Exclusive

Russian spies ran a campaign against Kyiv on Anthropic's Claude, and the AI chatbot's maker caught them at it. The operators automated phishing, intrusion, and data theft, leaving the human to refine the workflows.

Military

Ukraine keeps hitting the fuel that Russia's war runs on. Its latest target is the Slavyansk-EKO refinery, with an annual processing capacity of at least 3 million tonnes. The Ukrainian military struck it as part of a deep-strike operation, according to military intelligence.

Ukraine hit the radar that guards Sochi, the Russian resort city it struck ten days ago. Drones burned two fuel depots there ten days ago, and the Ukrainian military says the system meant to stop them is now the target.

He had survived Mariupol, Russian captivity and took over Ukraine's Azov grouping in Donetsk. Now Brigadier General Prokopenko warns Russia may mobilize up to 600,000 for its next offensive. Prokopenko, the Mariupol-defense commander now leading the Azov grouping in Donetsk, says the aim is to seize all of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Intelligence and technology

Modern war that the US is not ready for: For the price of one American cruise missile, Russia builds 20 "poor-man" drones and missiles. Russia is fielding cheap jet drones and missiles built with Chinese parts—slipping past defenses Ukraine and the West spent years building.

Iran armed Russia with Shaheds. Now it wants the jet-powered Geran-5 remake back to fight Israel and the US. Russia turned Iran's imported Shahed into a jet that flies at up to 600 km/h, with a new airframe closer to a cruise missile than to the propeller drone Tehran sent it.

Ukraine's FLYCAT strike drone is built to fly without satellite signals. Its bigger new sibling is designed to reach 200 km behind the front. Everything on the combat-proven FLYCAT but the engines is made in Ukraine, and Octava Defence says the new long-range version can stay airborne for more than two and a half hours.

Russia built five more halls for the drones it assembles using Chinese parts to hit Ukrainian cities. The nightly waves that reach Kyiv and the western border regions mostly begin on the assembly lines inside this zone.

International

"We expect specifics from our partners": Zelenskyy says Ukraine will accept energy truce with Russia only if West guarantees Moscow won't break it after its elections. Zelenskyy says any potential truce needs Western guarantees.

No NATO army has fought modern war: Ukrainian officers set their battlefield practice against NATO doctrine and exposed where its assumptions no longer fit. Ukrainian and NATO officers spent three weeks together in Poland.

Lithuania launches military exercises across 12 municipalities as Russia keeps probing NATO's eastern border. A larger multinational exercise is running at the same time on the Belarusian border, with about 2,500 troops from eight countries.

Humanitarian and social impact

Russian strikes will cost Ukraine's economy up to $10 billion this year, ministry says. Kyiv is answering with compensation and cheap credit, aimed at the companies losing warehouses fastest.

A fourth Ukrainian pharmaceutical warehouse has burned in a Russian strike since the start of the month. Russian forces damaged the newest one in Odesa, where the buildings belong to a wholesaler supplying drugstores across Ukraine.

Political and legal developments

Zelenskyy suspends prosecutor general who charged the bureau probing his own office. The agencies he accused are the ones whose independence Brussels treats as a condition of Ukraine's EU accession.

New developments

Belarus trains troops to fight saboteurs as Minsk puts its military on a war footing. Warnings that Russia could use Belarusian territory against Ukraine or a NATO state give the drills their edge.

Read our earlier daily review here.

Exclusives

Ukraine is working down the short list of ships that shell its cities with cruise missiles. A Neptune reached one of them tied up at its own pier. Drones went in with the missile, and the general staff counts three more vessels and the port's fuel-oil storage hit the same night.

Military

Russia strikes passenger train near Polish border as drone swarms reach deeper into western Ukraine. Russia's attacks on railways and border crossings are putting civilian travel at growing risk. Poland's Donald Tusk warned days earlier that Moscow could target Ukraine's crossings with Poland.

Watch first naval battle in history fought entirely by drones: Ukrainian uncrewed boat spots, fires on, and sinks Russian one in Black Sea. A gun-armed Sargan-3000 spotted and sank a Russian naval drone in the Black Sea.

Ukraine is closing Russia's skies without hitting single airliner: Russia shut its airports 993 times in August, worst month for civil aviation since war began. The closures are triggered by Russia's own emergency protocol every time a drone nears.

Ukraine retook 240 square km north of Lyman and nobody reported it for three months. The 3rd Army Corps attacked on 22 May and nobody outside the army reported it until late August. Whether it changes the war is the one thing the analysts do not agree on.

Future wars will be won not only by those who have the best technological systems, Ukraine's former top general says in London. Valerii Zaluzhnyi says an expensive Cold War missile has become a cheap weapon fired in bulk.

Russia has fired its Oreshnik with six warheads at Ukraine three times. State Duma defense committee member says "hour is not far" before fourth one. He cast it as revenge for a naval drone strike on Sochi.

Intelligence and technology

Fast kill but also long game: Russia is using AI-generated women and long conversations to lure Ukrainian soldiers to their deaths. The fake profiles are one of three versions of a honey-trap scheme that has killed six soldiers, the SBU says.

Russia is working to modernize its weapons on every front. This month, its drones are expected to carry 20-element anti-jam antennas to outpace Ukraine's jamming. Russia's new drones and cruise weapons navigate rather than fly, so Ukraine has to jam GPS, not the operator link.

A Russian intelligence operative and a Belarusian petty criminal: Germany names the Leipzig bomb-drone suspects. The files show one of them handled preparation and logistics, and the other left a scrap of glove on the equipment that flew the drone.

Second fire in a month hits the Bulgarian plant that ships ammunition to Ukraine, and sabotage is on the table. The country's interior minister has ordered every ammunition depot in the country inspected and says outside interference cannot be excluded.

"Its task is not cargo. Its task is people": After Russian FPV drone hit their house, K-2 brigade sent ground robot to carry casualties out.

"Credit to the Russians, they know how to scale," Ukrainian military spokesperson says. Ukraine's jet-drone interceptors show early promise, but harder job ahead. Scaling them up to match Ukraine's success against slower drones is the real test.

Money, not engineering, is what stands between Ukraine and Russia's fastest drones, Zelenskyy says. Dozens of firms are chasing the problem, but nobody has funded production at the scale the nightly waves demand.

International

Ukraine's fight against Russia reaches Africa as Ukrainian drone specialists support forces battling Moscow. Ukrainian drone specialists are supporting forces fighting Russian troops in Mali, training personnel from other Sahel countries and operating in Sudan as Kyiv expands its military activity far beyond Ukraine.

From Russian classrooms to Iran's defense industry: how Moscow trains Iranian specialists. Almost 10,000 Iranians studied at Russian universities in 2025, 42% more than two years earlier, by the Russian science ministry's count, with medicine still the most popular field.

The EU just released $7 billion for Ukraine to buy Patriot missiles and drones. The money comes from Europe's existing loan to Kyiv, and the decision finally lets Ukraine place orders for the American interceptors it cannot build itself.

A drone beside a Ukrainian cargo plane is costing Russia its last consulate in Germany. Four others closed in 2023, leaving Moscow with an embassy and, from this month, no consular presence outside it.

Ukraine shows its drones in Canada as Ottawa pledges a third of its future output. The presentation followed a declaration on defense cooperation that Kyiv calls the first step toward a drone deal still to be signed.

Humanitarian and social impact

"There is real hunger there": Oleshky, occupied town in Ukraine's Kherson Oblast, turned 942 this week. Behind Russian blockade, its people eat roadside grass. The 942-year-old Kherson city has spent months cut off, its aid convoys shelled.

Ukraine's Third Army Corps won't just hold Donetsk fortress cities. It's building mission to pull civilians out of them. A dedicated fund is opening to pay for more trips, more often.

"Sometimes I forget I don't have a leg": how two Ukrainian infantry soldiers returned to war behind screens. Two Ukrainian soldiers who lost limbs to mines have returned to Khartiia, their National Guard unit, working the drone screens, instead of walking into positions on the ground.

Political and legal developments

EU has never sanctioned Russia's nuclear sector. Activists say that gap just let Rosatom into German plant, and they're suing to close it. BUND says letting Russia's Rosatom help make fuel at the Lingen plant, amid the war and sabotage in Germany, hands Moscow critical infrastructure.

Ukraine's parliament changes how military budget is cleared, and freezes money behind one of war's cleverest supply schemes, defense-industry council says. The program lets Ukrainian units turn confirmed kills into new weapons, but a parliamentary rule change has frozen the payments.

EU sanctions rollover stalls over Russian oligarch Usmanov as Paris backs Bratislava's demand to delist him. Ambassadors broke up with no agreement on renewing the measures, and they have one sitting left before every restriction on the list runs out on its own.

Canada sanctions eight Russians over deported Ukrainian children as only about 2,500 of more than 20,000 have come home. Ottawa's listing bars anyone in Canada from handling the property of the eight, and it took effect a week before Ukraine's leader arrived for talks.

Read our previous daily review here.

Exclusives

Ukraine is working down the short list of ships that shell its cities with cruise missiles. A Neptune reached one of them tied up at its own pier. Drones went in with the missile, and the general staff counts three more vessels and the port's fuel-oil storage hit the same night.

Military

Watch first naval battle in history fought entirely by drones: Ukrainian uncrewed boat spots, fires on, and sinks Russian one in Black Sea. A gun-armed Sargan-3000 spotted and sank a Russian naval drone in the Black Sea.

Ukraine is closing Russia's skies without hitting single airliner: Russia shut its airports 993 times in August, worst month for civil aviation since war began. The closures are triggered by Russia's own emergency protocol every time a drone nears.

Ukraine retook 240 square km north of Lyman and nobody reported it for three months. The 3rd Army Corps attacked on 22 May and nobody outside the army reported it until late August. Whether it changes the war is the one thing the analysts do not agree on.

Intelligence and technology

Fast kill but also long game: Russia is using AI-generated women and long conversations to lure Ukrainian soldiers to their deaths. The fake profiles are one of three versions of a honey-trap scheme that has killed six soldiers, the SBU says.

Russia is working to modernize its weapons on every front. This month, its drones are expected to carry 20-element anti-jam antennas to outpace Ukraine's jamming. Russia's new drones and cruise weapons navigate rather than fly, so Ukraine has to jam GPS, not the operator link.

Second fire in a month hits the Bulgarian plant that ships ammunition to Ukraine, and sabotage is on the table. The country's interior minister has ordered every ammunition depot in the country inspected and says outside interference cannot be excluded.

From Russian classrooms to Iran's defense industry: how Moscow trains Iranian specialists. Almost 10,000 Iranians studied at Russian universities in 2025, 42% more than two years earlier, by the Russian science ministry's count, with medicine still the most popular field.

International

EU sanctions rollover stalls over Russian oligarch Usmanov as Paris backs Bratislava's demand to delist him. Ambassadors broke up with no agreement on renewing the measures, and they have one sitting left before every restriction on the list runs out on its own.

The EU just released $7 billion for Ukraine to buy Patriot missiles and drones. The money comes from Europe's existing loan to Kyiv, and the decision finally lets Ukraine place orders for the American interceptors it cannot build itself.

Humanitarian and social impact

"There is real hunger there": Oleshky, occupied town in Ukraine's Kherson Oblast, turned 942 this week. Behind Russian blockade, its people eat roadside grass. The 942-year-old Kherson city has spent months cut off, its aid convoys shelled.

Ukraine's Third Army Corps won't just hold Donetsk fortress cities. It's building mission to pull civilians out of them. A dedicated fund is opening to pay for more trips, more often.

Political and legal developments

EU has never sanctioned Russia's nuclear sector. Activists say that gap just let Rosatom into German plant, and they're suing to close it. BUND says letting Russia's Rosatom help make fuel at the Lingen plant, amid the war and sabotage in Germany, hands Moscow critical infrastructure.

A Russian intelligence operative and a Belarusian petty criminal: Germany names the Leipzig bomb-drone suspects. The files show one of them handled preparation and logistics, and the other left a scrap of glove on the equipment that flew the drone.

Ukraine's parliament changes how military budget is cleared, and freezes money behind one of war's cleverest supply schemes, defense-industry council says. The program lets Ukrainian units turn confirmed kills into new weapons, but a parliamentary rule change has frozen the payments.

Read our earlier daily review here.

Exclusives

Ukraine is working down the short list of ships that shell its cities with cruise missiles. A Neptune reached one of them tied up at its own pier. Drones went in with the missile, and the general staff counts three more vessels and the port's fuel-oil storage hit the same night.

One Russian drone held up seven flights in Moldova, Zelenskyy's trip to Norway for King Harald V's funeral among them. The drone crossed Moldova twice that afternoon, and controllers shut the airspace over the center of the country for more than an hour, until after it came down in the north.

Military

Ukraine hits key Russia-Iran logistics hub in Caspian Sea, damages three Russian warships. A fire broke out at the Makhachkala port after Ukrainian forces struck its oil infrastructure, while separate attacks damaged Russian vessels in Novorossiysk.

Intelligence and technology

"Its task is not cargo. Its task is people": After Russian FPV drone hit their house, K-2 brigade sent ground robot to carry casualties out.

Future wars will be won not only by those who have the best technological systems, Ukraine's former top general says in London. Valerii Zaluzhnyi says an expensive Cold War missile has become a cheap weapon fired in bulk.

"Credit to the Russians, they know how to scale," Ukrainian military spokesperson says. Ukraine's jet-drone interceptors show early promise, but harder job ahead. Scaling them up to match Ukraine's success against slower drones is the real test.

Ukraine shows its drones in Canada as Ottawa pledges a third of its future output. The presentation followed a declaration on defense cooperation that Kyiv calls the first step toward a drone deal still to be signed.

Money, not engineering, is what stands between Ukraine and Russia's fastest drones, Zelenskyy says. Dozens of firms are chasing the problem, but nobody has funded production at the scale the nightly waves demand.

International

A drone beside a Ukrainian cargo plane is costing Russia its last consulate in Germany. Four others closed in 2023, leaving Moscow with an embassy and, from this month, no consular presence outside it.

Humanitarian and social impact

"Sometimes I forget I don't have a leg": how two Ukrainian infantry soldiers returned to war behind screens. Two Ukrainian soldiers who lost limbs to mines have returned to Khartiia, their National Guard unit, working the drone screens—instead of walking into positions on the ground.

Political and legal developments

Russia has fired its Oreshnik with six warheads at Ukraine three times. State Duma defense committee member says "hour is not far" before fourth one. He cast it as revenge for a naval drone strike on Sochi.

Canada sanctions eight Russians over deported Ukrainian children as only about 2,500 of more than 20,000 have come home. Ottawa's listing bars anyone in Canada from handling the property of the eight, and it took effect a week before Ukraine's leader arrived for talks.

Read our earlier daily review here.

Exclusives

One Russian drone held up seven flights in Moldova, Zelenskyy’s trip to Norway for King Harald V’s funeral among them. The drone crossed Moldova twice that afternoon, and controllers shut the airspace over the center of the country for more than an hour, until after it came down in the north.

Military

Ukraine hits key Russia-Iran logistics hub in Caspian Sea, damages three Russian warships. A fire broke out at the Makhachkala port after Ukrainian forces struck its oil infrastructure, while separate attacks damaged Russian vessels in Novorossiysk.

