The Long-Range Strike Campaign

The International Energy Agency put Russian refinery throughput at 3.8 million barrels a day in June, the lowest in more than twenty years and about 30 per cent below a year earlier, gasoline output down a fifth and diesel down nearly a third. Through August a Russian refinery was hit on average every third day, and only five of thirty-two major plants remain untouched since 2022 — all 3,500 to 6,500 kilometres away. Kpler, measuring independently, found crude runs at a 21-year low. Reuters, counting from fuel-market participants, reports half of Russia’s six largest diesel refineries cutting back or halted. Kirishi is fully shut; Volgograd and NORSI run at about a quarter of capacity; KINEF, the country’s second-largest, stopped processing on September 2. Russia has banned gasoline, jet fuel and — for the first time — diesel exports, and two-thirds of its regions are rationing fuel. The bill is arriving too. Federal revenues for January to August came in almost 17 per cent below last year, and the eight-month deficit of 5.8 trillion roubles already exceeds the whole of 2025. Strikes continued through the period: TANECO was hit again on September 13, and the Yaroslavl refinery stopped after September 17.

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NewSep 17, 2026high

A Refinery Stops and an Airfield Burns in the Same Night

The Slavneft-YANOS refinery at Yaroslavl, some 700 kilometres from the front, ceased production after a strike on September 17 damaged its AVT-3 unit — 17,140 tonnes of crude a day, about 40 per cent of the plant’s capacity. The figure comes from Reuters’ industry sources, relayed by ISW; RFE/RL names the same refinery independently. The same overnight attack reached a military airfield at Rostov-on-Don, where Ukraine’s security service said three military transport aircraft and three helicopters were hit — a claim by the side that flew the mission, with no Russian acknowledgement and no imagery cited. ISW separately assesses that Ukraine has been striking military assets in Rostov Oblast since at least June.

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understandingwar.orgrferl.org

NewSep 17, 2026critical

The Campaign Has an Effect, and This Time It Is Not Ukraine Saying So

The International Energy Agency put Russian refinery throughput at 3.8 million barrels a day in June, the lowest in more than twenty years and about 30 per cent down on a year earlier, with gasoline output off 20 per cent and diesel estimated off nearly 30. Through the first eight months of 2026 a Russian refinery was hit on average once every three days; of 32 major refineries, five remain untouched since 2022, all between 3,500 and 6,500 kilometres from Ukraine. Kpler, measuring separately, put crude runs at a 21-year low with roughly 58 per cent of capacity attacked or in downtime, and product exports down to 1.2 million barrels a day from 2.3 a year earlier while crude exports rose — unprocessed barrels going out because they can no longer be processed. Neither body is a party to the war, and neither is relaying a belligerent’s tally.

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iea.orgkpler.com

NewSep 17, 2026high

What the War Costs the Side Running It: a Deficit Already Past Last Year’s Whole

Russian fiscal revenues for January to August came in almost 17 per cent below the same period of 2025, at 5 trillion roubles, while the federal deficit reached 5.8 trillion roubles for those eight months — up 150 per cent year on year, and already larger than the 5.6 trillion recorded for the whole of 2025. Between April and August Russian oil companies drew 1.5 trillion roubles, about 18 billion dollars, in subsidies, largely through the damper mechanism that compensates refiners when export prices outrun domestic ones. The figures are Russia’s own finance ministry’s, relayed by the IEA: a state’s accounting of its own position, against its own interest.

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iea.org

NewSep 15, 2026high

Half of Russia’s Biggest Diesel Refineries Are Cutting Back, Kirishi Is Shut

Reuters, calculating from fuel-market participants rather than from either government, reports that three of Russia’s six largest diesel-producing refineries — Omsk, Kirishi, TANECO, Volgograd, NORSI and Perm, together about half of national diesel output — have sharply cut or halted production in September after drone damage. Kirishi is fully shut. Volgograd and NORSI are running at about a quarter of nameplate capacity. KINEF in Leningrad Oblast, Russia’s second-largest refinery, stopped processing entirely on September 2. Two questions this page has carried for months are answered: Kirishi is down, and Omsk — unconfirmed either way for six cycles — is among those that have cut back.

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reuters.comkyivpost.com

NewSep 13, 2026high

Struck Again Before It Could Be Repaired: TANECO, 1,105 Kilometres Out

Satellite imagery published through an open-source channel shows damage to the ELOU-AVT-7 processing unit at the TANECO refinery in Nizhnekamsk, Tatarstan, about 1,105 kilometres from the border, after a strike on September 13. It is not a depth record — Omsk, hit in July, is roughly 2,500 kilometres out — but it is an instance of the pattern both the IEA and Kpler now describe as the campaign’s method: refineries struck again before repairs finish, so outages lengthen rather than clear. The damage is corroborated by imagery rather than asserted by the striking side, which is the distinction this page exists to keep.

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understandingwar.orgkyivpost.com

Sep 5, 2026high

For Three Days, the Long War Stops Over Two Cities

Ukraine and Russia agreed to halt long-range strikes on Kyiv and Moscow for three days so a US delegation could travel between them. Zelensky said on 5 September that Ukraine would hold to it until the end of 7 September; Putin, meeting Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Moscow the same day, confirmed he had ordered Russian strikes on Kyiv stopped for three days from midnight, and acknowledged Ukraine had already eased off during the visit. It is the first time either side has stopped the campaign by agreement, and the terms show how narrow it is: two cities, not two countries. Putin rejected the wider frontline ceasefire Ukraine proposed, and strikes elsewhere never paused. There is a precedent — Ukraine stopped hitting Moscow Oblast during the CIA director's visit on 26 August.

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understandingwar.orgunderstandingwar.org

Aug 30, 2026high

The Campaign Reaches Russia's Second-Largest Refinery, 790 Kilometres From the Border

Ukrainian drones struck the Kirishi refinery in Leningrad Oblast on the night of 29–30 August — about 790 kilometres from the international border, the only refinery in Russia's northwest, and at roughly 20 million tonnes a year some six percent of national refining capacity. Governor Alexander Drozdenko acknowledged a fire and said air defences downed 42 drones. By 2 September the plant had completely halted crude processing: the strike damaged its AVT-6 and AT-1 units — about 48 percent of capacity between them — while its other two units were already offline, industry sources told Reuters and The Moscow Times. That is the fifth strike since March 2025, and a rare case where a struck plant is confirmed fully offline rather than merely burning. The same night's tasking also hit a Pantsir-S1, radars and ammunition depots at the Yeysk and Millerovo airfields, corroborated by geolocated footage and NASA FIRMS.

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understandingwar.orgkyivpost.comru.themoscowtimes.comunited24media.commilitarnyi.com

Aug 27, 2026high

Russia Buys Petrol From a NATO Member, and Rents a Refinery in Kazakhstan

The refinery campaign has pushed Moscow into importing the fuel it used to export. Russia bought 200,000 barrels of petrol from Turkey this week for the first time, moving it from Mersin to the Baltic port of Primorsk aboard a sanctioned tanker, the Wendrix — the fifth seaborne fuel cargo of the summer, after deliveries routed through Egypt from India's Vadinar refinery, about a million barrels in all. It also signed a deal with the Kondensat refinery in western Kazakhstan to process Russian crude abroad and ship 70 percent of the product home, the crude going by rail. Imports from Belarus rose 141-fold in June year on year. Six regions have reimposed petrol rationing, and Orsk is shut. Ukraine struck refineries 18 times in August, matching July's record.

