The Low-Down

Ukraine Took Russia's Best Punch. Now It's Hitting Back. Harder

2026-04-30T09:42:00.002-04:00

As the weather warms, Ukraine's military and civilians have, this winter and spring, absorbed the worst Russia could throw at them and have not just survived, but emerged stronger.

The barbaric attacks on energy and electricity infrastructure in the dead of an historically cold winter did not lead to calls for negotiation. And rather than waiting for another set of Russian offensives, the Ukrainians took the initiative and launched counterattacks which have resulted in Russian forces losing territory. The war is not expected to end soon, but the global narrative about Russia's failure has become the norm and the supposed 'inevitability' of a Russian win is now considered a cruel joke - mostly on the hapless Russian troops who are dying as a result of it. JL

David Ignatius reports in the Washington Post:

At the Kyiv Security Forum last week European defense chiefs shared the assessment that, as one put it, “the Ukrainians have outpaced Russia in spite of being outgunned.” Ukraine currently neutralizes 70% of Russia’s drone attacks and hopes to boost that kill rate to more than 90% by the end of this year. Ukraine maintains its edge with monthly updates of its drone and electronic warfare systems. Drones account for 92% of kills, while just 3% come from artillery. Ukrainian troops held firm against Russia’s assault on the front lines last fall, and its cities survived a terrible, frigid winter despite a Russian blitz on infrastructure. Now spring has arrived: It’s warm again, and the power is still on. Ukraine has taken Russia’s heavy punch without buckling.

Strange as it sounds, it’s uplifting to visit Ukraine these days. This is a place where the good guys are winning — or at least holding their own. And they’re surviving with help from a stalwart Europe rather than a retreating United States.

At the Kyiv Security Forum here last week, European defense leaders voiced solidarity with Ukraine in a war against Russia that they now see as a common fight. “We should be in awe, admiration, and gratitude for what Ukraine is doing,” Adm. Tony Radakin, Britain’s former chief of defense, told the gathering.

And there was a palpable anger here at President Donald Trump, who European leaders see as pulling away from NATO at the very moment when Europe most needs American help. “The United States is not an ally anymore,” warned Nicolas Tenzer, a prominent French defense analyst. That’s an extreme view, but it reflects a common consternation that Trump has broken the trust that sustained the transatlantic alliance.
The deep concerns I’ve heard in past wartime visits here have eased. Ukrainian troops held firm against Russia’s ferocious assault on the front lines last fall, and its cities survived a terrible, frigid winter despite a Russian blitz on energy infrastructure. Now spring has arrived: It’s warm again, and the power is still on. Ukraine has taken Russia’s heavy punch without buckling.
“We are definitely not losing,” affirmed Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the former head of military intelligence who is now the top aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky, in remarks to the forum. That’s about as upbeat as the taciturn Budanov ever gets. But European defense chiefs gathered here seemed to share the assessment that, as one put it, “the Ukrainians have outpaced Russia in spite of being outgunned.”
A year ago, I wondered whether European nations would be willing or able to take over from the U.S. as Ukraine’s protector. The desire is now clearly there, although the capability lags. During the conference, a representative of the European Union announced approval of a new 90 billion euro loan (about $106 billion) for Ukraine. Gen. Sean Clancy, the chair of the E.U. Military Committee, promised: “Europe will continue supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

Europeans seem to realize that, in confronting a growing threat from Russian President Vladimir Putin, they need Ukraine’s strong military as much as Kyiv needs support from European capitals. “Ukraine has become a fortress, a lesson Europe would do well to learn,” Clancy told the conference.
Ukraine has one thing that Europe (and most other countries) desperately need, which is expertise in drone warfare — both offense and defense. The Ukrainians are offering to share this experience with partners, and the Kyiv gathering at times seemed almost a sales conference for Ukrainian drone-makers.
Top European defense officials listened intently at a private session on “New Age Defense,” where a representative of the drone unit of the Azov Brigade explained how Ukraine maintains its edge, with monthly updates of its drone and electronic warfare systems. He said that drones account for 92 percent of the brigade’s target kills, while just 3 percent come from artillery.
The Europeans seemed to get the message. “Warfare is a race of innovation, and time is a domain of war,” responded Adm. Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, chief of the NATO Military Committee. “We need more cooperation with Ukraine to adapt at the speed of conflict.”

The Kyiv forum showed that Ukraine’s remarkable defense innovation is nurtured by constant interaction between soldiers at the front and agile defense-tech companies. This feedback loop was explained by Oleksandr Yakovenko, founder of a drone-maker called TAF Industries. He said he had returned from the eastern front the previous day and would soon visit his plant to retool.
This innovation ecosystem is badly needed in Europe, Yakovenko argued: “European companies will take two years to solve a problem. We can do it in a month.” This same “learn from Ukraine” theme was expressed by Col. Mykyta Nadtochii. He told Europeans who are pledging support: “You’re not just doing this for Ukraine; you’re doing it for yourselves.”

Europe is already getting buzzed by Russian drones. So Europeans listened with special interest to a panel discussion on anti-drone defense. Oleksandr Yarmak, who created an air-defense brigade known as “Darknode,” said that his unit had downed 2,757 Shahed drones over the past two years.
Ukraine currently neutralizes 70 percent of Russia’s drone attacks and hopes to boost that kill rate to more than 90 percent by the end of this year, Yarmak said. “My message to our European partners is that you should build air defense capability quickly. An attack of 500 drones in one day can lead to your capitulation.”

Can a comfortable and hidebound Europe really become as tough and innovative as Ukraine? Maj. Illia Samoilenko, who lost one hand in combat with the Azov Brigade, had some tart words. Europeans, he said, “forgot how to fight. … Decades of inaction put them in a very disadvantageous position. They should take a cold shower.”
But we all know the old saw about how necessity is the mother of invention. What has happened in Ukraine over the past four years of war profoundly demonstrates that truth. And now, necessity seems to be forcing Europe to abandon its old passivity and work creatively with Ukraine to fend off a hostile Russia.

Moscow May 9 Parade To Have No Armored Vehicles, Few Troops Due To Losses, Fear Of Ukraine Drone Strike

2026-04-30T09:35:00.001-04:00

For the first time in twenty years, Moscow's annual Victory Day parade, which celebrates Russia's part in the defeat of Nazi Germany, will not feature any armored vehicles.

The reason, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, is 'the current operational situational,' which is a bureaucratic euphemism for devastating losses of such equipment in Ukraine as well as fear that the Ukrainians could embarrass Putin by launching drone attacks on the parade that the Russians might not be able to prevent, given Ukraine's decimation of Russian air defenses. JL

NBC News reports:

Russia's traditional parade marking the 81st anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II this year will take place without tanks, missiles and other military equipment, the Russian Defense Ministry said. It will be the first time in two decades — and in the more than four years of Russia’s war in Ukraine — that no military equipment will rumble through Moscow’s Red Square on May 9, the day Russia celebrates its most important holiday. The ministry statement this week cited the “current operational situation” as a reason for excluding a military equipment convoy, as well as cadets, from the parade.
Russia’s traditional parade marking the 81st anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II this year will take place without tanks, missiles and other military equipment, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement late Tuesday.

It will be the first time in nearly two decades — and in the more than four years of Russia’s war in Ukraine — that no military equipment will rumble through Moscow’s Red Square on May 9, the day Russia celebrates its most important secular holiday. The Kremlin has used it to showcase its military might and global clout.

Victory Day parades on Red Square involved military equipment and various weaponry every year since 2008.

The ministry statement this week cited the “current operational situation” as a reason for excluding a military equipment convoy, as well as cadets, from the parade. The statement didn’t elaborate.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday blamed Ukraine and its “terrorist activity, in an apparent reference to Kyiv’s strikes deep inside Russia. “All measures are being taken to minimize the danger,” he said.
The parade will feature “servicemen from higher military educational institutions of all kinds and certain service branches of the Russian Armed Forces” and a traditional military aircraft flyover, the ministry said.
World War II remains a rare point of consensus in the nation’s divisive history under Communist rule, and the Kremlin has leveraged that sentiment to encourage national pride and underline Russia’s position as a global power.
The Soviet Union lost 27 million people in what it calls the Great Patriotic War in 1941-45, an enormous sacrifice that left a deep scar in the national psyche.

President Vladimir Putin, who has ruled Russia for over 25 years, has turned Victory Day into a key pillar of his tenure and has tried to use it to justify the war in Ukraine.
Last year’s parade was the largest since Russia sent troops into Ukraine, and drew the most global leaders to Moscow in a decade, including high-profile guests like Chinese President Xi Jinping, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico.
It featured over 11,500 troops and more than 180 military vehicles, including tanks, armored infantry vehicles and artillery used on the battlefield in Ukraine, as well as huge Yars nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles launchers and drones carried on military trucks. Fighter jets flew over Red Square, too.
Putin had declared a unilateral 72-hour ceasefire starting May 7, 2025, and the authorities blocked cellphone internet in Moscow for several days in an effort to avert Ukrainian drone attacks.
In 2023, the parade was scaled down, with fewer troops and military equipment on display and no flyover.

Ukraine Doubles Ground Drones To Increase Use For Assault, Defense, Supply

2026-04-29T09:44:00.003-04:00

Ukrainian forces are doubling the number of ground drones they will deploy this year to 25,000.

Their intent is to replace as many as 30% of human infantry with the drones and to have all logistics tasks near the front carried out by the ground drones, which can transport approximately 200 kilos vs 20 kilos for a human. As these drones become more sophisticated, they are also being used for a growing number of combat tasks, including defending positions and attacking Russian strongpoints. JL

Alex Croft reports in The Independent and Katie Livingstone reports in Defense News:

Ukraine will (deploy) 25,000 unmanned ground vehicles in the first half of 2026, more than double the 2025 total, to shift all frontline logistics off soldiers and onto robots. Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade wants to replace 30% of its infantry with UGVs to cut down on troop losses on the (Donbas) front. They deliver supplies, evacuate wounded troops, hold territorial positions, destroy enemy defenses, carry out sabotage missions and lay mines. The unit has carried out more than 100 strike operations using UGVs in the past few months. “During these missions, we’ve destroyed enemy troops, shelters, command posts, and other high-value targets. This is daily, systematic combat work.”
Ukraine will contract 25,000 unmanned ground vehicles in the first half of 2026, more than double the 2025 total, as the Defense Ministry moves to shift all frontline logistics off soldiers and onto robots.
Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov shared the target after meeting with domestic UGV manufacturers last week, where he also announced that the ministry had already begun signing contracts for 2027 to stabilize long-term manufacturer pipelines.

“UGVs perform important logistics and evacuation tasks on the front line,” Fedorov wrote in a Facebook post on April 18. “In March alone, the military carried out more than 9,000 missions using them.”
“Our goal — 100% of frontline logistics should be performed by robotic systems,” the minister said.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry has spent over 14 billion hryvnia, or roughly $330 million, to push more than 181,000 drones, UGVs and electronic warfare systems to the front since January through a digital procurement system that allows frontline units to order equipment directly from domestic manufacturersFirst came the infantry, next the missiles, then the drones.
Now, after more than four years of a bloody and grinding war in Ukraine, remote-controlled ground robots are assuming command over the battlefield.
Last Wednesday, Volodymyr Zelensky claimed Ukraine’s 3rd Separate Assault Brigade had regained territory exclusively using a combination of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) and drones – a mission he says was a first in the war.
“The occupiers surrendered, and the operation was carried out without infantry and without losses on our side,” he went on, referring to an operation from the northeastern Kharkiv region last year, in which Ukrainian infantry occupied a position gained using the UGVs.

This shapeshifting conflict has transformed modern conventional warfare, most notably through the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVS – or drones) for reconnaissance and attack missions. But UGVs are the new future of warfare, Ukrainian commanders and engineers say – a future that has already arrived.

Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade wants to replace around 30 per cent of its infantry with UGVs as it looks to cut down on costly troop losses on the eastern front lines, Mykola Zinkevych, callsign Makar, commander of the “NC13” Strike UGV Unit that carried out the Kharkiv operation, tells The Independent.

“The logic is simple: where the risk to a human is high, a robot should be used. Because the life of an infantryman is priceless, and robots don’t bleed,” he says. “We’re working toward a model where UGVs take on the most dangerous tasks, while infantry becomes a highly specialised force focused on what UGVs cannot perform.”
Yaroslav Drobysh, callsign Zhulyk, is the operator and chief sergeant of the unit. He says growing use of UGVs has already significantly eased the burden for infantrymen, carrying out several logistical tasks and transporting large volumes of supplies and ammunition without losses.
“This is a new phase of the war,” Sgt Drobysh says.

“Having walked the path of an assault infantryman, I know first hand the true price of every metre of our land. That is why I deeply understand the value of decisions that reduce risk to human life.”

Sgt Drobysh’s unit says it is the world’s first strike UGV unit, starting from scratch with no military doctrine for the use of the vehicles in modern combat. Ukraine is now a world leader in their production and use; last year, its UGV market grew by 488 per cent, according to a study by the KSE Institute, BRAVE1, and Defence Builder.
The vehicles have already been transformative to logistics on the battlefield. While a modern infantryman can carry an average of 20kg of gear over distance, logistics UGVs can transport a cargo of 200 to 600kg to frontline positions.

They deliver critical supplies, evacuate wounded troops, hold territorial positions, destroy enemy positions, carry out sabotage missions and lay mines.
Cmdr Zinkevych says the unit has carried out more than 100 strike operations using UGVs in the past few months. “During these missions, we’ve destroyed enemy troops, shelters, command posts, and other high-value targets,” he says. “This is daily, systematic combat work.”

Although he says the vehicles have altered the course of the war, Cmdr Zinkevych has concerns about a slowdown in the pace of their development. He calls for a boost in funding, warning that slowing development is “something we cannot allow”.
Among the most used robotic units is the TW12.7, produced by the Ukrainian company DevDroid. It is a vehicle with a Browning machine gun mounted on top, and has been used extensively on the battlefield by the unit.
Earlier this year, Cmdr Zinkevych claimed a single TW12.7 held a position on the frontline for six weeks, moving to the forward position on the frontline to watch for any Russian movements and delivering suppressive fire, before withdrawing to a covered location in the evenings.
Oleg Fedoryshyn, head of research and design at DevDroid, says the UGV has transformed how Ukrainian troops hold positions.
“It’s easier to control an area for 24 hours when you are sitting in a safe zone 50km from the UGV, and you can swap with your team and another guy does it,” he tells The Independent.

The average cost of a UGV for the Ukrainian military, as sold by Devdroid, is $30,000 (£22,100). This rises to $50,000 if it comes equipped with a Browning machine gun, and the price increases significantly if it is sold to any military other than Ukraine’s.
Mr Fedoryshyn is coy about how many robots Devdroid has produced for Ukraine, but says the figure is growing rapidly. “From year to year, it's increasing and increasing a lot. It's not enough at this moment. In this year, in the next year, I think it will increase a lot.”
He is also wary of revealing details of a new UGV he says is currently being trialled by military units, which has not yet been publicly unveiled.
DevDroid is in constant contact with troops on the ground about how the new robots can be improved to better meet their needs.
“We try to produce UGVs that will work after one year. We just try to imagine how it changed, and how the front line changes, how the world is changing. And our product mustn't be outdated in one year,” he says. “Every day we talk with them about it, and they give us some improvements.”

Around 10 or 15 per cent of the robots sent by Devdroid were lost in battle, he estimates. Many of these were repaired and returned to their brigades, so were lost only temporarily.
Experts warn that the growing use of robots does come with its own risks. The physical detachment between the operator and the lethal weapon raises concerns over how force is used.
“Where we have an instrument that serves toward the application of force, operated from a distance, there is a risk that the threshold to use force becomes lowered ... and civilian populations are potentially at risk of bearing the brunt of the use of force,” explains Professor Elke Schwarz, an expert in military technologies at Queen Mary University.

But Prof Schwarz notes that Kyiv is developing the UGV tactics “out of necessity” and in the context of an existential threat.
It is a certain boost for Kyiv’s self-reliance in the war, she adds: “These are often homegrown systems, meaning that there is less reliance on external provisions, and the companies developing these UGVs can later expect to export the systems to other states.”

What Russia's Captured Soldiers Reveal About Its Failing War

2026-04-29T09:16:00.000-04:00

As Russia's winter and then spring-summer offensives have faltered this year, Ukrainian forces are finding that there has been something of a change in the composition of the Russian troops they are capturing. Long gone are the professional soldiers who tried to take Kyiv four years ago. And the convicts offered a second chance have largely disappeared. Even the opportunists who signed financially beneficial contracts are declining.

The latest batches are often men who have been coerced because they could not pay debts or faced trumped-up legal charges, suggesting that these troops are ever more desperate. But one thing has not changed: they all realize that, in their own words. they are being sent to be slaughtered. JL

Josh Olley reports in United 24:

In the first three months of 2026, 89,000 Russian troops were killed or seriously wounded. The Kremlin has increasingly relied on contract soldiers rather than conscription, now recruiting 400,000 contract troops annually, 70-80% of its deployed forces. Only one of five POWs interviewed said he had been formally mobilized. The others were either detained on minor drug charges and given a choice between long prison sentences or the front line, or were burdened by significant debt. A common factor linking every prisoner interviewed was that Russian troops openly speak of being sent “to be slaughtered.”
When the white van door opened, there was an immediate, unmistakable odor, the kind that speaks to long stretches without basic hygiene. Five men were piled into the back of the van, blindfolded and with their hands tightly bound, dressed in a mismatched combination of Russian uniforms and civilian clothing.
At an undisclosed location in the forest on the northeastern front of Ukraine, the Russian prisoners of war (POWs) had been captured the previous day while fighting near the front line in the Kupiansk region.
It was late February, a warm, sunny day compared to the months that had come before.
The Ukrainian soldiers calmly instructed them to step out of the van and form a line. As they appeared, one by one, the POWs bore little resemblance to the figures typically portrayed in Russian propaganda. Instead, they looked older, physically worn, and weak.
One of the POWs, a small, thin man with down-turned lips and a hungry stare, did not disclose his name. The ex-prisoner, 43, was born in Yamal, in northwest Siberia. Sitting in the middle of the sparse forest, snow lining the ground, he went on to describe in detail the moments that led up to his capture.
Ex-prisoner, 43, was born in Yamal, in northwest Siberia. February, 2026. Photo by Joshua Olley / UNITED24 Media.
He was instructed to move through various checkpoints using Alpine Quest , occupy a building, and remain there to observe and report all movements, including those of soldiers and equipment. Operating in the Kupiansk area, they arrived on the evening of January 30. Upon arrival, they were “hungry, soaked, no cigarettes, nothing,” says the POW.
During the night, they were attacked by FPV drones, including the “Baba Yaga” drones flying overhead. In response, they immediately contacted their command by radio, who instructed them to hold their position until morning. When morning arrived, nothing had changed, and the Ukrainian attacks continued.
This was followed by an assault, says the POW. Despite the intensity, they were not found. The next day, they reached out to command again, only to receive the same directive: wait until further notice. That's when he said he started doubting his orders.
“I saw a drone,” says the Russian POW. “I asked the commander if it was ours. He said no.” He was told to send the coordinates—instead, he turned off the radio and ran. “There were many such orders I didn’t follow. Reporting required stopping, which was dangerous.”
After enduring five more days of relentless attacks, with no support or weapons, Ukrainian soldiers eventually approached them and instructed them to surrender. Faced with no food and no clear direction, they complied.
Expendability of the Russian soldiers
A common factor linking every prisoner interviewed was that Russian troops openly speak of being sent “to be slaughtered.” Russia is currently losing troops at a staggering rate.
In the first three months of 2026 alone, 89,000 Russian troops were killed or seriously wounded. So far, the Kremlin has increasingly relied on contract soldiers rather than large-scale conscription, now recruiting an estimated 400,000 contract troops annually, which makes up 70-80% of its deployed forces, The Kyiv Independent reported.
Only one of the five POWs interviewed said he had been formally mobilized. The others claim they were either detained on minor drug charges and given a choice between long prison sentences or the front line, or were burdened by significant debt.
Taras, a POW who said he signed a Military Service Contract because “I had drugs. Because of the drugs, they made me sign the contract.” February, 2026. Photo by Joshua Olley / UNITED24 Media.
Ruslan, 45, from the Kostroma region, who says he signed a military contract due to debts. February, 2026. Photo by Joshua Olley / UNITED24 Media.
The Russian POW, Ruslan, 45, from the central Kostroma region, says that before the war he “worked with carpets.” Ruslan signed his contract on July 26, 2025. Within months was deployed to the front lines.
“I had debts,” he says. “The government was pressuring me constantly. They caught me and said—sign it.” Although Ruslan concedes that he joined for money, he claims he did not do so willingly. Yet, across Russian social media, recruitment ads flood the public space: sign up for the army, and in return, receive often over a million rubles, debt forgiveness, and lucrative incentives. “I signed the contract because I had a lot of debt,” claimed another POW who chose to remain anonymous. “That’s the only reason.”
As recruitment has shifted toward near-forced mobilization, according to Le Monde, accounts from within the ranks describe poorly trained and medically unfit men deployed with minimal preparation, some surviving only weeks at the front. Since August 2025, Russia has narrowed the list of disqualifying illnesses, clearing the way for psychiatric patients—including those with schizophrenia—to be sent to the front.
“They send us the most infirm, so they can be slaughtered,” said a Russian assault soldier, as quoted by the independent Russian outlet Verstka.
Andrey, born in 1990. Mobilized in 2022. February, 2026. Photo by Joshua Olley / UNITED24 Media.
Andrey, a POW born in 1990, was the only one of the POWs who appeared to be in decent health and carried himself in a timid but otherwise normal way. Before the 2022 mobilization, he says he worked as an assistant driller at a Russian engineering geology company. Andrey told us the conditions in the army were “terrible.”
Captured by Ukrainian soldiers who addressed him through a loudspeaker mounted on a drone, he described neglect and mistreatment by his commanders before his capture, especially toward regular soldiers. It was this that motivated him to refuse orders, as well as the lack of basic concessions: “If parents get sick or need hospital care, we’re supposed to get 10 days leave. They refused me.”
Taken together, these recruitment practices point to a military scrambling to replenish Russia’s ranks at any cost. On January 16, former president Dmitry Medvedev touted 422,000 recruitment contracts signed in 2025, presenting the figure as a success. But the number had already fallen from 450,000 the year before—a 6% drop that underscores a shrinking pool of willing recruits and a growing reliance on coercion to sustain the war.
Another Russian POW, Taras—a contract soldier—said he joined the Russian army after being detained on drug charges. "I was in possession of drugs; they made me sign the contract,” Taras says. He claims he had been promised he would serve in the territory of Russia. He was then sent to Ukraine to fight on the front line as an infantryman. According to Taras, who was captured on his first battle mission, most Russian soldiers hope for a “quick peace,” adding, "No one wants to die."
What that “peace” would mean for Ukraine, he did not say.
A captured Russian POW with a thousand-yard stare, signed military contract in 2024. February, 2026. Photo by Joshua Olley / UNITED24 Media.
The testimonies offer a glimpse into how Russia sustains its war. The anonymous POW described his situation before joining the army, saying he had survived most of his life doing odd jobs. After prison, he worked in the timber industry from 2009 to 2025, but then the plant closed. The POW concluded the interview saying that rather than go back to Russia, he would prefer to stay imprisoned in Ukraine. With more than a million rubles ($12,000) in debt, he simply claimed, “I had to go to war.”
All prisoners of war featured in this project were asked to participate in both the photo and interview process voluntarily.

