Single source — Display is not verification. The value lies in what the party itself publishes or claims: doctrine, self-image, announcements.
«Беспилотные угрозы: реалии, которые ждут весь мир» (Rybar: 'Unmanned threats: realities awaiting the whole world')
2026-10-27SINGLE SOURCEMILBLOGGER
In an opinion post, Rybar picks up a question raised by fellow milblogger Dva Mayora: what the development of unmanned technology means for Russia's security beyond the war. It points to a recent, widely publicised Ukrainian evacuation operation as proof that drones have moved beyond FPV strikes and relay roles and can now transport people.
Rybar argues that, given the length of Russia's borders, smugglers and saboteurs could in the medium term use aerial drones and uncrewed surface vessels (BEKs) for tasks that previously required people — e.g. smuggling goods or moving illegal migrants by sea. It notes Mexican drug cartels have long used drones for narcotics transport and semi-submersible boats for years, albeit with less advanced technology than in the Ukraine war zone.
Rybar concludes that counter-drone efforts should not be limited to the 'special military operation', that drone technology will keep accelerating in both military and civilian spheres, and that Russia should exploit its experience as a key actor. This is a single source from a Russian milblogger: a personal/editorial voice, not an MoD position; milbloggers can contradict each other and the MoD. Not independently verified.
«От снайперских пар до FPV-дуэлей — чемпионат ВС РФ прошёл в МВО» (Dva Mayora: 'From sniper pairs to FPV duels — Russian Armed Forces championship held in the Moscow Military District')
2026-10-26SINGLE SOURCEMILBLOGGER
Milblogger channel Dva Mayora (Two Majors), reposting a post from the channel 'Kot v podsumke', reports that the Russian Armed Forces championship in army tactical shooting all-round competition has concluded in the Moscow region (Moscow Military District). Over five days more than 250 participants in 26 teams competed, drawn from all services and branches as well as the Rosgvardia and other security structures. Prizes were presented by Deputy Defence Minister General of the Army Yunus-Bek Yevkurov. First place overall went to the Southern Military District team, second to the Logistics (MTO) Academy and third to the Eastern Military District. The organisers were the Main Directorate of Combat Training and the Army Tactical Shooting Federation, with the stated aim of raising fire and tactical proficiency based on the experience of the 'special military operation'.
According to the post, the programme was designed to be as close to real combat as possible: day and night tactical shooting, throwing knives, shovels and grenades, an obstacle course, and long-range sniper-pair contests. Separate duels were held between FPV-drone crews and reconnaissance-drone crews, with both soldiers and engineers taking part so that developers and fighters could exchange experience. Assault groups also practised advancing on motorcycles and other light vehicles, crossing water obstacles and engineering barriers, and destroying armour with RPGs.
This is a single source from a Russian milblogger (Dva Mayora), not independently verified. It is a personal/editorial voice, not a Russian MoD position; milbloggers can contradict each other and the MoD. The post reads as a promotional summary; participant numbers and results have not been checked against official MoD reporting.
«Снижение эффективности винтовых дронов ВСУ» (Topwar: 'The declining effectiveness of Ukraine's propeller drones')
2026-10-26SINGLE SOURCE
In an opinion piece, Topwar columnist Yevgeny Fedorov argues that slow piston-engined long-range strike drones are losing effectiveness on both sides. He says Russia was first to notice the problem with its own Geran drones: they were slow enough for Ukraine to move air-defence teams onto their routes and shoot them down with cheap interceptor drones. Russia's answer was jet-powered strike drones, culminating in the Geran-5, which he says Ukrainian propeller interceptors cannot catch and which leaves Ukraine relying on MANPADS. He claims Russia produces 'at least 3,000' jet kamikaze drones a month with localised engines, while Ukraine lacks small-turbojet technology and has only the jet-powered 'Palianytsia' in small numbers.
On defence, he credits systematic protection of Russian refineries against slow drones for ending this summer's fuel shortages and lifting rationing in some regions. He cites a 2026 CIAM (Central Institute of Aviation Motors) study, published in the journal Aviatsionnye Dvigateli by Lukovnikov and Zinenkov. It modelled an 8,000 kg UAV with turbojet, turboprop, piston and electric power: piston engines gave the longest range at low altitude, while turbojets perform best at 11-13 km. From this he argues that a Ukrainian deep-strike jet drone would have to fly high and would be intercepted. On the latest raid on St Petersburg, he says Ukraine launched 'up to a thousand' drones but only 15 reached the city. He reports one person killed and about 15 injured, a VK data centre and an Ozon warehouse that kept operating, and Pulkovo airport closed for six hours. He puts the cost of the attack to Kyiv at $60-80 million.
He warns that Ukraine could pick unprepared targets such as Yandex (he says rooftop chiller units at data centres were left uncovered), shift its mass launches to a 200-500 km band, or turn to attacks on crowded places. The piece is strongly polemical, including language about the 'Zelensky regime', and gives no sources for its production and raid figures. This is a single source: Topwar (Voennoye Obozreniye), a Russian pro-government military news site, not an official MoD outlet; the claims have not been independently verified.
«Военная революция»: Ким Чен Ын поручил сделать армию КНДР одной из сильнейших (Topwar: '"Military revolution": Kim Jong Un orders the DPRK army to become one of the strongest')
2026-10-24SINGLE SOURCE
Topwar (Voennoye Obozreniye), citing North Korea's state news agency KCNA, reports that Kim Jong Un called for accelerating the "military revolution" and making the Korean People's Army one of the strongest armies in the world. He spoke at the third meeting of KPA company commanders, held the day before his trip to China; according to the article it was the first army-wide event of this scale in a long time, with previous company-commander meetings held in 1991 and 1999.
According to the report, Kim's goal is to turn companies into universal combat units able to carry out assigned tasks independently in modern warfare. He stressed discipline, combat training and raising the military-technical level of personnel, and said company commanders' professional and organisational skills often directly determine the army's overall combat capability. Topwar notes that the emphasis was on modernising frontline units rather than on new weapons. The article gives no further details and cites no sources other than KCNA.
This is a single source: Topwar, a Russian pro-military website, relaying North Korean state media; the claims have not been independently verified.
«Спецназ ГРУ: 76 лет от глубинной разведки до войны беспилотников» (Source: 'GRU Spetsnaz: 76 years from deep reconnaissance to drone warfare')
2026-10-24SINGLE SOURCE
Published by Topwar author Anatoly Blinov for Russia's Day of Special-Purpose Units (24 October), the article traces the history of army/GRU spetsnaz. It starts with directive No. Org/2/395832 of 24 October 1950, signed by Defence Minister Vasilevsky and Chief of the General Staff Shtemenko, which created 46 separate special-purpose companies (120 men each, about 5,520 in total by May 1951) to find enemy nuclear delivery means, airfields, command posts and communication nodes deep behind the front. It describes the cut to 11 companies in 1953, the five separate battalions of 1957 (26th, 27th, 36th, 43rd, 61st), the cadre brigades formed from 1963 and the Pechory training unit from 1970. For Afghanistan it mentions the Taj Beg palace operation (December 1979), the hunt for caravans and the 'Zavesa' border-interdiction system from 1984, with a 1986 episode involving reconnaissance group No. 322 of Lt. Igor Beskrovnykh.
For the present, the article draws mainly on two Rossiyskaya Gazeta reports from July 2025 about a detachment of the 22nd Spetsnaz Brigade (commander callsign 'Viking') in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. According to these, open steppe and constant enemy drone surveillance make covert movement on foot difficult, so the unit relies more on UAVs and technical sensors to observe roads and settlements. A fighter callsign 'Byk' 3D-prints UAV parts, a field workshop repairs equipment, and the unit tested an experimental small remote-controlled ground cargo platform. The required skill set is said to have expanded to UAV operators, repair technicians, electronics specialists and designers, since drones need power, communications and maintenance and their video must be verified and tied to the terrain.
The author stresses that other troops now also use tactical drones and that a drone alone does not make a unit special forces; deep target-finding can partly be done remotely, but enemy air and electronic surveillance makes human reconnaissance harder. The picture of the drone era rests on one unit's reports and is generalised to the whole branch. This is a single source: Topwar (Voennoye Obozreniye), a Russian pro-government military-news site; the claims have not been independently verified.
War on the Rocks: deception against automated sensing and decision chains, drawing on Russo-Ukrainian combat lessons
2026-10-23
In an analysis for War on the Rocks, Édouard R. Maurin (call sign FIDES) argues that concealment alone no longer protects manoeuvre on a battlefield made transparent by sensors and drones. Maurin is a French veteran who served in 2024–2025 with an international volunteer section attached to a Ukrainian special-purpose battalion near Pokrovsk. He also runs Fog Defence, a company that develops decoys, which is a commercial interest in the subject. His argument is that deception should target the whole automated chain of sensing, sensor fusion, classification and decision, not only the human commander. He wants it judged on profitability: does the adversary spend more engaging a decoy than the decoy costs? He also wants it nested from section to corps level under one signature-management system. He adds that US doctrine (JP 3-13.4, FM 3-13.4) still assumes a human decision-maker.
