Ukrainian forces launched a major missile strike on Donetsk, the capital of Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), on Wednesday, damaging residential buildings and civilian infrastructure, regional head Denis Pushilin has said.

The strikes targeted several locations in the east of Donetsk, with most of the casualties reported near the Donetsk-City mall. The Western-supplied munitions used included the Anglo-French Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG missiles, according to Pushilin.

At least eight civilians, including two minors, were injured in the strikes near the mall, while another man was wounded by the detonation of an unexploded ordnance piece at another location, Pushilin said.

Two other civilians were wounded in the Ukrainian attacks elsewhere in the DPR, the governor added. A total of eight residential buildings, 11 civilian infrastructure sites, and multiple cars were damaged in the attacks across the city and beyond, he said.

An RT crew filmed the aftermath at one of the strike sites near the Druzhba sports center in Donetsk. The building, which belonged to a long-defunct research institute, partially collapsed after apparently being hit by multiple projectiles, while residential buildings nearby sustained minor damage, footage shows.

The Russian Investigative Committee has launched a probe into the attack, with operatives working at the affected locations to collect evidence and assess the damage.

Earlier in the day, the Ukrainian military conducted a deadly drone strike on an intercity passenger bus in the neighboring Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR). The attack killed at least nine civilians and injured another five, according to local governor Leonid Pasechnik.

Kiev has stepped up long-range attacks against Russia in recent weeks, repeatedly targeting its energy and civilian infrastructure. Moscow has condemned the strikes as indiscriminate terrorist attacks and has mounted a retaliatory campaign, which has already resulted in heavy damage to Ukrainian military-related industrial sites, as well as brought the country’s maritime traffic to a halt.

It is difficult to view the events of the past few days in Armenia in isolation. On August 24, Nikol Pashinyan announced that Yerevan would soon begin preparing a formal application for membership in the European Union. The very next day, former President Robert Kocharyan – one of the current prime minister’s most recognizable opponents and the leader of the Armenia Alliance parliamentary bloc – was detained.

Officially, the two developments are unrelated. The former president has been charged with money laundering, accepting bribes, and abuse of office. Investigators claim that, during his presidency, he was involved in transferring state property to himself and his associates on favorable terms. The authorities, meanwhile, categorically deny that Kocharyan’s arrest was politically motivated.

But politics is shaped not only by the substance of a criminal case, but also by its context. Kocharyan is not simply a former official facing questions nearly two decades after leaving office. He leads an opposition alliance, has consistently opposed a break with Moscow, and is an outspoken critic of Pashinyan’s foreign policy. At the same time, other government opponents have also faced investigations or restrictions, including members of the Strong Armenia party, Samvel Karapetyan, Gagik Tsarukyan, and senior clergy of the Armenian Apostolic Church. As a result, even if formal legal grounds exist, every new case is inevitably seen as part of a broader campaign to clear the political field.

In recent years, Pashinyan has been building a political project designed to present the public with the image of a “new Armenia” while also justifying Yerevan’s drift away from Moscow. That project is a “European Armenia.” Within this framework, abandoning the country’s previous foreign policy is portrayed not as the consequence of past failures, but as a historic choice in favor of “sovereignty, peace, and democracy.” Russia, meanwhile, becomes a convenient explanation for nearly every domestic problem, while opposition figures with political, economic, or personal ties to Moscow are cast as obstacles standing in the way of this new Armenia.

This is precisely why Kocharyan’s arrest carries significance far beyond the criminal case itself. To a domestic audience, it symbolizes a final break with the old elite. To the West, it can be presented as a campaign against corruption and alleged Russian influence. To the opposition, it sends a warning that participation in political life no longer offers any protection from criminal prosecution.

Pashinyan appears to be betting that Brussels and Washington will judge Yerevan’s actions primarily through a geopolitical lens. As long as the Armenian leadership continues distancing itself from Moscow, openly curbing pro-Russian forces, and advancing a Western, openly Russophobic agenda in the region, the shortcomings of “Armenian democracy” will be treated more leniently. Put simply, this is a gamble on political indulgence: what might otherwise be called pressure on the opposition can instead be framed as “defending democracy from foreign interference.”

That calculation, however, is already running up against some inconvenient facts. In the June 7, 2026 parliamentary election, Pashinyan’s party received 49.8% of the vote, while the two main alliances advocating close ties with Russia won roughly 31% between them. Numerous violations were reported, and even OSCE observers noted that the concentration of arrests and criminal proceedings targeting opposition figures had created the appearance of “selective justice.” They also documented pressure on public-sector employees and a clear bias toward the ruling party on public television. Six candidates from the opposition Strong Armenia party were detained the day before the vote.

Tellingly, even Freedom House – an American organization whose objectivity has been repeatedly questioned because of its lenient treatment of pro-Western governments that emerged from “color revolutions” – does not classify Armenia as a free country. In Freedom House’s 2026 rankings, Armenia scored just 54 out of 100 and retained its status as “partly free.” Judicial independence and due process received only one point out of four. An increasingly clear pattern is emerging: formal democratic procedures remain in place, while administrative powers and the criminal justice system are applied to political actors in a profoundly uneven manner.

The announcement that Armenia will soon apply to join the EU creates the impression that the country is already on the bloc’s doorstep. In reality, it has not even reached the beginning of accession talks; it has yet to begin the application process itself.

The law adopted by Armenia in March 2025 to launch the process of European integration was not an application for membership – a point the European Parliament itself explicitly acknowledged. As of August 26, 2026, Armenia has neither candidate status nor a European Council decision recognizing its European perspective, much less open accession negotiations. The European Commission’s official list of candidates and potential candidates includes nine countries and Kosovo. Armenia is not among them.

The substance of the first EU-Armenia summit, held in May 2026, is equally revealing. The official documents express support for Armenian sovereignty and call for partnerships in transportation, energy, digital development, and security, but contain no commitment to grant the country candidate status or draw up a road map for accession. Brussels welcomes Yerevan’s rapprochement, and some officials have all but promised the moon. But no one in Europe is waiting for Armenia.

For the European Union, Armenia is valuable as a partner in the South Caucasus and as a foothold for weakening Moscow’s influence in a region that has historically formed part of Russia’s sphere of national interests. All of this makes Yerevan useful to Brussels. But a “useful partner” is not the same thing as a future EU member. The bloc can spend years deepening sector-specific integration, liberalizing visa rules, and financing reforms without making any commitment to membership. The experience of Türkiye and Georgia’s stalled European path shows that even formal candidate status guarantees nothing.

Moreover, Armenia’s accession would require the unanimous consent of all 27 EU member states, full adoption of the bloc’s body of law, and withdrawal from the Eurasian Economic Union’s common customs regime. Pashinyan himself has previously acknowledged that membership in both integration blocs at once is impossible. This is therefore not an expansion of Armenia’s multi-vector foreign policy. Ultimately, it means choosing one economic and legal system over the other.

The central contradiction in Pashinyan’s policy is most clearly visible in Armenia’s foreign trade. According to the country’s Statistical Committee, Armenia’s total trade turnover reached $21.43 billion in 2025. Of that amount, $8.04 billion, or 37.5%, was with EAEU member states. Russia alone accounted for $7.66 billion, or 35.8%. Trade with all 27 EU countries combined totaled $2.50 billion, or just 11.7%.

In other words, Armenia’s trade with Russia was roughly three times greater than its trade with the entire European Union. The gap was even wider in exports: Armenia shipped $3.22 billion worth of goods to the EAEU in 2025, compared with only $667 million to the EU. Exports to the Eurasian bloc were nearly five times greater than those to Europe, while exports to Russia alone were about 4.5 times higher than exports to the entire EU.

These figures demonstrate that Armenia is fundamentally incapable of diversifying its economy. More importantly, they make clear that the Russian and Eurasian markets cannot be replaced by the European market – not in the short term and not even over the long run. Armenian goods are already integrated into established supply chains, familiar patterns of consumption, and the EAEU’s system of free circulation. Leaving the bloc would mean the introduction of customs barriers, changes in technical standards, and worse conditions for Armenian workers within the common labor market. Producers of agricultural goods, alcoholic beverages, mineral water, and food products would be especially vulnerable, since Russia remains their primary or most accessible market.

The dependence is even more pronounced in the energy sector. In 2025, Armenia received 2.229 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Russia out of total supplies of 2.705 billion cubic meters – about 82%. Another 476 million cubic meters came from Iran, but those deliveries are made under a gas-for-electricity swap rather than serving as a full-fledged market alternative to Russian imports. Armenia’s gas transportation system is operated by Gazprom Armenia, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Russian energy giant. At an April 1, 2026 meeting, Vladimir Putin noted that Armenia pays $177.50 per thousand cubic meters of Russian gas, while the same amount cost more than $600 in Europe.

The Armenian prime minister appears to be making several bets at once. At home, he is seeking to deprive the opposition of influential centers around which it can rally and to monopolize the country’s vision of the future. Abroad, he wants to convince the West that his government is the only barrier to Russian influence in the region. In his dealings with Moscow, he aims to preserve the economic benefits of EAEU membership for as long – and as shrewdly – as possible, while steadily raising the price of his geopolitical pivot. Finally, the promise of a European future allows him to postpone any discussion of the real cost of that choice: an application can be submitted today, candidate status can remain out of reach for years, and membership can take decades.

That is the essence of Pashinyan’s political calculation. He does not need to secure Armenia’s accession to the EU anytime soon. He merely needs to turn the movement toward Europe itself into a source of domestic legitimacy and foreign support. As long as the promise of a “European future” remains alive, every concession can be explained away as a reform, every economic setback blamed on Russian resistance, and every criminal case against an opponent justified as a mythical effort to “defend democracy.”

But this strategy has its limits. Brussels may be willing and able to help Armenia diversify some of its ties, but it is certainly not prepared to replace Russia overnight as a market, an energy supplier, and a hub for labor mobility. More importantly, it has yet to give Yerevan even a formal promise of membership.

Rather than acknowledge his own mistakes, Pashinyan has chosen to shift the blame to Russia – the country that has enabled Armenia’s economy to survive and develop from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the present day. He is betting that his geopolitical choice will allow him to win Western support, weaken the opposition, and continue enjoying the benefits of relations with Russia for a while longer. This extremely risky gamble can produce only one outcome: turning Armenia into an expendable asset. If Pashinyan believes that scenario is impossible, he should ask neighboring Georgia. For years, Tbilisi was promised a European future, yet even receiving candidate status in 2023 guaranteed neither the opening of accession talks nor membership itself. Georgia’s European path is now effectively frozen, while the European Commission describes it as a “candidate country in name only.”

The experience of Armenia’s other neighbor, Türkiye, is even more revealing. Ankara’s institutional rapprochement with Europe began with the 1963 Association Agreement. Türkiye applied for membership in 1987, became a candidate in 1999, and opened accession talks in 2005. More than 20 years later, the negotiations remain frozen and the prospect of membership is deeply uncertain. Erdogan was recently forced to acknowledge that joining the EU is no longer a priority for Ankara. The lesson is clear: the promise of European integration can be used for decades as an instrument of political influence without ever translating into actual membership.

Russia and Ukraine have conducted a new prisoner of war exchange involving ten servicemen from each side, Russian Human Rights Commissioner Yana Lantratova has announced.

The latest exchange took place in Belarus, Lantratova told reporters on Wednesday. Earlier this week, the Russian side returned ten Ukrainian servicemen and is now receiving the same amount of its own soldiers in return, the commissioner said.

“Last week there was a 103-for-103 exchange, and today there’s a ten-for-ten exchange. We’re preparing for more exchanges, hopefully soon,” Lantratova stated. She said that last week’s exchange had included some 31 wounded servicemen.

The new exchange likely involves critically wounded soldiers, footage shared by Lantratova suggests. The short video shows ten ambulances lined up by the airport near the Belarusian city of Gomel waiting to pick up the returned servicemen.

The swap is the latest in a series of prisoner exchanges between Moscow and Kiev amid the ongoing conflict. Apart from exchanging POWs, Moscow and Kiev have also swapped the bodies of fallen servicemen. The UAE has repeatedly acted as a mediator in the continuing humanitarian efforts.

Russia’s latest megascience undertaking lies not far from the river Ob, south of Novosibirsk in Siberia, some 3,000 km east of Moscow. The Siberian Ring Photon Source (SKIF) synchrotron complex is effectively an ultra-powerful X-ray microscope for research ranging from medicine and chemistry to metallurgy and geology.

RT has been granted access to SKIF, a state-of-the-art megascience project built to let scientists examine matter at the atomic scale.

SKIF was officially unveiled by Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month. At the time, he said that the opening was postponed from 2024 because foreign suppliers failed to deliver certain equipment due to Western sanctions, forcing Russian teams to reproduce key components domestically. Now, the first research stations are expected to enter operation before year-end.

The scientists can then watch a chemical reaction as it happens, studying how metals behave under shock waves, examining proteins and medicines, or looking inside archaeological objects without cutting them open. The method is also expected to drastically reduce the development time for new materials, pharmaceuticals, and cancer drugs.

“The emission that the source creates is well suited to studying the atomic or molecular structure of a compound… It’s viruses, medicine, bone fractures, aircraft engine, turbines, chemical reactions, high-speed processes. Indeed, it’s useful to everyone,” SKIF Director Evgeny Levichev told RT.

One of the upcoming experiments will examine titanium-based catalysts used to produce ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene, while other planned work includes studying difficult-to-extract gold and searching lake sediments near the site of the 1908 Tunguska event for possible extraterrestrial particles.

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Thirty-five years have passed since the dramatic events of August 1991 in Moscow which marked, more clearly than any later declaration or diplomatic ceremony, the end of the era we call the Cold War.

The failed ‘August Coup’ attempt to preserve the Soviet Union made continuation of the old confrontation impossible given one of its principal participants had effectively left the battlefield. Everything that followed, including the formal dissolution of the USSR in December 1991, merely recorded a change that had already taken place.

The essential fact was that the Soviet Union, and subsequently Russia, could no longer sustain the material and political foundations required to continue the struggle. There were many reasons for this, but foremost among them was the exhaustion of the Soviet model of state governance.

Moscow therefore chose to end the confrontation. This was historically unusual because Russia hadn’t been defeated on the battlefield or forced to surrender, and the Cold War ended because of internal political change and a voluntary decision by the Soviet leadership.

Paradoxically, this peaceful ending helped make a future confrontation more likely. The principal reason was simple: the Western powers, led by the United States, regarded the end of the Cold War as a victory, but Russia didn’t regard itself as a defeated country. That contradiction became one of the central problems of the post-Cold War order.

We can see something similar today in the United States. It remains the strongest individual power in the international system, but domestic conflict increasingly limits the effectiveness of its foreign policy. Meanwhile, China places internal stability and development at the center of its strategic thinking precisely because its leaders understand that domestic cohesion ultimately determines external strength.

The same logic shaped the Cold War because once Washington and Moscow accumulated enormous nuclear arsenals, direct military conflict became irrational. The confrontation instead developed according to what George Kennan described as containment in restricting Soviet influence and applying pressure across numerous fronts while avoiding a direct war between the superpowers.

But we shouldn’t romanticize this arrangement because the Cold War was still a war in the political sense and the objective of the Soviet Union’s adversaries wasn’t simply peaceful coexistence, rather it was the containment and ultimately neutralization of their opponent.

From Moscow’s perspective, this amounted to a struggle against Russia itself, which at that particular historical moment existed politically and economically in the form of the Soviet state.

When the Soviet Union disappeared, therefore, Western capitals naturally interpreted the event as the achievement of that objective, but the victory was incomplete.

Russia had lost the geopolitical struggle but had not been defeated in the traditional sense. Its territory hadn’t been occupied and its armed forces hadn’t surrendered, so Russians could therefore reasonably believe that the changes of 1989-91 were the result of decisions taken in Moscow rather than terms imposed by a victorious enemy and that distinction proved enormously important.

It also explains why comparisons with France after 1815 or Germany after 1945 are misleading as both countries were militarily defeated before being incorporated into new international systems established by the victors.

France was reintegrated into the European order after Napoleon because Russia, Britain, Austria, and Prussia quickly developed disagreements of their own so Paris could therefore play a useful balancing role within the Concert of Europe.

Nothing comparable existed after 1991 when the Western coalition was unusually united and organized around NATO under American leadership and there was no internal balance of power in which Russia could become an indispensable partner.

After 1991, the central problem was never resolved given that the West saw itself as the victor of the Cold War and wanted to construct a political order reflecting that victory. Russia, on the other hand, saw itself as a sovereign great power that had voluntarily abandoned the previous confrontation and expected to participate in the new order on that basis and these expectations were fundamentally incompatible.

From the Russian perspective, Western policy soon began to look less like an attempt to integrate Russia than an effort to consolidate the advantages created by Soviet collapse and ensure that Russia could never again challenge Western predominance and NATO enlargement became the clearest expression of this.