"Welcome To the Stone Age:" Ukraine Extends Drone Kill Zone Into Russia

2026-04-29T09:08:00.003-04:00

Ukraine's drone kill zone was originally intended to cover a few kilometers on either side of the front 'zero' line. Everything in that area was a target. When the front line, as such, became more of a gray zone because in many sectors neither side had firm control in the historical sense, the kill zone extended to 20 kilometers into the rear, though that has now increased with the introduction of more powerful drones to 50km.

But the latest extension announced by Ukraine now moves in Russia itself. And as recent attacks on logistics, command and control headquarters, as well anything that moves suggests, the Ukrainians are making good on their threats. Ukraine's drone commander is a former grain trader who understands the power of setting quantitative objectives. He started by announcing that the Ukrainians would kill or severely wound 35,000 Russian soldiers a month - which they have now done for four months in a row, with a goal of increasing that number to 50,000, far more than the Kremlin could replace. He has now said that his intent is to bomb Russia back to the stone age (though some informed observers believe much of the country never left it...). And he appears to be beginning to make good on that promise, as well. JL

Yuri Zoria reports in Euromaidan Press:

Ukraine's Drone Forces struck Russian locomotives, communications, ammunition depots, drone landing sites, and logistics hubs in occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts between 23 and 25 April as it expands the kill zone, scaling up depth in occupied areas. The SBS established its Deep Strike Center earlier this year to coordinate long-range drone ops against high-priority Russian targets. It has accelerated the tempo of strikes, hitting Iskander missile bases, air defenses, and the elite Russian drone unit Rubikon's facilities. Ukraine's drone forces have hit 240 targets across Russia and occupied territories in the first 48 days of 2026 alone, including 26 Russian air defenses. "Welcome to the stone age," Ukraine's "Madyar" Brovdi told Russian troops in occupied territories as rail logistics will become "dog sleds," and warehouses and fuel depots will retreat "beyond the Urals."

Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS) struck Russian locomotives, communications towers, ammunition depots, a drone landing site, and a logistics hub in occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts between 23 and 25 April, the SBS commander Robert "Madyar" Brovdi reported. The SBS is expanding the kill zone, scaling up its operations at operational depth in the occupied areas, the commander said.
Ukraine's drone campaign has stopped being a sequence of headlines and has become the underlying logic of the war. What started as opportunistic raids on Russian rear positions has hardened into a coordinated effort to make Russian logistics, energy, and command infrastructure unsustainable wherever it sits — in occupied Ukrainian territory, in Russia's south or Baltics, in the Caspian Sea oil fields, or near the Urals.
"Welcome to the stone age"
The SBS Deep Strike Center is gaining momentum, Brovdi said, with railway logistics, warehouses, fuel depots, communications, and command posts now under strike.
"There will be enough birds," he added, referring to the middle-range drones drones.
The strikes change the very logic of the occupiers' presence in the rear, Madyar noted, forcing them to hide, disperse, and lose control over supply.
Brovdi framed the campaign in characteristically vivid terms:
"Welcome to the stone age," he wrote, telling Russian troops in occupied territories that rail logistics will become "dog sleds and gondolas," and internet "pigeons," and warehouses and fuel depots will retreat "beyond the Urals."

What got hit, by whom, and where
All strikes were carried out using domestically produced FP-2 mid-range strike drones, Madyar's video shows.
On 25 April, the 9th "Kairos" battalion of the 414th SBS Brigade Madyar's Birds used two drones to strike two Russian locomotives in occupied parts of Donetsk Oblast. Later, pilots from the same unit struck another moving Russian train.
Communication tower in occupied Zaporizhzhia Oblast moments before a strike by Ukraine's 412th NEMESIS Brigade, 24 April 2026. Screenshot from video: Robert "Madyar" Brovdi via Telegram
On 24 April, the 20th SBS Brigade "K-2" used two drones to destroy a Russian logistics hub in occupied parts of Luhansk Oblast. The same day, the 412th SBS Brigade NEMESIS struck a communications tower in Zaporizhzhia Oblast — the structure collapsed completely.
Vehicles inside a Russian logistics hub in occupied Luhansk Oblast moments before a strike by Ukraine's 20th "K-2" Brigade, 24 April 2026. Screenshot from video: Robert "Madyar" Brovdi via Telegram
Between 23 and 25 April, the 9th "Kairos" battalion and the 1st SBS Center struck several communications hubs and another tower across occupied Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. On 25 April, the 9th battalion also identified and hit a Russian temporary deployment point in occupied Zaporizhzhia Oblast.
Aftermath of a Ukrainian drone strike on a Russian logistics hub in occupied Luhansk Oblast, 24 April 2026. Screenshot from video: Robert "Madyar" Brovdi via Telegram
On 23 April, specialists from the 1st SBS Center destroyed a Russian ammunition and supply depot in Luhansk Oblast. On 24 April, NEMESIS pilots struck a Russian drone landing site and storage depot in occupied Zaporizhzhia Oblast. The same day, the 1st SBS Center hit another Russian ammunition depot in occupied Luhansk Oblast.
A campaign that's still scaling
The SBS established its Deep Strike Center earlier this year to coordinate long-range drone operations against high-priority Russian targets in occupied territories and beyond. The center has accelerated the tempo of strikes, with overnight operations against Iskander missile bases, air defense systems, and even the elite Russian drone unit Rubikon's facilities all carried out in a single 16-target package on 16 April.

Ukraine's drone forces have hit 240 sensitive targets across Russia and occupied territories in the first 48 days of 2026 alone. SBS units have destroyed 26 Russian air defense elements at operational depth in March alone, with a Buk-M3 destroyed 50 km inside Bryansk Oblast.
Brovdi's stated goal is to scale the SBS to 5% of Ukraine's total military personnel — enough, he argued last September, to provide full front coverage at all three depths: tactical, operational, and strategic.

OpenAI Is Missing Key Revenue, User Targets Affecting Plans For IPO

2026-04-29T08:47:00.001-04:00

Companies miss targets sometimes. It is never a good outcome, but it need not be catastrophic. For normal companies in normal times, that is.

OpenAI is not a normal company and these are not normal times. AI has reset the business world's definition of success. Unheard of amounts of money are pouring into AI company coffers. Investors' expectations are extraordinary to the point of being delusional. So when one of the two leading AI firms reveals that it has missed key revenue and user numbers at the same time as a growing number of analysts are asking uncomfortable questions about whether growth plans are realistic, the corporate world takes notice. And when that company's Chief Financial Officer is then reported in the Wall Street Journal to be concerned about the impact of those missed targets on its ability to launch one of the most highly anticipated IPOs of this century, pandemonium ensues. And justifiably so. The Silicon Valley hype machine has savagely attacked anyone who questions the 'inevitability' of AI's future. So when negativity emerges from inside the tent, do not expect the business world to just say, 'no biggie.' JL

Berber Jin reports in the Wall Street Journal:

OpenAI recently missed its own targets for new users and revenue, stumbles that have raised concern among some company leaders about whether it will be able to support its massive spending on data centers. OpenAI missed multiple monthly revenue targets earlier this year after losing ground to Anthropic in the coding and enterprise markets. Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar has told other company leaders that she is worried the company might not be able to pay for future computing contracts if revenue doesn’t grow fast enough, according to people familiar with the matter. In recent months, Friar has also expressed reservations about OpenAI’s plans to go public by the end of this year

OpenAI recently missed its own targets for new users and revenue, stumbles that have raised concern among some company leaders about whether it will be able to support its massive spending on data centers.
Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar has told other company leaders that she is worried the company might not be able to pay for future computing contracts if revenue doesn’t grow fast enough, according to people familiar with the matter.
Board directors have also more closely examined the company’s data-center deals in recent months and questioned Chief Executive Sam Altman’s efforts to secure even more computing power despite the business slowdown, the people said.
The spending scrutiny is constraining Altman’s once-boundless ambitions ahead of a potential initial public offering that could take place by the end of the year. Friar and other executives are now seeking to control costs and instill more discipline in the business, at times putting them at odds with their CEO, people familiar with the issue said.
“We are totally aligned on buying as much compute as we can and working hard on it together every day,” Altman and Friar said in a joint statement Monday night. Any suggestion that the pair are divided or pulling back on securing new computing resources is “ridiculous,” they said.
The Nasdaq composite was down more than 1% earlier Tuesday following The Wall Street Journal’s report, including declines in Nvidia NVDA -1.63%decrease; red down pointing triangle, Oracle and other close OpenAI partners. Global tech conglomerate SoftBank Group 9984 -9.86%decrease; red down pointing triangle, which has committed more than $60 billion to OpenAI, fell 9.9% in Tokyo trading.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman CLARA MOKRI FOR WSJ
The company said in a statement Tuesday that there is “no truth” to the idea of a rift between Friar and Altman on computing resources. “The business is firing on all cylinders and the mood internally is incredibly positive,” the statement said.
For years, Altman has sought to lock up as much data-center capacity as possible, arguing that computing shortages were the biggest constraint to OpenAI’s growth. He went on a dealmaking spree last year that put OpenAI on the hook for some $600 billion in future spending commitments, and tied much of the tech sector’s success to OpenAI’s.
The “buy everything” computing strategy was buoyed by ChatGPT’s seemingly invincible success, and had the support of both Friar and the board. But the chatbot’s growth slowed toward the end of last year, sowing fresh doubt among company leaders about the approach.

OpenAI missed an internal goal of reaching one billion weekly active users for ChatGPT by the end of last year, according to people familiar with the goals. The company still hasn’t announced that milestone, unnerving some investors. It also missed its yearly revenue target for ChatGPT as well after Google’s Gemini saw massive growth late last year and ate into OpenAI’s market share, the people said. The company has also struggled with defection rates among subscribers, according to people familiar with those figures.
OpenAI missed multiple monthly revenue targets earlier this year after losing ground to Anthropic in the coding and enterprise markets, people familiar with its finances said.
OpenAI recently raised $122 billion in what was the largest funding round in Silicon Valley history, putting it on more solid financial footing. But the company has signed up for so much computing power that it expects to burn through that amount in the next three years, assuming that it meets ambitious revenue targets. Some of the funding is also conditional and depends on specific agreements with partners.
The company’s coding tool Codex is growing quickly in popularity, and it is shaving costs by cutting other projects such as its video-generation app Sora. OpenAI recently released GPT-5.5, a powerful model that topped a number of industry benchmarks.
A number of AI companies including Anthropic have faced a capacity crunch for computing in recent weeks, leading to price increases for access to AI processors, outages and rationing. The challenges have rankled power users of AI products, especially coders who have grown frustrated when AI systems have been unable to finish tasks in a way they had come to expect from past use.
OpenAI said in a recent memo to investors that it has been able to secure more computing capacity than Anthropic, giving it an advantage in reaching users. The memo, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal, also addressed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s veiled criticism of OpenAI at a recent business conference, when he said some companies had pulled “the risk dial too far” on data-center spending.
“In hindsight, that caution looks less like discipline and more like underestimating how fast demand would arrive,” the OpenAI memo said.
In recent months, Friar has also expressed reservations about OpenAI’s plans to go public by the end of this year, according to people familiar with the matter.
She has emphasized to executives and board directors the need for OpenAI to improve its internal controls, cautioning that the company isn’t yet ready to meet the rigorous reporting standards required of a public company. Altman has favored a more aggressive timeline for an IPO, some of the people said. Some details of OpenAI’s business challenges were earlier reported by tech-news site The Information.
OpenAI has to work through a slate of other issues ahead of a public listing. The company is currently experiencing a leadership vacuum after its second-in-command, Fidji Simo, unexpectedly took medical leave earlier this month. Separately, court proceedings began this week in a lawsuit by Elon Musk in which he is seeking to oust Altman and unwind OpenAI’s conversion into a for-profit company.

How Ukraine Is Supplanting America As Leader of the Free World

2026-04-28T10:25:00.005-04:00

Politics abhors a vacuum. When it became apparent that Donald Trump favored Putin's Russia versus Ukraine, the axis of power began to shift. No one - especially those in Europe and other democracies - wants to live under the blighted, oppressive economic and militaristic system that the Kremlin offers.

The catalyst for this shift has been Ukraine's heroic but also intelligence, innovative and successful defense against a much larger adversary. The Ukrainians have not just fought the Russians to a standstill, they have begun, in places, to push them back. The Kremlin is running out of willing recruits and its finances are a shambles. The US could have taken advantage of this situation but chose to cast its lot with a dictator. The result is that Europe has discovered it can survive without the US - and the people of the US are starting to pay the price. JL

David French comments in the New York Times:

A remarkable thing has happened on the battlefield. Ukraine - a nation that was supposed to dissolve within days of a Russian invasion - has fought Russia to a stalemate, revolutionizing land warfare in the process. The largest and most battle-hardened land force in the western world may be the Ukrainian Army. It has become an indispensable security partner in the western alliance, including in the war against Iran. Now, Ukraine’s president, is, by word and deed, showing Europe and the world how the post-American free world can preserve its liberty and independence. Politics abhors a vacuum. When America stepped back, other nations were bound to step forward. It is forfeiting its role as the leader of the free world. The moral and strategic heart of the defense of liberal democracy s in Kyiv, where a courageous leader and people have picked up the torch America dropped.

A remarkable thing has happened on the world’s battlefields. Ukraine — a nation that was supposed to dissolve within days of a Russian invasion — has fought Russia to a stalemate, revolutionizing land warfare in the process. It has become an indispensable security partner in the western alliance, including in the war against Iran.
Now, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, is taking the next step, one that would have been unthinkable even as recently as 2024. By word and deed, he’s showing Europe and the world how the post-American free world can preserve its liberty and independence. This is what happens when, as Phillips Payson O’Brien wrote in a piece for The Atlantic, “Kyiv appears to have given up on the United States.”
If that is true — and it looks as though it is — it may be worse news for the United States than it is for Ukraine.
Events on the ground and in world capitals are moving so quickly that it’s hard to keep up. First, the strategic situation in the Ukraine war seems to have changed. Last week, Mick Ryan, a retired Australian major general and one of the most astute analysts of the war, wrote that Ukraine has largely stabilized the frontline in eastern Ukraine, deepened its coalition, isolated Russia diplomatically and developed an indigenous arms industry that makes it less dependent on external support. It’s no longer accurate to think of Ukraine as a desperate underdog; it’s becoming an independent power. Even as it fights for its life against Russia, it’s reportedly reaching defense deals with the Gulf states and with the United States — and this time it’s Ukraine that’s providing military assistance.
In February 2025, Donald Trump mocked Zelensky in the Oval Office. “You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now,” Trump said. In April 2026, Ukraine has enough cards left that it’s sharing them.
This might be difficult for many readers to grasp — given our nation’s longstanding military supremacy — but the largest and most battle-hardened land force in the western world may well be the Ukrainian Army. While the precise numbers are classified, the Atlantic Council estimated in 2025 that Ukraine had roughly a million men and women under arms, the vast majority of whom serve in the ground forces.
America’s total force is larger than Ukraine’s, but to put the size of Ukrainian land forces in perspective, the combined size of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps is around 620,000. It’s also worth noting that the U.S. forces have much less combat experience than Ukraine forces — especially when it comes to combat with a great power.
No one should minimize Ukraine’s manpower issues (more recent estimates place its total number of active troops well below the million-body peak) or the fact that it has no nuclear weapons and Russia has thousands. But its army is still vast, and its military is the only western force that has fully adapted to modern drone warfare. Indeed, Ukraine is arguably the world’s leader in drone warfare. Rapid change isn’t just occurring in Ukraine. Other developments across the western alliance show that European nations are working with shocking speed to free themselves from dependence on America.
France is expanding its nuclear arsenal and increasing its defense spending. It is even changing its nuclear doctrine to allow it to deploy nuclear-armed aircraft outside France.
Germany has approved a plan to spend up to a trillion euros on defense and infrastructure. It has also set the goal of creating the strongest military in Europe by 2039 (ironically enough, the 100-year anniversary of the German invasion of Poland).
Canada is enacting its own defense budget increases — with the added twist that it will be spending far less money on American weapons.
This decision mirrors larger European and allied trends. Our allies are increasing their defense budgets and decreasing their dependence on American technology. Just last week, for example, NATO procurement officials decided to replace aging American-made early warning aircraft with newer designs from Saab, a Swedish manufacturer, and Bombardier of Canada. Ukraine has signed deals and letters of intent to purchase potentially hundreds of advanced fighters from Sweden and France. All of this is taking place after news reports that Denmark had been prepared to blow up airfields in Greenland if its fellow NATO member, the United States, attempted to invade.
Given these developments, is it any wonder that Zelensky has proposed a new defense arrangement for Europe if America keeps stepping back — an alliance between E.U. nations, plus non-E.U. powers like the United Kingdom, Norway, Turkey and Ukraine?
There are readers who will welcome these developments. Good, you might think. Europe should take primary responsibility for its own defense. But there is an immense difference between allies who step up to contribute their fair share to a cooperative alliance and nations who engage in a military buildup to replace American power, which they no longer trust.
I don’t think Americans fully appreciate the extraordinary cost of Trump’s bluster and blunders. It should go without saying, but once you threaten to invade an allied country, you don’t just place the existence of the alliance in jeopardy; you raise the possibility of allies turning into mortal enemies. You can also trigger the kind of insecurity and scramble for power that contributed to the start of World War I.
In practical terms, it’s hard to see how alienating American allies puts America first.
There’s certainly no military benefit. Americans have spent the last several weeks watching our president dismiss our European allies as irrelevant then rage at them for not helping American forces reopen the Strait of Hormuz. By launching the war against Iran without seeking the help of (or even consulting) our European allies, we lost potential access to their advanced fighters and frigates, as well as to France’s carrier battle group. In this context, there is no such thing as addition by subtraction. We are not stronger when there are fewer forces that will deploy to our aid.
There’s no fiscal benefit, either. This may sound overly basic, but it needs to be said: If you break faith with your allies, you can’t count on them to come to your defense. And that means you have to spend more money to maintain the same level of deterrence.
That’s exactly what Trump is planning to do; he has submitted a roughly $1.5 trillion budget request for the U.S. military, a staggering 40 percent increase from this fiscal year.
And where is the economic benefit? On Friday, Fareed Zakaria published a piece in The Washington Post observing that European and other allied governments aren’t just attempting to achieve greater military independence from the United States; they’re also attempting to gain more financial independence. And even though they have serious differences with China, the primary beneficiary of a rift in European and American relations may well be … China.
Zakaria quotes a Chinese businessman who puts Trump’s catastrophic diplomatic blunders in perspective. “For us, Trump’s attack on Iran is less consequential than his threat to attack Greenland,” he said. “When he did that, to America’s oldest allies, I knew that Europe would not follow America’s approach to China." History has its hinge points, and here is one: On Friday night, Feb. 25, 2022, Volodymyr Zelensky released a brief video from Kyiv. He told the people of Ukraine that the government has not fled to safety in the west and that it intended to stand and fight.
“We are here,” Zelensky said. “We are in Kyiv. We are protecting Ukraine.”
When I visited Ukraine in 2023, I spoke to Ukrainian soldiers who told me that statement sent a jolt of electricity through Ukrainian lines. From that moment, they knew they would not surrender; they would stand.
In hindsight, that decision hasn’t just changed the course of Ukrainian history. Its ripple effects are extending across the globe.
Here’s another hinge point: the night of Nov. 5, 2024, when the American people returned Donald Trump to the White House. It’s now clear that Trump’s second term will cause generational damage to American alliances.
Given that Americans saw how Trump behaved in his first term and put him back in power anyway, it’s fair for Europeans to conclude that the rift isn’t with Trump alone; its also with a critical mass of Americans. The European nations don’t have the luxury of blaming Trump’s re-election on inflation and the border — or presuming that the western alliance will be safe once Trump is gone. One of Trump’s most likely heirs, JD Vance, is arguably even more hostile to the western alliance and Ukraine than Trump is. After all, Vance recently said that one of the things he’s “proudest” of is the administration’s decision to stop buying weapons for Ukraine. How can we be trusted as an ally if only one political party is committed to fulfilling our commitments?
For the foreseeable future, America’s allies will reasonably fear that they may be one election away from abandonment and betrayal.
Politics abhors a vacuum. When America stepped back, other nations were bound to step forward.
While America is still the world’s most powerful nation and it remains (for now) in NATO, it is rapidly forfeiting its role as the leader of the free world. And while we have certainly made mistakes in that role, we did lead the NATO alliance to victory in its generations-long confrontation with the Soviet Union. And we did so without treading into another catastrophic world war.
But you cannot threaten the free world and lead it at the same time. No nation can match American might, but for the first time in my adult life, the moral and strategic heart of the defense of liberal democracy doesn’t beat in Washington. It doesn’t beat in London or Paris or Berlin or Ottawa, either. It’s in Kyiv, where a courageous leader and a courageous people have picked up the torch America has dropped.

