In just two months, Russian strikes have destroyed around a third of Ukraine's annual book output: 1.5 million copies in July and 10 million in August. Dozens of publishers and bookshops have been affected, as well as hundreds of schools: 9% of new textbooks have been burned in the attacks.

It's a double whammy for Ukraine's publishing industry, as the devastating Russian attacks have come at a time of financial strain and low demand for books.

Many bookshops in Ukraine were forced to close in 2026 because bookselling is no longer profitable. Now the Russians are destroying the warehouses where books are stored.

Industry experts say that without state support, the sector could collapse altogether. What measures does the book business expect the government to take?

The scale of the problem

In July and August, Russian forces attacked at least nine companies in the publishing industry. The damage was not limited to direct destruction: dozens of businesses suffered indirect losses too. On 2 July, Russian missiles struck the central warehouse of a logistics partner used by the publisher BookChef, causing 800,000 books to go up in flames.

On 19 July, during an attack on the capital, the Russians destroyed a warehouse belonging to the Kyiv-based publisher #knygolove where 250,000 books had been stored. The office of arc.ua, a publisher co-founded by former health minister Uliana Suprun, was also damaged.

The offices of the Mison publishing house were burned to the ground in the same attack. Konvi, one of Ukraine's largest printing companies and a producer of school textbooks, also suffered damage.

The attacks intensified in August. On the first day of the month, Russian forces destroyed the Kharkiv warehouse used by Ranok, one of Ukraine's biggest publishers of textbooks and children's books, and KnyhoLend, a chain of bookshops. Almost 8 million books – 28,800 titles – burned in the blaze.

The attack affected other publishers too, many of which specialise in books for children – Readberry, Zhorzh, Fabula, Shche Odnu Storinku (One More Page), Varvar Publishing, Osnova, Svoie, Korali Books, Kenhuru (Kangaroo) and 4mamas.

On Sunday 16 August, Russian forces damaged offices and warehouses in Kyiv belonging to the publishers Nash Format and Laboratoriia.

Ranok CEO Viktor Kruhlov said the number of books destroyed over these two months – around 13 million – amounts to a third of the market's annual supply.

Some of the books destroyed – 8.6%, or 1.2 million copies – were textbooks. For some school subjects, Russia has destroyed the entire print run of textbooks for the 2026-27 academic year, said Serhii Babak, chair of the Verkhovna Rada (Parliamentary) Education Committee.

Ninth-grade textbooks were hardest hit, with 850,000 copies destroyed, or 9.5% of the print run. Fourth-grade pupils have lost out on 271,000 books, or 7%. Sixth- and seventh-graders will be short of almost 45,000 textbooks, or 6% of the print run.

Both finished books and print runs still in production were hit. The publishers affected are Ranok, Hramota (which lost 50% of its printed textbooks), Linhvist, Akademiia, Osvita, Litera, Aston and Shkoliar.

How much has the book business lost?

Artem Bidenko, Head of the Ukrainian Publishers Association, told Ekonomichna Pravda that July and August 2026 may have been the toughest months in the history of Ukraine's book market. He said Russian attacks have cost the industry at least UAH 2 billion (US$44.8 million) in books alone, not counting equipment and premises.

"Some authors lost books that had already been printed, and the same is true of textbooks. So significant amounts of money will have to be found somewhere to reprint everything that had already been contracted. That means the losses are far greater than we can calculate right now," Bidenko says.

In a comment to Ekonomichna Pravda, Kruhlov noted that Ranok and its partners had printed all their textbooks without an advance payment from the state, which only pays after the advance copies have been received. He said Ranok does not currently have enough working capital to print another batch of books and textbooks.

"If the state doesn't help, I'm going to have to think hard about whether to continue working on school books," he said. A third of all textbooks are printed by Ranok.

In a critical condition

These devastating Russian strikes have hit the book market at a particularly difficult time. Demand for books is plummeting, forcing bookshops to close. Since spring 2026, Kyiv has seen the closure of a shop run by the publisher Artbooks, as well as Yakaboo's only bricks-and-mortar bookshop, located in the historic Main Post Office building on the Maidan.

Two bookshop cafés, Mriinyky in Vinnytsia and Fine Book Coffee in Kropyvnytskyi, have also closed, as have the Pershyi Tom bookshop in Cherkasy and two branches of the Readeat chain in Kyiv. Dmytro Feliksov, who owns the chain, said the shops barely broke even.

Forbes Ukraine reported that Feliksov was offering to sell both bookshops for UAH 5 million (US$112,000). The price did not cover his investment, but even so, he was unable to find a buyer.

The Vivat publishing house and bookshop chain, a major player on the market, has halted the opening of new locations due to falling demand, its director Yuliia Orlova said.

Business owners cite demographic trends as one reason for the decline in book sales: the population is shrinking and people are leaving the country. In addition, the rising cost of living is forcing Ukrainians to tighten their belts, and that includes spending less money on books.

"The economics of bookshops depend on footfall, and there has been no significant reduction in rents," Orlova said. "Landlords sometimes offer discounts, but that isn't enough to turn an unprofitable bookshop into a profitable one. We can see what the situation is with air defence in big cities, and we know this winter could be difficult. If even more people leave the country, some bookshops may not survive."

According to Bidenko, the book market entered a crisis of overproduction last winter. "We were afraid that not everyone would make it through the winter. Then the government launched the 'winter thousand' programme, and around UAH 220 million (US$5 million) came into the market in December, which saved it," he said. [The Winter Thousand is a one-off state payment of UAH 1,000 (US$22) introduced by the Ukrainian government at Zelenskyy's initiative as part of the Winter Support programme.] Publishers and book distributors are now expecting even stronger measures from the state.

Kruhlov, whose production facilities were hardest hit, has identified three actions that could save the book industry. Most of Ekonomichna Pravda's sources agreed with him.

• Preferential lending – creating a preferential loan programme for the publishing industry, including loans for post-strike recovery. The EBRD could be involved as a guarantor.
• Stimulating demand for books – existing support programmes (Baby Package, First-Grader Package and eBook for 18-year-olds) could be extended to under-25s and parents.
• Developing book infrastructure – supporting bookshops by offering partial compensation for rent, as provided for by legislation since 2023, as well as co-financing the purchase of new books for public and school libraries. No funds have been allocated for this in the state budget.

Kruhlov estimates that the market needs €125 million for recovery, most of it in the form of loans. "If the state launches purchases for libraries, a major buyer will appear on the market. That will give those affected some breathing room," Bidenko said. More bookshops and libraries would lower the risk of literature being destroyed.

Bidenko has also proposed deregulating the book industry. "Book publishing is exempt from VAT, but equipment isn't. Nor are books of less than 48 pages, which the tax authorities classify as brochures and therefore taxable, even though many children's books are this length," he said.

Will the state help?

The publishers said that since the strikes, the Verkhovna Rada's Education Committee has joined efforts to find money for textbook manufacturers. According to Ekonomicha Pravda's sources in the book industry, the committee is seeking UAH 150 million (US$3.3 million) for schoolbooks.

The Ministry of Culture has begun talks with businesses, but there is still no clear support plan. Deputy Prime Minister Tetiana Berezhna noted that printing companies affected by attacks can receive state grants of up to UAH 16 million (US$358,000) for repairs and up to UAH 30 million (US$672,000) in compensation under the war-risk insurance programme.

The ministry has promised to expand the eBook programme, in which Ukrainian citizens receive UAH 998 (about US$22) to buy books in Ukrainian when they reach the age of 18, and to introduce partial rent compensation for bookshops, as businesses have requested. However, Ekonomicha Pravda's book industry sources remain sceptical about Berezhna's statements.

One source complained: "The culture minister said she was working on compensation for bookshops and book purchases for libraries back in November 2025. It's now August, and we're talking about this again, but this time as an anti-crisis measure. Nothing has been done."

Volodymyr Tunik-Fryz

Translated by Ganna Bryedova and Yelyzaveta Khodatska

Edited by Teresa Pearce

On 18 August, the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) returned from its summer recess, opening the new political season. Everyone had hoped that the main personnel issue of recent weeks would finally be resolved that day – the issue that has sparked street protests in many cities across the country.

It concerns the position of defence minister, from which President Zelenskyy recently removed Mykhailo Fedorov, despite resistance and outrage from the public and a significant part of the military.

The main outstanding issue to be decided now appears to have been resolved. Ukrainska Pravda's political sources claim that the new head of the Defence Ministry will be its current acting minister, Yevhenii Khmara.

The day before, on Monday 17 August, coordination meetings were held throughout the day in the office of the Verkhovna Rada speaker. In the afternoon, parliamentary faction leaders joined them, including Batkivshchyna party leader Yuliia Tymoshenko – as focused and composed as her tightly wound signature hairstyle – as well as other representatives of the parliamentary majority.

According to Ukrainska Pravda's sources in the parliamentary leadership, the coordination meeting was long and difficult, but the discussion never reached the point of addressing the appointment issues, only touching on the fact that they needed to be resolved.

Despite this, on Tuesday 18 August, Zelenskyy submitted Khmara and Andrii Sybiha's candidacies to the Verkhovna Rada for the positions of defence and foreign ministers respectively.

Fedorov himself had called the 18th – the day the Verkhovna Rada returned to work – the point after which he would be able to decide on his next steps.

Will Khmara have enough votes in the Rada to be appointed? Will Fedorov's team remain at the Defence Ministry? And what plans does the former minister have? Ukrainska Pravda explores these questions below.

The day the vote could take place

A source in the top ranks of Zelenskyy's Servant of the People faction explained to Ukrainska Pravda that the personnel issue could be put on the agenda at any moment, meaning events could move very quickly.

"We calculated that even if there is a desire to push this whole thing through as quickly as possible, it would still take about an hour and a half to two hours just for the signed documents from Bankova Street [home to the Office of the President] to reach Hrushevskoho Street [the location of the parliament building] and be submitted to the committee," said the source.

"Because, as a statesman of the highest calibre, the parliament's speaker Stefanchuk is categorically opposed to such issues being considered without a committee decision and in violation of procedures. So, on the one hand, this issue could appear at any time. But on the other, it still won't be an instant process. It will take some time and everyone will be able to prepare for the decision-making process."

Most likely, the vote on the candidates for defence and foreign ministers will take place on Wednesday 19 August.

This will give MPs some time, albeit very limited, to discuss and communicate the decision.

In theory, the vote could also be postponed until Thursday. However, recently there has been an effort not to leave personnel issues until the end of the parliamentary week: on Thursdays, MPs are traditionally less disciplined, and quite a few previous votes have failed to take place on that day. The leadership of Servant of the People also insists that the decisions have not yet been finalised.

Will there be enough votes for Khmara?

Ukrainska Pravda's sources in the Rada said that there would be enough votes to appoint Khmara, "with some to spare". MPs had previously prepared an appeal to the president asking him to reinstate Mykhailo Fedorov as defence minister – but only three MPs signed it. This clearly demonstrates that there is no appetite in parliament to fight for Fedorov.

"Even those MPs who previously said they would not vote for anyone have already changed their tune and are now saying they will take part in the vote," an Ukrainska Pravda source said.

Khmara himself has already attended several meetings of the Verkhovna Rada's National Security Committee in his capacity as acting minister. According to Ukrainska Pravda's sources, he is viewed very positively there and considered worthy of becoming defence minister. Some committee members add that, in Khmara's nearly month-long tenure, the Defence Ministry has become more open in its communications and cooperation with them.

Roman Kostenko, secretary of the Verkhovna Rada's National Security Committee, told Ukrainska Pravda that he is ready to support the potential ministerial candidate. He had previously backed the appointments of both Fedorov and Denys Shmyhal.

"First and foremost, I believe that during wartime, the country certainly cannot remain without a defence minister for so long. So we need to appoint one and move forward. I haven't counted the votes, but I think there will definitely be enough. Khmara is a combat officer; he has shown himself to be a patriot and a worthy person. I don't think anyone will oppose his appointment as defence minister. I believe it is a good decision," Kostenko said.

One potential problem with the appointment

There is an important nuance to this story – the issue is now less about who is going to become defence minister and more about finding a formal mechanism that will allow Yevhenii Khmara to be appointed to the role.

Under Ukrainian legislation, the defence minister can only be a civilian – this is designed to ensure democratic control over the army and effective management of finances and decision-making.

Khmara is a serving general in the military, which means he cannot legally become defence minister. There are three ways this appointment could therefore take place:

• either the law is changed to accommodate the new minister
• or Khmara leaves military service
• or he becomes defence minister in violation of the law.

"Davyd [Arakhamiia, leader of the Servant of the People faction in parliament] was running around with this amendment last week – they wanted to change the law so that a serviceman could be defence minister," a source told Ukrainska Pravda. "They tried to find a way to squeeze it in somewhere, but then it all suddenly went quiet, and now no one's talking about any amendment.

"So they have probably found some other solution. Because to suggest that Khmara, who looks like Rambo, would be discharged through a military medical commission would be even more ridiculous than in the case of Zaluzhnyi.

