The Ukraine-Russia War: A Grinding Test of Industrial Might

Air Defence

Ukraine still has almost nothing that stops a ballistic missile. On the night of October 26–27 Russia fired 16, and the Air Force reported two downed; Zelenskyy says more than 100 were fired at Kyiv in the two weeks from October 14.

The supply behind that rate is now public. Zelenskyy says the US has sent about 12 Patriot missiles a month in 2026, against a need to stop 150 ballistic missiles a month, or 24 in the 90 days to October 24. A batch European allies paid for through NATO’s PURL scheme has waited nearly a month for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s sign-off, and The Hill reports the required steps were not completed. NATO sources tell Euronews they doubt the missiles will move before the US midterms on November 3.

Ukraine and NATO have turned to Europe’s own stocks instead. Ukraine asked five European allies for a tenth of their Patriot and IRIS-T missiles, and NATO asked members to hand over PAC-2s and PAC-3s now; Greece and Spain have not answered.

Against jet drones it is better: ISW put the rate at about 74 percent while interceptor drones lost their satellite link; Ukraine says the link was restored on October 24.

Civilian Harm

A UN inquiry has found that Russia’s campaign against Ukraine’s power system is a crime against humanity, and the people of occupied Oleshky have their first truce, though not yet a way out.

On October 26 the UN’s Commission of Inquiry told the General Assembly that Russian authorities committed war crimes and the crime against humanity of “other inhumane acts” by attacking Ukraine’s energy system. It found the attacks followed a state policy to deprive civilians of power and cause suffering, on the evidence of 255 witnesses who lived through last winter at minus 21°C.

A local truce took effect in and around Oleshky on October 27 and runs to November 1, Ukraine says. The White House credits Melania Trump with brokering it. Ukraine’s and Russia’s human-rights commissioners said on October 29 that it was holding, with aid due the next day. No one had been evacuated, estimates of who remains run from 1,700 to 6,000, and reported plans route evacuees through Crimea or Russia.

The killing went on elsewhere. On October 29 a drone hit a crowded platform at Dnipro’s station, killing 14, and strikes on Chernihiv and Kremenchuk killed five more, officials said.

The Home Fronts

Ukraine’s 2027 budget passed its first reading on October 28 with two-thirds of its UAH 7.27 trillion spending on security and defence. It still lacks $32.6 billion of the $52.6 billion it needs from abroad, and more than UAH 131 billion of revenue depends on tax rises not yet passed. MPs asked the government to look at raising military pay. Parliament also extended martial law and mobilisation to January 29.

The draft-exemption rewrite has landed. From October 27 arms and energy firms may shield at most 95% of liable staff rather than all of them, and a new centre reviews every request. The prime minister wants a deal with business by December 1 trading deferments for recruits.

Ukrainians’ stated resolve is steady: 63% told KIIS in mid-October they would hold out as long as necessary.

In Russia there is still no mobilisation order, but recruitment is leaning on force. Rights groups report men pressed into contracts in at least 33 regions. Moscow police are sweeping the metro for conscripts, and a desertion helpline says its caseload has tripled.

NATO & Ukraine Relations

The war keeps reaching NATO’s eastern members, and the alliance keeps answering with surveillance and police work rather than Article 4.

Romania’s prosecutors and intelligence service said on October 26 that a Russian network was behind a September fire beside a state arms plant in Brașov. Two suspects are under arrest, reportedly caught preparing similar attacks in Germany; the Russian link itself has not been shown publicly. At sea, a drone sank a cargo ship just outside Romania’s territorial waters on October 23, killing one sailor. Romania’s president called it a consequence of Russia’s war but did not say who launched it, and Bucharest is looking at faster maritime surveillance and counter-drone defences. On October 28 the defence ministers of Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey jointly condemned the ship attacks, addressing “all parties” rather than Moscow. NATO’s register still shows no Article 4 request since September 2025.

On Ukraine itself, NATO’s innovation accelerator DIANA signed its first agreement with any partner country, a memorandum with Kyiv on joint development and testing. Like the procurement-agency deal two weeks earlier, it widens Ukraine’s access to alliance machinery without touching membership.

Nuclear Safety at the Front

Zaporizhzhia’s last outside power line is on firmer footing, but it is still the only one.

Engineers finished repairing a damaged backup transformer behind the Ferosplavna-1 line under the eighth local ceasefire the IAEA has brokered, the agency said on October 23. Its team watched the work, sheltering with plant staff on October 20 as explosions and gunfire sounded nearby. The same week Russia and Ukraine both told the IAEA of new severe damage to the plant’s second main line, Dniprovska, a few kilometres away above the Dnipro, which may make restoring it harder. The emergency generators have had no diesel delivered since March.

The IAEA says it was told that a drone struck a plant bus on October 21, killing the driver, and that the plant cut its on-site staff significantly the next day. No one has independently established who launched the drone.

Across Ukraine, several reactor units cut power to steady the grid after attacks on substations on October 15–16, the IAEA says. Its monitors spent two weeks visiting the 19 substations that keep the plants connected.

Peace Negotiations

Russia and Ukraine have agreed a truce, but for one town. From October 27 both sides stopped fighting around Russian-occupied Oleshky so aid can enter and civilians leave; both confirmed it, and it runs to November 1. The White House announced it; the Vatican says the pope’s calls came first. Moscow calls it a possible precedent. Neither side calls it a step toward a wider ceasefire, and Russian missile strikes continued elsewhere the same day.