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theguardian.com

Aug 27, 2026high

Half a Million Drivers' Reports Put a Number on What the Refinery Strikes Did

Meduza analysed 478,685 crowdsourced fuel-availability reports covering 25,129 filling stations in 83 Russian regions between 4 July and 23 August, cross-checked against 3.9 million bank card-payment records from Sberbank, T-Bank and Alfa-Bank and against exchange volumes. On 11–13 August petrol could be bought without a queue at 25–33 percent of stations and was present at all at 46–48 percent — worse availability than at the peak of July's first wave. On a fixed panel of 2,176 stations reported on in both periods, supply without a queue fell from 46 to 32 percent; in Moscow it fell from 75 to 30 percent, in Moscow Oblast from 72 to 25. Exchange petrol volumes for 1–20 August ran 55 percent below 2025. Meduza discloses the obvious risk — organised false reporting, which the app's developer says it filters — which is why the bank data is there.

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meduza.io

Aug 26, 2026high

Every Big Lukoil Refinery in Russia Is Now Shut

A drone strike and fire on 26 August forced Lukoil to halt crude processing at Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez, and with it the company's last operating major refinery: Perm has been down since 21 August, Volgograd since 31 July. NORSI is Russia's fourth-largest plant by throughput and second by petrol output — above 15 million tonnes of crude a year. Reuters' industry sources describe damage to processing units, inter-shop links and plant utilities, with no repair timeline. The Nizhny Novgorod governor confirmed a strike on an unnamed industrial site; Ukraine's General Staff named the refinery, and on 4 September — an interested witness — confirmed the plant had suspended operations. No restart date has been published. It is the fifth time NORSI has been stopped this year, and the first time all three plants have been down together.

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united24media.comaljazeera.comunderstandingwar.orgunderstandingwar.org

Earlier this month27

NewSep 18, 2026

Five Hundred Locomotives, and Most of the Damage Done This Year

More than 500 locomotives have been damaged or destroyed since the start of the war, more than 60 per cent of that in the past eight months, according to Ukrzaliznytsia’s head Oleksandr Pertsovskyi. Most strikes fall within 200 kilometres of the front or the Russian border, but repeaters sited in Belarus have extended the reach of attacks on trains. On the night of September 17–18 Russia launched 93 Shahed-type drones, 46 jet-powered, against six oblasts; Ukraine reported 69 drones downed, and a strike on an electric train near Lypkuvativka killed at least one person.

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understandingwar.org

NewSep 18, 2026

Isolate frontline areas, sow panic and fear among the Ukrainian population, and paralyze the Ukrainian economy.^?

— Oleksandr Pertsovskyi

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understandingwar.org

Checked

Ukrzaliznytsia’s head describing what he takes the Russian rail campaign to be for. An interested party attributing intent to an adversary: the damage he counts is his own network’s and well attested, the purpose he ascribes to it is not independently established.

NewSep 17, 2026

Russia Bans Its Own Diesel Exports, and Rations at Home

Russia banned gasoline exports in April, jet fuel in mid-June, and diesel on July 8 — its first diesel export ban ever, in a country that had been exporting roughly half its diesel and gasoil. The ban has since been extended twice, most recently to September 30. By the end of June fuel shortages were reported across 92 per cent of Russian regions, two-thirds of which introduced rationing; Rosstat put gasoline up more than 19 per cent and diesel about 18 per cent since January. The bans are Russia’s own acts, and so not in dispute.

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iea.org

Sep 6, 2026

Inside the Truce Window, a Refinery's Petrol Unit Is Hit Again

Ukrainian drones struck the Ryazan refinery on the morning of 6 September, hitting the Isomal-2 isomerization unit — the part that turns low-octane fractions into the blending component the plant needs for Euro-5 petrol. Militarnyi placed the strike at the unit's coordinates from footage published by the Exilenova+ outlet. The same unit was hit in December 2025; by May the refinery was reported to have lost 90 to 100 percent of its capacity. Rosneft's Ryazan plant runs about 17 million tonnes of crude a year. The strike also fixes the halt's scope: Kyiv and Moscow, nothing else.

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militarnyi.com

Sep 5, 2026

Russia Turns to the Medically Unfit to Guard Its Own Rear

Putin said on 5 September he backs letting volunteers graded category D — unfit for military service — join regional air defence formations such as the BARS reserve to protect Russian facilities from Ukrainian drones, and that air defence needs a single commander rather than a coordinating body. It follows measures pushing the job outward: private companies have had to fund air defences at their own sites since late May, and Putin's 24 August decree lets the state seize critical infrastructure whose owners fail to protect it — not nationalisation, he said, but a way to force air defences in.

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understandingwar.orgunderstandingwar.org

Sep 4, 2026

A One-Way Drone Goes After One Man: the SBU Chief

Russia struck the Security Service headquarters in Kyiv on 4 September with a Geran-type drone, and Zelensky said it was aimed at the office of the service's head, Oleksandr Poklad; the two met afterwards. The drone was remotely flown, according to Ukrainian presidential adviser Serhiy 'Flash' Beskrestnov, its control link likely held open by a mesh-network repeater a Russian agent switched on within five kilometres of the building. Beskrestnov speaks from experience: four Shahed drones were sent after him in April. A campaign built to burn infrastructure is now pointed at named individuals.

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understandingwar.org

Sep 3, 2026

Sea Drones Reach Sochi for the First Time, Hitting an Oil-and-Gas Support Ship

Ukrainian naval drones struck the Russian support vessel Nefrit in the port of Sochi on 3 September — the first time Ukraine's sea drones have reached Sochi. Two measures of that reach are on the record and are not the same thing: about 560 kilometres from the nearest Ukrainian-held coast, and about 820 kilometres by sea, the figure ISW uses. The navy released footage and Sochi's mayor declared an emergency. The Nefrit is tied to Russia's offshore oil-and-gas work and, by Ukrainian and open-source accounts, to repair of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal carrying Kazakhstan's oil — reported, not confirmed.

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ground.newsunited24media.comunderstandingwar.org

Sep 3, 2026

Russian Refiners Miss 60 Percent of Their Exchange Gasoline Contracts

Russian oil companies failed to fulfil about 60 percent of gasoline supply contracts on the St Petersburg exchange between May and September, industry sources told the business daily Kommersant, blaming Ukrainian drone strikes on refineries. About 20 percent of deals ended in default or cancellation and 39 percent went unfilled, a quarter of those past the 30-day shipment window. Lukoil and Rosneft — hit hardest — accounted for 46 and 28 percent of the unfilled volume; producers filled state and defence orders first, leaving the independent stations that are the exchange's main buyers near the back of the queue. It is a Russian commercial read on the campaign's effect, distinct from the pump-availability data of late August.

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meduza.io

Sep 3, 2026

Moscow's Two Biggest Airports Shut for a Second Night, and Nobody Fired a Shot

Vnukovo and Sheremetyevo suspended operations for a second consecutive night — The Moscow Times, from flight-monitoring data, on 3 September — after Zelensky warned on 1 September that Ukrainian drones would threaten Russian airspace and Ukraine issued a notice to airmen. Russia's regulator Rosaviatsia first called the notice illegitimateand said flights were normal, then announced the suspensions itself. Zelensky says international airlines have begun cancelling flights to Russia — his claim alone. Ukraine struck the physical layer too: geolocated footage shows an air traffic control radar, two oil depots and an air defence battery hit at Adler.

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understandingwar.orgunderstandingwar.org

Sep 3, 2026

Ukrainian strikes are causing economic and other adverse effects on Russian oil refining and fuel exports, but repairs on the remaining damaged facilities will be finished 'in the very near future'.^?

— Vladimir Putin

Checked

The concession runs against Putin's interest and matches this timeline's Russian commercial record. The repair claim does not: no restart date has been published for any struck facility, Kirishi and Kstovo remain down, and ISW judges the repairs costly and drawn out.

Sep 3, 2026

Russia has not sailed a missile-armed warship out of its own ports for three months, firing its sea-launched cruise missiles from beside its naval bases instead, and has been unable to repair or maintain its ships and submarines for two years.^?

— Dmytro Pletenchuk

Checked

The Ukrainian Navy's own account of its campaign, with no published sortie data to test it. ISW reports Kalibr interception as 'reportedly' near 100 percent — uncheckable against the nightly record, since Ukraine stopped publishing missile interception counts on 11 August.