Why Russia's Spring 'Offensive' Is Running In Reverse

2026-04-28T10:09:00.004-04:00

Russia is now in the middle of what was supposed to have been its spring offensive. But that word usually implies advance not retreat. This year, though, the Ukrainians anticipated not just when the Russians would launch, but where they would do so. They beat the Russians to the start, initiating their own attacks before the Kremlin could organize and give the go-ahead for its own. This disrupted Russian planning and execution with the result that, as of now, the Ukrainians appear to have a net gain of territory while - for the fourth month in a row - have killed or severely wounded approximately 35,000 Russian soldiers a month. That number is unsustainable because no Russian with an education or decent economic prospects wants any part of the one-way ticket that fighting in Ukraine offers them.

Putin is trying to maintain the pretense of military might to impress Trump and cow Europe, but the narrative has clearly changed as few, if any, are buying the Kremlin line anymore. JL

Mark Sumner reports in The Journal of Uncharted Blue:

Russia is supposed to be in the middle of a spring offensive. But, that offensive seems to be making only tiny gains while suffering losses of troops and equipment that are among the highest in the war. In the last year, even Russia's pattern of blasting the landscape until no shelter remained, then sending men forward in suicidal waves, seems to have stalled out. Russia continues to burn through its resources at an unsustainable rate, but it's no longer seeing much territorial gain for these expenditures.
Right now, Russia is supposed to be in the middle of a spring offensive. However, that offensive seems to be making only tiny gains while suffering losses of troops and equipment that are among the highest in the war. Meanwhile, Ukraine is continuing to expand the use of the weapon that is making every existing military in the world obsolete—drones.
This far into Russia’s illegal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, it’s hard to remember the first days of Vladimir Putin’s war.
In the hours after mechanized forces crossed the border from Belarus in the north, Russia in the east, and occupied Crimea in the south, Putin's brag that he could capture Kyiv within three days seemed all too likely. There was the treachery that allowed Russian forces to cross the bridge into Kherson; the rapid movement south that saw Russian armor fighting in the streets of Kyiv suburbs (and the incomprehensible horror of Bucha), and the incredible close call at Hostomel, where Ukrainian forces acted with reckless speed to stave off a Russian landing at Antonov Airport.
Even when that instant capture failed to materialize, Russian forces continued to fight in the area directly around Kyiv for two months until Ukrainian resistance and their own over-taxed supply lines forced a general withdrawal from the area. And when that was over, there was the long string of Russian advances from the northeast, capturing cities with overwhelming force despite incredible levels of resistance. It still seemed as if Russia would be in Kyiv in months, if not weeks.
Then came the lightning advance of Ukrainian forces through Kharkiv in September of 2022, the recapture of Lyman and other cities in the Donbas, and the grinding strategic advance through Kherson that drove Russia from that capital in November. For a moment, it seemed as if Russian forces would be limping back to Moscow when spring arrived, and the roads were freed of mud.
Only ... that didn't happen. Ukraine's big 2023 spring offensive ran into walls of bad planning, kilometers of Russian defensive barriers, and spy drones that made stealthy movement impossible.
The following three years have been filled with amazing moments of bravery and stubborn persistence by Ukrainian soldiers, and with the steady, dreadful pounding of Russian artillery. Ukrainian forces have repeatedly driven Russians back at places like Bakhmut, Andrivka, and Pokrovsk, only to eventually surrender after these locations had been turned into rubble fields by months of shelling.
But in the last year, even Russia's pattern of blasting the landscape until no shelter remained, then sending men forward in suicidal waves, seems to have stalled out. Russia continues to burn through its resources at an unsustainable rate, but it's no longer seeing much territorial gain for these expenditures.
Putin entered this war backed by a population of 146 million, 1.15 million active-duty military members, 3,300 active main battle tanks, and another 14,000 tanks in reserve. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was defending a population of around 35 million, with a military of around 220,000 and roughly 1,000 tanks. On paper, this is not even close.
There are three big reasons why this fight is still going on:
Incredible bravery and persistence by Ukraine's people and leadership
Russia's difficulty in shifting away from tactics that worked when invading Georgia and Chechnya
Drones
Right now, April of 2026, was supposed to bring Russia's biggest spring offensive since the first year of the war, and yes, there is intense fighting at over a dozen locations. There's just not much movement. See the Three Big Reasons.
Also see the latest report on Russian losses from the Ukrainian General Staff.
Latest Russian losses reported by Ukrainian General Staff
Several numbers stand out in this report. First, Russia's casualty rate continues to be sickeningly high. Putin, it seems, never tires of seeing his own forces get chopped down.
Second, the losses of armor are surprisingly low. To some extent, that's because Russia has run through practically every bit of kit that was functional at the start of the war and is now running on armor that has been resurrected from storage or repaired after being damaged. Instead, movement of troops near the front is taking place with cars or motorcycles, which is why the number of losses in that category remains high.
However, an even bigger reason for the low level of armor losses is the recognition that traditional armored column advances are simply not working on a battlefield buzzing with drones. Long-range artillery may be largely able to stay out of the range of swarming FPV drones, but anything operating within a few kilometers of the front line is likely to be pummeled as soon as a flying eye spots it.
That doesn't mean Russia has given up on the idea of driving tanks across the steppes. At this moment, an armed force is reportedly being assembled as part of a Russian scheme to recapture the city of Lyman that was liberated by Ukrainian forces at the tail end of the 2022 counteroffensive. Maybe this time tanks have learned to dodge drones. Maybe the Russian military has devised a plan to make their heavy metal work in this new battlefield.
But I doubt it.
In that first year of the war, it became obvious that drones were going to play a much larger role in this conflict than any in the past. I went so far as to prepare a "field guide to drones," giving a fairly complete list of every model being used by either Ukraine or Russia.
It was worthless within weeks.
Drone warfare has been evolving in Ukraine far more quickly than most military observers expected. Ukraine has reacted to the intense pressure of this invasion with a constant stream of innovation and a recognition that fast, deadly, inexpensive drones could help match Russia's advantages in men and machines. Single-use First Person Viewpoint (FPV) drones have become singularly important as skilled operators can fly them right into tiny openings in buildings or armored vehicles.
But Ukraine's innovations haven't stopped there. Earlier this month, that led to an incident previously unprecedented in war – human forces surrendering to a completely remote-controlled opponent.
As the European version of Politico reported.
“For the first time in the history of this war, an enemy position was taken exclusively by unmanned platforms — ground systems and drones,” [President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy said on Monday.

“The occupiers surrendered, and the operation was carried out without infantry and without losses on our side,” Zelenskyy added.
"Ground systems" in this case, was a weaponized cart that, like aerial FPV drones, can be operated at a distance by a soldier wearing VR goggles. The carts, known as Droid TW-7.62, carry one or two automatic rifles along with cameras that use AI systems to help operators spot and identify targets. Some models are wheeled for a faster approach along roads or smooth terrain. Others have tracks for making their way over muddy or irregular ground. Small and nimble, these carts can often cross terrain where larger vehicles would quickly be spotted and taken out. They are also relatively inexpensive, so the loss of a unit isn't a catastrophe.

The use of these drones, and their numbers on the battlefield, have been growing rapidly over the last few months. At some locations, these Droids are even being advanced to forward positions expressly so they can shoot down Russian aerial drones. In others, they have routed Russian soldiers from trenches.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is also increasing the frequency of long-range drone attacks on Russian oil infrastructure. Since Donald Trump largely freed Russia from sanctions, Putin has raked in an additional $2 billion to $5 billion, but Ukraine is putting a cap on Russia's oil sales with spectacular damage to some of the largest refineries and storage fields.

This is happening as new information indicates that Russia's economy may be far shakier than most believed.
Swedish Military Intelligence and Security Service (MUST) said that while official Russian figures did show falling GDP and weak industrial production, they were presented in a way that made the country "appear more resilient than it really is."

Russia is likely suffering from "higher inflation and a larger budget deficit" than it was communicating, it added.
That report put the real inflation rate in Russia closer to 15%, rather than the 5.9% Putin is claiming. As with all things Russia, it's hard to know the truth, but there are good reasons to think that the Russian dictator doesn't just want this war to end soon; he needs it to end soon.
Over a year ago, The New York Times pointed to the widespread use of drones as one of the big reasons that Ukraine is suffering far fewer casualties than Russia, but it
Working with incomplete information, experts estimate that Ukraine has suffered about half of Russia’s irreplaceable losses — deaths and injuries that take soldiers out of battle indefinitely — in the nearly three-year-old war.
But, as the Times reported back then, 50% fewer casualties isn't enough when your opponent has 400% more people and a leader who seems willing to kill them all rather than admit a mistake. As they put it, Russia was suffering more deaths, but "still winning the war."
It's not clear that was true then. It's even less clear that it's true now.
The latest update from Lost Armor puts total Ukrainian deaths in this war at 90955, with 788 coming in the last week. These are horrible numbers. The real total may far worse, closer to 190,000 lost once those missing in action and civilians lost to Russian missiles or drones are included.
However, according to Ukrainian military sources, Russia is currently hitting an average of over 1,000 casualties a day as it tries to press its offensive. The total number of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine is thought to be around 350,000. An equal number have suffered injuries that will keep them off the battlefield.
As of April, Ukraine is increasing its use of drones of all kinds. Meanwhile, Russia is ramping up its offensive all along the front, with attacks ranging from north of Sumy (where Russia is trying to capture a buffer against future attacks into its territory) all the way down to the highways south of Zaporizhzhia.
Whether Ukraine can continue to contain Russia's advance isn't clear. Whether Russia's economy is really falling apart isn't clear.
What is clear is that the spring of 2026 may be the most critical time in the last three years.

Russians Try To Replace Starlink But Ukraine Blows Up Cell Towers, Signals Troops

2026-04-28T09:47:00.004-04:00

Ever since Russian forces lost access to Starlink, they have lost cohesion, coordination and command decision-making. That the Kremlin also chose that moment to deny access to the widely popular Telegram system due to Putinesque paranoia about technology he couldn't entirely control didn't help. But the Russians have worked hard to try to come up with an alternative system that will provide similar, if not entirely satisfactory communications strength. In doing so, though, they have had to face an unexpectedly serious problem: the Ukrainians have been tracking their technology development and how it is routed, quickly identifying the use of wireless repeating towers. They have then targeted both the towers and the hapless Russian signals troops charged with installing or repairing them, takiing them out with drone strikes as the photo to the right illustrates. The result has been continued frustration for Russian forces attempting to execute battle plans for which there is no easy way of communicating and coordinating. JL

Emily Rhodes reports in Medium, David Axe reports in Trench Art:

Three months after losing access to Starlink satellites, the Russians are getting desperate. Blowing up Russia’s wireless repeaters, Ukraine is working to prolong its advantage. Russian Wi-Fi communications can partially replace the loss of Starlink, but to be effective, the central nodes must be located as high as possible for radio line-of-sight. That makes communications towers such as this one easy targets for Ukrainian FPV drones. The repeaters aren’t hard to find and strike. When the Russians began climbing towers to install repeaters, the Ukrainians sortied drones to hunt them down. The poor radio troops are easy targets, as montages of Ukrainian drone strikes attest.

Three months after losing access to Starlink satellites, the Russians are getting desperate. There’s a pattern in modern warfare that keeps repeating itself: every time one side builds an advantage, the other side learns how to break it faster than expected. Russia’s latest attempt to solve one of its biggest battlefield problems was supposed to change that pattern. Instead, it may have reinforced it.
For months, Russia has been struggling with a quiet but critical vulnerability… communication. Not tanks, not missiles, not manpower, but something far less visible and far more important: the ability to stay connected in real time on a chaotic battlefield. When access to Starlink became restricted earlier in 2026, the impact on Russian forces wasn’t just inconvenient… it was deeply disruptive. Units lost coordination. Drone operations became less efficient. Command chains slowed down. In a war where seconds matter, that kind of delay can be fatal.

Blowing up Russia’s wireless repeaters, Ukraine is working to prolong its connectivity advantage. Russian Wi-Fi communications can partially replace the loss of Starlink, but to be effective, the central nodes must be located as high as possible for radio line-of-sight.
That makes communications towers such as this one easy targets for Ukrainian FPV drones
Recent footage of Ukrainian drone strikes on tower-mounter repeaters underscores the value of the repeaters—and their vulnerability. The repeaters, fixed to the tallest tower in a given area, can extend wireless signals across the war zone and allow drone operators to stay connected to their drones even as the drones fly over the horizon.
But the repeaters aren’t hard to find and strike. When the Russians began climbing towers to install repeaters, the Ukrainians sortied drones to hunt them down. The poor radio troops are easy targets, as montages of Ukrainian drone strikes attest.

Ukraine’s slow-burn campaign to suppress Russian air defenses in occupied Ukraine has cleared the air over wide swathes of the battlefield, allowing Ukrainian air force manned fighters to penetrate deeper inside what was once Russian-controlled air space to deliver precision glide bombs.
The same campaign—at least 492 strikes on air defenses between June and early March—is also clearing the way for Ukraine’s escalating drone raids targeting headquarters, drone teams, supply convoys and, yes, any surviving air defenses in the logistical zone stretching around 150 miles behind the no-man’s-land
Drones suppress Russian air defenses, enabling manned and unmanned aircraft to strike harder and more frequently, further degrading those air defenses in the process. It’s a virtuous cycle for Ukrainian deep strike forces—and a death spiral for Russian forces in occupied territory.
In blasting Russian repeaters and their installers, Ukrainian forces complicate Russian forces’ efforts to restore their disrupted front-line communications and get their drones back in the air.

AI Allies Align: Google Invests $40 Billion In Anthropic, After Amazon's $5 Billion

2026-04-28T09:15:00.004-04:00

In the history of new technologies, after the initial burst of innovation, there have always been alliances to consolidate financial and operational power. Westinghouse, General Electric, ATT, General Motors, the Sony, Phillips, Toshiba DVD alliance and, of course, the early Microsoft-Intel "Wintel" duopoly in personal computers, followed by the Apple vs Google/Samsung competition in mobile phones.

So it is no surprise to see a similar consolidation beginning to take shape in AI. What is interesting is that Anthropic, the ostensible 'fast follower' in historic Silicon Valley terms, is attracting such a strong set of allies so soon in the process. Some of this may be due to the superiority of Anthropic's Claude AI for certain tasks, like coding. But some of it may be the result of concerns about OpenAI's Sam Altman. There is also the possibility that Big Tech is hedging its bets and investing in both so that they are sure to come out on the winning side. The old line about one lawyer in town starving but two getting rich may also apply as Anthropic and OpenAI emerge as the clear frontrunners, with the various Chinese firms offering another possible alternative. Whatever the outcome, it is clear that industry concentration is going to be the norm, again, in AI as it has been in tech since the initial dotcom era. JL

Cris Tolomia reports in Quartz:

Google will invest up to $40 billion in Anthropic, the AI startup behind the Claude family of models, at a $350 billion valuation. Separately, Google Cloud has agreed to deliver five gigawatts of computing power to Anthropic across five-years, with the door open to additional gigawatts down the line. That computing arrangement builds on a three-way agreement between Anthropic, Google, and Broadcom. (This follows) a $5 billion infusion in Anthropic from Amazon, with an option to put in $20 billion more. The fundraising surge reflects booming appetite for Claude Code, Anthropic's AI agent built to accelerate software writing.
Alphabet $GOOGL +1.72%'s Google will invest up to $40 billion in Anthropic, the AI startup behind the Claude family of models, at a $350 billion valuation, according to Bloomberg. Under the terms of the deal, the first $10 billion arrives as an upfront cash commitment, while the remaining $30 billion is tied to whether Anthropic clears certain performance benchmarks.

Separately, Google Cloud has agreed to deliver five gigawatts of computing power to Anthropic across a five-year window, with the door open to several additional gigawatts down the line, according to Bloomberg. That computing arrangement builds on a three-way agreement between Anthropic, Google, and Broadcom $AVGO -1.08% that was announced earlier this month.

Earlier this week, Anthropic announced a $5 billion infusion from Amazon $AMZN -1.09%, according to Reuters, with an option for Amazon to put in as much as $20 billion more over time. Both deals value Anthropic at $350 billion — the same figure attached to a funding round the company closed in February.
The fundraising surge reflects booming appetite for Claude Code, Anthropic's AI agent built to accelerate software writing, which Bloomberg says has driven the company to seek capital at a rapid clip. Anthropic's Cowork agent, pitched at workers outside the engineering world, is also seeing rapid adoption, the company said. According to Bloomberg, current and former Google employees say the company's top executives have grown anxious about being outpaced in AI coding, a fast-growing segment where Anthropic has established a commanding lead.
Before launching Anthropic in 2021 with a cohort of colleagues who had departed OpenAI, Dario Amodei spent time at Google working in AI research. The two companies have maintained a close business relationship since then. Prior to the new deal, Google had put roughly $3 billion into Anthropic and had pledged to hand over as many as one million of its tensor processing unit chips to the startup, Bloomberg reported.
Google stock was up more than 1% Friday following the news.

Ukrainian Military Hacks, Disrupts Russian University Recruiting Event

2026-04-27T10:03:00.001-04:00

Taking psychological warfare to a new

direction, the Ukrainians hacked a zoom call between what was supposed to have been a Russian soldier trying to convince university students to enlist.