Most of the evidence comes from Russia and Ukraine. Maurin describes a fake radio call at Kotlyne on 5 January 2025, transmitted while Russian forces were listening, after which two soldiers left a bunker about two minutes later; he watched this himself through a drone's thermal camera. He also mentions feigned holding of terrain at Pokrovsk while survivors were evacuated. On the Russian side he cites Gerbera foam and wooden Parodiya decoy drones fitted with Luneburg lenses to mimic the radar signature of a Shahed/Geran. According to media reports, these decoys make up about half of the swarms, and Alabuga reportedly keeps their cost below $10,000. He contrasts Western interceptors costing hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars with Ukraine's Sting interceptor (about $2,500). He also quotes Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert 'Magyar' Brovdi, who puts a mass-produced kamikaze drone at about $400.
The article also describes Operation Vivaldi (September 2026). There, Ukraine's Third Army Corps first degraded Russian EW and drone-pilot teams and then used feints and fake signatures to retake the Nove settlement and its heights. According to deputy commander Maksym Zhorin, an EW 'protective dome' disrupted or suppressed about 20,000 Russian drones. Corps commander Andriy Biletsky called deception a key factor in the success. Maurin recommends company-level signature fleets, battalion-level signature management cells, and procurement of cheap active decoys. He states explicitly that the effect on automated classifiers is his hypothesis and has not been observed. Much of the Russo-Ukrainian evidence rests on media and unit reports and has not been independently verified.
«Украинские морские дроны вооружились ракетами. Смогут ли они заменить боевые корабли?» (Topwar: 'Ukrainian sea drones have armed themselves with missiles. Can they replace warships?')
2026-10-22SINGLE SOURCE
A long analysis piece on Topwar asks whether Ukraine's uncrewed surface vessels (USVs), now armed with missiles and air interceptors, could replace warships. The author recounts the Magura V7 boats with two AIM-9M Sidewinder missiles that, according to Ukrainian intelligence, engaged Russian Su-30s on 2 May 2025; citing Janes, the article says Russian sources acknowledged losing one Su-30 about 50 km west of Novorossiysk (the crew was rescued), while a second claimed kill is unconfirmed. It also mentions the April 2026 interception of a Shahed/Geran by an air interceptor launched from a naval carrier, attributed to the 412th Nemesis brigade and later linked to the 'Delfin' boat, and UFORCE's Magura MV11 shown in August 2026 with 18 containers for Sting interceptors and a claimed seven-day endurance.
The author concedes that USVs have proven effective at sea denial in the Black Sea, citing the 2024 losses of Ivanovets, Tsezar Kunikov and Sergey Kotov and the Black Sea Fleet's partial relocation from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk. He argues, however, that two missiles and an optical system do not make a ship-based air-defence system, that manufacturers' claims on endurance and swarming are self-interested, and that persistent surveillance, ASW, repair at sea, ammunition stocks and the cost of continuous patrol remain unproven. Black Sea geography, with short distances and shore support, is said to flatter the results and not to transfer automatically to ocean operations.
The piece concludes that there is no reason to expect warships to be abandoned soon, and that the Russian Navy must both harden ships and bases against uncrewed threats and develop its own uncrewed systems. This is a single source: Topwar (Voennoye Obozreniye), a Russian pro-government military-news site; the claims have not been independently verified.
«Акула-призрак»: какой флот нам нужен (WarGonzo: '"Ghost Shark": what kind of navy we need' — argues Russia needs uncrewed underwater drone carriers like Australia's Ghost Shark)
2026-10-22SINGLE SOURCEMILBLOGGER
A post on the milblogger channel WarGonzo, signed by a 'reserve sailor', opens a new recurring series titled 'What kind of navy we need', reviewing uncrewed naval systems from around the world. The author repeats an argument from an earlier article: large warships are losing value in modern war and becoming big targets for aerial, surface and underwater drones, so Russia must rapidly develop uncrewed technology, as its adversaries and Ukraine's navy have done, which the author says inflicted 'a number of painful defeats' on Russia's Black Sea and merchant fleets. He cites the Persian Gulf as further proof: the US destroyed all of Iran's large warships in the first days of the war, yet the Strait of Hormuz remains a problem for the US and the world economy.
The first system covered is Anduril Australia's Ghost Shark, an extra-large autonomous underwater vehicle of about 12 m, with endurance estimated at several weeks and displacement possibly up to 100 tonnes (the post notes that the 2,000+ nautical mile range claimed for the Dive XL base platform is unconfirmed for Ghost Shark). The author highlights its use as a covert carrier for aerial drones: from a semi-submerged position it can reportedly launch ALTIUS reconnaissance drones and ALTIUS-600M loitering munitions (called an American analogue of the Lancet), up to 24 in two launchers, and carry up to 12 sea mines.
The author describes a scenario in which one or a pack of such vehicles approaches an enemy coast and releases a drone swarm against coastal batteries, missile and drone launchers, radars, air defence and troops in the deep rear. Had Russia already had such systems, he argues, the whole Ukrainian coast and river mouths would be a danger zone, complicating Ukrainian operations against Crimea and the Black Sea coast and Ukrainian maritime logistics. He says Russia has an 'outstanding school' of underwater vehicle design and fast-growing drone technology, and only needs to combine the two quickly: an implicit admission that it has no such capability now. This is a single source: the personal/editorial Telegram voice of a pro-war Russian milblogger, not a Russian MoD position. Milbloggers may contradict each other and the MoD, and the claims have not been independently verified.
«russia Could Produce Fewer Than 40 Oreshnik Missiles Year Compared With Soviet RSD-10 Pioneer: What Is Plan for This Missile?» (Defense Express)
2026-10-22SINGLE SOURCE
Defense Express reports on a new report by the UK-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) on Russia's strategic nuclear arsenal. According to the outlet, RUSI notes that the Soviet Union could build at most 40 RSD-10 Pioneer intermediate-range ballistic missiles a year, and assesses that today's Russian defence industry has much less capacity and can produce only a 'limited number' of Oreshnik IRBMs. The report argues that IRBMs have an advantage over subsonic cruise missiles because Europe has very few systems able to intercept ballistic missiles, and suggests that, given their scarcity, it would be more rational for Russia to treat Oreshnik as a nuclear delivery system than as a long-range conventional weapon.
Defense Express adds that in early September 2026 Ukraine's military intelligence chief Oleh Ivashchenko told Ukrinform that units of the 101st Missile Brigade, equipped with Oreshnik, were being deployed in Belarus. The outlet argues that Russia thus appears to have a whole brigade dedicated to Oreshnik, which by Russian standards would mean up to 10-12 launchers and a matching number of missiles. In its view, the Belarus deployment shows that Oreshnik is at least partly a tool of pressure on Europe, in both a nuclear and a 'kinetic' (conventional) role, while further conventional strikes on Ukraine cannot be ruled out. This is a single source: Defense Express, a Ukrainian defence outlet; the claims have not been independently verified.
Biletskyi: Russia's Rubicon drone unit was not used to being hunted, and its morale fell sharply when Ukraine targeted its pilots in Operation Vivaldi
2026-10-20
Brig. Gen. Andrii Biletskyi, commander of Ukraine's 3rd Army Corps and of the 'Center' grouping, told journalists on 19 October that Rubicon, Russia's elite drone unit that specialises in hunting Ukrainian drone pilots, was not used to being hunted itself, and that its morale fell sharply once its pilots realised they were being killed, Euromaidan Press reports. Whenever a Rubicon position was located, the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade and the KRAKEN drone regiment sent FPV and bomber drones against its crews without limit. Brigade commander Yaroslav Levenets said his troops had prepared for Rubicon's arrival and concentrated on killing its pilots, without giving details, and described Rubicon troops as 'not stable in defence': they dislike staying in trenches and under pressure get nervous and change positions.
Biletskyi was summing up Operation Vivaldi, fought in northern Donetsk Oblast from May to mid-October. By his count it retook about 277 km², destroyed Russia's bridgehead on the Chornyi Zherebets river and forced Moscow to drop its plan to bypass Lyman from the north and encircle Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. He put Russian losses at more than 8,000 troops, with about 270 taken prisoner, including more than 20 officers (among them a chief of staff and three company commanders). The operation was named in winter 2025-2026 after Vivaldi's Four Seasons, originally one phase per season; one of its two lead planners, call sign Leshyi, has been killed and the other, Yurist, seriously wounded. The corps press service said on 20 October that Maj. Dmytro Rohoziuk, commander of the 60th Mechanized Brigade, is now acting commander of the 3rd Army Corps while Biletskyi leads the 'Center' grouping (3rd, 11th and 19th corps) and formally keeps his post; Biletskyi declined command of the Ground Forces.
The account matters because Rubicon has been Russia's flagship answer to Ukraine's drone advantage, including its campaign against Ukrainian drone crews and middle-strike assets. Ukrainian commanders now present a deliberate 'counter-pilot' effort as having exposed a weakness in an elite unit built for offence. These are the claims of the Ukrainian commanders involved, a party to the conflict; the loss figures and the assessment of Rubicon's morale have not been independently verified.