Can't intercept the missiles? Hit the factories—Ukraine's other way to stop Russia's ballistic missiles. Kyiv's US Patriots are all but gone as Russia builds ~100 of its deadliest missiles a month. Ukraine's fix: a $700,000 homemade interceptor.

Ukraine says drones hit Russia's gas heartland over 3,000 km from its border—a wartime record. Manufacturer Fire Point identified the drones as FP-1s. Ukrainian analysts said one strike hit equipment used in plastics production.

Ukraine downed a record 24,000 Russian copter drones in August—one per 1.5 km of front, every day. Each of those copters that spots a target can call in a full-fledged attack—so every one downed is a spotter out of the sky before it calls anything in.

Ukrainian commander, whose unit destroyed 57,000 Russia's targets: US telling allies to brace for years of war at Ramstein means no "miraculous de-escalation" is coming. The Kremlin understands only force and the West should press harder before winter, he adds.

Far from any front line: Russia has hit at least five of Ukraine's western border crossings with Moldova and NATO member since late August. During one strike, a drone flew into Moldova toward Romania and NATO jets scrambled.

"Neither pickup nor Bradley can enter": retreating Russians have mined sector where three Ukrainian oblasts meet so heavily that only ground robots can cross. On the junction of the Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, Russian forces lace their old positions and roads with mines and FPVs.

Ukraine's top commander scrapped more than 30 obsolete General Staff orders, freeing field commanders from paperwork built for different war. Many of the cancelled rules dated to the trench fighting of 2016-2020.

Intelligence and technology

Russia rehearsed how to disable Europe's undersea communications cables near Svalbard. NATO forces drove them off. British, Norwegian, and US forces tracked Russian vessels using deep-sea submersibles to simulate an operation designed to disable critical cables linking Svalbard with mainland Norway.

Ukraine's Bulava drone can now hunt in the dark—one camera handles day and night. Every new batch of the strike drone will ship with the upgrade, which also keeps it airborne longer and reaches farther than before.

Ai-Petri's maker began building EW gear after Russia took Crimea in 2014. It's now shown system, named for peninsula's highest peak, at Polish expo. It is already deployed in some 400 units along the front.

Russia is switching its cheap Molniya strike drones to digital video. When the change is complete, Ukraine's analog detectors go blind, Flash warns. Ukrainian interceptors must learn to catch the new signals now.

Romania trailed a Russian agent for seven months—then revealed what he was filming. Romania watched a man filming NATO bases and Ukraine's giant Antonov cargo planes for months.

"We found the key to the Russians": Ex-Defense Minister Fedorov returns from the US, planning Ukraine's largest venture fund for defense tech and war think tank. Fedorov credited contacts built around Palantir with helping raise it. No name, size, or date yet.

Osa air defense missile stocks are running low, but Ukraine has developed the RK-19 as a replacement. Ukraine's Osa launchers stay in the fight with a domestically built RK-19 interceptor as the Soviet 9M33 stock runs down.

Russia's new ballistic missile could reach western Ukraine—and it may be tested there within months. Russia is building more ballistic missiles as well as longer-ranged ones, part of a push to tip Ukraine into a social and economic crisis, Kyiv's military intelligence says.

20% to 70%: Ukraine's National Guard rewired its drone war around cables. Fiber-optic drones trail a cable with no signal to jam—and now account for 70% of the drones the National Guard uses, up from about a fifth.

International

Romania plans to send 20 officers to support Ukraine, but presidential administration denies claims Romania is being drawn into the war. The personnel are expected to join the Operational Command for the Multinational Force in Support of Ukraine. The command is based "thousands of kilometers from the front line."

US struck 5 Iranian tankers – 3 were also linked to Russia's shadow fleet. The vessels had carried Russian oil, called at Russian ports, or operated through networks used to evade sanctions, according to Ukraine.

Canada pledges more than $1 billion for Ukraine's critical air defense as Russia intensifies missile and drone attacks. The package includes Patriot missiles, F-16 ammunition and joint drone production, alongside Canada's commitment to join Ukraine's FREYJA anti-ballistic program.

Poland expects Russia to target border crossings as attacks on Ukraine escalate – Russia has already hit crossings with Moldova and Romania. Moscow has already struck at least five crossings with Moldova and NATO member Romania since late August, pushing its aerial campaign farther from the front line.

A drone nearly hit Zelenskyy's plane taking off from Moldova on his way to a king's funeral, Norway's PM says. Zelenskyy arrived in Oslo having spent much of the night on the phone about strikes on his own country.

Humanitarian and social impact

Kyiv couple marries after Russian strike ruins their home. Liudmyla and Leonid Ryzhak married in Kyiv on 8 September, hours after a Russian strike hit a warehouse across the street and a blast wave left their apartment uninhabitable.

He photographed Ukraine, then enlisted and died defending it at 27. Eleven years on, Viktor Hurniak's story is still being told. A new biography in a Ukrainian publisher's "True Heroes" series gathers what his family and friends remember of him.

Mines and unexploded munitions have harmed 1,688 civilians since Russia's full-scale invasion, Ukraine says. Farmers were the worst-hit occupation, in a country the UN's mine action service calls the most heavily contaminated since the Second World War.

Political and legal developments

EU lawmakers renew push to seize frozen Russian assets as Ukraine faces its toughest winter yet with a €23 billion defense funding gap. A cross-party group of 122 MEPs is pressing EU leaders to revive plans to turn more than €200 billion in immobilized Russian assets into support for Kyiv.

"I will continue to work just as productively": former intelligence chief Budanov shrugs off third Russian arrest order as an acknowledgment of his effectiveness. A Moscow court accuses him of prohibited methods of warfare.

Read our previous daily review here.

Exclusives

Ukraine’s prosecutor general resigns as the watchdogs he was appointed to leash close in. He is the third powerful figure they've brought down. What looks like a government in crisis is a state where impunity at the top is ending.

A US-Russia deal won’t end the war. It will start the next one. Two American processes are converging on the same point: the cost to Russia of attacking NATO. A peace on Moscow's terms lowers the political price; a US troop drawdown lowers the military one. Moscow is waiting to read both before it moves.

Team news

Vacancy: deputy editor-in-chief.

Military

Ukraine is sending its winning brigades to where the fighting is worst. The 46th just turned up outside Kramatorsk. Sloviansk and Kramatorsk are the last two big cities in the Donbas that Russia does not hold. The 46th Airmobile Brigade left the southeast in early July and reached them before anyone outside the army knew.

Trump’s peace envoys left, and Russia hit Kyiv with ballistics—the one thing Ukraine still struggles to stop. Only two ballistic missiles came down overnight, and the shortfall is now the centerpiece of what Kyiv is asking its allies to deliver.

Ukraine’s new top commander is pushing to unwind a Soviet-inherited command model mid-war. He wants combat-tested sergeants to have real authority. Ukraine inherited a system where officers decided everything and sergeants were senior soldiers with no ladder of their own.

Russia deploys missile brigade to Belarus as fears grow over new threat to Kyiv. The move comes as Russia steps up aerial attacks on Kyiv from the north and Belarus allows Moscow to use its territory to help guide strikes against Ukrainian targets.

Some ten robot boats. Five hundred Russian air sorties. One very lopsided hunt. Missions that once took a night now stretch to five days, and Russia keeps its fleet hidden, a naval drone unit commander says.

Intelligence and technology

Ukrainian engine for “Bars” missile-drone passes final tests. This is the last major imported component of the jet-powered drone used for deep strikes against Russia.

A Ukrainian strike drone that quietly hit 450-plus Russian targets steps out of the shadows. The drone pairs with a scout to punch through Russian jamming.

Ukraine’s new Hryfon Zakhid runs the whole drone chain on one screen. One operator assigns targets to drone crews from a tablet, in real time and without radio.

Ukrainian Armor unveils two new troop carriers at Polish arms exhibition: fast light scout and mine-resistant MRAP. Both meet NATO’s STANAG 4569 protection standards. Both cover opposite ends of the same job.

Ukraine shows a home-built missile designed to hit ballistic targets for the first time, the Koral, at Poland’s MSPO. Its guidance combines inertial navigation, radio correction, and an active radar homing head.

European NATO members may be the second target of Russia’s winter missile buildup—Ukraine’s foreign intelligence. The warning went to the national security advisors of Europe's leaders, with a call for urgent sanctions on 55 more firms keeping Russia's missile lines running.

Ukrainian AI targeting module placed third among 60-plus entries in NATO contest. NATO and Ukraine ran the challenge through their first jointly staffed body.

Ukrainian university and the Flamingo missile-maker opened an engineering course. On the first try, zero of 150 passed. Even students who scored well on the university entrance exam flunked the physics round.

Ukraine’s Brave1 says it can down Russia’s Banderol missiles with cruising speed 650 km/h for less than what they cost, and has destroyed at least four. In July, Ukrainian troops downed Banderols with Swedish Bofors L70 anti-aircraft guns designed in the late 1940s.

Ukraine has 67 companies working to shoot down Russia’s jet-powered drones en masse, Zelenskyy says. Only three to five have real results. He called the whole air-defense push "Plan B" to diplomacy's "Plan A".

China calls itself neutral—but its fiber ends up in the drones that hit Ukraine. The papers, reviewed by Western governments, trace drone-grade material straight from a Chinese state firm to a sanctioned Russian plant.

International

Brussels cleared Ukraine to spend EU loan money on American Patriot missiles for the coming winter of Russian attacks. The request went in four days earlier, and the funds come from the bloc's existing credit line rather than any new pledge.

Ukrainian journalist asks Trump’s envoy to his face whether he was disgusted to sit across from “international criminal” Putin. Witkoff wouldn’t answer directly. Earlier, Russia's FSB put a $400,000 bounty on Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Gordon.

Humanitarian and social impact

A Russian drone hit a Kyiv television newsroom in broad daylight while the channel was live on air. At least 5 people were injured, the building is partly destroyed, and firefighters put out the blaze at the site.

Russian-occupied nuclear plant ran on diesel for almost three weeks. Ukraine ended that, and the UN’s nuclear watchdog calls it a crucial step against an accident. The IAEA calls it a crucial step to prevent a nuclear accident at a site that had been facing a possible station blackout.

Russia burns occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant’s last-resort generators as everyday power, Ukraine says. Off-site power has been gone since 20 August, and the plant has cut its running generators to two to stretch the fuel that is left.

“Now on the 1,657th day”: Ukraine’s crews restored power to over 900,000 homes last week as Russia keeps striking grid before winter. Crews brought it back to 596 settlements, most of them in Odesa and Donetsk.

Kyiv stockpiles food and water as Russia’s new aerial tactics threaten a brutal winter. Russia has already targeted food storage around Kyiv, while Ukraine’s limited air defenses struggle to stop ballistic missiles and faster drones.

Political and legal developments

Russia’s FM says war must end so there is “no more Nazism” in Europe. Russian occupation official already said what that means: erasing Ukraine and stopping its aid. The collaborator put it plainly: "denazification is re-Russification".

Read our earlier daily review here.

Ukraine's Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko resigned on 7 September, hours after publicly defending himself, as anti-corruption investigators closed in on an alleged criminal organization operating inside his own office.

"I do not want the position of prosecutor general to be used as an instrument of political confrontation," Kravchenko said, announcing his departure on Telegram. "My position regarding the charges remains unchanged"—a denial he has held throughout, including in a 6 September statement rejecting any role in protecting the call centers.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the resignation on the evening of 7 September. "I had a fairly long meeting with the prosecutor general; he submitted the relevant resignation letter, and the submission will be sent to the Verkhovna Rada," Zelenskyy said, adding that he had spent the day on personnel matters and had also met the heads of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO). The resignation is not final until parliament acts on it.

It reads as a scandal. It is closer to the opposite.

Kravchenko was appointed in June 2025, as the anti-corruption agencies were pressing toward figures close to the president—and his appointment came alongside the draft law, No. 12414, that would have put NABU and SAPO under his control. That law triggered the first street protests since Russia's invasion; within ten days, parliament reversed the part stripping the agencies' independence.

The provisions handing Kravchenko a personnel monopoly over the prosecution service were never repealed.

Explore further

Contents

• Ukraine’s anti-corruption cops just beat the president—but the fight’s not over
• What Operation Carthage found
  • Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies target Prosecutor General’s Office official linked to fraudulent call centers
• The searches, and the surveillance files
• Why it matters
  • First real crash test for Ukraine’s anti-corruption institutions

Ukraine’s anti-corruption cops just beat the president—but the fight’s not over

Since then, those agencies have forced out Andriy Yermak, the second-most-powerful man in the country. Now they have reached the prosecutor general—whose office kept, even after the capture law was reversed, a personnel monopoly over the prosecution service.

The corruption is not new. What is new is that it is being caught, and that being caught now costs the powerful their offices. The story of the past year is not that Ukraine is coming apart, but that its watchdogs have stopped being toothless.

What Operation Carthage found

On 5 September, NABU and SAPO announced they had uncovered a criminal organization run, investigators say, by a department head inside the Prosecutor General's Office. Its members allegedly took regular bribes from fraudulent call centers—operations that defraud victims in Ukraine and abroad—in exchange for shielding them from prosecution, then laundered the money through property, assets registered to other people, and associates' bank accounts.

The group was formed in mid-2025 and recruited serving prosecutors and associates, NABU and SAPO said. Over 20 million hryvnias (about $449,000) went on property, jewelry, and other high-value assets, according to NABU.

NABU described the organization as run by the head of a department inside the Prosecutor General's Office. Sources told Ukrainska Pravda that the official is Serhii Kropyva, deputy head of the office's International Legal Cooperation Department. He was remanded in custody on 6 September with bail set at 120 million hryvnias (about $2.7 million).

In recordings released by NABU, a figure using the codename "Chancellor," reported to be Kropyva, is described as protected by a "boss." Two details identify that boss: the patronymic "Andriiovych," and a previous job leading the State Tax Service. Ruslan Andriiovych Kravchenko ran the State Tax Service from December 2024 until he became prosecutor general in June 2025. The investigation understands the "boss" to be Kravchenko, the Kyiv Independent reported.

NABU has not publicly named Kravchenko as a suspect. He denies instructing anyone to protect illegal call centers or using his office to shield them. He resigned nonetheless.

Explore further

Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies target Prosecutor General’s Office official linked to fraudulent call centers

The searches, and the surveillance files

NABU searches also reached the offices of Kravchenko himself, his deputy Mariia Vdovychenko, and the head of the Odesa Regional Military Administration, Oleh Kiper. Kravchenko defended the handling of those searches at a 7 September press conference—the same day he resigned.

The investigation into the Prosecutor General's Office is the latest in a widening confrontation between Ukraine's anti-corruption bodies and the institutions around the presidency. When NABU announced the case, it described a senior official running a criminal ring from inside the office meant to prosecute exactly such crimes.

Why it matters

The Prosecutor General's Office is one of the institutions Kyiv relies on to supervise—and, critics say, to restrain—NABU's investigations into figures close to the president. That an investigation reached the prosecutor general himself is a measure of how far the anti-corruption bodies have pushed against that restraint, not a sign they have failed.