Instead, a Ukrainian soldier appeared on-screen and warned them that if they made the mistake of volunteering, his comrades and he would have to kill them, as they have over 1.5 million other Russians. One can only imagine what the Russian students were saying to each other after that event. JL

MSN reports:

During a closed recruitment session at Kuban State Agrarian University, a man in camouflage, a balaclava, and dark glasses was introduced as a Russian serviceman but revealed himself as Ukrainian. He warned students that anyone signing a contract to fight in Ukraine would be killed, claimed all their faces had been recorded, and described Russian military failures, heavy losses, and corruption. Russian authorities have ordered universities to recruit 2% of their student body into military service, with a target of 78,800 for drone warfare units by the end of 2026. Some institutions have used coercive measures, such as removing exam retake options, to push students toward signing contracts. Hacking ops blend intelligence-gathering with public psychological impact, aiming to erode morale

During a closed recruitment session at Kuban State Agrarian University, a man in camouflage, a balaclava, and dark glasses was introduced as a Russian serviceman but revealed himself as Ukrainian. He warned students that anyone signing a contract to fight in Ukraine would be killed, claimed all their faces had been recorded, and described Russian military failures, heavy losses, and corruption. His remarks ended with a stark metaphor — “a cemetery the size of two countries” — before the call was cut off. The New Voice of Ukraine + 2
Cyber infiltration as a psychological weapon
The incident fits a pattern of Ukrainian cyber and activist groups breaching Russian digital security to disrupt propaganda events. Figures like Yevhen Volnov and networks such as the 'Kiborg' hacker community have gained access to high-level Russian defense meetings, sometimes revealing their identities to instill fear and signal personal risk to participants. These operations blend intelligence-gathering with public psychological impact, aiming to erode morale and deter involvement in the war. The New Voice of Ukraine + 1
The New Voice of Ukraine
Russian universities face enlistment quotas
Russian authorities have reportedly ordered universities to recruit at least 2% of their student body into military service, with a target of 78,800 for drone warfare units by the end of 2026. Some institutions have allegedly used coercive measures, such as removing exam retake options, to push students toward signing contracts. This pressure underscores the Kremlin’s reliance on educational institutions to meet manpower needs amid recruitment challenges. The New Voice of Ukraine + 1
Strategic implications for recruitment and morale
The infiltration not only disrupted one event but may also undermine broader recruitment campaigns by sowing doubt among potential recruits. If such breaches continue, they could force Russian authorities to tighten digital security and rethink public-facing recruitment strategies. Counterfactually, had the intruder remained undetected, he might have gathered intelligence for longer-term use rather than delivering an immediate public warning

Ukrainians Fly Drones Inside Buildings To Blow Up Hiding Russian Tanks

2026-04-27T09:51:00.000-04:00

Ukraine's drone operators have become so adept at maneuvering their increasingly sophisticated aerial weapons that they are now able to fly them in between gaps in walls and roofs to find and then destroy the Russian military's shrinking inventory of armored vehicles.

Due to its catastrophic losses over the past four years, the Kremlin is now reconditioning and sending to the front T-55 tanks which were first introduced in the 1950s. These relics are haphazardly up-armored - sometimes with old ammunition crates - because everything else they have has been destroyed. The Ukrainians' objective is to eliminate what is left in depots near the front so that even these inadequate substitutes cannot be used. JL

David Axe reports in Trench Art:

Dialing up the pressure on Russian forces in southeastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian 225th Assault Regiment is flying tiny explosive drones into buildings in search of Russian armored vehicles. FPV pilots maneuver through narrow gaps between the walls and roofs of sheds, garages and warehouses The vehicles the Ukrainian drones operators are destroying in their shelters are some of the oldest and weirdest in Russia's war on Ukraine. Blasting awkwardly up-armored T-55 tanks from the 1950s, the Ukrainians are discovering just how poorly equipped the Russian brigades are. At least one of the T-55s the 225th blew up sported discarded ammunition canisters that offer very little protection from a drone. Ukrainian units aren't just sitting around waiting for the coming Russian offensive. They're hunting down that Russian armor before it can roll into action.

Dialing up the pressure on Russian forces in southeastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian 225th Assault Regiment is flying tiny explosive drones into buildings in search of Russian armored vehicles.
The goal: to knock out the vehicles before the Russians can deploy them for a fresh push toward Zaporizhzhia city, 75 km to the west of the disputed gray zone threading south from Dnipropetrovsk Oblast through Zaporizhzhia Oblast.
The vehicles the Ukrainian drones operators are finding and destroying in their indoor shelters are some of the oldest and weirdest in Russia's 50-month wider war on Ukraine. Blasting awkwardly up-armored T-55 tanks from the 1950s, the Ukrainians are discovering just how poorly equipped some of the Russian regiments and brigades in the southeast actually are.

That the Russian 5th and 36th Combined Arms Armies in Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts ride in geriatric T-55s among other aged vehicles doesn't mean the CAAs—part of the Eastern Group of Forces—can't advance toward Zaporizhzhia. It does mean they may struggle. Especially given the increasing density of Ukrainian drones and other defenses in the area.
A recent montage of first-person-view drone strikes, circulated by the 225th Assault Regiment, depicts regimental FPV pilots deftly maneuvering through narrow gaps between the walls and roofs of sheds, garages and warehouses somewhere in the regiment's sector, which stretches between the Ukrainian base in Verkhnia Tersa and the Russian base in Zelene, 8 km to the east. The logistical hub of Huliaipole, captured by the Russians back in December, lies a few kilometers to the south.
Map: Euromaidan Press
Bad armor
In the montage, the drone operators find and strike at least three T-55s with add-on anti-drone armor. Not good add-on anti-drone armor, the likes of which you can see on the heavily up-armored T-72 "giga turtle" tanks belonging to the Russian 4th Motor Rifle Brigade, which fights around the Ukrainian stronghold of Kostiantynivka in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast.

Where the T-72 giga turtles boast layers of blast-absorbing sheet metal buttressed by drone-blocking spines, at least one of the 35-ton, four-person T-55s the 225th Assault Regiment blew up sported a layer of discarded ammunition canisters that almost certainly offer very little protection from an FPV drone. Especially one with a shaped-charge warhead that can punch right through the outermost layer of armor on most vehicles.
Lackluster equipment isn't the only thing holding back the 5th and 36th CAAs in southeastern Ukraine. In early February, Elon Musk's Starlink bricked thousands of stolen or smuggled satellite communications terminals that Russian forces relied on for front-line command and control. Ukrainian forces in the southeast took advantage of the ensuing chaos, and counterattacked along a 30-km front between Huliaipole in the south and Ternove in the north.

The Russians fell back. In a heady two months, Ukrainian troops liberated a couple of hundred square kilometers of Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts. As they scrambled to restore their communications, the Russians also rushed a clutch of marine brigades and other reinforcements to the area.
Today "the Huliaipole direction remains one of the most challenging for the Armed Forces of Ukraine," Ukrainian drone operator and analyst Kriegsforscher reported. "The Russians have deployed three naval infantry divisions (brigade strength) to this area, significantly enhancing the offensive capabilities of the East[ern] Group of Forces. The situation will likely deteriorate in the future, including an increase in assaults with armor."
The 225th Assault Regiment and adjacent Ukrainian units aren't just sitting around waiting for the coming Russian offensive. They're hunting down that Russian armor before it can roll into action. Armor that includes some very old, weirdly up-armored T-55s.

X-Twitter At Age 20: Or How To Burn $38 Billion Without Really Trying

2026-04-27T09:31:00.005-04:00

The fact that Twitter-X turned 20 last month is probably making some people feel pretty old. Though probably not TikTok users, who may not even be aware of its existence. Which illustrates the story of X-Twitter's rise and fall.

To be fair, Twitter-X has not collapsed or disappeared - it has a monthly user base of @388 million globally. But its most active are young men 16-24 and the countries with the highest level of engagement are...Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Kenya. It is generally considered a site for news, especially of the toxic right wing/manosphere variety favored by its current owner, Elon Musk, who is its most followed tweeter (though this has raised questions about algorithmic manipulation). It's usership palls by comparison with the Meta sites, Telegram, TikTok and others. Which is not terrible compared to traditional media, but suggests what could have been had it embraced a less hostile positioning. JL

Christophe Asselin reports in Onclusive and Barry Ritholtz reports in The Big Picture:

The X Twitter statistics 2026 tell a story of structural decline and partial stabilisation. The platform has lost casual users, shed advertisers, watched competitors gain ground, and navigated a crisis of information quality, but retains a core audience. The geographic portrait of X is unequal. Nigeria leads the world at 80.7%, meaning 4 in 5 Nigerian internet users say they used X in the past month. Saudi Arabia (66.7%), Kenya (60.0%) and Turkey (58.7%) complete the top four. X is significantly male-skewed at every age group, and across all demographics. The 16-24 male cohort is the most active, The platform fails to generate habitual engagement among women. TikTok’s dominance of daily time (1h 37m) outpaces YouTube (1h 25m). Instagram (1h 13m) and Facebook (1h 07m) complete a top four that all clear the one-hour mark. X’s 28 minutes/day places it 8th.

On March 21, 2026, the platform celebrated 20 years since first tweet.
On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey sent the first message on a new internal platform built by a small team at podcasting startup Odeo: “just setting up my twttr.” The platform was co-founded by Dorsey, Noah Glass, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, and launched publicly in July 2006. Its defining constraint was radical: 140 characters, mirroring the length limit of an SMS text message.
The idea was deceptively simple: a public, real-time stream of short updates, visible to anyone. At South by Southwest in March 2007, Twitter’s first major public exposure, daily tweet volume tripled overnight from 20,000 to 60,000. Chris Messina proposed the hashtag (#) that same year.
By 2009, the platform was processing 50 million tweets per day. By 2010, it was central to the Arab Spring, confirming what no one had fully anticipated in 2006: that a 140-character constraint, applied at global scale, could reshape journalism, politics, crisis communication and public discourse in ways that no traditional media institution had achieved before.
Twenty years later, the platform sends 500 million posts per day and remains the world’s primary real-time information infrastructure, despite having changed its name, its owner, and much of its identity along the way.
Twitter received its first surge of public attention at SXSW 2007.
By 2012 it had surpassed 100 million monthly active users.
By 2022 it was generating $4.4 billion in annual revenue.
Then Elon Musk bought it for $44 billion, fired 80% of the staff, renamed it X, and set in motion one of the most dramatic transformations in the history of social media.
The X Twitter statistics 2026 tell a story of structural decline and partial stabilisation. The platform has not collapsed. It has lost casual users, shed advertisers, watched competitors gain ground, and navigated a crisis of information quality, but it retains a core audience of over 388 million monthly users, an advertising reach of 557.5 million, and an unmatched position as the world’s primary real-time news platform.
I. Demographics: who uses X in 2026 ?
1. Self-declared monthly use: trend over time
X’s global footprint is best understood through three distinct lenses: self-declared monthly usage (how many internet users say they opened the app at least once in the past month), platform ranking against competitors, and the geographic and demographic breakdown of its active base.
Self-declared monthly use: trend over time. Source: GWI
The trend line tells a story of shock and stabilisation. Between Q2 and Q3 2023, self-declared use was already edging down (-0.9%). The sharp fall to 24.8% in Q4 2023 reflects a methodology change (inclusion of 65+ audiences) rather than a genuine user collapse, the data series is not continuous across this break. From Q1 2024 onwards, the picture stabilises: X has held between 29% and 30% for six consecutive quarters, suggesting the platform has found a floor after the post-Musk turbulence.
In absolute terms, 29.2% of global internet users aged 16+ say they used X in the past month as of Q2 2025. That translates to a substantial audience, but one that has clearly plateaued rather than growing.

Key reading for PR and communications professionals: The stabilisation of X’s user base at ~29% is strategically important. The platform has not collapsed. It has lost casual or marginal users and retained its core, a more engaged, more intentional audience that uses it primarily for news, information and public discourse.

2. X vs all major platforms: where does it rank?
X vs all major platforms: where does it rank? Source: GWI

In the global platform ranking, X sits 8th at 29.2%, well behind the dominant Meta ecosystem (Facebook 56.9%, Instagram 55.1%, WhatsApp 54.0%, Messenger 38.4%) and YouTube (55.4%). TikTok (36.0%) and Telegram (33.8%) have now clearly overtaken X. Pinterest (25.1%), WeChat (25.0%), Snapchat (23.2%) and LinkedIn (21.3%) trail behind.
The gap with Telegram (4.6 points) is striking: Telegram, born in 2013 as a messaging app, has grown its declared reach to near-parity with X, largely by attracting users seeking uncensored news channels and communities, precisely the audience X might have expected to retain.

3. X (Twitter) use by country
The geographic portrait of X is dramatically unequal. Nigeria leads the world at 80.7%, meaning more than 4 in 5 Nigerian internet users say they used X in the past month. Saudi Arabia (66.7%), Kenya (60.0%) and Turkey (58.7%) complete the top four, all markets with strong political, sports and news-driven Twitter cultures dating back to the Arab Spring and beyond.
The Global South and Middle East dominate the top positions: Indonesia (50.4%), South Africa (47.7%), UAE (46.7%), Mexico (45.6%), Thailand (45.4%) and Japan (44.0%) all far exceed the global average. The 29.2% worldwide figure masks an enormous variance, in some markets, X is a near-universal information tool; in others it is niche or negligible.
Western European markets cluster in the 16-22% range: France at 21.7%, Germany at 16.1%, Switzerland at 21.2%, Sweden at 21.1%. Russia shows no measurable data; China at 4.3% reflects its domestic alternatives. For European PR and communications professionals, this context matters: X remains a professional and media industry tool in these markets rather than a mass-market consumer platform.
The United States (30.9%) sits fractionally above the global average, a counter-intuitive finding given the platform’s American origins and its outsized role in U.S. political discourse. Japan (44.0%) is by far the most X-engaged major economy in the developed world, a position it has held for over a decade.

4. X (Twitter) use by age and gender
X (Twitter) use by age and gender. Source: GWI

X is a significantly male-skewed platform at every age group, and across all demographics. The gender gap in self-declared usage runs at approximately 10-11 percentage points at every age band, from 16-24 (male 43.9% vs female 32.8%) to 65+ (male 18.9% vs female 12.9%). This gap does not narrow with age.
Usage declines linearly with age for both genders. The 16-24 male cohort (43.9%) is the most active, but the platform clearly fails to generate the same level of habitual engagement among women, a strategic consideration for brands targeting female audiences who may find better reach-efficiency on Instagram or Pinterest.

II. The most followed X accounts in the world
The ranking of X’s most-followed accounts has shifted considerably since 2022. The Elon Musk era has produced a notable concentration of influence at the very top, with the platform’s owner now holding the most-followed account by a wide margin.
Elon Musk (236.8M) leads by a margin of nearly 95 million over Barack Obama (119.2M). The lead is not organic in the traditional sense, Musk’s visibility on his own platform has been the subject of academic research examining possible algorithmic amplification (see Section 7). The top 40 encompasses six distinct categories that reveal X’s core value proposition: it is where politics, sport, entertainment and media intersect in real time.
Music and entertainment dominates by account count (16 accounts, 944M combined), but many of these accounts (Bieber, Perry, Swift) have seen flat or declining follower counts in recent years. The sport category (9 accounts, 518M combined, averaging ~57M per account) is remarkably consistent, no individual account dominates (with the exception of Cristiano Ronaldo), reflecting sport’s distributed fandom model.
Of note for social media listening professionals: BTS (@bts_twt) appears at position 30 with 46.9M followers, underscoring the continued relevance of K-pop fandom communities as drivers of volume, engagement and trending topics on X. Major news brands, CNN (61.5M), CNN Breaking (59.5M), The New York Times (53M), BBC Breaking (49.8M), collectively reaching over 223M followers, confirm X’s structural role as a distribution channel for breaking news.
# Account Handle Category Followers
1 Elon Musk @elonmusk Politics/Tech 236.8M
2 Barack Obama @barackobama Politics 119.2M
3 Donald Trump @realdonaldtrump Politics 110.8M
4 Narendra Modi @narendramodi Politics 106.4M
5 Cristiano Ronaldo @cristiano Sport 106.1M
6 Rihanna @rihanna Music 96.6M
7 Justin Bieber @justinbieber Music 90M
8 NASA @nasa Science/Tech 89.9M
9 Katy Perry @katyperry Music 85.5M
10 Taylor Swift @taylorswift13 Music 79.2M
11 Lady Gaga @ladygaga Music 70.8M
12 Kim Kardashian @kimkardashian Entertainment 68.7M
13 YouTube @youtube Platform 68.1M
14 Virat Kohli @imvkohli Sport 66.2M
15 Bill Gates @billgates Tech 62.7M
16 Ellen DeGeneres @theellenshow Entertainment 62.6M
17 CNN @cnn News/media 61.5M
18 X (official) @x Platform 60.6M
19 CNN Breaking News @cnnbrk News/media 59.5M
20 Neymar @neymarjr Sport 58.7M
21 Selena Gomez @selenagomez Music 58.6M
22 PMO India @pmoindia Politics 58.2M
23 ESPN @espn Sport/media 57.8M
24 The New York Times @nytimes News/media 53M
25 UEFA Champions League @championsleague Sport 52.6M
26 BBC Breaking News @bbcbreaking News/media 49.8M
27 Real Madrid CF @realmadrid Sport 49M
28 Justin Timberlake @jtimberlake Music 48M
29 LeBron James @kingjames Sport 48.1M
30 BTS (방탄소년단) @bts_twt Music/K-pop 46.9M
31 FC Barcelona @fcbarcelona Sport 46.5M
32 NBA @nba Sport 46.2M
33 Shakira @shakira Music 45.3M
34 Premier League @premierleague Sport 45.0M
35 Amitabh Bachchan @srbachchan Entertainment 44.9M
36 Akshay Kumar @akshaykumar Entertainment 44.4M
37 Demi Lovato @ddlovato Music 43.4M
38 Jimmy Fallon @jimmyfallon Entertainment 43.2M
39 PlayStation @PlayStation Gaming 43.1
40 Britney Spears @britneyspears Music 43M
Top 40 most-followed X accounts Total follower count in millions, as of March 18, 2026

III. X Twitter statistics 2026: Usage and engagement

1. Average daily time per user
Among all X Twitter statistics 2026, the engagement metrics from SimilarWeb App Intelligence are the most operationally useful for social media professionals. They are based on actual Android device behaviour in August 2025, not self-declaration, covering approximately 70% of the world’s smartphones.
Average daily time per user: Average time per day that active users spent using each platform’s Android app-August 2025. Source: SimilarWeb
TikTok’s dominance of daily time (1h 37m) is extraordinar, it outpaces YouTube (1h 25m) by 12 minutes per day, a gap that compounds dramatically over weeks and months of algorithmic habit formation. Instagram (1h 13m) and Facebook (1h 07m) complete a top four that all clear the one-hour mark.
X’s 28 minutes/day places it 8th, ahead of Reddit (19m), Messenger (19m), Snapchat (17m), Discord (15m), Pinterest (10m), LinkedIn (6m) and Threads (4m). X generates more daily time per user than Reddit, all messaging apps below WhatsApp, and both of its newest competitors Threads and Discord, a useful counter to narratives of irrelevance. Threads, despite Meta’s aggressive promotion, generates only 4 minutes/day, a fraction of X’s engagement depth.