Ukrainian 'Nemesis' drone detachment caused about 70% of a US armored brigade's early casualties at Hohenfels, brigade commander writes
2026-10-20
Ukrainian drone operators playing the enemy in a US Army exercise caused about 70% of an American armored brigade's casualties in the first three days, according to an article in Military Review, the US Army's professional journal, reported by Defence Blog. The authors are Col. Michael Ziegelhofer, commander of the 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division ("Greywolf"), and six of his officers. They describe Combined Resolve 26-07, held in spring 2026 at the Hohenfels Training Area in Bavaria, where the opposing force was reinforced by a detachment of the 412th Regiment "Nemesis" of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces. Over the roughly 10-day rotation the opposing force initiated contact with drones more than 750 times, either striking troops directly or spotting for artillery. By the end of day three the share of drone-caused casualties had fallen below 30%, without the enemy easing off: "Greywolf changed how it fought".
According to the authors, roughly 60% of the brigade-level counter-drone fight is fieldcraft and drills. The brigade's counter-drone/EW systems jammed control links in protective bubbles up to 2 km wide, but had to be set up at fixed sites and moved forward in bounds, leaving units exposed on the move, and were less effective against the smaller number of unjammable fiber-optic drones. More than half the formation relied on cover, concealment, dispersion, smaller routes and fast battle drills. Survival had a price: crews switched off Blue Force Tracker, cut radio use and even dropped Starshield satellite links to reduce their electronic signature, and resupply took twice as long as planned because the enemy hunted supply lines. On the offensive side, the brigade brought in the 3rd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment (then an experimental drone battalion) and used more than 700 drones from platoon to brigade level; with relay drones, nearly all could fly 25-40 km, covering the whole ~14 x 27 km training area. That abundance initially overwhelmed the headquarters: collection-planning tools, the operations floor and per-drone airspace management could not keep up, and the staff never had a full picture of how many drones were airborne. The brigade adapted by giving drone units priorities and letting them hunt within the commander's intent, moving the coordinated fire line forward, making enemy drone ground control stations a top target and holding drone munitions in reserve; it ended the rotation with two simultaneous breaches about 6 km apart that the opposing force failed to stop.
The officers recommend multifunctional drone strike troops in armored brigades (long-range surveillance to at least 40 km, medium/heavy bomber drones, strike drones with relays), one common operational picture for all drones modelled on Ukraine's Delta system, and counter-drone defences that work on the move, from hard-kill protection on every vehicle to brigade-level radar and defeat systems. This is a different, earlier exercise than the Stork and MV7 trials covered previously; it is one of the clearest first-hand accounts of how a NATO heavy brigade fares against Ukrainian-style drone TTPs, which mirror what Russian forces face and increasingly employ themselves. The figures come from the brigade's own after-action account and concern a training environment.
«Защита для серверов» (Rybar: 'Protection for servers' — how data centres became military targets worldwide)
2026-10-20SINGLE SOURCEMILBLOGGER
The milblogger channel Rybar, citing the Financial Times, writes that data centres are no longer just server warehouses but have to be protected like military facilities: according to the FT, new AI infrastructure will soon be built with blast-resistant concrete, electronic-warfare (EW) systems and missile defence. Rybar lists the drivers: strikes on data centres have become noticeably more frequent this year; Ukrainian attacks on Russian data centres have caused outages in mobile payments and taxi services; and Iran has damaged facilities from Bahrain to the UAE, including large sites of US cloud companies. After the Iranian strikes, the UAE is reportedly reconsidering its AI strategy, planning a network of dispersed data centres instead of one large complex, with some sites possibly moved underground.
The channel argues that, as with dual-use goods, the line between military and civilian digital infrastructure is increasingly hard to draw, and that the US was first to declare computing capacity a national-security asset. State ownership does not protect against drones, Rybar notes, because cheap means of attack are now available to almost any party to a conflict. Its practical conclusion for Russia: the digital economy has become critical infrastructure and must be defended like energy and transport — by dispersal, redundancy, EW and air defence. That is expensive, the post concludes, but outages in complex economic processes across the country cost even more.
The post is notable as an implicit Russian acknowledgement that the recent Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian data centres (including the Yandex sites at Sasovo, Kaluga and Vladimir and the VK data centre near St Petersburg, see earlier entries) have had real economic effects. This is a single source: the personal/editorial Telegram voice of a pro-war Russian milblogger, not a Russian MoD position. Milbloggers may contradict each other and the MoD, and the claims have not been independently verified.
«Не звикли, що полюють за ними»: операція «Вівальді» показала головну ваду російського «Рубікону» (ArmyInform: '"Not used to being hunted": Operation Vivaldi showed the main flaw of Russia's Rubikon')
2026-10-19SINGLE SOURCE
ArmyInform reports that, according to Ukrainian commanders, Operation Vivaldi exposed the main weakness of Rubikon, Russia's elite drone unit: its operators are used to hunting Ukrainian drone pilots, not to being hunted themselves. Brig. Gen. Andrii Biletskyi and Yaroslav Levenets, commander of the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, describe Rubikon as special forces who dislike positional trench warfare and are not steady in defence: under pressure they get nervous and switch sectors or positions, and after losing people their morale dropped sharply. Biletskyi contrasts them with regular Russian drone units recruited from the infantry, which he says are better prepared for this; when a regular Russian pilot is killed, a replacement is trained and flying within about a week.
Levenets says the brigade knew Rubikon was a dangerous opponent, had intelligence that it was moving into their sector and prepared for it, focusing on physically destroying its pilots; he gave no details. The 3rd Assault Brigade and the 21st Unmanned Systems Regiment 'Kraken' agreed that whenever a Rubikon position was located, they would commit any number of FPV and bomber drones to destroy its personnel completely. Petro Horbatenko, chief of staff of the 3rd Army Corps, describes the emergence of systematic 'counter-pilot warfare' - detection, reconnaissance and observation, then destruction by all available means - which he compares to counter-battery fire. The article gives no casualty figures.
This is a single source: Ukraine's MoD news outlet ArmyInform, and its claims have not been independently verified.
NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, Admiral Vandier: Russian army more innovative and adaptable than in 2022, NATO risks falling behind
2026-10-19
French Admiral Pierre Vandier, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, told CBC News in an interview during a recent trip to Ottawa that the Russian army fighting in Ukraine today is not the one that invaded in 2022: Moscow has become 'more innovative, more adaptable and, in certain areas, more dangerous'. 'The enemy is not the same as the one we had in 2022,' he said. He pointed specifically to Russia's evolving drone technology, including faster jet-powered attack drones, whose more advanced propulsion has significantly reduced the effectiveness of some Ukrainian interception methods. He estimated interception success rates against certain Russian drones have fallen from about 90 per cent earlier this year to roughly 50 per cent; CBC notes Zelensky put the rate at about 55 per cent at the end of September.
Vandier's main concern is NATO's own speed: 'Being late is really my nightmare.' He said officials delaying important decisions, not committing money and using old-fashioned processes keep him up at night, and that 'time is not our friend. It's the enemy's friend.' He disputed that NATO has an automatic industrial advantage — 'I disagree with the point where we have a good industrial depth' — arguing the challenge is to produce in mass and rapidly rather than only exquisite systems in limited quantities. CBC sets this against IISS and other analyses describing a Russian military that regenerates formations while fighting, despite heavy losses (UK MoD estimate: 1.3 million casualties by mid-September).
TASS, Russian state media, relayed the CBC interview on 19 October and added Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov's line that NATO is engaged in 'rampant militarization' and uses the Russian threat to justify 5% of GDP defence spending. The original source is the CBC interview; the interception figures are Vandier's estimate and have not been independently verified.
US Army fields Ukrainian-designed unmanned systems in exercises: MV7 drone boats in Michigan, Stork recon drone in Germany
2026-10-18
Two US Army exercises in the past weeks featured unmanned systems that were designed in Ukraine and proven against Russia, Defence Blog reports, based on images and material released by the US Army. During Bayonet Quest 26, which the 7th Infantry Division (part of Multi-Domain Command-Pacific, based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord) ran across Michigan from 26 September to 6 October 2026, Magura-type MV7 uncrewed surface vessels built by the Ukrainian manufacturer UFORCE were used as floating launch pads for aerial drones, with a dedicated launch platform on the front of the hull. The exercise also included crewed-uncrewed maritime testing pairing a Mk VI patrol boat with autonomous systems. The division did not disclose how many boats took part, which variant was used, or what aerial drones they carried. It is the second publicly known use of the Magura family by US forces this year: during Balikatan 2026 in the Philippines, Magura boats sank a decommissioned target ship off Itbayat on 24 April 2026, which UFORCE confirmed on 8 June.
