Exclusives
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Russia bet 50 vehicles that the drones would miss. The drones did not miss.. Russian commanders had banned their own vehicles from these roads, knowing what the drones do to them. Then they lined up 50 and sent them anyway. |
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How Ukraine came to build more weapons than it can fund. Its top defense-industry chief just resigned after a deadly blast at one of his company’s depots. |
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Russia plans to build 120 Banderol missiles in month. Analyst who found it in 2025 says weapon is “nothing outstanding”. Russia plans to build 120 Banderol cruise missiles a month, but the factory hasn't hit the target, says Ukrainian military adviser Serhii Beskrestnov. |
Military
Russia built Crimea’s power grid on sanctioned Siemens turbines. Ukraine has struck cooling system of one in Balaklava. Ukraine's Special Operations Forces struck Sevastopol's Balaklava power plant, damaging the cooling system of a Siemens turbine that sanctions leave unrepairable.
The Azov Sea wasn’t enough—Ukraine’s drones followed Russia’s oil fleet into the Black Sea. Six drone units opened the new phase together, from Magyar's Birds to the Raid regiment that has been burning ships for days.
This Ukrainian female soldier flies one of war’s heaviest drones. She turns down promotion twice to keep doing it. "Tsyhancha" went from FPV operator to heavy bomber pilot in the 125th Brigade.
Intelligence and technology
You can’t jam what you can’t identify: Ukraine just fielded its first portable drone detector. Ukraine has gone the whole war without a portable, mass-produced drone-signature detector, while nearly every Russian soldier carries a Chinese "Bulat".
20,000 confirmed hits make General Cherry Ukraine’s top FPV drone maker. Ukraine's combat-driven drone market crowned General Cherry its top FPV manufacturer in June after more than 20,000 verified target hits.
Ukraine’s Navy just showed the Barracuda sea drone leading a three-drone strike—no crew in the fight. Ukraine's Navy has demonstrated what increasingly looks like the next stage of naval drone warfare: multiple uncrewed platforms carrying out different combat roles within a single coordinated strike, without exposing sailors to enemy fire.
Russia’s Arctic bases sit near-naked as air defenses vanish to guard Moscow and refineries burning inland. Satellite images show S-300 and S-400 batteries gone from long-held sites near Rogachevo and the nuclear-submarine city of Severodvinsk, RFE/RL says.
International
Brussels let Ukraine spend EU defense funds on Chinese drone components. The bloc does not turn out these parts in the volumes a front-line drone war burns through, so Kyiv looked east.
Latvia logs 111 straight days of migrants pushed across from Belarus—and blames its support for Ukraine. Lithuania and Poland together absorbed barely a tenth of the roughly 9,100 attempts recorded across the bloc's Belarus frontier since January.
Ukraine opened its captured Russian arsenal to allies. Hundreds of applications came in within month.
Humanitarian and social impact
From Russia’s contract to death in about month: Cameroon student and 23-year-old were found dead in Ukraine. Ukrainian intelligence identified two Cameroonians killed on the front weeks after signing Russian army contracts. HUR puts Cameroon's war dead at 106.
Russian drone tracked moving car on Kharkiv road and killed man driving it. A Molniya drone hit a Peugeot on the Zolochiv-Maksymivka road in Bohodukhiv raion. Prosecutors opened a war crimes investigation.
Political and legal developments
“Our state became further from victory”: Ukraine’s top volunteer, whose fund bought 286,000 FPV Drones, just lost his defense post. Serhii Sternenko, whose foundation delivered 118,000 FPV drones to the front, is out as defense adviser after Fedorov's exit.
Ukraine’s reformist defense Minister is out after six months. Earlier, his audit exposed $7.2 billion in defense overspending. Mykhailo Fedorov, the drone-warfare architect who became Ukraine's youngest defense minister, is leaving after six months, having opened his tenure with an audit that found $7.2 billion in overspending.
Russia fired its missile at ammo that was stored next to civilian homes. Now Ukraine’s top defense-industry chief is out. Herman Smetanin left Ukroboronprom days after a Russian strike on one of its ammo depots — stored next to homes in breach of the law — destroyed five streets in Vyshneve.
New developments
A nationwide bomb-shelter overhaul is underway in Belarus as Moscow pushes Minsk toward its war against Ukraine. Belpol documented shelter modernization at government offices, telecom sites, factories, utilities, and the National Bank, framing it as another stage of Minsk's war readiness.
A month’s worth of Russia’s oil exports is stuck at sea—135 million barrels loaded but not delivered. Bloomberg's vessel-tracking and price data put the four-week value of Russia's seaborne crude exports back near $1.7 billion, down from a weekly spike near $2.5 billion on the chart earlier this year.
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