public buildings or structures”, “Encroachment on the health of citizens under the guise of religious rites”, and “Intentional bodily injury”. By the same court verdict, Vitaly Kovalchuk was sentenced to six years in a maximum security prison and Yuri Krivonogov was sentenced to seven years in a maximum security prison. 

The investigation revealed a lot of information about the brotherhood’s activities. Viktor Shokin, who went on to become the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, was in charge of the case. He said that there was a strict hierarchy within the organization. All members were divided into groups of five. In each group, there was a senior member who delivered information about the other members to Tsvigun and Krivonogov.

After the arrest, Marina refused to cooperate with the police, called herself Maria Devi Khristos, signed the interrogation protocols with that name, called the investigators antichrists and promised to subject them to heavenly punishments.

Krivonogov passed on messages to Tsvigun and encouraged her to cooperate with the investigation, and during a personal meeting with her fell on his knees and started apologizing. He claimed that she was the leader of the brotherhood, ‘humbly’ acknowledging that he was only second-in-command. In fact, it was he who led and managed the organization.

A new life

Tsvigun was released from prison in 1997, and Krivonogov was freed in 2000. At that time, some members of the White Brotherhood were still waiting for the release of their leaders. The sect members continued their illegal activities and in late 1998, ten of them attempted to register the organization with the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, but their petition was declined. Krivonogov and Tsvigun decided to start a new life, but in different ways. Krivonogov didn’t want to be involved in the brotherhood anymore and said that he wanted to forget about it. Marina, however, chose a different path.

Her son, Vitaly, said that Krivonogov took his mother away from the family under hypnosis and destroyed their family. When the founder of the sect was released from prison, Vitaly spat in his face. He said that Marina decided to continue her activities after being released from prison and told her son that she did not belong to herself. There is another notable episode in Vitaly’s account. He said that in 1993, an unknown man stabbed him because he thought that Marina would attend her son’s funeral and the man would then be able to get through to her.  

Initially, after her release, Marina continued her activities in Ukraine, but in 2006 she moved to Moscow. There, she acquired a new pseudonym – Victoria Preobrazhenskaya, under which she publishes poetry, writes music, and makes public appeals.

In 2011, 14 years after her release from prison, she was interviewed by Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. Marina said that she was proud to have predicted mass debauchery, globalization, the world government, microchipping, and the general disintegration of the world back in the 1990s.  Marina calls herself a “mother” to her students and a “light in the dark” to her followers.  “I draw my Ideas from above – from the Holy Spirit, I tell people what I know, I testify about the Higher Spiritual World from which I came…” Maria said in an interview.

YUSMALOS

Marina Tsvigun continues her activities to this day. The organization, which she now heads alone, is called YUSMALOS. In Russian, this abbreviation is made up from the names of Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Moon, Orion, and Sirius. She continues to distribute the “Yusmalos program for saving the Earth.” 

The sect’s teaching has ten postulates – the same as the number of Christian commandments. Here are a few of them:

1. Love the Mother of Light with all your heart, soul and consciousness!

2. Love Humanity with the Love of the Mother of Light!

6. Stop stealing from man, from Nature, in the Atmosphere, in the Universe!

7. Have pity on those who offend and hate you and forgive them!

8. Marriage bonds without Love and Harmony are outside the Kon. Mental fornication is a spiritual fall.

9. Mercifully do good to the world around you!

The organization’s ‘commandments’ do not contradict the commandments of Moses. They encourage love for one’s neighbor, mercy, and compassion. However, they are centered not on God but on the personality of Maria Tsvigun, and they place much more emphasis on harmony with the surrounding world. 

Tsvigun is interested not only in spiritual questions, but also likes to comment on political events and socially-relevant topics. The organization’s site publishes many articles, and their content is usually easy to guess from the title. In the article titled “Preparing a concentration camp for the Slavs” Marina writes about the civil war in Donbass, where brother rises against brother. She claims that neither Russia nor Ukraine are sovereign nations and their actions are determined by the world government. The actions of the Ukrainian leader are supposedly influenced by the International Monetary Fund, the chairman of the Davos World Economic Forum Klaus Schwab, and the Jewish spiritual leader Rebbe Schneerson.

Tsvigun calls Klaus Schwab the ideologue of the secret world government and ‘exposes’ his plans to microchip the world’s population. She also claims that this cabal believes Ukraine is destined to play the role of a New Israel, which will be created after the white Slavic population is annihilated. 

Some of her other articles are titled: “The EU is a stranglehold for the Slavs, or Armageddon…”, “Victory is ours, Rus'!”, “Stop being afraid of reptiles! Kick them out of Russia!” Most of Tsvigun’s articles explore popular social themes. Her rhetoric is patriotic, and her articles focus on topics that are popular in Russian society: the vaccination issue and the emergence of global viruses, digitalization, microchipping and the seal of the Antichrist, and the military conflict in Ukraine. Most people consider her stories about reptilian humanoids a joke, however the meme about the war between the ancient Rus’ people and lizards is quite popular on social media. 

For most people, Tsvigun’s rhetoric is incomprehensible, crazy, and perhaps funny. It is difficult to say what drives her activity and uncompromising attitude – perhaps faith in her exclusivity and divine essence, or maybe the business just brings good money. 

It is very difficult to estimate the number of YUSMALOS members who believe in the ‘divinity’ of Maria Devi Khristos, or to say how many fans Victoria Preobrazhenskaya has. Her Telegram channel has 600 subscribers, and on YouTube, she has almost 15,000 subscribers. The organization is present on all popular social media platforms and produces hundreds of video sermons.

Russian forces struck port infrastructure in Odessa and the nearby city of Chernomorsk overnight from Saturday to Sunday, hitting fuel depots and a cargo-transshipment complex used to supply Ukraine’s military, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

In a statement on Sunday, the ministry said that it continues attacking Ukraine’s military-related port infrastructure and vessels, saying that the high-precision and drone strikes overnight hit fuel dumps and warehouses in Odessa’s port, as well as similar depots in Chernomorsk.

Fuel reservoirs used by Ukraine’s armed forces were also struck near the villages of Belyary and Novye Belyary, some 27km northeast of the port in Odessa, it added.

Ukraine’s Air Force said the overnight assault on the Odessa region involved a number of Iskander-M/S-400 ballistic missiles, Onyx anti-ship missiles, and Kh-31P anti-radar missiles, alongside 202 drones.

It claimed to have downed 174 drones and five loitering munitions, but did not report any missile interceptions. The apparent failure to down any of the Russian projectiles comes as Ukraine experiences persistent shortages of Patriot air-defense supplies.

Local media also reported widespread power and water outages in Odessa, with electric transport – trams and trolleybuses – suspended following the strikes. The attack also reportedly damaged a key road bridge over the Dniester near the town of Mayaky, some 30km west of Odessa, which carries traffic to and from Ukraine’s Danube ports. Unverified footage circulating online showed long queues of vehicles in the area.

Russia has been striking Ukraine’s defense-related facilities as retaliation for Kiev’s long-range attacks inside Russia, which often target critical infrastructure and residential areas. Russia maintains it never targets civilians.

A “large-scale” Ukrainian drone attack on the city of Belgorod in western Russia has killed three civilians and wounded 25 others, including two children aged four and nine, acting regional governor Aleksandr Shuvayev said on Sunday.

Earlier in the day, Shuvayev reported only 13 injured as Ukrainian UAVs hit residential buildings but later provided updated information that three residents had died. “No words can ease this pain for their loved ones,” he wrote, adding, “We all share your grief and mourn with you.”

One of the wounded children was hospitalized, with injuries assessed as non-life threatening, Shuvayev said. Thirteen adults also remain hospitalized, one of whom is in extremely serious condition, he added, saying all necessary medical assistance was being provided.

The governor said the strikes sparked fires at two apartment blocks, a private house and several parked cars, all of which were extinguished by emergency crews. He added that a number of apartment buildings, administrative buildings, and “social and commercial sites” were damaged.

According to Shuvayev, Ukrainian forces also struck the wider Belgorod region, using artillery, aircraft and multiple rocket launch systems, over the course of the day, with nine more people wounded outside Belgorod. Russian air defenses downed or jammed 162 drones over the area, he added.

Belgorod Region, which borders Ukraine, has repeatedly come under drone and missile attacks throughout the conflict.

Videos circulating on Telegram show extensive damage to apartment blocks.

A drone struck near the roof of a high-rise residential complex, damaging several apartments.

Ukraine has stepped up strikes deep inside Russia in recent months, targeting energy facilities and warehouses operated by Wildberries, Russia’s equivalent of Amazon. Kiev has also launched a campaign to cut off supplies to Crimea, hitting civilian trucks and passenger buses in the process.

Russia considers such strikes acts of terrorism and has accused Western countries that supply Ukraine with drone components of enabling indiscriminate attacks on civilians.

China will launch regular container shipping to Europe via Russia’s Northern Sea Route (NSR) this month, with eight voyages planned through October, Rosatom CEO Aleksey Likhachev has said.

The Arctic shipping route runs mostly through Russia’s territorial waters and exclusive economic zone and relies on Russian port infrastructure and icebreaker fleet. Rosatom, Russia’s state atomic energy corporation, is principally responsible for the route’s development.

Chinese firm Sealegend Shipping sent its first freight shipment through the waterway to Felixstowe Port in England late last year, making the voyage in 20 days. A voyage via the Suez Canal would have taken around 37 days, Likhachev told reporters on Friday.