Separately, at Combined Resolve 27-01 at the Hohenfels Training Area (Joint Multinational Readiness Center, Bavaria), a soldier of the 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment — the unit that usually plays the opposing force there — was photographed assembling a Stork reconnaissance drone on 16 October 2026. The Stork derives from the Leleka drone of Ukrainian maker DeViRo, widely used by Ukraine's forces since 2022; DeViRo's co-owners founded U&C UAS in the Czech Republic in July 2022 and build Stork and Mace strike drones in Kolín. According to the company, the Stork LR is an electric fixed-wing drone with a 3.4 m wingspan and 14 kg maximum takeoff weight, catapult launch and belly landing, up to five hours endurance, encrypted video links up to 135 km (using another Stork as relay) and jam-resistant satellite navigation. In May 2026 U&C UAS announced a contract, with Illinois-based ATP Gov, to supply ISR drones to US Army units in Europe after evaluations that included electronic warfare and degraded communications. The company claims more than 7,500 systems delivered and a capacity of about 500 drones per month; Russia's defence ministry listed the Kolín plant in April 2026 among European firms it described as potential targets.
Defence Blog places this in a broader pattern: in September the US Army also awarded Skyeton Inc., the US arm of Ukrainian maker Skyeton, a $10.6 million contract for Raybird long-endurance reconnaissance drones. Taken together, the reports show the US Army actively importing systems and concepts — drone boats as drone carriers, cheap long-range ISR drones built to operate under heavy EW — that were developed in the war against Russia.
Ukrainian adviser warns that online strike videos may help Russia refine the optical targeting of its Geran drones, saying Moscow pays people to film impacts
2026-10-15
Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov, adviser on defence technologies to Ukraine's president, says in a Facebook post that Russia is collecting footage of its Geran attack drones hitting targets in Ukraine, probably to test the optical target-recognition and guidance algorithms that steer the drones in their final seconds, Euromaidan Press reports. Russia has fitted jet-powered Geran variants with machine vision that lets them recognise and track targets autonomously in the terminal phase, a capability the article says Ukrainian electronic warfare cannot easily counter. Impact footage, Beskrestnov argues, shows how these algorithms perform under real combat conditions.
According to Beskrestnov, Russia is paying people inside Ukraine to film drone impacts, with requests circulating across many Telegram channels asking for videos and information about Geran strikes in exchange for a reward. The article gives no payment amounts and names no specific channels. He urges civilians not to film or publish videos of Shahed strikes, calling such footage vital to Russia.
The claim about how Russia uses the footage is Beskrestnov's assessment and has not been independently verified. The article also mentions that a Russian drone severed a unique power-transmission tower at the Dnipro river crossing in Kyiv, which according to Ukrenergo cannot be restored.
«Российская ПВО и опыт Спецоперации: первые успехи» (Topwar: 'Russian air defence and the experience of the Special Operation: first successes')
2026-10-15SINGLE SOURCE
In the first part of a three-part series, Topwar author Kirill Ryabov reviews the initial phase of Russian air defence in the war against Ukraine from February 2022. Ground Forces air defence carried the main load, with VKS air and missile defence units and naval systems also involved; the article lists the layered Ground Forces structure (S-300V4, Buk-M3, Tor-M1/2, Osa-AKM, Strela-10M3/4, Tunguska and MANPADS such as Verba) plus VKS S-400 and Pantsir-S1, and notes these ranges are manufacturer claims. In the early months manned aircraft were the main threat class; by the end of the phase drones had become the main problem.
Unusually for the outlet, the article treats official figures critically: it notes that the Russian MoD claim of 112 Ukrainian aircraft and 75 helicopters destroyed by 25 March 2022 nearly equals Ukraine's estimated pre-war fleet of about 116 combat aircraft, and therefore cannot be accepted as established fact. It cites the Ukrainian MoD claim of 7 May 2022 that Bayraktar TB2 strikes hit Tor systems and a landing craft at Snake Island, calling it telling that a drone defeated an air-defence system of comparable or higher cost, and describes a Tula media report of a Pantsir-S1 downing a HIMARS rocket near Nova Kakhovka as a single, weakly sourced case.
Its main conclusion is that the legacy Russian air-defence system coped with the manned-aviation threat it was built for, but was challenged by masses of cheap drones: intercepting small drop-capable UAVs with traditional SAMs proved difficult or uneconomical, requiring EW against control links and satellite navigation, small-calibre artillery and dedicated interceptors. According to the author, cost per intercept, small-target detection and protection of control channels now matter as much as range and altitude. Single source: this is an article by the Russian military news portal Topwar (Voennoe Obozrenie) that has not been independently verified.
NATO's top commander Grynkewich outlines a 'theory of victory' against a Russian attack: a drone and robot zone on the eastern flank, long-range strikes on Kaliningrad, the St Petersburg area and Belarus, then a counteroffensive
2026-10-12
General Alexus Grynkewich, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), set out what he called a 'theory of victory' for the eastern flank at a security conference in Warsaw on 12 October. Meduza bases its account largely on reporting by the Wall Street Journal and Reuters. Grynkewich did not name Russia, but he said any attack on an ally would be 'utterly futile' and that NATO would 'break the warfighting system' used against it, including everything that 'supports, sustains, and controls' the attacking force.
According to the reporting, the concept has three layers. The first is an 'autonomous zone', or drone wall, on the eastern flank, where drones and ground robots would slow an advance without heavy NATO casualties. The second is long-range missile strikes on Russian command posts and air defences in Kaliningrad, near St Petersburg and in Belarus, to contest control of the air so that the US Army's V Corps and other allied ground forces can counterattack. The third is air strikes on Russian reinforcements and rear-area targets. A cloud-based network for sharing classified targeting data between allies would link the system; parts of it were reportedly tested during the US attack on Iran. The NATO command-post exercise Steadfast Duel, with more than 20,000 personnel, simulated one million NATO troops repelling an invasion by an army of similar size. Bild reported a comparable Baltic plan in August, which included disabling Russian missile systems in Kaliningrad.
Meduza also sets out the Russian response. In September, Russia's embassy in Ireland claimed NATO was preparing an air and naval blockade of Kaliningrad and warned that Russia was ready to use 'any weapon', including nuclear weapons. A Russian note to NATO, obtained by Reuters, accused the alliance of a 'dangerous and reckless course'. Putin said a direct attack on Russian territory would put all of Russia's weapons on the table. NATO says its exercises do not threaten Russian territory. For Russia-watchers, the plan's significance is that it treats Kaliningrad, the Leningrad Military District area and Belarus as early targets for strikes against command and air defence. Moscow's messaging presents exactly that as grounds for nuclear escalation.
«Сдерживание с ударной дальностью» (Rybar: Deterrence with strike range)
2026-10-12SINGLE SOURCEMILBLOGGER
This is the personal and editorial voice of the Russian pro-war Telegram channel Rybar, not a position of the Russian Ministry of Defence. Milbloggers can contradict each other and the MoD, and the content has not been independently verified. Rybar picks up a follow-up to what it calls the story of British drones in Estonia. It says that in the summer the British tabloid The Sun reported on the UK contingent rehearsing a scenario of strikes on St Petersburg, and that the British side is now reported to have taken into service 'Nyan' kamikaze strike drones with a range of more than 250 kilometres.
According to Rybar, a spokeswoman for the British contingent stressed that the systems are meant for high-precision strikes at long range, including deep inside an adversary's defences. London is said not to disclose how many drones are involved, citing operational security. The channel contrasts the official framing, in which deploying strike drones is a contribution to 'NATO deterrence and defence', with the tabloid presentation of the same capability as a St Petersburg strike scenario.
Rybar's own interpretation is that such reports follow a familiar pattern: publicly showcasing threats helps justify higher military spending, and amid economic difficulties and tax rises it is easier to tell the public that the money is 'necessary for security'. The post gives no further technical details on the drone type. Single source: this is a post by the Russian milblogger channel Rybar that has not been independently verified.
Krasnaya Zvezda profiles Lieutenant Dmitry, callsign 'Yeger' ('Huntsman'), commander of the mortar platoon of the 'Shtorm' assault detachment of the Northern Fleet's separate Guards Kirkenes naval infantry brigade (based at Sputnik), now fighting with the 'Tsentr' (Centre) grouping on the Dobropillia axis. According to the article, the platoon previously supported assaults on the Kherson axis, near Krynky and the Antonivskyi bridge. A graduate of the Mikhailovsky Military Artillery Academy, he says the month-long lieutenants' course at the brigade, run by instructors with combat experience, covered much that the academy lacked: extensive shotgun shooting at aerial targets, and updated artillery tactics, radio communications and tactical medicine.
The tactical points the article makes: placing several guns side by side at standard intervals is no longer possible because of losses, so work at the line of contact is done 'strictly gun by gun', with the emphasis on mobility and accuracy. Firing positions are first scouted from the air and then on the ground. The mortars operate only 3-4 km from the Ukrainian forward defence line; since no vehicle (not even a quad bike) can get that close unseen, crews carry the disassembled mortar (over 200 kg) and its ammunition in by hand. Gun pads, ammunition store and counter-battery shelter are built well apart so that one hit does not knock out the rest. Fire is observed and corrected through a quadcopter's live video feed, and after the initial fire mission the platoon fires on targets passed by the assault groups. The officer was wounded the previous autumn when his motorcycle set off a magnetic-fuzed mine scattered a few hours earlier by a Ukrainian 'Baba Yaga' heavy drone on a trail he was scouting.