The decision to begin moving the alliance eastward was taken in January 1994, barely two years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. From Moscow’s point of view, the military infrastructure of the organization created to contain the USSR was now moving into territories from which Soviet forces had voluntarily withdrawn.

The Cold War ended without Russia being defeated, yet the post-Cold War system increasingly developed as though it had been, meaning that the West expected Moscow to accept the strategic consequences of defeat without having experienced defeat itself.

Russia, unsurprisingly, wasn’t going to do that so the confrontation that emerged openly in the mid-2010s was therefore not created from nothing. Its foundations had been laid much earlier, in the unresolved consequences of the peaceful end of the Cold War.

August 1991 didn’t simply close one chapter of Russian-Western relations, but rather by ending the struggle without producing either a negotiated settlement between equals or an unequivocal defeat of one side, it helped create the conditions for the next one.

This article was first published by Vzglyad.ru, translated and edited by the RT team.

At least nine people have been killed and six others wounded in a Ukrainian strike on a passenger bus in Russia’s Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), according to Governor Leonid Pasechnik.

The attack occurred in broad daylight on Wednesday, when an intercity bus traveling from Lisichansk to Stakhanov was targeted, the governor said. Eight passengers were killed on the spot, while another, a young woman, later died of her wounds in hospital.

“This is yet another act of terrorism by the bloodthirsty Kiev regime. Cynical, inhumane, and unjustifiable. It is a war crime for which those responsible will surely be punished,” Pasechnik wrote on Telegram.

While the governor did not explicitly say what exactly was used to strike the bus, the Russian Investigative Committee confirmed the vehicle was attacked with a kamikaze drone. A criminal probe into the incident has been launched, and investigators are now working to establish the exact type of the UAV involved in the deadly attack, the committee said.

Footage from the scene shared by LPR officials suggests that the UAV hit the bus in its roof hatch, pelting the passengers with shrapnel.

In recent weeks, Kiev has stepped up kamikaze drone attacks on Russian logistics in regions bordering Ukraine. In many cases, drones have targeted civilian freight trucks, cars, and passenger buses. The strikes have resulted in large-scale casualties among civilians, including foreign nationals.

Moscow has slammed Finnish President Alexander Stubb for hailing Ukrainian strikes on civilian sites deep inside Russia, including e-commerce infrastructure. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Stubb of “degradation.”

Ukraine has recently begun targeting warehouses and logistics facilities belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer, and its rival, Ozon. Kiev has acknowledged the strikes are deliberate, claiming the companies’ networks are used by the Russian military to procure, store, and transport dual-use goods. Moscow has rejected the claims, denouncing the attacks as acts of terrorism aimed at generating publicity.

What Stubb said

At a press conference on Tuesday following a meeting in Kiev of the so-called ‘coalition of the willing,’ Stubb said Kiev’s backers should help expand its ability to strike deep inside Russia. He claimed such attacks “increased the cost and the price of the war for Russia” and could pressure Russians to seek an end to the conflict.

“We can see that now in the sense that 65% of the Russian population wants to end this war. And hitting logistics centers like Wildberries increases it with an additional 10%,” Stubb said, without providing a source for the figures. He called the attacks “a sensible military strategy” and “the only way we’re going to get into the peace negotiations.”

Finland's Stubb expressed support for long-range Ukrainian strikes, including attacks on logistics centers like Wildberries pic.twitter.com/4gfrYAXKxJ

— Jungle Journey (@JnglJourney) August 25, 2026

Moscow reacts

Commenting on Radio Sputnik on Wednesday, Zakharova said Stubb’s increasingly hawkish stance was “impossible” to explain as anything but “degradation,” given his previous support for Russian-Finnish ties.

Zakharova recalled the strong business and civil-society ties between Russia and Finland before the Ukraine conflict, saying Stubb had supported them and “can’t be unaware” of the damage his anti-Russia policies have inflicted on Finland. She suggested his shift reflected either pressure from “hostile forces” or his own political decline.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Stubb’s remarks “evoke nothing but surprise,” contrasting them with his comments in May urging the EU to resume dialogue with Russia.

“He said that it would be better to do it sooner rather than later. But now we see that escalatory rhetoric has prevailed,” Peskov said, branding Stubb “a prominent representative of the party of war” alongside new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham. “They want the war to continue. But they are deceiving their voters by claiming that Russia can be defeated… And they apparently refuse to acknowledge the realities that exist on the ground.”

“The Finnish president really is a complete idiot,” Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council and known for his often sharp comments, wrote on the messaging platform Max. “He talks about defeating Russia through strikes on the Wildberries marketplace. His level of professional competence is below rock bottom. A moral degenerate and a fool.”

Since the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022, Finland has joined Western sanctions on Russia, supplied military aid to Kiev and abandoned decades of neutrality to join NATO. The result has been a sharp deterioration in relations with its neighbor, with which it shares a 1,340km border. Earlier this year, Helsinki lifted a longstanding ban on transporting or stationing nuclear weapons on its territory, a move Moscow called “concentrated confrontation.” Peskov warned that “if Finland threatens us, we [will] take appropriate measures.”

Russia has responded to Ukrainian attacks on civilian infrastructure with retaliatory strikes on military-industrial sites, Black Sea shipping, and key port facilities that handle military-related imports. The Russian military maintains it targets only infrastructure that supports Ukraine’s war effort.

President Vladimir Putin recently warned that Ukraine faces a “catastrophic scenario” after “opening Pandora’s box” with attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure. He said retaliatory strikes had hit Ukraine’s “most sensitive economic sectors,” including agricultural exports, while Kiev’s attacks had failed to change the course of the conflict. Citing Putin’s remarks, the Russian Defense Ministry vowed to continue retaliatory strikes, writing on Max: “There will always be a response.”

Ukrainian authorities have ordered the evacuation of a village that was heavily damaged by a powerful explosion on Tuesday, citing security concerns and an ongoing investigation.

The incident in Peschanka, in Dnepropetrovsk Region, 20 km northeast of the regional capital, Dnepr, resulted in an explosion that killed at least one woman and injured 11 other people. The blast also destroyed three houses and damaged 15 others, according to Aleksandr Ganzha, head of the region’s military-civilian administration.

A local news channel published a short video showing a large column of smoke rising in the distance before a massive explosion sent debris flying through the air.

Another news outlet posted two clips purportedly filmed at the scene, showing several damaged buildings. Smaller explosions typical for a fire at a munitions storage facility can be heard in the footage, followed by a big blast.

Municipal authorities said the evacuation of Peschanka was ordered because of “potential risks,” while criminal investigators and bomb disposal specialists worked at the scene. 

There have previously been incidents in which Ukrainian officials stored military munitions near residential areas. The practice endangers civilians and is considered a form of using noncombatants as human shields under international law.

The Ukrainian military distanced itself from the Vishnyovoe incident, while executives at a local defense plant were arrested on suspicion of negligence.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s unannounced trip to Moscow on Tuesday was for contact between the US and Russian security services, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

A US Air Force C-17A Globemaster III, identified by flight trackers as RCH4555, flew from Joint Base Andrews to Riga on Sunday evening before continuing on Tuesday to Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport. Later that day, a motorcade with US diplomatic plates was spotted in central Moscow.

CBS News first reported that Ratcliffe was in Moscow for meetings, citing sources familiar with the situation. It was also not clear whether the visit – which ultimately lasted roughly eight hours – involved any other senior US officials.

Asked by the Washington Post on Wednesday about the purpose of Ratcliffe’s trip, Peskov said it was for “contacts between security services” and declined to give further details. Separately, Peskov told TASS that “contacts with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin were not planned.”

Speaking to reporters later on Wednesday, Peskov said Putin had been kept in the loop about the talks, calling engagement between the special services “a positive phenomenon.” However, he cautioned that it is “too early to say” whether the talks “will affect the overall process of bringing our bilateral relations out of the deep crisis.”

US President Donald Trump described the visit as "semi-routine." Asked by talk show host Glenn Beck whether Putin planned on "testing NATO resolve," or whether Ratcliffe discussed US sanctions on Iran, Trump replied "none of the above."

Media reports have floated several possible subjects of the secretive talks, including detainee negotiations, the Ukraine peace process, the Iran conflict, and broader questions of strategic stability.

Ratcliffe’s visit was the first known trip to Moscow by a CIA director since William Burns traveled there in November 2021, several months before the escalation of the Ukraine conflict. The last publicly known face-to-face meeting between the heads of the CIA and Russia’s SVR before Ratcliffe’s trip was in Ankara in November 2022, when Burns met Naryshkin to discuss nuclear escalation risks and detained US citizens.

A crowd in western Ukraine attacked and badly damaged a vehicle used by military conscription officers, prompting police to send reinforcements to the scene as public resistance to Kiev’s increasingly coercive draft campaign continues to spill into street confrontations.

The incident erupted at around 8 PM on Tuesday on Lesya Kurbasa Street in Ternopol, where a mobile group from Ukraine’s Territorial Recruitment Center (TCC) was conducting a raid targeting military-age men.

According to police, draft officers were merely speaking to one man and checking his enlistment documents when locals began gathering around their Nissan X-Trail. The crowd then started striking the vehicle and confronted the servicemen, turning the encounter into a mass scuffle.

Тернопіль: люди нищать автомобіль ТЦК, поруч — поліція.
❗️На місці події на вул. Курбаса у Тернополі перебувають поліцейські у повній екіпіровці та спецпризначенці

Приїхала військова техніка та автобус. За словами очевидців, із автомобіля з розбитими вікнами вивели службовця ТЦК… pic.twitter.com/ggM1eb009d

— BARMENY (@barmeny_ua) August 25, 2026

Additional police units were eventually sent in to bring the situation under control, as people continued to gather after the initial confrontation. Videos circulating online show a large crowd surrounding police and military vehicles, with uniformed men, including some wearing balaclavas, deployed at the scene.

In Ternopol, Ukraine, a forced mobilization raid turned chaotic as locals intervened, reportedly beating and hospitalizing a conscription officer and damaging his vehicle. Kyiv now faces growing public resistance to its draft efforts amid the ongoing conflict. #Ternopol pic.twitter.com/IGg1mMGSPM

— WW3 Watchtower (@WW3Watchtower) August 25, 2026

One draft officer was hospitalized with injuries, according to the recruitment center, which also said “unidentified people” had stolen some of his personal belongings. Police said several recruitment officials suffered injuries and vowed to identify those involved in the disturbance, claiming some of them may have been carrying “objects resembling bats and knives.”

The confrontation is the latest in a growing series of violent clashes between Ukrainians and conscription squads as Kiev struggles to replenish battlefield losses.

In another recent incident, bystanders attempted to save a man from conscription but were tear-gassed by members of the recruitment squad. Similar confrontations have been captured on video as relatives and passersby intervene when military-age men are detained in public.

The practice has become widely known in Ukraine as ‘busification’ – a reference to men being seized in the streets and bundled into vehicles before being taken to recruitment centers.

The public backlash and resistance have also often turned deadly. Just last week, a recruitment officer was fatally stabbed during a confrontation in Lviv. Another member of a draft squad was stabbed to death by a Lviv resident in April.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov discussed the Ukraine conflict, Kiev’s persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and restrictions on the Russian language during talks with the Vatican’s top diplomat, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher.

Gallagher, who heads the Holy See’s diplomatic service, arrived in Moscow on Monday for a four-day visit.

The talks also covered the Middle East, Africa, and other global hotspots, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry. Moscow and the Vatican also found common ground on protecting traditional values and discussed emerging issues such as AI.

Here are the key takeaways from Lavrov’s remarks following the meeting:

Ukraine conflict

President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said Russia was forced to launch the military operation in Ukraine to protect civilians in the largely Russian-speaking Donbass. Moscow has also long described Kiev’s deepening military cooperation with NATO as a major threat to Russian national security.

Lavrov also praised the Vatican’s involvement in humanitarian efforts linked to the conflict, including work to reunite children separated from their families.

‘Blatant cruelty’

Lavrov said another wave of Ukrainian strikes on several southern Russian regions early Monday killed three minors and injured six others at a childcare center in Krasnodar.

“We will [also] never forget and will seek justice for [Ukrainian leader Vladimir] Zelensky’s bloody terror attack in Starobelsk,” Lavrov said, referring to a drone strike in May on a college dormitory in the Donbass city. The attack killed 21 people, most of them teenage girls.

Lavrov accused Kiev of waging an unprecedented campaign against the Russian language and Russian culture.

Ukraine is the only country to have outright banned Russian, he stated, arguing that no other state has gone as far in targeting Russian speakers.

“We discussed how Ukraine treats the Russian language, Russian education, Russian media, and Russian culture in general,” Lavrov said. He expressed hope that Vatican diplomats would raise the issue directly with Kiev.

Plight of Ukrainian Orthodox Church

Gallagher was also given a copy of its latest report on Kiev’s persecution of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The report details “unlawful actions” against the church, the clergy, and parishioners and has already been submitted to the UN and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Lavrov said.

Zelensky’s government has targeted the Ukrainian Orthodox Church for several years, accusing it of maintaining ties with Moscow despite the church declaring independence from the Russian Orthodox Church in 2022.

The crackdown has included monastery raids, property seizures, and dozens of criminal cases against clergy on collaboration charges. Kiev also supports the rival Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which the Russian Orthodox Church considers schismatic.

Moscow-Vatican ties

He praised the Holy See for favoring diplomacy and peaceful solutions and said Moscow remains ready to work closely with the Vatican on humanitarian issues.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said the two sides discussed defending traditional spiritual and moral values, family reunification, prisoner exchanges, and the protection of Christian communities around the world.

The Russian military has struck a launch site for Ukraine’s long-range FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles, the Defense Ministry said on Tuesday. Kiev has used Flamingos in attacks deep inside Russia.

The site was targeted with two Iskander cruise missiles and seven Geran-4 Seeker attack drones, according to the ministry.

“The target has been hit,” it said, adding that the strike triggered a major fire and “a massive fuel spill… burning over an area of approximately 40,000 square meters.”

The MOD also released drone footage purporting to show a massive fire engulfing the launch site after the attack.

In separate strikes, Russian forces also hit Ukrainian drone assembly and storage facilities, according to the ministry.

The Russian military has intensified long-range strikes on targets in Ukraine in response to repeated Ukrainian attacks on civilian and energy infrastructure inside Russia. Moscow has condemned Kiev’s drone and missile strikes, including attacks deep inside Russian territory, as acts of terrorism intended to compensate for Ukrainian setbacks on the battlefield.

Russia maintains that it does not deliberately target civilians and that its strikes are directed at military facilities and infrastructure supporting Ukrainian forces.

Fire Point has been promoted by Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky during trips to Western countries as the manufacturer of some of the nation’s “most successful” weapons. Over the weekend, a Russian volunteer air-defense unit shot down one of the supposedly state-of-the-art Flamingo missiles with machine-gun fire, according to Kursk Region Governor Aleksandr Khinshtein.

Fire Point has been linked to Zelensky’s former business partner, Timur Mindich, who has been dubbed ‘Zelensky’s wallet’ in Ukraine. Mindich fled the country last year after being named as a key suspect in a major corruption scandal.

Thirty-five years after Ukraine declared independence, the anniversary offers little cause for celebration from Moscow’s perspective. Russian officials and commentators argue that a country which inherited one of the Soviet Union’s strongest industrial bases has spent the ensuing decades squandering that legacy, surrendering its real sovereignty to the West, and building a national identity around hostility toward Russia and rejection of the two nations’ shared past.

RT gathered comments from Russian diplomats, politicians, and analysts on what – if anything – remains of that independence and where the country’s chosen path is ultimately leading.

Ukraine is marking the 35th anniversary of its so-called “independence” with great fanfare. But is there really anything to celebrate? Over the past three and a half decades, successive governments have run the country into the ground. Those who shouted the loudest about Ukraine’s independence and bright future have, whether knowingly or not, been the very ones destroying it. Its current dictator – the self-proclaimed “president of peace,” whose term has long since expired – has been particularly successful in this regard.

With the active involvement of the collective West – whose countries claim to embody “civilization” and “democracy” – Ukraine has been turned into a “Zelensky concentration camp.” All dissent and political opposition have been outlawed, while those brave enough to voice an alternative point of view are imprisoned without trial or due process – or physically eliminated. The unprecedented persecution of the canonical Orthodox Church has been accompanied by brutal attacks on clergy and parishioners. Meanwhile, history is being rewritten wholesale: the Soviet legacy is repudiated, while Hitler’s accomplices and collaborators – responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Russians, Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians during World War II – are glorified.

It is not only the Russian language that is under attack. Everything associated with our shared past is being systematically erased. The Kiev authorities display a truly primitive form of Russophobia and xenophobia – directed, in practice, even against their own citizens, many of whom are Russian not only by ancestry but also by cultural identity.