Sep 1, 2026

A Sixth Day of Barrage on Kyiv, and Russia Starts Striking Through the Daylight

Russia's assault on Kyiv ran into a sixth consecutive day around 1 September. In the overnight ballistic attack at least 12 died and 21 were injured in the city and oblast — six of the dead Ukrainian Railways staff, killed when a missile hit a depot. The next night Russia fired four missiles and 174 drones, of which Ukraine downed 138; Ukrenergo reported outages in five oblasts. The change ISW flags is method, not volume: Russia has begun striking through the daylight, not only overnight, to wear the population down — prompting Ukraine to split its air alerts into a yellow drone level and a red missile level.

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kyivindependent.comunderstandingwar.org

Sep 1, 2026

Ukraine's 40-day strike campaign, ordered by Zelensky on 25 June, inflicted damage on Russia equivalent to about 1 percent of GDP.^?

— Vladimir Putin

Checked

Putin's own 1 September estimate, reported by Bloomberg — a concession of scale by the side being hit, who has every reason to understate it. About 1 percent of Russia's roughly $2.2tn GDP is on the order of $20bn. No independent accounting has been published to test the figure.

Aug 29, 2026

Russia's Largest Bank Says Marketplace Spending Has Fallen 15 Percent

Sberbank CFO Taras Skvortsov said on 29 August that Russian consumer spending on marketplaces has dropped 15 percent in recent weeks, and that marketplaces account for 15 percent of all Russian consumer spending. The figure matters for who gives it: Russia's largest bank, reading its own payments data, has no interest in advertising the effect of Ukrainian warehouse strikes. Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service separately put Ozon's commissions and logistics charges at 47.8 percent of product value from April to June, rising to 55 percent for sellers using its warehouses — an interested party's account of a Russian company's distress, recorded as its claim.

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understandingwar.org

Aug 29, 2026

Odesa's Ports Go From Eight Ships a Day to One

Ukrainian Ports Association president Dmytro Barinov told the Telegraph that traffic through Odesa Oblast ports has fallen from an average of seven or eight vessels a day to one, since Russian forces began repeated strikes on Black Sea port infrastructure using S8000 Banderol jet-powered loitering munitions. The Banderol entered serial production in late July and is launched from Orion drones and Mi-28N helicopters over Crimean airspace, stored in Dzhankoi Raion and at the Kirovske and Simferopol airfields; a Kremlin-affiliated milblogger says it is cheaper and faster to build than a Kh-101 cruise missile. The Telegraph report was reached only as relayed by ISW.

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understandingwar.org

Aug 29, 2026

Twenty-Eight Hours of Alerts, and Thirty-Seven Dead at an Ammunition Store

Russia ran a combined package against Kyiv City and Oblast across 28 and 29 August lasting more than 28 hours — over 550 Banderol, Shahed, Gerbera and Parodiya munitions plus Onyx and Iskander-M missiles from occupied Crimea, striking 15 locations. Ukrainian Air Force data indicate about 86 percent of strike drones were downed; the missile totals were withheld again, as they have been since 11 August, so there is no denominator for what got through. A strike on an ammunition warehouse near Myla, on Kyiv's western outskirts, set off secondary detonations that damaged at least 130 residential buildings and a retirement home, killing at least 37 and injuring 42.

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understandingwar.org

Aug 27, 2026

The situation is changing every day. We're constantly monitoring it and are making decisions at our headquarters. We're gathering the federal headquarters with the regions and all of our companies twice a week.^?

— Alexander Novak

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theguardian.comunderstandingwar.orgunderstandingwar.org

Checked

Still unverified a week on. Putin said on 3 September repairs would finish 'in the very near future', again naming no plant and no volume; ISW judges them costly and drawn out, and Ukraine's General Staff says Kstovo remains suspended.

Aug 27, 2026

A 258-Drone Package, and the Ballistic Numbers Stay Hidden

Russia sent 258 Shahed-, Gerbera- and other-type drones at Ukraine overnight into 27 August, with two Oniks anti-ship missiles, three S8000 Banderol cruise missiles and an undisclosed number of Iskander-M and KN-23 ballistics. Ukraine's Air Force reported 222 drones, one Oniks, all three Banderols and seven ballistic missiles intercepted or suppressed, with strikes at 15 locations and debris at 11 more. Odesa, Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Poltava oblasts and Zaporizhzhia were the main targets; a woman was killed in Sumy Oblast. As since 11 August the ballistic launch count was withheld, so the seven downed cannot be read as a rate.

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hromadske.ua

Aug 26, 2026

The Warehouse War: Wildberries Loses a Hundred Thousand Square Metres

A drone strike destroyed a Wildberries logistics centre at Kotovsk in Tambov Oblast, 500 kilometres southeast of Moscow; governor Yevgeny Pervyshov said it was completely destroyed after about 100,000 square metres caught alight. Russia's defence ministry claimed 426 drones intercepted overnight; at least 12 people were killed in the wave. Ukraine has hit Wildberries since mid-July and its rival Ozon in recent days: together they dominate one of the few growing parts of a stagnant economy. Kyiv says Wildberries carries military logistics; Moscow and the company say otherwise. The same night, glide bombs severely damaged the Kherson thermal power plant.

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aljazeera.comunderstandingwar.org

Aug 19, 2026high

Russia's Fuel Crisis Reaches Moscow as a 'Second Wave' Forces Rationing and the National Guard onto the Forecourts

Months of Ukrainian strikes on refineries have tipped Russia's summer fuel shortage into what Russian media call a "second wave" — and it has reached the capital the Kremlin most tries to shield. Gazprom Neft reimposed 60-litre limits at Moscow stations and Tatneft capped sales, weeks after briefly easing restrictions across 13 regions. On August 18 gasoline was available at only 28% of Russian stations, down from 41% a week earlier, on the crowd-sourced GdeBENZ data cited by Izvestia. Putin sent Rosgvardia units to gas-station queues, the government weighed banning aromatic-hydrocarbon exports — already worsening a motor-oil shortage — and extended the fuel export ban into early 2027. On August 19 Putin conceded that "external pressure" and "terrorist attacks", the Kremlin's term for the strikes, were denting growth, now near 1%. Ukraine kept hitting refineries, striking the Ufa hub 1,200km away that same day.

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understandingwar.orgthemoscowtimes.com

Aug 16, 2026high

The War's Largest Salvo Burns Russia's Biggest Warehouse, Forty Kilometres From Moscow

Overnight into August 16 Ukraine sent more than 800 long-range drones into Russia, one of the war's largest attacks. Its centrepiece was a 250,000-square-metre Wildberries distribution hub at Podolsk, about forty kilometres south of central Moscow and 420 from the border — the retailer's single largest warehouse, corroborated three ways: geolocated footage, Moscow Oblast Governor Andrey Vorobyov, and the company, which confirmed the blaze and a forced logistics reorganisation. A second warehouse burned nearby. Ukraine says it has now disabled seven of the retailer's ten largest logistics centres — a category claim — after a campaign that had destroyed at least 1.18 million square metres, a fifth of its capacity, plus a cyberattack on August 10-11. Drones also hit the Kamensky solid-rocket-fuel plant in Rostov Oblast, with satellite imagery showing workshops destroyed. Regional authorities put the night's dead at six. The interception figures do not fit together: the Defence Ministry claimed 822 drones destroyed overnight and 1,478 over 24 hours — both above the number reported launched, and the outlet carrying the higher figure called it probably exaggerated; Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said about 600 drones headed for the capital region and 201 were destroyed.