"So, if they are not changing the law and he is not being discharged through a military medical commission, then they will probably simply appoint a general as defence minister under martial law. Why not? Although this still needs to be clarified, because no one has communicated anything to the MPs formally."

Our sources say that Khmara has agreed to leave military service. It is highly likely that he will go to the vote no longer holding the status of a serviceman. Notably, the acting minister had previously been unwilling on principle to be "struck off" military service. However, it now appears that the President's Office has found a way to persuade him after all.

The new minister may receive a "personnel surprise"

Khmara attended one of the sittings of the national security committee, where he presented his plan for the further conduct of the war. There are few details, as the meeting was held behind closed doors. However, sources of Ukrainska Pravda say that there was considerable discussion with his deputies – Mstyslav Banik and Oleksii Vyskub – about procurement matters.

At the sitting, the acting minister introduced all his deputies and explained their respective areas of responsibility. For now, there are no changes in the team – it has remained the same as it was under Fedorov.

"All the deputies joined [the committee meeting], plus there was one deputy, Mykola Shvydkyi, who was appointed already after Khmara took his post [at the Ministry of Defence]," explained Kostenko. "As for whether he's planning to replace any deputies, there has been no mention of that so far. Currently everyone is working in the same way, and in due course he [Khmara] will assess their work and make decisions."

However, Fedorov's team appears to be planning something rather different. UP's sources say that at the Ministry of Defence the majority are in fact in a state of waiting to see what happens after 18 August. As soon as a new defence minister is appointed, part of the team will leave to join Fedorov for whatever he does next.

"So the further question here is how Khmara will move, given he will not have a team and has no one to put in the top positions," a source from Fedorov's team told UP. "I don't think he even has any candidates for the director-level roles. All the deputies, the key managers – that was the best thing Mykhailo could have left for Khmara."

Fedorov met with Khmara immediately after his dismissal in order to hand over his team's strategy. In terms of Khmara's plans, for now he is trying to understand what needs to be improved. The secretary of the national security committee asserted that Khmara will continue to hold the course on areas he considers to be working well.

"Everything that is positive will continue to move forward," said Kostenko. "It would be unfair to take away the good things and say that the previous minister did everything wrong. Of course, Khmara has plenty of his own ideas for development. In some areas they don't align with Fedorov's vision, in others they do, but he sees things differently. So that's the direction we'll take. I think he has enough of his own ideas and experience to bring something new to the Ministry of Defence."

And what about Fedorov?

The sources in the Servant of the People faction surveyed by UP are unified in saying that Mykhailo Fedorov's return to the post of defence minister is impossible for now.

Another source from the presidential faction gave his view of the situation:

"Well, Misha [Fedorov] has now become the leader of the youth and the protests, while we have a team of older people. So I do not think his return to the Ministry of Defence is possible. But at the same time we can't say that all bridges have been burned. It is similar to the situation with Kubrakov. If he does not climb onto the barricades and try to break through walls with his head, then it is entirely possible that some place in the team will be found for him after all. Mykhailo worked with us for a long time. The history of the relationship is long, so it will always be possible to reach an understanding. But this is definitely no longer about the Ministry of Defence."

Oleksandr Kubrakov, referred to by the source above, had been the deputy prime minister for Reconstruction. Following his dismissal and after some time had passed, he was given the post of freelance presidential adviser on infrastructure and engagement with hromadas (administrative units designating a village, several villages, or a town, and their adjacent territories). It is highly doubtful that Fedorov will have any prospect of being appointed to a formal post as an adviser with unclear responsibilities and powers. Moreover, the former defence minister himself does not appear likely to accept such an offer.

Fedorov's team told UP that dialogue with the president has not been active of late. They have also not met in person in recent days. After Fedorov turned down the offer of becoming deputy prime minister, there have been no further offers. Fedorov had previously stated that he would not agree to any other post other than returning as defence minister. He has not changed his position, and the subject of returning to the post has not come up in the dialogue with the president.

The former minister and his team are awaiting the Verkhovna Rada's decision. Should Khmara be appointed, Fedorov's "plan B" will come into effect – he will launch a series of projects, one after another, connected to the war and Ukraine's defence, sources said. In what status and in what sector this will take place is not being disclosed for now.

***

And while the country waits to see what the future holds for the Ministry of Defence, it appears there is no suspense here at all – the ending of the story is obvious. The only question is when the vote will take place and which mechanism will be chosen for Khmara's appointment, given his general's rank in the military.

At the conciliation board it was announced that on 18 August the candidates will meet with the factions, and on 19 August the vote on the ministers will be held, MP Yaroslav Zhelezniak reported. This also concerns the submission of Andrii Sybiha's candidacy for the post of foreign minister.

On this matter, according to UP's sources, there are no disputes whatsoever. This appointment is expected to go through very quickly and easily.

Roman Romaniuk, Tetiana Kryvishyn, Natalia Bodnar, UP

Translated by Anna Kybukevych and Anastasiia Lipara

Edited by Shoël Stadlen

Shortly before his departure, Ukrainska Pravda managed to speak to some of Mykhailo's friends, and to Mykhailo himself. The volunteer was already outside Ukraine, in Poland, when our conversation took place. Here we tell his story in his own words.

It was the middle of summer 2026. The paperwork was almost complete. Mykhailo Puryshev, a serviceman who was close to being discharged, was doing household chores at his home on the outskirts of Kyiv. A year of military service was behind him, as were his health problems, although he was still feeling the effects of the two heart attacks he'd suffered. Just a few more documents to get hold of, and he could go back to volunteering.

Suddenly a call came through on Telegram. It was his son Oleksandr. Mykhailo hadn't seen him for more than four years. He was an adult now – 18. Mykhailo would probably have struggled to recognise him if they met. Oleksandr sounded anxious.

His son's frightened voice came down the phone. "Dad, there are some people here and they want to talk to you."

Mykhailo ended the call and rushed to find a second phone. Another call came through from his son's number. Mykhailo started recording. A man's voice came down the phone, speaking in Russian.

"Good afternoon, Mikhail [Mykhailo in Russian – ed.]. You understand who you're talking to. The equivalent of your 'security service'. Let's be friends, Mikhail. If you don't want to be friends… you help the military, don't you? How would you feel if your son were on the other side, up against those people? Who matters more to you, Mikhail?"

At first Mykhailo didn't know what to do. If they'd called from an unknown number, he could have sworn at them and hung up. But they were calling from his own son's number. That meant these people were with him and had him under their control. He had to figure out how to save him. How to save his son from the FSB.

Family in Russia and blackmail using his son

Mykhailo had divorced long before the full-scale invasion. His ex-wife took their two children – a son and a daughter – and moved to Russia. She had lived in Pskov since 2016. From time to time, his son would visit him in Mariupol. Father and son travelled around the country, ate hot dogs at petrol stations, stayed in good hotels and went to amusement parks. Oleksandr was interested in programming and computer games and dreamed of studying abroad. Russia's invasion changed everything.

Father and son began to talk less often. Mykhailo didn't want to put Oleksandr at risk unnecessarily because of his volunteer work. So Oleksandr was usually the one who called. He told his dad that the other kids at school didn't talk very nicely about Ukraine or Ukrainians. It seemed the invasion was forcing him to grow up too fast.

It was obvious that the Russians would draft his son into the army as soon as he turned 18. Mykhailo tried several times to get him out of Russia. First he attempted to enlist the help of his ex-wife: he tried to persuade her to sign some documents so that their son could fly to see Mykhailo's brother in Canada. But she refused. Then he tried to do it secretly, through acquaintances and friends. The plan almost worked, but at the last moment Oleksandr said he couldn't go through with it: if he fled to Canada, his mother would be very upset.

Then, on 16 July 2026, came the call mentioned at the start of this article.

The man from the "equivalent of the security service" who had suggested that they "be friends" was in fact issuing a direct ultimatum: either Mykhailo helped the Russians or his son would be sent to the front lines. Mykhailo was warned that if he tried to tell anyone about the conversation or attempted to get Oleksandr out of Russia with the help of relatives, the threats would quickly be carried out. But if their "friendship" worked out, they assured him they would help arrange Oleksandr's studies, possibly even abroad. They even promised to provide money for his education.

The Russian asked whether Mykhailo was in contact with his ex-wife and why their relationship was so strained. We do not know the details of Mykhailo's family life, but the man from the "equivalent of the security service" guaranteed that he could sort that out too. He promised that the next call would come from his ex-wife's number. They also said they wouldn't bother him too often: twice a month max.

"I felt dirty," Mykhailo recalled. "All sorts of ideas kept running through my head about how to sort this out. I cried. I wondered what to do. I was worried about my son, afraid they might have locked him up somewhere. He was frightened. Those people who'd come to see him weren't friends; they'd come to scare him. I think he was terrified."

The second time the Russians called, it was via Telegram from an unknown number, and they were excessively polite. Even when Mykhailo became emotional, they said calmly: "We're speaking to you politely, aren't we? And I know a lot about you. I respect you. And I'm speaking to you respectfully."

The unknown caller told Mykhailo to buy another phone and a new SIM card and to find a good hiding place for them. When the time came, he was to make contact.

The subsequent conversations, if they can be called that, became more specific: the Russians explained what they expected from the cooperation they were proposing. They wanted information about foreign military personnel serving in Ukraine's defence forces and the locations of various units. They were particularly interested in Azov.

"Has something happened to you? Why are you so sad? Why are you off social media? Why aren't you posting anything?" asked the unidentified caller who wanted to "be friends".

Mykhailo didn't know what to say. He couldn't swear at him. Nor could he directly refuse to cooperate. After all, the Russians were holding his son hostage. Mykhailo didn't know what had happened to him, where he was, or what conditions he was being held in. He didn't even know whether his son was free. The Russians desperately needed Mykhailo to go back to his volunteering and his social media as though nothing had happened.

"I've just gone through the military medical board and I'm waiting for the paperwork. I'm being discharged," Mykhailo explained. "And technically, I'm supposed to be at my permanent duty station. So just to avoid any questions, I'm staying at home, not really going anywhere, and I won't be posting anything until I have the documents."

The Russian kept asking when Mykhailo would be able to return to volunteering, because it was "very, very necessary" that he do so. This time, however, the conversation was more friendly than businesslike: the man from the "equivalent of the security service" seemed to have changed tactics and was trying to act more casually, asking about the weather, Mykhailo's health, relationships, women. And, almost in passing, he asked where Mykhailo's unit was currently stationed.

Mykhailo gave a vague answer: "Somewhere in the east."

There were five calls in total. It was becoming clear that the Russians were losing patience and were no longer prepared to believe that the military medical board bureaucracy could take so long. They demanded that Mykhailo go back to his volunteering and finally begin cooperating with them.

The last conversation took place on 3 August. After that, they communicated only by text. Mykhailo even deleted the text messages to make it look as if he really was interested in cooperating with the Russians.

The decision

Meanwhile, a plan was taking shape in his mind. Mykhailo spoke to various people who suggested different ways of resolving the situation, including physically getting Oleksandr out of Russia.

But putting other people's lives at risk was unacceptable to the volunteer, as was forcing his son to take such a risk. Mykhailo decided to fly to Moscow and sort it out once and for all.

"Everyone's worried about whether I'll be all right. But if someone else got my son out, wouldn't they have a family too? Of course they would. This is my problem. I've tried to solve it. There is no option in which no one suffers. This is my child – I can take responsibility for him myself. I believe this is the best option there is," Mykhailo explained.

All this time he kept on trying to contact his son, but there was no answer. Then, around the beginning of August, his ex-wife called relatives and repeatedly urged them to tell Mykhailo not to try to contact Oleksandr.

The unknown Russian man who had "wanted to be friends" kept promising to arrange a conversation with Mykhailo's son. At one point he even suggested meeting in person, saying that Mykhailo could travel to Russia via a third country such as Kazakhstan. To convince him that he had the necessary connections, the man even promised to make sure that no stamp showing that Mykhailo had crossed into Russia would be put in his passport. But Mykhailo never once got to hear his son's voice.

"It was difficult," he said. "I considered different ways of solving the problem. Some of them wouldn't have been ideal for me. How long can someone who's had two heart attacks survive in captivity? Not long, I don't think. But there is hope that perhaps things will turn out differently.

I always say that wherever I've been and whatever I've done, I've always put my faith in God. Because there was no logic to any of it. Let them do whatever they want. My son will stop being of interest to them. There'll be no one left to blackmail me with, and nothing to blackmail me over. There will be no reason to waste resources."

Eventually Mykhailo travelled to Poland and on to Türkiye. On the Turkish coast, he bought a plane ticket to Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow. His plan was to arrive at the airport and be detained at passport control.

"I've left a video explaining everything. I wanted people to understand me. Parents will understand why I did this. If they're decent, proper parents, borders won't matter to them. Parents will go and get their children, whatever the cost," Mykhailo said.

He said that just before the flight, he'd finally felt a sense of relief. Suddenly he remembered how much he'd loved swimming in the river as a child. He used to jump in off a dam. It was incredibly scary. But once you'd taken that step, there was no way back. All you could do was plunge into the water and swim...