Perhaps nowhere is the wretchedness of Kiev’s rulers more evident than in one seemingly absurd example. Ukraine has even imposed sanctions on the Russian animated series Masha and the Bear, claiming that it promotes Russian militaristic narratives.

Having failed to achieve the desired results on the battlefield, the Kiev regime has now descended into outright terrorism against Russia’s civilian population. At the same time, Zelensky continues begging his Western patrons for more weapons and ammunition, which are then used to strike Russian cities, residential neighborhoods, and civilian infrastructure. The calculation is obvious: to frighten the public, sow chaos, and destabilize the situation inside Russia. Terrorism has become Kiev’s last resort in its attempt to reverse a situation that is increasingly turning against it.

Ukraine marks its 35th anniversary as more than just a failed state. It has become a country reduced to a single function, whose only reason for existing is to wage war against Russia. It is not fighting for its own interests, since everyone understands that Ukraine’s only chance of surviving in any form is to make peace with Russia immediately.

Whatever the ultimate outcome of the war, Ukraine has already perished in it. Its population has been cut in half, it has lost one-fifth of its territory, its industrial base and energy sector have been destroyed, and, most recently, its agricultural exports have been severed. Countries do not recover from something like this.

And all of it has been sacrificed for the interests of Ukraine’s Western masters. The country is now dying to give France, Britain, and Germany a chance to establish themselves in a post-American world. But Ukrainians spent 35 years consciously pursuing this path, and now they are getting exactly what they worked so hard to achieve.

Happy Dependence Day, neighbors.

Dmitry Rodionov, Director of the Center for Geopolitical Studies at the Institute for Intonational Development (IID):

The document that laid the foundation for Ukrainian “statehood” was adopted by the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR exactly 35 years ago.

Ukraine marked the occasion with its customary pomp, despite the ongoing hostilities. After all, the “dignity” and “unbreakable spirit” of the “Ukrainian nation” must be emphasized at every opportunity. Yet much of this pageantry stems from the architects of Ukrainian “statehood” recognizing just how artificial and fraudulent their creation really is – hence their determination to make it appear as real as possible.

The declaration of Ukrainian independence was riddled with legal inconsistencies. These became a kind of foundational birth defect that predetermined the future of the Ukrainian “state,” which ultimately turned into a textbook failed state. Its historic collapse was baked in from the beginning, but regrettably, the process has dragged on for years and continues to claim more and more lives.

There are more than enough such inconsistencies to declare Ukraine a nonexistent state and withdraw its recognition as an entity under international law. But what would be the point? Ukraine’s fate is now being decided on the battlefield. Kiev still has a chance to preserve at least some form of statehood, yet it stubbornly refuses to do so, clinging instead to historical phantoms such as the “1991 borders.”

History will therefore put everything in its proper place and bury the temporary geopolitical aberration known as “Ukraine” once and for all.

Anatoly Viktorov, Russian Ambassador to Israel:

On August 24, 1991, Ukraine adopted its Act of Declaration of Independence. The 35 years that have passed since then provide an opportunity to look back and acknowledge with regret that Ukraine cannot claim any genuine autonomy in either its foreign or domestic policy.

Western countries have completely stripped Ukraine of its international legal personality, placing it under direct foreign control and turning the country into a staging ground for threats to Russia’s security.

At outside instigation, with the active participation of the “collective West” and amid the passive indifference of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, a radical and destructive strain of Western Ukrainian nationalism took root and flourished in the country. The Kiev regime based its ideology on the misanthropic ideas of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), led by terrorist Stepan Bandera, who, in pursuit of his slogan “Ukraine for Ukrainians,” became an organizer of and accomplice to the murder of thousands of Poles, Russians, and Jews. The greeting now commonly used in Ukraine – ”Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!” – was introduced by Bandera’s followers. It is comparable to the Nazi salute “Heil Hitler! Sieg Heil!”

The attempts by the Kiev junta, which has seized control of Ukraine, to portray its confrontation with Russia as Ukraine’s “existential struggle” for independence bear no resemblance to reality.

Likewise, Ukrainian officials’ claims that Ukrainians and Israelis face some kind of common “axis of evil” amount to little more than verbal gymnastics.

Ukraine has now become one of the world’s leading exporters of instability. The trail of Kiev’s intelligence services can be traced across numerous global flash points, including in the Middle East. Ukrainian “operatives” are actively seeking to share their experience and are more than willing to profit from the misfortunes of others.

Russia’s achievement of all the objectives of its special military operation would not only serve our vital interests in security and the protection of human rights, but also help curb modern Ukraine’s unchecked and destructive influence on the very foundations of international relations.

Thirty-five years of independence have clearly demonstrated that Ukraine simply failed the test of statehood – something that was effectively handed to it when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Instead of making intelligent use of the enormous potential it inherited from the USSR and building upon it effectively, Ukraine chose simply to squander that legacy. Once it was gone, the country began playing a series of strange games in the hope of outsmarting everyone else.

At first, Ukraine tried to “have it both ways.” Later, following the Euromaidan, it attempted to tap into the European Union’s supposedly “bottomless barrel.” As a result, Ukrainian statehood now stands on the brink of collapse, with its industrial base destroyed, its demographic crisis reaching monstrous proportions, and vast territories lost.

The country’s political reputation has also been ruined beyond repair. In 1991, Ukraine was given enormous credit as a new and promising post-Soviet state. Today, however, the same West treats it with condescension, if not outright contempt, despite continuing to provide financial, military, and information support. Incidentally, it is only thanks to this assistance that Ukraine has not yet disintegrated completely and continues to exist in some form as a state.

Ukraine is being exploited in every conceivable way, while still being regarded as a kind of “territory of Untermenschen and Nazi collaborators.” This is largely the result of the Ukrainian elites becoming so consumed by what they believed were their clever political games that they ultimately gambled away their own country. The population bears responsibility as well: it allowed itself to be drawn into the elites’ schemes, failed to rein them in before it was too late, and then, in large numbers, supported the Maidan and began sliding down the slope toward rabid Russophobia and Nazism.

Ukraine was one of the wealthiest and most developed republics in the Soviet Union. Judging by its GDP and the revenues and expenditures it generated, it was broadly capable of supporting itself. It was a self-sufficient republic with advanced industry, agriculture, and a thriving tourism sector – the Black Sea resorts and everything associated with them.

This system began to fall apart after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The years of independence brought industrial decline, mass emigration, and deteriorating infrastructure – processes that began long before Russia launched its military operation.

Take Crimea, for example. During the peninsula’s years as part of Ukraine, its infrastructure and roads fell into an extreme state of disrepair, while Kiev invested virtually nothing in their development.

Independence therefore brought Ukraine no happiness whatsoever. The country has lost its land, its people, its natural resources, and much of what once made it prosperous and livable. The term “independence” is particularly inappropriate in Ukraine’s case.

It should also be remembered that an independent, territorially unified Ukraine stretching from the Carpathians to Donetsk never existed historically. Ukraine was once a relatively small territory centered somewhere around Kiev.

Before becoming part of the Russian Empire, Ukraine was dependent on other states, particularly Poland. After 1991, that dependence merely changed direction: Ukraine became dependent on Western countries – above all the United States, Poland, and Britain. It possesses neither political nor economic sovereignty, so there is no reason for it to celebrate Independence Day.

What Ukraine has today is pseudo-independence, artificially sustained by the United States, the European Union, and those who have aligned themselves with the pro-Western world in the belief that they can defeat Russia using the Ukrainian army. That will never happen. Russia has a unique history: even in the most difficult moments, it has always emerged victorious.

Ukraine today is a completely fabricated country with no centuries-old history of its own. There were never any “ancient Ukrs.” These stories were invented by Ukrainian “scholars” to create the myth of an age-old Ukrainian state. Ukraine’s territory became prosperous and developed as part of a greater Russia, thanks to the collective efforts of the entire country. But once its politicians embraced the “anti-Russia” formula, Ukraine began destroying itself, ultimately driving the country into effective bankruptcy and leaving it unable even to pay pensions.

Ukraine has no GDP, economy, or industry of its own. It does not even own its land, which has been sold off to European and pro-American companies. Even its president can no longer be called a president, because he is illegitimate – no elections were held. Ukraine today resembles a patient in intensive care connected to an artificial life-support system. Western countries are keeping it alive solely so that it can continue fighting Russia. Therefore, when we speak of Ukraine as an independent state, its independence is in fact largely notional.

Russia will prevail – we have no doubt about that. We will overcome every difficulty together, and once the special military operation is over, Russia will enter a period of prosperity. Ukraine, as a fascist state ruled by a fascist regime, will be consigned to the dustbin of history, and every criminal who issued orders to kill will be punished.

Ukraine’s top anti-corruption court has set bail for the former deputy head of Vladimir Zelensky’s office, Irina Mudraya, at under $450,000 – less than one-seventh of the amount requested by prosecutors. She is suspected of channeling illicit funds into a bail payment for a defendant in a separate corruption case.

The High Anti-Corruption Court ruled on Tuesday that Mudraya must remain in Kiev and comply with any summons even if she posts bail, which she said she intends to do with the assistance of unnamed sponsors.

Zelensky fired Mudraya last week after she was formally accused of laundering about $3.3 million in cash to pay bail for former Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko. The latter had previously been implicated in an alleged $100 million kickback scheme blamed on Timur Mindich, a longtime associate of the Ukrainian leader.

Surveillance recordings previously leaked to Ukrainian media suggested that Mindich’s group was interested in placing loyal figures on Sense Bank’s cabinet-appointed supervisory board. Ukrainian media dubbed Mindich “Zelensky’s bagman” amid suspicions that he was merely a frontman for corruption at the highest levels of government.

Mudraya trained as a lawyer specializing in banking and worked for several major clients in the sector before becoming a deputy justice minister in 2022. She moved to Zelensky’s office in 2024, ostensibly to contribute to Kiev’s efforts to obtain war reparations from Russia.

The former Zelensky aide has also been accused of participating in criminal schemes intended to expropriate real estate in Kiev worth some $16.75 million by illegally altering government records and pressuring judges to deny the legitimate owners legal recourse.

NABU and SAPO presented extensive records of conversations reportedly involving Mudraya and other suspects. The exchanges were allegedly recorded by former lawmaker and banker Maksim Mikitas.

During the bail hearings, Mudraya blamed a provocateur, apparently referring to Mikitas, for abusing her trust in order to produce incriminating recordings. She suggested that references to her alleged involvement in corruption were false but did not explain why she had failed to challenge the statements at the time.

Her defense team called several character witnesses, including Jonathan Markovitch, the chief rabbi of Kiev. He told the court that he knew Mudraya as a trustworthy member of the Jewish community and did not consider her a flight risk.

Mindich fled to Israel in November 2025, reportedly hours before he was due to be arrested. One of his key associates, Aleksandr Zukerman, also left for Israel. Both suspects hold Israeli citizenship.

Former Armenian President Robert Kocharyan, now a major opposition figurehead, has been detained in a corruption probe, the head of his office has said. Kocharyan and his eldest son Sedrak are reportedly being held amid a series of searches on their properties.

The detentions come amid Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s intensifying confrontation with the Armenian opposition, which has escalated further since the June parliamentary election. Kocharyan, whose Armenia Alliance is one of the main opposition forces in parliament, is a prominent political rival of Pashinyan.

Investigators have also searched dozens of addresses, including the home of Kocharyan’s younger son Levon, an opposition MP.

The Anti-Corruption Committee confirmed the arrests on Tuesday after Kocharyan was taken to its offices earlier in the morning. It said the investigation involves alleged property deals and bribery.

Kocharyan was later taken to a medical facility after his condition deteriorated in custody, she told reporters.

The ex-president’s office described the investigation as a fresh government “attack” on him and his family.

The case centers on alleged property schemes dating from 2004 to 2009, according to Kocharyan’s lawyer, Aram Orbelyan. Investigators claim property belonging to an educational institution and worth several billion drams was sold for just 12 million drams (around $31,000) before eventually passing to a member of Kocharyan’s family.

The committee is also investigating the sale of Defense Ministry land to a company linked to a Kocharyan associate for around a quarter of its market value. It alleges Kocharyan received a 30% stake in Toyota Yerevan for facilitating the deal, which was later transferred to Sedrak through allegedly fictitious transactions. Armenian media reported on Tuesday that tax authorities had sealed the Toyota dealership as part of searches targeting businesses linked to the family.

Armenia’s Central Electoral Commission authorized criminal proceedings against Kocharyan in June. The former president had earlier been barred from leaving the country without explanation, with his office accusing the authorities of attempting to fabricate a case against him.

The latest proceedings come after Kocharyan’s Armenia Alliance won 9.92% of the vote and 12 seats in the June 7 parliamentary election. Pashinyan’s ruling Civil Contract party secured 49.74% and 64 seats. Kocharyan subsequently accused Pashinyan of attempting to “usurp power” by declaring victory before the final results had been announced.

Pashinyan, who was first elected prime minister in 2018, has since declared the opposition parties that entered parliament illegitimate and threatened to strip them of their political status. He has also vowed to confiscate the assets of the three largest opposition parties’ leaders, saying they “should be left hungry.”

The escalating tensions between Kocharyan and the Armenian authorities come as Yerevan seeks closer ties with the EU while maintaining strong economic links with Russia. Kocharyan has criticized the policy as a “geopolitical balancing act,” arguing that Armenia’s rhetoric is directed toward the EU while its economy and business remain oriented toward Russia. President Vladimir Putin has said Yerevan will eventually have to choose between the EU and the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), while Armenian officials have insisted they have no intention of severing ties with Moscow.

Moscow has mocked a German journalist’s claim that a Russian missile strike near Kiev the day before German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul visited the Ukrainian capital amounted to a “clear affront” to Berlin.

The strike reportedly near Borispol airport – some 40 km to the east of central Kiev – destroyed dozens of trucks that had been converted into concealed launch platforms for long-range drones, as revealed by images of the aftermath released by the Ukrainian authorities, which were later scrubbed from official accounts.

When asked about Welt correspondent Christoph Wanner’s claim that the strike had crossed a certain diplomatic threshold, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Izvestia on Tuesday that Germany “gets insulted on a regular basis.”

What appears to be a truck coverted into a mobile launcher for Ukrainian FP-series one-way attack drones destroyed as a result of Russian strikes in Boryspil, Kyiv Oblast, earlier on Saturday. pic.twitter.com/wSIfrPZsjR

— Status-6 (War & Military News) (@Archer83Able) August 22, 2026

She pointed to several examples, including the US wiretapping of then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone, which was exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. She also cited the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which German investigators have linked to a Ukrainian diving team that may have acted on orders from Kiev.

Berlin endures diplomacy Ukraine-style

Ukraine’s diplomatic corps has for years used moral pressure to secure concessions from Western countries. Andrey Melnik, who served as Kiev’s ambassador to Germany from 2014 to 2022, became a prominent example of that approach by repeatedly lobbing insults at officials and politicians in his host country.

Among other things, Melnik called then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz an “offended liverwurst” and accused former Chancellor Angela Merkel of having a “borderline obsession” with Russia that was “almost perverse.” While serving in Berlin, he also branded retired German Gen. Erich Vad a “pathetic loser” and left-wing politician Klaus Ernst a “Marxist crank.”

Melnik was recalled and appointed ambassador to Brazil only after becoming embroiled in a major controversy in Germany over his defense of Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera. In an interview, he denied that Bandera and his movement were responsible for mass atrocities during World War II. Melnik currently serves as Ukraine’s envoy to the UN.

As recently as July 26 of this year, Ursula von der Leyen appeared full of confidence in victory during her visit to Kiev. She claimed the tide of the war had turned, that Ukraine had regained the initiative, and that Russia was on the defensive. The cause of this supposed turnaround, after four and a half years of a devastating war, is said to be a new ‘wonder weapon’: drones which, with the help of AI provided by Palantir and others, can carry the war deep into the Russian hinterland and precisely destroy oil refineries and other critical infrastructure there. The Russian economy – particularly the energy sector – is said to be severely weakened, and the war Russia started has now hit the country itself “with full force.”

On the battlefield too, according to these accounts, Ukraine has achieved considerable success with autonomously operating “killer drones.” These drones are said to be capable of automatically detecting and destroying all life at a distance of 30 kilometers on the front line. Technology, it is claimed, has thus more than compensated for the shortage of Ukrainian soldiers. Russian soldiers, by contrast, are now said paying a heavy price in lives without being able to demonstrate any military successes. This must be wearing down the aggressors and forcing Putin to acknowledge that he is going to lose the war.

These accounts were accompanied by media-effective drone attacks on Moscow and St Petersburg. No wonder, then, that the mainstream Western media have been full of victory reports over the past two months. Some even speculated that Russia could only hold out for another six months; a coup in Moscow was deemed possible. The strategically important Crimea was said to have been largely cut off from Russia by Ukrainian attacks. Putin would now be forced to the negotiating table as the loser – and on the terms of the European NATO states, which would amount to a Russian surrender. Their policy of providing massive military, political, and financial support to Ukraine, while refusing any talks until Russia was ‘brought to its knees’, seemed to have paid off.