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criticalthreats.orgcriticalthreats.orgcriticalthreats.orgapnews.comtheguardian.compbs.org

Aug 15, 2026high

Novorossiysk Stops Loading Crude, and the Refining Loss Reaches the IEA's Books

The strongest evidence yet that the campaign is doing measurable damage arrived in one week from three directions, none of them Ukrainian. Russia suspended crude exports from the Sheskharis terminal at Novorossiysk and stopped accepting oil into it after the 11-12 August strike, its tanks full — Reuters, from three sources, reaching this record through ISW. Russian Railways then restricted cargo loading at the port from 13 to 22 August, a state operator acting against its own interest. And the International Energy Agency, with no stake in either side's claims, cut its estimate of third-quarter global refinery runs by a further 370,000 barrels a day, naming attacks on Russian refineries alongside Middle East disruption. The two causes are not separated, so this is not the campaign's bill alone — but it is the first time the strikes have been priced into the world's reference oil balance. By end-July more than 30 percent of Russia's actual refining capacity was out of commission (45 percent of nominal, a different measure), and on 14 August the government conceded fuel supply 'remains difficult' in eleven named regions.

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criticalthreats.orgiea.orgoilprice.comcharter97.org

Aug 11, 2026high

The Biggest Strike Yet on Novorossiysk Halts Two of Russia's Largest Grain Terminals

On the night of 11-12 August Ukraine mounted its largest strike of the war on Novorossiysk, the Black Sea Fleet's main refuge and a principal oil and grain gateway. Zelensky said it used Palyanytsya jet drones, Neptune cruise missiles and sea drones against air-defence positions, berths and port infrastructure; Ukrainian sources published footage of fires at the Sheskharis oil terminal and the naval base, and Governor Veniamin Kondratyev acknowledged the strike. The measurable consequence was at the grain terminals: Reuters, citing four industry sources, reported two of Russia's largest suspended operations. Satellite imagery from Vantor, read by Naval News, indicates the frigates Admiral Essen and Admiral Makarov were hit on or beside their forward vertical-launch cells and burned — likely disabling the missile batteries of the two most capable surface ships the fleet had left after the Moskva sank in 2022. An S-300 fire-control radar was damaged. That reading is the publication's own analysts', and Russia has not acknowledged it.

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criticalthreats.orgnavalnews.com

Aug 10, 2026high

The Deepest Strikes Yet, and the Deadliest, at a Tatarstan Refinery

On August 10 Ukrainian drones reached two of the furthest targets of the campaign and, at one of them, produced its heaviest civilian toll on Russian soil. At Nizhnekamsk in the republic of Tatarstan, roughly 1,200 kilometres from the border, drones set fire to Tatneft's TANECO refinery — one of Russia's largest and most advanced, with a capacity Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces put at about 13 million tonnes of crude a year — and the Tatarstan administration acknowledged the strike. Local authorities said at least 13 people were killed, including a child, and up to 75 wounded; Russian investigators opened a case they called a terrorist attack, saying residential areas had been struck. It is among the deadliest single Ukrainian strikes inside Russia of the war. The same night the General Staff reported hitting the Tobolskneftekhim petrochemical plant at Tobolsk, in Tyumen Oblast about 2,200 kilometres from the border, damaging a gas-fractionation unit rated at some 6.6 million tonnes of feedstock a year. The distance is the furthest the campaign has been placed by the border measure; the toll is the change. A campaign that has for months burned tanks and processing units at range has now, at a refinery ringed by a Soviet-era city, killed civilians in the numbers Russia's own strikes on Ukraine routinely do.

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theguardian.comabc.net.aucriticalthreats.org

Aug 5, 2026high

Twenty-Eight Missiles at Kyiv, None Stopped, and the Interception Rate in the Data

Overnight into August 5 Russia fired 28 missiles at Ukraine — 24 Iskander-M and S-400 ballistic missiles and four Zircon/Onyx anti-ship missiles on quasi-ballistic tracks — alongside 115 strike and decoy drones, with Kyiv and its region the primary target. Ukrainian forces intercepted none of the 28 missiles; air defences downed 98 of the 115 drones. At least 21 people were killed — 17 in the Kyiv region, the deadliest night the capital area has seen this year, three in Donetsk and one in Kharkiv — and dozens were injured. Zelenskyy said the strikes hit civilian warehouse and logistics facilities — naming Epicentr, Rozetka and Nova Poshta sites, a brewing company and construction-materials depots — along with a railway station and infrastructure in Odesa Oblast, and that the targets "had nothing to do with the war"; a strike on Kyiv's Holosiivskyi district caused a contained ammonia leak, and Kyiv authorities alleged cluster munitions were used. Russia's Defence Ministry said it had struck military logistics hubs and supply chains, and three cargo vessels near Odesa. What is not contested is the failure of the defence: Ukrainian Air Force data analysed by BBC Verify show missile-interception rates fell to 44.4 percent over July 6–August 5 from 66.7 percent a year earlier — 156 of 351 missiles downed, against 128 of 192 in the same 2025 window — even as Russian missile launches rose 83 percent year on year, while drone-interception rates barely moved (85.8 percent, against 88.4 percent). Zelenskyy said interceptor deliveries are running three times lower than in 2025 and that ballistic interceptors "could have saved the lives of those killed."

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understandingwar.orgbbc.comft.comaljazeera.com

Jul 27, 2026high

Ukraine Strikes 2,000 Kilometres Deep, and Kazakhstan Loses Half Its Oil Output

The campaign reached its furthest point of the war and, for the first time on this record, measurably cost a third country. On July 25 Ukrainian drones hit the Antipinsky refinery near Tyumen — roughly 1,980 kilometres from the frontline — confirmed three ways: ISW geolocation, Zelensky, and Tyumen Governor Alexander Moor, who reported a fire. Overnight July 26-27 Zelensky confirmed strikes in Yaroslavl Oblast and Udmurtia, over 1,300 kilometres from the border, and the General Staff and Rostov Governor Yuri Slyusar reported an export terminal hit at Rostov-on-Don (the two distances are measured differently, frontline vs border). Brovdi put July's tally of struck Russian substations at 154 — his force's own unverified claim. Deputy PM Alexander Novak said Russia will extend its gasoline export ban to end-2026 (gasoline suspended April 1, diesel July 8). And ISW, relaying Reuters, reported Kazakhstan's daily oil-and-condensate output more than halved to about one million barrels, from a June average of 2.16 million, after strikes closed its main Black Sea export terminal — the figure resting on a single anonymous source; Kazakhstan's energy ministry reported the Caspian Pipeline Consortium resuming July 27.

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understandingwar.orgunderstandingwar.org

Jul 24, 2026high

Ukraine's Drone War Reaches Russia's Shopping Baskets

Ukrainian drones struck warehouses belonging to Wildberries — Russia's largest online marketplace, which handles 52% of the country's online orders — in St Petersburg, the adjacent Leningrad region and Simferopol in occupied Crimea on July 24, the latest in a wave that began on the night of July 18–19 and has hit at least nine of the retailer's logistics sites. ISW geolocation independently confirmed fires at Wildberries hubs near Krasnodar City and Nevinnomyssk on July 21 and near Voronezh on July 23, and recorded earlier strikes in Moscow and Tambov oblasts. The struck sites cover about 552,000 square metres, roughly a tenth of the company's warehouse capacity; the Moscow research firm Data Insight put the destroyed merchandise at 170 billion roubles (about $2.2 billion), though the same firm's lead analyst told the Associated Press losses could run to about $3 billion while cautioning there is not enough data to assess. At least nine people have been killed. Most of the loss falls not on Wildberries but on the independent sellers whose stock burned — and the company changed its seller terms 11 days before the first strike to exempt itself from liability for goods destroyed by 'force majeure', explicitly including drone attacks. It has since begun payments prioritising more than 88,000 of its smallest sellers; one seller said he received 19,000 roubles against 4.6 million roubles of losses, 'less than 1% of the total'. After months of striking refineries and fuel infrastructure, the campaign marks a turn to the consumer logistics network that grew into the gap Western brands left after 2022 — the first phase of Ukraine's long-range war whose effects are felt directly in ordinary Russian households.