It caps a run of accountability cases since July 2025 that would have been unthinkable earlier in the war.

In June 2025, NABU charged Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov—the only official at Zelenskyy's private birthday during lockdown—with a $24 million land scheme, the first case to reach the president's "family."

The attempt to capture the agencies came weeks later, and failed: in November, Operation Midas exposed a $100 million scheme that forced out Zelenskyy's chief of staff and two ministers, one of them later detained at the border. Other resonant cases include Operation Forest Gump, targeting officials inside the President's Office. Now Carthage has reached the prosecutor general himself.

The pattern that looks like a government in crisis is also a state where stealing at the top is no longer safe—and where the public has twice in a year come into the streets over how power is used: in July 2025 to defend NABU and SAPO, and in July 2026 for a sacked minister.

Kravchenko took office in June 2025. He is the second prosecutor general to leave under a cloud in three years, after Andriy Kostin.

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First real crash test for Ukraine’s anti-corruption institutions

Exclusive

Ukraine's Swedish radar planes have flown inside Russian missile range for six months. None has been shot down.. Kyiv said nothing until this week. The planes can see 450 km, and Russia's best missile flies nearly as far.

Ukraine put its own peace proposals on the table as two US envoys reached Kyiv for the first time. Security guarantees topped the Ukrainian list, and the day's diplomacy ran in consecutive sessions that widened to include three European governments' security chiefs.

Ukraine logged impacts at 11 sites while the American peace delegation was still in Moscow. The strike package mixed jet-powered attack drones, decoys, and cruise missiles across several oblasts.

Ukraine is running short of its best missiles for hunting Russia's jet drones. Now MiG-29s are firing 1970s weapons. The R-73 was the missile for the job. Ukraine has burned through enough of them to bring back a weapon that was obsolete in 2022.

Ukraine is taking 1980s Leopards from across Europe and giving them radar-guided anti-drone guns and gunner-less turrets. Thirty-one get a Belgian turret the crew doesn't sit in. Others become radar-guided drone killers, built in Rome and paid for with frozen Russian money.

Team news

Vacancy: deputy editor-in-chief.

Military

Ukraine's new top commander is pushing to unwind a Soviet-inherited command model mid-war. He wants combat-tested sergeants to have real authority. Ukraine inherited a system where officers decided everything and sergeants were senior soldiers with no ladder of their own.

Russia deploys missile brigade to Belarus as fears grow over new threat to Kyiv. The move comes as Russia steps up aerial attacks on Kyiv from the north and Belarus allows Moscow to use its territory to help guide strikes against Ukrainian targets.

Some ten robot boats. Five hundred Russian air sorties. One very lopsided hunt. Missions that once took a night now stretch to five days, and Russia keeps its fleet hidden, a naval drone unit commander says.

Ukrainian drones took Ryazan's blending unit after knocking out two of its four crude units. Satellite imagery in August showed half the plant's primary distillation capacity already out of action.

Ukraine's drone forces say they hit 58,465 Russian targets in August, nearly 1,900 a day. Three named campaigns did the strategic damage. Most of the volume is small front-line hits.

Intelligence and technology

Ukrainian AI targeting module placed third among 60-plus entries in NATO contest. NATO and Ukraine ran the challenge through their first jointly staffed body.

Ukrainian university and the Flamingo missile-maker opened an engineering course. On the first try, zero of 150 passed. Even students who scored well on the university entrance exam flunked the physics round.

Ukraine's Brave1 says it can down Russia's Banderol missiles with cruising speed 650 km/h for less than what they cost, and has destroyed at least four. In July, Ukrainian troops downed Banderols with Swedish Bofors L70 anti-aircraft guns designed in the late 1940s.

Ukraine has 67 companies working to shoot down Russia's jet-powered drones en masse, Zelenskyy says. Only three to five have real results. He called the whole air-defense push "Plan B" to diplomacy's "Plan A".

China calls itself neutral—but its fiber ends up in the drones that hit Ukraine. The papers, reviewed by Western governments, trace drone-grade material straight from a Chinese state firm to a sanctioned Russian plant.

International

Ukrainian journalist asks Trump's envoy to his face whether he was disgusted to sit across from "international criminal" Putin. Witkoff wouldn't answer directly. Earlier, Russia's FSB put a $400,000 bounty on Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Gordon.

Humanitarian and social impact

Russia burns occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant's last-resort generators as everyday power, Ukraine says. Off-site power has been gone since 20 August, and the plant has cut its running generators to two to stretch the fuel that is left.

"Now on the 1,657th day": Ukraine's crews restored power to over 900,000 homes last week as Russia keeps striking grid before winter. Crews brought it back to 596 settlements, most of them in Odesa and Donetsk.

Kyiv stockpiles food and water as Russia's new aerial tactics threaten a brutal winter. Russia has already targeted food storage around Kyiv, while Ukraine's limited air defenses struggle to stop ballistic missiles and faster drones.

Political and legal developments

Russia's FM says war must end so there is "no more Nazism" in Europe. Russian occupation official already said what that means: erasing Ukraine and stopping its aid. The collaborator put it plainly: "denazification is re-Russification".

Read our earlier daily review here.

Exclusives

Ukraine is running short of its best missiles for hunting Russia's jet drones. Now MiG-29s are firing 1970s weapons. The R-73 was the missile for the job. Ukraine has burned through enough of them to bring back a weapon that was obsolete in 2022.

Ukraine is taking 1980s Leopards from across Europe and giving them radar-guided anti-drone guns and gunner-less turrets. Thirty-one get a Belgian turret the crew doesn't sit in. Others become radar-guided drone killers, built in Rome and paid for with frozen Russian money.

Russia destroyed most of Ukraine's big warehouses. Now the country is scrambling to build small ones everywhere. Whether they can do it before winter, and at what cost to prices, is the question now hanging over the country's food supply.

Military

Ukraine's Lasar's Group says its bomber drones destroyed rare Russian Zhitel jammer 55 km behind front. The R-330Zh Zhitel jams GPS, satellite and cellular signals at once.

"Everyone is absolutely livid": Expert says Russian agent may have activated MESH relay within 5 km of attack on Security Service, enraging Ukraine and Europe. The drone was aimed directly at the acting SBU chief's office, Zelenskyy said.

Intelligence and Technology

More than 400 defense firms ask Kyiv to create one state body with real authority over $6.8 billion industry. A year after the strategic-industries ministry folded into Defense, the sector's council says responsibility is scattered across half a dozen agencies.

From HQ to the zero line: Ukraine's Hrafit system answers one important question on an ordinary phone in a trench and on the road. Built by military programmers, Hrafit fuses radio-intelligence and surveillance into one picture.

International

Slovakia, led by one of EU's most Russia-friendly governments, condemns Russia's drone strike on Ukraine's Security Service building. Slovakia condemns Russia's SBU strike but urges "both sides" to de-escalate.

Ukraine orders temporary ceasefire as US envoys visit Moscow. Air raid alert sounds in Kyiv immediately as pause begins. The reported order covers 5–8 September as Washington seeks to restart peace talks after months of stalled negotiations, but Russian attacks continued as the pause was due to begin.

Germany suspects Russian intelligence behind arson attack as hybrid warfare threat grows across Europe. The Munich attack follows attempts to disrupt Germany's power grid and comes amid mounting evidence of Russian covert operations targeting European countries supporting Ukraine.

Humanitarian and Social Impact

Russia made 500 Ukrainian schoolchildren in occupied Donetsk take part in "anti-terrorism dictation". It taught them they can be jailed for a repost at 14. The test drilled Russian extremism law into pupils. In 2025 alone, occupation authorities sent 48 Ukrainian children to psychiatric hospitals.

Political and Legal Developments

"If you're gonna f*ck, f*ck a queen, if you're gonna steal, steal a million": Ukraine's anti-corruption bureau says senior official ran criminal ring inside Prosecutor General's Office. Investigators say the suspect took bribes to shield scam call centers and laundered millions.

Read our earlier daily review here.

Exclusives

Desperate to save Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, Ukrainian forces counterattack and reinforce. A Russian pincer is slowly closing around the last two big free cities in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region. Winter will be a brief reprieve.

Military

Ukraine's Khartiia soldiers clear 4 km² near Kupiansk, while Russia pushes for main rail hub (VIDEO). On the left bank, Russian supply was so broken that they delivered water by drone.

Drones hit fuel depots in Sochi and an explosives plant 1,300 km away on the same night.

Spain keeps arming Ukraine against Russia's ballistic missiles, and promises even more. Madrid is readying a fresh batch of interceptors for Kyiv, and has ordered four new Patriot systems of its own in a $1.7 billion Raytheon deal.

Ukraine's F-16s are so short of Western missiles that pilots fall back on jet's built-in M61A1 Vulcan cannon, which risks killing civilians below. The AIM missiles the jets are rationing are the same ones defending Kyiv from the ground.

Ukraine says it struck a Bastion in Crimea, the launcher Russia pairs Zircon and Oniks missiles on. One of those missiles flies at hypersonic speed, and Russia has aimed both at targets far from any coastline.

Russian drone strikes SBU headquarters in central Kyiv. Zelenskyy says "geography" of Ukraine's response is set. The midday strike injured 12 people and damaged the nearby Sofia Kyivska historic complex, as Russia continues its relentless drone campaign against the capital.

Gunman on a motorcycle shoots the Russian air force general Ukraine says ordered the strike on Kyiv's children's hospital. The officer was hit twice as he stepped outside in a settlement near Engels, and surgeons in Saratov worked through the morning to keep him alive.

For first time, Ukraine shows its British Rapid Ranger air-defense system mounted on Spanish off-road chassis. Its crews call it "close-range storm". This 500-kilogram missile system is designed to catch what radar misses.

Intelligence and technology

Russia's answer to Starlink was written off as a failure, its satellites are still climbing. Forty-six days after their 19 July launch, the new craft sit at a median 365 km, higher than Russia's already-working first batch was at the same age.

Russia straps two small attack drones to wings of its long-range Gerans and releases them deep inside Ukraine. It rarely works, Flash says. An FPV drone drop was recently recorded in Kyiv Oblast, but there is no confirmation yet that it was carried out using a Gerbera.

Russia now hunts Kyiv by daylight too, Flash explains why.

International

Germany suspects Russian intelligence behind arson attack as hybrid warfare threat grows across Europe. The Munich attack follows attempts to disrupt Germany's power grid and comes amid mounting evidence of Russian covert operations targeting European countries supporting Ukraine.

Witkoff and Kushner to visit Kyiv and Moscow to revive peace talks as Russia ramps up attacks across Ukraine. The US envoys will meet Russian and Ukrainian leaders as Washington attempts to put peace talks back on track.

Finland ran Europe's largest civil defense drill since World War II inside a shelter carved under a sports arena. More than two thousand people spent hours underground in Kuopio while rescue services tested a facility that had never once been used for its wartime purpose.

Germany will close Russia's Bonn consulate after attributing Leipzig Airport drone attack to Moscow. Germany is tightening its response to Russia after the Leipzig drone plot, with new restrictions targeting Russian institutions and citizens as investigators identify two suspects.

Estonia paid $81 million for Ukraine's shells to firm that had never made one, now its defense minister is out. Estonia may have to repay €70 million in EU funds. The ammunition failed quality standards.

Poland sent Ukraine 350 tanks, Europe just agreed to refund it half a billion dollars. Once Hungary lifted its two-year veto, Warsaw's total refund for arming Kyiv is nearing $1.4 billion, with $500 million more due in 2027.

EU foreign ministers want Russia's ex-fighters out. Nobody has written down what counts as proof. Each member state would have to judge individual cases, and the bloc set itself a June deadline for the plan that its council still cannot approve.

Russian Black Sea attacks, low Danube waters push EU to seek alternative routes for Ukrainian grain exports. Ukraine's two main wartime export outlets are under pressure at once, threatening farm revenue as global crop prices climb.

Ukraine takes Zelenskyy's Russian airspace warning to UN aviation body. Kyiv's letter asks the UN aviation body to recommend that member states stop flying over Russia.

Belgium points Ukraine to next year's European loan instead of Russia's frozen cash. Earnings from the immobilized money underwrite an earlier European loan, while the sum they come from stays behind one government's objections.

Humanitarian and social impact

Ukraine adopts two-tier air raid alert system as Russia's mass drone attacks become the new normal. The new system will distinguish drone threats from the heightened threat of missile or combined strikes, changing how businesses and cities respond to air raids.

Political and legal developments

Ukraine orders temporary ceasefire as US envoys visit Moscow. Air raid alert sounds in Kyiv immediately as pause begins. The reported order covers 5–8 September as Washington seeks to restart peace talks after months of stalled negotiations, but Russian attacks continued as the pause was due to begin.

After years of disputes, Hungary finds common ground with Ukraine, on honoring Soviet deportations from Zakarpattia. A Rada resolution honors thousands who died in a Soviet deportation campaign targeting Hungarian- and German-speaking Zakarpattia residents.

Ukraine's anti-corruption agencies target Prosecutor General's Office official linked to fraudulent call centers. The operation targets an alleged criminal organization linked to a network of fraudulent call centers and asset laundering.

Read our previous daily review here.

Exclusives

Desperate to save Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, Ukrainian forces counterattack and reinforce. A Russian pincer is slowly closing around the last two big free cities in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region. Winter will be a brief reprieve.

NATO vows to defend every inch. Svalbard is where Russia plans to prove it won't.. The CIA chief's visit to Moscow gave rise to warnings that Russia may be preparing to strike the Baltics. However, Russia has an easier target for the goal of paralyzing NATO.

Military

Ukraine's Khartiia soldiers clear 4 km² near Kupiansk, while Russia pushes for main rail hub (VIDEO). On the left bank, Russian supply was so broken that they delivered water by drone.

Gunman on a motorcycle shoots the Russian air force general Ukraine says ordered the strike on Kyiv's children's hospital. The officer was hit twice as he stepped outside in a settlement near Engels, and surgeons in Saratov worked through the morning to keep him alive.

Russia now hunts Kyiv by daylight too, Flash explains why.

Intelligence and technology

Poland sent Ukraine 350 tanks—Europe just agreed to refund it half a billion dollars. Once Hungary lifted its two-year veto, Warsaw's total refund for arming Kyiv is nearing $1.4 billion—with $500 million more due in 2027.

Russia straps two small attack drones to wings of its long-range Gerans and releases them deep inside Ukraine. It rarely works, Flash says. An FPV drone drop was recently recorded in Kyiv Oblast, but there is no confirmation yet that it was carried out using a Gerbera.

For first time, Ukraine shows its British Rapid Ranger air-defense system mounted on Spanish off-road chassis. Its crews call it "close-range storm". This 500-kilogram missile system is designed to catch what radar misses.

Ukrainian brigade trials Serval Cube EW dome in combat-like conditions, suppresses every drone launched at it. Serval Cube jams the control, navigation, and video-transmission channels a drone depends on rather than destroying it outright.

International

Ukraine takes Zelenskyy's Russian airspace warning to UN aviation body. Kyiv's letter asks the UN aviation body to recommend that member states stop flying over Russia.