Single source: this is a report from Krasnaya Zvezda, the newspaper of the Russian Ministry of Defence, that has not been independently verified. Much of the piece is a heroic portrait; the claims about effectiveness are unverified.
Ukrainska Pravda column: Russia's army adapts tactics under pressure but its top-down command culture persists, citing Voyennaya Mysl studies
2026-10-08
In an opinion column in Ukrainska Pravda (8 October 2026), Liubov Tsybulska, a Ukrainian strategic-communications and hybrid-threats expert and director of the NGO Join Ukraine, compares Russian and NATO officer training, drawing on a Join Ukraine study of how Russia prepares officers for war. She contrasts NATO mission command, a professional NCO corps and the blame-free After Action Review with Russia's Soviet-derived top-down command, in which junior officers rather than sergeants carry small-unit leadership and admitting mistakes invites punishment, so reports to superiors are often embellished. She cites early-war failures at Hostomel airport, the Siverskyi Donets river crossing and Chornobaivka airfield as examples of units losing time while waiting for orders.
The column draws on two articles in the Russian MoD journal Voyennaya Mysl, without giving issue numbers or author names. The first, from 2023, surveyed more than a hundred mostly tactical-level artillery officers, 81% of them with combat experience. Only 12% chose the line of 'reasonable initiative', 40% named 'excessive tutelage and commanders' distrust of subordinates' as the obstacle, and only 30% supported a ban on punishing failed initiative. The authors also noted that the concept of 'initiative' does not appear even in the document governing education at MoD universities. In the second article, researchers at the General Staff Military Academy acknowledged that small Ukrainian units with one or two guns and a single, often civilian, drone, coordinating horizontally, struck Russian columns and withdrew before battalion tactical group (BTG) commanders could assess the situation, turning the BTG into a 'big cow' against a pack of small wolves. Their proposed remedy is 'counter-planning': the concept flows top-down, while tasks, coordination and support requests flow bottom-up. Tsybulska calls this mission command in all but name, and notes that the authors based it on the experience of the Taliban and the Ukrainian armed forces, not on NATO doctrine.
According to the column, the Russian forces have nonetheless adapted since 2022. They restructured logistics against HIMARS strikes, changed armour use in response to FPV drones, integrated commercial UAVs into reconnaissance at scale, shortened the detect-to-strike cycle and expanded small assault groups. Junior commanders also informally delegate responsibility to experienced soldiers. Change is fastest in C4ISR, UAV-operator training and the transfer of front-line experience into higher military education, at institutions such as the Mikhailovsky Artillery Academy, the Military Academy of Army Air Defence, the Military Academy of Communications and the Military University of Radio Electronics. Tsybulska argues that these changes do not make the Russian army Western. She warns that Russia could combine new technology and tight control with a low value placed on soldiers' lives. This is an opinion piece by a Ukrainian author; the Voyennaya Mysl findings are quoted second-hand, have not been checked against the original articles, and their exact issues are not identified.
China's military is preparing for Ukraine-style drone war
2026-10-08
Defence Blog reports on a CSIS commentary published on 7 October by Lilly Min-Chen Lee (Taiwan's Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology) and Kateryna Bondar (CSIS Wadhwani AI Center), based on more than 90 Chinese-language sources from 45 outlets (July 2022 – August 2026), including PLA Daily and journals of China's state missile, shipbuilding and aviation conglomerates. The authors conclude that China studies the Russia-Ukraine war mainly from the perspective of a likely target, and that Chinese analysts typically write up a new battlefield technique within about four months of its first use. Nearly half the sources come from defense-industrial publications that feed lessons directly into requirements and procurement.
On Russian practice, National Defense University analysts cited Russian forces striking detected targets within three to five minutes, with Orlan-10 reconnaissance drones cueing Lancet and Kub loitering munitions. PLA Daily flagged Russia's jam-resistant fiber-optic drones in May 2024, within weeks of their debut, and by April 2025 a People's Armed Police unit in Yunnan was training with FPV drones and researching fiber-optic models. On the defensive side, a Naval University of Engineering team counted more than 10 large Russian naval vessels damaged by Ukrainian strikes and concluded that sea-drone attacks must be met by counter-sea-drone equipment working as a system; PLA drills against unmanned boats followed in August 2025, April 2026 and July–August 2026. After Ukraine's Operation Spider's Web (1 June 2025), a PLA brigade exercised in October 2025 against a drone team of more than 20 operators, using RF detection gear with a catalog of over 800 commercial drone models.
The study also notes rapid fielding of Chinese counter-drone weapons (Tianqiong, the Hurricane 3000 microwave weapon and the LW-60 laser at Zhuhai 2024; lasers and microwave weapons at the September 2025 parade), three new military universities created in May 2025 with degree programs in unmanned-systems command and control, and Chinese skepticism about swarms, which China National Defense News argued in October 2024 had underdelivered in Ukraine. Relevance for this tracker is indirect: the item concerns lessons a third country draws from Russian and Ukrainian drone warfare.
Ukrainian deputy air defense commander says Russia appears to use AI to plan wave attacks on Odesa and for target recognition in Geran-4 drones
2026-10-07
Colonel Yurii Cherevashenko, Deputy Air Force Commander for Air Defense, told Ukrinform (as relayed by Euromaidan Press and Interfax-Ukraine) that Russian forces appear to use artificial intelligence to plan air attacks and to recognize targets. He linked this to recent air raids on Odesa that came in waves with very short gaps between them. According to him, such long, wave-by-wave strikes would be extremely difficult to plan and coordinate without AI. He said: "Russian forces use AI to lay out attack routes and to recognize targets." This is his own assessment, not a confirmed fact: he noted that the scale of Russian AI use is hard to measure, but that Ukrainian specialists see elements of it in how the attacks are organized.
The report also states that Russia has equipped its jet-powered Geran-4 drones with machine vision, which lets them recognize and track targets autonomously in the final seconds of flight. A single jet-powered drone hit a locomotive in Odesa Oblast in late September and killed two railway workers. These details come from the Ukrainian-side reporting and are not independently verified here.
Cherevashenko also explained why defending the Odesa area is hard. Odesa Oblast hosts Ukraine's largest port, "Southern". Airspace over water is harder to defend than over land: some air defense assets perform worse over the sea, and in some cases crews can engage a target only as it approaches. Storms and fog complicate operations, and the open sea gives Russia more freedom in choosing drone routes. Ukraine is developing AI of its own, including automated turrets with machine vision against drones; Army Media reports Air Force-confirmed shoot-downs, including of Geran-5 drones, with one soldier saying fifty rounds were enough for one Geran. In late September Ukraine's Defense Ministry presented SPECTR, an AI system built by its A1 AI Center that analyzes battlefield data, predicts Russian movements and suggests options to commanders; several combat units are testing it.
«Сквозь дым – к опорному пункту противника» (Krasnaya Zvezda: Through the smoke – to the enemy strongpoint)
2026-10-07SINGLE SOURCE
Krasnaya Zvezda reports that assault units of the 2nd Guards Tamanskaya Motor Rifle Division (1st Tank Army, Group of Forces "West") went through intensive combat training at a range in the rear area of the war zone. According to the paper, the troops practised dismounting from BTR-82 armoured personnel carriers, laying smoke screens, firing their standard weapons (AK-74M rifles), using grenade launchers and rocket-propelled assault grenades against simulated armour and fortifications, close-quarters fighting among mock-up buildings, and tactical first aid.
The drill described goes like this: assault groups ride on top of the BTR-82s, jump off while the vehicles are still moving a few hundred metres from the line of contact, and then advance on a mock "enemy" strongpoint. Smoke pots are placed according to wind direction to hide movement onto the assault line and to cover the evacuation of wounded. In the final combined exercise, assault groups backed by BTR-82 fire suppress firing points, take and hold positions and set up a defence, using ravines, tree lines and hills as cover. A platoon commander with the call sign "Fantom" stresses small-group action and mutual cover in built-up areas. Medics say tourniquets, bleeding control and casualty evacuation, including with improvised stretchers, are drilled until they become reflexes.
The article is a training report with propaganda framing and contains no figures on unit strength, losses or where the division is deployed. It does show the MoD portraying mechanised assault with APC support, alongside the small dismounted assault groups common on the front. Single source: this is a Russian Ministry of Defence (Krasnaya Zvezda) report that has not been independently verified.
Taliban and North Korean military officials hold talks on the sidelines of Russia's Tsentr-2026 exercise
2026-10-07
Militarnyi reports that Afghan Taliban and North Korean military officials held talks during Russia's Tsentr-2026 (Center-2026) strategic exercise, held from 28 September to 3 October 2026. Nasibullah Madani, commander of the Taliban's Joint Combat Training Command, met North Korean military attaché Ro Ki Chol at an arms exhibition alongside the drills. The information comes from Afghanistan's Ministry of Defense and Safir TV; a photo released by the Afghan ministry shows the two men together.