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Aug 25, 2026

Two Killed at Afipsky, and Perm Turns Out to Have Lost Most of Its Capacity

Drones struck two more southern refineries on 25 August. Krasnodar governor Veniamin Kondratyev said falling debris killed two people at the Afipsky refinery, which caught fire; in Rostov Oblast the Novoshakhtinsky refinery was damaged and suspended processing. The more consequential number came from satellite imagery: the Dnipro OSINT project assessed that Lukoil's Perm refinery, struck on 21 August more than 1,500 kilometres from the border, had lost roughly 86 percent of its primary crude-processing capacity, about 11.3 million tonnes a year. Industry sources had put the repair window at one to two weeks. A single OSINT estimate, not a measurement.

Aug 24, 2026

The Fuel Crisis Crosses the Border into Central Asia

Russians along the Volga now drive hundreds of kilometres into Kazakhstan to fill up, and Kazakh border guards report thwarting hundreds of attempts to carry petrol back, three months after Astana banned exports. Kazakh fuel prices are up 15.6 percent this year. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which took up to 90 percent of their petrol from Russia, are rationing: Bishkek has spent about $11.4m on subsidies, Dushanbe has 20-litre limits and signed a mid-August deal for 2.5 million tonnes of Iranian fuel. Uzbekistan is building a two-to-three-month reserve.

Aug 23, 2026

The Campaign Turns on the Air Defences Themselves

ISW assessed on August 23 that Ukraine is running a sustained campaign to suppress and destroy Russian air defences at intermediate range — striking Su-33 and MiG-29 fighters, a SAM unit and integrated air-defence assets in Krasnodar Krai, air-defence sensors in Rostov Oblast and radars in occupied Crimea, and destroying an Iskander-M launcher near the border. The purpose is to degrade Russia's ability to defend its rear against the deep strikes that follow. The claims come from Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces and Zelensky, relayed rather than geolocated; the same commander reports 267 power plants struck August 1–22, a category not comparable with earlier substation counts.

Aug 23, 2026

Two Passenger Trains Struck in a Day

Russian forces hit two Ukrainian passenger trains on August 23. A double-tap Geran-type drone strike on an electric train at Lymanivka station in Kharkiv Oblast — a second strike timed for the responders — killed one civilian and injured four. A Zhytomyr–Odesa service carrying 593 people, 15 of them children, was struck without injury because officials recognised the threat and evacuated the train first, the chairman of Ukrainian Railways said. Rail has been a standing target of the Russian campaign; the double-tap is what separates these from routine damage.

Aug 21, 2026

Russia's Seventh-Largest Refinery Goes Down as the Fuel Crisis Deepens

The Perm refinery stopped work after an August 21 drone strike, industry sources told Reuters. Its CDU-4 unit — about 40 percent of the plant, 14,000 tonnes of crude a day — was shut, with repairs put at one to two weeks; CDU-5, another 34 percent, has been down since a July 29 strike. Zelensky confirmed the strike. Retail petrol has risen 7.4 percent this year to about 70 roubles a litre, past 100 in some regions, and the antimonopoly service has opened 41 cases against oil companies.

Aug 20, 2026

Sixteen Dead in Kyiv, and Not One Ballistic Missile Stopped

A combined Russian package that began just before midnight on August 19 and ran into the afternoon killed at least 16 people in and around Kyiv and injured 33, collapsing a nine-storey block in Solomianskyi and damaging a school and a children's medical centre. Ukraine's air force reported dozens of ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missiles and 168 drones, and said it downed 41 of 46 cruise missiles and 145 drones. It intercepted none of the ballistic missiles — and no longer publishes how many were fired, having stopped announcing the figure earlier in August on security grounds.

Aug 18, 2026

Ukraine Strikes Grain Ships at Russian Ports for the First Time

Ukrainian forces struck at least five grain vessels near the Black Sea ports of Novorossiysk and Tuapse on August 17 and 18, Bloomberg reported citing people familiar with the matter — the first confirmed strikes on grain ships at Russian ports, and a new class of maritime target. They came days after Moscow rejected Ukraine's proposed moratorium on Black Sea maritime strikes. Russian authorities are said to be downplaying the attacks, and the attribution is soft — "unspecified actors", likely Ukrainian — so it is recorded here as reported rather than confirmed. It extends a campaign that had already reached the Baltic at Ust-Luga into the grain trade that helps fund the war.

Aug 17, 2026

Russia Turns on the Gas Fields as Ukraine's Civilian Toll Hits a Four-Year High

Russia spent the week on Ukraine's energy firms and its cities. Naftogaz, the state gas company, said its gas-production facilities were struck thirteen times in the week from August 10 and 293 times this year — a count that names no regions, assets or cost, and covers gas production rather than the grid. A missile hit ArcelorMittal's Kryvyi Rih works, killing two and partly halting production (confirmed by the company that suffered it), and a ballistic missile burned much of Kyiv's Petrovka book market, injuring six. The United Nations, with nothing at stake in the count, recorded 437 civilians killed and 2,610 injured across Ukraine in July — the worst month since May 2022, about 30 percent above June's own record, seventeen of the dead children. The defence can no longer be read: the Air Force stopped publishing missile figures on August 11, giving only drone counts, while Zelensky's weekly total for August 9-15 (more than 1,550 drones, nearly 1,560 glide bombs, 62 missiles) carried no interception figure at all.

Aug 15, 2026

Flamingos Hit a Space-Rocket Plant, and Ukraine Starts Hunting the Launchers

Overnight into 15 August Ukraine fired FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles at the Progress Space Rocket Center in Samara — central, the Ukrainian General Staff said, to Russia's effort to build its own battlefield satellite communications — and a fire followed. The same side measured the distance two ways: the General Staff put Samara roughly 1,488 km from the border, Zelensky about 900 km. Two of five missiles got through, despite four A-50U radar aircraft flown up to help intercept them. Hours earlier Ukrainian officials reported a fire at Savasleyka air base, about 680 km out, which flies the MiG-31Ks that launch Kinzhal missiles. Unable to buy enough interceptors, Ukraine appears to be reaching for the aircraft that carry the missiles and the plants that build what guides them — ISW puts it no more firmly than 'appear to be targeting', and Russia acknowledged neither strike. On 19 August the General Staff said the Progress strike hit the Soyuz engine assembly workshop.

Aug 14, 2026

The Campaign Reaches the Baltic at Ust-Luga

Overnight into August 14 Ukrainian drones struck the Novatek Ust-Luga oil refinery at Slobodka in Leningrad Oblast, hitting two of its processing units, and set a fire at the port of Ust-Luga itself — Russia's largest Baltic export terminal, the gate through which crude, fuel, coal, fertiliser and grain leave the country's north. The strike is the Ukrainian General Staff's account. The fire is the struck side's own: Leningrad Oblast Governor Alexander Drozdenko acknowledged it on his Telegram channel and then closed it down, writing that "all consequences of the attack in the port of Ust-Luga were eliminated, there are no victims" — and publishing no figure for throughput lost, tankage destroyed or loading suspended. Two things make this more than another refinery. One is geography: the campaign's long reach had run east to the Volga and the Urals and south to the Black Sea, and Ust-Luga sits on the Gulf of Finland. The other is repetition — it is the second strike there since early July, the pattern of returning to a site before its repairs are finished.