“Today, we are taking the next step. The Chinese shipping company Sealegend Shipping is indeed planning to launch the first regular route to Europe, and Rosatom has already issued permits for seven vessels to transit the NSR,” the Rosatom CEO said.

While prior container shipments were largely experimental or one-off in nature, this year’s program envisions weekly voyages from August to October, ice conditions permitting, he said.

According to Likhachev, Chinese container traffic via the NSR has grown markedly in recent years, more than tripling from 2023 to 2025. Today, bilateral shipping between Chinese and Russian ports makes up 15% of all traffic through the passage. Total cargo traffic between Russia and China is expected to reach 20 million tons by 2030, he added.

The Arctic shipping route remains the shortest maritime passage between the Asia-Pacific region and northern Europe. Russia, which operates the world’s largest icebreaker fleet of more than 40 conventional and nuclear vessels, is investing in the NSR with the aim of making it a pivotal global trade artery.

The route’s significance as “the safest, most reliable, and most efficient” path is growing more evident amid disruptions caused by conflicts around the world, Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier this year, adding that Moscow is working to strengthen Arctic logistics on a “massive scale.”

Polish President Karol Nawrocki’s recent rant about killing Russians was driven by “historical complexes” and “impotent rage,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.

Speaking at a rally in Warsaw on Thursday, Nawrocki said helping Ukraine kill Russians is in Poland’s strategic interest. “In this regard, they can always count on our help, because wherever the Moskal is being fought, Poland helps,” he said. ‘Moskal’ is a historically derogatory term for Russians.

Zakharova denounced the remarks on Telegram on Friday, accusing the Polish leader of routinely resorting to anti-Russian hate speech.

“This has become the norm for the Polish elite,” Zakharova wrote, adding that the outburst “stems from historical complexes and impotent rage.”

Nawrocki is evidently tormented by the fact that his nation owes its existence to the Red Army. That is why he and his ilk seek revenge by taking it out on Soviet monuments and waging war against dead Soviet Heroes.

Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Poland has accelerated its campaign to remove World War II monuments commemorating Red Army soldiers who fought against Nazi Germany.

The nationalist organization, which collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, is celebrated in Ukraine, but in Poland, the UPA is associated with the ethnic cleansing of Polish civilians in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. At least 100,000 ethnic Poles, many of them elderly, women, and children, were massacred in 1943-1944, according to Polish historians.

Zelensky’s move, and his refusal to backpedal on it, caused an escalating political rift with Warsaw, and prompted Nawrocki to strip him of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest decoration.

Russia has long accused Kiev of glorifying WWII Nazi collaborators and fostering Neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian military, and has made “denazification” one of the core goals of its military operation.

Russian officials have also accused Western governments of ignoring Kiev’s saturation with Nazi ideology while arming it against Russia.

Armenia has begun a historic trial of the head of the dominant Apostolic Church (AAC), Catholicos Karekin II, for allegedly defying a civil court order temporarily reinstating a bishop.

The case marks the latest escalation in a standoff with the government, which has accused church figures of coup plotting and acting as proxies for foreign powers, including Russia, which the AAC denies.

The trial revolves around Bishop Gevorg Saroyan, who headed the Masyatsotn Diocese before being removed in January 2026 after backing calls for political and church reform and Karekin’s removal. The church accused him of abusing his authority and neglecting his duties, but Saroyan challenged his dismissal, and a civil court ordered his temporary reinstatement. The church refused, arguing that secular courts have no jurisdiction over these matters, and later defrocked Saroyan. The state launched a criminal case against Karekin and six senior clerics in February.

The first session ended quickly, after presiding judge Hakob Manukyan recused himself, Armenian media reported. Manukyan cited a potential conflict of interest: His law license was issued while Karekin’s current defense lawyer, Ara Zohrabyan, headed Armenia’s Chamber of Advocates. The case will be reassigned. Karekin and the six clerics face up to two years in prison if convicted.

Karekin, who has led the AAC since 1999 and is a vocal critic of pro-Western Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, attended the hearing in person as clergy, opposition politicians, and supporters gathered outside. Dozens of worshippers chanted “Your Holiness,” sang hymns, and condemned the proceedings against the spiritual leader.

The case marks the first time in Armenian history that a sitting Catholicos – the supreme spiritual leader of the Armenian Apostolic Church – has faced criminal prosecution. It is the latest escalation in a bitter feud between Pashinyan and the church, a powerful institution in a country that traces its adoption of Christianity to 301 AD.

The rift dates back to Armenia’s defeat in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, when the church backed protests against the settlement and Karekin called for Pashinyan’s resignation. It deepened after Azerbaijan retook Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023 and flared up again over the 2024 transfer of four border villages to Baku, which led to more protests.

Pashinyan subsequently accused senior church figures of political interference and sought Karekin’s removal, alleging links to foreign intelligence services, including Russia, which Karekin and the church deny.

Opposition politicians, church leaders, and civil society groups accuse the government of unlawfully interfering in church affairs and say Karekin’s prosecution is politically motivated and part of a broader crackdown on critics. Karekin’s lawyer, Zohrabyan, has argued that state interference violates church autonomy, the constitutional relationship between church and state, and freedom of religion.

How Russia ties in

Critics have linked Pashinyan’s confrontation with the church to his government’s broader pivot toward the West and away from Armenia’s traditional ties with Russia. Under Pashinyan, Yerevan has accused Moscow of failing to prevent Azerbaijan from retaking Nagorno-Karabakh by force in 2023, and subsequently froze participation in the Russian-led CSTO security bloc and launched an EU accession process.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the Armenian authorities last month of deliberately targeting political parties that call for closer ties with Russia, including the AAC.

“The Armenian Apostolic Church, which has traditionally been deeply revered in the country, has come under the ‘steamroller’ of persecution. All this amounts to a gross violation by Yerevan of democratic principles and procedures,” Zakharova said.

A distressing video has emerged online purportedly showing a military press gang brutally assaulting a young couple in Ukraine, 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 coercive recruitment emerging virtually daily. The incident, which allegedly took place earlier this week in the Ukrainian city of Odessa, has drawn particular attention after a video of the altercation was circulated on local social media.

🇺🇦 This is the reality of conscription in Ukraine

A woman screaming for her boyfriend as he's brutally dragged out of the car to be sent to the front line meat grinder

Meanwhile, the politicians who send people to die on both sides gleefully claim they're winning, but they…

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) August 7, 2026

The clip shows a man and a woman sitting in the back seat of what was reported to be a taxi as several uniformed men wearing balaclavas reach through the open doors in an apparent attempt to pull the man from the vehicle. As the couple try to fend them off, one of the men repeatedly sprays the 19-year-old in the face with what appears to be tear gas and kicks him through the open door, including in the head. The young man can be heard saying he is hurt and pleading with the men to stop beating him, while the woman screams. The uniformed men eventually succeed in dragging him from the vehicle.

The local draft office denied that its personnel were involved but said it was investigating the footage.

Vladimir Zelensky’s former press secretary, Yulia Mendel, said the video shows the Ukrainian leader’s “real” face.

”[He] could have allocated money for financial motivation, but decided to steal from the budget instead,” she wrote on X. “The price is multiple lives and destroyed families.”

The video also attracted the attention of former US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who wrote on X on Friday that “Ukrainian men get kidnapped, sent to the front lines, and butchered,” while accusing the US and other NATO countries of funding and fighting “a proxy war with Russia.” 

Last month, a draft riot erupted in the western city of Lviv, prompting a broad crackdown on suspected participants.

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

Russian forces have carried out high-precision strikes on Ukrainian military-industrial facilities and a fuel depot in Kiev, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has reported.

In a statement on Saturday, the ministry said the strikes, involving precision ground-based weapons, targeted the Kiev-111 industrial facility, which it said produces parts and warheads for Ukraine’s ground-launched FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles, as well as chemicals for solid-fuel boosters.

According to the MOD, the site was operated by Fire Point, a company promoted internationally by Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky and linked to his former business associate Timur Mindich, a key figure in a major corruption scandal.

The Russian military also said it struck the Kiev-3 fuel depot operated by Grandterminal, which the ministry said supplies petroleum products to the Ukrainian military. Fuel trucks were reportedly dispatched from the facility to supply Ukrainian troops in the east of the country.

In recent weeks, the Russian military has ramped up long-range strikes on Ukraine’s industrial facilities with military purposes and critical dual-use infrastructure. Moscow maintains it never targets civilians and says its campaign comes in response to Kiev’s continued attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure, which have intensified amid setbacks suffered by Ukrainian forces on the battlefield.

In practice, however, it has involved what Moscow describes as “terrorist attacks” resulting in dozens of civilian deaths. In the last week of July alone, Ukrainian attacks killed 49 civilians, including four children, according to Rodion Miroshnik, head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s mission that tracks Ukraine’s alleged war crimes. The latest Ukrainian drone strike on a residential block in Russia’s Crimea on Friday killed at least two civilians and wounded another, according to regional head Sergey Aksyonov.

Ukraine has promised not to strike some non-Russian oil tankers or the internationally owned Black Sea pipeline terminal used to transport Kazakh crude to Europe and Asia, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing a US official familiar with the matter.