It is striking that for the past week there have been hardly any reports on the course of the war, and the victory announcements have largely fallen silent. This is because doubts are mounting, both in the US and in Ukraine itself, about the success of the drone war deep within the Russian hinterland.

One need only heed the warnings of Valery Zaluzhny: the drone war is not very successful and far too expensive. As former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and current ambassador to the UK, he should know. According to the pro-Ukrainian war monitors ‘Dron-Bomber’, the Russians are now reportedly achieving a high shoot-down rate of Ukrainian drones. The dismissal of Ukrainian Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov is also likely to be linked to the looming failure of the drone war. Is the realization taking hold that this conflict cannot be won by drone warfare alone?

This means that developments on the battlefield remain decisive. However, there can be no question of a military stalemate claimed by the Western media. Even some Ukrainian Telegram channels admit, that “the pace of the Russian armed forces’ offensive is increasing.” Russian territorial gains are said to have occurred not only in Donbass but also around Kharkov and in Zaporozhye. This is still proceeding slowly, but it is a war of attrition whose primary aim is the destruction of the enemy’s armed forces. Could this objective be achieved by capturing the last remaining fortified defensive positions around the Donbass cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk?

Even more serious for Ukraine is the fact that its drone attacks have led to a hardening of the Russian position. The Russian leadership is now openly speaking of a war – including a war by NATO against Russia – and has significantly intensified the conflict. In the cruel logic of war, the destruction in Ukraine now far exceeds that in Russia. Another crucial factor is that Ukraine has no air defenses to speak of and is barely able to defend itself against massive Russian drone and missile attacks, while the intensity of Ukrainian attacks is reportedly waning.

The European NATO member states can do little to change this – they lack the military capabilities. Plans to station a ‘coalition of the willing’ in Poland or even to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine are completely unrealistic. The United States has recently announced that it will hand over leadership of the NATO center in Wiesbaden, which coordinates military support for Ukraine, entirely to European NATO member states. There is even talk of disbanding this NATO facility, which is crucial for Ukraine. Further, with the Iran war ranging, the US has hardly any weapons left to spare. There can therefore be little question of renewed US military involvement in the war in Ukraine.

Even before the latest escalation of the war, there were clear indications that the Ukrainian army was experiencing considerable difficulty. Upon taking office as defense minister in January, Fedorov spoke of around 200,000 deserters; other MPs cited significantly higher figures. Furthermore, some two million Ukrainian men are said to have evaded conscription orders. Whichever figures are accurate, they point to an alarming state of affairs within the Ukrainian armed forces – a situation that cannot be remedied either by forced recruitment on the streets or, as is now becoming apparent, by drones controlled by artificial intelligence. Similarly, a proposal now being discussed by the EU – to withdraw refugee status from Ukrainian men who have fled, in breach of international law, and to send them back to Ukraine to face the war – is further evidence of the hopelessness of the situation.

In May, Ukrainian Minister for Social Affairs Denis Ulyutin stated that the population in the government-controlled part of the country had shrunk from 52 million (at the time of independence in 1991) to possibly as low as 22 million. Of these, around 11 million are on social security, predominantly pensioners and war invalids. He expects the population to continue to fall after the war ends, as young men – once exempt from military service – would follow their families to the West. He does not expect any significant return of Ukrainians living abroad. Added to this demographic decline are increasing impoverishment, deep social inequalities, pervasive corruption, astronomical public debt and the country’s economic collapse.

Of course, such forecasts must be treated with caution. Yet the apparent failure of the drone war to bring about a strategic turning point should make it clear to European NATO states that, at the end of this escalation which was accompanied by such fanfare, Ukraine may not emerge as the victor, but is instead sliding into an increasingly devastated, depopulated, and bled-dry country. This should give us cause for great concern for the suffering people in Ukraine. European NATO-states must ask themselves whether a continuation of the war – which they have demanded and supported – can still be morally justified at all.

European NATO states are only harming Ukraine with their illusions of victory and wonder weapons, and must finally base their policy on a more realistic assessment of how the war is unfolding. It is therefore time to consider what would happen if the Ukrainian army’s resistance were to collapse one day and Russia were to capture Kharkov and Odessa as well. Any remnant of Ukraine that remained would scarcely be viable. It must be in the top interest not only of Ukraine but also of its Western backers to prevent such a scenario. But how?

Certainly, this cannot be prevented through direct military intervention by NATO. This would make the situation only much worse – also for Ukraine – as such a course of action would inevitably entail the risk of a nuclear war, which nobody can win. Diplomacy therefore remains the only realistic option. After almost five years of war, it is high time that the European NATO states actively sought dialogue with Russia. Germany – given its role as the strongest country in the EU, its geographical location, and its historical responsibility – should take the first step.

To move beyond the entrenched positions of both governments, an initial rapprochement through a civil‑society initiative involving respected and influential figures may be advisable. Such an approach could open a first, cautious pathway toward renewed understanding after years of silence and mutual demonization. Europe needs peace, and lasting peace can only be achieved with Russia, not against it.

There is not much time left for this.

This article was first published by Russia in Global Affairs and edited by the RT team

Ukraine has been transformed into a “Zelensky concentration camp” with Western assistance, Russia’s envoy to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, has said, accusing Kiev of suppressing dissent at home and increasingly resorting to attacks on civilians in Russia.

Nebenzia made the remarks at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday marking the 35th anniversary of Ukraine’s declaration of independence. The session was requested by the council’s five European members – Denmark, France, Greece, Latvia, and the UK – which reiterated their full support for Kiev.

The Russian diplomat questioned whether Ukraine has anything to celebrate, arguing that successive governments have run the country “into the ground” and that Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky accelerated the process.

“With the most active involvement of the countries of the collective West, which claim to be ‘civilized’ and ‘democratic,’ Ukraine has morphed into a ‘Zelensky concentration camp,’ where any dissent or opposition is completely prohibited and those who find the courage to voice an alternative point of view are thrown behind bars without trial or due process, or physically eliminated,” he said.

Amid a growing crackdown on dissent and a deteriorating battlefield situation, Kiev has now slipped into “outright terror against Russia’s civilian population,” Nebenzia said.

“Terror has become the last resort for Kiev in its attempt to reverse the situation that is not currently in its favor,” he added. “At the same time, Zelensky continues to beg his Western patrons for new shipments of weapons and ammunition, which are then used to hit Russian cities, residential areas, and civilian infrastructure.”

Nebenzia said Russia retains the battlefield initiative and rejected calls for a temporary ceasefire that would give Kiev time to regroup and its Western sponsors time to rearm it. He warned that there would be no meaningful diplomatic process as long as Russia is confronted with ultimatums and threats while the reality on the ground is ignored.

The head of the Vatican’s diplomatic service, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, is visiting Moscow from August 24-28. 

This visit is part of the Holy See’s diplomatic efforts on humanitarian issues and the discussion of ways to resolve the Ukraine conflict. This is reflected in the fact that the Vatican, together with the authorities of several states, including Bulgaria, Hungary, and Italy recently contributed to keeping Patriarch Kirill off the latest EU sanctions list.

The visit is clearly necessary to revitalize communication between the Vatican and Moscow, as the formal diplomatic channels – though fully operational – have recently lost the historical depth and back-channel confidentiality previously maintained through the Russian Orthodox Church’s external relations. Below, we examine the true operational motives behind the Holy See’s urgent mission within the broader context of its geopolitical and financial survival in Central and Eastern Europe.   

American Pope

Pope Leo XIV has been in power for a year, allowing us to draw certain conclusions about his leadership style. We see a tough, sovereign politician who skillfully uses conservative symbols to promote the Church’s internal stability, but on the world stage, he advocates a center-left, global agenda that criticizes both rigid state borders and the power of algorithms. 

For example, the Vatican has returned to the use of traditional ornate vestments, which had been shelved under Francis XII. The public appearance was also received extremely favorably by conservative critics of the use of 'gender ideology' in schools and the promotion of non-traditional lifestyles. At the same time, the Pope is promoting ideas for decentralizing Vatican authority and proposing synodal reform, the essence of which is aimed at collegial governance of the Church, where decisions are made collectively by a large number of bishops and laypeople. 

Importantly, his statements provoked a counterattack from Silicon Valley leaders; Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel were among those who reacted negatively.

Overall, this paints him as a representative of the systemic wing of the Catholic Church – a supranational sovereign structure that thinks in terms of centuries, not electoral cycles. His accession to the throne signaled the Roman Curia’s intention to establish a strict leader from the New World, free from parochial European caste disputes.

The Institute for the Works of Religion, aka the Vatican Bank: Personnel Changes and Conservatism

It’s logical that Pope Leo XIV began his sovereign expansion on the throne not with abstract peace declarations, but with an immediate, surgical reformatting of the Holy See’s entire financial vertical. His very first significant document was the Apostolic Letter ‘Coniuncta Cura’ (Joint Care), which dealt a crushing blow to the former monopoly over the Institute for the Affairs of Religion (IOR). The Pontiff officially rescinded Francis’s harsh decree, which had previously forcibly locked 100% of the liquidity of all Vatican departments and orders within the Vatican Bank. 

Why did Leo XIV make this sensitive issue his very first priority? The answer is cynical: the previous centralization of accounts in the IOR had completely paralyzed the Vatican’s operational para-diplomacy, and most importantly, blocked the influx of capital from the New World. Conservative US Catholic foundations and Wall Street heavyweights – with Cardinal Timothy Dolan serving as the bridge – were ready to resume multi-billion-dollar donations but flatly refused to place them under the total control of the old IOR bureaucracy.

With the issuance of the ‘Coniuncta cura’ decree, Leo XIV restored the right of dicasteries and external bodies to legally move and place assets in major international commercial banks and foreign investment platforms. This opened legal channels for the influx of billions from conservative right-wing American circles, while simultaneously facilitating the transit of shadow funds belonging to the right-wing elites of the Visegrád Group (Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia) – elites seeking to safeguard their reserves from the fiscal coercion of Brussels and the ECB.

The mechanism of this combination is simple: as long as the Vatican is outside the official peace track, US financial authorities retain leverage over IOR transactions. But as soon as the Vatican is officially recognized by Moscow and Washington as an international arbiter (and the Pontiff has repeatedly stated that the Vatican is ready to play such a role) its bank automatically receives the status of peace process infrastructure. Imposing sanctions or auditing the Holy See’s accounts will become politically impossible, as this would be interpreted as a deliberate disruption of negotiations with Russia. Mediation in Ukraine is a legal shield shielding the Vatican’s assets from American and European regulators.

Moreover, the influx of hundreds of millions of dollars from conservative New World billionaires demands reciprocal political steps from the Pope. Ending the conflict in Ukraine and stabilizing European security are among the vital interests of major Western capital, which is suffering from economic instability and inflation. By becoming a participant in the peace settlement, Leo XIV is proving to his American donors that the Vatican is not just a 'church', but a highly effective instrument of global influence, in which it is profitable to invest money.

At the same time, Leo XIV’s policy is more subtle than it seems. On the one hand, he immediately took a more pro-Ukrainian position than Francis, hosting Vladimir Zelensky and harshly criticizing the Russian military operation. On the other hand, he pragmatically leaves the door open to Moscow, engaging in dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin on humanitarian issues (for example, the return of civilians and children). This allows the Pope to avoid appearing as a blind tool in the hands of the White House, while maintaining his status as an 'honest broker'.

Why does the Vatican need Ukraine?

Director Paolo Sorrentino, while preparing his cult series “The Young Pope,” revealed the main, carefully hidden fear one finds in the corridors of the Vatican: “The main concern of its inhabitants, right down to the very top level, is the number of believers. How many believers do we have? How many are we losing? How many can we bring back?” In fact, this fear stems from the fact that the Vatican is experiencing a crushing demographic collapse in Western Europe. Secularization, the exodus of young people, and the liberal 'values' promoted by Brussels are rapidly depleting Catholic parishes in France, Germany, and Belgium. 

Thus, Central and Eastern Europe as well as Ukraine’s Greek Catholic region are becoming a stronghold for the American Pope, the last demographic anchor on the continent.  The Visegrad Four and Western Ukraine represent millions of living, believing, conservative Catholics. Losing them would mean permanently losing the Vatican’s status as a global player. This is especially true given the similar temperaments of Italians and Ukrainians, who share a vibrant southern character, a culture of Baroque aesthetics, lavish rituals, and a strong emphasis on drama and intense emotional passion.

The historical syntax of the Vatican’s interest in Central and Eastern Europe is rooted in the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the outcome of which – the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire, the largest Catholic empire in human history, and the disintegration of the macro-region into small nation-states – is traditionally considered by the Vatican to be a catastrophic geopolitical mistake. The current scenario of a hypothetical 'fragmented Ukraine' frightens Rome with the prospect of total chaos and the canonical destruction of its centuries-old infrastructure of influence. 

Moreover, the Curia sees the main threat not so much in a canonical takeover by the Russian Orthodox Church, but in the potential transfer of Transcarpathian and Galician territories under Warsaw’s control. If such a scenario materializes, the aggressive Polish Roman Catholic Church will inevitably eliminate the autonomy of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, forcibly converting millions of believers to the Latin Rite and forever cutting off the Vatican’s unique gateway to the 'Eastern Rite' for soft expansion into the Orthodox world.

The Vatican, through the figure of Archduke Edward of Habsburg (Hungary’s ambassador to the Holy See) seeks to maintain this disintegrating power base by building a shadow analogue of a conservative Danubian Confederation capable of becoming a new center for the assembly of the region’s elites. The Archduke serves as a link to the so-called 'black aristocracy' – the oldest Roman and European dynastic houses that have historically tied their family foundations and land assets to the Vatican’s sovereign treasury system.

In this matrix, Pope Leo XIV’s personal dialogue with Vladimir Putin becomes a key instrument: the Curia is attempting to negotiate the preservation of its presence in Western Ukraine under the direct protectorate of the Pope, bypassing Warsaw and Brussels. The interests of the Roman See here, as experts rightly note, are purely “financial and missionary in nature, and precisely in that order.” 

The Vatican is proposing to Moscow to transform the IOR Bank into an external, secure gateway for Russia’s cross-border transactions with conservative Europe in exchange for security guarantees for its flock. Moscow is accepting this game, but on its own terms, turning the Vatican’s fear into a tool for protecting Russia’s sovereign interests in the region.

The main hidden marker of the depth of informal ties between the Holy See and Moscow remains an unprecedented fact: Patriarch Kirill has never been included in the official sanctions list of the European Union. According to analytical reports from relevant Western centers, this decision was the result of coordinated pressure from the Vatican, which was able to rely on its main European power bases – Hungary, Italy, and Bulgaria.

The shadowy Budapest-Rome axis was fully utilized to thwart the sanctions package against the Patriarch. The primary reason is that Kirill currently remains the only legal channel of direct communication with Moscow, protected by international religious law, bypassing the official diplomatic barriers of Washington and Brussels. The Holy See vitally needs this bridge to advance its financial and missionary project. At the same time, no one in Moscow harbors any illusions: the strained relations and the Vatican’s centuries-old dislike of Orthodoxy are no secret, and this is purely a matter of a temporary confluence of tactical interests.

However, by the time the Vatican representatives visit Russia later in August, the previous architecture of contacts between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic leadership will have been completely abandoned. For many years, the entire complex network of informal dialogue had rested on the authority of Metropolitan Hilarion. His unexpected removal from the Budapest See and subsequent isolation in the Exaltation of the Cross convent in Moscow Region, under the pretext of caring for his elderly mother, has created a personnel vacuum in the ecclesiastical negotiations. Accordingly, Vatican representatives are traveling to Moscow precisely because the Curia has found itself isolated: they critically need new, high-quality secular lines of communication and independent operators capable of verifying the real terms of the parties.

The subtle threat of the Vatican’s scheme is that the resources offered by the papacy are de facto tied to conservative circles within the American 'deep state'. At the same time, the Holy See is attempting to legitimize a permanent ideological foothold and cordon sanitaire in the 'fragments of Ukraine' under the shadowy control of representatives of the European 'black aristocracy'. Given that the Russian Orthodox Church lacks sufficient room to maneuver under severe sanctions pressure, Rome is convinced that Moscow will lose this order’s bargaining game through subtle psychological maneuvering due to the lack of personnel figures of comparable intellectual caliber.

Russian-Israeli historian Artyom Kirpichenok has been subjected to brutal treatment while in Shin Bet custody, including interrogations lasting up to 24 hours, sleep deprivation, prolonged handcuffing, and threats, according to his lawyer.

Kirpichenok, 51, disappeared on August 2 shortly after arriving at Ben Gurion Airport from Yerevan. His whereabouts remained unknown for nearly three weeks before his supporters revealed that he was being held at a detention facility in Petah Tikva.