Aug 13, 2026

Russia's Fuel Exports Hit a Record Low, and the Export Ban Runs Into 2027

The cumulative bill on Russian refining, measured from outside and conceded from inside, deepened across the week. The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air reported that Russian oil-product export loadings fell 23 percent in July to 4.7 million tonnes — the lowest on record and less than half the 9.6 million tonnes loaded a year earlier — as fossil-fuel export revenue slid 12 percent month on month to 683 million euros a day, with seaborne oil-product revenue down 45 percent. Moscow's own answer confirms the strain: the government renewed its ban on gasoline and diesel exports to run from August 1 to January 31, 2027, longer and broader than the end-of-2026 gasoline extension its deputy prime minister had signalled, and the average petrol price has climbed 19 percent since the start of the year. The refineries kept falling. The Orsk plant near the Kazakh border suspended operations after a strike, with the Orenburg governor estimating repairs could take six months, and overnight into August 13 drones hit the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat complex in Bashkortostan, which processes up to 74 million barrels of crude a year — the fourth refinery struck in three days. These are the effect the campaign's planners said they were after: not a burning tank but a national fuel market that can no longer export what it makes.

Aug 11, 2026

A Children's Hospital and a Steelworks, and Ukraine Goes Quiet on the Missile Count

Russia's overnight package into August 11 combined ballistic and quasi-ballistic missiles — Iskander-M, a North Korean-provided KN-23 and Zircon anti-ship missiles on ballistic tracks — with 120 drones, of which Ukraine downed 98, and it struck industry and hospitals rather than the grid directly. A ballistic missile hit a children's hospital in Kyiv, damaging a gas pipe and the building's glazing; in Zaporizhzhia the steel and iron producer Metinvest confirmed a ballistic strike on its Zaporizhstal works killed seven employees and injured 21, halting coke and blast-furnace production, with the city's wider toll put at at least six dead. The following night brought a further Iskander-M, a Kh-31P and cruise missiles alongside 138 drones, 112 of them downed. What is no longer on the record is how many missiles Russia fired and how many were stopped: Ukraine's Air Force has stopped publishing missile launch and interception counts, a change it described as a security measure, so silence about downed missiles can no longer be read as a failure to intercept. The best independent gauge of the defence — the share of ballistic missiles stopped — has gone dark just as Russia leans on the ballistic weapons Ukraine can least often catch.

Aug 8, 2026

Russia Turns Back to the Grid, a Month Early, and the Grain Exports Fall

Russia's campaign is pivoting back toward the target it worked all last winter: Ukraine's power grid. Ukraine's Center for Strategic Communications, citing US intelligence, warned on August 8 that Russia is preparing a large-scale strike campaign against Kyiv's energy infrastructure before Ukraine's Independence Day on August 24, drawing on its strategic reserve of ballistic missiles — roughly a month earlier than its 2025 winter campaign began, in ISW's reading an attempt to disrupt Ukrainian repairs and to exploit the interceptor shortage before it can be fixed. The overnight packages already point that way. Into August 7, Russia sent 147 strike and decoy drones, of which Ukraine downed 114; Ukrenergo reported outages across five oblasts, Ukrnafta reported seven facilities and four filling stations hit, and Naftogaz said its sites had been struck 287 times in 2026 — more than in 2025 and the first three years of the full-scale war combined. Into August 8 came six Iskander-M and S-400 ballistic missiles and 151 drones; 135 drones were downed, several missiles missed, and no clean missile-interception figure was released. A double-tap drone strike at Pukhivka, in the Kyiv region's Brovary district, killed a grandfather, grandmother and their three-year-old grandson; one more person was killed in the capital by ballistic missiles. And the maritime half of Russia's campaign is now measurable at the far end: after strikes on Black Sea grain ships — the Liberian-flagged EMIL, hit twice as its crew evacuated, and the wheat-carrying Mera Queen — Ukraine's agriculture ministry forecast that farm exports could fall 54 percent in the 2026-27 marketing year, with wheat down 53 percent and grain storage full by early November, according to Bloomberg.

Aug 7, 2026

The Bill for Wildberries Comes Due: $4.8 Billion, and No Insurance

The warehouse campaign against Wildberries, Russia's largest online retailer, is now being counted in money rather than buildings, and the counting is coming from the Russian side. A Russian insider source, cited by ISW, put the damage at up to 400 billion rubles — about 4.82 billion dollars — across at least 21 struck facilities representing up to 22 percent of the company's space between July 18 and August 5, and said the company had bought no insurance on any of them, which leaves it carrying the full liability. Reuters, working from satellite imagery, calculates that the strikes have destroyed at least 1.18 million square metres of warehouse space, a fifth of Wildberries' total capacity. The company confirmed a fresh strike in Yekaterinburg on August 7 and, the same day, raised its own product-insurance rates by 40 percent, to as much as 5.6 percent of a consignment's value. The wider damage is financial: a source close to the Kremlin told Reuters the strikes will set off a wave of bankruptcies among the small and medium retailers who stored goods with Wildberries, that no entity in Russia has the capacity to prevent it, and that officials are weighing state-bank loans, tax breaks and subsidies; Ukraine's Center for Strategic Communications reports retailers are increasingly seeking debt restructurings, adding to the strain on Russian banks whose asset quality was already deteriorating. It is the clearest corporate-distress accounting the campaign has produced — a measurable effect stated, in this case, by the side absorbing it.

Aug 6, 2026

Four Refineries in Three Nights, and the Independent Numbers Catch Up

Ukraine hit four refineries across three nights. On 5-6 August drones set a large fire at Slavneft-Yanos in Yaroslavl (about 15 million tonnes of crude a year, roughly 700 km from the border): the Security Service named four RVS-2000 tanks and the ELOU-1 and AVT-3 units, ISW cited geolocated footage, and Governor Mikhail Yevrayev acknowledged tank damage. The same night it struck Bashneft-Novoil at Ufa, about 1,200 km out — the third strike there since 2 August, the restrike-before-repair signature. On 7-8 August it hit Ilsky in Krasnodar Krai, whose operational headquarters conceded a fire, and Syzran in Samara Oblast, geolocated and acknowledged by Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev. No depth record: the tempo is the news. Independent figures moved with it — the Kyiv School of Economics put Russian refinery runs at 3.8 million barrels a day, 1.6 million below a year earlier.

Aug 5, 2026

Russia Brings Back Petrol It Banned in 2013 to Head Off a Fuel Crisis

The domestic cost of the refinery campaign surfaced in a government decree. Russia authorised the production, import and sale of Euro-2, -3 and -4 (K2–K4) motor gasoline — grades banned in the country since 2013 — until July 1, 2027, to stave off a fuel shortage; Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak tied the step to drone strikes on refineries. The Moscow Times reported that gasoline output had fallen to about 65 percent of average domestic consumption by early July and that diesel output barely matched demand. Gasoline imports from Belarus surged roughly 25-fold year on year, to about 665,000 tonnes over January–July, with further imports from India, Kazakhstan and Morocco. A government relaxing its own fuel-quality law is a clean, dated effect stated by the side being hurt — the domestic-supply counterpart to the export bans already on the record, which addressed the other end of the same shortage.

Aug 5, 2026

Nineteen Wildberries Warehouses, and Now Belarusian Sellers Are Paying

The campaign against the logistics network of Wildberries, Russia's largest online retailer, widened: the Institute for the Study of War counts at least 19 of the company's warehouses struck across Russia since the first such strike on July 18. On August 4–5, geolocated footage and Russian governors' and company confirmations recorded fires at Wildberries facilities in Aleksin (Tula Oblast) and Krasny Bor (Leningrad Oblast, near St Petersburg). The cost has now crossed a second border: Belarusian entrepreneurs have petitioned Minsk for compensation, citing an estimated 22,000 Belarusian-owned products stored in the struck Russian warehouses — extending the third-country consequence first seen when the retailer began seeking warehouse space in Kazakhstan. Individual strikes on the chain are now routine; the finding is the cumulative count and the spread of the bill.