2. Average daily sessions
WhatsApp’s 20.7 daily sessions, more than one open every waking hour, reflects its messaging-first utility. Instagram’s 12.3 and TikTok’s 10.0 reflect content-feed platforms optimized for repeated short check-ins. X’s 6.8 daily sessions ranks 9th, ahead of YouTube (5.9), Reddit (4.7) and all other platforms except messaging and social-feed apps.
The session count for X is lower than Instagram and TikTok, but this needs to be read alongside session duration. X users open the app less often but read more each time, a profile consistent with purposeful news consumption rather than mindless scrolling.
Average daily sessions: Average number of times that active users open each platform’s Android app per day – August 2025. Source: SimilarWeb

3. Average session duration
Session duration is where X performs best relative to its peers: 4 minutes 05 seconds per session, ranking 6th, ahead of Reddit (4m 01s), Pinterest (3m 28s), Telegram (3m 01s) and all messaging apps. YouTube (14m 29s) leads by a wide margin reflecting long-form video; TikTok’s 9m 42s reflects autoplay loops. Facebook’s 7m 17s is surprisingly high, possibly driven by video content and marketplace browsing.
Reading X’s four engagement metrics together gives a coherent portrait: the platform attracts focused, text-reading sessions. It is opened less often than social apps, but when opened, users engage meaningfully. This is the engagement signature of an information platform, not an entertainment or social platform.
Average session duration: Average time each time a user opens the respective platform’s Android app – August 2025. Source: SimilarWeb

4. What people use each platform for
What people use each platform for: % of active users aged 16+ who say they use that platform for each activity , Oct 2025 (excl. China). Source: GWI

X’s dominant use case: news, confirmed by the data.
With 59.7% of active users accessing X for news and current events, it scores higher on this dimension than any other platform , higher than Facebook (58.3%), Instagram (55.8%), and dramatically higher than LinkedIn (29.7%) which is often cited as a news-reading platform. For PR and communications professionals, this is the single most important data point: X is where news breaks, where journalists look, and where press releases get amplified in real time.
Beyond news, X’s 38.1% score for brand and product research ranks 4th behind Instagram (62.8%), TikTok (56.2%) and Facebook (53.0%) , a respectable position suggesting meaningful purchase influence. Its entertainment score (35.7%) places it 5th, behind TikTok (80.3%), Instagram (67.9%), Facebook (55.9%) and Snapchat (40.4%). X’s lowest scores are for messaging (19.4%, 2nd lowest) and photo/video sharing (28.3%, 5th), consistent with its text-first heritage.
TikTok’s 80.3% dominance for entertainment, Instagram’s 70.1% for photo/video sharing, Facebook’s 71.9% for messaging, and Snapchat’s 48.0% for photo/video posting , each platform clearly owns a behavioural niche. X’s niche is news. No platform comes close on that dimension.

5. X (Twitter) as the world’s real-time event monitor
Still unmatched for live events: from World Cups to state funerals
Even in a period of overall audience decline, X retains one capability that no other platform has replicated at scale: the ability to function as a global, real-time, open information layer around live events. Whether a football final is being played, a verdict is being announced, a political leader is stepping down or a red carpet is unfolding, X is where journalists, experts, eyewitnesses and opinion leaders narrate the moment as it happens , and where the public goes to follow along, react and share.
The numbers behind this role are striking. X generates an estimated 500 million posts per day in 2024-2025, according to consistent estimates across Statista, DataReportal, SimilarWeb, Sprout Social and SocialPilot. During major live events, the platform’s post velocity surges far above its daily baseline, producing some of the highest concentrations of real-time public expression ever recorded on any digital medium:

Event Date Peak activity Context
FIFA World Cup 2022 final Dec 18, 2022 24,400 posts/sec Argentina vs France; all-time record
Japan scores vs Germany, World Cup Nov 23, 2022 20,600 posts/sec Japan’s comeback win; Japan highest X-use country
Super Bowl LVII Feb 12, 2023 14,300 posts/sec Kansas City Chiefs vs Philadelphia Eagles
Will Smith / Oscars “slap” moment Mar 27, 2022 12,700 posts/sec Instant global reaction; trending within 30 seconds
Super Bowl LIX Feb 9, 2025 13M posts total 4.5B impressions · 511M video views · 3.3M unique authors
Biden retirement announcement Jul 21, 2024 400M views Most-reported post of 2024; linked from 4,700+ websites
FIFA World Cup 2014 (full tournament) Jun–Jul 2014 672M tweets 32-day tournament; peak at 618,725 tweets/min in final
Obama anti-racism tweet (most liked ever) Aug 12, 2017 4.5M likes · 1.4M RTs Response to Charlottesville; most-liked post in platform history
Sources: David Sayce / dsayce.com (posts/sec data, 2025); X official blog (World Cup 2014); X @Sports account (Super Bowl LIX, February 2025); Majestic blog (Biden tweet, 2024); Wikipedia (Obama likes). Peak posts/sec figures are real-time spikes, not sustained averages.

These figures illustrate a structural truth that no competitor has yet displaced: when something important happens in the world, X is where the first public reaction forms. The platform’s architecture , open, asymmetric, chronological at its core, and built around short-form text , is uniquely suited to the speed of breaking events. A football goal, an election result, an assassination attempt, a celebrity death, a corporate announcement or a diplomatic incident all produce the same pattern: a spike in real-time posts, a rush of journalists and eyewitnesses adding primary source material, and an instant global conversation that other platforms can only echo after the fact.
This is why X remains the tier-1 monitoring environment for PR professionals, media intelligence analysts, crisis communicators and competitive intelligence teams , even as its overall user numbers plateau. In 2024, X generated 8.3 billion video views per day (+40% year-on-year), and 363.6 billion daily user seconds (+12% year-on-year) in Q2 2024, showing that the depth of engagement around events is not diminishing. During U.S. primaries alone, X generated 2.9 billion impressions. Twitter Spaces usage has tripled around major events, adding a live audio layer to the platform’s real-time text infrastructure.
For journalists and media monitors, the value of X at events is not only volumetric. Research confirms that verified journalists and emergency agencies achieve substantially higher engagement and response rates than other account types , meaning that when accuracy is at stake, the platform’s audience naturally gravitates toward credible sources. From the Arab Spring to the 2024 U.S. election, from the Champions League final to a royal family health crisis, X has been the first place the world found out , and discussed what it meant.

Monitor and analyze conversations on X-Twitter (and across all social media platforms) to turn them into insights! Ready to take your social media listening and media monitoring to the next level? Contact us today to learn how Onclusive’s platform can help you track, analyse, and respond to media coverage with precision and ease.

IV. X Twitter statistics 2026 for brands and advertisers

1. X Advertising Reach Statistics
X ranks 9th on total reported advertising reach (557M) and 8th for adults 18+ (529M). The platform reaches more adults than Pinterest (305M) and Threads (141M), and is within 72M of Snapchat (601M). The comparison with LinkedIn (1.33B) is instructive: LinkedIn’s figure is based on total registered members rather than active users, meaning the actual active addressable audience gap between the two platforms is likely narrower in practice.   The YouTube vs Facebook ranking difference between total and 18+ is worth noting: YouTube leads total reach (2.58B) but Facebook leads 18+ (2.34B vs 2.31B), reflecting YouTube’s significant under-18 user base. For brands with adult-only mandates, the 18+ column is the operationally relevant one.   For media planning professionals: X’s 529M 18+ addressable audience is larger than many brands realise. The combination of male skew (64.4%), news orientation (59.7%) and relatively affordable CPMs (around $2.09 vs $2.53 on Meta, per Hootsuite 2025 benchmarks) makes X a cost-efficient channel for reaching male news readers in high-intent moments , particularly for finance, technology, automotive and sports categories.
Social media ad audiences: adults aged 18+ only. Potential ad reach amongst users aged 18+ , Oct 2025. Source: Kepios
Northern America (19.5%) and Eastern Asia (18.9%) , predominantly Japan and South Korea , together account for 38.4% of X’s entire global advertising audience. South-Eastern Asia (11.7%) completes a top three that collectively represents half the platform’s ad reach. Western Europe (8.3%) ranks 5th, below Western Asia (8.5%). Southern America adds 6.9%. Combined, all European regions (Northern 5.9% + Western 8.3% + Southern 3.6% + Eastern 2.1%) total approximately 19.9% , nearly matching North America alone. For European advertisers, this means X’s global audience is not primarily in their own backyard. Africa, despite its high usage rates in countries like Nigeria and Kenya, generates only 3% of total ad reach combined (Northern 1.4% + Western 1.6% + Eastern 0.9% + Southern 0.6%) , reflecting lower digital advertising infrastructure and platform monetisation in those markets.
2. Notable brand campaigns on X (Twitter)
X’s combination of real-time reach, news consumption behaviour and open public conversation has made it the defining platform for a specific type of brand campaign: reactive, event-driven, culturally relevant and built around a distinctive brand voice. The following cases represent some of the most documented and studied campaigns in the platform’s twenty-year history.   Oreo, “Dunk in the Dark” (Super Bowl 2013): the campaign that redefined real-time marketing On February 3, 2013, during a 34-minute power outage at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, a 13-person social media command centre assembled by Oreo’s agency 360i published a single tweet: “Power out? No problem. You can still dunk in the dark.” The tweet was composed and approved in under a minute. The tweet accumulated approximately 15,000 retweets within a day of posting. The “Dunk in the Dark” image garnered $525 million in earned media impressions. Oreo’s Twitter followers increased by 8,000, and its Instagram following grew from 2,000 to 36,000 in the immediate aftermath. The campaign won a Cannes Silver Lion for Best Use of Digital Direct Marketing. The Huffington Post declared it “one of the most buzz-worthy ads of the Super Bowl, and it wasn’t even a commercial.” The campaign is widely cited as the founding moment of the “social media war room” model, inspiring brands across every sector to establish dedicated real-time response teams for major live events. For PR and media monitoring professionals, it established a template that is still in active use: pre-position a team around a live event, monitor in real time, act within minutes of an unexpected moment.   Wendy’s, “Roast” strategy and #NationalRoastDay (2017, ongoing), voice as a competitive weapon In 2017, Wendy’s eliminated the bureaucratic approval process for its Twitter account and gave its social team the freedom to respond in real time, including to competitors. The result was a brand voice, sarcastic, direct and genuinely funny, that became one of the most studied in social media marketing. The “Nuggs for Carter” campaign in 2017, where Wendy’s challenged a user to achieve 18 million retweets for a year of free nuggets, generated over 3.4 million retweets and an estimated $8 million in earned media value. Wendy’s reported a 4.9% increase in same-store sales in that same breakout year. The annual #NationalRoastDay campaign generated over 130 million impressions in 2022. The #NationalRoastDay hashtag has accumulated over 116 million views on TikTok, reaching 30% of the platform’s audience. As of 2023, Wendy’s had approximately 3.8 million Twitter followers, a base built almost entirely through organic engagement rather than paid promotion. Wendy’s was named one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies in social media by Fast Company.   Dove, #SpeakBeautiful (2015), social listening turned into social impact Dove launched #SpeakBeautiful in partnership with Twitter, responding to research showing that women send approximately 5 million negative beauty-related tweets per year. The campaign used Twitter’s social listening infrastructure to identify and reply in real time to women posting negatively about their own appearance.
Dove, #SpeakBeautiful (2015), social listening turned into social impact
Dove’s #SpeakBeautiful campaign achieved a 36% reduction in negative beauty tweets during the campaign period. The initiative was cited by Twitter itself as a landmark demonstration of how brands could use the platform’s real-time listening capabilities not just for marketing but for measurable cultural impact.   Nike, #Breaking2 (2017), Twitter as a global live broadcast platform Nike used Twitter as the primary distribution channel for its attempt to break the two-hour marathon barrier, with runners Eliud Kipchoge, Lelisa Desisa and Zersenay Tadese. The event was broadcast live on Twitter simultaneously across global time zones, with real-time commentary, alerts and engagement from Nike’s account.
Nike, #Breaking2 (2017), Twitter as a global live broadcast platform
Nike built a global audience for a single online live event across multiple time zones, establishing Twitter as a broadcast-quality live event platform for brand campaigns. Kipchoge ran 2:00:25, 25 seconds short of the barrier, and Nike’s post-race tweet became one of the most-engaged brand moments of that year. The campaign demonstrated that Twitter’s combination of real-time conversation and live video could substitute for traditional broadcast advertising at scale.   Super Bowl LIX brand activity (February 2025), the platform still sets the real-time standard The most recent major event data confirms that X retains its structural position for brand activity around live events. The Super Bowl LIX conversation alone drove 4.5 billion impressions and 511 million video views on X, generated by 3.3 million unique authors. Brands including Budweiser, Nike, and dozens of major CPG companies use X’s paid amplification products (Promoted Trend Spotlight, In-Stream Video Ads) to position alongside this organic conversation.   What the data shows for brand strategy on X Taken together, these cases and the broader platform benchmarks confirm a consistent pattern for brands that succeed on X: X users are 32% more likely to try new products first, 24% more likely to share product recommendations, and 39% more likely to purchase advertised products than non-X users. 58% of X users engage with brand content every week. Over 1,700 advertisers returned to X in the last quarter, including 90 of the top 100 ad spenders from the previous year. X is used by 39% of social media marketers, with 16% citing it as the channel that delivers their highest ROI, according to HubSpot’s State of Marketing 2024 report. The pattern across all successful brand campaigns on X is consistent: speed of response, cultural relevance to a live moment, a distinctive and authentic brand voice, and the structural advantage of X as the platform where journalists, editors and opinion leaders are most likely to amplify organic content beyond the platform itself.
V. X (Twitter): Revenue and financial performance

Since the Musk acquisition, X no longer publishes quarterly financial reports. All figures below are estimates from WARC, eMarketer, Social Media Today and Business of Apps, and should be treated as directional.
Year Estimated global ad revenue YoY change Context
2019 $2.99 B +14% Pre-pandemic growth
2020 $3.21 B +7% COVID-19 slowdown
2021 $4.51 B +40% Peak Twitter ad year
2022 ~$4.40 B -2% Musk acquisition in Oct; advertiser uncertainty
2023 ~$3.40 B -23% Post-acquisition advertiser exodus
2024 ~$2.00 B -41% Continued brand safety concerns
2025 (proj.) ~$2.26 B +16.5% First increase since acquisition (eMarketer)
Sources: Twitter annual reports (2019-2021); WARC / Statista / Social Media Today estimates (2022-2024); eMarketer projection (2025).

Financial metric Value Note
Acquisition price (Oct 2022) $44 billion Musk’s purchase price
Estimated 2024 total net revenue ~$2.6 billion All sources combined
Estimated 2025 ad revenue (global) ~$2.26 billion eMarketer, March 2025
Estimated 2025 US ad revenue ~$1.31 billion +17.5% YoY (eMarketer)
Annual debt servicing cost ~$1.2 billion Acquisition financing
Current valuation (early 2025) ~$44 billion Recovered from ~$12.32B low
Musk’s 2028 revenue projection $26.4 billion Widely considered unachievable
Sources: Social Media Today (September 2025); eMarketer / The Wrap (March 2025); Fidelity Investments.
Twitter’s advertising revenue peaked at approximately $4.5 billion in 2021. By 2024, third-party estimates put ad revenue at approximately $2 billion, a reduction of more than 55% in three years. The 2025 partial recovery (+16.5% projected, eMarketer) is real but fragile. As one eMarketer analyst noted, some of the recovery is “being driven by fear,” with companies spending on X to avoid potential political or legal repercussions from the Musk-Trump alignment. Fear is not a sustainable revenue driver. More structurally positive is the growth of SMB (small and medium-sized business) advertisers on X, a segment Twitter historically struggled to attract and which now constitutes a growing share of X’s revenue base.

VI. Twitter becomes X: the Musk acquisition in figures
Elon Musk formally completed his acquisition of Twitter on October 27, 2022, for $44 billion , a deal that had been acrimonious and legally contested over several months. The platform was rebranded as X on July 23, 2023. The key figures of this transition:

Milestone Date Detail
Acquisition completed October 27, 2022 $44 billion; acrimonious, contested deal
Staff headcount at acquisition Oct 2022 ~7,500 full-time employees
Staff headcount post-cuts Jan 2023 ~1,300 full-time employees
Staff reduction Oct 2022 – Jan 2023 ~80% reduction
Platform rebranding July 23, 2023 Twitter → X; blue bird → X logo
Trust and Safety Council dissolved Dec 2022 Replaced by community-based system
Paid verification launched Nov 2022 X Premium / Blue tick
Algorithm open-sourced Mar 2024 Published on GitHub
Advertiser exodus peak 2023 Apple, Disney, IBM and others paused
Advertiser partial return 2025 Apple, Disney returned post-Trump election
User loss projection Dec 2022 ~30M expected to leave by end 2024
Actual platform usage (Q2 2025) Jun 2025 29.2% self-declared monthly use (stable)
Sources: Public record; GWI Q2 2025; CNBC January 2023; Social Media Today.

The operational transformation under Musk has been radical. Key platform changes include: the introduction of paid verification (X Premium), the dismantling of the Trust and Safety Council, reinstatement of previously banned accounts (including Donald Trump, who was restored in November 2022), the introduction of Community Notes as the primary misinformation response tool, dramatic increases to API access pricing that forced out many third-party developers and academic researchers, and the open-sourcing of the recommendation algorithm in early 2024.

The advertiser exodus that followed , driven by brand safety concerns about ad placement alongside harmful content, and by the reinstatement of controversial accounts , was the most damaging commercial consequence. Major brands including Apple, Disney, IBM and others paused spending. Recovery began in early 2025, partly driven by the political context of Trump’s election victory and Musk’s role in the new administration. As one eMarketer analyst noted, some of X’s ad growth in 2025 is “being driven by fear,” as companies view spending on X as “a cost of doing business in order to mitigate potential legal or financial repercussions” , a precarious and unsustainable driver of revenue.
The emergence of Bluesky and Threads as alternatives has not produced the mass migration many predicted, but both platforms are growing: Threads now reaches 142M in ad audience, up from 141M in the 18+ count, though it generates only 4 minutes of daily time per user.

VII. X algorithm, moderation and information quality

This section draws on peer-reviewed academic research published in 2024-2025.
The open-sourced algorithm.
In early 2024, X open-sourced its recommendation algorithm on GitHub , an unprecedented transparency measure. The algorithm processes approximately 5 billion ranking decisions daily. Academic researchers have since used this and related methods to study its political effects.
Evidence of political bias in content curation.
A 2025 study published at the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT), auditing algorithmic amplification during the 2024 U.S. presidential election, found that X’s algorithm “may have moved away from promoting moderate content to reinforcing users’ existing preferences more explicitly, especially in out-of-network recommendations.” The study found that right-leaning accounts are more prominently featured in X’s algorithmic curation, including a “default right-leaning bias observed for neutral accounts” , meaning new users are likely to encounter partisan content early in their engagement with the platform (ACM FAccT, March 2025).
Elon Musk’s account amplification.
Researchers at the Penn Center on Media, Technology and Democracy found that Musk’s account had substantially higher baseline view counts compared to other accounts (an average difference of approximately 4.43 million views prior to the identified change point), and that this advantage increased sharply after Musk endorsed Donald Trump on July 13, 2024. The authors concluded this “may hint at the possibility of algorithmic prioritization or bias” (Tech Policy Press, November 2024).
Causal evidence of polarisation.
A study published in Science (late 2025), conducted via a browser extension experiment with 1,256 volunteers during the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign, provided causal evidence that greater exposure to content expressing anti-democratic attitudes and partisan hostility measurably alters political polarisation. The findings directly contradict earlier Meta-funded research that found no such relationship on Facebook and Instagram , a distinction with significant implications for how the platforms compare on societal impact.
Information quality decline post-acquisition.
Research published in the Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review (July 2025) used NewsGuard credibility scores across two datasets (a Twitter panel and the Decahose firehose) and found consistent evidence of declining average information quality following the ownership change. The proposed mechanisms include: algorithmic amplification of engagement-driven content at the expense of credibility; shifts in user composition (high-credibility sharers leaving, low-credibility sharers remaining); and relaxed content moderation policies including the reinstatement of previously banned accounts.
Community Notes: effectiveness and limitations.
X’s transition from professional third-party fact-checking to crowd-sourced Community Notes mirrors a shift Meta announced in January 2025. Research from MIT Sloan (2025) found that fact-check warning labels reduce belief in false headlines by 27% and sharing of false headlines by 25% , effects that persist even among people who distrust fact-checkers (13% and 17% reduction respectively). Whether Community Notes achieves comparable effectiveness at scale remains an open research question. A 2025 study in Nature Scientific Reports examining Twitter’s COVID-19 moderation found that vaccine-skeptical account clusters continued to spread misinformative content despite sustained removal , suggesting that the challenge of effective moderation predates the Musk era, but that structural dismantling of moderation infrastructure has amplified it.

For brand safety and communication professionals: The academic literature on X’s post-Musk content environment is now substantial and consistently points in the same direction: lower average information quality, measurable algorithmic amplification of partisan content, and reduced professional fact-checking infrastructure. These are not reputational risks but documented operational realities that inform brand placement decisions, media monitoring methodology, and the weight given to X-sourced intelligence in competitive analysis.

VIII.X’s impact on elections: A data-driven exploration (2006–2026)
Since its launch in 2006, X (formerly Twitter) has evolved from a real-time news tool into a powerful, and controversial, force in electoral politics. It enables direct candidate-voter communication, rapid mobilization, and agenda-setting, but also amplifies misinformation, polarization, and algorithmic bias. Below is a factual overview grounded in peer-reviewed studies, Pew Research, and independent reports up to early 2026. No causal claims are overstated; effects are often correlational or from randomized experiments.