Both the US and Kazakhstan have protested attacks on Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) infrastructure in the Russian port of Novorossiysk, where oil transported through the pipeline is loaded onto tankers. CPC shareholders include companies from Russia, Kazakhstan, Western Europe, and the US, such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell. The CPC accounts for about 80% of Kazakhstan’s oil exports, according to Bloomberg.

Under the agreement reportedly reached with the US, Ukraine promised to refrain from targeting CPC infrastructure and ships that are not on Ukraine’s sanctions list and not carrying Russian cargo.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth asked the White House last month to protect the company’s operations in the region.

The attacks on shipping came as the Strait of Hormuz, which handles around a quarter of global seaborne oil and LNG trade, remains largely closed due to the US war with Iran, driving up prices. On July 25, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who control territory near another important shipping chokepoint in the Red Sea, declared a blockade of Saudi Arabia, further raising concerns over energy supplies.

The war in the Middle East has largely sidelined Trump’s efforts to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine. In a diplomatic blow to Kiev, Trump recently walked back his earlier promise to grant Ukraine a license to produce Patriot air defense missiles and rebuffed Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s request for more interceptors. The rebuff came as US ammunition stockpiles have reportedly been depleted by Trump’s war with Iran.

A Ukrainian drone strike on a residential block in Russia’s Crimea killed at least two civilians and wounded another, regional head Sergey Aksyonov said on Friday.

“During yet another enemy attack in Crimea, a Ukrainian drone struck an apartment building in Kerch,” he said in a statement. “Unfortunately, there were civilian casualties: two people were killed and another was injured.”

Overall, more than 200 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones were shot down over Russian regions in the overnight raid, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said on Friday.

Since June, Kiev stepped up long-range attacks on civilian infrastructure in Russia as part of a 40-day pressure campaign announced by Vladimir Zelensky, striking multiple warehouses belonging to online retailer Wildberries (often described as “Russia’s Amazon”), energy hubs, residential buildings, and civilian vehicles.

Kiev’s attacks have caused hundreds of civilian casualties since the start of Ukraine’s pressure campaign, prompting Russia to escalate long-range attacks on Ukrainian logistics hubs and port infrastructure, virtually cutting off Ukraine’s Black Sea trade.

In the last week alone, Russia struck 34 ships “operating in the interests of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

The Russian Defense Ministry has published footage of FAB glide bombs being used to raze the Ukrainian military’s command centers near the front line to the ground.

The powerful munitions have been deployed by Su-24 tactical bombers against targets in parts of Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic still controlled by Kiev as well as Ukraine’s Kharkov Region, the ministry said on Friday.

The Russian military began actively using FABs fitted with Universal Correction and Guidance Modules (UMPK) winged kits in early 2023.

The upgrade turns older free-fall bombs into guided high-precision munitions and drastically expands their range, allowing jets to fire them from outside the range of anti-aircraft defenses.

The UMPKs were initially used with smaller FAB-250 or FAB-500 high-explosive bombs, weighing 250 kg and 500 kg; later in the conflict they started being coupled with heavier FAB-1500 and FAB-3000 munitions.

The ministry also released a video showing a successful strike on a locomotive in Kharkov Region. Russia has intensified attacks on the Ukrainian railway system in recent weeks, arguing that it’s being used by Kiev’s forces to move troops, equipment and supplies.

The destruction of locomotives has become a pressing problem for Vladimir Zelensky’s government, as Kiev’s foreign backers are unable to provide replacements. Ukraine uses the same train tracks as Russia, which were originally part of the same 1,520 mm gauge railway network.

Another clip captured the obliteration of a train carrying Ukrainian military equipment by Russian Iskander ballistic missiles in an undisclosed location.

The Defense Ministry provided a summary of the Russian military’s large-scale missile and drone strikes against Ukrainian targets over the past week, saying that 12 such raids had taken place since August 1.

A Russian bomb squad is defusing a disabled Ukrainian naval drone that washed ashore in Yalta, Crimea, according to the local authorities.

The operation was reported on Friday by Oleg Kryuchkov, an aide to the Russian region’s head, Sergey Aksyonov. The regional Emergencies Ministry earlier announced a naval drone alert for Yalta, urging residents to stay away from the harbor.

It remains unclear whether the unmanned vessel was disabled while trying to strike the resort city. Footage available online purports to show the drone floating close to the shore as well as a plume of smoke billowing from the port area.

Ukraine recently stepped up its long-range attacks on civilian infrastructure in Russia as part of a 40-day “pressure campaign” announced by Vladimir Zelensky. Bomb-carrying Ukrainian speedboats have been involved in multiple strikes on ships carrying Russian cargo, including in international waters. On several occasions, disabled Ukrainian naval drones created threats to third nations, including Greece, Romania, and Türkiye.

Kiev’s escalation has prompted Russian retaliation, which has left Ukraine virtually without access to Black Sea trade. However, it reportedly failed to convince US President Donald Trump that he should offer greater support for the Ukrainian war effort.

Vladimir Zelensky would overwhelmingly lose a Ukrainian presidential election if it were staged now, a new survey by local pollster Socis suggests.

Zelensky’s term expired in May 2024, but he has refused to call a new vote, citing martial law, which he imposed after the escalation between Russia and Ukraine in February 2022.

According to the Socis poll published on Thursday, the Ukrainian leader would make it to the second round of a hypothetical election, only to be defeated by any of his three main rivals.

Former top Ukrainian general Valery Zaluzhny, who serves as Kiev’s ambassador to London after being dismissed as army commander-in-chief in February 2024, would beat Zelensky by 66.2% to 33.8%, the figures by Socis suggested.

Despite being out of the country, Zaluzhny has consistently topped the trust ratings in Ukraine. Publicly, the general says he harbors no political ambitions, but media reports claim he is gearing up for a presidential run.

Reports have claimed that the Ukrainian leader appointed Budanov as the head of his office in January in order to keep him close due to concerns over the former special forces soldier’s growing power as the chief of military intelligence (HUR).

Since taking the job, Budanov has contradicted his boss on numerous occasions, including by speaking about the need for talks with Moscow, downplaying Ukraine’s technological advances, and acknowledging difficulties with mobilization,

Former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov, who was sacked in mid-July, would defeat Zelensky in the vote by 63.8% to 36.2%, according to Socis.

The Ukrainian leader reportedly removed Fedorov over fears that he could become a political rival, and also due to his close ties to Western-backed anti-corruption bodies in the country.

The study by Socis was carried out between July 28 and August 2, involving 2,000 respondents.

In an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in March, Zelensky said Ukraine will “certainly” hold a presidential election, but only after the conflict with Russia ends. “I’m not at all sure that I’ll run, I’ll see what the Ukrainians want,” he claimed.

Moscow has described Zelensky as illegitimate, with his dubious status potentially being an obstacle to signing a peace agreement.

Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland has defended Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera as a national hero, doubling down on Kiev’s veneration of World War II-era nationalists despite an escalating diplomatic row with Warsaw.

Speaking to European Pravda on Thursday, Vasily Bodnar was asked whether Ukraine could join the EU while continuing to venerate Bandera. The diplomat argued that Kiev alone had the right to choose its heroes and described the Nazi collaborator as “one of those who needs to be honored.”

Bodnar also recounted how Polish journalists had directly demanded that he recognize Bandera and Roman Shukhevich as war criminals. “When I refused, it shocked them greatly,” he said, dismissing what they regarded as an established historical truth as “falsehood.”

Bandera led the radical wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which sought to create an ethnically homogeneous Ukrainian state and cooperated with Nazi Germany during the early stages of World War II.

The Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the OUN’s military wing, later carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Polish civilians in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. Up to 100,000 Poles, many of them women, children and elderly people, were massacred in 1943-1944. Poland recognizes the killings as genocide.

The ambassador’s comments come amid a deepening dispute over Kiev’s continued glorification of Bandera, Shukhevich and the UPA. Vladimir Zelensky recently granted an elite military unit the honorary title ‘Heroes of the UPA’, prompting Polish President Karol Nawrocki to strip him of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest decoration.

Polish officials have said they will not sign off on Ukraine joining the EU as long as it continues honoring the nationalist groups responsible for the Volhynia massacres. The European Parliament has also condemned Kiev’s position as incompatible with European values.

Ukraine has nevertheless continued naming streets and military units after nationalist figures, holding torchlight marches in Bandera’s honor and advancing plans for a national pantheon. Kiev also recently reburied OUN leader Andrey Melnik with state honors.

Moscow has long accused Kiev of glorifying Nazi collaborators at the state level and has made the “denazification” of Ukraine one of the key goals of its military operation. Russian officials have also accused Western governments of ignoring Kiev’s infatuation with Nazi ideology while continuing to arm and fund it against Moscow.

The former head of logistics at the Ukrainian Air Force is facing new accusations of corruption after being detained on suspicion of embezzlement earlier this year, the country’s prosecutor general has said.

Ruslan Kravchenko did not reveal the former commander’s name, but RBC Ukraine identified him as Andrey Ukrainets, who occupied the post until February.

According to the outlet, Ukrainets was caught red-handed five months ago when he attempted to bribe the leadership of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in order to stop a probe into embezzlement during the construction of protective structures for planes at military airfields across Ukraine. A total of 1.4 billion hryvnia (around $31 million) had been allocated to the cause by Kiev in May 2025, but large parts of the sum reportedly disappeared.