According to the Afghan ministry, the talks covered bilateral relations, the exchange of military experience, professional training and opportunities for cooperation. No concrete details or agreements were disclosed. The two sides have no formal diplomatic relations, and Pyongyang has not recognised the Taliban government; the reporting describes this as the first reported direct contact between military officials of the two sides. The Taliban delegation also held talks with military officials from China, India, Vietnam, Colombia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and toured displays of heavy weapons, drones, long-range missiles and robotic systems.
Russia hosted the exercise and invited both delegations as observers. Militarnyi notes that Moscow has deepened its military ties with the Taliban, having signed a military-technical cooperation agreement in May 2026 focused on restoring existing Afghan equipment and setting up maintenance training centres. NK News, citing a Russian Defence Ministry announcement and Afghan ministry photographs, adds that the meeting took place on the sidelines at the Chebarkul training ground, that Russia's Defence Ministry organised the exercise and weapons expo, that North Korea was among 33 observer states, and that eight further countries sent contingents to take part, with roughly 47,000 troops involved. NK News also says the discussions are not specified beyond 'talks on the sidelines'.
Germany to set up its first drone regiment in 2027, modeled on Ukraine war lessons
2026-10-05
According to Defense News, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced that Germany will set up its first dedicated drone regiment, with formation beginning in 2027. The unit would start with 300-350 troops and grow to as many as 600, with full operational capability targeted for 2029. It is to be organized in five to six companies with specialized functions.
The regiment is to consolidate reconnaissance systems, deep-strike platforms (with ranges of up to 500 kilometers, subject to the availability of commercial equipment), unmanned ground vehicles, electronic warfare capabilities and counter-drone defenses, plus an internal trials company meant to speed up testing. It is to be equipped with loitering munitions that are expected to reach troops in 2027. The regiment will be a divisional asset of the 10th Panzer Division, Germany's high-readiness NATO 'Division 2025' formation, which also oversees Panzerbrigade 45 in Lithuania.
German Army Chief Lt. Gen. Christian Freuding described a dual-track approach: dedicated formations alongside the institutionalization of drone use across light infantry, reconnaissance and armor units, starting at the end of this year. Officials credited 'direct operational exchanges with Ukrainian frontline units' for shaping live-fire trials of aerial drones and unmanned ground systems, with ground robotics getting equal emphasis. The article, as summarized, does not state a specific Russian threat rationale. Open questions include the permanent basing location and contracts for specific long-range platforms.
Bloomberg: NATO's SACEUR Grynkewich drafts a 'Theory of Victory' against a Russian attack on the eastern flank, built on low-cost drones, minimally crewed systems and AI targeting
2026-10-05
Bloomberg has obtained an unclassified version of a document titled 'Theory of Victory'. It was drafted by NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Alexus Grynkewich, and sets out how the Alliance would quickly defeat a Russian attack on its eastern flank. Grynkewich is due to present it in Poland on 12 October. Officials and diplomats familiar with the matter say it is meant to explain how NATO would respond to an invasion of its territory. It should also show how NATO will combine conventional weapons with capabilities that have emerged since 2022, and push allies to invest more in defence and preparedness.
The strategy stresses that NATO is defensive, that unintended provocations must be avoided and that hybrid threats require a collective response. Showing readiness is meant to convince an adversary that victory is impossible. If NATO is attacked anyway, it would try to stop the invasion with ground forces and other assets under the NATO Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative. That concept relies on low-cost drones, minimally crewed systems and AI-powered targeting.
Grynkewich's spokesperson, Colonel Martin O'Donnell, declined to discuss details. He said SACEUR's theory of victory is simply to maintain NATO's advantage, and that conditions must be set now to deter aggression and, if necessary, win if attacked. The details come from Bloomberg via European Pravda and Ukrainska Pravda; the document itself has not been published.
«От тактики роевого применения дронов до атак безэкипажных танков» (Krasnaya Zvezda: From swarm drone tactics to uncrewed tank attacks — Tsentr-2026 wrap-up)
2026-10-04SINGLE SOURCE
Krasnaya Zvezda, the Russian Defence Ministry's newspaper, published an overview of the main phase of the strategic command-staff exercise Tsentr-2026, which ended on 2 October at the Central Military District's 255th Chebarkul range, watched by President Putin and with Defence Minister Belousov reporting. According to the paper, more than 6,000 troops took part at Chebarkul (4,600 Russian, 1,479 foreign, 634 of them from CSTO Collective Rapid Reaction Force contingents). More than 600 pieces of equipment were used, including 55 aircraft and helicopters, 567 UAVs and more than 50 robotic systems. Representatives of 41 states took part. Six of them sent contingents: Belarus, China, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan and Tajikistan. Overall command was held by Deputy Defence Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov. The paper names the key features as mass use of UAVs, ground robotic systems and electronic warfare, assaults on motorcycles, buggies and quad bikes, and counter-battery fire 'taking into account the experience of the special military operation'.
The drone section focuses on the 'Roy' (Swarm) formation. FPV crews in this formation supported motorcycle assault groups, which attacked from the flanks while fire came from the front. Concentrated FPV strikes hit enemy firing positions as they were revealed, and mobile fire groups in 'Ulan-2' vehicles fought off enemy UAVs. The paper says swarm use of strike FPV drones is 'widely used' by Unmanned Systems Forces units in the war zone. It adds that Central Military District drone units combined swarm strikes on ground targets with point defence against air threats by FPV interceptors. Other drone elements were a Supercam-S350 with 'Repei' software for tank fire from indirect positions (up to 4.5 h endurance, data link up to 100 km), Kub-2 loitering munitions with thermobaric warheads (range over 60 km), a Kurier ground robot with rocket-propelled infantry flamethrowers, and Bogomol, Impuls and Depesha ground robots for resupply and casualty evacuation. Heavy Mangas and Zanoza-30 drones dropped supplies to assault troops. Assault groups also practised slipping through the grey zone via a water conduit and a pre-dug tunnel.
On armour, the article says uncrewed tanks with uninhabited fighting compartments manoeuvred within armoured groups and fired from short halts. It credits their mobility to a 'multichannel, jam-resistant' control system that duplicates the most vulnerable control nodes. T-14 Armata and T-90M tanks with the Arena active protection system used 'tank carousel' fire. The paper says Arena's radar detects FPV drones on approach and fires a fragmentation cloud with a radius of up to 200 m. The tanks were covered by a 'Spiridon' support vehicle and the Derivatsiya-PVO anti-aircraft gun system. Su-34s dropped twelve OFAB-500PD bombs at once on a command post and flew the 'Shnek' anti-missile manoeuvre; tactical aviation stayed outside enemy air-defence engagement zones. The article does not mention the reported problems with the uncrewed tanks (see entry e-20261004-07). Single source: this is a Russian state source (the Defence Ministry's newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda) presenting the ministry's own account of a staged exercise; the claims have not been independently verified.
Putin says an attack on Kaliningrad would 'inevitably' put Russia's entire arsenal on the agenda, backing the Foreign Ministry's warning to NATO; European Commission condemns the 'irresponsible nuclear rhetoric'
2026-10-01
Speaking at the plenary session of the Valdai International Discussion Club on 1 October, Vladimir Putin said that in the event of a direct attack on the Russian Federation, "in this case meaning Kaliningrad and perhaps some other territories", the use of "all the weapons at our country's disposal" would "inevitably and immediately" be on the agenda. He endorsed the recent Russian Foreign Ministry statement and the letters it sent to certain countries, saying "everything is written correctly" in them, and framed them not as intimidation but as "a response to an attempt to intimidate us". He also claimed that "no one currently has such means of destruction" as Russia. His remarks were carried by the Russian state and state-aligned agencies TASS, RIA Novosti and Interfax.
Putin claimed that the Foreign Ministry's letter on the defence of Kaliningrad Oblast did not mention nuclear weapons but rather the use of all means, and accused Western leaders of taking such answers out of context to inflate a narrative of Russian nuclear threats. He added that Russia would not attack anyone "in 2029, or 2030, or 2050", but would be forced to respond to aggression. According to Ukrainska Pravda, however, the document Russia handed to NATO (described as a non-paper) warned that Russia could use its entire available arsenal, including nuclear weapons, if the Alliance tried to isolate Kaliningrad Oblast. NATO responded by stressing its defensive nature and calling on Moscow to end its irresponsible nuclear rhetoric; Secretary General Mark Rutte said Putin knows he can never defeat NATO, and Lithuania called the threats psychological pressure.
Earlier the same day, European Commission spokesperson Christian Wigand, asked about the communication to NATO, said the Commission welcomed NATO's "clear reaction" and condemned "Russia's irresponsible nuclear rhetoric". "The EU will not fall for the Russian trap and we will not amplify Moscow's tactics of intimidation and scaremongering," he said, adding that the EU is working closely with NATO on countering Russian threats, without giving details. Chief spokesperson Paula Pinho stated that the Commission itself had received no such letter from Russia.