From entrepreneur to volunteer

We can't know exactly what Mykhailo was feeling at that moment. But he certainly knew who he would be dealing with and what those people are capable of. After all, he had first-hand experience of dealing with Russian occupying forces in Mariupol in 2022.

The Russians were interested in Mykhailo Puryshev for a reason. He was one of the few volunteers who had managed to get into Mariupol during the occupation and evacuate people. He later continued helping civilians evacuate from frontline cities, including Kherson.

Before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Mykhailo did not consider himself a volunteer. He lived in the city and ran several businesses, including an IT company and a nightclub. On 24 February 2022, he took his family and relatives to safety in Ukraine's west, bought a red Mercedes minibus, painted "Volunteer" all over it and drove back to Mariupol. He managed to get into the city on 8 March. He was lucky: at the time, he didn't understand the immensity of the risks he was about to face.

Mykhailo made six trips to Mariupol in all. He brought aid into the city in his red minibus, and on the return journey he took families with children out. There were no humanitarian corridors, so attacks would be going on during the evacuations.

On subsequent trips, other people Mykhailo knew also went with him in their own vehicles, which meant they could rescue more people. By his estimate, around a thousand Mariupol residents were rescued during the spring of 2022. The volunteer's trips were reported on by Ukrainian and international media outlets, including Euronews, Fox News, CNN, the Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne, 1+1, NV and local outlet Mrpl.city.

Getting through the Russian checkpoints wasn't easy. The Russian occupying forces thought Mykhailo was either insane or a spy. They would search his vehicle thoroughly. Eventually they began to recognise him. They thought he would either be killed by Russian artillery or accidentally shot by his own side. During one of his trips, a shell landed near his minibus, damaging the bonnet and blowing out one of the side doors.

His final trip to Mariupol was in May. Mykhailo had learned that there might be children inside the Azovstal steelworks, so he decided to try to rescue them. He took two megaphones in addition to his usual humanitarian supplies. He planned to drive around the plant and broadcast a recorded message offering evacuation. Mykhailo hoped that by doing this, he would be able to locate civilians who were sheltering from the constant bombardment alongside the Ukrainian troops.

This time, however, he failed to reach the city. During his previous trip he had been threatened by so-called militants from the "DPR" (the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic) at one of the checkpoints. They said that if they saw his Mercedes again, they would put him in a basement and either keep him prisoner or shoot him.

Mykhailo was detained at a checkpoint near Mariupol. His vehicle was confiscated and he was taken away for interrogation. There were a lot of people in the building where he was held. They were all taken away to be interrogated. They were tortured too. Electric shock was the main method.

There was one incident that Mykhailo is unlikely ever to forget. One of the prisoners was tortured so brutally that he could literally no longer walk. He was dragged bodily into the room.

"The guy had left the room on his own two feet, but when he came back, they had to drag him in," Mykhailo recalls. "People immediately started looking for ways to help him, searching for painkillers. The stench of burnt skin was overwhelming – they'd subjected him to such severe electric shocks. It felt as though human life meant absolutely nothing there."

But the collaborators were the most brutal. At times they were even more vicious than the Russians. In their eagerness to prove themselves useful to the Russian occupying forces, they could torture prisoners in an attempt to extract information that did not even exist.

The Russians laughed at Mykhailo's determination to reach Azovstal. When they realised that he was completely serious, they asked him how he could possibly imagine doing it. Eventually, during one of the interrogations, Mykhailo was released. The Russians even returned the red minibus he'd arrived in. On the way to Zaporizhzhia, he managed to evacuate two more families with children. He called the other volunteers and advised them not to travel to the city any more: it was becoming too dangerous.

But that wasn't the end of his volunteer work. Mykhailo spent some time delivering humanitarian aid to Kyiv and Kharkiv oblasts after they had been liberated. During one of his trips to Kramatorsk, he came up with the idea of setting up invincibility centres – heated premises stocked with food and power banks to assist people facing hardships due to power cuts – for both military personnel and civilians. Water was a major problem in frontline cities: people had been unable to wash properly for months.

The first invincibility centre was established in Bakhmut. A well was drilled in a basement, and a filtration system enabled up to 1,000 litres of water an hour to be pumped through it. People started coming to the pink basement – Mykhailo and the other volunteers painted the centres pink – to wash themselves, do their laundry, or pick up toys that the volunteers had left there for the children.

This was also how they found families with children who were reluctant to leave. Mykhailo and his friends would keep track of them and try to persuade them to evacuate. Sometimes they succeeded. Similar invincibility centres were later established in Avdiivka, Vuhledar, Kupiansk, Druzhkivka, Kostiantynivka, Kherson and Huliaipole. The most expensive one cost just over half a million hryvnias (about US$11,100). Eventually the Russians began bombing the centres. They claimed on Russian television that the volunteers were "helping the Nazis".

The volunteers suspected that local collaborators were helping the Russians locate the basements equipped for washing and doing laundry, as they would enter the premises and film them. They managed to catch one of these "helpers" red-handed, and several others were caught later.

Mykhailo officially registered his volunteer organisation, naming it Unity of People. Some members of the team decided to enlist in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and he joined them. He wanted to keep an eye on his friends.

But after suffering two heart attacks and related health issues, Mykhailo was deemed unfit for military service – he was having to take four different medications every day to keep his condition under control. He returned to his home near Kyiv, where he was finishing up the paperwork and planning his next volunteer projects, when on 16 July, he received that phone call from the FSB.

***

Mykhailo Puryshev landed at Sheremetyevo on the morning of 17 August. He has not been in contact with anyone since. His friends have no information about what has happened to him.

Videos continue to appear on Mykhailo's social media accounts, but he said that his team would handle all communication from then on.

- -

P.S. Ukrainska Pravda has contacted human rights advocates who are aware of Puryshev's situation and are trying to find ways to help him.

UP also requested comment from the Security Service of Ukraine, but had not received a response at the time this article was posted.

P.P.S. During our conversations with Mykhailo and his friends, we expressed concern about his decision and warned him about the possible risks. However, it was clear from our conversations that unfortunately, Mykhailo was not going to change his plans.

Stanislav Kozliuk and Yevhen Buderatskyi

Translated by Myroslava Zavadska and Tetiana Buchkovska

Edited by Teresa Pearce

Missile attacks of this kind have become an almost daily occurrence. Banderol strikes are among the factors that have forced Ukraine to close its Black Sea ports. Vladyslav Vlasiuk, the Presidential Commissioner for Sanctions Policy, says these missiles are involved in around 80% of Russian attacks on Odesa's infrastructure.

Moscow is ramping up production of the Banderol and can now make dozens every month. Read on to find out how the Russians developed this new low-cost cruise missile, and why it represents a fresh challenge for Ukraine's air defence forces.

S8000 Banderol

Banderol missiles are developed and manufactured by Kronstadt JSC, the company that's also behind the far more expensive high-tech Orion reconnaissance and attack drones.

Russia began testing the Banderol as early as 2024, according to Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat, but for a long time the new missile was shrouded in secrecy.

The first evidence that Russia was using the S8000 Banderol in attacks on Ukraine was recorded in spring 2025. Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU) revealed the missile's specifications after analysing debris. The Banderol's external appearance was later revealed in Russian media reports.

Outwardly, the Banderol resembles a scaled-down Kh-101 cruise missile. It too has wings that deploy during flight and a distinctive shape intended to reduce its radar signature. But the similarities end there.

Compared to the Kh-101, which is launched from strategic bombers thousands of kilometres away and carries a warhead weighing up to 900 kg, the Banderol is much smaller.

It can reach speeds of up to 600 km/h, has a range of up to 500 km, and carries a 114kg high-explosive fragmentation warhead. It is primarily launched from Orion drones, which are manufactured at the same plant, but has also been integrated into Mi-28 helicopters.

Internally, they are also completely different missiles. The Kh-101 features sophisticated electronics, including Russian-made components, an optical guidance system and purpose-built engines. The Banderol has none of these.

Much of what is inside the Banderol is sourced from abroad, from the Chinese-made Swiwin turbojet engine to American, European and Japanese electronics and chips. To enable it to navigate despite interference from electronic warfare systems, the Banderol is fitted with a Russian Kometa-8 controlled reception pattern antenna (CRPA) and a Chinese inertial navigation system.

The extensive use of civilian components keeps the Banderol's price low, at just US$50,000-150,000. In comparison, a Kh-101 missile costs around US$2 million and an Iskander-K comes in at US$1.5 million.

Despite its low cost, the Banderol retains the key characteristics of a cruise missile. Capable of flying at 600 km/h and at altitudes of between 200 and 2,000 m, it has performance parameters comparable to those of the Kh-101 and Iskander-K.

"Because they fly at speeds of 600 km/h or more, they can only be intercepted by air defence systems or fighter aircraft," Ihnat told Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne.

A temporary lull

After autumn 2025, Russia temporarily stopped launching Banderol missiles, most likely for two reasons.

The first possible reason is that following its initial combat use, Russia may have paused launches to assess the Banderol's performance and upgrade the missile. The break also gave it time to prepare for mass production and build up stocks.

Another possible factor was a Ukrainian strike that may have disrupted the rollout of Banderol production. In June 2025, eight Ukrainian FP-1 drones struck a Kronstadt assembly workshop.

However, it is difficult to assess the impact of the strike on Orion and Banderol production. Pavel Luzin, a senior research fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and the Saratoga Foundation, told Ukrainska Pravda that there is another, larger workshop next to the damaged one that continued to operate.

"For a large building that cost RUB 4 billion (about US$48 million), that sort of damage is not particularly serious," Luzin said. "They did lose some equipment, of course, and had to send some away to be repaired or calibrated. But they were able to easily move production elsewhere."

The latest satellite imagery shows that the damaged workshop has already been repaired. Russia has also resumed its Banderol missile launches.

Russia began using Banderol missiles again in May 2026. Since then, strikes have been recorded in almost every region of Ukraine except the western oblasts, which Banderols have not yet reached.

Banderol launches are now recorded almost every day. The city and oblast of Odesa have borne the brunt of the attacks, with around 70% of the missiles targeting the region, according to Ukrainian OSINT analysts at Oko Gora.

Russia is making extensive use of occupied Crimea as a launch site. DIU told Ukrainska Pravda that the way Banderol missiles are deployed poses a particular threat. They are most often launched from Mi-28N attack helicopters operating from the peninsula. Russia has also developed a ground-based launcher that enables the missiles to be launched at shorter ranges.

This method of deployment leaves little time to detect and respond to a launch. By the time air-raid warnings are issued, the Banderols are often already on their way to the city.

According to data that DIU provided to Ukrainska Pravda, Russia is manufacturing around 80 Banderol missiles a month and plans to produce up to 1,000 this year. Its targets are primarily static: port infrastructure facilities, including terminals, logistics hubs and food warehouses.

Meanwhile, Russia continues to upgrade the Banderol. According to DIU, the latest versions differ significantly from those produced in 2025.

"Missile spam"

The Banderol is often employed in a tactic that could be described as "missile spam". Russia can launch single missiles at intervals throughout the day to keep Ukraine's air defence forces on edge. Banderols are also regularly used alongside jet-powered Geran loitering munitions or Kh-59/69 cruise missiles.

Flying at 500-600 km/h, the Banderol is too fast for FPV interceptor drones. Unlike conventional Shaheds, which can be brought down using cheaper weapons, intercepting Banderols requires more expensive air defence systems, man-portable air defence systems (MANPADS) or aircraft.

Banderols are putting additional strain on air defence systems designed to intercept cruise missiles. However, Ihnat said it is still too early to say that Ukraine's capabilities in this area are being exhausted.

There are several possible reasons behind the increase in Banderol launches.

Firstly, Russia is stepping up efforts to build up its stockpile of jet-powered weapons. In one recent attack, half of the weapons deployed were jet-powered drones. Notably, Russia is producing around 3,000 Geran-4/5 jet-powered drones a month.

Secondly, cheaper cruise missiles enable Russia to rely less on strategic aircraft – a limited resource – meaning larger missiles can be reserved for more significant or heavily fortified targets.

"The Russians have technical problems that affect both their cruise missiles and the aircraft themselves. Not all missiles launch successfully," Major-General Vadym Skibitskyi, Deputy Head of DIU, told RBC-Ukraine.

Meanwhile, DIU says Russia is also deploying and actively developing other systems similar to the Banderol: the Dan-T and S-71.

There is little publicly available information about the Dan-T. It is believed to be a modified version of the Dan-M, a jet-powered UAV that Russia previously used as a target for air defence training. According to Skibitskyi, one of Russia's priorities is to move towards a fully Russian-made component base. Like the Banderol, the Dan-T can also be launched from helicopters.

The S-71K is a new missile being developed specifically for the Su-57 fighter jet. It carries a 250kg warhead and can strike targets up to 300 km away. A module thought to be used for AI-assisted control was recently recovered from the wreckage of an S-71K.

How can the Banderol be countered?

Ukraine is developing low-cost interceptor missiles designed to down Shaheds which could also potentially be used against Banderols and other missiles. Foreign-made systems are also being tested, including Estonia's Mark I missiles.