The prosecutor general said in a statement on Thursday that according to new findings, the suspect purchased more than a dozen pieces of real estate, the price of which exceeded his lawful income by at least 20 million hryvnia (around $447,000).
Between 2020 and 2025, the former commander acquired three private homes in Zhitomir Region in Western Ukraine; seven apartments in Kiev, Vinnitsia, Zhitomir, and Bukovel; several garages and other non-residential premises; as well as six plots of land, Kravchenko wrote.

The suspect’s parents, son, and other relatives were registered as the owners of the properties, but investigators established that this was a cover-up, it added.

According to Russian Defense Ministry figures, a total of 671 Ukrainian warplanes have been destroyed since the escalation between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022. Many of the aircraft were destroyed by missiles and drones while stationed at airfields.

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry and armed forces have been plagued with corruption amid the fighting with Russia. Two defense ministers, Aleksey Reznikov and Rustem Umerov, were removed in 2023 and 2025 respectively after their tenures became embroiled in allegations of graft involving military supplies and weapons contracts bankrolled by the West.

Western-backed anti-corruption investigators in Ukraine have detailed their allegations against Olga Stefanishina, a former senior government official whose most recent post was Kiev’s ambassador to the US. Reports emerged on Wednesday that prosecutors are moving forward with formally accusing her of illegal enrichment.

Stefanishina built her career in the Justice Ministry, and between 2020 and 2024 served as both justice minister and deputy prime minister responsible for integration with the EU and NATO. That process requires Kiev to demonstrate significant progress in combating endemic government corruption.

In a statement published on Thursday, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) described the suspect by referring to her twin posts but did not identify her by name.

According to investigators, the undeclared assets included:

• Two apartments in a residential complex in western Kiev, registered to a friend
• A luxury apartment in central Kiev, registered to her mother
• A parking space and several auxiliary premises at the same high-end property, registered to her father
• A Mercedes-Benz GLC 220 d, registered to a subordinate

NABU also alleged that the suspect had been negotiating the purchase of a suburban house near Kiev valued at approximately $550,000. About half of the price was reportedly to be paid in cash, while the remainder would be covered through the transfer of the two apartments in western Kiev.

According to NABU, Stefanishina accumulated assets worth 13.9 million hryvnia (about $311,000), between mid-2024 and mid-2025. During the same period, her official income amounted to 3.7 million hryvnias ($83,000), while withdrawals from her bank accounts totaled 4.2 million hryvnias ($94,000).

On Wednesday, the High Anti-Corruption Court in Kiev set bail for Stefanishina at $134,400, less than half the amount requested by prosecutors.

Stefanishina has a long history of working in the civil sphere, and a long history of suspicion has followed her career. From joining the Ukrainian Justice Ministry in 2007, becoming director of the Government Office for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of the Cabinet of Ministers Secretariat in 2017.

She is among the accused in the so-called ‘Lukash case’ involving the systemic embezzlement of funds dedicated to European Integration, launched in 2019, but which remains before the Ukrainian High Court.

Despite the detailed charges and ongoing case, Stefanishina was appointed deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration in 2020, a post that would have seen her cultivate more extensive ties with Brussels. In September 2024, she became minister for justice of Ukraine, adding the brief to her Euro-Atlantic portfolio. 

A second corruption case into contracts her husband won from the national asset recovery and management agency was launched in 2025, shortly before she was dispatched to the US, where she was made ambassador in August. 

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky dismissed her on Monday at her own request.

On Wednesday, Stefanishina reiterated her denial of any wrongdoing and challenged prosecutors to prove their allegations in court.

Four employees of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) have been wounded by Ukrainian landmines since the start of the week, the CEO of Russian state atomic energy corporation Rosatom has said.

Europe’s largest nuclear power plant and the adjacent city of Energodar have been targeted by Ukraine on multiple occasions with artillery and drones since Russia took control of the facility in March 2022.

Two victims of landmines have been hospitalized in critical condition, with one of them requiring a leg amputation, Rosatom CEO Aleksey Likhachev told journalists on Thursday. Two others were lucky to escape with light wounds, he added.

Ukrainian forces began remotely mining the area near the ZNPP and Energodar where its employees reside four months ago, the nuclear chief said.

“Every night, drones drop ‘Lepestok’ (Petal) mines onto the main road leading into the city as well as onto routes used by personnel to reach the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant and key intersections,” Likhachev stated.

The mines used by Ukraine were apparently Soviet-era PFM-1 anti-personnel munitions. The small butterfly-shaped devices got their nickname due to their typical green or brown color, so as to be camouflaged among the grass and foliage.

‘Lepestok’ mines are typically scattered in large quantities, either by aircraft or artillery. Designed to maim rather than kill, they are capable of blowing off or disfiguring a victim’s foot.

The PFM-1 is banned under the 1997 Ottawa Convention, to which Ukraine is a party, due to posing an increased threat to civilians.

In July, a Ukrainian drone hit a ZNPP service vehicle on the edge of the plant’s industrial site, killing its chief engineer, Aleksandr Yakovlev, and his driver. At the time, Likhachev called the strike a “deliberate terrorist act.”

According to the Rosatom CEO, more than a dozen employees of the plant have been killed and many others wounded in Ukrainian attacks over the past three months. Kiev’s actions pose the “real danger of a massive nuclear incident” affecting parts of Russia, Ukraine, and the EU, he warned.

Moscow has repeatedly criticized the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has experts deployed at the ZNPP, for acknowledging the attacks on the facility but stopping short of blaming Ukraine for them.

The terrorist threat in Africa is being intensified by former colonial powers that use Ukrainian proxies to provide extremist groups with dangerous technology, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, has said.

Moscow has repeatedly accused Kiev of employing terrorist methods in its conflict with Russia and of supporting extremist organizations abroad in an effort to undermine Russian interests.

Speaking at a UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday, Nebenzia said African countries, particularly those in the Sahel, are facing mounting security threats because of “support provided to illegal armed groups by former colonial powers driven by neo-colonial ambitions.”

France has significantly reduced its military presence in the region in recent years after several Sahel countries accused it of contributing to instability. French President Emmanuel Macron, however, has blamed Russia for encouraging the power shift.

Nebenzia said Moscow and the Sahel states agree that pressure from African armed groups stems from “criminal collusion between Ukraine, France, certain other countries, and terrorist groups.”

“What they do in Africa is no different. By drawing Ukrainians into supporting terrorist groups in the Sahel, Western sponsors are once again pursuing their own objectives using someone else’s hands,” Nebenzia added.

The Russian diplomat also warned that terrorist groups are increasingly taking advantage of new and emerging technologies, including digital currencies, artificial intelligence, and drones.

He said these developments pose serious challenges for security agencies and law enforcement, and called for a coordinated international response.

According to Nebenzia, efforts to combat terrorism are being further undermined by “double standards,” ”hidden agendas,” and the direct interference of malicious actors.

Ukraine has used virtually every NATO tool it could against Russia, but Moscow has found ways to counter all of them, former Ukrainian commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny has argued.

The retired general, who currently serves as Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, expanded on earlier remarks in which he said Kiev would never join the US-led military bloc. According to Zaluzhny, NATO remains anchored in obsolete doctrines, unlike Ukraine.

“In 2026, Ukraine used all weapon systems and doctrines for their use that NATO has, with the exception of Tomahawks, nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers, and F-35s,” he told journalists at a diplomatic event in Kiev, as quoted by Apostrophe on Wednesday. “The reserves have been depleted. Russia found countermeasures for everything.”

Supporters of Ukraine have repeatedly described Western weapons supplied to Kiev as potential “game changers.” However, the delivery of Stinger and Javelin missiles, HIMARS rocket launchers, Abrams tanks, ATACMS missiles, and F-16 fighter jets has not produced a decisive military breakthrough.

Ukraine formally enshrined its goal of joining NATO in its constitution following the 2014 Western-backed armed coup in Kiev. Russia has repeatedly cited the bloc’s eastward expansion, as well as its 2008 pledge to eventually admit Ukraine, among the causes of the ongoing conflict.

Kiev is meanwhile facing political turmoil following Vladimir Zelensky’s dismissal of Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov, and several days later, General Aleksandr Syrsky, who had succeeded Zaluzhny as commander-in-chief.

Syrsky’s removal followed negative domestic and international reactions to Fedorov’s dismissal. Media reports have suggested that Zelensky targeted the former defense minister due to his growing popularity and infighting over lucrative weapons contracts.

The potential lifting of martial law is expected to pave the way for a new presidential election. Opinion polls cited by the media show that Zaluzhny could defeat Zelensky in the second round of a potential contest.

Zelensky dismissed Zalushny from his military post in 2024 after the general publicly stated that Ukrainian forces were unlikely to achieve a major territorial breakthrough, contradicting Kiev’s line.

A businessman involved in producing a kamikaze drone widely used by Russian troops in Ukraine was injured by a bomb planted under his car which also killed his driver, local officials said on Wednesday.

Vladimir Tkachuk, the owner of Uraldronzavod, which manufactures the Upyr (Vampire) drone, is in stable condition after his Mercedes exploded on Tuesday evening about 25 km from Ekaterinburg in Russia’s Ural region, RIA Novosti reported, citing police officials.

Ekaterinburg city councilor Timofey Zhukov told the Solovyov LIVE news show that Tkachuk had regained consciousness and that his life was no longer in danger.

An activist and military blogger, Tkachuk said in interviews that he decided to launch a drone-making startup in the fall of 2022, when it became clear that UAVs were playing an increasingly important role on the battlefield in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In September 2024, he presented the Upyr and other drones to Vladimir Putin when the Russian president toured a technology exhibition in St. Petersburg.