1. Historical impact (Pre-musk era, 2006–2022)
Early academic evidence suggests Twitter sometimes acted as a counterweight to conservative candidates in U.S. presidential races. A Princeton/NBER study using the staggered rollout of Twitter (instrumented via SXSW 2007 early adopters) found that higher local Twitter adoption reduced Republican presidential vote share by approximately 0.5 percentage points per 10% increase in users during the 2016 and 2020 elections. The effect was limited or absent in congressional races, implying platform content may have swayed moderates and independents toward more liberal-leaning narratives at the presidential level.
Globally, X played catalytic roles in events like the Arab Spring (2011) through real-time coordination, but election-specific studies (e.g., Brexit 2016, U.S. 2016) highlighted Russian interference campaigns that reached millions via targeted accounts and bots. Pre-2022, the platform was often credited with increasing political engagement while raising concerns about filter bubbles.

2. Algorithmic feed effects: Evidence from the landmark 2026 Nature study
Post-acquisition (October 2022), X shifted its default feed to algorithmic (“For You”). A rigorous randomized controlled field experiment published in Nature (February 18, 2026) by Gauthier, Hodler, Widmer, and Zhuravskaya provides the strongest causal evidence to date.
Methodology: ~4,965 U.S. active users were randomly assigned for ~7 weeks (July–September 2023) to either the algorithmic feed or chronological (“Following”) feed. Pre- and post-surveys measured attitudes; browser extensions tracked content and follows (compliance ~85–89%).

Key findings:
Switching to the algorithmic feed increased overall engagement (+0.14 standard deviations) and shifted political attitudes toward more conservative positions (+0.11–0.12 s.d. on a composite index of policy priorities and news attitudes).
Specific shifts included: stronger support for Republican-leaning priorities (e.g., immigration, inflation; +4.7 percentage points), viewing Trump investigations as more “unacceptable,” and more pro-Kremlin stances on Ukraine.
Mechanism: The algorithm promoted conservative content (+2.9 pp), activist accounts (+5.9 pp), and demoted traditional media (−15.5 pp). Users exposed to it followed more conservative/activist accounts (+0.17–0.18 s.d.), creating persistent effects even after reverting to chronological feed.
Effects were asymmetric (switching off the algorithm had no impact) and stronger among Republicans and Independents. No increase in partisanship or affective polarization.
The authors conclude that “initial exposure to X’s algorithm has persistent effects on users’ current political attitudes and account-following behaviour.” This has clear implications for election cycles: algorithmic promotion can tilt information environments in tight races.

3. Misinformation, amplification, and the 2024 U.S. presidential election
During the 2024 campaign, X became a focal point for election-related claims. A Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) analysis documented at least 87 false or misleading posts by Elon Musk himself, accumulating over 2 billion views on the platform. Experts (including Carnegie Mellon’s Kathleen Carley) described X as the “epicenter” of U.S. election misinformation, with content spreading via network effects to other platforms.
Additional studies:
An arXiv audit of 2024 data found the algorithm amplified “own-side” content for both parties but showed right-leaning bias for neutral users and higher exposure inequality for right-leaning accounts.
Social media mention volume (buzz) predicted Senate and tight-race outcomes earlier than traditional polls (Penn State research).
Record usage during the election night period, yet concerns over AI-generated images, deepfakes, and participatory disinformation (e.g., false voter-fraud videos in Pennsylvania).
Musk’s personal endorsement of Donald Trump and platform changes (reduced moderation staff, Community Notes system) coincided with these patterns. X’s spokesperson defended Community Notes as more effective than legacy warning labels.

4. Partisan perceptions on X (Pew research, 2024–2025)
U.S. users’ experiences on X diverged sharply by party:
51% of Republicans rated their time on X as “mostly positive” (vs. 20% of Democrats).
55% of Democrats said X favors conservative views; only 13% of Republicans agreed.
Views on democracy: Republicans saying X is “mostly good” for U.S. democracy rose from 17% (2021) to 58% (2025); Democrats fell from 47% to 17%.
74% of X users encounter political content (higher than Facebook 52%, TikTok 45%, Instagram 36%); 59% use it to follow politics.
74% of X users encounter political content (higher than Facebook 52%, TikTok 45%, Instagram 36%); 59% use it to follow politics.
These divides intensified after 2022 changes, with Democrats more concerned about misinformation and harassment.

5. International and European contexts (including France)
2022 French presidential election: A network analysis using daily tweet data and Convergent Cross Mapping (Frontiers in Political Science, 2025) revealed asymmetric causal influences. Candidates like Éric Zemmour exerted broad one-way influence (especially on immigration), while Emmanuel Macron’s health-policy posts had the strongest causal pull. Foreign policy (Ukraine) and health topics drove cross-party synchronization pre-election; post-election, ecology and left-wing alliances (NUPES) increased clustering. No direct vote-share causation measured, but the platform facilitated agenda-setting and ideological echo chambers.
2024 European parliamentary elections: Multi-platform studies showed X used for campaigning, but Russian-linked “Doppelgänger” disinformation networks were active. French authorities opened investigations into X for potential algorithmic facilitation of foreign interference.
Other cases: India 2024 (mobilization + misinformation spikes); Indonesia 2024 (candidate disinformation via social media).

Overall assessment and ongoing debates
X demonstrably influences engagement, information exposure, and attitude formation, with measurable rightward algorithmic tilt post-2022 and high-visibility misinformation in 2024. Pre-Musk evidence pointed to occasional liberal-leaning net effects; post-Musk dynamics reversed for many metrics. Positive roles include real-time discourse, candidate direct reach, and predictive signals from mentions. Challenges persist around brand safety, foreign interference, and echo chambers.
No single study proves X “decided” any election, but cumulative evidence shows it shapes the information environment in which voters decide, especially in polarized, close contests. As X marks 20 years in 2026, ongoing academic monitoring (NYU CSMaP, Pew) and regulatory scrutiny continue. For deeper dives, tools like social listening remain essential for tracking real-time dynamics.
Sources drawn from Nature (2026), Pew Research Center (2024–2025), CCDH/Reuters (2024), Frontiers in Political Science (2025), NBER/Princeton (2023–2024), and related peer-reviewed audits.

IX. Infographic: A 20-Year Timeline of Twitter-X

The timeline covers 21 milestones from 2006 to 2026, organised into 5 filterable categories:
Blue, “Growth & scale”, user and revenue milestones (IPO, 50M tweets/day, revenue peak)
Green, “Product”, feature launches (280 characters, Twitter Spaces, algorithm open-source)
Amber, “Culture & events”, cultural turning points (Arab Spring, World Cup, Oscars selfie, Obama tweets)
Red, “Crisis & controversy”, governance crises (Dorsey return, Alex Jones ban, election misinformation)
Purple, “Musk / X era”, everything from the $44B acquisition onwards
Infographic: A 20-Year Timeline of Twitter-X

FAQ: X Twitter statistics 2026, the most asked questions
How many people use X (Twitter) in 2025? As of Q2 2025, 29.2% of global internet users aged 16+ use X monthly (GWI). In absolute terms, X has approximately 388 million monthly active users (Business of Apps, 2026), with a total potential advertising audience of 557.5 million.
Which country uses X the most? Nigeria leads with 80.7% of internet users accessing X monthly, followed by Saudi Arabia (66.7%), Kenya (60.0%) and Turkey (58.7%). In absolute advertising audience size, the United States (99 million) and Japan (71.2 million) are the two largest markets.
What percentage of X users are male? 64.4% of X’s 18+ advertising audience is male, 35.4% female. This gender gap is consistent across all age groups and represents one of the most pronounced gender imbalances in social media.
How much time do people spend on X per day? 28 minutes per day on average (Android active users, August 2025, SimilarWeb), ranking 8th among major platforms. Session duration is 4 minutes 05 seconds, ranking 6th.
How much revenue does X generate? Based on third-party estimates (X no longer publishes official reports), approximately $2.6 billion in total net revenue in 2024, with ad revenue at approximately $2 billion, down from a peak of approximately $4.5 billion in 2021. A +16.5% recovery is projected for 2025 (eMarketer).
Is X still relevant for brand monitoring and PR in 2025? Yes. X’s 59.7% news-use rate — the highest of any social platform, makes it structurally essential for PR monitoring, media intelligence and crisis tracking. Its decline in user numbers has not diminished its role as the primary real-time news distribution channel.
What happened to Twitter’s advertising after Elon Musk’s acquisition? Major advertisers including Apple, Disney and IBM paused spending due to brand safety concerns, contributing to a revenue decline from approximately $4.4 billion (2022) to approximately $2 billion (2024). A partial recovery began in 2025, with some major brands returning and SMB advertisers growing their activity.
How does X compare to Threads? In advertising reach, X (557M total, 529M adults 18+) is substantially larger than Threads (142M total, 141M adults 18+). In engagement, X users spend 28 minutes per day on the app vs Threads’ 4 minutes. Threads has the distribution advantage of Instagram but has not yet established deep daily usage habits.

Putin's Approval Falls For 7th Straight Week To Lowest Level In 4 Years

2026-04-26T12:34:00.001-04:00

Putin's approval rating by the state sponsored polling agency has fallen for seven weeks in a row, hitting its lowest level since before the Ukraine invasion.

A number of causes have been cited, including inflation, war fatigue and restrictions on the internet to which all Russians are as addicted as westerners. The combination of financial strain and inconvenience is telling, but the fact that Russia is clearly not winning, nor demonstrating any ability to do so, combined with the realization that Trump is not riding to their rescue is evidently disconcerting to a growing number of Russians. That the data have been released must be assumed to have been approved by the Kremlin as a signal, perhaps that a less than satisfactory end to the war may be necessary. Or it may be a leak intended to send a message to the Kremlin that whatever his aides are telling him, things are not going well. JL

Ben Aris reports in BNE Intellinews:

Vladimir Putin's approval rating has fallen for a seventh consecutive week to its lowest level since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to the state-owned polling agency. The proximate cause of the decline is not (just) the war, inflation or the banking sector strains - it is something more mundane and more viscerally felt by the urban middle class that has historically sustained Putin's support: the internet is broken. "The Kremlin's approval ratings are falling due to public frustration over the blocking of Telegram and restrictions on mobile internet access." (But) other factors were also at play. "Too much [negative] is happening at once, from rising prices to growing war fatigue."
Vladimir Putin's approval rating has fallen for a seventh consecutive week to its lowest level since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to data from VTsIOM, the state-owned polling agency whose numbers the Kremlin monitors closely and whose methodology has every incentive to flatter the president.
The latest VTsIOM survey, conducted between April 13 and 19, found that almost a quarter of Russians (24.1%) do not trust Putin, while nearly a third (31.1%) disapprove of the activities of the Russian government. Both figures are up around seven percentage points since February and represent the lowest ratings for Putin and his administration since the start of the war.
The Reuters figure puts Putin's current approval at 65.6%, down from 73.3% in March. According to the state pollster, in the past three months the president's rating has fallen by 7.3 percentage points, while disapproval has increased by 5.7 percentage points. Putin's approval jumped to just below 80% after the invasion of Ukraine and stayed well above 75% for most of the war, dipping only briefly after the mobilisation announcement in 2022.
The ruling party United Russia has also been hit, with its approval rating dropping to 27.3%. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin's trust rating fell to 53.8%. Dmitry Medvedev's rose to 36.8%, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov's to 32.7% and Just Russia's Sergei Mironov's to 29.8% — a pattern that suggests voters are shopping around within the approved political spectrum.
The internet that broke the spell
The proximate cause of the decline is not the war, inflation or the banking sector strains documented elsewhere — it is something more mundane and more viscerally felt by the urban middle class that has historically sustained Putin's support: the internet is broken.
A political consultant working with Russia's Presidential Administration told Meduza that the Kremlin's approval ratings are falling, citing public frustration over the blocking of messaging service Telegram and restrictions on mobile internet access as among the reasons, while stressing other factors were also at play.
"Too much [negative] is happening at once — from rising prices to growing war fatigue. It's hard to say how much of that is down to the restrictions specifically," he said, as cited by the Kyiv Post.
Russians love their tech but a government crackdown on the so-called RuNet has made those services deeply unreliable. Bank apps and ride-hailing applications do not always work. E-government Gosuslugi services are glitchy. In the regions of Russia’s hinterland, residents have no reliable way of receiving real-time information about Ukrainian drone attacks — one of the more pointed ironies of a crackdown justified on national security grounds.
The public backlash is forcing a Kremlin rethink. While the Kremlin cracks down hard on political opposition dissent, when it comes to gripes by the population over more non-political mundane issues it is a lot more cautious and often compromises.
The push by Russia's FSB security service for tougher controls over RuNet has prompted some top officials to warn of political and economic risks from barring access to popular online services, according to people familiar with the discussions, reports The Bell. That is likely to slow the crackdown, allowing Telegram to continue functioning in Russia, those people said.
The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service has already issued a temporary ruling that companies will not face penalties for advertising on Telegram and YouTube until the end of the year — a tacit acknowledgement that forcing an immediate advertising exodus is impractical.
Putin himself acknowledged the problem on April 23, saying that internet outages were “necessary” for security reasons, but that law enforcement officials must show "ingenuity" to find solutions and guarantee the functioning of vital healthcare and government services. The remark was a rare public concession that the security services had overreached.
Zyuganov's 1917 warning
Against this backdrop, the language being used in Russia's public sphere has shifted in ways that would have been unthinkable two years ago. Veteran Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov did not mince his words when he addressed the State Duma earlier this week. "By autumn a repeat of what happened in 1917 awaits us," the 81-year-old told parliament. "We don't have the right to repeat that."
It has been years, if not decades, since such language has been heard from the floor of Russia's parliament, Owen Matthew, a veteran Russia reporter, said in a column in The Daily Telegraph. Zyuganov was at pains to add that "we're doing everything we can to support Putin and his strategy and policies, but [the government] are not listening" — framing his warning as counsel from a loyalist, not a challenge from an opponent. But the invocation of 1917 in the Duma, in the year before a parliamentary election, is a signal that cannot be entirely managed away.
Ahead of those Duma elections, due by late September, at least 46 applications to hold protest rallies have been rejected by authorities across Russia, mostly on technicalities. In Tomsk, Kaluga, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Sochi and Murmansk, activists and protest organisers have been detained, fined or threatened. Some smaller protests went ahead regardless.
The influencer rebellion
More striking than any formal opposition is the emergence of public dissent from figures who have never previously challenged the Kremlin — and who frame their criticism in terms carefully calibrated to avoid crossing the line into anti-war sentiment.
Former Russian Big Brother star and high-profile model Victoria Bonya posted a video address to Putin warning that "the people are afraid of you, entertainers are afraid, governors are afraid. There is a big wall between you and the people." She added that "people will stop being afraid and they're being squeezed into a coiled spring and that one day that coiled spring will explode."
Bonya lives in Monaco, but her video was viewed more than 25mn times. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov took it seriously enough to issue a statement assuring Russians that many of her criticisms were being "actively worked on."
Once-loyalist actor Ivan Okhlobystin has railed against internet shutdowns as "a huge mistake" and blasted the government for wanting to "bring us back to the USSR." Former Duma deputy Nikolai Bondarenko posted a rant against a government that had brought "this incredibly rich country full of oil and gas and all kinds of resources to the edge of bankruptcy."
Pavel Durov, the Russian-born founder of Telegram, has also unusually vocally criticised the Kremlin, at what he described as the Putin regime's “propaganda operations”, revealing that over 90% of votes in a poll supporting his platform were generated by automated accounts.
None of this constitutes a revolutionary threat. All of the celebrity critics have carefully framed their appeals as being addressed to a good tsar surrounded by bad advisers – and aged old refrain in Russia -- and all have avoided any direct criticism of the war in Ukraine — the one line that savage prosecutions, including the murder in custody of opposition figure Alexei Navalny in 2023, have made clear remains uncrossable.
"The concern for the Kremlin is that this crackdown on the internet becomes a lightning rod for wider discontent that's already there below the surface," The Bell said in a commentary.
What has changed is that criticism of the government has become normalised across every stratum of Russian society — from glamorous influencers in Monaco to military Z-bloggers recording their rants from inside their cars.
With an economy straining after more than four years of endless war, a banking sector showing the first signs of systemic stress, and an internet crackdown that has antagonised the very urban class that has historically been most compliant, the edifice of Putin's invincibility is developing unmistakable cracks — visible even in the polling data of his own state pollsters.

Mid-Range Ukraine Drone Attack Surge Is Depleting Russian Supplies, Combat Ability

2026-04-26T11:19:00.002-04:00

The drone war has become sufficiently sophisticated that there are now three aspects to it, each with its own drone types. Ukraine initially focused on the first, then the third and now the second.

In the first short range, frontline sector, the targets are troops, weapons and trenches. The next, or third, is the long range, which is now targeting economic and strategic objectives like oil refineries and defense industry manufacturing deep inside Russia, the attacks on which have played a significant role in disrupting the Russian economy. The final, and most recent, is the mid-range sector, which targets Russian supply, logistics and sector command and control. Ukrainian strikes on trucks, supply deport and local headquarters and now disrupting the spring offensive by making it harder for the Russians to amass sufficient equipment and intelligence to plan and execute attacks. JL

Euromaidan Press reports:

Ukraine is surging more explosive drones into Russia's logistical zone, weaken Russian units before they can attack. Ukraine's 12th Azov Brigade and the 20th Unmanned Systems Brigade are deploying the new SETH mid-range drone for raids in the logistical zone, which stretches from 10 km to 200 km behind the gray zone where most ground combat takes place. ""The drone war is not about the number of killed today. Ownership of depth means control of movement, logistics, [surveillance], communication and decisions in the sector, not just in the trench. We cut off the enemy's logistics, we destroy them before they reach the front line. Russia's air defense is not intact. Ukrainian drone strikes on radars, surface-to-air missile launchers and mobile guns—492 of them between June 2025 and early March—are "facilitating strikes on critical targets deep within Russian territory,"

Ukraine is surging more explosive drones into Russia's vulnerable logistical zone, aiming to weaken Russian regiments before the regiments can attack.
At least two Ukrainian units, the 12th Azov Brigade and the 20th Unmanned Systems Brigade, are deploying the new SETH mid-range drone for these raids in the logistical zone, which stretches from around 10 km to around 200 km behind the disputed gray zone where most of the direct ground combat takes place.
Recent video montages from the two Ukrainian units depict SETH strikes on Russian trucks, vans and motorcycles. "We cut off the enemy's logistics, we destroy them before they even reach the front line," the 20th Unmanned Systems Brigade stated.
The SETH is a "pusher" design with a rear-mounted propeller and 1.5-meter wingspan. It hauls a 3-kg warhead as far as 40 km under satellite navigation. The drone spots targets such as trucks or trains using an AI-assisted camera. A remote operator approves the target before the drone barrels in.
A single SETH reportedly cost several hundred thousand dollars as recently as a year ago, potentially making it much more expensive than the other Ukrainian attack drones in its class. The Fire Point FP-2, which Ukrainian drone forces have used to hit Russian air bases in Crimea, reportedly costs around $50,000 per unit. The Swift Beat Hornet, built by a US company owned by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, is supplied to Ukraine at cost price under a 2025 memorandum.
Drones tend to come down in cost as the production rate increases, however. And Ukrainian production of mid- and long-range drones is increasing a lot, to a new high of 7,000 copies in March 2026. Robert Brovdi, call sign "Magyar," the commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, recently announced four more USF brigades would re-equip with mid- and long-range drones.

Fast drone expansion
The fast expansion of Ukraine's mid-range strike campaign represents a profound reversal. Just a few months ago, Ryan O'Leary, an American who once led a volunteer company fighting for Ukraine, worried that Ukrainian leaders were effectively handing Russia the drone advantage in the logistical zone—by focusing too much on the shortest- and longest-range drones while neglecting the mid-range ones.
Short-range first-person-view drones, patrolling the gray zone, can inflict heavy casualties on Russian infantry. But heavy infantry losses may not mean much to the Kremlin, which continues to recruit enough fresh troops to replace combat losses.
"Ukrainian drones are still optimized for destroying infantry, not for changing sectors," O'Leary wrote in a since-deleted post. "This creates cool videos, but delivers weak strategic effect."