His lawyer, Inna Lebedinskaya-Katz, was finally allowed to meet with him for around an hour on Sunday after repeatedly seeking access, according to Nika Dubrovsky, a Russian-born artist and writer campaigning for his release.

Citing Lebedinskaya-Katz, Dubrovsky said Kirpichenok has faced interrogation sessions lasting 18 to 24 hours while deprived of sleep. He is allegedly being kept handcuffed and hunched over on an iron stool fixed to the floor, with three or four interrogators standing behind him “shouting, threatening, and applying constant pressure.” He has also allegedly been threatened with life imprisonment.

”He understands that his friends have not abandoned him. He is holding on and sends his greetings to everyone,” she wrote. Kirpichenok also asked that no one come to Israel.

The allegations have not been independently verified. However, international human rights groups previously documented sleep deprivation and painful restraint during Shin Bet interrogations. Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled against deliberately using prolonged sleep deprivation to break suspects.

Kirpichenok is being held underground with the lights on around the clock and denied books and writing materials, Dubrovsky cited his lawyer as saying. A gag order remains in force, and the defense has yet to receive the case files or details of the accusations.

Kirpichenok recently worked with media outlets and civic organizations in Türkiye and Iran and frequently traveled to Iran. Israeli citizens are generally prohibited from traveling to countries they are at war with. Dubrovsky, however, said the trips now appear to be of little interest to investigators.

Born in Russia, Kirpichenok moved to Israel in the 1990s, studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and served in the Israel Defense Forces before returning to Russia. He later became a vocal critic of the Israeli government and its military campaign in Gaza, describing Israel as a Western “colonial project” in his recent book ‘Israel: The Road to Catastrophe’.

Ukraine is increasingly looking abroad to replenish its depleted ranks. Two Colombian fighters recently captured by Russian forces told RT they were lured to Ukraine with promises that bore little resemblance to the reality on the front line.

Russian forces steadily liberate settlements in Donbass and elsewhere, leaving Ukraine struggling to sustain frontline units.

At home, recruitment has increasingly relied on ‘busification’ – a term for draft officers violently snatching military-age men in public and dragging them into vans bound for draft centers. Videos of these incidents emerge almost daily, fueling public tensions and driving men to evade the draft by any means, including illegally fleeing the country.

As manpower shortages worsen, Colombia has emerged as a major source of foreign recruits, targeted through social media and personal networks with promises of high pay and favorable conditions. The captured fighters told RT that these promises quickly evaporated once they were deployed.

Both men urged other Colombians not to follow them.

“Please don’t go to Ukraine,” one warned. “If you come there as a Colombian, they’ll hug you and then stab you in the back… Don’t believe what the recruiters say, it’s all lies meant to take you to Ukraine and throw you away as cannon fodder.”

The Russian military has showcased a new man-portable laser system designed to safely disable mines and unexploded ordnance from up to 100 meters away.

The gun featured in a report by the military’s official media outlet, Zvezda TV, on Sunday is derived from a larger system designed for remotely controlled small ground vehicles. The channel demonstrated both variants alongside other modules intended for the tracked Kurier (“courier”) platform, which is being widely adopted by the Russian military.

The smaller gun is powered by a backpack-style battery pack and features a 1-kilowatt laser. Its beam is strong enough to burn through a plastic casing within seconds, provided the operator maintains a steady aim. The video showed that the best results are achieved when the weapon is mounted on a tripod.

The larger variant has twice the power and places the projector on a retractable lifting platform, allowing the laser to be fired from behind cover. Its greater stability and beam strength give it a range of up to 500 meters, according to the developer. Both the rover-mounted module and the man-portable gun have entered serial production.

The Zvezda report also demonstrated other modules developed for the Kurier platform, including some designed by a frontline engineering unit involved in the Ukraine conflict. One of its creations is fitted with a drill and is used to prepare holes for poles before anti-drone nets are installed over roads in the battle zone.

Both Russia and Ukraine are developing new uses for remotely operated vehicles, which are increasingly being deployed for combat, resupply, medical evacuation, and military engineering missions.

The European Commission has approved €6.1 billion ($7.1 billion) in new weapons purchases for Ukraine, the commission said on Monday. The tranche is part of a €90 billion loan allocated by Brussels for budgetary and military aid to Kiev earlier this year.

Facing mounting battlefield pressure, Kiev is increasingly pushing for faster aid disbursements as it relies heavily on foreign funding to plug a widening budget gap and sustain its war effort against Russia. Moscow has argued that Western military aid to Ukraine, which comes at the expense of ordinary taxpayers, only serves to prolong the conflict.

In April, the EU approved a €90 billion ($105 billion) emergency loan for Ukraine that allocates €30 billion for budget support and €60 billion for military aid in 2026-2027. The loan, backed by joint EU borrowing and repayable only if Kiev receives war reparations from Russia, was pushed through after plans to seize Russian sovereign assets frozen in the West failed. Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia have secured exemptions from the scheme.

The latest tranche came on top of €16 billion of previously approved procurement plans, of which €8.35 billion has already been transferred to Kiev. The €6.1 billion disbursement is expected to finance air and missile defense systems, missiles, ammunition, and radars, according to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The EU’s financial and military aid to Ukraine has drawn criticism from current and former officials in and outside the bloc. Earlier this month, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Nikolay Azarov said the West will never recover its loans to Kiev.

German MEP Fabio De Masi warned that the funds will enrich “corrupt oligarchs.” Former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl told RT earlier this year that the EU is shifting from its traditional focus on trade toward an increasingly geopolitical and defense-oriented agenda.

In July, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Kiev and the “so-called European pseudo-peacekeepers” of seeking to prolong the conflict. He said their goal is “not peace, but the continuation of the war with Russia to the last Ukrainian.”

Russia has successfully placed a new military spacecraft into orbit aboard a Soyuz-2.1b rocket launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Arkhangelsk Region, the Defense Ministry has said. The type and specific mission of the spacecraft have not been disclosed.

A combat crew of the Russian Space Forces launched the medium-class rocket at 5:40 AM Moscow time on Monday. The spacecraft was sent up “in the interests of the Russian Defense Ministry,” according to an official statement.

The spacecraft reached its designated orbit and was taken under the control of ground-based Space Forces systems.

“Stable telemetry communication has been established and maintained with the spacecraft, its onboard systems are functioning normally,” the ministry said. The flight and deployment proceeded as planned.

After the launch, the Soyuz-2.1b and its payload were tracked by the ground-based automated control complex of the German Titov Main Test Space Center, which is responsible for controlling and monitoring Russian military spacecraft.

The Soyuz-2.1b is a disposable three-stage medium-lift launch vehicle that has frequently been used to deploy both military and civilian satellites.

The mission comes after several military launches from Plesetsk earlier this year. On April 17, a Soyuz-2.1b carried several spacecraft into orbit for the Defense Ministry. Six days later, an Angara-1.2 light rocket was launched from the cosmodrome with military satellites.

Plesetsk is Russia’s northernmost major launch facility. Its high latitude makes it suited to place spacecraft into polar orbits, which are widely used for Earth observation and military missions. The facility began as a Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile base before being converted for space launches in the 1960s.

Repeated claims that Ukraine is about to turn the tide against Russia and achieve a military victory are like being trapped in a time loop, a former White House official has told RT.

The latest wave of media reports predicting a breakthrough in Kiev’s military campaign came on the heels of an escalation in Ukrainian long-range drone strikes on Russian oil refineries, retail warehouses, and cargo ships. Ukrainian officials claimed the attacks would pressure Moscow into accepting Kiev’s terms for a peace settlement.

Russia instead intensified its own strikes, virtually paralyzing crucial Ukrainian trade through Black Sea ports and inflicting other damage. On Sunday, President Vladimir Putin said Kiev was the one that “opened Pandora’s box.”

“I feel like the old American movie ‘Groundhog Day’,” conservative media host Steve Gill, who served in the office of the US Trade Representative under Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, told RT.

“How many times do we have to hear, ‘oh, it’s the spring offensive, the fall offensive, the summer offensive, the winter offensive that is going to win things for Ukraine? And it is the same cycle of promise and despair, promise and failure that, again, has done nothing but cost the lives of both Russian and Ukrainian men and increasingly women,” he added.

Gill also suggested that Ukrainians who want to end the hostilities are in no position to do so because the country does not determine its own foreign policy.

“The ones who are making the decisions in Western Europe – and some in the United States, some who have the ear of President [Donald] Trump – are feeding misinformation and disinformation both through media and through the policymakers that is continuing the violence, continuing the death, and continuing this folly of Ukraine thinking that they’re somehow winning on the battlefield when nothing could be further from the truth,” he explained.

Watch the full interview.

A Ukrainian monk has been stabbed to death and two other people are seriously wounded in an attack at a monastery in the Ukrainian-controlled northern part of the Donetsk People’s Republic, near the frontline of the conflict with Russia.

The deadly assault by a group of unidentified perpetrators occurred on Sunday morning near a 17th-century church at the Svyatogorsk Lavra. The monastery is run by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which has faced a sweeping government crackdown in recent years.

The Svyatogorsk monastery identified the slain monk as Barsanuphius. The two surviving victims were named as junior monk Gregory and a refugee, Andrey Kirienko.

Gregory managed to reach the monks’ dormitory and alert others to the attack. Both survivors suffered punctured lungs and severe blood loss and were rushed to the hospital, the monastery said.

Ukrainian police did not immediately comment on the criminal investigation into the attack. Unconfirmed reports suggest that Ukrainian troops may have been responsible.

The government of Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has labeled the UOC, which has historical ties to the Russian Orthodox Church, a national security threat. The authorities have charged several senior clergy members with subversive activities and raided major cathedrals and monasteries in search of evidence of alleged anti-Ukrainian conduct.

Kiev supports the rival Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which was established ahead of the 2019 presidential campaign in a move that caused a major schism in the Orthodox world. The organization has sought to take control of UOC property across the country.

The Svyatogorsk monastery traces its recorded history to at least the 16th century, when it was mentioned in a German diplomat’s account of his travels. It may, however, have been founded as early as the ninth century by refugees from Byzantium. The monastery was shut down twice, first in 1787 and later by the Bolsheviks, before being reinstated in 2000.

The deadly attack coincided with a Ukrainian drone strike on the Epiphany Cathedral in Gorlovka, in the Russian-controlled part of Donbass. It reportedly occurred during Sunday services and injured local bishop Metropolitan Mitrofan and three other people.

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has condemned a Ukrainian drone strike on a church during a service in Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic.

The attack occurred on Sunday at the Epiphany Cathedral in Gorlovka, according to a statement on the Moscow Patriarchate’s website.

Metropolitan Mitrofan of Gorlovka and Slavyansk was wounded and treated at the hospital, the local diocese said. Protodeacon Roman Stepin and two volunteers with the Patriarchal Humanitarian Mission suffered minor injuries.

“An enemy drone attacked people during prayer, once again demonstrating the lack of principle and flagrant cynicism of those who directed this criminal attack,” Kirill said.

Ukraine has intensified its deep-strike campaign in Russia in recent months amid battlefield setbacks. Moscow has described the strikes as acts of terrorism, pointing to drones and missiles hitting apartment blocks and other civilian targets.

Russia has said it is retaliating with missile and drone strikes against Ukrainian weapons factories, logistics centers, and infrastructure supporting the military.

Last week, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Russia will “respond proportionately to emerging threats” from Ukraine.

The death toll in the Ukrainian drone strike on a childcare center in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar on Monday has risen to four, Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova reported on Wednesday.

The victims were aged 13-16, according to the official. Six remain in the hospital, she said.

Earlier, regional Governor Veniamin Kondratyev reported that two adults were also hospitalized following what he described as “a massive attack by enemy drones” on the city near the Black Sea coast. He said apartment blocks were also hit and a warehouse caught fire.

“This is how Zelensky’s regime, and he himself, treats children,” Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said of the attack, condemning Kiev’s “sophisticated murders of children of all ages, from infants to students.”

Ukrainian drones also targeted an unspecified industrial site in Nevinnomyssk in neighboring Stavropol Region, Governor Vladimir Vladimirov said.

Two civilians were injured in strikes the previous day in Belgorod Region, which borders Ukraine, according to the regional emergency services.

Ukraine has stepped up its deep-strike campaign in recent months, targeting energy sites, ports, and warehouses. In many cases, drones have also hit civilian targets, including apartment blocks and fuel trucks on highways.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that the strikes will not destroy the country’s economy nor dampen public morale, but will have “exactly the opposite effect.”

A small Russian mobile air defense unit consisting of volunteers has successfully shot down a Ukrainian missile Kiev touted as its “most successful” weapon by firing at it with a machine gun, according to Kursk Region Governor Aleksandr Khinshtein.

The intercept occurred during a Ukrainian drone and missile attack overnight on Sunday. According to Khinshtein, the BARS-Kursk brigade, made up predominantly of residents of the border region, received an alert about an incoming strike. Minutes later, one of its mobile air defense units detected a “huge” missile traveling at 500 kilometers per hour at an altitude of less than 50 meters. The soldiers managed to hit the missile, forcing it to lose altitude and eventually fall into a wooded area.

A video of the intercept recorded by BARS-Kursk soldiers and published by Khinshtein shows the unit detecting the projectile flying at a low altitude and shooting at it. The missile is then shown crashing into the ground in a massive fiery blast. The second part of the video shows soldiers examining the wreckage at the crash site.

“Our volunteers did not just shoot down a missile. They prevented a catastrophe and saved human lives,” the governor said, vowing to recommend the air defense unit servicemen for a decoration. He also called it an example “of what a Russian solider is capable of.”

The Ukrainian military has routinely targeted civilian and energy infrastructure in drone and missile strikes deep into Russian territory. Moscow has condemned the Ukrainian strikes on civilian infrastructure and residential areas as terrorist attacks, adding that they are apparently intended to compensate for Kiev’s setbacks on the battlefield, where Russian forces continue their steady advance.

Unveiled in 2025, the FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile has been touted by Kiev as a state-of-the-art weapon. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky described it last year as “by far the most successful missile in Ukraine’s arsenal.”

The missile is produced by Fire Point – a Ukrainian defense contractor personally promoted by Zelensky during his trips to Western nations.

The company was later revealed to be de facto owned by the Ukrainian leader’s longtime former business partner, Timur Mindich, known as “Zelensky’s wallet” in Kiev. The businessman fled Ukraine last year after a major corruption scandal in which he was named as one of the primary suspects.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s position on the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage is motivated by the fact that Warsaw lost out economically on the project, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with Vesti published on Sunday.

The statement came just days after Tusk said that those responsible for the September 2022 blasts should not be ashamed, but rather those who built the pipelines. Warsaw had long opposed the pipelines’ construction over concerns about Europe’s dependence on Russian energy, he told reporters on Thursday.

According to Putin, the Polish prime minister’s “motives are very simple – economic expediency.”

The initial plan for the Nord Stream project envisioned one of the pipelines going through Poland, he said. However, the decision was ultimately made to “to run the second line along the bottom of the Baltic Sea in order to minimize risks,” he added.

“Partly because it would lose certain economic advantages for Poland as a transit country. Secondly, Poland would lose revenue from the transit of our hydrocarbons. This position is absolutely nothing new,” he said.

Tusk’s statement came a day after a Ukrainian national suspected of taking part in the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines was arrested in Croatia on a European warrant.

Moscow has long dismissed the theory as fantasy, arguing that the operation could not have been carried out in NATO-controlled waters without state backing.

In a 2024 interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson, Putin hinted that the blasts were likely orchestrated by the CIA.

By 1943, World War II had turned decisively in the Allies’ favor. At Stalingrad, the Russians destroyed the Wehrmacht’s largest field formation, the Sixth Army. In the Pacific, the Americans and their allies won a hard-fought victory over the Japanese at Guadalcanal. In North Africa, Allied forces trapped the German Afrika Korps and its Italian partners and forced them to surrender. And back in Russia, the Red Army won the decisive Battle of Kursk.

Beating the enemy with a shovel

In the winter of 1942-43, riding the momentum of their triumph at Stalingrad, Soviet forces launched a series of operations across the southern sector of their enormous front. Most met with at least some success. But in March, Field Marshal Erich von Manstein mounted a surprise counteroffensive that drove the Red Army’s battle-weary forces back from Kharkov and Belgorod.

Elsewhere, however, victory at Voronezh allowed the Russians to break through quickly to Kursk, a major transportation hub in central Russia. The result was a bulge in the front known in the West as the Kursk salient and in Russian as the Kurskaya Duga, or Kursk Arc. It projected roughly 150 kilometers westward, measured about 200 kilometers across at its base, and had Kursk at its center. To the north, it was flanked by the German-held Orel salient, which was roughly the same size. To the south, the German line formed a right angle with Belgorod at its corner.

The coming operation was code-named Citadel. German forces would strike along converging axes at the base of the Kursk salient, then surge into the rear of the Soviet armies deployed inside it.