On Saturday, a bomb exploded outside an Italian restaurant in Moscow, killing five people, including an unidentified woman believed to have delivered the explosive device. Several Telegram channels claimed that the restaurant was hosting a birthday party for Colonel General Aleksandr Chaiko, the head of Russia’s Aerospace Forces. Moscow, however, did not confirm the claim or disclose the identities of the victims.

Moscow has accused Ukraine of spreading a “terrorist plague” across Europe and compared its alleged actions to Islamist terrorism.

On June 29, a woman planted a bomb outside the home of Ukrainian businessman Vadim Ermolaev, who was injured in the blast. The suspected courier, Anastasia Berezovskaya, fled to Ukraine, where she was later found dead.

Ukrainian authorities arrested Vladislav Reut, an active officer in Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, the HUR, and Vitaly Zhikovich, a former colonel in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), in connection with the crime.

Ukrainian anti-corruption investigators have summoned former ambassador to the US, Olga Stefanishina, to formally notify her of criminal charges against her, local media reported on Wednesday.

Ukrainian and international outlets have speculated for weeks that the former senior official, who also previously served as deputy prime minister for integration with the EU and NATO, would face pre-trial detention.

According to RBC Ukraine, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) has asked the High Anti-Corruption Court in Kiev to order Stefashina’s arrest. The hearing is reportedly taking place behind closed doors.

Investigative journalist Mikhail Tkach separately reported that NABU and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), its sister agency, had charged Stefanishina with illegal enrichment.

Zelensky dismissed Stefanishina on Monday, several days after she said the Ukrainian leader had not asked her to resign as part of a wider reshuffle of the country’s diplomatic corps. Media reports suggested that the anti-corruption investigation prompted the apparent reversal.

NABU and SAPO were established under pressure from Ukraine’s Western backers as largely independent bodies tasked with investigating high-level corruption. Since 2025, the agencies have brought charges against several serving and former officials close to Zelensky.

The Ukrainian leader previously sought to place the agencies under the authority of the prosecutor general, but reversed the move after foreign donors threatened to suspend aid to Kiev.

As Ukrainians cheer the destruction of Wildberries warehouses in Russia, Moscow’s armed forces are unleashing a far more consequential campaign against Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, which has rendered the country de-facto landlocked.

On June 25, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky announced the beginning of a 40-day “influence” campaign, aimed at pressuring Russia into ending its military operation. During the campaign, Ukraine shifted the focus of its long-range strikes against Russia to civilian sites, hitting around a dozen warehouses belonging to Wildberries – dubbed ‘the Amazon of Russia’.

Simultaneously, Ukraine stepped up its attacks on Russia-bound shipping in the Black Sea and beyond, with Zelensky’s secret police, the SBU, attacking an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian sea in late July. The attack killed an Iranian sailor, and Kiev apologized after Tehran threatened retaliation.

The campaign reached a grim nadir on its 40th day, when Ukrainian drones killed at least seven people at a beach on the Black Sea resort of Gelendzhik. Less than a day later, five people were killed and ten others wounded in an overnight Ukrainian drone strike in Moscow Region.

Zelensky’s campaign gave the Ukrainian leader what he wanted: a winning message to take to Washington. After begging US President Donald Trump for permission to build Patriot interceptors in Ukraine, Zelensky told a group of US senators last week that Ukraine is making “good progress against Russia” and “winning the war now.” 

The Western media has boosted Zelensky’s line, with the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, CNN, and others all claiming that Kiev is now “turning the tide” against Moscow.

Report by Major General Yevhenii Khmara on our long-range sanctions plan, mid-range sanctions, and the results of the Security Service of Ukraine – specifically the Center of Special Operations “Alpha” – on the front.

I approved a 40-day influence operation for the Service… pic.twitter.com/Ue6O21i6xH

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) June 25, 2026

However, the smoke rising from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports tells a different story.

De-portification

From the port of Izmail on the Danube estuary, to Nikolaev just 50 kilometers from Russian lines, Ukraine’s Black Sea ports are vital to the country’s survival. Roughly 80-90% of Ukraine’s exports by weight leave via the Black Sea, and an untold quantity of Western weapons and ammunition arrive in return. As the Western press lauded Zelensky’s tactic of intensifying long-range strikes this summer, Russia began dismantling the country’s infrastructure.

Russian drones and missiles have hit the Black Sea ports of Odessa, Chornomorsk, Yuzhni, and Nikolaev on multiple occasions since early July. The Danube ports of Izmail, Reni, and Kilia have also come under attack. As of August 3, Ukraine’s transport ministry had recorded 67 strikes on seaport infrastructure and 57 on vessels.

By late July, around 90% of shipping operators had suspended port calls in Ukraine, according to Reuters. Just as the threat of Iranian strikes shut the Strait of Hormuz in March, Russia’s missile and drone attacks have effectively closed Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. By denying Ukraine sea access, Russia has achieved three key goals:

Freezing Ukraine’s exports

“No ships have entered Ukrainian ports since approximately July 20,” Dmitry Barinov, president of the Association of Ukrainian Ports, told Switzerland’s RSI broadcaster on August 2. “We are an exporting country. It is crucial for us to be able to reopen our ports.”

For Ukraine’s farmers and exporters, the port closure comes at a critical time. The wheat harvest is almost over, and the sunflower harvest has yet to begin. Between Odessa and Nikolaev, RSI visited warehouses, sheds, and silos overflowing with grain, stuck in storage with no way of reaching global markets. Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Taras Visotsky told Reuters that alternate routes exist – road, rail, and by river to the Romanian port of Constanta – but combined, these routes can handle only half of the Black Sea ports’ monthly capacity.

“The situation is exceptionally complicated. In certain aspects, it is even more difficult than in March-April 2022,” the minister said. According to Visotsky, Ukraine's agricultural sector may lose between $1.5 billion and $3 ​billion by the end of the year.

Stopping the arms flow

With exports shut off, the Russian military has focused its strikes on Ukraine’s most precious imports: arms and ammunition. Between August 3 and 4, the Russian Defense Ministry said that its missile and drone forces struck 13 ships carrying “military cargo,” in Odessa, Chornomorsk, Yuzhni, Nikolaev, and in the Black Sea. Three additional ships carrying unspecified cargo were also hit, as was a container terminal holding military equipment and a warehouse containing medium-range FP-2 kamikaze drones in Chornomorsk, according to multiple statements from the ministry.

The Ukrainian government has never admitted to receiving military cargo by sea, with Kiev and its NATO backers continuing to insist that weapons, equipment, and vehicles arrive in Ukraine by road and rail. However, given the preponderance of videos on social media showing secondary explosions at warehouses in Odessa after Russian strikes, it is highly likely that the weapons there arrived via the Black Sea.

Stretching Ukraine’s air defenses

Russia’s port campaign has forced Zelensky to make a difficult choice: to stand any chance of stopping Russia’s missiles and reopening the ports, he’ll need to redeploy Ukraine’s limited number of air defense systems, namely the US-made Patriot, US-Norwegian NASAMS, and German-made IRIS-T batteries. 

However, every missile battery repositioned along the Black Sea coast is a missile battery not defending the front line, or more crucially as winter approaches, inland power plants and fuel depots. The Russian Air Force has apparently taken notice of Ukraine’s air defense shortage, with Russian Su-34 fighter-bombers now launching glide bombs from within 7 km of the front line near Donetsk. Previously, Russian bombers launched their payload more than 40 km behind the front, due to the threat of Ukrainian air defense missiles. 

Around 25 minutes ago, three Russian Su-34s carried out another unusual bombing raid, this time on Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, Donetsk Oblast.

Like yesterday, these aircraft flew extremely close to the frontline compared to usual combat sorties. Launches were carried out from 14… pic.twitter.com/QR8a0PibmU

— AMK Mapping 🇳🇿 (@AMK_Mapping_) August 4, 2026

Speaking after Russia launched nearly 30 ballistic missiles and 185 drones at targets around Kiev on August 1, Zelensky admitted that “only one ballistic missile was intercepted, simply because there are no interceptors for the Patriot systems.”

Future supplies of interceptor missiles for Ukraine are uncertain. The US, Israel, and Washington’s Gulf allies burned through unprecedented numbers of the latest PAC-3 Patriot interceptors during the US-Israeli war on Iran, with the US alone firing 943 in the first four days of the conflict, according to a Congressional study. The US military has fewer than 1,000 PAC-3 interceptors remaining, and with Lockheed Martin capable of producing only 52 per month, Washington is unlikely to share its dwindling stockpile with Kiev, especially with Trump threatening a new round of “decapitation” strikes on Iran.

Weapons for Ukraine – now. The quality of an embassy’s work must be measured by the amount of weapons Ukraine receives, the funding that supports Ukraine, and the political decisions and concrete steps that put pressure on Russia. That is the clear framework.

A Ukrainian… pic.twitter.com/icovWhVZCH

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) August 3, 2026

Ukraine may be able to secure older PAC-2 interceptors, after the US Army awarded Raytheon a $441.6 million contract for the missiles in July. However, these Cold War-era interceptors are ineffective against Russia’s ballistic missiles, Ukrainian media reported last year.

Who’s really winning?