Humanitarian and social impact

Russian Black Sea attacks, low Danube waters push EU to seek alternative routes for Ukrainian grain exports. Ukraine's two main wartime export outlets are under pressure at once, threatening farm revenue as global crop prices climb.

Political and legal developments

Estonia paid $81 million for Ukraine's shells to firm that had never made one—now its defense minister is out. Estonia may have to repay €70 million in EU funds. The ammunition failed quality standards.

EU foreign ministers want Russia's ex-fighters out. Nobody has written down what counts as proof. Each member state would have to judge individual cases, and the bloc set itself a June deadline for the plan that its council still cannot approve.

Belgium points Ukraine to next year's European loan instead of Russia's frozen cash. Earnings from the immobilized money underwrite an earlier European loan, while the sum they come from stays behind one government's objections.

Read our earlier daily review here.

Exclusive

NATO vows to defend every inch. Svalbard is where Russia plans to prove it won't.. The CIA chief's visit to Moscow gave rise to warnings that Russia may be preparing to strike the Baltics. However, Russia has an easier target for the goal of paralyzing NATO.

Ukraine spent three years learning to catch Russian drones—so Russia made them fly faster. Russia's jet-powered drones don't beat Ukraine's missile defense. They threaten the cheap layer that keeps it affordable—and they are turning the war into a contest over reaction time.

Military

42,020 troops, 1,827 artillery systems, 89 tanks: Ukraine's tally of what it cost Russia to keep fighting in August. As frontline losses climb, Moscow fires ballistic missiles and jet drones Ukraine cannot catch.

Ukraine confirms strike hit Novatek fuel plant at Russia's Ust-Luga port. Kyiv says the Baltic-coast facility supports Russia's military, while the strike's effect on production remains unknown.

Putin says Russia is 12 km from Sumy—1.5 km farther than in June. Just two months ago, the Kremlin claimed Russian troops were 10.5 km from Sumy—now it says they are 12 km away.

Foot soldiers get a long spear: Ukrainian assault units strike deep behind Russian lines. Ukraine's trench units now fly strike drones 150 km into the Russian rear—a job that once belonged to specialists.

Intelligence and technology

Twenty Ukrainian firms are racing to catch Russia's jet-powered Shaheds. This one's interceptor is already flying combat missions. Firebolt Engineering joins Ukraine's jet-interceptor drone race.

Kazakh refinery deal could ease Russia's front-line fuel pressure—but it covers just 0.3% of demand. Central Asia lacks capacity to solve Moscow's shortage, while potential suppliers risk Western sanctions.

Ukraine says it bought 5,000 pickup trucks through open competitive bidding and saved more than $45 million. Six suppliers will deliver the all-wheel-drive diesels by year's end.

International

190 or 580 Patriot missiles? What Ukraine's EU-loan request could buy—and why Washington still decides. The EU is weighing Ukraine's loan request to buy Patriot missiles, von der Leyen confirmed—member states take it up on 7 September.

Russia says Armenia's EU accession law means leaving Moscow-led trade bloc. Yerevan disagrees. At their first meeting since Armenia's June election, Pashinyan rejected Putin's claim that Yerevan had begun leaving Moscow's economic bloc.

A masked figure got into a Polish drone-parts plant—Poland now suspects a foreign spy service set the fire. Poland has opened a foreign-intelligence and terrorism case. A masked figure got in over the fence, the fire followed, and no one is charged.

Humanitarian and social impact

Russia's air war has cost the average Ukrainian mall 166.8 working days since 2022, about eight months of closed floors. Ukraine's malls spent a fifth of August under air-raid alerts, a new record.

Zaporizhzhia's largest mall closes as Russia's attacks seek to make Ukrainian cities unlivable. City Mall will remain closed throughout September after a Russian strike hit a nearby hypermarket, as repeated attacks disrupt businesses and everyday life across Ukraine.

Political and legal developments

Ukraine says it busted a Kyiv crypto ring that drained EU citizens' wallets. The SBU says the alleged scheme's monthly turnover from stolen funds could reach $1 million during its most lucrative periods.

Putin dismisses mobilization reports as Ukraine warns Russia could call up 600,000 to war. Russian officials gave similar assurances before the Kremlin's 2022 call-up, while the decree authorizing it was never formally revoked.

Russian Church installs Soviet military veteran to lead occupation-created diocese in Kherson Oblast. After Patriarch Kirill consecrated him in Moscow, Igor Pashentsev will oversee Russian Orthodox parishes across five occupied Kherson districts.

Ukraine's Security Service says it foiled FSB plot to assassinate Russian opposition leader in Kyiv – several wounded in street shootout. The clash followed the reported disappearance of a Russian Volunteer Corps commander and a Ukrainian investigation into an alleged Russian assassination attempt.

Putin calls Zelenskyy's airspace warning "state terrorism" as shares in Russia's national airline fall 5%. European and US airlines already avoid Russian airspace, while carriers from China, Türkiye, and Gulf states continue using it.

New developments

Estonia quarantines emails from Russian domains over cyberattack risk. Messages will undergo automated security screening rather than being blocked outright. Local governments and some state bodies remain outside the system.

Russian propagandists fake Polish newspaper claiming Ukraine faces famine. The Matryoshka disinformation network fabricated a Polish newspaper front page claiming that Russian strikes could leave 63% of Ukrainians facing famine.

Read our earlier daily review here.

Exclusives

Ukraine spent three years learning to catch Russian drones—so Russia made them fly faster. Russia's jet-powered drones don't beat Ukraine's missile defense. They threaten the cheap layer that keeps it affordable—and they are turning the war into a contest over reaction time.

Russia keeps striking Ukraine’s energy system. Winter resilience plans are less than half complete. Ukraine is racing to shield heat, water, and rail from Russian strikes—but new locomotives will not arrive before 2027.

Military

Second drone brigade in two months: Ukraine is forming the 446th Unmanned Systems Brigade. It is the second brigade of this level stood up in 2026, following the 445th, and recruitment is already underway, per unofficial sources.

Drone attack damages Russia's Baltic oil port as drone crosses Latvia into Estonia. Finland separately restricted air and maritime traffic in the eastern Gulf of Finland. No drones entered Finnish territory.

Russia's 6-day attack on Kyiv that started two days after CIA head's visit to Moscow, culminates with massive ballistic missile strike on eve of school year. Three children were among the injured. Civilian infrastructure was damaged in five of Kyiv's ten districts.

800 jet drones in four days: Russia is now firing type Ukraine's interceptors cannot catch. Of more than 1,500 drones launched over four days, about 800 have been jet-powered.

"In intercepts, they're screaming": Russia occupied this spit to control Ukraine's ports. Military says it has now isolated 2,500-strong grouping and destroyed all its artillery. Drone strikes and remote mining have cut supply, the Ukrainian soldiers say.

Intelligence and technology

Russia's Starlink rival falters as latest satellite batch stalls in low orbit, ISW says. None of the 16 spacecraft launched in July reached the 550-kilometer benchmark, while two may reenter the atmosphere and be lost.

Fired Ukraine defense chief Fedorov launches defense-tech company with Palantir CEO backing. After leaving government, Mykhailo Fedorov has moved deeper into defense technology, raising money in the US and pitching new ways to turn Ukraine's battlefield experience into weapons and military systems.

Russia promised a scramjet superweapon. Ukraine says Zircon runs on solid fuel. Ukraine's military intelligence puts Zircon's highest recorded speed at Mach 6.8, below Moscow's Mach 9 claim, and says both its motors are solid-fuel. Its component catalogue also names two US-manufacturer chips inside.

Ukrainian company builds single device that detects FPV drone, reads its video feed, and jams it. Brama has passed lab and combat testing and is now going through codification.

About $150 for airframe, about $875 for finished glider: Ukraine's BlueBird is selling its drone at every stage of assembly. Units pick the control system, camera, and electronics themselves; the bare airframe starts near $150.

Fired Ukrainian minister offers to help build America's drone army— for Patriot missiles in return. Mykhailo Fedorov is courting US investors for a fund that would build defense tech companies itself, not just back them.

International

Germany blames Moscow for Leipzig drone attack, closes consulate and cultural center among sweeping diplomatic measures. One of three drones linked to the incident reportedly struck a Ukrainian Antonov without detonating. Berlin also plans tighter entry controls for Russian nationals and additional EU sanctions.

German politician wants to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine after Russian drone attack in Leipzig airport. Wolfgang Kubicki wants Berlin to warn Moscow that further sabotage in Germany could unlock long-range cruise missiles for Ukraine.

US welcomes Russia back to G20 but rules out economic relief, source says. Washington tied any economic relief for Moscow to the end of the war, while European officials resisted Russia's return to the G20.

Armenia drops Russia's 'strategic partner' label, but foreign minister says alliance remains. The comments come after Armenia's new five-year government program changed how it describes ties with Moscow.

Latvia blocks Russian and Belarusian books, clothes and toys. The national measure goes beyond EU sanctions, covers goods worth €12.5 million in 2025, and limits the entry of propaganda materials.

Indonesia is examining whether traffickers put its citizens into Russia's war on Ukraine. The country's Foreign Ministry has put its overseas missions on establishing how one of its nationals came to serve Moscow's forces.

Someone placed funeral wreaths near defense companies in Lithuania and Czechia. The head of a Lithuanian defense company called it "ordinary intimidation" by Russians.

The US built itself a Russo-Ukrainian drone-war drill—Poland is the first ally in. A Green Beret officer expects most of NATO's 32 members to want a look, as Ukraine's war experience reshapes how the alliance trains.

Russia's shadow war on Europe is widening—NATO still sees no attack coming. A Polish warning, a US spy chief's Moscow trip, and an explosive drone found beside a cargo plane at a German airport all preceded the alliance's assessment.

Humanitarian and social impact

Russian air attack interrupts lessons on first day of school in Ukraine. Around 240,000 Ukrainian children entered first grade, 10% fewer than last year. 200,000 students near the front will study entirely online.

UN counted 183 Ukrainian children killed or wounded in July, the highest since 2022. The Ukrainian military released the breakdown on the day many schools across the country stayed shut because of Russian strikes.

Russian drone struck a Ukrainian fire truck on its way to a house fire—four rescuers injured. The crew was answering a call in a village outside Zaporizhzhia, and all four men went to hospital with injuries of differing severity.

Political and legal developments

"Russian airspace will effectively be closing": Zelenskyy warns airlines Russian skies are no longer safe. Ukraine says civilian aviation is not a target, but warns airlines can no longer assume Russian skies are safe.

Former Ukrainian president has made offer to Zelenskyy amid Russia's new type of war on Kyiv. Petro Poroshenko has tabled a five-point plan for how the capital survives permanent air raid alerts.

Read our previous daily review here.

Exclusives

Ukraine has five ways to stop Russia's Iskanders. Only one arrives before the strikes on the grid begin. It means finding a launcher in a forest during the twenty minutes it spends above ground.

A rare Ukrainian Bulat tank turned up in a brigade that never had them. Ukraine wanted 400 of the up-armored T-64s and built about 80. Nobody can say how the 57th Motorized Brigade got one.

Military

800 jet drones in four days: Russia is now firing type Ukraine's interceptors cannot catch. Of more than 1,500 drones launched over four days, about 800 have been jet-powered.

"In intercepts, they're screaming": Russia occupied this spit to control Ukraine's ports. Military says it has now isolated 2,500-strong grouping and destroyed all its artillery. Drone strikes and remote mining have cut supply, the Ukrainian soldiers say.

Intelligence and technology

Ukrainian company builds single device that detects FPV drone, reads its video feed, and jams it. Brama has passed lab and combat testing and is now going through codification.

About $150 for airframe, about $875 for finished glider: Ukraine's BlueBird is selling its drone at every stage of assembly. Units pick the control system, camera, and electronics themselves; the bare airframe starts near $150.

International

Fired Ukrainian minister offers to help build America's drone army— for Patriot missiles in return. Mykhailo Fedorov is courting US investors for a fund that would build defense tech companies itself, not just back them.

The US built itself a Russo-Ukrainian drone-war drill—Poland is the first ally in. A Green Beret officer expects most of NATO's 32 members to want a look, as Ukraine's war experience reshapes how the alliance trains.

Russia's shadow war on Europe is widening—NATO still sees no attack coming. A Polish warning, a US spy chief's Moscow trip, and an explosive drone found beside a cargo plane at a German airport all preceded the alliance's assessment.

New developments

Someone placed funeral wreaths near defense companies in Lithuania and Czechia. The head of a Lithuanian defense company called it "ordinary intimidation" by Russians.

Read our earlier daily review here.

Exclusives

Ukraine has five ways to stop Russia’s Iskanders. Only one arrives before the strikes on the grid begin. It means finding a launcher in a forest during the twenty minutes it spends above ground.

A rare Ukrainian Bulat tank turned up in a brigade that never had them. Ukraine wanted 400 of the up-armored T-64s and built about 80. Nobody can say how the 57th Motorized Brigade got one.

Russia drove most ships from Ukraine’s ports. Now its drones are hunting the trains. By late August, Ukraine had exported only a third of its normal volume of farm goods. Russia damaged more than 250 locomotives in six months.

Military

Ukraine is testing four new drone interceptors as Russia floods its skies with faster Gerans. Kyiv is racing to scale new defences after Russia used more than 2,500 jet-powered drones in August alone.

Ukraine strikes Russia's second-largest oil refinery again in major overnight attack, also hitting airfield and drone launch site. The refinery has been targeted repeatedly during the full-scale war as Ukraine strikes infrastructure supporting Russia's military and economy.

Four days of Russian attacks keep Kyiv under near-constant fire. Ukraine is struggling to defend its skies. Russia has launched nearly 2,000 attack drones, more than 1,600 guided bombs and 31 missiles against Ukraine this week, while Kyiv faces repeated strikes and a shortage of critical air defence interceptors.

Ukrainian ground-robot maker has moved into air: Ratel's first strike drone flies 30 kilometres on Starlink link. The Ratel K1 carries two kilograms, the maker says.

"We have surprises for our neighbors": Ukraine's aviation commander says new aircraft developments are essentially finished and already in testing. Ukraine has already rebuilt what it flies. Its crews turned the 1970s-era Su-24 bomber into a launcher for SCALP cruise missiles.

Russia launches third attack on Ukraine's largest Danube port this month, during peak of wheat harvest. Five trucks loaded with grain were destroyed and three more damaged in the Izmail district.

Ukraine chooses three Western fighters to build its air force around. One of them can fly again from stretch of road in 15 to 20 minutes. The Air Force settled on them after weighing cost, logistics, and repair speed.

Fix for Ukraine's interceptors is radar seeker head, and American firm is selling one for $4,000, says president's tech adviser. Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov says cloud and fog collapse interceptor hit rates, and a seeker head is the way out.

Four ground robots for one evacuation: Russia is targeting Ukraine's robotic medevac missions. Ground robots are helping evacuate wounded troops from exposed positions, but the systems themselves have come under intense Russian fire.

Ukrainian robot commander calls ground robots "Persian elephants." What army really needs are "Arabian steeds," he says. A "Khartia" robot commander says FPV drones and mines have collapsed the machines' lifespan.