The challenge presented by the Banderol is similar to that posed by the Geran-4 and Geran-5 jet-powered loitering munitions: Ukraine needs to maintain a layered air defence system. Early detection through a combination of radars and sensors is critical to give air defence forces enough time to respond effectively.

The idea is to match the air defence response to the threat. Cheaper missiles and slow-moving drones can be dealt with using low-cost interceptors, drones and anti-aircraft systems such as Skynex. For more expensive and dangerous threats such as the Kh-101, Iskander-K and Kalibr missiles, Ukraine needs fighter aircraft and systems such as NASAMS, IRIS-T and Patriot.

But the most effective way to curb Russia's ability to launch new missiles and drones may be to keep striking its production facilities and tighten sanctions pressure. Banderol production continues to depend on foreign-made components.

"Banderols will keep on being produced as long as China keeps on supplying the components," Luzin says.

Translated by Artem Yakymyshyn

Edited by Teresa Pearce

Footage of the strike soon circulated across social media and Telegram channels. Yet the drone at the centre of it looked nothing like a Liutyi or an FP-1, two systems widely used by the Ukrainian military in long-range strikes on Russia. Instead, it bore a striking resemblance to the Iranian-designed Shahed, leaving analysts scratching their heads over what exactly they were looking at.

This was not the first time Shahed-like drones had been used in attacks on targets inside Russia. Among the possible candidates were the Egyptian-made Jabbar-150, Türkiye's Troy T20 Block 20 and China's ZTK-150.

The drone in question is, in fact, the Ukrainian MICH-2000. But those who thought footage of the strikes showed Chinese-made ZTK-150s were not entirely wrong either.

This drone's story began thousands of kilometres from the front line – not in a Ukrainian garage or design office, but at a factory in China. In late 2023, Ukrainian UAV developers travelled there to acquire ready-made civilian UAVs for military use. Nobody at the time could have known that the mission would lay the groundwork for a Ukrainian long-range drone – the kind of system the military, engineers and politicians in Ukraine commonly call a "deep-strike" UAV.

Today, the MICH is no longer simply a Chinese-made drone, but a system operated exclusively by the Security Service of Ukraine's Special Operations Centre Alpha. Capable of flying up to 2,000 km and carrying as much as 60 kg of explosives, it is building an ever-longer record of targets struck inside Russia.

Ukrainska Pravda has visited the factory producing the MICH-2000 to tell, for the first time, the story of how a trip in search of Chinese-made drones kick-started the production of a Ukrainian long-range drone for the Alpha.

All material presented in this story has been cleared for publication by the manufacturer and the Security Service of Ukraine.

A "little plane" from China

The use of Chinese-made drones as long-range weapons dates back to 2022. Ukraine was then only taking its first steps towards developing systems of its own, such as the Liutyi and FP-1. But the need to reach targets deep behind enemy lines was already there. Until its own drones were ready, the simplest answer was to buy off-the-shelf aircraft from China.

The Ukrainian military adapted civilian Mugin-5 PRO drones for military use, fitted them with explosives and launched them on targets far behind Russian lines. At around US$15,000 apiece, the aircraft could carry up to 25 kg of explosives to targets as far as 500 km away.

The use of unidentified Chinese-made drones to strike targets inside Russia did not remain under the radar for long. Media reports began to draw attention to them, and China eventually responded. In the summer of 2023, the Communist Party imposed restrictions on the direct export of civilian drones. With the aircraft suddenly harder to obtain, Ukrainian buyers had to find ways around the new barriers.

Towards the end of 2023, a team of Ukrainian UAV engineers received an assignment from the military: travel to China, buy what they referred to simply as "little planes" from local manufacturers, and bring them back to Ukraine.

When the team arrived in China, dozens of ZTK-150 drones were being produced before their eyes. They looked strikingly similar to the Iranian-designed Shaheds that Russia deploys in daily terror attacks on Ukrainian cities and communities. The only obvious visual difference was a pair of small canards at the front.

"We visited a very large production facility and saw how everything was done," recalls a member of the team who travelled to China. "We then spent several days negotiating with Chinese intermediaries, until they suggested selling us the technology so we could manufacture everything ourselves. That was when the idea took root: instead of buying and importing drones, we could build them in Ukraine. Those were the first steps towards creating the MICH-2000."

The Ukrainian command was receptive to the idea. However, when the team returned to China to buy the technology, the deal had fallen through: the factory's management had forbidden the sale.

Nevertheless, the Chinese intermediaries were still keen to make the deal happen and found a workaround. Their solution was to assemble the drones elsewhere, where the export restrictions did not apply. The offer also included pilot training, an opportunity the MICH team eagerly took up.

"We went there to train our pilots to fly Chinese drones," a source tells Ukrainska Pravda. "And while the training was underway, we photographed everything we could – from the production process to the arrangement of the shelves and cupboards."

The team returned to Ukraine with eight Chinese-made drones and a group of newly trained pilots.

First test flights

Back home, the team began taking the new drones apart, studying their design and uncovering their flaws. The MICH-2000's first test flight came in the summer of 2024. Its maiden flight lasted only one kilometre before the aircraft crashed because the weight distribution was wrong.

The second test was a step forward: the drone remained airborne for about an hour. But near the end of the flight, one of its propellers came off when vibrations from the engine sheared the bolts that held it in place.

During the third flight, electronic warfare interfered with the drone, revealing another weakness: it was ill-suited to operating amid disrupted communications. Each subsequent launch helped the team identify further changes needed to the design. By the end of the summer, they had mastered airframe production and moved on to experimenting with different electronics.

The company's owner tells Ukrainska Pravda: "When we first began making our own airframes, we made countless mistakes – aerodynamic and structural – and kept running into one problem after another. But every trip to the test range gave us more experience.

For a month and a half, maybe two months, we kept crashing drones at the test range until our client finally said: 'Enough. It's time to put them to work.' We replied that we hadn't even properly got them flying yet – there was always some new problem. But Alpha didn't want to hear it. They wanted results."

The first combat mission came in October 2024. Three MICH drones were launched: one was shot down, and the other two missed their targets by about 10 m. For Alpha, that was enough. The unit gave the green light for production.

When it comes to aviation, every detail matters

At first glance, the MICH manufacturing plant looks much like any other. But the assembly process has its own peculiarities. It begins with the airframe and the installation of the fuel tank. The MICH is a flying-wing design, meaning it has no separate wings – the aircraft's body performs that function.

The fuel tanks first undergo leak testing. The completed fuselages are then painted black and fed into a specialised robot, which cuts openings for the electronics and other mechanisms. After that, they are sanded, given a final coat of paint and weighed.

Weighing is one of the key quality-control stages. The manufacturer told Ukrainska Pravda that the final weight reveals how accurately the production technology has been followed. Dozens of other checks take place along the way, each governed by its own set of requirements.

The company's owner says: "For me, consistency is everything. The lighter the drone's airframe, the more fuel it can carry, and the less likely it is to run into problems during flight.

Everything we have learned so far shows that there are no small details in manufacturing. A single millimetre out of place, or even a misplaced comma in the code, can cause an error."

After passing the scales, the drones enter the final stage of assembly, where the electronics, motors and combat components are put in place.

In the company's catalogue, there are eight MICH variants designed for either long- or medium-range missions. The MICH can fly up to 2,000 km and carry a payload of 25-60 kg. Operators can select the communications system – analogue, digital, or Starlink – along with the warhead, fuel tank size and guidance assistance for the final stage of the flight.

According to the company, the Chinese MICH and its Ukrainian successor now share little more than an external resemblance. Their prices differ as well: the Chinese predecessor costs US$50,000, while a basic Ukrainian-made MICH costs US$48,000. The final price depends on the configuration – the guidance-assistance system, the number of CRPA antenna channels used to protect navigation against electronic warfare, and other components.

In the past two years, the company has built a network of dozens of manufacturers producing everything from engines, warheads and fuselages to initiation boards, rocket boosters and even the fuel that powers them.

"We had a few painful incidents where third-party boosters destroyed equipment worth US$1 million," the company's owner recalls. "After that, we were no longer allowed to launch aircraft using those boosters. It was probably the most stressful time, because we had only just started developing our own boosters and had not yet tested them in flight.

We knew there was a chance they would not work, but there was no other option. We arrived at the test site and launched the first drone. The booster was not working properly and was producing more thrust than it should. Chemists and engineers spent the night modifying the rockets right there at the site. The next day, the team took part in the launches, and three drones successfully took off. That was when we began scaling up and moving to our own boosters."

Although the company has brought engine and warhead production in-house, it still relies on overseas suppliers for certain components.

CRPA antennas are one example. Only a few companies in Ukraine have mastered their production. Without one, up to 85% of the drone's cost can be localised in Ukraine – that is, covered by domestically sourced components. Once a CRPA antenna is added, that figure drops to 55%. The antennas themselves are expensive, costing as much as US$20,000-25,000 depending on the number of modules.

The MICH 2000's combat path

The company can produce around 6,000 drones a year. Compared with another prominent Ukrainian manufacturer, Fire Point, which has set a target of producing 100,000 drones annually, that figure may seem modest. But there is a reason for the difference.

Unlike the FP-1, which is widely used by various Ukrainian units, the MICH currently has only one user: Alpha.

"We know our drones won't simply disappear into the swamps [Russia]. They will be sent towards a specific target, because Alpha is all about analytics and effectiveness," the company says, demonstrating the analysis behind the strikes.

Ukrainska Pravda has analysed dozens of videos showing attacks on Russian assets using Shahed-like drones. We identified at least eight videos in which the MICH was either in flight or striking its target.

The actual number of MICH strikes is far higher. The company's director says Alpha personnel have launched thousands of the drones, hitting hundreds of targets in both the temporarily occupied territories and Russia.

Since its inception, the MICH has been used in raids on Moscow, destroyed a Tu-95MS strategic bomber at Engels airfield, and struck a logistics hub operated by Russia's largest online retailer, Wildberries, in Ryazan Oblast. It has also destroyed an electronic warfare system used to interfere with Starlink communications in Gelendzhik, near Putin's palace, and taken part in an attack on a naval base of Russia's Baltic Fleet.

The largest-scale MICH strike came at the port of Ust-Luga, where more than 20 drones reached their target.

"During one MICH attack, so many drones made it through to the target that we ran out of targets for them. They started chasing a Pantsir [air defence system] along the road after it had run out of ammunition," the company's director says, laughing.

Most MICH attacks are never captured on camera, but that does not stop the company from monitoring the outcome of each operation through trackers fitted to the drones. The data is then fed back into the development process, helping the team refine the drone's design and software. New changes are introduced almost every week.

MICH+

The company plans to raise annual production to 10,000 drones in the near future. To make that possible, it is recruiting new staff, seeking additional production sites and expanding its network of suppliers. It is also putting around US$1 million of its monthly profits into R&D.

"We have an R&D department that operates continuously. We conduct trials at the testing ground at least three times a week and work closely with the team," says the company's owner.

The company is currently working on the MICH+, a new medium-range drone that will look different from the MICH-2000 and have no front canards. It is being designed to carry a 70-kg warhead, travel up to 600 km and receive guidance during flight. The expected price is up to US$40,000. The company sees the drone as a way to carve out its own niche in the market.

The company sees organic growth as a more sustainable path than rapid expansion, which can leave production exposed to force majeure events. Growing at a measured pace also gives the company time to build the reserves needed to keep operating if a crisis strikes.

There is also a financial reason for the cautious approach. With essentially just one single customer, the company cannot easily finance a rapid increase in production. It is now looking for additional sources of funding to support expansion.

One option is joint production. The company is considering cooperation with the Baltic states through the Build with Ukraine programme, which could significantly increase drone production with funding from European grants.

"To be honest, I don't want to speculate about what happens after we reach 10,000. I just want the war to end. But if we have to keep working, then we'll keep working," the company's director concludes.

Translated by Artem Yakymyshyn

Edited by Susan McDonald

What makes the S-400 particularly notable is that it was designed as an air defence system to intercept incoming missiles, not to strike ground targets. It has nevertheless been repurposed by Russia, which has ramped up production, extended its range to Kyiv, and significantly expanded its strike capabilities.

Read on this Ukrainska Pravda story to learn what these missiles are, why they travel at such high speeds, and why their inaccuracy makes them especially dangerous to the civilian population.

How an anti-aircraft missile becomes a short-range ballistic missile

This is not the first time Russia has used air defence missiles to strike ground targets. In 2022, it employed older S-300 surface-to-air missiles against towns and cities near the front line.

Subsequent reports confirmed the use of the newer 48N6 missiles, compatible with later variants of the S-300 and the S-400. In 2026, Russia added the RM-48U to its arsenal, mass-producing the missile by converting decommissioned surface-to-air missiles. According to Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, Russia manufactured 200 RM-48Us in 2025 and intends to produce more than 480 in 2026.

Russia has turned the ad hoc use of surface-to-air missiles into a stand-alone production effort that enables it to supplement Iskander short-range ballistic missiles during combined attacks. The result is a greater number of high-speed weapons per strike, despite their inferior accuracy and destructive power compared with purpose-built ballistic missiles.