The bigger round is still unscheduled. Both capitals name Abu Dhabi for three-way talks with the US, the first since February. Zelenskyy hopes for November 6–10 and wants results on energy, the sea and prisoners, with territory left to leaders. Putin’s aide Yury Ushakov says after November 4, depending on “the situation on the battlefield”, and that no one plans to invite the Europeans. The Kremlin says talking does not mean pausing the war.

Finland’s and Norway’s leaders called Putin on October 27, the first such call since 2022; he told them Zelenskyy could come to Moscow, which Kyiv refuses. The Kremlin says a Putin–Trump–Xi meeting in Shenzhen on November 18–19 is agreed in principle; neither Washington nor Beijing has confirmed it.

Russia's War Economy

Russian diesel is on its way to America, but slowly. Kpler data show three tankers carrying 924,000 barrels between them left Primorsk between October 16 and 22, due on the US East Coast from November 7. Two of the three are under Western sanctions. The first, the Agioi Fanendes, holds about 40,000 tonnes. Donald Trump had said Russia would supply 300,000 tonnes at once. Moscow will keep its diesel export ban to the end of the year, Reuters reports, and export by quota instead: 500,000 tonnes in October, rising to 2 million in November.

The money is still coming in. The value of Russia’s seaborne crude reached $2.76 billion in the week to October 26, a wartime high on Bloomberg’s tracking, in a week with no reported refinery strikes. On October 29 the Duma passed in first reading a 2027 budget giving defence 17.1 trillion roubles, over a third of all spending.

In Washington the licence is under legal attack, though not yet in court. Senator Richard Blumenthal has told the tanker owners to recall their cargoes. Representative Jamie Raskin has warned importers they face criminal penalties under the 2022 import ban whatever the Treasury’s licence says.

The Long-Range Strike Campaign

Ukraine’s long-range drones have moved from Russia’s refineries to its chemical and steel plants, and Russia has turned its missiles on Ukraine’s bridges and railways.

No Ukrainian strike on a Russian refinery has been reported since October 16. Zelensky says he held off them after Trump announced an energy truce on October 11, and Russian refineries raised crude processing by a quarter in the second half of October, sources told Reuters. Instead, footage geolocated by ISW shows fires at synthetic-rubber plants in Omsk and Tolyatti on October 24, and at a nitrogen plant in Novomoskovsk and the Novolipetsk steelworks, Russia’s largest, on October 28. Local officials conceded industrial damage without naming the plants; Lipetsk’s governor denied the steelworks fire. Strikes on October 23–24 cut power across occupied Crimea, which Russia’s energy ministry acknowledged, and Yandex says it has moved its supercomputers after strikes on its data centres.

On October 26–27 Russian ballistic missiles closed Kyiv’s Southern Bridge to cars and trains; Zelensky counted 16 missiles that night and more than 100 at Kyiv since October 14. On October 29 a drone hit a crowded platform at Dnipro’s main station, killing at least 14.

Evolving Battlefield Tactics

The cap on Ukraine’s satellite-linked drones is gone. Ukraine’s defence ministry said on 24 October that its Starlink and Starshield links were fully restored, with stable connections above 400 km/h, after about ten days in which interceptor, supply and strike drones lost the link at about 160 km/h. The US side has not confirmed it.

Near Kupyansk the war has gone underground. Russian troops had used Soviet-era gas pipelines as covered roads, crawling in under a metre of soil that drones cannot see through, cutting new exits as fast as Ukraine destroyed the old ones, and building barricades and living spaces inside. Ukraine went in after them with scouting robots, explosive ground vehicles, remote machine guns and infantry fighting single file. ISW judges that drones above and control of the pipes below now deny Russia a staging ground there, and a CSIS analyst calls the move underground a response to precision weapons.

Around Dobropillya Russia has partly returned to vehicle assaults, sending groups of up to ten in armoured carriers, motorcycles and buggies across the drone kill zone, often at dawn in poor visibility, while glide bombs fall in threes and fours on buildings sheltering drone teams.

Territorial Control & Troop Movements

Russia’s autumn has been a net loss. On October 22 ISW counted 241 square kilometres more lost than taken since September 1, and judged that Russia is “not winning on the battlefield”. The trackers disagree on October itself: DeepState’s data has Russia gaining about 47 square kilometres net in the four weeks to October 26, while The Economist’s estimate has Ukraine ahead.

Ukraine has gone underground at Kupyansk. Its troops took the gas pipeline Russian infiltrators had used to reach the town, and ISW saw no Russian attacks there on October 26, though several dozen Russian soldiers remain in its north. Near Oleksandrivka, Ukrainian troops have retaken several villages and are edging toward the Russian supply hub at Velyka Novosilka.

In the Donetsk cities, the lines barely moved: Russia gained a foothold north of Kostiantynivka and infiltrated Dobropillya without holding it. The pressure has turned on the cities themselves, and Ukraine has ordered every family with children out of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk.

The announcements go on. Russia claimed four more villages between October 22 and 28; ISW found none of them, though DeepState recorded genuine small Russian advances in Zaporizhzhia.