"The drone war is not about the number of killed today," O'Leary added. "It is about controlling the space tomorrow. Ownership of the depth means control of movement, logistics, [surveillance], communication and decisions in the sector, not just in the trench."
Ukrainian commanders clearly shared O'Leary's concern. Efforts were already underway to pivot drone units to mid-range strikes.
By this spring, these efforts were explosively evident as more FP-2s, Hornets and SETHs surged into the logistical zone—and more Russian trucks, trains, headquarters and air defenses went up in flames. A mid-March Institute for the Study of War assessment found monthly Ukrainian mid-range strikes had quadrupled since November 2025.
The mid-range strikes on logistical targets are only as effective as Russia's air defenses are ineffective. A mid-range drone might spend several minutes in the air at an altitude that could make it an easy target for an intact air defense network.
But Russia's air defense is not intact. Relentless Ukrainian drone strikes on radars, surface-to-air missile launchers and mobile guns—at least 492 of them between June 2025 and early March—are "facilitating strikes on more critical targets deep within Russian territory," Tochnyi.info explained in a recent report.
Ukraine's destruction of Russian air defense assets. Screenshot from Tochnyi.info
The Ukrainian strikes on Russian air defenses continue in parallel with the expansion of the mid-range strikes on logistical targets. Just how much damage FP-2s, Hornets and SETHs can inflict on Russian logistics may depend on how many more Russian air defenses the Ukrainians can knock out.
The impact on Russia's spring offensive, which is just starting in some sectors, may be hard to measure. But if the offensive falters without the Russians capturing much new ground, it may be thanks to the mid-range drone strikes that sapped the Russians' combat power before they could bring that combat power to bear in the gray zone.

12 Kremlin FSB Officers Killed In Ukraine Drone Strike On Donetsk HQ

2026-04-24T02:52:00.002-04:00

A Ukrainian drone strike targeting the Kremlin's Donetsk command center for the FSB (formerly KGB) in occupied Donetsk city killed 12 FSB officers and wounded another 15.

This was a particularly noxious FSB unit, charged with "detention and physical elimination of disloyal citizens" as well as sabotage and other operations. Another systematic and strategic strike on a source of Russian oppression. JL

Cyril Barabaltchouk reports in United 24:

Ukrainian Ukrainian drones destroyed a Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) special forces command post in occupied Donetsk. The operation took place at 8:01 a.m. when the Ukrainian military launched eight high-precision strikes using FP-2 drones carrying 60 to 100-kilogram warheads. The attack resulted in 27 casualties among the Russian special forces unit. The strike killed 12 Russian FSB officers and wounded another 15. The FSB’s Mobile Action Directorate is a counterintelligence unit tasked with operations in occupied territories across Ukraine, “performing counterintelligence, sabotage, military operations, agent networks, detention of disloyal citizens, physical elimination of opponents, and coordination of pro-Russian militants”

Ukrainian drones destroyed a Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) special forces command post in the temporarily occupied Ukrainian city of Donetsk, Commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Unmanned Systems Forces Robert “Magyar” Brovdi reported on Telegram on April 22.
The operation took place at 8:01 a.m. when the Ukrainian military launched eight high-precision strikes using FP-2 drones carrying 60 to 100-kilogram warheads.

Brovdi stated that the attack resulted in 27 casualties among the Russian special forces unit. The strike killed 12 Russian FSB officers and wounded another 15.
He also explained that the FSB’s Mobile Action Directorate (UMD) operates as a special counterintelligence unit tasked with executing operations in temporarily occupied territories and across Ukraine.
“The UMD performs counterintelligence tasks, sabotage, military special operations, the creation of agent networks, the search and detention of disloyal citizens, the physical elimination of opponents, and the coordination of pro-Russian militants,” Magyar wrote. He added that within Ukrainian territory, the unit is responsible for recruitment, managing agent networks, and carrying out terrorist acts, sabotage, and arson.

The strike was developed by the Deep Strike Center of the Unmanned Systems Forces in coordination with specialists from the Azov 1st Corps of the National Guard. The operation itself was executed by the “Ptakhy” (“Birds”) unit using “MiddleStrike” systems.
The operation in Donetsk follows the recent deep strikes by Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces using FP-2 drones. Commander Brovdi had previously reported that his units and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) used the same type of drone to hit the Russian Navy frigate Admiral Grigorovich in the port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea coast.
Despite the warship actively firing its onboard air defense missiles at the incoming targets, the Ukrainian drones successfully struck the Kalibr missile-capable vessel.

Russia's Spring Offensive: "Zero Tactically Significant Gains," Has Now Lost Ground

2026-04-23T03:18:00.003-04:00

Russia's Spring Summer offensive, which began March 17, has, according to geolocated analysis, not only made 'zero tactically significant gains, but has actually lost ground.

This is counter to the claims of the Russian high command which claims to have gained 1700 square kilometers and several cities, all of which have been contradicted by independent observers. Fortunately, western media are no longer as gullible as they once were, nor are they as intimidated by the Trump administration, so are less willing to accept and publish the Russian accounts and more likely to give deserved credence to the Ukrainians. JL

Yuri Zoria reports:

Russia's Russia's spring-summer 2026 offensive has produced zero tactically significant gains since it launched no later than 17 March, and that Russian forces have lost ground since 1 March. Russia's Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov has claimed Russian forces had taken over 1,700 km² and 80 settlements across Ukraine since early 2026 — Luhansk Oblast among them — with a further 700 km² and 34 settlements falling in March and April alone. Heavy casualties have forced Russia to reduce its operational tempo in several sectors. Russia's troop generation is being squeezed from both ends — recruitment falling while casualties climb — eroding the viability of its mass-assault approach
Russia's Chief of the General Staff, Army General Valery Gerasimov, made a series of sweeping statements about battlefield progress during a visit to the Southern Grouping of Forces command on 21 April, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which found that the claims contradicted available evidence, including reporting from pro-Russian sources. ISW assessed that Russia's spring-summer 2026 offensive has produced zero tactically significant gains since it launched no later than 17 March, and that Russian forces have lost ground since 1 March.
Russia has maintained a pattern of inflating territorial gains for domestic and international audiences throughout the war, escalating these claims alongside its stalling spring offensive as the Kremlin attempts to shape Western perceptions ahead of any potential negotiations.
What Gerasimov said — and what ISW found
Gerasimov claimed Russian forces had taken over 1,700 km² and 80 settlements across Ukraine since early 2026 — Luhansk Oblast among them — with a further 700 km² and 34 settlements falling in March and April alone. ISW's tracking puts Russian forces at 381.5 km² gained and 13 settlements taken since 1 January — while finding a net 59.79 km² loss across the theater since 1 March.
The Luhansk claim is not new. ISW noted that Russian military command had made the same assertion three times before 21 April — including twice after Ukraine's Fall 2022 counteroffensive retook portions of the oblast.
ISW-assessed control of terrain in the Borova tactical area, 21 April 2026. Map: ISW
Gerasimov also stated Russian forces had advanced to within 7 km of Kramatorsk and 12 km of Sloviansk. Even the most optimistic figures from Russian sources ISW had on record placed forces no closer than roughly 14 km from Kramatorsk and 9 km from Sloviansk. On specific settlements, the gap is equally stark: Gerasimov stated 70% of Lyman seized — ISW found no evidence Russian forces had seized any of it — and 75% of Novopavlivka, where ISW assessed 20.51% actual Russian control.
ISW-assessed control of terrain in the Sloviansk direction, 21 April 2026. Msp: ISW
Gerasimov went further, stating Russian forces had entered Borova, Studenok, and Zaporozhets — three settlements ISW places several kilometers from the furthest extent of any confirmed Russian advances. Rybar's pro-Russian frontline map from 20 April depicted Zaporozhets as territory still held by Ukraine.
ISW-assessed control of terrain in the Lyman tactical area, 21 April 2026. Map: ISW
Even maximalist Russian sources don't support the claims
ISW calculated that combining confirmed Russian advances with all unconfirmed Russian claims produces a total of 715 km² — just 42% of Gerasimov's stated figure. No Russian source published a map consistent with 1,700 km² of gains in 2026. Several of the settlements Gerasimov named sit beyond even the outer edge of what Russia's own milbloggers have claimed. Russian milbloggers have repeatedly accused Gerasimov of sending “beautiful reports” up the chain of command — their term for embellished or fabricated claims of progress.

ISW also noted that the April speech covered two to four months of "gains" instead of the single month covered in previous addresses — a tactic ISW assessed as designed to disguise the absence of recent progress behind a larger cumulative figure. Gerasimov also recycled previous settlement claims, presenting them as fresh to manufacture an image of rapid ongoing advances. He has now delivered comparable exaggerated claims five times in 2026, on 15 January, 27 January, 15 February, 16 March, and 21 April.

What the offensive is actually producing
Russia launched its spring-summer 2026 offensive more than a month ago and has made no tactically significant gains since then, losing roughly 10 km² across the theater, and its rate of advance has slowed all across the front. Heavy casualties have forced Russia to reduce its operational tempo in several sectors. ISW assessed that Russia's troop generation is being squeezed from both ends — recruitment falling while casualties climb — eroding the viability of its mass-assault approach

At Pokrovsk, Ukraine's Elite Brazil Volunteers' Surprise Attack Shocks Russians

2026-04-22T04:00:00.004-04:00

Ukrainian forces continue to launch surprise counterattacks along the front to disrupt the Russians' plans, which has already caused the Kremlin to redeploy forces.

On the Pokrovsk front, where the fighting remains among the heaviest of the war, a surprise Ukrainian counterattack led by volunteers from Brazil, whose performance has quickly underscored their elite status, shocked Russian troops at the crucial settlement of Hryshyne, decimating Russian units and pushing them back. The integration of the Brazilians into the Ukrainian force stands in contrast with the Russians use of other nationalities like the North Koreans, Africans from various countries and Nepalis, who have often been tricked or forced into the military and then slaughtered. JL

RFU News reports:

At Pokrovsk, the Ukrainian command unexpectedly deployed Brazilian volunteers to push the Russians back in an intense counterattack. To counter Russian attempts near Hryshyne, Ukraine's Brazilian volunteer soldiers were deployed to support Ukrainian forces, with the task of clearing positions and reinforcing the counteroffensive momentum. Geolocated footage captured by a drone shows how Brazilian soldiers are clearing houses inside the settlement, using explosives to blow the entrance of the buildings and sustained small arms fire to suppress Russian positions. The Brazilians operated in small groups to reduce exposure and avoid Russian drone strikes. Their skill disrupted Russian plans, leaving attacking enemy forces in shock.

Today, there are important developments from the Pokrovsk direction.
Here, Russian forces are attempting to mount attacks from Pokrovsk to wear down the Ukrainian defenders in the next settlements. However, the Ukrainian command unexpectedly deployed Brazilian volunteers to push the Russians back in an intense counterattack, which shocked the enemy.
Currently, the Russians are focused on taking control of the surrounding area of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad, having already captured the towns. This will ensure a safer accumulation of troops in the towns for the Russians, if they manage to push the Ukrainians further back, especially Ukrainian drone operators. The Russians have already begun moving artillery to the southern outskirts of the town, indicating that this area is now out of the range of standard Ukrainian drones. Additionally, the Russians created a kill zone within a twenty-kilometer radius of the center of Myrnohrad and are targeting anything that moves, which complicates Ukrainian activity in the area. Through this, the Russians have accomplished their primary objective of cutting off this route by bringing it under fire control, which means that logistics to Hryshyne are significantly disrupted, leaving the defending units reliant on drone-dropped supplies.
By taking Hryshyne under control, they could cut the logistics going into the northern outskirts of Myrnohrad and Rodynske, where Ukrainian defenders still hold positions despite fierce battles.
As a result, Russian infiltrations are increasingly being detected in the Novooleksandrivka area west of the village, showing that Russians occasionally slip through the Ukrainian defenses.
The Russian plan is to advance from Hryshyne to Shylivka and beyond, following the highway to Pavlohrad. The Ukrainians must prevent the full capture of Hryshyne, because if the Russians break through, they could expand and destabilize the wider Pokrovsk axis, by using it as a stepping stone to assault westward.
Intense fighting is already underway around the village, and geolocated footage from the area shows how Ukrainian drone operators are stopping the Russians by constantly monitoring the village and striking them to reduce their manpower and deny them a stable foothold.
On one occasion, two Russians attempted to shoot down the incoming FPV drones unsuccessfully, resulting in the death of one of them, while the other tried to hide in a destroyed building without success. However, drone attrition isn’t always sufficient to clear entrenched positions, and the Ukrainian command decided to deploy a Leopard tank, which engaged a group of Russians on the outskirts of Hryshyne.
The Russians were attempting to enter the settlement from the direction of Pokrovsk when they were spotted by a Ukrainian drone, so the Leopard tank advanced to a close firing position and used its main gun to open fire. During the operation, a Russian FPV drone was deployed against the tank and managed to strike it, showing the danger that Ukrainians must face because of the high enemy drone activity.
Despite the hit, the crew completed their mission and withdrew successfully, and after the tank raid, two Ukrainian soldiers moved in and cleared a house where the remaining Russian troops had taken cover. One Ukrainian soldier provided cover with automatic fire into the building, while the other threw grenades.
To minimize any risk, the Ukrainian command ordered a retreat, after which a heavy bomber drone dropped a shell at the enemy's position, successfully destroying it.
To counter any further Russian attempts near Hryshyne and clear any potential survivors, Brazilian soldiers were deployed to support the operations of the Ukrainian forces, with the task of clearing positions and reinforcing the counteroffensive momentum. Geolocated footage captured by a drone shows how Brazilian soldiers are clearing a church and houses inside the settlement. They are using explosives to blow the entrance of the building and sustained small arms fire to suppress Russian positions.
This tactic is based on their previous military experience from their native country and is used to cause injuries and chaos before entering the buildings, reducing the defender's ability to resist. At the same time, the footage also showed how the Brazilians operated in small groups to shorten their exposure and avoid Russian drone strikes.
Overall, the deployment of Brazilians plays an important role in preventing a Russian breakthrough west of Pokrovsk by helping the Ukrainian forces to clear and hold Hryshyne, a critical gateway to the next settlements. Their skill and integration into assault units have disrupted Russian plans, leaving attacking enemy forces in shock. These clearing operations are slowing momentum while securing positions vital to the defense of the frontline in the area and giving more time to the Ukrainians to prepare.

Anthropic's Multi-Billion Dollar Deal With Amazon Challenges OpenAI

2026-04-22T03:35:00.004-04:00

Anthropic has signed a series of strategic alliances with Amazon, Google and Broadcom, which gives the AI company access to computing power while providing the other firms greater ability to use its AI.

But the Amazon deal, which came after the other two, also begins to shape global AI alliances that will see OpenAI-Microsoft and the Chinese AI companies facing off against each other and against the Anthropic group as a potential harbinger of future competitive strength. The relative success of the various AI models will be determined by the utility of the AI as well as the financial, computing and marketing power of each. This latest alliance gives Anthropic, which was started by executives who departed OpenAI, an ability to challenge OpenAI, because of the growing success of its model.JL

Sean McClain and Kate Clark report in the Wall Street Journal:

Amazon will invest an additional $5 billion in Anthropic, part of a broadening partnership that will see the two tech companies collaborate more closely. Amazon's total investment could be as high as $25 billion. Anthropic, which has been hampered by a shortage of the computing power needed to serve its popular AI models, agreed to purchase $100 billion of Amazon’s cloud services. Anthropic said it would make use of 5 gigawatts’ worth of Amazon’s AI chips. Anthropic also expanded its partnership with Google and Broadcom, adding multiple gigawatts of capacity on their TPU chips. Recent months have seen rapid growth of the company’s coding tool Claude Code. Anthropic said this month that its revenue run-rate had reached $30 billion, far exceeding its earlier expectations for the year.

Amazon AMZN 0.66%increase; green up pointing triangle said Monday that it would invest an additional $5 billion in Anthropic, part of a broadening partnership that will see the two tech companies collaborate more closely.
Amazon said its total investment could be as high as $25 billion if the partnership hits certain commercial milestones. As part of the agreement, Anthropic, which has increasingly been hampered by a shortage of the computing power needed to serve its popular artificial intelligence models, agreed to purchase more than $100 billion of Amazon’s cloud services. Anthropic said it would make use of 5 gigawatts’ worth of Amazon’s AI chips as part of the agreement.
The investment comes as competition in the AI industry heats up ahead of the expected public offerings of Anthropic and its rival OpenAI.
Amazon is rapidly expanding spending on new data centers and chip designs. The company has said that it would spend $200 billion on capital expenditures this year, much of it on AI-related investments, including new data centers. The pace of investment has led some analysts to question whether Amazon could justify the spending with enough new business. Amazon shares rose nearly 3% in after-hours trading on Monday.
Amazon’s partnership with Anthropic started in 2023 when the e-commerce and cloud computing giant invested $4 billion in the AI startup. Today, Anthropic is both a strategic investment and a key customer for Amazon Web Services and the company’s AI chips, dubbed Trainium.
In October, Amazon opened one of the largest AI data centers for Anthropic in Indiana called Project Rainier, which is powered by half-a-million Trainium 2 chips. Ultimately, that number is set to double, Amazon has said.
The added computing capacity could help relieve pressure on Anthropic, recently valued at $380 billion, as demand for its AI models surges.
The company has faced a computing power crunch that has led to outages, throttling and slower performance for its Claude AI model. Some customers have opted to switch to other AI models out of frustration with the disruptions, the Journal has reported.
Earlier this month, Anthropic also expanded its partnership with Alphabet’s Google and Broadcom, adding multiple gigawatts of capacity on their TPU chips.
Recent months have seen rapid growth of the company’s coding tool Claude Code. Anthropic said this month that its revenue run-rate had reached $30 billion, far exceeding its earlier expectations for the year.

In a statement, Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei said the company needs “to build the infrastructure to keep pace with rapidly growing demand.”

For 2 Days In A Row, Russia Attacked Chasiv Yar (Again), And Were Beaten Back

2026-04-21T03:05:00.004-04:00

Chasiv Yar, again? Yes, the Russians are again attacking Ukrainian positions at Chasiv Yar because it is on the way to Ukraine's fortress belt cities further west.

But the Russians are being beaten back - as they have been elsewhere along the front - by a combination of Ukraine's drones, artillery and infantry. JL

David Axe reports in Trench Art:

Two days in a row, the Russian 70th Motor Rifle Division attacked Ukrainian positions at Chasiv Yar. Two days in a row, the Ukrainian 24th Mechanized Brigade fought back with drones, artillery and infantry. Ukrainian defenders destroyed enemy armored vehicles, transport, and troops even at the approaches to the positions. A similar breakthrough attempt was made by the Russians on April 18. They involved five armored combat vehicles, a tank, as well as motorcycles and ATVs for rapid advancement. However, thanks to the coordinated work of intelligence, drones, artillery, and infantry, the attack was thwarted. The Russians are trying to act in waves, combining equipment and light mobile groups, but is suffering huge losses.
The ruins of Chasiv Yar are the eastern doorway to Konstantynivka, a Ukrainian stronghold in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.
Capture Konstantynivka, and the Russians will have a clearer shot at the last major free cities in Donetsk: Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, 12 miles north of Konstantynivka. Fail to capture Konstantynivka, and the Russians’ march toward Kramatorsk and Sloviansk could be much costlier.
But Chasiv Yar holds—well, at least the westernmost parts of it—almost exactly two years after the Russians arrived at the eastern outskirts. Two days in a row starting Saturday, the Russian 70th Motor Rifle Division attacked. Two days in a row, the Ukrainian 24th Mechanized Brigade fought back with drones, artillery and infantry.
“The enemy achieved no success,” the Ukrainian brigade reported. According to military information, the enemy has been trying to break through in the area of responsibility of the 24th Separate Mechanized Brigade for the second consecutive day, using armored vehicles and mobile assault groups.
The brigade reported that the latest mechanized assault was completely repelled. Ukrainian defenders destroyed enemy armored vehicles, transport, and troops even at the approaches to the positions.
«For the second consecutive day, the enemy is conducting mechanized assaults in the area of the 24th Brigade. The attack has been repelled. Enemy armored vehicles, cars, and troops — destroyed», — the military noted.
A similar breakthrough attempt was made by the Russians on April 18. They involved five armored combat vehicles, a tank, as well as motorcycles and ATVs for rapid advancement. However, thanks to the coordinated work of intelligence, drones, artillery, and infantry, the attack was thwarted.
Ukrainian military emphasize that the enemy is trying to act in waves, combining equipment and light mobile groups, but is suffering losses and not achieving tactical success.
The situation in this section of the front remains tense, as Russian troops continue to attempt to advance, despite significant losses

New Ukraine-UK AI Hub Uses Battle Data To Predict, Disrupt Russian Moves

2026-04-20T03:35:00.003-04:00

Ukraine, in partnership with the UK, has created an AI war center, which is designed to predict, identify and disrupt Russian tactics and movements.