The names S-300 and S-400 are commonly used as shorthand for missiles, although they actually refer to families of air defence systems comprising radars, command posts, launchers and several missile types. Rosoboronexport, Russia's state arms exporter, lists four missile variants for the S-400 alone: the 48N6E3, 48N6E2, 40N6E and 9M96E2. As a result, recovering a piece of wreckage from a 48N6 missile is not always enough to determine which specific air defence system launched it, as these missiles are often compatible with both later variants of the S-300 and the newer S-400.

The oldest missile relevant to this story, the 5V55R, weighs around 1.66 tonnes and carries a high-explosive fragmentation warhead weighing about 130 kg. Its standard engagement range against aerial targets is up to 75 km. The newer 48N6 weighs around 1.8 tonnes and, depending on the variant, carries a warhead weighing between 143 and 180 kg, according to various reference sources.

Both missiles were designed primarily to destroy aircraft and incoming missiles in flight. Their warheads generate a large volume of fragmentation but lack the specialised penetrators or reinforced casings needed to breach concrete or underground structures. As a result, they are less effective than purpose-built surface-to-surface missiles against hardened point targets. Yet in urban areas, that limitation matters little. Travelling at high speed, the missile's mass and the spread of thousands of fragments can devastate a wide area even with a relatively modest warhead.

The 40N6 stands apart as the S-400's longest-range missile, with a claimed engagement range of up to 380-400 km against aerial targets. In November 2023, Ukrainian officials reported finding debris from a 40N6 on the Zaporizhzhia front. However, the presence of missile debris alone does not prove it was launched against a ground target rather than fired by Russian air defence units. Nor is there any public evidence that the 40N6 has been used systematically in ground-attack roles. Likewise, its maximum engagement range against aircraft should not be confused with its potential range in ground strikes, as the missile follows a different flight profile and relies on different guidance methods.

The S-300's ground-attack capability predates the full-scale invasion. In May 2011, three Russian air defence missile regiments carried out exercises at the Telemba training range, firing five combat missiles from a stationary S-300 system at ground targets. The Russian military claimed that all five had hit their targets. Results achieved on a test range, where target coordinates are known in advance, cannot be directly compared with long-range strikes under combat conditions. They do, however, confirm that the capability existed and had been practised.

The exact guidance algorithms used for ground attacks for all missile variants remain classified. The available technical information indicates that they employ inertial and radio-command guidance during the initial stages of flight. Once the missile passes beyond the radio horizon, however, guidance from the ground radar is no longer possible, and it continues towards the target using inertial navigation alone. This mechanism enabled the 48N6DM to cover more than 200 km in a strike on Kyiv, but it also explains why these missiles sacrifice accuracy for speed over long distances.

For this reason, describing these weapons as ballistic missiles comes with an important caveat. Neither the 5V55 nor the 48N6 is a true equivalent of the 9M723 missile used by the Iskander-M system. Instead, each follows a ballistic-like trajectory for much of its flight before descending into the designated target area during the terminal phase. There is no publicly available, verified data on the circular error probable (CEP) of strikes by these missiles, meaning the precise accuracy figures that occasionally appear in the media cannot be independently substantiated.

The absence of reliable accuracy data is particularly relevant when analysing individual strikes. Hitting a target on a test range or a large industrial site does not necessarily prove that the missile can reliably strike a small target at its maximum range. The longer it flies without radio correction, the further its performance diverges from that of a dedicated precision-guided munition.

Travelling at extremely high speed, the 48N6DM gives defenders only minutes to react. Ukrainian estimates put its top speed at about 2.5 km/s, which means it can cover 200 km in just a few minutes. During an attack on Kyiv Oblast in January 2023, the early warning system was not always able to issue timely alerts. The issue was not that the missile could not be detected, but that its short flight time left little time to determine whether an S-300 or S-400 launch was directed at an aerial or ground target.

Geography of the strikes: from Mykolaiv and Zaporizhzhia to Kharkiv

During 2022 and 2023, S-300 missiles were used primarily against regions close to the front line or the Russian border. Among the most devastating was the attack on a humanitarian convoy in Zaporizhzhia on 30 September 2022. Russia fired 16 S-300 missiles on the city and its outskirts, four of which hit the area around a car market and a convoy of civilian vehicles. The strike killed 32 people and injured 118 others.

Further south, Mykolaiv also came under S-300 attack. On 23 October 2022, a Russian missile struck a five-storey residential block. No fatalities were reported.

On 14 April 2023, Russia struck Sloviansk with eight S-300 missiles. Residential buildings, offices and commercial premises were damaged. The attack claimed 15 lives and injured 24 people, according to the final toll after search-and-rescue operations ended.

On the evening of 21 October 2023, two missiles struck a postal hub operated by Nova Poshta (Nova Post), Ukraine's largest private delivery company, in Novyi Korotych, near Kharkiv. Citing early reports, the prosecutor's office identified them as S-300 missiles launched from Russia's Belgorod Oblast. Bomb disposal experts recovered debris at the scene consistent with that assessment. Eight people were killed and 15 were injured.

These incidents demonstrate the key advantage of this type of weapon for Russia: the launchers are positioned close to the battlefield, enabling missiles to reach cities such as Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Sloviansk in a matter of minutes and leaving less time for warning systems to react.

When the S-400 reached Kyiv

On the morning of 14 January 2023, the Ukrainian command reported that S-400 missiles fired from the north had struck Kyiv. Photographs of missile debris showed markings that allowed experts to identify it as a 48N6DM. Russia's Bryansk Oblast was named as the likely launch area, although the exact coordinates and final conclusions of the expert analysis were not made public. This makes it more accurate to refer to the finding as a credible Ukrainian assessment rather than definitive confirmation.

The newer 48N6DM can travel significantly further than the older 5V55 and carries a heavier warhead. However, the S-400's maximum advertised range of 400 km should not be interpreted as the ability of all its missiles to accurately hit ground targets at that distance, as that figure primarily refers to the 40N6 missile's claimed performance against aerial targets. Regarding the Kyiv attack, Ukrainian experts attributed the strike to a 48N6DM missile that had covered more than 200 km.

In the summer of 2026, S-400 missiles are once again appearing regularly in Ukrainian reports alongside Iskander missiles. On 2 July, the Ukrainian Air Force recorded 24 missiles in the combined Iskander-M/S-400 category, four of which were intercepted. On 6 July, 23 missiles were recorded, but no interceptions of ballistic assets were reported. On 1 August, one of the 27 missiles in this category was shot down. On 5 August, none of the 24 missiles was intercepted. All four attacks were directed primarily at Kyiv or Kyiv Oblast. Based on publicly available data, it is impossible to determine what proportion of these missiles were S-400s.

The Russian attack on 14 July provided further physical evidence of S-400 use. A warhead and debris from an S-400 missile were found in Kyiv's Darnytskyi district. Since the exact variant was not determined, the evidence confirms the system's involvement but does not allow the missile to be definitively identified as either the 48N6DM or the 40N6.

The low interception rate during these attacks is a result of the missiles' flight profile, high speed and the limited number of systems capable of engaging them. Russia is taking advantage of Ukraine's shortage of Patriot interceptors and increasing its use of ballistic missile strikes. Defending against these threats requires Patriot or similar systems, such as the SAMP/T, which Ukraine also operates. The result is a costly imbalance: even a missile with limited accuracy can force Ukraine to choose between exposing a critical infrastructure facility to destruction or using a valuable anti-missile interceptor.

RM-48U: from the disposal of old missiles to a mass-produced weapon

Debris identified as RM-48U was publicly shown in Ukraine for the first time after the combined attack on 20 January 2026. The missile is a refurbished dummy based on older 5V55 or 48N6 missiles withdrawn from service. It is compatible with S-300 and S-400 launch systems.

It was initially unclear whether the missile in question had been equipped with a conventional warhead or was being used as a decoy. In January, Defence Intelligence of Ukraine described RM-48Us in a report on the cost of the latest Russian attack as training missiles. By June, the same type was listed in intelligence data as the RM-48U missile designed for ground targets. This indicates that different variants or employment methods may exist within the same missile family.

The extent of the RM-48U programme became apparent only in 2026. Defence Intelligence of Ukraine reported that Russia had produced more than 200 RM-48U missiles in 2025, aims to produce over 480 in 2026 and has reached a production rate of up to 50 per month. As a result, the first publicly identified debris in January should not be interpreted as the missile's first deployment. It was merely the first case where its use could be tied to a clearly identified designation.

These figures change the perception of the RM-48U as a one-off effort to dispose of obsolete missiles. Instead, they point to a specialised production line that enables Russia to convert decommissioned surface-to-air missiles into offensive weapons or decoys. The RM-48U cannot match the Iskander in precision, destructive power or ability to defeat fortified targets. Instead, it adds more fast-moving assets to Russian attacks, further complicating Ukraine's early warning and missile defence efforts.

For air defence units, the difference between a live missile and a decoy becomes apparent too late. A high-speed target cannot simply be ignored on the assumption that it may not carry a warhead. It must still be tracked by radar, its trajectory assessed and a decision made on whether to launch an interceptor. This is precisely why the RM-48U retains military value even in its decoy configuration.

Not a replacement for the Iskander, but a second echelon of attack

For Russia, converting S-300 and S-400 surface-to-air missiles into ground-attack weapons is a practical solution. It enables Moscow to tap into vast Soviet-era stockpiles, including missiles nearing the end of their service life, and takes advantage of launchers already deployed near Ukraine. The RM-48U programme expands on this approach by establishing a structured method for refurbishing decommissioned missiles. As Soviet-era reserves gradually diminish, developing new anti-aircraft missiles requires considerable investment and lengthy production cycles.

However, this is not a cost-free replacement for purpose-built ballistic missiles. The 5V55 and 48N6 have smaller warheads, limited ability to penetrate hardened structures and lower demonstrated accuracy against ground targets. Their use also draws on Russia's air defence reserves. Their advantage is distinct: they pose a fast, additional threat that can increase the number of missiles in a single attack and complicate Ukrainian interception efforts, as they require a different response than that used against drones or cruise missiles.

Ukraine's response cannot be limited to expanding its missile defence arsenal. Patriot and SAMP/T systems depend on a steady supply of scarce interceptors. Other measures are equally important: improving launch detection, providing earlier warnings, dispersing personnel and critical industrial facilities, and targeting launchers, radars and production sites linked to Russia's missile programme. The RM-48U's mass production indicates that this threat will persist even as Soviet-era 5V55 stocks decline. Russia is moving from using accumulated reserves towards maintaining a dedicated capability to produce and deploy new weapons.

Arkadii Dotsenko

Translated by Artem Yakymyshyn

Edited by Susan McDonald

If Russia were a normal state, such a project would be seen as a logical step in technological development. In a country with such a vast territory, satellite internet could genuinely provide connection even to the most remote regions.

However, in the context of Russia's war against Ukraine, the story takes on a very different meaning. For Ukraine, it represents a significant potential threat to national security.

After losing access to Starlink, the Russian military has been searching for an alternative. Although Russia's attempts to develop its own systems have not always been successful, Moscow is trying to build a Starlink equivalent called Rassvet.

Little has been publicly disclosed about the project, which is being developed by Bureau 1440, but within a year it could become a major topic. If Russia succeeds, it will significantly improve military communications and, in the future, could use satellite internet to control drones – an idea that Kremlin ruler Vladimir Putin himself voiced in the spring.

If that happens, Russia's occupation forces will gain a new autonomous communications capability that is less dependent on ground infrastructure, foreign services and vulnerable communication channels. Can Moscow really build a Starlink equivalent? What threats would such a system pose to Ukraine? And what is known about Bureau 1440?

Project 1440

Russian aerospace company Bureau 1440 was established in 2020 as a project of MegaFon, Russia's second-largest mobile network operator. Initially, it was called MegaFon 1440 and operated as part of the IT company X Holding.

MegaFon's initiative was not Russia's first attempt to create a satellite internet system. The Kremlin had been trying to launch a satellite communications constellation called Efir (Ether) since 2017. At the time, the plan was to spend RUB 300 billion (about US$5.1 billion) to deploy 288 satellites into polar orbit.

In 2018, Russia announced the creation of the Sfera (Sphere) programme, which envisaged launching more than 600 satellites for communications, navigation and Earth observation. Efir was intended to become part of that programme by serving as its satellite internet component.

However, a year later, Efir was removed from the programme. The Russian government had hoped to attract private investors but failed to do so. The Sfera programme retained various satellite systems, ranging from the existing Ekspress and Luch constellations to planned projects such as Marathon-IoT and Skif.

After 2022, it became clear that Moscow was incapable of delivering on its original plans. Against this backdrop, Bureau 1440 effectively became Russia's flagship project in the field of low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellite internet.

The original concept behind MegaFon 1440 was to assess the capabilities of LEO satellite systems for high-speed data transmission. In its early stages, the mobile operator financed the core work, including developing the business model, selecting technologies, and later building prototype satellites and ground infrastructure.