At first, the Germans did not intend to wait long. They planned to launch the offensive in the spring of 1943. Then other considerations intervened. In their memoirs, German generals usually had an elegant way of assigning responsibility for controversial decisions to a dead Führer who could no longer answer back. In reality, however, the man who first called for postponing the attack at Kursk was Walter Model, commander of the German forces north of the salient.

That winter, Model had “suffered a victory” near the town of Rzhev. The Germans had repelled a Soviet offensive there, but their own losses were too heavy to replace quickly. Now Model, who was supposed to attack the Kursk Arc from the north, wanted more time to prepare and as many reinforcements as he could get. Some other generals argued that the operation should be canceled altogether. Yet the Germans had no alternative plan for the summer of 1943. Trying to hold the entire front through passive defense was a dead end. Sooner or later, the Russians would find a weak spot. In war, it is critical to impose your will on the enemy and make him fight where it suits you.

In the end, the plan was simply revised to accommodate Model’s demands. The delay also gave the Germans time to stockpile ammunition and equip their forces with the latest armored vehicles. The most famous were the heavy Tiger tank, the medium Panther, and the Ferdinand tank destroyer. But the new arsenal included several other models as well, including such exotic machines as the Borgward demolition carrier.

The Germans’ problem was that the Soviets had not been sitting still, meekly awaiting their fate. The plan was too obvious, and intelligence reports confirmed what Soviet commanders had already suspected. As early as April, Marshal Georgy Zhukov outlined the enemy’s most likely course of action. Zhukov was no crystal-ball prophet. All it took to arrive at the broad conclusion was a look at the map and a basic understanding of the enemy’s condition.

Curiously, the Russians received independent confirmation of the coming offensive from intelligence agents operating among their own allies. Kim Philby and John Cairncross of the famous Cambridge spy ring sent Moscow a German radio message intercepted by the British that contained the plan for the operation. Some Soviet commanders favored a preemptive strike. Zhukov and Chief of the General Staff Alexander Vasilevsky, however, decided it would be far wiser to absorb and extinguish the force of the German blow, since they already knew where it would fall.

The Red Army spent the remaining time building defenses around Kursk.

Surrendering the initiative to the enemy is normally extremely risky, but in this case the Russians had a reasonably good idea of where the attack would come. Soviet industry, now operating at full capacity, was supplying the troops with enormous quantities of weapons and materiel. There were also enough men under arms to create not only formidable defensive lines, but a safety cushion in the form of massive reserves.

While troops facing the German armored fists dug into the earth, Soviet armies were preparing offensives of their own near Orel, north of the Kursk Arc, and in the Donbass to the south. At the decisive moment, those attacks were supposed to force the Germans to abandon their own operations and start plugging holes elsewhere. The Soviet offensives were therefore inseparably linked to the defense of Kursk.

The Russians had to hold out until the Germans were fully committed and had burned through men, machines, supplies, and ammunition. Then the Red Army would strike on other sectors. The offensives near Orel and in the Donbass were expected to force the Germans to halt their attacks around Kursk, while the stubborn defense of the salient would wear them down so badly that they could not stop the new Soviet advances.

In early July, the agonizing wait came to an end.

The North: Ponyri Station and Olkhovatka

Konstantin Rokossovsky commanded the front defending the approaches north of Kursk. He received his final warning from the Stavka on July 2. On the night of July 4-5, a clash erupted in no-man’s-land when Soviet scouts ran into a group of German combat engineers clearing lanes through the minefields. Several Germans were killed and one was captured. The prisoner quickly told his interrogators everything he knew. Acting on his account, Rokossovsky immediately ordered his artillery to begin “counterpreparation” – a preemptive strike against the enemy’s gun batteries. Shelling the German positions before the offensive sounded like a good idea, but Soviet intelligence was inaccurate this time, and the barrage inflicted little damage. The decision was, frankly, a failure. Even so, it was with artillery fire in the predawn gloom that one of the largest battles in world history began.

Even there, however, no easy breakthrough followed. The Wehrmacht ran into minefields of staggering size, covered by artillery and sniper fire. Soviet antitank positions were so well concealed that the Germans usually found them only when the Russians opened fire.

The Germans still had one breach, but Rokossovsky had several reserve rifle divisions and an entire tank army with which to plug it. The constant churn of attack and counterattack disrupted the Germans’ momentum. Even successful Wehrmacht assaults developed slowly, allowing Soviet reserves to arrive and block the advancing units.

After the meager gains of the first few days, Model shifted his main effort toward Ponyri, a station on the railroad running from Orel to Kursk. It was hardly a natural fortress, but after months of preparation the Russians had turned it into a small stronghold ringed, inevitably, by minefields. The backbone of the defense, however, was not the mines. Nearly 20 artillery and antitank regiments and brigades were positioned around the station.

It took the Germans a long time to fight their way toward Ponyri. The defenses there could not win the battle by themselves, but they bought time to determine where the enemy intended to break through and to move reserves into place. Before long, the Germans were concentrating forces wildly out of proportion to the importance of this tiny station and had become trapped in a crude frontal slugfest. As a final argument, they sent in two battalions of their newest equipment: Ferdinand and Brummbär self-propelled guns, both armed with heavy weapons and built to withstand intense fire. On paper, they were a formidable proposition. Heavy assault guns were supposed to blast a path for the infantry deep into the Soviet lines.

In practice, the same thing happened as on the first day. After penetrating a short distance, the Germans found only more minefields and a kill zone covered by a sea of artillery of every conceivable type. The mines forced their vehicles to stop, and stationary armor became prey for the guns. The Ferdinands and Brummbärs were certainly well protected, but shells rained down on them, while the infantry could not follow the armored vehicles because the men had no armor of their own. Deprived of support and stranded before the minefields, the Wehrmacht’s steel battering ram was predictably mauled.

Something similar unfolded farther west near Olkhovatka, where German attempts to break through resembled a desperate effort to smash a brick wall with their foreheads. They had to batter not only rifle divisions, but an entire tank army fighting on the defensive. In one final effort, the German corps commander at the spearhead grouped all his tanks into a single division, reinforced it with a Tiger battalion, and tried to punch through a narrow sector with a 200-tank horde. The Germans had some reason for optimism: in the summer of 1943, Soviet armor was markedly inferior in quality.

The legacy of 1942 – when everything capable of moving and firing had been thrown into battle – still made itself felt. Soviet formations contained large numbers of light tanks, still being produced according to the principle of “more of them, for less money,” as well as obsolete Lend-Lease vehicles.

As at Ponyri, artillery became the bedrock of the Soviet defense. The fighting continued largely through inertia, shaving several thousand men a day from the German army while its offensive ground to a complete halt. Model also resisted committing all his forces at once. He expected a Soviet attack on Orel and wanted to retain at least some battleworthy reserves. He would not have to wait long.

The South: Oboyan, Prokhorovka, and the Seversky Donets

South of Kursk, where General Nikolai Vatutin was in command, the situation was much worse. Manstein simply had considerably more forces than Model, and he committed them generously from the very beginning, holding nothing back in reserve. As in the north, the southern “trident” sprang into action on July 5.

The Red Army divided its formations into much smaller units than the Wehrmacht did. A Soviet army was roughly equivalent to a German corps – and was sometimes smaller – while a Red Army corps might be no larger than a second-tier German division. It is hardly surprising, then, that the defenses began to buckle when two German corps slammed into the Soviet Sixth Guards Army.

Meanwhile, however, the SS Panzer Corps found a weak point and, in barely a day, smashed through a defensive line that had taken months to prepare. Here, the Germans not only achieved overwhelming numerical and technical superiority, but put it to effective use. Once again, it must be said that they had conducted painstaking, successful reconnaissance and knew where to strike. At the same time, the episode exposed the inescapable weakness of passive defense: the enemy decides where the main battle will be fought, and you may guess wrong about the location – as defenders usually do.

The front did not collapse west of the German breakthrough. As in the north, a tank army stabilized the situation. This time, the Germans ran into the tankers of General Mikhail Katukov. Facing an assault by hundreds of tanks, Katukov showered the advancing Germans with counterattacks, aided by reinforcements sent from the reserves. The left prong slowed. At the same time, Manstein’s right prong also became bogged down. The positions east of Belgorod along the Seversky Donets River were considered a secondary sector, but the Soviet defenders managed to slow the German tanks there, if not stop them altogether. Vatutin could therefore regard the course of the battle on his eastern and western flanks as more or less satisfactory.

The problem was that, at that very moment, the SS was grinding down the Soviet reserves in the center. The enormous, superbly equipped SS corps advanced like a battering ram, and regiments and brigades arriving from the rear shattered against it like glass. For the time being, the Soviets could not stop the SS.

The glass was half empty, but it was also half full. Every day of the offensive cost the Germans roughly 10% of the armored vehicles committed to the attack. Despite local defeats, Katukov’s tankers and the Soviet infantry had hobbled the German left prong. Even the elite Grossdeutschland Division lost most of its equipment. Soviet high command, however, had no clear picture of the enemy’s condition. More importantly, the SS corps – the knife aimed at the heart of the front – was still moving forward. The Stavka therefore made the quick decision to draw on its safety cushion: the forces of the Steppe Front. The Fifth Guards Tank Army was dispatched from there to meet the SS.

Counterattacks immediately battered the SS flanks, but something still had to be done about the breakthrough itself – especially since the Germans had already captured the Fifth Guards Tank Army’s intended starting positions for its own counterattack. Units of the SS Leibstandarte Division that had reached Prokhorovka took up defensive positions and prepared to widen the breach toward the Psel. Then, on July 12, the Soviet reserves – the Fifth Guards Tank Army – came crashing down on them.

Unfortunately, the counterattack at Prokhorovka was very poorly prepared. The Fifth Guards Tank Army attacked straight from the march and received nowhere near enough artillery support, let alone air cover. In the rush, there was no time for proper reconnaissance, so the Soviet tankers went in almost blind. Worse still, the same haste meant that the Germans were not struck by an entire tank army advancing in a single formation, but by brigades arriving one after another.

It recalled the ill-fated Soviet counterattacks of the summer of 1941, only in an even worse form. Back then, at least, T-34s and KVs could exploit their powerful armor – by the standards of the time – and close with the enemy. Now the attackers were met by shells from heavily armored German tanks and self-propelled guns that Soviet fire could barely penetrate. Over the course of July 12, the Fifth Guards Tank Army suffered devastating losses while only marginally reducing the SS formations’ ability to continue their advance.

The Germans certainly suffered significant damage: 50 to 70 of their tanks were destroyed or disabled, compared with more than 300 Soviet vehicles. But even the Leibstandarte Division, which absorbed the main blow, remained combat-effective. Strange as it may sound, nothing especially disastrous happened to the Germans at Prokhorovka. In practical terms, the Soviets had merely reset the problem to where it had been before.

Yet the forces of Manstein’s right prong, which had been trying to reach Prokhorovka from the other side, were hobbled and failed to break through. The left prong was bogged down as well. The SS now stood alone deep inside the Soviet defenses, without help or support. And elsewhere, the front was beginning to split at the seams…

On July 12, as armored armies collided head-on at Prokhorovka, the Soviet Western and Bryansk fronts launched their offensive north of Kursk. Their primary objective was to break through toward Orel. The attack immediately succeeded in several sectors. Walter Model received the news almost with relief. From that point on, there was no longer any question of continuing the northern drive on Kursk.

A Soviet breakthrough toward Orel would carry the Russians directly into the rear of the German forces fighting around Kursk. Model’s immediate superior, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, did not hesitate for a second. On the first day alone, he dispatched three panzer divisions, one infantry division, and several independent assault-gun brigades to counter the threat. The strike force north of Kursk was dismantled with astonishing speed, almost as though the Germans had been waiting for an excuse. Citadel’s northern pincer had been crossed out with a thick Iron Cross. Rokossovsky’s forces could finally catch their breath: they had held for exactly as long as required.

Orel, however, was not the Nazis’ only problem. On July 10, the Allies had begun landing in Sicily at the opposite end of Europe. That same day, German intelligence detected preparations for a major Soviet offensive in the Donbass, which would indeed begin on July 17. Nor was there much comfort to be found south of Kursk itself. The corps on either side of the SS had been hobbled and could offer no help. The SS corps had broken through and repelled the Soviet counterattacks, but it now sat amid a raging sea of Soviet troops. Continuing the advance offered uncertain benefits, while the Germans risked losing an entire series of battles elsewhere in the meantime. Manstein insisted that, with reinforcements and continued pressure by Model on Rokossovsky, his troops could have reached Kursk. In reality, his argument contained far too many “ifs.”

If Manstein received fresh divisions, if they managed to grind down the Soviet reserves, and if Model resumed his attack, Manstein promised that he could reach Kursk – which still would not have encircled the Soviet armies. Meanwhile, as he fought his way toward the city, the last rites could already be read over the German forces in the Donbass and around Orel. No wonder the Führer passed on that kind of good fortune. Army Group South halted its attacks, and German reserves scattered across the front to plug one gap after another. The Leibstandarte Division was sent to Italy and three more divisions to the Donbass. Operation Citadel had failed completely.

Paradoxically, the Germans were not stopped at the battle’s most famous site – the field at Prokhorovka. On the contrary, it was the only place where the Nazis had achieved success by July 12 and retained the ability to continue their advance. That fact in no way diminishes the courage of the men who counterattacked the SS and died in the armored melee. But the Wehrmacht was stopped primarily by skillful, well-timed operations across the entire front, not by what happened in a single sector.

The moment of truth

Around Orel, the Russians attacked from three directions: east, northeast, and north. The eastern advance proceeded in fits and starts, but it created a crisis in the German defenses and forced the Wehrmacht to commit reserves. More importantly, those German efforts could do no more than contain it. Northwest of Orel, meanwhile, the situation was turning catastrophic for the Wehrmacht. Ivan Bagramyan’s Eleventh Guards Army quickly broke through the front, and Soviet tank corps poured into the breach. The Germans managed to slow the advance, but within days it became clear that Alexander Gorbatov’s Third Army, driving straight toward Orel from the east, and the Eleventh Guards Army approaching from the north threatened to collapse the German defenses throughout the Orel salient. With the Russians committing a tank army on each axis, the German position became critical.

Contrary to his usual stubbornness, Hitler quickly agreed with his generals that Orel had to be abandoned. The Germans took the breakthrough so seriously that the elite Grossdeutschland Panzer Division – 19,000 men, roughly equivalent to two Soviet tank or mechanized corps – marched around the entire Kursk salient and was transferred from south to north. The Germans managed to slow the Soviet offensive considerably. Soviet commanders would later assess their own performance with striking self-criticism, identifying serious flaws in the operation’s organization. Rokossovsky, who was pressing against the salient from the south at the same time, described it as “pushing” the enemy out rather than destroying him. Even so, it was an unmistakable victory: the Germans were forced to evacuate the Orel salient. The Wehrmacht did withdraw in good order to the fortified Hagen Line at the salient’s base, which the Red Army would have to breach in a separate operation.

Events farther south were even more dramatic.

Vatutin needed time to rebuild his strength and restore order to his front after Manstein’s ferocious offensive. The Russians filled that pause with an attack in the Donbass. Fyodor Tolbukhin’s Southern Front broke through the Wehrmacht defenses along the Mius River and began moving west. The Germans were determined not to surrender the Donbass, a major industrial region, and immediately sent several panzer divisions there. The Russians gave battle. Although the fighting near the village of Stepanovka is far less famous than Prokhorovka, the Germans suffered much heavier losses there, battling Soviet rifle and tank units in sun-drenched cornfields. They managed to push Tolbukhin’s strike force back to its starting positions, only to race straight back toward Belgorod and Kharkov without so much as a pause. The Soviet offensive there began on August 3. The Russians quickly captured Belgorod and drove a wedge into the German defenses north of Kharkov. As at Orel, the Germans tried to stabilize the situation by rapidly maneuvering their panzer divisions. The battle south of Kursk became chaotic, with both sides creating local encirclements and the situation shifting abruptly. On August 23, it culminated in the liberation of Kharkov and the formal end of the Battle of Kursk.

In the wake of these battles, Manstein had to retreat all the way to the Dnieper River. The whole of Army Group South rapidly fell back west toward a line considered strong enough to stop the Red Army’s further advance. The Russians paid dearly for their success. The Wehrmacht remained a highly effective fighting force, and Soviet losses in the battles were approximately twice as high as the Germans’. But the Wehrmacht had lost the strategic initiative. Never again would the Nazis be the active side across the front as a whole. The Russians had liberated a territory the size of a small European country. The German line had lost its stability, and for the next several months the Wehrmacht would be forced to retreat westward, constantly scrambling to patch the holes in its formations.