Aug 5, 2026

Can Russia Keep Firing Barrages It Cannot Stock? North Korea Ships More Missiles

The August 5 barrage that Ukraine could not touch turns on a supply-side question: whether Russia can sustain zero-interception ballistic packages against Ukraine's depleted interceptor stocks. Ukraine's military intelligence (GUR), via Reuters, said on August 5 that North Korea has begun deploying a missile unit — about 90 soldiers, up to 120 ballistic missiles and six launchers — to Voronezh Oblast in western Russia; an earlier batch of some 40 KN-23/24 missiles and personnel had already arrived, and the North Korean missile used in Russia's July 29–30 strike came from it. The Institute for the Study of War notes Russia expended up to two-thirds of its planned annual Zircon production in the first 19 days of July, launching faster than it builds — so roughly 160 added North Korean missiles would let it keep or enlarge ballistic barrages without drawing down its own S-400 and Zircon stocks. The transfer itself is a weapons-supply development; what bears on this campaign is the balance it shifts — between Russia's capacity to keep firing and Ukraine's shrinking capacity to intercept.

Aug 4, 2026

The SBU Totals Its Own 40-Day Campaign: 100 Strikes, by Its Own Count

On August 4 Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) announced that in a 40-day operation begun June 26 its drone operators had conducted more than 100 strikes across a wide Russian target set — 14 oil refineries and other oil-infrastructure sites, defence-industrial plants, air bases (Engels in Saratov Oblast, Khanskaya in Adygea and bases in occupied Crimea), command posts, air-defence assets, two cargo ships and two shadow-fleet tankers — and claimed to have destroyed a Tu-95MS strategic bomber, two Su-35 fighters and two L-39 trainers. Zelenskyy said he had approved a further SBU operation without specifying its scope. The figures are the striking service's own account of its own operation, relayed by the Institute for the Study of War without independent per-item geolocation, and are recorded as such — a self-tally in a different category from the Unmanned Systems Forces' running substation counts, not a revision of them.

Aug 4, 2026

Russian Refining Falls to a 24-Year Low, and This Time the Number Is Not Ukraine's

For the first time the strike campaign's cumulative effect on Russian refining is quantified by a party with no stake in the claim. Bloomberg reported on August 3, citing the consultancy EA Analytics, that Russian refineries processed an estimated 3.6 million barrels of crude a day in July 2026 — roughly a third below the 5.3–5.6 million barrels seen across the same months in 2020–2025, and the lowest refining rate since May 2002 — forcing Russia to export near-record volumes of unrefined crude. Bloomberg counted 30 attacks on oil infrastructure in July (18 of them refineries, including the Omsk plant more than 2,500 kilometres from the border, plus five tankers, five port sites and two pipelines), the second-highest monthly total after May's 32. The Institute for the Study of War, relaying Meduza, RBK and Deutsche Welle, separately put the degradation of Russia's refining capacity at "at least one third." These are outside estimates of outcome rather than the striking forces' counts of activity — the measurable effect the campaign's Ukrainian planners have said they are pursuing, now visible from the Russian-refining side. Bloomberg's own report is paywalled and reached here through The Moscow Times and ISW, and is attributed as relayed.

Aug 4, 2026

War-Risk Cover Dries Up in the Black and Azov Seas

The maritime strikes are raising the cost of moving cargo through Russia's southern waters. RBK reported on August 4, citing Russian shipping and insurance sources, that Russian insurers have effectively stopped covering military- and terrorism-risk for cargo ships in the Black and Azov seas — after the Russian Defence Ministry issued a navigational warning for those waters from July 12 to 18 amid intensified Ukrainian vessel strikes — and that foreign insurers have raised war-risk rates. The account is RBK's, a Russian business outlet, relayed by the Institute for the Study of War. It is a third-party cost of the campaign, borne by shippers rather than by either combatant, and a market signal of the same maritime pressure the Nadezhda and Gelendzhik strikes made visible.

Aug 3, 2026

A Drone Hits a Black Sea Beach, and the Toll Is the Governor's

On August 3 a drone struck a beach near the Russian Black Sea resort town of Gelendzhik, in Krasnodar Krai. Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said six people were killed, including three children, and about 40 injured, and blamed Ukraine; other Russian officials put the toll higher, at seven dead. Ukraine's military did not comment. BBC Verify geolocated the footage to the beachfront but corroborated only that a drone struck there — the casualty figures are the governor's account, not independently verified. The beach lies about 40 kilometres from the Russian naval base at Novorossiysk, reported as the likely intended target, which raises the possibility of an errant strike. It is the campaign's second civilian-beach toll of the war and marks, if the account holds, a change in what the maritime campaign is hitting near a defended naval port.

Aug 3, 2026

Drones Reach a Cargo Ship on the Turkish Route into Novorossiysk

On August 3 drones struck the Cameroon-flagged roll-on/roll-off cargo vessel Nadezhda as it approached Russia's Novorossiysk port from Samsun, Turkey, injuring three to four crew, according to Turkish officials and Russian opposition media relayed by the Institute for the Study of War. Russian opposition sources distinguished the vessel from a separate Russian-flagged dry-cargo ship of the same name that Ukraine has sanctioned. The strike extends the maritime campaign to third-country-flagged commercial shipping on the route into Novorossiysk, and lands the same day as the Gelendzhik beach strike a short distance away — both close to the naval base the port hosts.

Aug 3, 2026

Russians have destroyed or damaged more than 80 percent of Ukraine's power generation.^±

— Denys Shmyhal

Aug 1, 2026

Russian Barrage Hits Kyiv and the Lithuanian Embassy as Interceptors Run Low

Russia escalated its ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv, launching a barrage of 27 ballistic missiles at the capital. Ukraine was only able to shoot down one of the missiles, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy explicitly blaming the low interception rate on a critical shortage of Patriot interceptors. The strikes killed at least nine people and injured dozens, partially destroying a five-storey residential building in the Solomyanskyi district and another building in the Darnytskyi district. Debris from the strikes also landed near the Lithuanian embassy, breaking windows and scattering across the compound, prompting Lithuania's foreign minister to announce they would summon the Russian representative in protest.

Aug 1, 2026

Ukraine Strikes the Engels Airbase, Russian Refineries, and Sinks the Yanina

Ukraine continued its deep-strike campaign against Russian infrastructure and military assets. Ukrainian drones struck the Engels airfield in the Saratov region—a major base for Russian Tu-95MC and Tu-160 strategic bombers—as well as a major oil refinery in Saratov, an oil depot in Kaluga, and a drone launch site in Bryansk. The strikes killed at least nine people across the Udmurtia, Belgorod, and Saratov regions, including a drone strike on a car over 1,300 kilometres from the front line. Meanwhile, in the Black Sea, Ukrainian drones sank the 100,000-tonne Russian-owned container ship Yanina, which Zelenskyy characterized as sustaining the war effort, while Rosatom claimed it was carrying civilian goods. The campaign also struck two more Wildberries warehouses in the Samara region, continuing Ukraine's targeting of logistics hubs it says supply the Russian military.

Jul 30, 2026

A Family Dies at Radushne in Russia's Heaviest Package in Weeks

Overnight into July 30 Russia fired more than 70 missiles (many ballistic) and over 280 drones at at least ten regions; defences downed more than 260 drones, with no interception figure published for the missiles. At least eight civilians were killed. Six died at Radushne near Kryvyi Rih, where a ballistic missile destroyed a house — a six-year-old girl and boys of 11 and 17 with their parents; the family's full toll was not established, some victims identifiable only from fragments. Ballistic missiles hit Kyiv, killing one, and cruise missiles struck residential high-rises in Lviv, where the injured count climbed through the morning past 34, including children. In Poltava drones hit a Nova Poshta logistics terminal, the second postal terminal struck in twelve days. The Russian Defence Ministry's published target list named air bases and arms, drone, missile and aircraft-repair plants; power generation appears nowhere on it. Zelenskyy, who had warned a mass assault was coming and pressed partners on Patriot interceptors, cited "the critical shortage of air defense missiles from our partners".