In 2021, the now-sanctioned VTB Bank joined the project, investing RUB 2 billion (about US$27 million) in exchange for a 15% stake in the company. MegaFon envisioned the system as a hybrid orbital-ground network that would become a more cost-effective alternative to laying fibre-optic cables in Russia's sparsely populated regions.

By the end of 2021, MegaFon 1440 began transforming from a research project into a standalone company. Its mission was to develop and manufacture the key components of the system, including satellites, user terminals and ground infrastructure.

At the time, MegaFon and X Holding were part of the telecommunications group USM, owned by sanctioned oligarch Alisher Usmanov, who is linked to the Kremlin. In 2022, Usmanov sold his stake in X Holding to its founder, Anton Cherepennikov, causing the company to leave the USM group. The MegaFon 1440 project was subsequently renamed Bureau 1440. In February 2023, X Holding was placed under US sanctions.

Scaling up the project

In June 2023, Bureau 1440 launched the first three experimental satellites of its Rassvet-1 mission. Their purpose was to test communications technologies, ground stations and onboard systems. A year later, the company launched another three satellites as part of the Rassvet-2 mission. These were full-scale prototypes of the production satellites.

One of the objectives of the second launch was to test laser inter-satellite communications. Without this technology, a satellite cannot relay data when it is outside the coverage area of a ground station – for example, while passing over the ocean.

Laser inter-satellite links make it possible to create a unified orbital network and provide broader coverage without relying on a large number of ground relay stations. Starlink uses the same principle.

Bureau 1440's data suggests that tests of the satellite system successfully transmitted approximately 200 GB of data, with peak connection speeds reaching 10 Gbps. The company also reported successfully establishing communication between a satellite and its own user terminal using 5G NTN (Non-Terrestrial Network) technology.

In March 2026, the company launched its first operational group of 16 satellites, and at the end of July announced that a second group had been placed into orbit. Once testing is completed, the satellites are expected to reach their designated operational orbit.

According to Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to the Ukrainian president better known as Flash, there are currently up to 40 Rassvet satellites in orbit.

Bureau 1440 plans to begin commercial operation of the network in 2027. By then, it intends to expand its constellation to 250 satellites. In Flash's assessment, at least 200-250 satellites are needed to provide continuous and stable data transmission. By 2030, Bureau 1440 aims to deploy around 730 satellites, increasing the constellation to more than 900 elements by 2035.

But will Roscosmos actually be able to launch all of Bureau 1440's satellites using its own launch vehicles? And can the ambitious figures announced for the coming years realistically become a fully operational constellation capable of providing broadband satellite internet to Russia?

On one hand, the sanctions imposed on Russia's space industry after 2022 raise doubts about its ability to carry out such a technically demanding programme. On the other hand, before the full-scale invasion, Roscosmos had extensive experience launching large numbers of satellites.

Between February 2019 and February 2022, the Russian state corporation launched 648 satellites developed by OneWeb, one of Starlink's main competitors, into orbit. Despite that, OneWeb's attempt to enter the Russian market failed. The company had established a joint venture with Russian satellite operator Gonets in 2017, but never received the necessary radio frequencies.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) opposed the project, calling it a threat to national security. In 2020, OneWeb withdrew from the venture, and after the start of the full-scale war, Roscosmos refused to launch additional OneWeb satellites without guarantees that they would not be used for military purposes.

What are low-Earth-orbit satellites?

Low-Earth-orbit satellites operate at altitudes of 300 to 2,000 km and are primarily used to provide broadband internet access. The main drawback of the technology is that reliable coverage requires a large satellite constellation. At least one satellite must always be positioned above any given area, and because LEO satellites gradually lose altitude over time, they must be replaced regularly.

This is the operating principle behind both Starlink and OneWeb. Rassvet is also designed as a low-Earth-orbit system, but its satellites operate at an altitude of around 800 km – significantly higher than Starlink's. Another important difference between the Russian project and Starlink is its geographical coverage.

"Russia's Rassvet satellites operate in slightly different orbits, both in terms of altitude and incline. This is intended to provide better coverage of northern latitudes, particularly the Arctic. For Russia, this is important not only for communications in remote regions but also for supporting ships, icebreakers and infrastructure in the far north," says telecommunications expert Oleksandr Hlushchenko.

Hlushchenko explains that Starlink was designed with a different strategy in mind. Its primary markets were countries with vast territories and high demand for internet connectivity, such as the United States, Australia and other countries that do not require constant high-capacity coverage near the North Pole. Starlink's highest-capacity operational zone is centered around 53 degrees latitude in both the northern and southern hemispheres. While some satellites provide polar coverage, these are a relatively small part of the overall constellation.

Rassvet's ground terminals weigh 15 kg and measure 60×60 cm. Each terminal is designed to deliver data transfer speeds of up to 1 Gbps. The equipment has been engineered to withstand Russia's climate and is expected to operate in temperatures ranging from -40°C to +40°C.

Challenges for Ukraine

According to Dmytro Khmara, co-founder of the Space Cossacks, Lunar Research Service, and MySat UA aerospace engineering projects, Russia may need far fewer satellites than it has announced for the commercial launch of the network in order to provide military communications on the battlefield.

"The Russians can reposition satellites and concentrate their coverage over specific areas. One of those areas could be Ukraine's east and south," he explains.

Telecommunications expert Oleksandr Hlushchenko added that one of Rassvet's primary military applications could be providing communications within Russian military formations. For the Russian armed forces, the system could partially replace Starlink, access to which Russian troops lost earlier this year. It would also allow Russia to shift military communications from geostationary satellites to LEO satellites.

However, Khmara notes that because Rassvet satellites operate at a higher altitude than Starlink, signal latency will inevitably be greater despite the project's official performance claims. As a result, its application may be more limited.

Nevertheless, he says the system would still be highly valuable for Russian forces.

"The system could be used for communication, transmitting video to command posts, controlling drones, and operating ground robotic systems," Khmara says.

There are few quick or straightforward ways to counter such a threat. Khmara points out that even Russia itself has not always been able to effectively counter Starlink, despite possessing powerful electronic warfare (EW) capabilities and attempting to jam satellite communications.

Having its own satellite constellation would reduce Moscow's dependence on foreign services or other vulnerable communications channels. In Khmara's assessment, Russia has little choice but to pursue this path. "For them, autonomous communication is a strategic objective," he says.

That could pose a serious challenge for Ukraine. Experience with satellite-connected drones has shown that even advanced electronic warfare technology is not always capable of effectively disrupting such systems.

According to Hlushchenko, the key question is how the West will respond to the creation of a satellite communications system that Russia may use for military aggression against it.

"The West can slow this process down. The available levers include sanctions on components, restrictions on access to critical technologies, and radio-frequency licensing. If the International Telecommunication Union blocks Russia's frequency allocations or initiates a review process, it could significantly complicate the deployment of such a network," he says.

Instead of a conclusion

Whether Russia will achieve its stated objectives remains an open question. It is difficult to assess the true capabilities of Russia's space industry under sanctions. It is equally unclear whether Roscosmos will be able to launch all of the required satellites aboard Soyuz launch vehicles.

Nonetheless, the project will be extremely expensive both to build and to operate. According to Khmara, a Russian satellite terminal could cost hundreds of times more than a Starlink terminal.

The biggest challenge will be scaling. SpaceX was able to deploy thousands of satellites and mass-produce user terminals because it industrialised the manufacturing process. This enabled the company to build a constellation of more than 10,000 satellites and expand the network rapidly.

Russia is unlikely to replicate that success. The Rassvet programme was included in the latest package of EU sanctions. Those restrictions are expected to limit the project's capabilities, complicate its implementation, and significantly increase costs.

However, the experience of Russia's war against Ukraine suggests that the Kremlin is willing to absorb enormous financial costs if military objectives are at stake.

Russia may fail to achieve its plans within the announced timeframe, but it is still likely to continue pursuing its own satellite internet network. The key question is when that capability will become operational – and whether Ukraine and its partners will be prepared when it does.

Ihor Pylypiv

Translated by Myroslava Zavadska

Edited by Iryna Moskaliuk

That has begun to change. Ukraine's defence forces are now seeking to inflict ever greater damage on Russia's space programme. Read this Ukrainska Pravda story to find out whether the effort could succeed.

How space communications centres work

A space communications centre (SCC) is a ground-based facility used to operate satellites and communicate with them. It collects telemetry, oversees spacecraft systems, sends manoeuvring commands, corrects orbital trajectories, adjusts satellite orientation and ensures solar panels remain aligned with the Sun. Nick Kovalski, founder of the space consultancy East Front Solutions, told Ukrainska Pravda that the centres also calibrate navigation satellites.

In addition to managing satellites, a centre receives, processes and transmits data. It handles military and government communications, intelligence data and missile warning information and also supports the operation of navigation systems such as GLONASS.

A centre consists of an antenna array and a computing centre. Its antenna dishes are mounted on rotating mechanisms that keep them aligned with satellites, and destroying these systems can render the facility inoperable. Even so, the office buildings are the primary targets, as they contain the control consoles, decoders and satellite modems.

Russia inherited a network of parabolic antennas, computing centres and satellite control centres from the Soviet Union and uses it for both civilian and military purposes. The infrastructure has been used for everything from broadcasting the 1980 Olympics to supporting the command and control of Russia's nuclear triad of land-, sea- and air-based nuclear forces.

The Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces each have their own infrastructure. These are used to transmit sensitive data and conduct intelligence operations, including the interception and decryption of enemy satellite communications and the early detection of intercontinental ballistic missile launches.

Russia's intelligence services use their own space infrastructure to maintain a secure communications network. Encrypted channels shield data transmissions from cyber-attacks and electronic warfare (EW) measures. "This is done to ensure that the data cannot be intercepted, tampered with or jammed," Kovalski says.

Russia also uses civilian infrastructure for military purposes. Facilities operated by the Russian Satellite Communications Company can be repurposed for the Ministry of Defence without major modifications. As Andrii Kolesnyk, a former adviser to the head of the State Space Agency of Ukraine, explains: "A civilian facility can easily be adapted for military use. The antenna and tracking systems function in exactly the same way. To repurpose the station, all that is needed is to replace the electronics."

It is precisely this ease of conversion and the use of civilian space communications centres for military purposes that have made them targets on a par with purely military facilities.

The impact of Ukrainian strikes on space infrastructure facilities

Western-supplied Storm Shadow and ATACMS missiles have enabled Ukraine's defence forces to strike Russian space infrastructure in occupied Crimea. The first confirmed strike came on 20 December 2023, when two Storm Shadow missiles hit the Russian Aerospace Forces' 40th Separate Command and Measurement Complex (Deep Space Communications Centre) in the village of Vityne, according to Krymsky Veter (Crimean Wind), a Telegram channel covering developments in Crimea.

Before Russia's occupation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine used the base for civilian purposes: the Lybid satellite programme and Earth observation. Russia has since used it to control GLONASS satellites and support the Russian Navy's Liana maritime surveillance system, which intercepts radio signals and records the coordinates of radars, air defence systems and ships.

On 24 May 2024, six ATACMS missiles hit an FSB communications hub near Alushta. They struck the base in Vityne once more on 23 June.

June 2026 saw Ukrainian drones take the campaign against Russia's space infrastructure beyond occupied Crimea. Strikes on 22 and 30 June hit the Dubna space communications centre and the Vladimir station. On 26 June, drones also targeted the Rubin communications hub of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces in Beloomut and the 476th Military Intelligence Information Reception Centre Meshcherino-1, which receives and processes data from Russia's electro-optical reconnaissance satellites used to detect and track military targets, equipment and infrastructure.

Destroying a ground hub does not result in the immediate loss of satellites, as modern spacecraft can continue operating autonomously. According to Kolesnyk, their onboard systems independently regulate thermal conditions and orient the spacecraft towards the Sun to recharge their batteries.

"If that were to happen while all ground-based control infrastructure had been disabled, the satellite could be lost, although the likelihood of that is quite low," Kolesnyk said. "There have been cases in both the Soviet and US space programmes where satellites thought to be lost were rediscovered by amateur radio operators years later. Once contact was re-established, the spacecraft continued operating."

Strikes on fixed infrastructure disrupt, but do not paralyse, the command and control of Russian forces. The destruction of satellite teleports – ground stations that relay communications to and from satellites – forces Russia to reroute communications through backup facilities, which is slowing the flow of orders between headquarters.

The loss of command and measurement centres hampers the calibration of the GLONASS navigation system. However, its accuracy would only begin to deteriorate two to four weeks after the hypothetical loss of all ground control infrastructure.

Kovalski explains that Russia relies on ground-based centres to adjust the position of its satellites in orbit. If all of these facilities were disabled, GLONASS's accuracy would begin to degrade within a few weeks.

Kolesnyk emphasises that even this would not completely blind Russian weapons. Guided munitions typically use several navigation systems at once, so if GLONASS were to fail, Russia could still rely on GPS, BeiDou or inertial navigation, which operates independently of satellites.

How Russia could replace its destroyed space communications centres

Russia has a multi-layered backup system for satellite control. Satellite signals can be received by stations in Siberia, the Russian Far East and abroad, including Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, South Africa, Nicaragua and Antarctica. These overseas facilities were established to replace the Soviet fleet of space communications ships, which was sold off in the 1990s.