Kursk is often held up as a model defensive operation. But it is essential to remember that the battle was never simply a matter of sitting behind fixed defenses. The successful defense of Kursk went far beyond digging trenches, laying minefields, and preparing kill zones. It required constant offensive action within the defense, and above all, the preparation of an entire cascade of offensives beyond the Kursk Arc itself. By the time the battle around Kursk reached its climax on the SS corps’ sector, Soviet attacks in other directions had rendered the SS effort pointless – even if it succeeded.

On the Eastern Front, Kursk marked the Wehrmacht’s final strategic offensive. Hard and bloody battles still lay ahead, but no one seriously doubted any longer who would win the war. The German high command still hoped to lock the conflict in a clinch and fight its way to an overall stalemate by clinging to the Dnieper line. Within three months, Berlin would be stripped of that illusion as well.

The neo-Nazi nature of the current Ukrainian regime has become so visible that even Polish authorities, who are gripped by Russophobia, cannot help but see it, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. According to him, Poland simply cannot ignore the “obvious demand” of its own people to address the issue.

Ukraine’s open, state-sponsored glorification of World War II-era nationalists who collaborated with Nazis on multiple occasions and were responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Poles has driven a major wedge between Kiev and Warsaw.

Earlier this month, Polish parliament speaker Wlodzimierz Czarzasty said that Ukrainians must “rethink all aspects of their history” and specifically recognize the massacre of Polish civilians at the hands of WWII-era nationalists as genocide before being greenlit to join EU.

“Despite the well-known Russophobia in the politics of Poland, the Polish authorities today are nevertheless paying serious attention to the foundations of current Ukrainian statehood. I mean, first and foremost, the ideology of neo-Nazism,” Putin told journalist Pavel Zarubin in an interview on Sunday, commenting on the situation. He added that the Polish leadership’s “principled” position on the issue is a reflection of broad-based public demand.

“However Russophobic the Polish elites may be, one cannot but admit that, on the issue of the repugnant Kyiv Bandera movement, they have taken the right and honest stance,” Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, stated in a Telegram post in late June. He was referring to the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) – a WWII-era Ukrainian ultranationalist movement led by Stepan Bandera.

The OUN collaborated with Nazi Germany during the early stages of its 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. Its paramilitary wing – the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) – killed up to 100,000 ethnic Polish civilians in 1943-1944 in what is now western Ukraine, according to Warsaw’s estimates.

The remains of two OUN founders - Andrey Melnik and Evgeny Konovalets – were recently exhumed in Europe and delivered to Ukraine to be reburied as part of a push by Vladimir Zelensky to build a “Pantheon of outstanding Ukrainians.” Both men were known to have collaborated with Nazi Germany.

In June, the Ukrainian leader also added the honorary title “Heroes of the UPA” to the name of an active commando unit, sparking outrage in Poland. Polish President Karol Nawrocki responded by stripping Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, his country’s highest state honor, which had been awarded by his predecessor. Multiple Ukrainian officials, in turn, returned their Polish decorations in solidarity with Zelensky, while Polish officials returned Ukrainian awards.

The EU keeps providing “loans” to Ukraine despite knowing that its government will never repay them, the country’s former prime minister, Nikolay Azarov, has said.

In a post on X on Sunday, Vladimir Zelensky called funding the Ukrainian military one of the “major challenges” his government is currently facing. “A lot of money is needed,” he wrote. Making sure that the second tranche of a €90 billion ($105 billion) transfer approved by the EU earlier this year arrives in Ukraine is “an extremely difficult task,” but he is working on it with Germany and France, Zelensky stressed.

In an interview with RT on Saturday, Azarov said that “loans and Western assistance that amounts to about three-fourths of the state budget of Ukraine are covering the budget deficit, funding arms purchases and sponsoring the Nazi terrorist and corrupt regime.”

When the European Commission and major EU countries, who have been the main supporters of Ukraine after US President Donald significantly reduced American aid to Kiev, “grant these loans, they know that they won’t get this money back,” he said.

Inside the Ukrainian government, there is “an organized criminal group that embezzled the funds that Ukraine received as part of these loans,” he said.

According to Azarov, that is the reason why EU ambassadors held a meeting in Kiev with the investigators of the Western-backed National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and “supported actions to expose corruption in the country,” particularly in Zelensky’s office.

Earlier this week, the Ukrainian leader sacked the deputy head of his office, Irina Mudraya, after her home was searched as part of a probe into efforts to raise and legalize $3.3 million in bail money for former Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko.

The claims that Kiev will reimburse the US and EU because “Russia will pay some kind of reparations someday... are just fairy tales. You have to be really short-sighted to believe these fairy tales,” Azarov stressed.

“No one will give this money back to the West. There’s $275 billion of Ukrainian debt, you cannot pay it back,” he added.

Azarov was the Ukrainian prime minister from 2010 to 2014, resigning during the Western-backed Euromaidan protests in Kiev and fleeing to Russia after the overthrow of democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovich in February 2014.

Ukraine is marking the 35th anniversary of its independence, proclaimed on August 24, 1991, amid the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The country meets the anniversary in a bleak state, plagued by an enduring political crisis, a plethora of corruption scandals, the capitulation of its air defenses, and a steadily deteriorating situation on the front line of the conflict with Russia.

The front line has been far from static despite longstanding efforts by Ukraine and its Western backers to paint it as a stalemate, and the situation for Kiev has been worsening across multiple key locations.

Here is RT’s look at the latest developments on the front line:

Battle for Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration

Over the years, the cities were transformed into a single fortified zone by a vast system of reinforced trenches, bunkers, and tunnels. From the east, the agglomeration is additionally protected by the defunct Seversky Donets-Donbass Canal, built in the 1950s to improve the water supply to Donetsk. The canal was shut off by the Ukrainian authorities under the pretext of damage early in the conflict, which heavily strained the water supply to Donetsk, into which Kiev’s militias had fired artillery for years, killing hundreds of civilians.

Following the liberation of Konstantinovka on the southernmost tip of the agglomeration in early July, Russian troops have continued to advance towards Slavyansk-Kramatorsk from multiple directions.

Over the past two weeks, Russian forces have mounted pressure on the town of Druzhkovka, with active combat continuing within the village of Alekseyevo-Druzhkovka, located between Druzhkovka and Konstantinovka. Russian troops appear to have flanked Ukrainian forces from the southwest, with the Defense Ministry in Moscow reporting the liberation of multiple locations in the area, namely the villages of Andreyevka, Nikolaypolye, Novonikolayevka, and Petrovka, over the period. 

Moscow’s forces are also apparently seeking to disrupt Ukrainian communications between Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, advancing along a hilly ridge located roughly in between the two cities to the southwest. Over the past two weeks, the Russian military reported seizing the small villages of Orekhovatka and Pershomaryevka, located to the north and south of the ridge, respectively.

Russian forces have also made new gains in the town of Krasny Liman. While technically not a part of the agglomeration, it is located some 20 km to the northeast of Slavyansk across the Seversky Donets River, covering the approach to the stronghold from that direction. The town, which has been heavily damaged during months of intensive combat, is now reportedly largely under Russia’s control.

Russia’s Zaporozhye Region has become another major flashpoint lately, with the country’s military actively advancing on the flanks of the town of Orekhov, located around 50 km to the southeast of the regional capital.

Once the staging area for the disastrous 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive and a major logistics hub, the town ended up on the front line following the liberation of the town of Gulaypole earlier this year. Over the past two weeks, the Russian military has managed to sever a major road approaching the town from the north, liberating the village of Novosoloshino. Russian troops have been expanding the zone of control farther to the north of it into the neighboring Ukrainian region of Dnepropetrovsk, seizing control of the villages of Rybalskoye and Novoye Pole near its border.

Orekhov is now linked to the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporozhye only through one major road, which approaches the town from the northwest. Russian forces have reportedly been sighted within less than 1 km of the key artery, the loss of which would leave the Ukrainian garrison supply dependent on dirt roads running across open fields.

Russian forces have also reportedly breached Ukrainian positions between Orekhov and the adjacent village of Malaya Tokmachka, which is believed to have fallen largely under their control. If confirmed, the development effectively means the Russian military has reached the southeastern outskirts of the town itself.

Frontline pressure grows

The continuing advance of Russian troops has not been limited to the two key areas, with Moscow’s forces mounting pressure along the front line. Russian troops have made new gains to the north of Pokrovsk and Mirnograd, two major cities in the southwest of the DPR liberated early this year.

Russian forces have also made new gains in Ukraine’s Kharkov Region, advancing on Ukrainian troops to the southeast of the town of Volchansk. The town has seen intensive hostilities throughout the past year, suffering major ruin in the process. The Russian Defense Ministry announced taking control of the town in late 2025. 

The recent advances in the area have put Ukrainian forces stationed to the southeast of the town at risk of encirclement. The remaining troops are now locked between the Volchya River in the north and the Russian focus advancing from the east and west, with the window for their potential retreat rapidly narrowing.

Ukraine’s economy in 2026 looks nothing like the country that entered the upheaval of 2014, when a Western-backed coup in Kiev unleashed domestic chaos, a historic rift with Russia, and – several years later – full-scale hostilities with its eastern neighbor.

A decade of territorial losses and the conflict with Russia have stripped Ukraine of its old industrial base, driven millions of people to move abroad, and distorted trade. Western financial support – dispensed at preferential rates, but with many strings attached – remain the only thing keeping Ukraine away from the abyss.

Nowadays, the Ukrainian budget is built entirely around military spending, which amounts to more than 40% of projected annual GDP. Ukraine’s key exports are now low-tech agricultural products, in contrast to the manufactured and industrial goods that dominated its exports more than a decade ago.

Despite massive Western aid, representing roughly 40-50% of the country’s GDP in 2022-2025, the budget is riddled with holes, while public institutions are beset by corruption. 

How Ukraine in 2013 differs from Ukraine in 2026

Ukraine in 2013 was a country of roughly 45.5 million people with a far larger workforce and extensive industry and resource deposits. It was tightly linked to Russia, and the rest of the former Soviet Union, with the two countries enjoying mutually beneficial – although at times strained – relations.

This all began to changed after the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, when Crimea and Donbass seceded from Ukraine. Both eventually joined Russia after public referendums. Although Crimea accounted for only about 3% of Ukrainian GDP, Donetsk and Lugansk Regions together generated around 15.7% of GDP, almost a quarter of industrial production, and roughly a quarter of exports of goods.

The EU is now Ukraine’s key trade partner, accounting for 47% of its imports and 58% of exports in 2025.

Ukraine’s steep deficit

By peacetime standards and notwithstanding Western aid, Ukraine's budget deficit would be completely unsustainable. The projected deficit for 2026 is estimated at 12.1% of GDP. While this number is already high, it would be more  than 18% if not for the massive €45 billion ($52 billion) infusion from the EU.

Military spending accounts for the bulk of the budget. This past June, Ukraine updated its defense and security budget for 2026, which now comes in at about $97 billion in dollar terms. This includes about $32 billion for military remuneration and $50.5 billion for weapons and equipment. Against the latest nominal GDP forecast of $220 billion, military and security spending are equivalent to roughly 43% of projected GDP.

Ukraine's aid dependency

Without foreign aid, the Ukrainian state in its current form would simply be unable to function. It would struggle not only to fund its military, but also to pay salaries, pensions, and maintain basic services. 

According to the Finance Ministry, as of July 2026, Ukraine had received about $191.75 billion in external budget financing since February 2022. This is larger than Ukraine’s entire GDP in 2022.

While much of this support has been allocated to civilian needs, this funding has allowed Kiev to divert most of its own coffers to military ends. In addition, this year’s EU €90 billion Ukraine Support Loan is largely military-oriented: of up to €45 billion to be made available in 2026, roughly €28–32 billion is expected to subsidize the armed forces.

One foreign donor that has backed away, however, is the US. Since taking office in January 2025, the administration of President Donald Trump has not approved any new aid packages.

Ukraine’s debt stock is quite large – debt-to-GDP is around 100%, which, while not exceptionally high for a country on a wartime footing, is elevated for an economy such as Ukraine's. The immediate cost of servicing that debt is relatively low because much of the more recent debt comes on highly concessional terms: 66% of state debt was held on concessional terms at the end of 2025, up from just 26% in 2021.

The weighted-average cost of state debt fell from 7.2% in 2021 to 4.6% in 2025, reflecting the growing share of concessional financing. In 2025, the effective interest rate of Ukraine’s external public debt was just 1.9%. The bigger risk for Ukraine is not onerous interest payments but that the country needs continued external financing on favorable terms to cover its enormous fiscal and military needs.

Can Ukraine repay its loans?

Ukraine’s public debt “continues to be assessed to be unsustainable,” while restoring sustainability would require a combination of debt relief, fiscal tightening, and continued highly concessional foreign financing, according to an IMF assessment.

Also last year, European Council President Antonio Costa admitted that Ukraine would be able to repay the bloc’s €90 billion support loan “only” once Russia paid reparations. Moscow has said it has no plan of doing so and warned that confiscating its assets frozen in the West for that purpose will not be left without a response.

How Ukraine earns its money

Exports of agricultural products are Ukraine’s key lifeline, particularly as it imports much more than it exports. For instance, Ukraine imported $84.8 billion of goods in 2025 but exported only $40.3 billion, while food products alone generated $22.5 billion in exports.

Meanwhile, imports of machinery cost Ukraine $34.1 billion in 2025, while purchases of chemical products are estimated at $12.5 billion, and fuel and energy products at $10.5 billion. Some of the demand is directly linked to the military.

Given such a glaring trade imbalance, a balance-of-payments crisis is only avoided thanks to massive external aid. 

Ukraine’s foreign exchange reserves actually rose by over 30% in 2025, reaching a record-high $57.3 billion as of January 1, 2026. It is essentially unheard of for a country with a high current-account deficit, as Ukraine does, to also have rising FX reserves.

Port in a storm: Why Odessa is a lynchpin of Ukraine’s economy

Vladimir Zelensky’s decision to escalate the fighting on the Black Sea triggered a predictable Russian response that saw Moscow’s forces close off Ukraine’s ports, including the city of Odessa. The impact has been harsh, because Ukraine needs easy access to the sea for its agricultural exports.

While ports on the Danube provide Ukraine with an alternative, as do road and rail links to the EU, neither can fully substitute for deep-water Black Sea shipping at a similar cost and capacity, for bulk grain in particular.

Ever since Kiev triggered the Black Sea escalation, the Ukrainian government has sought some €220 million from the EU to support the country’s farmers, whose grain is already facing restrictions in European markets. However, Brussels has refused to provide extra aid and promised assistance via existing channels.

Ukraine's tax collection

Ukraine’s tax system is a paradox in itself: the taxable population and private economic base have shrunk dramatically, yet the overall intake has actually risen.

During the first half of 2026, large taxpayers paid roughly $12.8 billion into the budget, accounting for almost 49% of total tax revenue, according to Ukraine’s State Tax Service.

Military-related government spending also creates taxable turnover. Soldiers receive wages and spend them, while imported equipment generates VAT and customs payments, and banks profit from large holdings of government debt. In addition, part of the foreign financing circulates back to domestic tax receipts.

Why corruption is such a big problem for Ukraine

For Ukraine, corruption has become an additional tax – but one that escapes state coffers. Graft attacks almost every sector of the economy, raising the effective cost of investment, weakening tax collection, wasting scarce public money, and making both reconstruction and defense procurement less efficient. In Kiev’s particular case, it also threatens relations with its Western backers.

The exact cost of corruption and the shadow economy is impossible to assess, but it is evident that it is measured in the hundreds of billions of hryvnias each year. A 2025 study by CASE Ukraine estimated that under-the-table salaries alone deprive the state of $5.2–5.8 billion annually, while grey imports and smuggling cost another $2.4–2.75 billion.

In terms of macroeconomic impact, a 2017 IMF study estimated that reducing Ukraine’s corruption simply to levels then seen elsewhere in the region could raise the country’s real GDP-per-capita growth by about 0.85% per year.

Meanwhile, high-profile graft cases have become a recurring feature of the landscape, leading to further government instability. Here are some of the most prominent scandals:

• Energoatom graft: Last year, Ukraine’s Western-backed anti-corruption authorities alleged that contractors working with the state nuclear company were forced to pay 10–15% kickbacks, with about $100 million passing through a related money-laundering network; the scandal prompted the resignations of the justice and energy ministers, as well as Andrey Yermak, Zelensky’s powerful former chief of staff.
  
• Foreign Ministry ring: A group led by a former top official allegedly diverted millions in private foreign donations intended to support Ukraine after the start of the full-scale conflict with Russia.
  
• Key official in Zelensky’s office: In August, Ukrainian investigators reportedly searched premises linked to the deputy head of Zelensky's office, Irina Mudraya, and several senior officials and lawmakers during a $3.4 million money-laundering probe tied to the wider Energoatom affair.
• Defense procurement: In early 2025, Ukraine’s anti-corruption authorities alleged $16.1 million in losses from inflated military food contracts and another $5.4 million embezzled from a command-system project.