Russia destroyed last of Kherson's heat and power equipment on 26 August. Ukraine's new defence minister arrived days later. Yevhenii Khmara met the regional governor days after glide bombs wrecked the city's power plant.

Ukraine has built twin-Kalashnikov turret for cheap ground robots. Security Service has already used one to destroy Russian ambushes. A Brave1 turret carries two AKs and went from idea to prototype in under six months.

Ukraine struck Tu-95 at base Russia launches its cruise missiles on Ukraine's civilians. Satellite image shows third of right wing gone. SBU Alpha struck the strategic bomber at Engels-2.

Kyiv has been under attack for 2 days nonstop. Russia is targeting the capital's civilian supply chains. Russian jet-powered drones have repeatedly struck warehouses, businesses and logistics facilities around the capital, disrupting supplies while rescuers work under threat of further attacks.

Intelligence and technology

Ukraine's intelligence: Russia is running its Nepal, Cuba, Kenya, and India recruitment scheme in Indonesia now. Ukraine's foreign intelligence says it holds documents on at least eight recruited Indonesian citizens.

Partisans say Russian recruiters in occupied Donetsk are taking drunk men from bars straight to enlistment offices. An ATESH agent inside the Dnepr grouping headquarters reports a new scheme.

Russians bought $300 million in body armor, thermal sights, and drone parts on Ozon marketplace Ukraine is bombing. Russians bought 157,700 body armour vests there.

International

After CIA head's visit to Moscow, Poland's PM warns Russia is preparing to escalate war. He puts critical window at seven or eight months. Poland's prime minister says there are signals of serious Russian preparation.

Ukraine dismissed its defence minister in July. He is now advising NATO country on defence innovation. Guido Crozetto called the dismissed Ukrainian minister the day after Kyiv let him go.

From the Gripen sale to coast guard boats: Sweden sends 10 vessels to Ukraine. Ukraine's emergency service will use the boats for waterborne rescue work, including clearing mines from river beds. Stockholm's contributions to the US-led PURL programme now total $552 million.

Humanitarian and social impact

Russia has burned millions of Ukrainian books, striking at the infrastructure of Ukrainian culture. More than 60,000 books were destroyed in a single warehouse strike near Kyiv this week, adding to losses that publishers say are becoming impossible to absorb.

Russia has destroyed 90% of Ukraine's modern commercial storage capacity. Retail logistics are being reshaped. Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi says the country faces no threat of famine, but warns stores could see a narrower range of products.

Political and legal developments

What does Ukraine's new defence minister wear on his wrist? He did not mention it until reporter asked. Yevhenii Khmara's bracelet carries the names of fallen comrades, a US magazine reported.

"Territory that will allow us to export our energy resources to Europe": Russia's deputy Duma chairman calls for massed bombing of Ukrainian cities. Duma vice-speaker Pyotr Tolstoy said the aim is to demoralise civilians until they give up.

Read our previous daily review here.

Exclusives

Ukraine has five ways to stop Russia's Iskanders. Only one arrives before the strikes on the grid begin. It means finding a launcher in a forest during the twenty minutes it spends above ground.

A rare Ukrainian Bulat tank turned up in a brigade that never had them. Ukraine wanted 400 of the up-armored T-64s and built about 80. Nobody can say how the 57th Motorized Brigade got one.

Russia drove most ships from Ukraine's ports. Now its drones are hunting the trains. By late August, Ukraine had exported only a third of its normal volume of farm goods. Russia damaged more than 250 locomotives in six months.

Intelligence and technology

"We have surprises for our neighbors": Ukraine's aviation commander says new aircraft developments are essentially finished and already in testing. Ukraine has already rebuilt what it flies. Its crews turned the 1970s-era Su-24 bomber into a launcher for SCALP cruise missiles.

Ukraine chooses three Western fighters to build its air force around. One of them can fly again from stretch of road in 15 to 20 minutes. The Air Force settled on them after weighing cost, logistics, and repair speed.

Ukraine's intelligence: Russia is running its Nepal, Cuba, Kenya, and India recruitment scheme in Indonesia now. Ukraine's foreign intelligence says it holds documents on at least eight recruited Indonesian citizens.

International

After CIA head's visit to Moscow, Poland's PM warns Russia is preparing to escalate war. He puts critical window at seven or eight months. Poland's prime minister says there are signals of serious Russian preparation.

Humanitarian and social impact

Russia launches third attack on Ukraine's largest Danube port this month, during peak of wheat harvest. Five trucks loaded with grain were destroyed and three more damaged in the Izmail district.

New developments

What does Ukraine's new defense minister wear on his wrist? He did not mention it until reporter asked. Yevhenii Khmara's bracelet carries the names of fallen comrades, a US magazine reported.

Read our earlier daily review here.

Exclusives

Russia drove most ships from Ukraine’s ports. Now its drones are hunting the trains. By late August, Ukraine had exported only a third of its normal volume of farm goods. Russia damaged more than 250 locomotives in six months.

Shares in Russia’s second-largest bank hit record low as Wildberries-linked offering price holds steady. VTB sought access to Wildberries’ 80 million customers. After drone strikes hit the retailer’s warehouses, Moscow considered making the bank central to a support plan.

Fifth drone-related NORSI shutdown in under five months leaves all major Lukoil refineries offline. Russia’s second-largest gasoline producer is offline as Moscow orders fuel redistribution and regional authorities tighten sales limits.

Military

Fix for Ukraine's interceptors is radar seeker head, and American firm is selling one for $4,000, says president's tech adviser. Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov says cloud and fog collapse interceptor hit rates, and a seeker head is the way out.

Four ground robots for one evacuation: Russia is targeting Ukraine's robotic medevac missions. Ground robots are helping evacuate wounded troops from exposed positions, but the systems themselves have come under intense Russian fire.

Ukrainian robot commander calls ground robots "Persian elephants." What army really needs are "Arabian steeds", he says. A "Khartia" robot commander says FPV drones and mines have collapsed the machines' lifespan.

Ukraine has built twin-Kalashnikov turret for cheap ground robots. Security Service has already used one to destroy Russian ambushes. A Brave1 turret carries two AKs and went from idea to prototype in under six months.

Ukraine struck Tu-95 at base Russia launches its cruise missiles on Ukraine's civilians. Satellite image shows third of right wing gone. SBU Alpha struck the strategic bomber at Engels-2.

Kyiv has been under attack for 2 days nonstop. Russia is targeting the capital's civilian supply chains. Russian jet-powered drones have repeatedly struck warehouses, businesses and logistics facilities around the capital, disrupting supplies while rescuers work under threat of further attacks.

Intelligence and technology

Partisans say Russian recruiters in occupied Donetsk are taking drunk men from bars straight to enlistment offices. An ATESH agent inside the Dnepr grouping headquarters reports a new scheme.

Russians bought $300 million in body armor, thermal sights, and drone parts on Ozon marketplace Ukraine is bombing. Russians bought 157,700 body armor vests there.

Russia is secretly building a mortar-launched drone-killer—and a resistance group just leaked the blueprints. Leaked documents describe a swept-wing drone built to hunt other drones at up to 300 km/h. Russian firm NIK allegedly cooperated with Boeing.

International

Ukraine dismissed its defense minister in July. He is now advising NATO country on defense innovation. Guido Crozetto called the dismissed Ukrainian minister the day after Kyiv let him go.

From the Gripen sale to coast guard boats—Sweden sends 10 vessels to Ukraine. Ukraine's emergency service will use the boats for waterborne rescue work, including clearing mines from river beds. Stockholm's contributions to the US-led PURL program now total $552 million.

Poland kept selling itself as Kyiv's gateway to Europe—Ukraine stopped needing one, Polish journalist argues. Russian disinformation moved into the gap the two governments left, hardening a rupture neither of them prepared for, he wrote.

Sofia gets seven minehunters from Belgium and the Netherlands for a sea Russia mined. Parliament signed off on two separate agreements this week, one a purchase and one a transfer, with the Dutch side restoring part of the fleet before it changes hands.

Moldova is investing in air defense against the Russian drones crossing from Ukraine—Romania shoots down the ones that reach it. Allied fighters over the neighboring NATO member have destroyed intruding drones repeatedly this year, while the neutral country in between can track them crossing but not shoot them down.

A suspected Russian scheme to obtain Finnish citizenship ran for more than 20 years before Finland noticed. Police and the Border Guard say the size of what they uncovered took them by surprise, and that several naturalizations were still moving through the system when the inquiry opened.

Humanitarian and social impact

Russia destroyed last of Kherson's heat and power equipment on 26 August. Ukraine's new defense minister arrived days later. Yevhenii Khmara met the regional governor days after glide bombs wrecked the city's power plant.

Russia has destroyed 90% of Ukraine's modern commercial storage capacity. Retail logistics are being reshaped. Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi says the country faces no threat of famine, but warns stores could see a narrower range of products.

Political and legal developments

“Territory that will allow us to export our energy resources to Europe”: Russia's deputy Duma chairman calls for massed bombing of Ukrainian cities. Duma vice-speaker Pyotr Tolstoy said the aim is to demoralize civilians until they give up.

Read our previous daily review here.

Exclusives

Ukraine's secret counteroffensive is more successful than we thought. The Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps has cut across a dangerous Russian salient in the east. All without telling anyone.

Frontline Rolls: Ukrainian soldiers document their lives at the front on film. The 2025 project is now a photobook and traveling exhibition after winning two international photography awards.

US C-17 spends 8½ hours in Moscow during first CIA chief visit since 2021. Washington reportedly asked Kyiv to pause strikes on Moscow and St. Petersburg while John Ratcliffe held undisclosed talks with Russian security officials.

Ukraine fires state bank chair after alleged $3.3 million bail-laundering scheme. The government and central bank also moved against Sense Bank's CEO and financial monitoring chief while reviewing the bank's entire supervisory board.

Military

"This is smart war": Ukraine is reinforcing two Donetsk groupings, as Russia pushes at fortress cities. Azov commanders will lead both. Putin has ordered his army to seize the entire territory of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts by the end of this year.

Ukraine's new commander-in-chief has been picking technical chiefs. Adviser who knows them says he is putting most competent people. Serhii Beskrestnov says he knows most of the army's technical specialists and rates the new appointments.

A warehouse built to hold up to 54 million items burned down in Tambov Oblast, Russia. It opened only last year as the central logistics point of Russia's largest online retailer and has now been hit by drones twice.

Intelligence and technology

Russia's fleet is set to get 150 uncrewed vessels in 2026, and possibly 230. Sanctions are holding the build back. Ukraine's naval drones drove Russia's Black Sea Fleet out of its main base.

Zvook covers Ukraine's skies for under €50 million. Now, it has started testing hydrophones underwater. Zvook is currently focused on collecting data in real conditions, determining which objects can be reliably detected and classified.

Belarus built base near Ukraine. Now it's laying rail that can unload 60 wagons of military equipment. Project documents describe a freight platform with a ramp for unloading wheeled and tracked vehicles.

Biggest Magura sea drone doesn't ram ships. It carries other drones and stays out seven days. Unlike Ukraine's one-way strike boats, the V11 stays at sea a week and forward-bases other drones far offshore.

A gasoline and polystyrene mix—police call it napalm—was meant for a Ukrainian drone plant in Slovakia. Investigators say the three men charged were hired to set the fire, and about 70 employees could have been inside the hall when it went up.

Ukraine has wrecked more than 100,000 Russian vehicles by hitting the roads, and this new drone is built exactly for that job. The fixed-wing Baton is built to cut Russian supply lines, according to the association that showed it.

International

Ukraine asks US orchestra to drop Russian-born violinist, citing ties to Kremlin-backed cultural initiatives. The orchestra dropped Vadim Repin from a March 2022 program after Russia's full-scale invasion, then re-booked him for November.

Ukrainian officers march in Toronto's 105-year-old Warriors' Day Parade. The Warriors' Day Parade marked its 105th edition at the Canadian National Exhibition.

Humanitarian and social impact

Retired Valencia official came to Ukraine to repay debt from Franco's time. Russia has held him since 2022, and now his Kherson apartment has burned. Mariano García Calatayud has not been seen since Russian forces took him from his own doorstep in March 2022.

Political and legal developments

One tracked tank repairs, one marked artillery, one aimed bombs at civilians—all three got 15 years. Ukraine says two of the men came to Russian intelligence's notice through their own comments in chat groups, and the third through a relative working for Moscow's domestic security service.

Ukraine starts checks: Five days later, deputy commander was charged for $15,600 in combat pay for combat that never happened. The deputy battalion commander faces up to 12 years.

Read our earlier daily review here.

Frontline Rolls, a documentary photography project by Ukrainian photographer Serhii Melnychenko, began in February 2025, when Serhii started sending disposable film cameras to soldiers serving in different areas of the front line. He asked them to document their daily lives, routines, and work.

The project has since been published as a standalone photobook and adapted into an exhibition, with photographs, handwritten letters, and artifacts returned by the participants. In 2026, it won the PhMuseum 2026 Photography Grant Main Prize.

The Ukraine War Archive calls Russia’s war against Ukraine the most documented war in history. Frontline Rolls records it from the soldiers’ own perspective through their photographs, letters, and chosen objects.

How Frontline Rolls began

Serhii spent nearly all of 2024 working on Along the Dnipro. Since he did not have time to travel to soldiers’ positions but wanted to document their experiences, he began looking for alternative ways. He asked himself one question:

“Do I really have to be there in person to document this?” Serhii writes in the foreword to the book, the project’s print format.

The answer was for the soldiers themselves to document their lives for a period of time. Serhii reached out to Fotovramci, which agreed to provide him with disposable film cameras free of charge.

The photographs that came back document the soldiers’ daily lives and the spaces in which they served.

Project participants also shared their stories in the book:

“I joined because I have to protect my family from the orcs. Before the full‐scale invasion I was an artist–designer, worked in advertising. Now a tank commander and reconnaissance pilot on a Mavic. In my free time I decorate shell‐casings and send them to volunteers for help,” says Oleksii, a soldier and participant in the project who goes by the call sign “Lapa.”

“For almost 3½ years I have remained in my soul a civilian. This system is very alien to me. In it I suffer a lot, in particular due to the huge restrictions on freedom. But I am here so that my country remains free. And for my values and convictions I have already paid a considerable price. If I had the option to choose another path—I would still choose this one,” says Oleksii “Photographer,” a soldier and project participant.

“I don’t have a callsign, because everyone knows me as Holikov. In the military since November 2023. From the very start of the full‑scale invasion I volunteered, but with each trip to the front I felt that I was doing not enough and decided to join the ranks of the 109th Separate Brigade of Territorial Defence,” says Viktor Holikov.

“In the army I... feel calmer. I have finally found a certain peace of mind during the full‐scale invasion, despite the difficulties. Partly I still feel that I’m doing not enough, but now it doesn’t haunt me like it used to,” says Kseniia, a servicewoman who goes by the call sign “Jane.”

“The army for me is, first of all, what is called brotherhood. It is hard to describe—you can only understand it by being inside,” says Danylo “Doc.”

The artifacts tell their own stories

Participants returned handwritten letters and personal objects with the exposed film. Serhii describes the resulting collection as a record of “personal experiences, struggles, and memories.”