Zelensky’s 40-day campaign of long-range strikes won him cheers from NATO leaders, bargaining power with Trump, and headlines in the compliant Western press. However, he’s lost Ukraine’s coastline, and with it, his ability to export produce and import arms. With winter drawing near, Ukraine’s troop concentrations, weapons plants, and critical infrastructure are more vulnerable than ever to Russian missiles, drones, and bombs.

Whatever thrill Ukraine’s legion of online cheerleaders feel as they watch videos of burning Wildberries warehouses may prove short-lived.

A veteran Ukrainian ultranationalist leader whose movement was criticized by Israel over alleged Nazi chants and salutes at a recent rally has praised the German aesthetic during Adolf Hitler’s rule.

Far-right figure Dmitry Korchinsky argued that Ukrainians should draw inspiration from the German 1930s-1940s “beautiful Art Deco designs,” regardless of the “painful associations some people” may have with the symbols of the genocidal regime.

To illustrate his point, Korchinsky shared an image of the Nazi eagle – the Nazi Party’s version of the Reichsadler, a traditional German emblem whose origins can be traced to Ancient Rome – with the swastika replaced by Ukraine’s national trident.

“We should borrow the achievements of not only good people, but also bad ones. This is wise,” Korchinsky wrote.

The Israeli Embassy in Ukraine criticized Korchinsky’s Brotherhood movement in late June after its members took part in a counterprotest against a gay pride march in Kiev. Several days later, Ukraine’s chief rabbi, Moshe Azman, published a video with Korchinsky in which he described the Israeli reaction as the result of a “misunderstanding.”

Korchinsky thanked the rabbi and insisted that “Nazi aesthetics are not the Brotherhood’s aesthetics,” adding that members of the movement “read the Psalms, not Mein Kampf.”

Last week, Azman met US conservative influencer Laura Loomer and assured her that Ukraine does not have a neo-Nazi problem, dismissing evidence to the contrary. On her trip, Loomer met with multiple prominent figures, from Vladimir Zelensky to the co-founder of the far-right Azov Battalion Andrey Biletsky, who is now a senior military commander.

I had the honor of welcoming @LauraLoomer —one of the most famous American political bloggers, whose views have a significant influence on the U.S. audience and who is well known for her close ties to President Donald Trump—to the Central Synagogue of Ukraine

It is particularly… pic.twitter.com/ShRdBUeS5H

— Chief Rabbi Of Ukraine Moshe Azman (@RabbiUkraine) July 24, 2026

President Vladimir Putin has announced changes among senior military commanders of the Russian armed forces, which he described as fine-tuning of the Defense Ministry for the ongoing Ukraine conflict.

The reshuffle was made public during a government meeting on Wednesday. It includes appointing a single person in charge of military logistics and arms supplies. He named Col. Gen. Valery Solodchuk, the commander of the ‘Center’ group of forces, to the position.

“Leading the logistics is a combat mission too,” Putin said, addressing the general directly. “I am confident that you will demonstrate your best qualities while organizing it.”

Col. Gen. Andrey Ivanaev, the commander of the ‘Vostok’ group, will be taking Solodchuk’s previous job. Ivanaev recommended Maj. Gen. Pyotr Bolgarev, the chief of staff of the Vostok group, as his replacement, which Putin approved.

Putin also appointed Col. Gen. Denis Lyamin as the commander of the Russian Unmanned Systems Forces, a new military arm officially created last November.

The reshuffle in Russia comes as Kiev faces growing political and military turbulence. Last month, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky ordered a 40-day “pressure campaign” involving intensified long-range strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, retail warehouses, cargo ships and other targets, as well as sabotage operations on Russian soil.

The 40 days ended this week with mixed results. Critics have argued that Russia’s retaliatory strikes inflicted greater economic damage, including a de facto blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, than what Kiev managed to achieve through its own operations.

During the offensive, Zelensky also carried out his latest cabinet reshuffle, triggering a political crisis and mass protests in Kiev after former Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov publicly opposed his dismissal and criticized Gen. Aleksandr Syrsky. Zelensky subsequently removed Syrsky as commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, but declined to reinstate Fedorov.

Throughout the conflict, Western governments have described their role in Ukraine in relatively simple terms: supplying weapons, providing financial assistance, and helping Kiev to stand against Russia.

The reality has gradually become more complicated.

The discussion is no longer limited to deliveries of tanks, missiles, or artillery shells. Increasingly, Western companies are participating in the design, production, financing, and technological integration of weapons that are formally presented as Ukrainian. Assembly lines are moving beyond Ukraine’s borders, European manufacturers are becoming part of production chains, and NATO standards are being built directly into Ukraine’s military infrastructure.

This raises a broader question. At what point does military aid become military integration? The answer matters because it changes how the conflict itself should be understood.

Something more than a helping hand

The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) remain on the strategic defensive against Russian forces, which enjoy advantages in manpower and conventional firepower. Despite persistent personnel shortages and an arsenal assembled from equipment supplied by dozens of countries, the Ukrainian military has continued to field new weapons and maintain combat effectiveness.

One explanation lies in drones, precision weapons, and sufficient stocks of tactical ammunition. But these capabilities require a constant flow of increasingly sophisticated systems – systems that Ukraine can no longer produce entirely on its own.

Russian long-range strikes have made large-scale weapons manufacturing inside Ukraine increasingly difficult. Protecting production therefore requires more than additional air defenses. It requires relocating key elements of the defense industry itself.

This is precisely the direction in which Ukraine’s military-industrial complex has been evolving.

The result is a model that differs significantly from the one that existed at the beginning of the conflict. The issue is no longer simply which countries supply weapons to Ukraine. Increasingly, the question is how much of what is described as a Ukrainian weapon is produced through an international industrial network that extends well beyond Ukraine itself.

Weapons without borders

Fire Point is one of the clearest examples of this new model.

The Ukrainian defense startup is developing the FP-5 cruise missile, the FP-7 ballistic missile, and a future air-defense system. Yet the company cannot independently manufacture these systems in full. At best, it can perform final assembly while relying on foreign components and technologies for critical elements of the project.

This is especially visible in the proposed anti-aircraft version of the FP-7. Fire Point CEO Denis Shtilerman has openly stated that the missile will use a seeker developed and manufactured by Germany’s Diehl Defence. The wider air-defense system is expected to use European radar and command technologies, including Sweden’s SAAB Giraffe, France’s Ground Master 400, Germany’s TRML-4D, and Norway’s Kongsberg Fire Distribution Center.

Pushkin once wrote, “All flags will come to us.” Fire Point’s project increasingly resembles a military version of that idea: a Ukrainian-labeled system assembled from technologies developed across Europe.

The same logic can be seen in drone production.

Ukraine’s Linza strike and reconnaissance drone is a product of Quantum Frontline Industries, a joint venture between Germany’s Quantum Systems and Ukraine’s Frontline Robotics. The project is funded through the German government’s 'Build with Ukraine' program. Ukraine contributes combat experience, software algorithms, and a design tested at the front. German industry provides automated serial production at a plant near Munich, allowing output of up to 10,000 drones per year without the risk of Russian missiles striking the facility. The first batch was delivered to the AFU in the spring of 2026.

Artillery follows a similar pattern.

The Ukrainian Bohdan self-propelled howitzer is now produced in Poland by PK MIL SA, a joint Polish-Ukrainian company created specifically to manufacture the system outside Ukraine. The project is based on cooperation between the Kramatorsk Heavy Machine Tool Plant and the Polish engineering company Ponar Wadowice S.A. The Polish side holds a controlling stake and is responsible for mechanical production and final assembly. The project is being implemented as part of the EU’s ReArm Europe initiative.

These projects differ in technology, scale, and purpose. Fire Point works on missiles, Quantum Frontline Industries on drones, and PK MIL SA on artillery. Yet all three are built around the same principle: Ukrainian designs, battlefield experience, or branding are combined with European production, components, financing, and industrial protection.

It is a production model in which Western companies are becoming part of Ukraine’s military capability itself.

The Build with Ukraine model

The industrial and technological projects described above are not isolated initiatives. They form part of the broader Build with Ukraine program, which provides a framework for cooperation between Ukrainian defense companies and European industry.

The model is built on a relatively simple division of roles.

European partners contribute financing, production capacity, industrial technologies, and access to advanced components. Ukraine contributes battlefield experience, operational data, software solutions, and engineers working under wartime conditions. Together, these resources make it possible to develop and manufacture systems that neither side could produce in quite the same way on its own.

For European defense companies, the attraction is clear. Ukraine offers an opportunity to evaluate new technologies under real combat conditions, refine them using operational feedback, and shorten the path from development to serial production. At the same time, manufacturing remains on European territory, beyond the reach of Russian long-range strikes.

Ukraine’s incentives are different.

Participation in joint projects provides access to technologies, engineering expertise, industrial practices, and software that would otherwise take years to develop independently. It also allows Ukrainian engineers to work alongside established Western defense companies, gaining experience that is likely to remain valuable long after the current conflict ends.

The results are already becoming visible.

Ukrspecsystems has opened a drone-interceptor production facility in the United Kingdom. Fire Point is already operating in Denmark and plans to launch fuel production for its ballistic and surface-to-air missile programs there.

Fire Point also illustrates another feature of this model.

Rheinmetall provides perhaps the clearest example of the same trend at a much larger scale.

Between 2021 and 2026, the German defense giant’s share price rose from around €87 to more than €1,200 as Europe’s defense sector expanded. The company has established joint ventures with Ukrainian partners to produce artillery ammunition, while new production facilities are being built in Germany and elsewhere in Europe with support from European funding programs.