Jul 30, 2026

The Russians may be counting that they might break Ukraine's resistance by attacks on heating and, in power generation. They have destroyed 80% of Ukraine's electricity generating capacity, which of course affects not only civilians but also, production capabilities in the defence sector and so on.^±

— Radosław Sikorski

Jul 29, 2026

Two Refineries in One Night, and the Aim Point Narrows to a Single Unit

On the night of July 28-29 Ukrainian drones struck two of Russia's largest refineries at once. At Ryazan — about 465 kilometres from the international border by the ISW's measure, about 360 by the Kyiv Independent's — a fire broke out at the Rosneft plant that processes upwards of 17 million tonnes of crude a year, roughly 5 percent of Russia's refining output; Governor Pavel Malkov acknowledged a massive drone attack, fires in industrial areas and six people hospitalised, without naming the target. A Wildberries warehouse complex in the same city burned, and the retailer's press service confirmed it had evacuated the site and restricted access to it. And about 1,465 kilometres out, at Perm, Ukraine's Security Service claimed a strike on the Lukoil refinery that processes nearly 13 million tonnes a year, with the ISW citing geolocated footage of damage to its AVT-5 primary processing unit; Perm Krai's governor conceded only that drones had damaged an industrial facility. That single-unit aim point is the campaign's new signature. The Financial Times, citing Ukrainian military planners, drone operators and energy specialists, reports that the campaign has shifted from broad strikes on refineries to targeted strikes on components that are hard to replace, and now returns to the same equipment before repairs are finished. Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert "Magyar" Brovdi says his forces have struck 164 energy infrastructure targets across the theatre since July 1, including thirteen substations in occupied Kherson, Crimea and Luhansk on this night alone — a count published by the striking force and not independently verified, and a broader category than the 154 substations he claimed three days earlier rather than a revision of that figure. The commercial consequences keep travelling outward: Kommersant reports that Wildberries is seeking warehouse space in Kazakhstan and will not lease any more in Russia because of the strike risk, while Reuters reports the Kremlin is weighing tax breaks and state-bank loans to keep the company standing.

Jul 24, 2026

Ballistic Strike on Defence-Industry Gathering Near Kyiv Kills at Least 10

A Russian ballistic missile struck the grounds of a privately operated military training site in the Bucha district, 20 to 30 kilometres from central Kyiv, that was hosting a defence-industry event on July 24, killing at least 10 people and wounding nearly 100 according to Ukrainian government and industry officials. The Ukrainian Defence Industry Council, the country's largest association of private defence manufacturers, said industry representatives were at the site when it was hit; acting regional military administration head Ruslan Oliinyk reported 27 homes and 44 vehicles also damaged. The Ukrainian government imposed reporting restrictions on the attack, so the figures may be incomplete. Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko opened two cases — a war-crimes investigation into the strike itself and, unusually, a separate criminal case over possible negligence by the event's Ukrainian organisers, with investigators to examine who approved its location, timing and format. The strike came a day after Zelenskyy met senior Raytheon representatives in Kyiv and said the maker of the Patriot system was ready to co-produce interceptors with Ukraine — a claim Raytheon has not confirmed — and Zelenskyy said afterwards that 'missiles for the Patriot systems are the top priority'.

Jul 20, 2026

Ukraine Strikes Moscow With Hundreds of Drones in Retaliation

On the night of July 19–20, a day after Russia's record barrage on Kyiv, Ukraine struck Moscow and the surrounding oblast with hundreds of drones — Russian officials said roughly 400 were aimed at the Moscow region. Geolocated footage confirmed drones hitting a Wildberries logistics warehouse in Domodedovo, while Russian opposition monitors and NASA fire-detection data placed a second strike on an oil depot in Podolsk; President Zelenskyy acknowledged hitting an oil depot and logistics facilities in Moscow Oblast. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and Oblast Governor Andrei Vorobyov confirmed the attack, which authorities said wounded at least 10 people. The same night Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces reported destroying six Russian air-defense systems — a Tor-M2 launcher and Kasta-2E2, Gamma-C1M and two Nebo-SV radars — in Krasnodar Krai, part of a sustained effort to peel back Russia's air-defense umbrella. The strike extended the tit-for-tat long-range exchange that has come to define the war with the frontline frozen.

Jul 19, 2026

Naval Drones Choke Russia's Crimea Resupply

Ukraine's drone interdiction campaign has begun to sever Russia's logistics to occupied Crimea from two directions. Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert 'Magyar' Brovdi reported Ukrainian forces struck 183 vessels in the Black and Azov seas in July, destroying five ferries that handled roughly 80% of military transport from the port of Kavkaz to the peninsula and cutting the Kerch ferry crossing's capacity by about 75%. By July 20 the campaign had extended to the northern land route: ISW assessed that Ukraine's intermediate-range strikes have 'at least partially deprived Russian forces of a significant' ground line of communication — the M-14 (R-280) Rostov–Crimea highway — observing at least four strikes on it between July 1 and 20. ISW reported the campaign has forced Russia to divert elite Rubikon drone crews and air-defense units to guard shipping, and that the Black Sea Fleet ordered the evacuation of servicemembers' families from occupied Sevastopol. Vessel-strike tallies are Ukrainian claims; the Russian countermeasures and the GLOC assessment are ISW-reported.

Jul 19, 2026

Russia Hits Kyiv With One of the War's Largest Missile Barrages

On the night of July 18–19, Russia struck Kyiv and other cities with one of its largest ballistic missile barrages of the war — roughly 40 missiles, including Iskander-M/S-400 ballistic missiles, Zircon hypersonic missiles, and Onyx and Kh-59/69 guided missiles, alongside about 125 strike drones over a five-hour assault. Ukraine's Air Force downed 18 missiles and 108 drones, but at least one civilian was killed and up to 16 wounded in Kyiv, with at least six killed nationwide — including three at a Nova Poshta postal terminal in Kharkiv and a 16-year-old in Odesa — while a cruise-missile strike on the Guinea-Bissau-flagged bulk carrier Golden Leo near Odesa killed 10 — nine crew members, among them four Indian nationals, and a Ukrainian maritime pilot — the deadliest attack on a merchant ship of the war as Russia intensifies strikes on the Black Sea grain corridor. Zelenskyy said Russia had spent days stockpiling missiles for the strike and was exploiting a global shortage of Patriot interceptors, the munition best able to down ballistic missiles; the ISW noted Russia is now launching more ballistic missiles than it produces each month, drawing down its stockpiles while cutting drone volumes. Acting Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called it "a brutal terrorist attack" and said "the coward in Moscow, who is afraid to meet with President Zelenskyy to end the war, continues to wage a war against civilians" — the barrage undercutting President Trump's July 15 prediction that Putin was "ready to reach a peace agreement soon."

Jul 18, 2026

Ukraine Launches Mass Deep-Strike Wave Into Russia

Ukrainian drones struck sites deep inside Russia in one of the largest single-wave operations of the war, killing at least nine people and wounding more than 60, according to Russian officials. Two Wildberries logistics warehouses were hit — in Kotovsk (Tambov region) and in Elektrostal, roughly 50km east of Moscow — and an oil depot in Noginsk caught fire. Russia's Defense Ministry said it intercepted 379 drones over 19 regions. Zelenskyy said the targeted facilities supplied sanctioned components for Russian drone and navigation-equipment production. Independent Russian outlets later estimated the strikes damaged roughly 7–15% of Wildberries' warehouse capacity, with losses of around 100 billion rubles (~$1.28 billion).

Jul 17, 2026

Kinburn Spit Amphibious Drone Assault

Ukraine carries out the world's first sea-drone-to-ground-robot assault mission on Russian-held positions at the Kinburn Spit, demonstrating highly advanced integrated unmanned tactics.

Jul 16, 2026

Expansion of Unmanned Systems Forces

Ukraine significantly scales up its Unmanned Systems Forces, leveraging domestic drone production and joint defense ventures with European partners. This shift aims to offset Russian artillery advantages through precision deep-strikes on logistics and infrastructure — the USF reported striking 90 Russian vessels in the Sea of Azov in the week of July 6-12 alone.

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