The last line of defence consists of mobile command centres mounted on vehicle chassis. Russia tested the concept while working with the Iranian reconnaissance satellite Khayyam. When Israel destroyed Khayyam's stationary command post in March 2026, Iran retained control of the satellite thanks to these mobile platforms.

Rebuilding destroyed infrastructure is both costly and time-consuming. Rotating mechanisms for large antenna arrays are no longer mass-produced, meaning repairs depend on dwindling Soviet-era stockpiles.

"Last autumn, the mobile service tower at the Baikonur Cosmodrome broke down during a Soyuz launch," Kolesnyk said. "They found a replacement from the 1970s in storage that had been sitting there for half a century and installed it. If the required mechanisms are no longer in stock, manufacturing new ones would take a long time."

The only realistic way for Russia to quickly shore up its own space programme is through cooperation with China. But that cooperation has its limits – and it certainly does not come free.

Recent problems with satellite production in Russia bear this out. The country's import-substitution programme failed to produce space-grade microchips capable of operating at temperatures ranging from -180°C to +220°C. Manufacturers relied on Soviet-era stockpiles until 2016, after which satellite production largely ground to a halt until 2020.

China refused to supply the electronics unless Russia agreed to transfer technology for its RD-180 rocket engines. Unable to obtain the required components, Russian manufacturers instead began fitting satellites with military-grade microchips and replacing imported parts with larger, heavier domestically produced alternatives. Engineers were then forced to redesign the spacecraft and switch from Soyuz launch vehicles to the heavier Proton rockets, significantly increasing launch costs.

In theory, if Russia's control centres were to sustain critical damage, Moscow could attempt to operate its satellites through partner control centres located in China.

However, Kovalski argues that this would be a slow and undesirable solution. Few countries would be willing to control their military satellites from abroad, as doing so requires sharing highly sensitive encryption keys with a foreign partner.

How Ukraine can step up pressure on Russia's space programme

Russia continues to expand its satellite capabilities. Among its latest projects is Rassvet, a planned satellite constellation designed to function as a military equivalent of Starlink.

To effectively disrupt Russia's space programme, Ukraine must continue striking space communications centres, although completely disabling the network is likely to prove extremely difficult. As a result, Ukraine's defence forces are targeting not only satellite communications facilities but also launch sites, disrupting the deployment schedule for new spacecraft.

Over 70 military and reconnaissance satellites have been launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. This spring, the head of Roscosmos, Russia's state space agency, said the facility had come under an attempted drone attack during the launch of 16 Rassvet satellites. Late last year, Russian sources also reported drones being shot down near Plesetsk during the launch of a radar reconnaissance satellite. Attacks on launch infrastructure and satellite control stations are compelling Russia to reinforce air defences around facilities located more than 1,000 km from the front line.

Russia's space infrastructure is unlikely to suffer a significant loss of capability as a result of UAV strikes on space communications centres alone. It has redundant systems beyond the reach of Ukrainian weapons, spare parts stored abroad and mobile control stations.

However, every strike forces Russia to divert air defence systems to protect these centres or allocate funds to rebuild damaged infrastructure. As a result, Moscow must spread its air defence resources more thinly while bearing higher costs to maintain its satellite constellations.

If Ukraine's military command decides that investing additional resources in disrupting Russia's satellite capabilities before they reach orbit is worthwhile, the next phase could see regular strikes not only on control centres but also on launch sites. This would mark a fundamentally new stage in the space confrontation between Ukraine and Russia.

Sviatoslav Nakonechnyi

Translated by Artem Yakymyshyn

Edited by Susan McDonald

Nonetheless, a bipartisan group in the US Congress has done the hard work of making Trump's task more straightforward. A proposed bill clearly identifies comprehensive ways to squeeze Russian export revenues, while also creating a well-targeted tariff authority to support those measures and ensure that they cannot hurt the US economy.

The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act (known as S.5025 in the Senate) was crafted by the late Senator Lindsey Graham, together with Senators Richard Blumenthal, Jeanne Shaheen, Katie Britt, Roger Wicker, James Risch, and other colleagues. It focuses on hitting Russia where it would hurt most: the oil and natural gas exports that generate the revenues financing its war machine.

To be sure, previous attempts to squeeze Russian export revenues have had some impact. But they also resulted in the growth of a large "shadow fleet" carrying Russian oil, as well as related financial transactions designed to evade Western sanctions. In response to previous attempts to limit Russian export revenue, the Kremlin and its international partners found various workarounds, including using tankers with shadowy ownership and "washing" oil by routing it through ports in oil-rich regions like the Middle East.

Despite its name, the "shadow fleet" is not hidden at all. Russia has been conspicuously flaunting its ability to evade sanctions, confident that the West—especially the United States—will not enforce meaningful legal countermeasures.

That could change with the proposed legislation, which has three main components. First, it focuses attention (and mandatory sanctions) on all Russian companies involved in exporting fossil fuels, including energy companies, financial vehicles, and energy projects themselves. Second, it "clamps down" on the shadow fleet. There would be no more cheating or turning a blind eye. Anyone who deals with this fleet would be subject to punitive American sanctions.

Third, it imposes targeted tariffs on a narrow group of the worst-offending countries that continue to buy oil or natural gas from Russia. This provision would stop most potential purchasers in their tracks. A few countries may continue to buy from Russian suppliers, but only if they can secure massive discounts.

Importantly, the US would retain the discretion to adjust these measures if there are unintended consequences, and the increased pressure on Russia would be huge. The price at which Russia can sell oil would fall, probably by a lot, and as the money flowing into the Kremlin's coffers declined, so would its spending on the war and efforts to prop up its teetering civilian economy.

At the same time, Russia will continue to pump and sell oil to the world at roughly the same volume as before. The reason for this is simple: the marginal cost of production in West Siberia (Russia's main fields) is around $15 per barrel, and Russia is desperate for foreign cash. As long as it is making at least a few dollars per barrel, the oil will flow.

Consequently, the Sanctioning Russia Act would be unlikely to affect the world price of oil, which is determined by the global balance of supply and demand, but it would reduce the price received by the Kremlin. A lower net price for its oil exports would throttle Russia's ability to import electronics and other components for rockets, drones, and military equipment more generally. Without these inputs, its attacks on Ukraine would grind to a halt.

Equally important, these sanctions would deal a severe blow to a Russian economy that is already struggling after more than four years on a war footing. High inflation and interest rates are eating away at the foundations of the economy and sapping its growth. By hitting its most important sectors, and its principal source of foreign currency, this bill would pile enormous pressure on the Kremlin and intensify the economic discontent already growing among ordinary Russians and the country's elite.

If everything is a negotiation, as Trump says, the best way to prevail vis-à-vis Russian President Vladimir Putin is to strengthen America's hand with credible threats and more leverage. And the best way to achieve this is to pass the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act.

Ending Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine would contribute to global economic stability, lower energy prices, and reduce living costs. Oil and gas markets would become more resilient, the inflationary pressures from emergency Western military procurement would abate, and a secure Ukraine would once again become a major supplier of food products to the world. This should be a no-brainer for any US leader.

Project Syndicate

Modern warfare is a system in which every element performs its own function. If one element fails, the entire structure is weakened. One such element is the Military Law Enforcement Service of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (MLES), a specialised military law enforcement body within the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Its work rarely attracts public attention. It is usually mentioned only in connection with isolated high-profile incidents. In reality, however, the responsibilities of the MLES are far broader. They encompass functions that directly affect the combat effectiveness of the Armed Forces: maintaining military law and order, carrying out combat missions, returning service personnel to duty, conducting stabilisation measures in liberated territories, recovering military property, and documenting information that may later serve as evidence of international crimes.

This approach is by no means unique to Ukraine. Virtually every modern military maintains its own military law enforcement structure, which in most cases is also vested with investigative powers. In the United States, these functions are performed by the Military Police Corps; in the United Kingdom, by the Royal Military Police; in Germany, by the Feldjäger (the Bundeswehr Military Police); in the Netherlands, by the Koninklijke Marechaussee (Royal Military Constabulary); in Poland, by the Żandarmeria Wojskowa (Military Gendarmerie); in France, by the Gendarmerie nationale (National Gendarmerie); and in Italy, by the Arma dei Carabinieri (Carabinieri Corps).

Following the restoration of its independence, Ukraine inherited from the Soviet Union a system of military justice that included military tribunals (courts), the military prosecutor's office and other specialised institutions. Over the following years, this system was gradually dismantled. In 2010, regrettably, the military courts were abolished, while criminal justice reforms altered the powers of other military institutions. Throughout this period, the future of military justice remained the subject of ongoing professional debate.

An important element of this transformation was the establishment of the Military Law Enforcement Service of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 2002. At that time, its principal responsibilities included maintaining military discipline, preventing offences, conducting patrols, carrying out inquiries into military offences, safeguarding military property and assisting commanders in maintaining good order within military units. These functions reflected the needs of a military operating in peacetime.

The true value of any institution, however, is revealed by the challenges it faces. For the Military Law Enforcement Service, as for the Armed Forces of Ukraine as a whole, that defining challenge was Russia's aggression against Ukraine.

Following the outbreak of the war in 2014, the Ukrainian Armed Forces began adapting to a fundamentally new reality. The military expanded rapidly, while its approaches to training, command and coordination evolved accordingly. Combat experience required long-established practices across virtually every aspect of military service to be reconsidered. Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022 accelerated these changes even further. Within a short period, the size of the Armed Forces increased several-fold. New military units were formed, new weapons systems were introduced, new methods of warfare emerged, and the Armed Forces encountered challenges that had previously been unknown. The Military Law Enforcement Service had to evolve alongside the military itself. It was confronted with tasks that would have been difficult to foresee only a few years earlier: managing the continuous movement of hundreds of thousands of service personnel and military equipment, operating in frontline and liberated territories, securing critical military facilities, locating missing service personnel, cooperating with other law enforcement agencies, and responding to crises in the context of a large-scale war.

It soon became evident that the Military Law Enforcement Service could no longer remain an institution associated solely with control or punishment. The war demanded a different approach: helping the Armed Forces preserve their operational effectiveness. This meant not only responding to violations but also understanding their underlying causes, preventing them wherever possible, and developing solutions that would enable the military to remain resilient and combat-ready.

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the MLES special operations units have been carrying out combat missions directly in areas of active hostilities, operating alongside other components of the Defence Forces of Ukraine. They take part in defensive and special operations, protect strategically important military facilities, conduct search and evacuation missions, and perform other tasks that are often critical to maintaining the resilience of the defence on particular sectors of the front.

One of the earliest such tests was the defence of Vasylkiv during the first days of the full-scale invasion. It was there that MLES special operations personnel, together with other Defence Forces units, defended the military airfield, the capture of which would have enabled the enemy to deploy airborne assault forces for a further advance towards Kyiv. Under constant missile attacks, they held designated defensive positions, ensured the protection of the runway so that tactical aircraft could continue carrying out combat missions, and located and evacuated a Ukrainian pilot who had ejected from his aircraft despite intense enemy fire. This episode became one of the first demonstrations that MLES special operations units were capable of successfully carrying out some of the most demanding combat tasks alongside other units of the Defence Forces of Ukraine.

Another of the clearest examples of the Service's systemic transformation has been its work with service personnel who had left their military units without authorisation.

Unauthorised abandonment of a military unit has always constituted a serious military offence. It undermines the combat effectiveness of military units, places an additional burden on fellow service personnel, and can have severe consequences during combat operations. At the same time, the full-scale war demonstrated that identical legal classifications may conceal profoundly different personal circumstances. Prolonged combat operations without rotation, physical and psychological exhaustion, the inability to obtain leave in a timely manner, difficult family circumstances, or conflicts within military units frequently became the factors that drove service personnel to make such a decision.

None of these circumstances removes legal responsibility. However, they raised a different question for the State: can it always afford to lose a trained and experienced soldier if there is a realistic opportunity to return that person to military service?

For this reason, the Military Law Enforcement Service began developing a mechanism aimed not only at locating such service personnel but also at facilitating their return to duty. This involved establishing the reasons for leaving a military unit, restoring the necessary documentation, identifying units prepared to accept the individual concerned, and providing support throughout the entire process.

In the course of analysing the reasons behind unauthorised abandonment, the MLES established that one of the most common causes was the prolonged absence of leave or the inability to obtain it even in urgent family or personal circumstances. These findings became one of the factors that drew attention to the problem and were subsequently taken into account during the further improvement of legislation, particularly with regard to guaranteeing service personnel the right to leave.

It also became clear that merely restoring an individual to the personnel register was insufficient. A returning service member had to be placed under the command of an officer willing to understand the circumstances that had led to the previous situation, help rebuild trust within the unit, provide the necessary preparation, and create conditions that would prevent similar situations from recurring. In many cases, this also meant helping service personnel resolve family or social difficulties or enabling them to take long-overdue leave.