“I collected artifacts that will remain part of our nation’s history after victory, reminding us of these challenging times,” Serhii says in the book.

Frontline Rolls travels beyond Ukraine

In 2026, Serhii also received the PhEST International Award in Italy, ex aequo with photographer Victorine Alisse.

The photographs were also presented in Copenhagen as part of The War They Live, an exhibition curated by The Kyiv Independent photo editor Irynka Hromotska together with Serhii. The project was also shown at the Athens Photo Festival in 2026. According to Serhii, the exhibition is also scheduled to open at Fotografiska Stockholm in October 2026.

“I sincerely hope that when the war ends, every participant in this project will be alive. Because each of them has become much more to me than just a contributor—they’ve become true friends,” Serhii concludes the foreword to the book.

Exclusive

Ukraine fires state bank chair after alleged $3.3 million bail-laundering scheme. The government and central bank also moved against Sense Bank's CEO and financial monitoring chief while reviewing the bank's entire supervisory board.

Ukraine's secret counteroffensive takes the pressure off Sloviansk. Under strict operational security, the Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps has been counterattacking north of Lyman. For months now.

Russia turns failed drone defenses into grounds for state control of company assets. Russia can now take control of a company's property and shares if it fails to protect key infrastructure from drones—even when the controller is foreign.

Ukraine escaped the empire in 1991. The empire struck back.. It took 22 years of Moscow holding the strings, and then an invasion, to make Ukrainians fight for the real thing.

Why did Ozon fall as much as 29% while Russia's market lost 2.9%?. After five weeks of strikes on privately held Wildberries, attacks on listed Ozon gave investors a direct price for warehouse risk.

Military

The fifth fire at the same refinery this year—and Russia still calls it debris. Ukraine's military confirmed the strike, naming the Afipsky plant as a fuel supplier for the forces invading Ukraine.

Ukraine destroys depot that occupiers filled with generators, after Russian state TV filmed them. Russian propagandists inadvertently filmed the target themselves.

Intelligence and technology

Poland signs $2 billion Piorun order, largest ever for launcher Ukraine has used since 2022. The framework deal covers several thousand launchers and missiles, more than 80 percent of them for Poland.

For first time, Ukraine is tendering ground robots to ministry-set specifications and no maker can take more than half of any class. The Defense Procurement Agency is applying the tender template it introduced for fiber-optic drones three days ago.

Russia's attack drones now jam the cheap interceptors sent to kill them. The jammer reads the interceptor's own video frequency, then floods it—blinding the operator who steers the drone.

Ukrainian drone maker is pitching its new five-inch strike FPV as assault squad's mortar. F-Drones says its F5 carries a kilogram, fits several to a rucksack, and flies six kilometers on fiber.

Ukraine mapped Russia's Su-35 down to individual control units—and found 22 firms nobody has sanctioned. The names cover engines, guidance, jamming gear, and the air-to-air missiles the aircraft fires.

International

Spanish nun's foundation brings her 45th convoy to Kyiv on Independence Day. It hands ambulance and six vehicles to border brigade fighting for Kharkiv. A convent foundation from Manresa delivered an ambulance, a pickup, and five cars, then opened the next stage of a medical program.

Humanitarian and social impact

A Russian drone chose its own target and killed three. The code that told it what to look for was readable. Ukrainian investigators found an Nvidia Jetson Orin module inside the wreckage, unencrypted, with the object-recognition code still readable.

582,000 children, 2,000 schools, no Ukrainian language: Russia sent occupied territories its first lesson – on "Unity of the Peoples of Russia". Ukrainian language was removed as a school subject entirely under federal standards on 15 December 2025.

Chernivtsi Oblast commissions three mini power plants to keep heat on during blackouts. The 3.9 MW addition contrasts with a March finding that 41% of 137 tracked donor units remained uncommissioned.

Aid the Ukrainian Red Cross stockpiled for winter in Kherson burned in a Russian drone attack. Alongside the cold-weather equipment, the warehouse held the emergency materials aid workers use to close up buildings torn open by Russian strikes, the Ukrainian Red Cross says.

Political and legal developments

Russia set target specific target for military recruits in 2026: in Arkhangelsk Oblast, man was sent to front after being detained for drinking on street. The School of the Conscript recorded 11 complaints in July and August.

About 50 grams of suspected military explosive lay in a German field 10 days after the attempt on Ukraine's plane. Germany's police worked the ground for two days before a first assessment identified the substance, and other leads had already taken officers to a village north of the runways.

Read our earlier daily review here.

Exclusives

Russia’s thermobaric launchers used to just drive up and fire. Now they move one at a time, in steel boxes built to stop Ukrainian drones. Ukraine has knocked out at least 36 of them. Twenty-seven burned outright.

Ukrainians rally across dozens of countries to demand Europe use Russia’s frozen billions. The EU backed a €90 billion Ukraine loan with its budget while €210 billion in Russian central bank assets remain immobilized.

Ukraine finally hit three Russian Kalibr ships on 12 August. On the 19th, an untouched one hit Kyiv. Prior to 12 August, the Russian Black Sea Fleet had eight warships capable of firing Kalibr cruise missiles. It still has at least four.

Military

Ukraine’s drones hit two Russian fighters and a spy drone—and blinded radars from occupied Crimea to Rostov. The aircraft sat at Vityazevo, a Black Sea airfield the jets had fled to after strikes made occupied Crimea too dangerous to park in.

One Russian warehouse smolders near Kazakhstan while a bigger fire rages near St. Petersburg. The parcel depot near Kazakhstan can hold tens of millions of orders and had to be cleared out.

Ukraine says it hit an Iskander launcher near the border—part of a dedicated hunt for Russia’s ballistic launch sites. The tactic gives Kyiv another way to reduce the missile threat when its stocks of anti-ballistic interceptors are low, Zelenskyy says.

Intelligence and technology

Ukraine’s ousted defense minister confirms M&M’s operation planning and discloses real story behind its name. The planned operation involved using autonomous, AI-powered drones to target Moscow’s airports and disrupt air traffic.

Reports credit North Korea’s newest missile of terror with 2.5-ton warhead and 900-km range. Expert explains why those numbers can’t both be true. Russia may receive up to 150 North Korean missiles, including the KN-30.

International

Six Nordic-Baltic leaders came to Kyiv. Norway put a $9 billion figure on 2027 support. The visitors joined Ukraine's State Flag Day events ahead of Independence Day, alongside bilateral and multilateral talks with the Ukrainian president.

Humanitarian and social impact

Every Russian attack on Kyiv costs the city about $12 million. They now come almost twice in week. Over 4,000 buildings were damaged in the Ukrainian capital.

Russia holds up to 20,000 Ukrainian civilians in captivity. One of newest is teacher who stayed in her occupied village to care for her 83-year-old mother. Russia is replacing detained Ukrainian teachers with its own educators in occupied territories, where they are used to impose propaganda narratives.

New developments

Zelenskyy awarded Vikings star, ballistic missile CEO took stage, and strike drone got signed with messages to Russians: Ukraine’s major UNITED24 platform turns four. Ukraine's UNITED24 platform has raised nearly $4 billion in four years of war.

Read our earlier daily review here.

Exclusives

Ukrainians rally across dozens of countries to demand Europe use Russia's frozen billions. The EU backed a €90 billion Ukraine loan with its budget while €210 billion in Russian central bank assets remain immobilized.

Ukraine finally hit three Russian Kalibr ships on 12 August. On the 19th, an untouched one hit Kyiv. Prior to 12 August, the Russian Black Sea Fleet had eight warships capable of firing Kalibr cruise missiles. It still has at least five.

Military

Evacuation is "force majeure that no one is ready for" in most Ukrainian units, and robots are too slow to fix it, commander says. Chornovol says casualty evacuation remains improvised chaos in most Ukrainian units, calling for dedicated evacuation teams and light-armored transport.

Ukrainian intelligence units will not help: Analyst warns that once Russia breaks into Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, reinforcing them only delays inevitable. Russian forces are 12 to 13 km from Sloviansk and Kramatorsk and could begin infiltrating the fortress-belt cities by late 2026.

Ukrainian drones hit warehouse belonging to Russian online retailer Ozon for the first time. Ozon suspended operations at the Chapayevsk hub and began redirecting deliveries and orders through other facilities.

Ukraine says its drones hit major Russian refinery amid deepening fuel shortages. Militarnyi describes the target as one of Russia's 10 largest refineries. Damage or interruption to production remains unconfirmed.

Ukrainian drone unit seriously wounded Colonel Dmitry Shabaev, commander of Russia's 64th brigade, tied to 2022 Bucha atrocities that killed 637 civilians. The strike hit 80 km behind the front line.

Intelligence and technology

One pilot, five bombers: Ukraine's Lasar's Group ties whole raid to single operator to save manpower. Facing a manpower shortage, Ukraine is building autonomy into its drones and ground robots so one operator can run several at once.

Four times pixels of anything before it: Ukrainian firm's rare thermal camera aims to see targets from much farther away. Ukrainian company Oko Camera is developing the Oko HD thermal camera.

Intelligence: Putin ordered secret biolab built on island, so protected that fishing is banned, and its own guards fear infection. Ukraine's military intelligence says Russia runs a secret biolab complex in Tver Oblast, an inversion of Russia's own false claims about Ukraine.

Ukraine is buying jam-proof fiber-optic drones for first time to single standard, so any maker can compete. Ukraine's Defense Procurement Agency launched its first buy of fiber-optic FPV kamikaze drones to Defense Ministry-defined specifications.

Ukraine has shown its answer to Russia's most powerful drones for first time. Meet Alexa Spatium, which can carry thermobaric warheads and fly back home. Ukraine codified its first jet-powered interceptor drone, the Alexa Spatium, built to destroy Russia's jet Geran drones.

Russia's North Korean missiles could threaten Kyiv and six other regions, ISW says. Moscow is expected to keep saving ballistic and cruise missiles for periodic mass attacks designed to overwhelm Ukraine's air defenses.

Ukraine is fielding more drone-hunters than ever. Free simulator now lets operators learn each one before it reaches their hands. Two Ukrainian interceptor drones, the P1-SUN and Bullet, were integrated into the UFDS combat simulator.

Humanitarian and social impact

Russia has burned 13 million Ukrainian books in three months, nearly third of everything country printed in 2025. Publishers have asked President Zelenskyy to convene the National Security Council.

Russia struck Kyiv and Boryspil, its main airport hub, twice in 24 hours with ballistics Ukraine can't stop without US Patriots, days before Independence Day.

Political and legal developments

"Only Ukrainians will decide for themselves who our heroes are," says Zelenskyy at International Veterans Forum with US envoy, as number of veterans passes two million. Zelenskyy said Ukraine will create a national pantheon for those who shaped its identity.

New developments

From Warsaw to New York, Ukrainians will form human chains on Independence Day. Communities scattered by Russia's invasion will revive a symbol from Ukraine's independence movement to keep the country visible abroad.

Military

Russian groups keep trying—and failing—to reach Lyman, gateway to Donbas' fortress belt, officer says. Russia is trying to push small infantry groups through Ukrainian defences as it seeks to capture Lyman and open the way towards Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, he noted.

Kyiv is asking Musk to let it strike inside Russia. Its best line to Musk is gone. Running low on Patriot interceptors, Kyiv wants to hunt the launchers up to 200 km inside Russia, but only Musk can switch the drones on.

Lukoil's Perm refinery struck 1,530 km from Ukraine's northern border, Kyiv confirms. The same overnight wave also hit a military airfield in Volgograd Oblast and left results in the Black Sea, the General Staff said.

Ukraine's drive to black out occupied Crimea claims another night. Russian officials are staying mum on the extent of the damage after overnight drone strikes across the occupied peninsula.

Ukraine's biggest weakness against Russia isn't interceptor shortage, analyst argues. It's what happens before missiles even launch. Russia plans its terror campaigns years out, an analyst says.

Intelligence and technology

Ukraine warns Russia could exploit upcoming Independence Day for attacks and sabotage. Ukraine's security service urged vigilance ahead of 24 August, warning about potential attacks, sabotage, suspicious activity, and attempts to gather military information.

After Canada in May, now Finland: top-ranked Ukrainian drone maker keeps taking its technology abroad.

Russian-Australian man charged over alleged operation to gather Ukrainian military secrets. Australian police allege he joined Ukraine's armed forces after receiving military-style training in Russia, then tried to pass information to people linked to Russian intelligence.

Ex-FSB general who wired Russia's spies and army found dead in Moscow—a gunshot, no note, no official report. The 83-year-old chaired a long-time supplier of encrypted communications for the country's security and military structures.

Ukraine planned 1,000 AI-guided drones a night to shut Moscow airports, Atlantic reports. Two anonymous sources said the drones could identify targets despite jamming. A Ukrainian presidential official denied the project existed.

160 grams, 118-km link, and jam-resistance by frequency-hopping: Ukraine's answer to drone war's connectivity problem. Ukraine's Rise Technologies unveiled Nakande, a drone communication system that hops across frequencies to keep its link under jamming.

Ukraine takes Soviet BRDM-2s from its stockpile and rebuilds them into remote robots, with a Mercedes diesel under consideration. Ukraine is converting Soviet BRDM-2 armored scout vehicles into remote-controlled robotic platforms with a heavy weapon module.

65% on Telegram, 30% on web, translated into four languages: Russia floods 1,000 posts against Ukraine's new defense minister in two days. Russia branded Ukraine's new Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara a "terrorist".

International

Ukraine's Flamingo missile maker's new Danish plant delayed to 2027 as costs could triple. Denmark removed 20-plus legal barriers for Fire Point's rocket-fuel plant, but safety rules still make a new factory necessary.

Russia's UN envoy denies reports of post-election mass mobilization. More than 20,000 people crossed from Russia into Georgia in one day amid fears of a post-election draft. Ukraine says Russia is losing troops faster than it recruits them.

Latvia resumes naming firms trading with Russia or Belarus after nearly three years. A new monthly register identifies Latvian businesses that traded goods with Russia or Belarus in July, without alleging that they violated sanctions.

Italy's largest arms maker had no plans for a Ukraine factory—a year later, it has a Kyiv subsidiary. The Kyiv-based R&D unit will research communications, navigation, and electronic and optical technologies for Ukraine's defense sector.

Gasoline rationing returns to Moscow and St. Petersburg as Rosneft caps fills nationwide. Rationing has returned to Russia's two biggest cities, and Rosneft is now capping fills at 30 liters at every station in the country.

Russian strike damaged Ukrainian warehouse of Yves Rocher, French brand that paid $6 million into Russia's budget in 2022. Russia's 20 August attack damaged the Ukrainian warehouse of Yves Rocher that sits on Ukraine's list of international sponsors of war.

Ukraine can't get one permit to find its WWII dead in Poland—yet approves Polish searches, Kyiv's ambassador says. Ukraine's ambassador says a permit awaiting regional approval has prevented researchers from searching a suspected Ukrainian burial site in Poland.

A suspected Russian intruder in Finland's sky, and Helsinki wants answers. A three-minute crossing by a Russian reconnaissance plane has drawn in Helsinki's investigators and put its allies on notice.

Ukraine's new commander spoke with chair of NATO's Military Committee. Result: body will visit Ukraine in October, for first time in eight years. Ukraine's security is NATO's security, NATO Military Committee Chair Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone says.