General Staff mobilisation chief Burdinsky: conscripts will not be sent to the ‘special military operation’ zone, units there staffed by contract soldiers
2026-10-01
According to TASS, Yevgeny Burdinsky, chief of the Russian General Staff's Main Mobilisation Directorate, said in an interview with the MoD newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda that conscripts will not be deployed to carry out combat missions of the "special military operation" in the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, or on the territory of Ukraine.
Burdinsky added that units and formations carrying out tasks in the operation are staffed exclusively by citizens who have signed contracts for military service. The article as retrieved does not give conscription quotas or call-up dates.
Caveat: this is a statement by a Russian General Staff official, relayed by Russian state media (TASS). It cannot be independently verified from this source, and it should be read against other reporting on where conscripts actually serve.
Russian combined strike on Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast, 29-30 Sep: Zircon/Oniks, Iskander and 188 drones, energy infrastructure the main target
2026-09-30
According to Ukraine's Air Force, Russia attacked Ukraine on the night of 29-30 September (from 18:00 on 29 September) with Zircon/Oniks anti-ship missiles launched from Kursk Oblast, Iskander-M/S-400 ballistic missiles launched from Voronezh and Bryansk oblasts, and 188 drones: Shahed (86 of them jet-powered), Gerbera attack drones and Parodiya decoy UAVs. The drones were launched from Oryol, Millerovo, Kursk, Primorsko-Akhtarsk, occupied Donetsk Oblast and, in occupied Crimea, Hvardiiske and Chauda. As of 08:00 Ukrainian air defence reported 160 aerial assets destroyed or jammed (5 ballistic/anti-ship missiles and 155 drones), with hits recorded at 18 locations. Aircraft, SAM units, electronic warfare assets, unmanned-systems units and mobile fire groups took part in the defence. Kyiv Oblast was the main target, and the Air Force said some drones were still in the air.
President Zelenskyy said the main target was energy infrastructure in the capital and Kyiv Oblast, that nearly 190 attack drones and ballistic missiles were used, that some of the ballistic missiles were intercepted, and that 5 people had been killed (including a child) and 14 injured across Ukraine. Kyiv Oblast governor Tymur Tkachenko reported the body of a child found under the rubble of a destroyed house in Vyshhorod, with three others pulled from the rubble (a child in shock, a man with shrapnel wounds to the head, a woman with a leg injury). Houses, cars and two warehouse buildings were damaged in the Bucha district, and infrastructure facilities were damaged in the Bucha, Vyshhorod and Obukhiv districts. In Kyiv, Mayor Klitschko said a Kyivteploenergo employee, a driver of a crew working at the site, was killed when a warehouse in Solomianskyi district was hit. In the afternoon a drone that MP Volodymyr Ariev identified as a jet-powered Geran-4 crashed into a playground in Obolon district without detonating, and bomb disposal experts reportedly removed it.
Meduza describes this as part of a shift in which Russia is wearing down Kyiv's air defences with near-daily drone attacks, now also in daylight, using jet-powered drones that are faster and harder to shoot down. It notes that Kyiv had civilian casualties on 16 of the first 24 days of September, which it calls unprecedented since the full-scale invasion, and that strikes between 22 and 28 September killed 13 residents and injured over 160 (including 23 September: 2 killed, 45 injured; 25 September: 7 killed, 59 injured in the city). The campaign intensified in late August with five consecutive days of strikes. All figures come from Ukrainian officials and Ukrainian/Meduza reporting and are not independently verified. The previous night (28-29 September) is covered in a separate entry.
ISW assesses Russia's mass drone strikes aim to force Ukraine's capitulation by spring 2027
2026-09-28
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assesses that Russia is running a large-scale long-range strike campaign, built on jet-powered drones and ballistic missiles, with the aim of forcing Ukraine to capitulate by spring 2027, as reported by Euromaidan Press. ISW calls this Putin's theory of victory: launching cheap Geran (Shahed-type) jet-powered drones in such numbers that enough of them get through Ukrainian defences.
The figures cited: Russian use of jet-powered drones rose eightfold between June and August; about 7,700 have been used since their first launch; more than 2,730 Shahed drones were launched in September alone, of which Ukraine intercepted or suppressed over 1,500. On 26 September Zelensky put the interception rate for jet-powered Shaheds at 55%. ISW says the approach relies on Ukraine's shortage of Patriot interceptors against ballistic missiles, the degradation of the power grid and Ukraine's limited air defence resources. On 25 September Putin said Ukraine 'must feel' Russia's 'retaliatory' strikes, which ISW reads as a sign of intensification over the winter.
Possible disruptions: Presidential Office head Kyrylo Budanov indicated that mass deployment of Ukrainian interceptor drones could begin within months, though it is uncertain whether it comes in time for the winter escalation. ISW also assesses that Putin may postpone large-scale forced mobilisation until the results of the drone campaign are clear, despite groundwork already being laid. Note that the capitulation timeline is an ISW assessment, not a stated Russian aim, and the figures on launches and interceptions come from Ukrainian and ISW reporting.
In a post signed by Oleg Tsarev and published on Dva Majora, the author criticises the Russian authorities for staying silent about Ukrainian footage of Russian prisoners of war. He says the Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps released a video and claimed that in a new phase of operation "Vivaldi" on the Krasny Liman (Lyman) axis more than 250 Russian servicemen were captured, including, according to the Ukrainian side, officers, pilots and artillerymen. Tsarev notes that the Russian MoD and General Staff have not commented, and asks whether all those shown are Russian military and whether they were taken at once or gathered over months and combined in one frame. He points out that on 19 September the MoD channel still said Krasny Liman was being cleared of individual Ukrainian soldiers.
Tsarev lists earlier cases in which he says official messaging lagged behind events: the 2022 withdrawal from Balakliya and Izyum called a "regrouping"; the August 2024 Ukrainian incursion into Kursk oblast, where Gerasimov reported the next day that the advance had been halted while the acting governor soon spoke of 12 km depth and 40 km width, and the recovery took nearly nine months; and the reported liberation of Kupyansk last November, after which Zelensky filmed a video at the town sign three weeks later, while official reports still speak of a "clearing" mode almost a year on. His argument is that people can bear a military setback but not the feeling of being treated as fools.
He calls on the MoD to acknowledge that the situation on the axis differs from the last official summary, to say that the footage is being studied and numbers and names verified, to explain where and when the men were captured, and to prove it if Kyiv merged prisoners from different days. He accepts restricting those who reveal positions but not replacing information with bans. He ends by stating that there is no collapse of the front, that the situation is better than near Kyiv, Kherson, Kharkiv and Kursk, and that the prisoners will return. The 250+ figure is a Ukrainian claim and is not verified by the post. Caveat: this is single-source reporting from the Dva Majora Telegram channel (Russian pro-Kremlin milblogger channel); it reflects a personal/editorial voice, not a position of the Russian MoD, milbloggers regularly contradict each other and the MoD, and the claims have not been independently verified.
US and Russia remove requirement to verify AI-identified targets from draft UN autonomous weapons rules
2026-09-27
According to Militarnyi, which cites a Washington Post report based on internal documents and sources familiar with the talks, US and Russian diplomats removed three provisions from a draft UN agreement on autonomous weapons during negotiations in Switzerland in early September. The deleted items were the requirements that AI-enabled systems operate 'predictably' and 'reliably', the mandate to consider ethics in their use, and the requirement for human verification of AI-identified targets before a strike.
The changes reportedly came in a closed-door session on the final day. The US and Russia each brought about ten lawyers, nearly twice as many as other delegations, and according to the reporting smaller delegations could not keep up with the pace of the edits. The text was meant to become the first international agreement covering AI-powered combat systems. The article also notes that the Trump administration opposes what it calls 'globalist' AI controls, and cites a CNN-reported case in which erroneous AI-generated intelligence on a Chinese vessel's cargo was circulated at US Special Operations Command without adequate human review.
Caveat: the account is secondhand from Militarnyi (Ukrainian defence media) relaying Washington Post reporting; it was not checked against the draft text, and the article does not give a Russian or US official response.
Asked whether Ukraine would send troops to defend NATO, Zelenskyy instead offers Ukraine's drone-defence know-how to neighbours facing Russian incursions
2026-09-26
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukraine will share its experience of defending against drones with partners facing Russian hybrid and drone attacks, NATO members and non-members alike, Euromaidan Press reported, citing UNIAN. Asked whether Ukraine would send troops to defend NATO members under attack, Zelenskyy did not answer that question directly. He pointed instead to Ukraine's "Drone Deal" agreements. These are bilateral pacts, open to countries inside and outside NATO, that combine sales of drones and missiles and joint production with "an exchange of experience". According to the report, Ukraine had signed such deals with nine countries by early August and was negotiating with more than a dozen others. Kyiv presents itself as "a security provider for Europe".