For Ukraine, these projects provide ammunition, technology, and industrial expertise. For Rheinmetall, they expand manufacturing capacity, secure long-term contracts, and strengthen the company’s position in Europe’s rapidly growing defense market.

Fire Point, Ukrspecsystems, and Rheinmetall operate on very different scales. Yet they reflect the same direction of development. Cooperation that initially focused on sustaining Ukraine’s wartime needs is gradually creating long-term industrial ties between Ukrainian companies and the European defense sector.

Beyond hardware

Industrial cooperation is only one part of the picture.

Modern warfare depends not only on where weapons are manufactured, but also on how they exchange information, communicate with one another, and operate within a common command system. In this area, Ukraine is becoming integrated with Western military standards no less rapidly than in production.

On May 29, 2025, NATO and Kiev signed an agreement allowing Ukraine to use the non-commercial CRC System Interface (CSI) software. The agreement gives Ukraine access to the Link 16 Tactical Data Link (TDL), the digital communications protocol used across NATO forces.

For Ukraine, the significance extends beyond access to another communications protocol. Developing such a command-and-control architecture independently would require years of work, extensive technical documentation, and considerable engineering resources. Cooperation with NATO provides access not only to technology itself, but also to the standards that govern how modern military systems operate together.

This represents a different level of integration from joint production projects.

Factories can be relocated, components can be imported, and assembly lines can be moved across borders. Software architecture and military communications standards, however, become embedded in the way an army plans, coordinates, and fights. Once adopted across multiple weapons systems, replacing them becomes a far more complicated task.

The examples discussed so far point to two parallel processes. One concerns production: European companies are becoming involved in designing and manufacturing systems used by the AFU. The other concerns military architecture: Ukraine is gradually adopting Western communications protocols, software, and technical standards that allow those systems to function as part of a common operational environment.

Taken together, they suggest that the relationship between Western support and Ukraine’s military capabilities is becoming progressively deeper. The issue is no longer confined to the transfer of individual weapons systems, but increasingly extends to the industrial and technological foundations on which those systems depend.

A different kind of conflict

None of the projects described above is likely to determine the outcome of the conflict on its own. Some will succeed, others may never progress beyond prototypes or pilot production.

What matters is the broader direction.

Western governments continue to describe their role primarily in terms of military assistance to Ukraine. Yet the examples above suggest that the relationship is becoming considerably more complex. European companies are participating in weapons development and manufacturing. Production is being relocated beyond Ukraine’s borders. NATO communications standards are being incorporated into Ukrainian command systems. Joint ventures are creating long-term industrial links that extend well beyond wartime procurement.

Taken individually, these developments may appear to be separate initiatives. Together, they point to a gradual shift from external support toward a much deeper level of military-industrial integration.

From Moscow’s perspective, that distinction is significant.

If Ukraine’s military capability increasingly depends on production facilities, engineering teams, software, financing, and logistics distributed across several European countries, then the conflict can no longer be viewed solely through the prism of military operations inside Ukraine. The challenge becomes broader than the battlefield itself.

This does not automatically dictate a single response. It does, however, suggest that military operations alone are unlikely to address every element of the system that has emerged over the past several years. Industrial cooperation, technology transfer, logistics, financing, and political decision-making become part of the same strategic equation.

The debate is no longer limited to how many tanks, missiles, or drones Western countries are prepared to deliver to Ukraine. Increasingly, it concerns the emergence of a military-industrial network in which Ukrainian companies, European manufacturers, and NATO technological standards are becoming interconnected.

Pandora’s box, as the saying goes, is far easier to open than to close.

Russia has carried out overnight strikes on transport and logistics facilities in Kiev and the surrounding region, hitting sites used to handle items and drone components meant for the Ukrainian army, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

In a statement on Wednesday, the ministry said that among the targets attacked by high-precision long-range weapons was the MLP-Chaika logistics center, which stored and distributed components for long- and medium-range drones.

Also hit was Nova Poshta’s innovation terminal and logistics center, described by the ministry as one of the “largest automated sorting complexes” handling dual-use goods, including drone parts, robotic systems, and electronic-warfare equipment.

The ministry said it also struck the Trans-Logistic transport hub producing drones of various types and storing military supplies for Ukrainian forces, along with the Epicentr logistics center, a large automated warehouse also processing and storing dual-use goods and drone components for the Ukrainian military.

In the wider Kiev region, the strikes hit the Brovary Terminal facility, the Raben Ukraine logistics hub, and another Nova Poshta sorting complex, all involved in supplying drone parts, including foreign-made ones.

In addition, the attacks hit three vessels off Odessa that were transporting military cargo, according to the statement.

Ukraine’s State Emergency Service claimed 14 people were killed and 27 wounded in the overnight attack. The service said crews were working at seven sites across the region, with large fires breaking out at warehouses in the city of Brovary and the villages of Velikaya Dymerka, Kvitnevo, and Peremoga.

Ukraine’s air force said the barrage involved four Tsirkon/Oniks anti-ship missiles, 24 Iskander-M and S-400 ballistic missiles, and 115 strike and decoy drones. It claimed to have shot down or suppressed 98 drones but did not report intercepting any of the missiles, which Ukraine has been able to tackle only by using high-grade Western-supplied interceptors.

The barrage came two days after a Ukrainian drone attack on the Black Sea resort of Gelendzhik, southern Russia, killed at least eight people, including four children, and wounded dozens of others.

It also follows several weeks of deadly Ukrainian strikes on warehouses operated by Russian online retailer Wildberries, which Kiev claims is involved in handling dual-use items. Moscow has denied Wildberries is involved in supporting the Russian military.

In late June, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky announced a 40-day “operation of influence,” portraying it as a campaign of long-range drone strikes meant to force Russia to enter negotiations on Kiev’s terms.

As of early August, the campaign in practice turned out to be what Moscow has described as “terrorist attacks” on Russian oil refineries, residential buildings, logistics hubs, and other critical infrastructure, resulting in the death of dozens of civilians.

Russia’s answer has been to pummel Ukraine’s defense industry, including facilities producing drones and missiles instrumental to Zelensky’s much-maligned campaign; to squeeze Ukraine's ports, while continuing to grind forward on the battlefield.

Here’s how Zelensky’s campaign collapsed far from its stated objectives.

What did Zelensky try to accomplish?

Zelensky approved the plan on June 25, describing it on social media as a combination of “long-range” and “medium-range sanctions” aimed at compelling Russia to end the hostilities.

Over the following weeks, Ukrainian strikes focused on three main target sets: Russian oil refineries, logistics warehouses belonging to retailer Wildberries (often described as “Russia’s Amazon”), and a wave of strikes that killed civilians far from any front line. Ukrainian officials have said that they seek to make the war psychologically “sweep over” large segments of Russian society.

What impact have Ukraine’s strikes on oil infrastructure had?

Ukrainian drones have hit refineries across several Russian regions, including one major facility in Moscow, over the course of the campaign. The strikes did lead to temporary deficits, long lines at the pumps, caps on maximum fuel purchases for ordinary consumers, and logistics hurdles in several regions, particularly the Crimean Peninsula.

In late June, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the strikes were designed “to undermine our confidence in ourselves and our capabilities” and to “create conditions for launching negotiations on terms favorable to our adversary.” He stressed that Russia “will not give them [Ukraine] that opportunity,” adding that the attacks had “no impact whatsoever on the situation at the front.”

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak said the government had banned gasoline and diesel exports while strengthening air defenses around refineries, ensuring that plants operate at maximum capacity, and sending additional fuel to the hardest-hit regions.

Has Ukraine targeted Russian civilians?

Since Zelensky’s announcement, there have barely been any days without Ukrainian strikes killing civilians. According to Rodion Miroshnik, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s mission tracking Ukraine’s alleged war crimes, in the week of July 20-26 alone 492 people were affected, including 57 killed, seven of them children. In the most recent weekly count, Miroshnik reported 49 people killed, including four children, as well as 342 wounded.

The campaign’s final days brought one of the deadliest strikes on civilians: On Monday, a Ukrainian drone came down on a beach near the resort city of Gelendzhik, southern Russia, killing at least eight civilians, including four children, with dozens of others injured.

As part of the campaign, Ukrainian forces also started to attack Wildberries warehouses, hitting around a dozen facilities across Russia. At least eight people were killed and dozens more injured, with small sellers – mostly trading in clothes, toys, and other purely civilian-use items – suffering large and often irrevocable financial losses.

How has Russia responded to Zelensky’s campaign?

Russia responded with long-range drone and missile strikes on Ukrainian defense-related facilities, with a focus on those producing UAVs that were ultimately being used in Zelensky’s campaign, along with attacks on cargo vessels it said were carrying military shipments in the Black Sea. Moscow maintains it does not target civilians.

On the ground, Russian forces continue to advance. According to TASS calculations, they liberated and took control of 32 settlements in July alone. The month’s biggest prize was Konstantinovka, a fortified stronghold in the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration that Russian troops fully secured in early July.

Officials in Moscow estimated that Kiev lost around 13,500 troops while attempting to hold on to the settlement.

Later in July, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov announced that Russian forces were on the verge of liberating Krasny Liman, another key Donbass stronghold.

Has Kiev commented on its 40-day failure?