Humanitarian and social impact

Russian drone strike on Kryvyi Rih shopping center kills 15, injures 130. Second attack targeted rescue workers 30 minutes later. The daytime drone attack set the shopping center on fire before a second wave struck emergency crews responding to the scene.

She joined Ukraine's army in 2019. Seven years later, she is still feeding the front. For one Ukrainian military cook, seven years of service show how much of a working life Russia's war can occupy.

Russian strikes on Odesa ports push Ukrainian farms toward bankruptcy, Bloomberg reports. Weekly grain and oilseed exports have fallen by more than 90% since early July, Bloomberg reports. Oxford Economics estimates a 2.1% GDP loss in 2027.

Russia occupied Anton's home when he was 10. At 18, he volunteered to fight against Ukraine. Many Ukrainian-born prisoners told the BBC they joined Russia's army willingly. Others described forced conscription.

Political and legal developments

Captured Russian marine executed Ukrainian commander on superior's order, prosecutors say. The suspect is in custody as Ukraine steps up efforts to prosecute Russian troops accused of crimes against Ukrainian prisoners of war.

72 searches, 22 suspects: Ukraine's State Bureau of Investigation, together with General Staff, open large operation across military units. Ukraine's State Bureau of Investigation launched an operation targeting illegal payments to soldiers and commanders using troops for private labor.

Hungary sent commandos to seize Ukraine's $82 million bank convoy. Its investigators now say they have found no crime. Hungarian investigators found the seized cash and gold came from a lawful bank deal. Attention has now turned to officials behind the raid.

Read our previous daily review here.

Exclusives

The Fedorov protesters lost. But they backed a man for what he built, not what he promised—and that may be new in Ukraine.. For twenty years, Ukrainians voted for the biggest promises. This summer they marched for a record instead—and a scholar thinks that's the real story.

Ukraine offers cash rewards for capturing Russian soldiers and close-combat kills. The group that captures a Russian soldier shares a reward of 100,000 hryvnias (~$2,225), while each confirmed kill in small-arms or hand-to-hand combat, backed by video, brings 15,000 hryvnias (~$335).

Black Sea attacks delayed up to 2.5 million tons of wheat bound for Asia. Russian attacks on Ukraine's ports and Black Sea ships surged from 14 in all of 2025 to 124 this July. Up to 2.5 million tons of wheat bound for Asia is delayed.

Russia diverts defense-industry chemicals to gasoline—but stations still run dry. A July decree sent defense-industry chemicals to the fuel pump; motor oil prices have since spiked 40%, and Rosgvardia is patrolling gas stations in Moscow Oblast.

Russia is trying to get its guns within range of Zaporizhzhia. First it has to take a prison. The Ukrainian 118th Mechanized Brigade blocks any march on Zaporizhzhia City. But a Russian field army aims to disrupt the defense.

Military

Romania destroys a sea drone and finds aerial drone debris on its soil amid Russia's attack on Ukraine. Both incidents occurred during the same overnight barrage that also triggered air defense activations in Poland and Moldova.

She made sushi last year—now she flies combat drones for Ukraine's army. Khrystyna is one of a growing number of young Ukrainians choosing drone roles through the "18–24" voluntary military contract—now the most popular specialization at recruitment centers.

Ukraine hits major Russian refinery and Black Sea oil terminal as drones strike substation powering occupied Crimea. Fires broke out at all three targets as occupied Crimea suffered a widespread blackout that halted electric transport in several cities.

Intelligence and technology

Ukraine's top military marketplace has processed $235 million in orders. Now it goes further, letting units spec a custom drone across 17 characteristics. Ukraine's Brave1 Market added a tool letting military units order custom drones built to their own specifications.

Russia stops mass-producing Kinzhals amid accuracy problems, but 50 missiles remain ready for Ukraine. Russia is redirecting resources toward other ballistic and cruise missiles as it seeks to maintain the pace of strikes against Ukraine.

Arson did not disrupt Ukraine deliveries, Estonian military robot maker says. Three suspects were detained in Latvia. The company Milrem said more than 200 of its robotic systems would be operating in Ukraine by year-end.

Bradley IFVs won battles in Ukraine. The parts to keep them running went out of production. US Army seeks contractor to restart production of discontinued Bradley parts and train Ukrainian crews to maintain the fleet.

International

Ukraine's refinery strikes push Russia's fuel crisis into Central Asia. Gasoline prices rose 10–13% in the most exposed markets, a Kazakh economist estimated, as governments sought other suppliers.

Russia faked broadcasts from Sweden's national TV to smear its PM—the same network already hit Germany and France this month. Germany's domestic intelligence agency, France's anti-disinformation body, and Swedish journalists all flagged the campaign in August.

Belgium lines up a "drone deal" to tap Ukraine's war-tested know-how. Brussels has pledged 30 F-16s and over €1 billion in aid a year. A joint drone pact is next, with both sides eyeing a signing date.

Humanitarian and social impact

Russian Shaheds hit near Moldova-border crossing, burn food cargo, and black out 13,000 in Odesa Oblast. The Odesa strikes were part of a combined Russian attack across Ukraine. A suspected Shahed also crossed into Moldova, and a drone crashed in Romania.

14 killed as Russia unleashes massive overnight barrage on unprotected Kyiv, striking homes, hospital, school and railway infrastructure. Russia attacked Kyiv with ballistic and cruise missiles, including Zircon, Iskander-M and S-400 missiles, as well as 168 Shahed-type and other drones in a massive overnight barrage.

Russia hit Kyiv with ballistic and hypersonic missiles overnight, damaging a children's hospital, with people trapped in a shelter. Russia launched a massed overnight attack on Kyiv with ballistic and Zircon hypersonic missiles on 20 August.

Political and legal developments

He was on the set of a Hollywood thriller about Nord Stream. Then Germany had him arrested over the real attack.. Croatian authorities detained a Ukrainian diver wanted by Germany after two earlier attempts failed, opening a new path to trial in the Nord Stream case.

Read our earlier daily review

On 19 August, veteran and civic activist Dmytro Koziatynskyi thanked everyone who had taken part in the month-long protests to bring back Mykhailo Fedorov, and said it was all worth it. Koziatynskyi was one of the organizers of rallies across Ukrainian cities demanding the reinstatement of Fedorov, the defense minister widely credited with driving Ukraine's military-tech overhaul, after he was abruptly dismissed on 14 July.

His firing detonated a month of protests because Fedorov was no ordinary minister: the 35-year-old reformer had exposed billions in defense overspending and built the drone programs many Ukrainians saw as their best chance in the war, so his removal read, to those in the streets, as the old system protecting itself.

Koziatynskyi's decision to end his protest came after Parliament voted 312 that same day to appoint Yevhenii Khmara as defense minister. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy did not meet the protesters' main demand: the return of Fedorov.

"It is a pity that we were never able to establish a dialogue between the authorities and society. I hope this issue will be resolved over time because, in my view, the lack of communication was the root cause of these protests," Koziatynskyi writes.

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Contents

• Ukraine’s cardboard protests look like democracy working. In a war, that’s also the risk.
• Actions, not words
  • “They removed the auditor, not the thieves”: why Ukrainians are protesting Zelenskyy’s reshuffle
• The protesters were "for," not "against"
  • Ukraine’s ousted defense minister took drone contracts away from the generals. Now they may take them back
    • Ukraine’s defense minister explained how the country buys weapons—after he was sacked
• This year's cardboard protests could be a good start

Ukraine’s cardboard protests look like democracy working. In a war, that’s also the risk.

But the rallies may leave Ukrainian society with something that outlasts the outcome of one personnel decision, Anatolii Romaniuk, a political scientist at Ivan Franko National University in Lviv, told Euromaidan Press. The protesters lost: Parliament appointed Yevhenii Khmara as defense minister, not Mykhailo Fedorov. Yet the "cardboard Maidan," as the protests were termed for their abundance of handmade signs, may have revealed the beginnings of a broader shift in Ukrainian society. Romaniuk believes its significance lies in why people took to the streets: to support a politician not because of what he promised them, but because of what he had already done.

Actions, not words

Romaniuk believes Ukrainian society has long lived under what he calls a "political curse": large numbers of Ukrainians repeatedly bought into populist promises from politicians offering things that were simply unrealistic.

He points to every Ukrainian election from 2004 through 2019, arguing that the share of populist promises only increased. Experts could see that many of them were impossible to fulfill, he says, yet voters continued to support politicians who made them. Romaniuk points to a promise from the 2019 election campaign that Ukrainian wages would overtake Poland's—at a time when the average salary in Ukraine was around $400 a month, and Poland's was roughly three times that.

The 2026 protests may represent a change in perspective, he argues: people backed a politician not for what he said he would do, but for what he had already done.

Fedorov's signature result was an audit—in his first months, his ministry exposed roughly $7.2 billion (300 billion hryvnia) in defense overspending, and that figure became the movement's rallying cry. "The audit showed 300 billion in theft. They removed the auditor, not the thieves," read one cardboard sign in Lviv.

Explore further

“They removed the auditor, not the thieves”: why Ukrainians are protesting Zelenskyy’s reshuffle

The protesters were defending a record: open procurement built on the Brave1 marketplace, where frontline units order drones directly from certified manufacturers; a first competitive tender that cut 155mm shell prices by 16%; and, above all, Fedorov's bet on robotization—technology instead of manpower—that many Ukrainians saw as their best chance against a larger Russian army, a way to spend drones rather than lives. Fedorov was removed while he was implementing the reform, amid a conflict with then Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi.

"If this change in perspective continues, we will get out of the situation where we have become hostages to a growing wave of populism that would otherwise simply overwhelm us in the next elections. Because the degree, or the level, of populism in the 2019 elections was already very high. It was unrealistic," Romaniuk says of the protests' possible longer-term effect.

The protesters were "for," not "against"

Romaniuk sees another distinction between these demonstrations and earlier protests in Ukraine's modern history: previous movements were built around being "against" something. This time, the demand was explicitly "for" something.

"If we recall the events of the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution, and even last year's protests, they were 'against.' That is, they were against Yanukovych signing an agreement with Russia and refusing to sign the Association Agreement. They were against a decision made at the highest level in Ukraine to restrict the anti-corruption bodies," Romaniuk says, referring to former President Viktor Yanukovych, whose 2013 pivot away from the European Union set off the Euromaidan Revolution.

He argues that Ukraine has never before seen protests explicitly organized in support of a government official, making the Fedorov rallies a first.

At the same time, Romaniuk acknowledges the paradox: even protests framed as being "against" something almost always implied support for an alternative. In 2004, for example, Ukrainians protested the results of the second round of a falsified presidential election that had declared pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych the winner over his pro-European rival, Viktor Yushchenko. But by opposing those results, Romaniuk says, they were also supporting democratic elections.

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Ukraine’s ousted defense minister took drone contracts away from the generals. Now they may take them back

The difference this time is that the "for" was clearly articulated. Protesters demanding Fedorov's return had an idea of the kind of Ukraine they wanted to see.

"In these protests, we have a situation where people are supporting the course pursued by Defense Minister Fedorov—the modernization of the army, changing approaches to warfare, and changing what the Ukrainian state should look like," Romaniuk says.

Dariia, a 22-year-old who attended the protests in Lviv, describes her reasons for joining them in similar terms.

"My motivation is to see changes in the country, to see justice, to see that young, progressive people who put technology ahead of human losses are leading us toward victory."

She says Fedorov was one of the people introducing reforms "from the very top of government all the way to the battlefield."

"And we really saw those changes," Dariia told Euromaidan Press. She credits Fedorov with the long-range drone campaign that has struck Russian refineries, defense plants, and Wildberries depots as far as Bashkortostan, some 1,300 kilometers inside Russia: "Our enemy finds ways to attack, and we must also search for new ways to respond. Fedorov, as defense minister, was the person finding ways to respond to these attacks, how to carry out deep strikes."

Explore further

Ukraine’s defense minister explained how the country buys weapons—after he was sacked

This year's cardboard protests could be a good start

Romaniuk cautions that it is still too early to speak of a change in Ukrainians' political culture. But he says he would like to see this episode become the beginning of one.

"I would like other people in power to also be judged by their results, by what they have done," he says.

A genuine pattern, he adds, could only be established if similar cases repeated themselves. For now, this remains one specific episode rather than a proven trend.

Dariia connects the rallies to her own experience of protesting more than a decade earlier.

"I remember the rallies in Mykolaiv in 2014 against the occupation regime in the east. Back then, it was five people with cardboard signs standing in the rain. My family was one of them. Nobody came out, nobody understood that position… It is nice to see that people in the south and east understand now," Dariia says.

Exclusives

Putin's Mach-10 wonder weapon misses by 30 meters. Russia stopped building it in April.. Putin unveiled it as unstoppable in 2018. Ukrainian intelligence says the line stopped in April, and the fuel now goes to Iskanders.

Wiretaps, a mocking codename, and a seized playbook—Ukraine's anti-graft bureau reaches the President's Office again. Media reports place a deputy head of the presidential office among those searched, while investigators decline to confirm any identities.

Military

"Two targets and ammo with one drone": How a Ukrainian drone crew hunts Russian transport behind the front line. A National Guard unit uses middle-strike drones to hunt Russian military vehicles deep behind the front line.

Intelligence and technology

Ukrainian top volunteer from outgoing minister's own team, whose drones downed 12,954 Russian targets, is offering to help his successor. Serhii Sternenko, the activist whose charity has supplied hundreds of thousands of FPV drones, congratulated new Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara with his new position.

Ukraine's 25th Airborne Brigade moves ground robots from testing to combat. The brigade is now using the machines for supply, evacuation and fire missions across its units.

No radio signal, no way to jam it: Ukraine's top-ranked strike drone can wait 48 hours for its target. Ukraine's manufacturers ranked their most effective fiber-optic strike drones in July, with Beshket, Deadliner Q1, and Vyriy Opto 10 taking the top three.

Estonia probes Russian link in suspected arson at military robot maker supplying Ukraine. A Tallinn blaze hit premises used by the maker of THeMIS ground robots, which Ukraine uses for evacuation, resupply, and mine clearance.

Humanitarian and social impact

Two officers, 101 soldiers—Ukraine's newest homecoming from Russian cells. The group spans four years of the war, from the fall of Mariupol to captures made only months ago.

Polish prosecutors charge a woman over an attack on Ukrainian children. Consulate says the siblings were targeted for speaking Ukrainian. The attacker twisted one child's arm, broke the siblings' toy drone, and threw its fragments at the 12-year-old boy, scratching him, according to the family and the consulate.

Political and legal developments

Ukraine's parliament advanced a Finnish-style shelter bill: everyone must be able to reach one within 10 minutes. Ukraine's parliament passed a first-reading bill requiring bomb shelters within 10 minutes' reach, as tens of thousands shelter in metro stations nightly.

Ukraine's former Defense Minister Fedorov is out, but man behind his procurement reform and apps like Army+ isn't going anywhere. Mstyslav Banik, the deputy who ran Ukraine's defense-procurement reform, says he is staying in the team of new Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara.