The offer comes as Russian drone and hybrid activity spreads beyond Ukraine, to Moldova, Romania and Germany among others. "Russia will continue hybrid attacks against various countries, and not only NATO members," Zelenskyy said. He singled out Moldova, which belongs to neither NATO nor the EU. According to the report, Moldova logged 39 Russian drone incursions in the first eight months of 2026. On 24 September drones entered both Moldovan and Romanian airspace while Poland scrambled fighter jets. Zelenskyy said Ukraine offers help "above all to those countries that help us during the war".
As a precedent for sharing counter-drone expertise, Zelenskyy cited Ukraine sending specialists to the Middle East to help protect critical infrastructure. He said sharing drone-defence know-how is "precisely part of this exchange" under the Drone Deal framework. The development shows Kyiv using its combat-tested counter-UAS experience as a diplomatic and security asset, while it avoids any commitment of troops.
Investigation: Russia has been rebuilding Facility 1335 in the Urals, the bunker linked to the 'Dead Hand' (Perimeter) nuclear command system
2026-09-26
A joint investigation by the Danish outlet Danwatch, The Sunday Times and the Dossier Center reports that Russia's Ministry of Defence has been carrying out a large modernisation of Object 1335 (codename 'Grot') since 2018. The facility is an underground complex inside Mount Kosvinsky Kamen near the village of Kytlym in the Sverdlovsk region of the Urals. According to the reporting it serves as a command post of the Strategic Missile Forces and is linked to Perimeter (Perimetr), the Soviet-era backup command system known in the West as 'Dead Hand'. Perimeter was built in the mid-1980s to make sure a retaliatory nuclear strike could still be launched if the leadership were killed or communications cut off. Militarnyi describes the complex as having at least 24 rooms, with the main and emergency exits about 2.5 km apart.
The evidence consists of two parts. The first is Russian defence procurement records: the investigators searched about 2.5 million records from 2018 to 2024 and found thousands of tenders naming Object 1335. These cover more than 22,000 tonnes of reinforcing steel, about 56,500 tonnes of cement, 600 km of electrical cable, 182 ventilation units, 5 MW of refrigeration capacity (bought in 2019), 14,000 lamps, heavy machinery, rock-drilling equipment, blast-resistant equipment and filters against radioactive, chemical and biological contamination. The records also list Western-made components such as Rockwool insulation and Danfoss and Belimo fittings. The second is satellite imagery, which shows extensive earthworks at the mountain's entrances and work on about six new access points. A Danish construction professor, Per Goltermann, called the quantities an 'enormous' construction project.
These records and images establish that there has been a large construction and hardening effort at Object 1335. The link to a revived and more automated Perimeter comes from interpretation and from Russian testimony. Retired Major General Viktor Khalin, who says he worked on developing Perimeter in 2005–2010, wrote in a Russian veterans' magazine in January 2026 that the system was reactivated in 2023 and can now work 'not only in an automated mode but also in a fully automatic mode'. Western experts such as Jeffrey Lewis and Andy Weber think reactivation is the most likely explanation. Tom Røseth describes the digging and reinforcement as a defensive measure to protect a retaliatory capability. Experts stress that claims about fully autonomous nuclear launch must be qualified, because Perimeter's operational details remain classified. The Kremlin did not respond to the investigators.
No tanks, lone soldiers: Russia shifts to small-group infiltration tactics on the northeastern front
2026-09-20
Ukrainian Joint Forces Task Force spokesperson Viktor Trehubov said on 20 September that Russian assault tactics have shifted markedly over the past year on the northeastern front: rather than attacking in columns supported by tanks and armored vehicles, Russian troops now advance in small groups of a few soldiers, or even alone, trying to cross the "kill zone" separating rear positions from the front line undetected.
According to Trehubov, small groups or individual soldiers who make it through the kill zone take cover and wait for others to catch up before regrouping into larger assault elements — reflecting Russia scaling down each assault wave because of the difficulty of crossing a kill zone that has expanded to roughly 20 km. Armor has been all but pulled from frontline assault roles: tanks have "moved not just to the back seat, but to the third row," used mainly when Russia can mass enough drone cover to escort them through, or when poor weather grounds Ukrainian drones. Ukrainian mechanized brigades told the Kyiv Independent this spring that their own tank crews rarely deploy under current drone-saturated conditions — indicating this is a mutual adaptation to dense drone ISR/strike coverage on both sides, not a Russian-only phenomenon.
Ukrainian military media separately reporting on the Kupyansk sector specifically describe a similar pattern — infantry infiltrating in small groups through remaining forest cover, spreading pressure across multiple directions rather than one concentrated mechanized thrust, with heavy equipment relegated to fire support, mine-clearing and logistics, and Ukrainian drone reconnaissance credited with detecting groups before they regroup. Note: this Kupyansk-specific framing comes from separate Ukrainian military-affiliated reporting, not from the verified kyivindependent source itself, which describes the tactical shift at the broader "northeastern front" level without naming Kupyansk explicitly.
Ukraine's frontline medics bring robot rescue lessons to Sweden
2026-09-20
Combat medics from Ukraine's 1st Separate Medical Battalion traveled to Sweden in mid-September 2026 to share their experience evacuating wounded soldiers under drone threat, meeting with medical personnel from the Swedish Armed Forces' Life Guards regiment (Livgardet, IB 1). The exchange centered on Ukrainian methods for reaching casualties inside the "kill zone" — the stretch of ground near the front line reachable by drones and other weapons from both sides — using unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) to retrieve wounded from locations too dangerous for personnel or vehicles.
The visit marked the first trip abroad for MAUL, a Ukrainian-built ground robot developed by the company AIDronesUA, used for wounded evacuation in combat conditions. AIDronesUA's CEO said Swedish personnel used the visit to learn about the platform's role in casualty evacuation and about ground-robot use in combat more broadly. Battalion commander Asan Charuhov said missions are planned around injury severity, terrain and site conditions, and that some casualties evacuated by UGV likely would not have survived evacuation by any other method.
The Ukrainian team also met General Michael Claesson, commander-in-chief of the Swedish Armed Forces, who thanked them for sharing knowledge Sweden can use to strengthen its own defenses. The exchange comes as Sweden, a NATO member since 2024, continues deepening ties with Ukrainian units experienced against Russia's drone-heavy tactics. Note: the reporting rests on a Swedish regiment social-media post and a LinkedIn post from AIDronesUA's CEO, with no independent third-party confirmation found; no technical specs for MAUL (payload, range) are given in the source.
Polish PM Tusk warns Russia is preparing 'accidental' drone and missile strikes on NATO states backing Ukraine
2026-09-17
In an address to the Sejm on 17 September 2026, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called this "the most probable scenario for the coming months": based on intelligence from NATO, Ukraine and the US (including the CIA), he said Russia's plans also include hybrid strikes with drones and missiles against countries supporting Ukraine, including Poland itself. He described this intelligence as "highly consistent and, unfortunately, persuasive."
Tusk set the warning against a string of recent incidents. On 13 September, Russian drones struck a gas station and a passenger train near the Polish-Ukrainian border, with a train carrying Western politicians narrowly avoiding a hit. On 15 September, NATO jets shot down a drone over Lithuania for the first time; Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda identified it as Russian. Estonia and Latvia have also seen drone incursions in recent months, and Poland alone recorded four incidents at border crossings in the past week targeting supply lines to Ukraine. Tusk also pointed to a new generation of fast, high-altitude Russian jet-powered drones that "hardly anyone is effectively prepared to counter," and to sustained heavy strikes on six Ukrainian cities plus the destruction of more than 300 railway locomotives.
The core of Tusk's warning is the distinction between a deliberately disguised "accident" and an actual incident: he assessed that Russia would deliberately make strikes on NATO territory look like accidents — a drone or missile "straying" into NATO airspace — to erode allies' resolve to invoke Article 5, without giving a clear trigger for a collective response. Importantly, this is Tusk's political threat assessment based on intelligence, not a confirmed or attributed incident in itself; he called for political unity and warned against pro-Russian framing of the threat.
US Air Force Confirms New Orbital Weapon Targeting Russian, Chinese Satellites
2026-09-17
Bloomberg reported on September 16, 2026 that the US Air Force/Space Force now has an orbital (space-based) weapon as part of its arsenal against Russian and Chinese satellites, for the first time expanding beyond its known ground-based jamming systems. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink disclosed the capability this week.
According to Bloomberg, the previously known ground-based arsenal consists of three systems: the Counter Communications System (operational since 2020), the more mobile Meadowlands system (operational since July 2026), and the Remote Modular Terminal (deployment nearing completion). These can temporarily jam Russian and Chinese telecommunications satellites but not destroy them. The new orbital weapon marks an escalation because it operates from space itself; the US has declined to disclose specifics about its capabilities. Bloomberg notes that all three leading space powers (US, China, Russia) have for years built maneuverable satellites able to jam, laser-blind, or even capture other spacecraft.
TASS adds its own political framing on top of this: Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Meink's remarks "prove that Washington seeks to deploy weapons in outer space," repeating Russia's call for "urgent practical steps to prevent an arms race in outer space." This reaction is TASS's own addition, not part of Bloomberg's original report, and should be read as Moscow's political response rather than independent confirmation of the weapon's nature.