The concept is to use Ukraine's vast store of battlefield data to anticipate and then shape Russian options so that Ukraine has an ability to force them to make decisions which give Ukraine the advantage. This will not surprise corporate users of AI, whose marketing or financial strategies may be similarly created, but this will be a first war-time application. The intention is to optimize opportunities and reduce casualties while never letting the Russians have a moment's peace. JL

Olena Mukhina reports:

Ukraine, backed by the UK, is launching a Defense AI Center. At the core of the concept is that in modern conflict, decisive advantage is determined not by the volume of resources, but by the speed of decision-making. Accordingly, “A1” is focused on the practical battlefield application of AI technologies. Processing large-scale battlefield data, the objective is to transform raw information into actionable intelligence: forecasting enemy behavior, modeling possible scenarios, and generating response options. A second priority is the development of autonomous drones and ground robotic systems which operate without GPS access and under conditions of intense electronic warfare while maintaining functionality
Ukraine, backed by the UK government, is launching the Defense AI Center “A1”. According to Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, the new institution is intended to accelerate the integration of artificial intelligence into military processes.
The initiative is positioned as a tool for achieving technological superiority in conditions of high-intensity, fast-moving warfare.
At the core of the concept is the idea that in modern conflict, decisive advantage is determined not by the volume of resources, but by the speed of decision-making.
Accordingly, “A1” is focused not on experimental research but on the practical battlefield application of AI technologies.
Turning battlefield data into predictive systems
One of the center’s key functions is the processing of large-scale battlefield data.
The objective is to transform raw information into actionable intelligence: forecasting enemy behavior, modeling possible scenarios, and generating response options.
Autonomous systems beyond traditional human control
A second priority is the development of autonomous platforms, including drones and ground-based robotic systems.
These systems are expected to operate in environments without GPS access and under conditions of intense electronic warfare, maintaining functionality even when standard communication channels are disrupted.

Such platforms are envisioned to operate within interconnected networks where machine-to-machine coordination reduces the need for direct human control.
This approach is seen as a way to increase operational efficiency while reducing personnel risks

Accelerated innovation and testing cycles
Another key direction is the creation of simulation environments to test emerging technologies before deployment on the battlefield. This is intended to shorten the “idea–development–frontline” cycle and enable faster adaptation to real combat conditions.
In parallel, the center is expected to reduce bureaucratic burdens within the armed forces, particularly in procurement, financial oversight, and personnel management.
Unified hub for defense innovation
The “A1” center is designed as a coordination platform bringing together military personnel, defense companies, research institutions, and international partners. Its goal is to synchronize development efforts and reduce the time required to move from concept to operational deployment.
Strategically, the center is intended to support the systematic integration of AI as a key factor of Ukraine’s advantage in the air, on the ground, and within the broader economic dimension of warfare.

Russian Intel Being Shaped By Ukraine's Degrading of EW, Targeting Ability

2026-04-20T03:17:00.002-04:00

Like watching two computers playing chess against each other, Ukraine and Russia have been using their technological capabilities to gain battlefield advantage. But the one evidently emerging with an advantage is Ukraine.

Ukraine's systematic targeting of Russian radar, air defense and other electronic warfare assets is now giving it the ability to force the Russians to make choices which are more beneficial to the Ukrainians. This has been accomplished by the early interdiction of logistics, troop movements and other operations that are slowing Russia's ability to plan. JL

Mick Ryan reports in Futura Doctrina

The operational picture displays a slowdown in Russian gains. Russian forces captured just 133 square kilometres in March 2026 — the lowest monthly total since June 2024. The latest figures suggest deeper Ukrainian drone operations, increased attacks on the Russians, improved defensive preparations, and the diversion of Russian military attention to southern Ukraine is imposing costs on Russia’s spring offensive tempo. On the Kharkiv axis, Ukrainian forces continued their mid-range campaign against Russian radar systems. This was part of the Ukrainian campaign to degrade Russian early warning and targeting capabilities. This reflects a maturation of Ukrainian operations. Ukraine is shaping the sensor and intelligence architecture that supports Russian air defence, artillery and aviation.
The ground war during the week was characterised by the familiar rhythm of attritional combat: large numbers of tactical engagements, incremental gains and losses measured in hundreds of metres, and Russia’s continued inability to translate local tactical gains into operationally significant advances.
In the Donetsk Oblast, the most significant development came from the DeepState monitoring group’s assessment on 18 April that Russian forces were solidifying positions in Kalynove as a staging point for an advance toward the logistical hub of Kostiantynivka. Russian drone crews redeployed from the Kursk Oblast operations were reported in the area. Russian forces are now able to operate drones deep enough to reach Kostiantynivka itself - a city of 67,000 pre-war residents that is an important Ukrainian logistics node. ISW assessed that Ukrainian forces made advances in the Kostiantynivka-Druzhkivka tactical area on 12 and 13 April.
On the Sumy front, Ukrainian forces pulled back to prepared lines near Myropilske as Russian forces claimed ground in three villages in the border region. Russian small-group infiltrations continued in northern Sumy Oblast, though a Kremlin-affiliated milblogger cautioned on 13 April that Russian forces “are unable to control large areas of forest” due to frequent Ukrainian counterattacks, and that a near-term seizure of Krasnopillya was “premature.” Zelenskyy warned on 17 April that Russia would likely attempt offensives in Sumy, Kharkiv, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. This signals that Ukrainian intelligence assessments are seeing Russian ground forces assembling on multiple potential axes of advance.
The broader operational picture however displays a slowdown in Russian territorial gains. DeepState reported that Russian forces captured just 133 square kilometres in March 2026 — the lowest monthly total since June 2024. But as I noted last week that figure should not generate premature optimism. Russia has captured enormous amounts of territory since 2022 and holds approximately 20 percent of Ukraine. However, the latest figures do suggest that the combination of deeper Ukrainian drone operations and increased attacks on the Russians, improved defensive preparations, and the diversion of Russian military attention to southern Ukraine is imposing costs on Russia’s spring offensive tempo.
Source: Russia Matters.
On the Kharkiv axis of advance, ISW’s 14 April assessment noted that Ukrainian forces continued their mid-range strike campaign against Russian radar systems in Belgorod Oblast. This was part of the larger Ukrainian campaign to degrade Russian early warning and targeting capabilities along the northeastern approaches. This campaign reflects a maturation of Ukrainian operational thinking. Ukraine is actively shaping the sensor and intelligence architecture that supports Russian air defence, artillery and aviation.

Russian Refineries Struck, Burned By Ukraine After US Lifts Oil Sanctions

2026-04-19T03:03:00.001-04:00

Immediately after the US again relaxed oil sanctions on Russia, a massive Ukrainian drone attack struck several Russian oil refineries from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea, damaging them and leaving some still burning. The US government is desperate to reduce rising gas prices as its war on Iran continues despite repeatedly failed ceasefires.

Ukraine now has the capacity to do this without US help or permission as it is developing more of its own weapons. It has been clear that it will no longer quietly accept actions which hurt Ukraine. JL

Ivana Kottasova reports in CNN:

Ukraine attacked two Russian refineries and other key oil targets overnight Saturday, just hours after the US granted Moscow another waiver on the sale of its sanctioned oil. Kyiv’s ‌drone forces commander Robert “Madyar” Brovdi said Ukraine had struck the Novokuybyshevsk and Syzran oil refineries in Russia’s Samara region, the Tikhoretsk oil terminal in the Krasnodar region, and the Baltic Sea port of Vysotsk, as well as an oil depot in Sevastopol, in occupied Crimea. The Krasnodar region Emergency Response Headquarters said a fire had broken out at the oil depot in Tikhoretsk, and were trying to bring it under control. The governor of the Leningrad region where the Vysotsk port is located, said a drone attack had caused a fire at the port
Ukraine attacked two Russian refineries and other key oil targets overnight into Saturday, officials said, just hours after the United States granted Moscow another waiver on the sale of its sanctioned oil.
Kyiv’s ‌drone forces commander Robert “Madyar” Brovdi said on Telegram that Ukraine had struck the Novokuybyshevsk and Syzran oil refineries in Russia’s Samara region, the Tikhoretsk oil terminal in the Krasnodar region, and the Baltic Sea port of Vysotsk, as well as an oil depot in Sevastopol, in occupied Crimea.
The Russian Ministry of Defense did not acknowledge the strikes, announcing only that the country’s air defenses intercepted 258 Ukrainian drones overnight.
However, Russian regional authorities reported the attacks, or their consequences. Vyacheslav Fedorishchev, the governor of the Samara region, said “strikes have been recorded” against what he called “industrial facilities” and that emergency services were on the scene.
The Krasnodar region Emergency Response Headquarters said a fire had broken out at the oil depot in Tikhoretsk, and that “224 personnel and 56 pieces of equipment” were involved in trying to bring it under control.
Aleksandr Drozdenko, the governor of the Leningrad region where the Vysotsk port is located, said on Saturday morning that a drone attack had caused a fire at the port, which he said had since been extinguished.
Brovdi made no secret of the fact that the strikes were in response to the US renewed waiver, which allows the delivery and sale of sanctioned seaborne Russian crude through May 16, accusing the US of “cynicism” and warning the move comes with a price tag of “Ukrainian lives.”
The US Treasury issued the waiver on Friday, as the Trump administration desperately tries to ease the pressure on global oil prices caused by the US and Israel’s war on Iran.

“As negotiations accelerate, Treasury wants to ensure oil is available to those who need it,” a spokesperson for the US Treasury Department said.
The decision marked the second time the administration had taken the controversial step of allowing Russia to sell sanctioned crude and petroleum products stranded at sea. The previous waiver expired on April 11 and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters as recently as Wednesday that the administration would not renew it. Yet on Friday, it did just that.
Western powers and other allies imposed sanctions on Russian energy exports because of the key role they play in financing Moscow’s war on Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev said on Saturday that the extension of the waiver would affect 100 million barrels of Russian oil, on top of the 100 million barrels that were covered by the previous license.

Higher oil prices and the waivers have already given a major boost to Russia’s struggling budget – the International Energy Agency said earlier this week that Russia’s energy revenues had nearly doubled in March, to $19 billion, from $9.75 billion in February.

Ukraine Wiped Out the Logistics of Rubicon, Russia's Most Effective Drone Unit

2026-04-18T03:25:00.004-04:00

Ukrainian special forces identified and then destroyed the logistics center for Russia's most effective and feared drone unit, the Rubicon group.

The storage sites were located near Mariupol, in occupied Donetsk. The strike eliminating them was launched yesterday. JL

Taras Safronov reports in Militarnyi:

Ukraine's Special Operations Forces struck the logistics base of the classified Russian Advanced Unmanned Technologies ‘Rubicon.’ The operation took place in occupied Manhush, the Donetsk region, on the night of April 17. A series of strikes on enemy targets was carried out using Middlestrike drones. Rubicon uses nearly all strike and reconnaissance drones available in Russia against Ukraine, with the exception of Shahed drones including conventional and fiber-optic FPV drones, Molniya and Lancet strike drones, ZALA, Orlan, and Supercam reconnaissance drones, as well as maritime and anti-aircraft drones.
Special Operations Forces struck the logistics base of the classified Russian Center for Advanced Unmanned Technologies ‘Rubicon.’
The Special Operations Forces reported that the operation took place in occupied Manhush, the Donetsk region, on the night of April 17.
A series of strikes on enemy targets was carried out using Middlestrike drones.

A massive fire broke out at the site, which was captured on video by local residents, reports Exilenova+. Special Operations Forces struck the logistics base of the classified Russian Center for Advanced Unmanned Technologies ‘Rubicon.’

The Rubicon Center uses nearly all strike and reconnaissance drones available in Russia against Ukraine, with the exception of Shahed drones.
The enemy unit, among other things, is armed with conventional and fiber-optic FPV drones, Molniya and Lancet strike drones, ZALA, Orlan, and Supercam reconnaissance drones, as well as maritime and anti-aircraft drones.

“Striking and destroying the enemy’s logistics centers significantly reduces its combat capability,” the Special Operations Forces reported.

Russia Running Out of Reserves As New Troops Deployed Less Than Loss Rate

2026-04-18T02:57:00.000-04:00

There was a time when the Kremlin announced it was deploying new reserves to take an objective and western military experts worried if Ukraine could withstand the added pressure. Not so much anymore.

Russian forces are expected to be bolstered by 20,000 this summer, primarily for its ongoing bloodbath in Donbas. But these days, 20,000 Russians is less than two-thirds of the Kremlin's monthly losses. This suggests that the new deployment is unlikely to help achieve their unrealistic goals or change the war much - and if that is the largest force it can muster, that Russia is running short of reserves. JL

The Financial Times and The Institute for the Study of War report:

Russia is preparing to dip into its strategic reserve to add 20,000 troops to its force in southeastern Ukraine. 20,000 is below Russia's monthly losses, and may still outstrip Moscow's usable force-generation surplus, since new recruitment is no longer keeping pace with attrition and deployable reserves are limited. Russian forces have repeatedly failed to meet the Russian military command’s unrealistic deadlines. Russian forces set a deadline to seize Druzhkivka, Kostyantynivka, and Pokrovsk by the end of April 2026. They have not made the inroads in Kostyantynivka and Druzhkivka necessary to seize the settlements by the end of April. The deployment is unlikely to significantly alter the frontline; 20,000 soldiers are notably fewer than one month’s worth of Russian casualties.
The Russian military command is likely pulling forces from the Russian strategic reserves in order to mitigate Russian forces’ continuous inability to reach the unrealistic operational objectives and deadlines.

Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Deputy Head Major General Vadym Skibitskyi told the Financial Times (FT) on April 16 that Russia is likely preparing to dip into its strategic reserve to add 20,000 fresh troops to its force grouping in southeastern Ukraine.[13] Skibitskyi stated that a GUR report indicates that Russia is aiming to capture the entire Donbas by September 2026 and that it currently has around 680,000 soldiers currently stationed in the theater.

Skibitskyi’s statement supports Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets’ recent reports that Russian forces are deploying elements of their strategic reserve in the Oleksandrivka and Zaporizhia directions, both away from their priority effort in Donetsk Oblast.[14] Russian forces have faced several difficulties in recent months, including simultaneously increasing casualty rates and decreasing recruitment rates, that threaten the success of the Russian military command’s usual tactics of casualty-heavy, high-intensity waves of assaults and infiltration missions.[15]

While 20,000 is below Russia's monthly losses, it may still temporarily outstrip Moscow's usable force-generation surplus, since new recruitment is no longer keeping pace with attrition and deployable reserves are limited.

Russian forces have repeatedly failed to meet the Russian military command’s unrealistic deadlines.[16] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reported on April 10 that Russian forces set a deadline to seize Druzhkivka, Kostyantynivka, and Pokrovsk by the end of April 2026.[17] Russian forces have seized Pokrovsk they have not made the inroads in Kostyantynivka and Druzhkivka necessary to seize the settlements by the end of April. The deployment, if true, is unlikely to significantly alter the situation on the frontline; 20,000 soldiers are notably fewer than one month’s worth of Russian casualties.

#	Account	Handle	Category	Followers
1	Elon Musk	@elonmusk	Politics/Tech	236.8M
2	Barack Obama	@barackobama	Politics	119.2M
3	Donald Trump	@realdonaldtrump	Politics	110.8M
4	Narendra Modi	@narendramodi	Politics	106.4M
5	Cristiano Ronaldo	@cristiano	Sport	106.1M
6	Rihanna	@rihanna	Music	96.6M
7	Justin Bieber	@justinbieber	Music	90M
8	NASA	@nasa	Science/Tech	89.9M
9	Katy Perry	@katyperry	Music	85.5M
10	Taylor Swift	@taylorswift13	Music	79.2M
11	Lady Gaga	@ladygaga	Music	70.8M
12	Kim Kardashian	@kimkardashian	Entertainment	68.7M
13	YouTube	@youtube	Platform	68.1M
14	Virat Kohli	@imvkohli	Sport	66.2M
15	Bill Gates	@billgates	Tech	62.7M
16	Ellen DeGeneres	@theellenshow	Entertainment	62.6M
17	CNN	@cnn	News/media	61.5M
18	X (official)	@x	Platform	60.6M
19	CNN Breaking News	@cnnbrk	News/media	59.5M
20	Neymar	@neymarjr	Sport	58.7M
21	Selena Gomez	@selenagomez	Music	58.6M
22	PMO India	@pmoindia	Politics	58.2M
23	ESPN	@espn	Sport/media	57.8M
24	The New York Times	@nytimes	News/media	53M
25	UEFA Champions League	@championsleague	Sport	52.6M
26	BBC Breaking News	@bbcbreaking	News/media	49.8M
27	Real Madrid CF	@realmadrid	Sport	49M
28	Justin Timberlake	@jtimberlake	Music	48M
29	LeBron James	@kingjames	Sport	48.1M
30	BTS (방탄소년단)	@bts_twt	Music/K-pop	46.9M
31	FC Barcelona	@fcbarcelona	Sport	46.5M
32	NBA	@nba	Sport	46.2M
33	Shakira	@shakira	Music	45.3M
34	Premier League	@premierleague	Sport	45.0M
35	Amitabh Bachchan	@srbachchan	Entertainment	44.9M
36	Akshay Kumar	@akshaykumar	Entertainment	44.4M
37	Demi Lovato	@ddlovato	Music	43.4M
38	Jimmy Fallon	@jimmyfallon	Entertainment	43.2M
39	PlayStation	@PlayStation	Gaming	43.1
40	Britney Spears	@britneyspears	Music	43M

Event	Date	Peak activity	Context
FIFA World Cup 2022 final	Dec 18, 2022	24,400 posts/sec	Argentina vs France; all-time record
Japan scores vs Germany, World Cup	Nov 23, 2022	20,600 posts/sec	Japan’s comeback win; Japan highest X-use country
Super Bowl LVII	Feb 12, 2023	14,300 posts/sec	Kansas City Chiefs vs Philadelphia Eagles
Will Smith / Oscars “slap” moment	Mar 27, 2022	12,700 posts/sec	Instant global reaction; trending within 30 seconds
Super Bowl LIX	Feb 9, 2025	13M posts total	4.5B impressions · 511M video views · 3.3M unique authors
Biden retirement announcement	Jul 21, 2024	400M views	Most-reported post of 2024; linked from 4,700+ websites
FIFA World Cup 2014 (full tournament)	Jun–Jul 2014	672M tweets	32-day tournament; peak at 618,725 tweets/min in final
Obama anti-racism tweet (most liked ever)	Aug 12, 2017	4.5M likes · 1.4M RTs	Response to Charlottesville; most-liked post in platform history

Year	Estimated global ad revenue	YoY change	Context
2019	$2.99 B	+14%	Pre-pandemic growth
2020	$3.21 B	+7%	COVID-19 slowdown
2021	$4.51 B	+40%	Peak Twitter ad year
2022	~$4.40 B	-2%	Musk acquisition in Oct; advertiser uncertainty
2023	~$3.40 B	-23%	Post-acquisition advertiser exodus
2024	~$2.00 B	-41%	Continued brand safety concerns
2025 (proj.)	~$2.26 B	+16.5%	First increase since acquisition (eMarketer)

Financial metric	Value	Note
Acquisition price (Oct 2022)	$44 billion	Musk’s purchase price
Estimated 2024 total net revenue	~$2.6 billion	All sources combined
Estimated 2025 ad revenue (global)	~$2.26 billion	eMarketer, March 2025
Estimated 2025 US ad revenue	~$1.31 billion	+17.5% YoY (eMarketer)
Annual debt servicing cost	~$1.2 billion	Acquisition financing
Current valuation (early 2025)	~$44 billion	Recovered from ~$12.32B low
Musk’s 2028 revenue projection	$26.4 billion	Widely considered unachievable

Milestone	Date	Detail
Acquisition completed	October 27, 2022	$44 billion; acrimonious, contested deal
Staff headcount at acquisition	Oct 2022	~7,500 full-time employees
Staff headcount post-cuts	Jan 2023	~1,300 full-time employees
Staff reduction	Oct 2022 – Jan 2023	~80% reduction
Platform rebranding	July 23, 2023	Twitter → X; blue bird → X logo
Trust and Safety Council dissolved	Dec 2022	Replaced by community-based system
Paid verification launched	Nov 2022	X Premium / Blue tick
Algorithm open-sourced	Mar 2024	Published on GitHub
Advertiser exodus peak	2023	Apple, Disney, IBM and others paused
Advertiser partial return	2025	Apple, Disney returned post-Trump election
User loss projection	Dec 2022	~30M expected to leave by end 2024
Actual platform usage (Q2 2025)	Jun 2025	29.2% self-declared monthly use (stable)