"Fedorov instead of Khmara": Ukrainian protesters outside parliament greet news of new defense minister's appointment with disapproval. People say they will continue protesting despite the decision.

Ukraine's new defense minister says he already knows Russia's strategy for fall and winter. Yevhenii Khmara has become Ukraine's new defense minister after a vote in parliament.

Germany charged a Ukrainian for the Nord Stream blasts—Kyiv is now investigating if Russia staged the attack to frame Ukrainians. Ukraine's top prosecutors confirmed they are testing a "false flag" theory even as a Ukrainian suspect heads to trial in Germany.

Read our earlier daily review here.

Ukraine's anti-corruption bureau and anti-corruption prosecutors opened a special operation against an alleged criminal organization reaching into the Office of the President, the two agencies said on 19 August 2026. Detectives said a sitting and a former lawmaker led the group, released a wiretap recording that points to the presidential administration, and seized a document laying out a plan to shape public opinion around the anti-corruption fight. Media reports place a deputy head of the President's Office among those searched, though investigators have not confirmed any names.

A case named after a Hollywood film

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP) ran searches on the morning of 19 August and unveiled the operation hours later. The two agencies said they had exposed an alleged criminal organization run by a sitting and a former member of parliament, with senior Office of the President officials taking part, the bureau said. It promised further details later.

The operation carries a mocking name, Forest Gump, drawn from the suspects' own words. In a 47-second recording of intercepted conversations, one man ties the label to how the group allegedly hid money. 

"We've got Saving Private Ryan, right? But only an idiot would register the theft of money—and their tuition on top of it—on their own children. That's why, Forest Gump," he says.

Other fragments reference cash and the presidential administration directly. "Well, there are four bags of money there," one voice says on the tape. Another adds: "If we do this, you can drive to the Office of the President yourselves. Believe me. I can see it."

Explore further (a 2025 article)

Zelenskyy tried to kill NABU. Then it exposed his friend’s 0M scheme.

The document found in the search

During the searches, NABU said, agents recovered a document containing an "anti-crisis" communications plan built around the work of a temporary investigative commission in Ukraine's parliament. The bureau described it as a set of communication steps and messages aimed at managing the public situation around that commission.

The plan maps out a media campaign across Telegram, social platforms, talk shows, and named Ukrainian and international outlets. It casts the commission head as the main voice, frames the effort as “audit, not attack,” and aims to build trust in the commission while shielding the President and Cabinet.

Who investigators are said to be targeting

Media reports say the investigative actions include searches at Iryna Mudra, a deputy head of the Office of the President. A source told Ukrinform that detectives were working at Mudra, who oversees judicial reform and the creation of a special tribunal on the crime of aggression against Ukraine. NABU said it would not comment on the ongoing actions for now.

Beyond Mudra, the case reportedly involves member of parliament Vadym Stolar and former lawmaker Maksym Mykytas, along with Justice Ministry officials, RBC-Ukraine reported. 

The raids reach a state-linked bank

NABU also searched Sens Bank's supervisory board, including suspended chair Mykola Hladyshchenko, sources told Ekonomichna Pravda — a thread running back to the "Mindich tapes," where those under investigation discussed lining up the bank's board seats as their own "quotas." The recording also echoed that case's reported detail: a former minister's son schooled at a Swiss college costing up to $200,000 a year, which the tape's "children's tuition" line appears to touch.

Explore further (a 2025 article)

The Mindich tapes: anti-graft recordings expose Zelenskyy associate’s 0M nuclear operator protection racket

Echoes of the Mindich tapes

The operation lands atop a major graft scandal of Ukraine's wartime politics. In November 2025, NABU unveiled the Mindich tapes, documenting a $100 million kickback network around state nuclear operator Energoatom and reaching President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's former business partner. The case later widened to touch other parts of Ukraine's defense and energy sectors. It followed a summer 2025 attempt to curb the anti-corruption bodies' independence, which mass protests forced the authorities to reverse.

Exclusives

Moldova halves grain-transit fees for Ukraine as its own farmers threaten protests. President Maia Sandu is defending the halved transit fees against her own farmers, arguing that a neighbor able to export and arm itself is worth more to Moldova than the risk to local grain prices.

India’s cooking-oil imports jump for festival season—but not war-hit sunflower. Indian refiners are stocking up for the festival season, but the war has left the world’s top sunflower supplier shut out of the boom.

Russia has thousands of tanks it can’t risk. One drone shield decides whether they roll. Russia has finally fielded a tank defense that can shoot down Ukrainian FPV drones. The problem is that Ukrainian crews can send more drones than the Arena-M can stop—and the first tanks carrying it have burned anyway.

Military

Russia launches "massive" attack on Ukrainian power plant as Kyiv braces for extremely difficult winter. The strike halted electricity generation at the plant as Moscow steps up attacks on Ukraine's critical infrastructure ahead of the cold season.

Operation Hell-2: Azov says it burned 4,221 tons of Russian fuel in occupied Donetsk Oblast. The Ukrainian National Guard unit spent a month tracking Russian fuel tanks in occupied Donetsk Oblast before striking them.

“Chasing away vipers”: Ukrainian special forces retake Andriivka-Klevtsove, capture 30 Russian soldiers. The operation adds another settlement to Ukraine's gains in its eight-month Oleksandrivka counteroffensive, which Kyiv says has reclaimed 745 square kilometres.

Greek-run tanker carrying Russian oil hit off Russia's Black Sea coast, Bloomberg reports. The ship's manager reported no injuries or pollution. It was the first attack on a vessel calling at the CPC terminal in nearly three weeks.

Russia claims it downed a record 1,671 drones as fires burn across Moscow Oblast. A drone struck another Wildberries warehouse, but this one caused no major fire as others had in previous strikes.

Russian drone attacks on Ukraine's Danube ports hit recent high, Romania says. Drone debris reached Romania as Ukraine sought safer grain routes and Bucharest prepared cheaper defences against low-flying incursions.

Russia's latest strike on Ukraine's most important trade route: Togo-flagged civilian ship hit in Odesa. A Russian strike on Odesa Oblast port infrastructure damaged a civilian vessel and injured four people, three of them hospitalised.

Intelligence and technology

Russia could open northern front by February if it orders new mobilization, Ukraine intel says. Ukraine's military intelligence sees no preparations for a northern attack, but officials warn such a front could pull defenders from the east and south.

1.2 million weapons in a year: Inside Ukraine's Amazon-for-arms that ships to the frontline in 24 hours. Frontline units now pick from 1,181 products by 300 Ukrainian makers, and the fastest arrive within 24 hours.

HUR: Russia seeks rest of Donetsk Oblast, not a peace deal, by year-end. HUR's deputy chief says Russia cannot form new units without mobilization after battlefield losses exceeded contract recruitment in June and July.

New satellite imagery shows a caved-in roof at Russia's only Soyuz rocket-assembly plant. The imagery pins the damage to the building where crews wire the rockets' controls and electronics.

Why does Ukraine need a Bebradron-M drone with no warhead and only 2 kg of payload?. Ukraine has approved 413 new unmanned aerial systems for military use this year, most of them domestically produced.

The Ukrainian company behind MAUL, a robot that hits 70 km/h and survives flipping over, moves toward investment from an $81M US firm. AIDronesUA and US-based Empery Digital Inc. have signed an agreement to explore a strategic investment, with due diligence now underway.

International

NATO army bought Russian missiles and now it can't give them away. Israel and US lawmakers are stalling Türkiye's F-35 deal as its talks to offload a Russian S-400 to the UAE show no movement.

Russia warns UK of “consequences” over British-made drones in Ukraine's deep strikes. London vows to continue supporting Kyiv. Moscow accused London of deliberately escalating the war after reports that Ukrainian forces used UK-built drones to strike targets inside Russia, including oil refineries.

Blast marks Moldova's third airspace breach in nine days. Ukraine's Air Force reported that a Russian Banderol crossed the border, but Moldovan investigators could not conclusively identify the wreckage.

Kenya and South Africa went first, and now Ghana accuses Russia of luring Ghanaians into war. The methods drawing foreigners toward the front range from bogus contracts to political intrigue across Africa.

650 participants from 24 countries: Ukraine brings its battle-tested drone-defence experience to NATO's Baltic Trust 2026 exercise. For Ukraine, taking part as a valued contributor rather than an aid recipient marks its deepening integration with the alliance it seeks to join.

Humanitarian and social impact

Russia weaponizes Ukrainian children in occupied territories. Ukraine singles out those responsible. At a competition in May, children practised handling explosives and piloting drones across Russian-occupied Ukraine, according to HUR.

Two Russian missiles hit a post office and shops in Kharkiv Oblast, killing 10 people. The strike on a crowded crossroads in Pechenihy wounded 18 more and set a cafe and cars ablaze.

Medical tourism and IT can draw visitors back to Ukraine after the war, UN Tourism's chief told a Kyiv briefing. Her Kyiv visit, the first by a UN Tourism chief in a decade, came with a concrete deliverable: 500 online-academy scholarships, 200 of them for veterans.

He fought for Ukrainian independence until a Soviet chocolate-box bomb killed him. Now Ukraine plans to honour him permanently. Ukrainian leader Yevhen Konovalets' remains returned from Rotterdam after 88 years and are set for temporary reburial at Ukraine's National Military Memorial Cemetery.

Latvian public broadcaster opens new charity drive for Ukraine's wounded. Timed to Ukraine's 24 August Independence Day, a Latvian broadcaster's new drive aims to fund recovery for Ukrainian soldiers.

Political and legal developments

Russia jails 61-year-old Ukrainian for alleged Azov service, names no specific act. A Russian military court sentenced Hulak to five years and four months over an alleged connection to the Azov group.

World's largest crypto exchange helped Russia identify and jail a man who donated to Ukraine's army. Binance reportedly provided Russian authorities with personal data that helped lead to the arrest of a Russian IT specialist.

Read our previous daily review here.

Exclusives

Russia has thousands of tanks it can't risk. One drone shield decides whether they roll. Russia has finally fielded a tank defense that can shoot down Ukrainian FPV drones. The problem is that Ukrainian crews can send more drones than the Arena-M can stop—and the first tanks carrying it have burned anyway.

Ukraine let young men leave to keep teenage boys home. Restaurants now struggle to hire. Work.ua recorded 29% fewer male candidates aged 18 to 22 in hospitality and retail. Across the platform, advertised entry-level pay rose 23 to 24%.

Ukraine landed a gun-armed robot on a Russian beach. Russia sent jet drones after the boats. No Ukrainian went ashore on the Kinburn Spit in July. The machines did it. Now Russia is hunting the boats that carried them.

NATO no longer deters Russia. A new coalition could. A formal declaration of Ukraine's alliance with European military powers would radically change Russia's calculus

How did Sberbank's record dividend end up frozen for Western shareholders?. Russia's largest bank keeps setting profit records and paying record dividends. For its shareholders in the West, that money is frozen in accounts they cannot touch.

Military

Ukraine hit ground-control station for rare drone that fires Russia's Banderol, missile hitting 650 km/h with 114-kg warhead. Ukraine hit a Shahed storage and launch site, an Orion drone control station, and drone relay points across occupied Crimea and Kherson Oblast.

Ukraine has knocked out seven of Russia's 10 biggest warehouses as its air defenses fall short, ISW says. The drones keep reaching depots that help supply Moscow's military, faster than Russia can shield them. The latest strike occurred yesterday.

A Russian drone knocked out an evacuation robot, so a Ukrainian commander drove into the kill zone in a pickup to save two wounded soldiers. The robotic evacuation that Ukraine now runs by the thousand failed under fire. A commander with a pickup was the fallback.

Intelligence and technology

Why does Ukraine need a Bebradron-M drone with no warhead and only 2 kg of payload?. Ukraine has approved 413 new unmanned aerial systems for military use this year, most of them domestically produced.

The Ukrainian company behind MAUL — a robot that hits 70 km/h and survives flipping over — moves toward investment from an $81M US firm. AIDronesUA and US-based Empery Digital Inc. have signed an agreement to explore a strategic investment, with due diligence now underway.

$3,032 to kill a soldier on whom Russia spends $65,000: Ukraine's new system puts a price on every strike. Every $1 Ukraine spends hitting a target inflicts nearly $5 of losses on Russia, according to the Mission Control module.

Ukrainian commander says one French howitzer could have changed the war's early months, if there'd been more of it. The French CAESAR is one of the best self-propelled howitzers in Ukraine's arsenal, accurate, long-range, and mobile, an artillery major says.

This new drone stays aloft for more than day and resists jamming. Ukraine says it can now reach beyond the Urals. The T40 extends Ukraine's homegrown deep-strike reach to distant rear-area targets like factories and airfields.

Slovakia resumes BMP-1 hull production after 36 years. The secret customer may be Ukraine. The first two prototype hulls are complete under a late-2025 contract with an unnamed foreign buyer, and Defense Express points to Ukraine as the likely customer.

Russia builds and expands at least 10 drone bases. Some could put Warsaw in range – Telegraph. Seven sites were reportedly used in attacks on Kyiv, while the wider buildout adds to Russia's military infrastructure along NATO's borders.

Russia's most-used map app is erasing a Baltic missile site that Western maps still show. The concealment appears only on Yandex, leaving Google, Apple, and Microsoft to reveal exactly what Moscow wanted buried.

Russia's new drone outruns old Shahed by four times and tracks its target in real time. Its own heat is what lets Ukraine track it back. Its size and heat signature make it vulnerable, a Ukrainian colonel says.

International

Berlin weighs closing the Russian House for spying, yet a federal ministry just moved in beside it. One arm of the German government reviews shutting the site while another shares a wall with it, exposing a split over how seriously the threat is taken.

Japan tracks four Russian missile boats passing close to its coast off Hokkaido. The country's navy shadowed the warships with a patrol plane as they sailed back west through a strait between two of its northern islands.

Humanitarian and social impact

Russia's latest strike on Ukraine's most important trade route: Togo-flagged civilian ship hit in Odesa. A Russian strike on Odesa Oblast port infrastructure damaged a civilian vessel and injured four people, three of them hospitalized.

Russians are buying seaside apartments built on the ruins of the Mariupol homes Russia bombed—DW. Russian occupation authorities ordered some residents out of apartments that survived the siege, sending them to hostels or Mariupol's outskirts, according to DW sources.

Nearly 500 Africans recruited into Russia's army have died, Ukraine says. Ukraine has identified almost 3,000 recruits from 37 countries, including 35 now held as prisoners of war.

Russia's strikes across 10 Ukrainian regions kill at least eight in 24 hours. Deaths were reported in at least three regions, with civilian infrastructure damaged.

Russia struck Ukraine's gas producer 13 times in a single week, forcing some wells offline. The drone-and-missile barrage more than doubled the company's strike count from a comparable week last winter, well before the heating season begins.

Man and woman attacked two children for speaking Ukrainian, Gdańsk consulate says. The consulate says police are searching for the alleged attackers. The siblings escaped serious physical injury but suffered severe emotional stress.

Political and legal developments

World's largest crypto exchange helped Russia identify and jail a man who donated to Ukraine's army. Binance reportedly provided Russian authorities with personal data that helped lead to the arrest of a Russian IT specialist.

Read our earlier daily review here.