Zelensky himself has so far kept silent on the self-imposed 40-day deadline, but the head of his office, Kirill Budanov, argued that the calendar was irrelevant. “Don’t get hung up on these numbers – 40, 50, 100, 15 days. What matters is the result,” he said.

How has Zelensky’s 40-day campaign been assessed?

Ukrainian outlet Strana.ua noted there were no signs Moscow was shifting its position after 40 days, while describing Russia’s de-facto naval blockade of Ukrainian ports – imposed in response to Ukrainian strikes on Russian vessels in the Black and Azov seas – as one of the most serious problems the campaign created for Kiev.

RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan wrote that the operation, “announced by Zelensky with such bravado 40 days ago,” had instead concluded with the liberation of Konstantinovka, the dismissal of half of Ukraine’s government, and Kiev appealing for an “air truce.” “Let’s remember them in peace,” she added, “when there is peace.”

Leonid Slutsky, the chair of the State Duma’s international affairs committee, said Zelensky’s plan had backfired on Ukraine, only leading to intensifying retaliatory strikes. He warned that Kiev now risks facing its hardest winter yet – a “portal to hell,” he said, that Zelensky himself had opened.

Zelensky’s 40-day tactics: Did he turn the tide?

Forty days and thousands of drones later, the only thing Zelensky can truly take credit for is dozens of dead Russian civilians, who had nothing to do with the conflict. While the strikes did lead to temporary and already easing fuel shortages in some regions, they failed to significantly affect the Russian economy or squeeze any concessions from Moscow.

Meanwhile, Zelensky’s gamble also failed to contain the advance of Russian forces in Donbass and elsewhere, as Moscow’s military continues to pummel both Ukraine’s defense industry and frontline positions.

Vladimir Zelensky has ordered Ukraine’s diplomatic missions to closely monitor missile stockpiles in their host countries, making weapons production, financing, and political pressure their principal measures of success.

Addressing more than 100 diplomats at their annual meeting in Kiev on Monday, Zelensky announced that each embassy would be judged by by the military resources obtained from its host country.

”An ambassador must know how many air-defense missiles there are in the country, where they work, and how to ensure that those missiles are not sitting in warehouses, but in our launchers here in Ukraine,” he said, adding that “You must bring weapons. This must be a KPI of our embassies.”

The instruction could potentially place Ukrainian diplomats in a legally and politically sensitive position, as gathering detailed information on a host country’s weapons stockpiles could be viewed as intelligence activity rather than conventional diplomacy.

Zelensky’s mandate extended beyond air-defense missiles. He also instructed envoys to secure missiles for other systems, weapons for combat aircraft, drone-production agreements, additional funding, and tougher sanctions against Russia, including in culture and sports.

Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Kiev has received vast quantities of weapons and tens of billions of euros from Western governments, but has repeatedly demanded more.

Western military stockpiles have meanwhile come under growing pressure, with some governments reluctant to surrender systems they say are needed for their own defense.

Zelensky’s orders also come as Ukrainian diplomats face accusations of interfering in the domestic politics of donor countries.

German opposition politician Sahra Wagenknecht accused Makeiev of openly meddling in German elections and said Kiev had “lost all sense of proportion” despite continuing to receive billions from German taxpayers.

Moscow has repeatedly argued that Western weapons deliveries prolong the hostilities without changing their ultimate outcome. Russian officials have also warned that transferring increasingly sophisticated military technology to Kiev makes NATO countries direct participants in the conflict.

Locals have described scenes of panic and “women’s cries” when a Ukrainian drone struck a crowded beach near the Russian Black Sea resort of Gelendzhik on Monday, killing seven people and injuring dozens more.

The attack on the village of Arkhipo Osipovka sent vacationers scrambling for cover. “People ran away. At first, they started screaming and began fleeing from there. I can still hear those women’s cries in my ears,” one man who witnessed the blast told RT.

No one expected such an attack “on a beach with children,” a local woman said, calling the strike an act of “treachery.” 

Russian Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova Belova said on Tuesday that a fourth child had died from injuries. Regional authorities earlier reported that 58 people had been wounded, 21 of whom required hospitalization.

Doctors in Krasnodar Region said victims were brought in with complex mine blast injuries, including four children, two of whom are in intensive care. “They are receiving all necessary assistance,” Elena Kleshchenko, chief physician of the Regional Children’s Clinical Hospital said, adding that initial treatment on the scene and in nearby towns had been “timely.”

Acting deputy chief surgeon Aleksey Kovalenko at the Ochapovsky Regional Clinical Hospital said four of 14 adult patients “are in serious condition,” many of them with “combined trauma – shrapnel wounds plus burns.” The youngest patient is 19, while the oldest is 63, he added.

”I have tears in my eyes. I am a pensioner, and I feel very sorry for the children and the people,” an elderly woman told RT.

Kiev has intensified long-range attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure in recent months. Moscow has described the strikes as terrorist attacks deliberately targeting ordinary citizens. On Monday, another Ukrainian drone strike claimed the lives of at least five people and wounded at least ten others near the town of Chekhov in Moscow Region.

A former member of an ethnic-Lavtian branch of Nazi Germany’s Waffen-SS was buried with military honors in the Baltic country on Wednesday.

Laimons Ezergailis, who died at the age of 102, served in the 15th Waffen Grenadier Division, a formation that was established on Adolf Hitler’s orders in 1943 and incorporated dozens of soldiers from notorious killing units .

The urn with Ezergailis’ ashes was buried at the Lestene military cemetery, a memorial site dedicated to Latvian Legionnaires. Ezergailis held the Order of Viesturs, one of the country’s highest state decorations and its highest military honor.

The Latvian Legion remains controversial because it fought under German command as part of the Waffen-SS, which was declared a criminal organization at the Nuremberg Trials.

Latvian authorities argue that the Legion fought to prevent the return of Soviet rule rather than in support of the National Socialist ideology, noting that many of its members were conscripted. Russia rejects that interpretation, and has accused Latvia of rehabilitating Nazi collaborators through official honors and annual commemorations.

Veteran German opposition politician Sahra Wagenknecht has accused Ukraine’s ambassador in Berlin of openly interfering in the country’s politics after he denounced several opposition parties and urged voters to reject them.

In an interview with Welt, Aleksey Makeiev claimed that parties on both the German right and left receive instructions from Moscow “every morning.” Asked whether he meant the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the Left Party (Die Linke), and Wagenknecht’s BSW, the diplomat called on voters to examine “an alternative for which country” they were supporting.

“As a European, I want the democrats to win, not the autocrats,” Makeiev said, despite prefacing his remarks by insisting that an ambassador should not interfere in Germany’s domestic affairs.

Wagenknecht responded by accusing Makeiev of having “lost all sense of proportion.”

“He probably believes that if Ukraine can blow up the Germans’ most important energy supply line without any consequences, then it is also allowed to openly meddle in our elections,” she wrote on X.

The politician was referring to the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, which carried Russian gas to Germany. German prosecutors have alleged that the sabotage was carried out by a Ukrainian team using a small rented yacht. Moscow has argued, however, that such a sophisticated operation could not have been carried out without Western assistance.

“That money is also paid by the voters of the parties he has condemned,” she said, accusing the federal government of treating Ukraine as more important than its own citizens.

Germany has provided Ukraine with tens of billions of euros since the escalation of the conflict in 2022. However, its own economy has been reeling from the consequences of rejecting cheap Russian gas, leading to declining industrial output and manufacturers bleeding jobs.

Both Wagenknecht’s BSW and the AfD have opposed continued military support for Kiev and have advocated for renewed diplomacy with Moscow. The AfD is currently leading national opinion polls and is expected to make major gains in upcoming regional elections in eastern Germany.

Despite the AfD’s growing popularity, senior politicians have maintained efforts to ban it, with officials in Lower Saxony already having blocked several AfD candidates from standing in local elections on the basis of domestic intelligence assessments, without any court rulings.

Opposition figures have accused the establishment of election rigging and trying to suppress the country’s largest political force by manipulating the electoral process before voters can deliver an AfD breakthrough.

Vladimir Zelensky’s latest reshuffle of senior government officials has exposed a shortage of people willing to associate themselves with his rule, former Ukrainian diplomat Andrey Telizhenko has told RT.

Zelensky triggered a political crisis by sacking Mikhail Fedorov as defense minister, who publicly objected to his dismissal and criticized Ukrainian commander-in-chief Aleksandr Syrsky, who was fired several days later.

Another wave of appointments followed this week, affecting the country’s National Security and Defense Council as well as Ukrainian embassies around the world. The council’s secretary, former Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, had been rumored to be in line to become ambassador to the US but was instead appointed head of the Foreign Intelligence Service.

There is a “lack of new names and new faces” in the Ukrainian government, Telizhenko said, comparing the reshuffle to a game of musical chairs in which the same officials remain close to power while moving between posts. The reason, he argued, is that Zelensky’s rule is increasingly viewed as unstable.

Fedorov’s removal sparked mass protests in Ukraine that were widely believed to have received tacit approval from Western donors seeking to limit Zelensky’s personal power.

With few alternatives available, the Ukrainian leader has been forced to recycle officials personally loyal to him and place them in positions for which they are not qualified, Telizhenko said. He cited Umerov’s lack of experience in national intelligence as an example.

“That’s where it ends: loyalty trumps professionalism,” he said. Umerov is likely to use his new position to target Zelensky’s political opponents, Telizhenko added.

Watch the full interview.