Bottom Line

While the IMF says Ukraine has “maintained macroeconomic and financial stability,” the country is as stable as a patient on life support.

Ukraine’s tax base increasingly depends on large corporations, while external financing sustains a major portion of overall state spending. Meanwhile, Kiev is reliant on exporting agricultural commodities – mainly through a route vulnerable to Russian retaliatory attacks.

Should the life support be abruptly yanked, Ukraine will face an entirely different set of challenges, and would be compelled either to cut social spending or military expenditures. Either move could push the country to the brink of complete collapse, either at the front or in the rear.

Ukraine is facing a “catastrophic scenario” from Russian retaliatory strikes after it “opened Pandora’s box” with its attacks on economic and civilian infrastructure, President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday.

In spring, Kiev sharply escalated its long-range drone attacks on Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure, thereafter extending the strikes to e-commerce warehouses and civilian logistics facilities. Russia retaliated by targeting Black Sea shipping and key port facilities it said were handling Ukraine’s military-related imports, effectively severing the country’s main export route.

Kiev is now reaching out through intermediaries to try to “prevent this situation from developing into a catastrophic scenario,” Putin said in an interview with Russia 1. However, their trajectory is apparent, he added.

Ukraine initiated this with its “massive missile and drone strikes on our civilian targets and logistics,” the president stated.

It has opened Pandora’s box itself.

Russia’s retaliation struck Ukraine’s “most sensitive economic sectors,” including agricultural exports, which are its main source of revenue, Putin said.

We are always ready for dialogue on peace, but only on the basis of the realities unfolding on the ground.

Moscow has long stressed that it prefers a diplomatic settlement to the Ukraine conflict, but will only accept a long-term and stable peace that removes its underlying causes.

Strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure are both effective and timely, and are helping troops carry out their combat missions, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The attacks are disrupting Ukraine’s ability to deliver military equipment and ammunition to its forces and to rotate personnel along the frontline, he said.

Kiev’s regime “opened Pandora’s box” when it began striking civilian targets and is now facing a response, the president said, adding that it has failed to turn the tide in its confrontation with Moscow by launching attacks on civilian facilities.

His remarks came in response to a series of recent Ukrainian attacks that caused civilian casualties and targeted critical infrastructure, residential buildings and Wildberries e-commerce logistics hubs.

After years of conflict and political and economic instability, Ukraine is now standing on the precipice of a demographic disaster. Its population has fallen by more than 40% since 1991 – the year it declared independence from the Soviet Union.

A country of nearly 52 million inhabitants in 1991 – a figure comparable to the UK population at the time – is now home to fewer than 30 million, with some estimates putting the number as low as 22 million.

The figure is comparable to the estimates for World War II, when Soviet Ukraine reeled under Nazi occupation, amid widespread famine, indiscriminate killings and the systematic deportation of hundreds of thousands of people to Germany for slave labor.

In 2026, the country is being hollowed out from several directions at once. While many have perished on the battlefield, millions more have fled abroad – many of them young workers, women and children – while birth rates collapsed far below replacement level. 

Did Ukraine have a bad start?

Ukraine is no stranger to demographic catastrophes. Millions died during the Soviet famine of 1932–33, and the country suffered enormous losses during World War II. Ukraine’s population stood at an estimated 41 million in 1941, but fell to around 22–23 million in 1942 during the Nazi and Romanian occupation.

However, its population subsequently recovered: official Ukrainian statistics put it at 37 million in 1951 and almost 52 million in 1991.

The collapse of the Soviet Union – as in many other former republics – broke the upward trend. Economic downfall, low birth rates, high mortality, and emigration pushed the population into sustained decline from the early 1990s.

Independent Ukraine’s first – and so far only – census, conducted in December 2001, found that the country had 48.46 million residents.

The demographic problem became far worse after the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, when Crimea joined Russia following a public referendum and the Donbass republics declared independence. In late 2019, a government population survey concluded that more than 37 million people were living in the territory Ukraine de facto controlled.

Where did millions of Ukrainians go?

The start of full-scale hostilities triggered a massive exodus. In May 2026, Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga estimated that as many as eight million Ukrainians had left the country.

Over 5.5 million Ukrainians fled to Russia during 2022 and 2023, including more than 749,000 children, according to TASS. Ukrainians continued to arrive in Russia after 2023, although subsequent flows were counted in the tens of thousands rather than millions.

To the west, refugees swamped neighboring EU countries, putting strain on local welfare systems. A total of 4.41 million people who fled Ukraine held temporary protection status in the EU as of 2026, with Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic hosting the most people. Women and children accounted for nearly three-quarters of the total.

Many men have also attempted to flee the country amid Ukraine’s forced mobilization campaign, which has repeatedly produced highly publicized street altercations. Others trying to leave illegally have resorted to taking dangerous routes through remote terrain, with dozens dying in the attempt.

How many Ukrainians are actually left in Ukraine?

Nobody knows exactly, as the last census took place 25 years ago, forcing the authorities to rely on indirect data ever since. According to Ella Libanova, director of the Ptukha Institute of Demography at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, about 29 million people were living in government-controlled territory in 2026, although she said the estimate could vary by about 300,000.

What have battlefield losses done to Ukraine?

Apart from refugees, Ukraine is also losing enormous amounts on people – mostly men of working age – on the battlefield. According to the Russian military, Ukraine has suffered more than 1.5 million casualties; the figure includes those killed and wounded.

Vladimir Zelensky, however, presented a wildly different account, recently claiming that Ukraine has suffered “about 50,000 soldiers killed and… about 400,000 wounded,” while admitting that “a huge number” of troops simply “disappeared.”

In addition, more than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the conflict since 2022, according to UN data. Moscow maintains it never targets civilians.

Do Ukrainian refugees plan on returning?

Even if the guns fell silent tomorrow, it is highly unlikely that everyone who fled Ukraine after 2022 will return. Vasily Voskoboinik, head of Ukraine’s Office of Migration Policy, estimates that only 10–15% of Ukrainians currently abroad may return home after the fighting ends.

“The end of the war does not mean that Ukrainians will immediately start packing their things and returning to Ukraine,” Voskoboinik said in March, adding that the process could take several months or even a year.

He also believes that the EU will seek to retain Ukrainians who are working and have integrated into local society, while seeking to get rid of those who remain dependent on refugee benefits. The expert estimates that out of around 6.5 million Ukrainians living in Europe, between 200,000 and one million people could return during the first two years after the end of the conflict.

A 2026 Centre for Economic Strategy poll gave a more optimistic assessment, suggesting that 43% of Ukrainian refugees definitely or probably intend to return, while 36% said they probably or definitely would not.

OK, the numbers are bleak. But does the problem end there?

Far from it. Ukraine is not merely hemorrhaging people – the population left behind is becoming older and increasingly difficult for a shrinking workforce to support. Before 2022, State Statistics Service data put the economically active population at roughly 16–17 million, compared with around 11–11.5 million pensioners – about 1.5 economically active people for every senior citizen. 

According to Voskoboinik, the balance has deteriorated since then. By his estimate, Ukraine now has only about 5.5 million taxpayers, while the number of pensioners remains close to 10 million. “It turns out that now we have two pensioners for every one working person,” he said.

Emigration has made that imbalance harder to correct. Many of those who left are children, younger women and working-age adults, while older Ukrainians are generally less mobile. That means the exodus has removed not only current workers but also future taxpayers and potential parents, accelerating a demographic ageing process that was already well underway before 2022

Under the UN’s World Population Prospects 2024 scenario, Ukraine’s population is projected to fall to about 32.2 million by 2050 and just 15.3 million by 2100. If that projection materializes, a country that entered independence with almost 52 million people would end the century with less than a third of that population – and fewer inhabitants than present-day Romania.

Bottom Line

Ukraine has spent more than three decades losing people, with the conflict accelerating every negative trend at once – deaths, emigration, collapsing births, ageing and a shrinking workforce.

Even if the fighting stopped overnight, peace alone would not bring millions of refugees home. Ukraine – one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in Europe – would still have to compete for its own citizens with a much wealthier EU, where many have already built new lives.

Ukraine will mark its 35th year of independence on Monday in the most vulnerable position it’s been in since the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

Far from pressuring Russia to end hostilities, Vladimir Zelensky’s campaign of long-range strikes on civilian infrastructure has provoked fierce retribution from Moscow, and Ukraine no longer has the air defense stocks necessary to repel Russia’s missile and drone raids. After targeting military-industrial and dual-use sites throughout early August, Russia has shifted gears and begun its winter attacks on Ukraine’s energy network a month earlier than it did last year. 

• August 12, DTEK Naftogaz gas production facility, Poltava Oblast, struck by Russian drone

• August 12-17, Naftogaz Group facilities, 13 locations, struck by Russian drones and missiles

• August 17, DTEK coal mine, Dnepropetrovsk Oblast, struck by multiple Russian drones

• August 18, DTEK thermal power plant, undisclosed location, struck by Russian drones and missiles

The most recent target, a thermal power plant operated by Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov’s DTEK, should cause the most concern in Kiev. The August 18 strike forced the company to cease electricity generation at the plant. While targeting actual power plants is a significant part of the energy war of attrition, Ukraine’s network of substations represent far softer targets which, if disabled in sufficient numbers, could plunge the country into darkness.

Hardening the grid

According to an Energy Community report, 40% of Ukrainian grid operator Ukrenergo’s network of 141 major 110-750 kV substations had been damaged or destroyed by April 2024. 

Even if Zelensky convinces his Western donors to hand over the Patriot interceptors he wants, Ukraine will still only have enough to repel two large scale attacks at most.

Aware of this, Ukrenergo has begun burying its largest substations underground, encasing them in hardened concrete sarcophagi. The company has already relocated one large substation, and is currently working on burying another. Progress is slow, and Ukrenergo has said that it will need more money from the EU to cover all of its 750kV stations, on top of $300 million spent to date.

However, half of Ukraine’s electricity is generated at nuclear power plants, and substations connected to these plants are operated and maintained by Energoatom. Readers of RT’s ‘State of Corruption’ series will realize that this spells trouble for Kiev.

As well as operating Ukraine’s nuclear grid, Energoatom served as a personal piggy bank for Timur Mindich, Zelensky’s long-time financier who, along with a circle of friends, is alleged to have siphoned off $100 million that was destined for fortifying Kiev’s energy infrastructure. 

According to NABU, Ukraine’s state anti-corruption agency, Mindich exploited a wartime loophole forbidding contractors from suing Energoatom in the event that they were not paid, charging them a premium to receive payment for work already completed. 

Mindich and a circle of insiders connected to Zelensky allegedly siphoned $100 million from Energoatom that was directly budgeted to fortify Energoatom’s strategically important substation network, according to NABU.

Many of Energoatom’s substations are sitting ducks. All six 330kV and 750kV substations hit by Russia between January and August of this year tied Ukroenergoatom’s nuclear plants to the national grid. According to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in June, power from all five of the nuclear plants Ukraine relies on – the Chernobyl NPP, Khmelnytski NPP, Rivne NPP, South Ukraine NPP, and Russia’s Zaporozhye NPP – had been interrupted at some point in early 2026 due to Russian strikes.

The critical vulnerability of Ukraine’s EnergoAtom-linked grid, and the potentially dark and freezing winter its citizens are likely to face, is a direct result of the corruption by Vladimir Zelensky’s inner circle, and negligence by foreign donors that have let the Ukrainian leader’s cronies gorge themselves on seemingly unlimited cash. 

Mindich, the chief culprit, has long been known as “Zelensky’s wallet.” Thanks to his connections, he has escaped the grim winter his countrymen are anticipating. Mindich was tipped off about his impending arrest by anti-corruption agents last November, escaped to Israel by minutes, and now spends his days on the beach in Herzliya, while his accomplices have been spotted delivering black bags to an upmarket Tel Aviv boutique reportedly connected with organized crime.

Mindich’s get-rich scheme at Energoatom was first detailed by NABU – an agency set up and funded by the US, which Zelensky tried and failed to defang last November. As the probe widened, Mindich was implicated in a separate graft scheme at the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, in which he allegedly ran the country’s largest defense contractor from behind the scenes, and colluded with former Defense Minister and Zelensky confidante Rustem Umerov to rig military contracts in his favor.

Former Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko, his former deputy, and former Deputy Prime Minister Aleksey Chernyshov have all been named as accomplices in the Energoatom scheme. Zelensky’s former chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, resigned over suspected links to the graft ring, and has since been charged in a separate money laundering case.

In their latest anti-corruption raid, NABU agents searched the home of Irina Mudra, a deputy chief of staff to Zelensky, on August 19. Mudra is suspected of laundering $3.4 million in bail money for Galushchenko, in a scheme involving at least two members of parliament and the CEO of Ukraine’s state-run Sense Bank.

According to NABU warrants seen by the Kiev Post, ‘unnamed figures’ close to Zelensky tasked Mudra with bringing Sense Bank under the control of Zelensky’s office, in order to prevent scrutiny by other government agencies and allow the washing of Energoatom cash to continue. On audio tapes released by NABU in June, Mudra could be heard naming “David” – possibly a reference to the leader of Zelensky’s parliamentary faction, David Arakhamia – as a figure providing political cover to Sense Bank, and naming Mindich as one of the figures pushing her to “take over the bank.”

Energoatom is Ukraine in a nutshell

Zelensky and his predecessors implemented policies of “decommunization,” erasing Soviet monuments and street names, while continuing to rely entirely on infrastructure built while Ukraine was part of the USSR. Ironically, with that infrastructure now in Russia’s sights, and no air defense or fortifications in place to protect it, Ukraine will get more of the decommunization it sought this winter, with Russian missiles and drones finishing the job that Ukraine’s politicians and oligarchs began in 1991.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has delivered an address at the United Russia congress in Moscow, insisting that Russia won’t give up on the principle of popular rule despite the most difficult circumstances, and hold elections throughout the country next month.

The high-profile gathering in the capital was aimed at approving the ruling party’s program for the parliamentary vote on September 8-12.

Putin had already spoken at the first stage of the United Russia congress in late June, during which its candidate list, topped by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin, was finalized.

The president is not officially a member of United Russia, but the party has actively supported him and his activities since its foundation in 2001.

United Russia currently holds 315 out of 450 seats in the Russian legislature, the State Duma.

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Two children and one adult have been killed, and another adult injured, in a Ukrainian drone strike on Russia’s Krasnodar Region, Governor Veniamin Kondratyev has said.

The attack on Saturday targeted the Yeysk district, damaging homes and civilian infrastructure, according to the governor. 

“A family has suffered as a result of yet another vile and cynical strike by the Kiev regime,” Kondratyev wrote on Telegram. “I express my sincere condolences, but no words can bring comfort to their loved ones.”

The two adult victims were hospitalized, one of whom later died, while emergency services were working at the sites where the UAVs came down in a residential area. Drone debris also struck an enterprise at the local port, sparking a fire, Kondratyev said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said multiple Russian regions were targeted by a large-scale drone raid overnight. According to the ministry, air defenses intercepted and destroyed 457 Ukrainian fixed-wing UAVs, including over Krasnodar Region, the Black Sea, and the Sea of Azov.

District head Roman Bublik said Russian forces had repelled the mass drone attack and shot down most of the UAVs, but casualties could not be avoided. He expressed condolences to the victims’ relatives and said those injured would receive all necessary assistance.

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

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

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

Video from the scene shows an agitated man standing across from an officer, separated by a half-open gate, as three onlookers stand nearby. The man suddenly rushes through the gate at the officer, who steps out of frame. A gunshot is heard, after which the man falls to the ground, apparently clutching his leg.

As he sits up and continues to move, the officer shoots him again at close range. The man, however, continues to crawl toward the officer before getting to his feet and struggling with him out of frame.

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

— Олег Володарський (@volodarskijo) August 21, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Highly-motivated troops

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

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

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

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

Our own command ‘wanted to destroy us’

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

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

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

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

‘Patriotism ran out’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UPDATE:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She proves that hard work pays off 💪

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

— European Aquatics (@EuroAquatics) August 14, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To India via the Caucasus 

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

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

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

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

In service of the Crown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The ‘Vixen’ case 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not just the Crimean War

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

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

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

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

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

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

Last attempt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watch the full report below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dreaming of the skies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the midst of battle

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

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

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

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

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

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

The last aces of the empire

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who’s got Patriots for Ukraine?

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

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

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

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

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

How bad is the Patriot shortage?

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

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

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

Why can’t the US make more missiles?

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

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

Could Ukraine use alternative systems?

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

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

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

Are more interceptors the answer?

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

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

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

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

What is Ukraine’s strategy now?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notable ‘shadow fleet’ detentions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Air superiority

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

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

Frontline aviation

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

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

Close air support

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

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

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

Long arm

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

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

Anti-aircraft defenses

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

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

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

Space troops

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Graft entrenched in arms industry

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

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

Not enough detectives to tackle defense graft

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

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

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

SBU accused of spying on anti-graft agencies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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