This approach proved to be not only humane but also pragmatic. It enabled the Armed Forces to retain personnel who already possessed valuable combat experience and remained capable of performing demanding operational tasks.

The effectiveness of this model was demonstrated by concrete examples. In one sector of the Donetsk region, service personnel who had returned after unauthorised abandonment were retrained and assigned to combat missions alongside an MLES special operations unit. Over the course of several weeks, they participated in the defence of a populated area. During one engagement, two of them not only held their positions but also evacuated a wounded MLES special operator from the battlefield, administered first aid, and ultimately saved his life. There have been many similar cases.

This experience does not diminish the seriousness of unauthorised abandonment. Rather, it demonstrates that a formal legal classification does not always provide a complete understanding of an individual's circumstances, motivations or potential. Given appropriate conditions, many such service personnel are capable of returning to military service, performing their duties conscientiously, and once again becoming effective members of combat units.

The experience gained in addressing unauthorised abandonment became only one example of how the war reshaped the very philosophy of the Military Law Enforcement Service. Increasingly, its work shifted from reacting to consequences to preventing problems, and from exercising formal control to developing solutions that strengthen the Armed Forces' operational effectiveness. Against this background, the restoration of investigative powers appears to be one logical step in that evolution.

The same adaptive approach has also come to define the Service's broader institutional development.

After 2024, one of the principal priorities in the development of the Military Law Enforcement Service became the restructuring of its organisational model. The primary measure of success was no longer the number of units or the formal discharge of prescribed functions. Instead, emphasis shifted to practical results: how rapidly the Service could respond to new challenges and how effectively its work contributed to the successful accomplishment of combat missions. This approach made it possible to develop new capabilities quickly wherever they were genuinely required.

One example is the Scorpion Rapid Response Unit. Full-scale war means that hundreds of thousands of people are exposed to exceptionally demanding combat experiences. Most of them seek to return to civilian life after completing their military service. The State must therefore be prepared for crisis situations involving service personnel who have experienced combat, sustained injuries, or are suffering acute psychological distress and require a specialised approach. In such circumstances, standard law enforcement skills alone may be insufficient. Effective responses require an understanding of military service, combat experience, psychological trauma, and conflict de-escalation techniques.

A recent incident at a military hospital clearly illustrated this need. One service member threatened to use hand grenades. Situations of this kind require the utmost restraint and professionalism. They cannot be resolved effectively through force alone. It is essential to understand the psychology of a person who has experienced war and to reduce tensions in a manner that prevents tragedy.

The establishment of specialised units of this kind represents a proactive approach. It does not imply that veterans or service personnel pose an increased threat. Rather, it reflects the responsibility of the State to develop professional mechanisms capable of responding to the exceptional situations in which an individual requires specialised assistance or a tailored approach.

Equally significant changes have taken place in the Service's day-to-day activities.

One example is the way in which the Military Traffic Safety Inspectorate ensures the safe and efficient movement of military forces. More recently, it has been integrated with the patrol service into joint mobile teams. This decision has enhanced the safety of inspectors themselves, made patrol operations more mobile, and improved the overall effectiveness of operational tasks.

The Military Law Enforcement Service has adopted a similar approach in other areas of its work. Its units have uncovered schemes designed to evade military service, including the use of forged documents, fraudulent medical certificates, and fabricated grounds for discharge or deferment from service. Their work did not end with referring materials to law enforcement authorities. Drawing on the experience gained, the Service developed practical recommendations enabling Territorial Centres of Recruitment and Social Support and other military authorities to identify such violations at an earlier stage.

At the same time, the realities of war have once again demonstrated that effective military law enforcement depends not only on the powers vested in a particular institution but also on its ability to cooperate closely with other agencies. This is particularly true in the military sphere, where success depends upon well-coordinated interaction between the Armed Forces and civilian law enforcement bodies.

The Military Law Enforcement Service operates within the military environment and possesses a thorough understanding of its specific characteristics. At the same time, it is not vested with the full range of procedural powers necessary to conduct operational-search activities or pre-trial investigations. Consequently, many of its tasks are carried out in cooperation with the National Police of Ukraine, the State Bureau of Investigation, and other public authorities.

There are numerous examples demonstrating the effectiveness of such cooperation. One recent case concerned the murder of the Moseichuk brothers, in which members of the 155th Brigade, deployed in an operational area, came under suspicion. Information obtained by the Military Law Enforcement Service helped establish the circumstances of the crime and identify the location where the victims' bodies had been concealed. Following the transfer of the relevant materials to the National Police, arrests were carried out, the bodies were exhumed, and other necessary procedural measures were undertaken.

Cooperation is organised according to the same principles in other areas of the Service's work, including the recovery of lost military property. During intensive combat operations, weapons, ammunition, military equipment and other property may be lost, damaged or unlawfully appropriated. The Military Law Enforcement Service identifies such cases, establishes the relevant circumstances, and works together with other competent authorities to prevent the illicit circulation of military property and restore it to lawful use.

Another major challenge brought about by the full-scale war has been maintaining law and order in liberated territories.

Following the cessation of hostilities, civilian authorities cannot resume their work immediately. There is always a transitional period during which public order must be maintained, local communities engaged, security threats addressed, and conditions created for the return of State institutions.

Ukraine experienced precisely this after the liberation of the Kyiv and Kherson regions, as well as other territories. While civilian authorities were only beginning to restore their operations, the Military Law Enforcement Service was already maintaining law and order, supporting military commanders, and helping establish the conditions necessary for the return of State institutions.

This experience was further developed during the Kursk operation, where MLES personnel also carried out stabilisation tasks in areas under the control of the Defence Forces of Ukraine, including ensuring compliance with international humanitarian law. Once again, this demonstrated that modern warfare requires a specialised military law enforcement institution capable of operating not only in the rear but also directly in combat zones and in territories immediately after they come under the control of friendly forces.

Comparable functions have long been performed by military gendarmerie forces and military police organisations in many countries. Ukraine's experience has only reinforced the need to further develop this capability.

Perhaps the most significant innovation brought about by the full-scale war, however, has been the documentation of information relating to violations of the law of armed conflict (battlefield evidence). Modern warfare generates an enormous volume of potential evidence: physical evidence, satellite imagery, drone footage, electronic media, documents, munition fragments and numerous other materials. Military personnel are almost always the first to gain access to such evidence. Investigators are not always able to operate directly in combat areas without delay, yet soldiers should not be expected to assume the role of investigators.

For this reason, the Military Law Enforcement Service is developing a system that enables service personnel to identify potentially significant information, record it correctly at the initial stage, preserve it, and transfer it to law enforcement authorities. The objective is not to impose additional responsibilities on military personnel but to establish simple procedures that prevent potentially valuable evidence from being lost while allowing service members to remain focused on their combat missions.

For Ukraine, this has strategic importance. Investigations into international crimes will continue for many years, but their outcome depends upon decisions taken today. Evidence lost on the battlefield cannot be reconstructed tomorrow.

The Military Law Enforcement Service's comprehensive experience is attracting increasing interest from Ukraine's international partners. An important role in developing these capabilities is played by the 25th Training Centre of the Military Law Enforcement Service. The Centre not only trains MLES personnel but also promotes international cooperation and introduces modern training standards. It has become a NATO Partnership Training and Education Centre (PTEC), while Ukrainian instructors are already delivering courses in English for representatives of partner countries.

This is a clear illustration of how Ukraine's role has changed. Whereas in the past Ukraine primarily learned from international experience, today it is increasingly sharing its own. Most NATO member states developed their military law enforcement institutions during peace support or expeditionary operations. Ukraine, by contrast, is adapting them to the realities of a high-intensity war characterised by the large-scale use of unmanned systems, precision weapons, digital technologies and constantly evolving tactics. For this reason, Ukraine's experience has already become of considerable practical interest to its partners.

The experience of the full-scale war has also fundamentally reshaped the discussion about the future of military law enforcement in Ukraine. In practice, the Military Law Enforcement Service already performs a significant proportion of the functions that, in many countries, are entrusted to military police forces. At the same time, its statutory powers do not always correspond to the responsibilities it actually carries out.

This does not mean that its powers should be expanded at any cost. Any reform must be accompanied by appropriate safeguards to ensure legality, professional training, effective oversight and respect for human rights. What the war has demonstrated, however, is that the institutional foundations of a modern military police service already exist in Ukraine.

The issue, therefore, is not the creation of a new institution or a change of name, but rather the further development of one that has already demonstrated its effectiveness. A logical continuation of this process would be legislative amendments empowering the Military Law Enforcement Service to conduct pre-trial investigations into certain military criminal offences, including unauthorised abandonment of a military unit, desertion and other offences directly related to military service. These are areas in which the Service is already substantially involved in practice. They are also powers that the Military Law Enforcement Service exercised prior to 2012, before they were removed as one of the elements that weakened Ukraine's military justice system during the period of Russia's hybrid aggression against Ukraine.

Over the past two years, it has not only been the Military Law Enforcement Service that has changed. The very understanding of its role has evolved. None of these developments arose from abstract theoretical concepts or from a desire to imitate foreign models. They were dictated by the realities of war itself.

Today, the Military Law Enforcement Service is far more than an institution responsible for maintaining discipline. It helps preserve the Armed Forces' effectiveness, ensures military law and order, contributes to the stabilisation of liberated territories, cooperates closely with other law enforcement agencies, and plays an important role in laying the foundations for future justice.

Ultimately, the strength of a State is measured not only by the quantity of its weapons or the success of individual military operations. It also depends on its ability to build institutions that learn, adapt rapidly and develop effective responses to new challenges. It is precisely such institutions that strengthen the Armed Forces during wartime and lay the foundations for security and the rule of law once the war has ended.

Read this Ukrainska Pravda story to find out how drone warfare has transformed the role of attack helicopters and how the Ukrainian military and global defence companies envisage the future of military aviation.

The twilight of the "flying tank" era: from Hostomel to tactical impasse

In March 2026, the crew of a Ukrainian Navy Mi-8 destroyed 12 Russian Shahed loitering munitions over the sea in just three hours. Four years earlier, Russian Mi-8 helicopters had skimmed treetops on their way to Hostomel, just outside Kyiv, carrying paratroopers to establish an air bridge for the assault on the Ukrainian capital.

These two episodes illustrate how the role of attack and multi-role helicopters has evolved over the course of the war. Attack helicopters, designed to provide close air support and to strike targets on the battlefield, are now forced to operate farther from the front line. Multi-role helicopters continue to transport troops and cargo and evacuate the wounded, but have also taken on new missions, most notably intercepting aerial assets far behind the front.

This does not mean helicopters have lost their military relevance. However, Ukraine's experience has exposed the limitations of the old doctrine, under which armour, low-altitude flight and onboard protection systems were expected to allow attack helicopters to operate directly over the front line.

Although the American and Soviet approaches to army aviation differed, both were shaped by the same Cold War battlefield assumptions. The American AH-64 Apache was primarily built to counter armoured forces and strike targets deep in enemy territory. The Soviet Mi-24 (NATO reporting name: Hind) combined two roles in a single platform: it served as a gunship for infantry support and a troop carrier for small assault teams. Later Soviet designs – the Ka-52 (Hokum) and Mi-28 (Havoc) – focused more heavily on the attack helicopter role. The doctrine relied on helicopters using terrain masking to approach targets, fire anti-tank weapons and escape before the enemy could react.

Russia attempted to apply this logic in its war against Ukraine. On 24 February 2022, a group of 34 helicopters headed towards Hostomel airfield, tasked with dropping several hundred paratroopers. According to a commentary by the UK-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), Russia lost around 17% of the helicopters deployed during the operation, mainly to man-portable air defence systems and as a result of being hit by other weapons. Oryx, an open-source intelligence project which counts only losses confirmed by photographs or video footage, identified six helicopters lost in the Hostomel area: one Mi-8, one Mi-28 and four Ka-52s, one of which was captured by Ukrainian forces.

The assault force took control of the airfield, but the strategic objective was out of reach. Ukrainian forces denied Russia the ability to quickly establish an air bridge for heavy transport aircraft. Ground convoys advancing towards Kyiv ground to a halt. The helicopter assault, which was intended as the opening move of a lightning campaign, became one of the clearest signs that the plan was doomed to fail.

Hostomel was only the beginning of a wider problem. In the early weeks of the invasion, Ka-52s, Mi-28s and Mi-24/35s swept across the battlefield in pairs, flying at extremely low altitudes as they hunted Ukrainian forces and occasionally ventured dozens of kilometres behind the front line. By spring, however, these operations had largely stopped. A RUSI study of the air war has found that heavy losses made helicopter crews increasingly unwilling to risk crossing the front line.

Onboard defence systems and heat decoys were no magic shield. They could send an infrared-guided missile off course, but they could not eliminate the threat. On a battlefield where thousands of crews armed with Stinger, Piorun, Igla and other MANPADS are scattered along the front line, a helicopter only needs to make one mistake – to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The scale of the losses is visible in open-source data. At the time of writing, at least 54 Russian Ka-52s and 14 Mi-28s had been visually confirmed destroyed. Once damaged and captured aircraft are added, the tally rises to 68 Ka-52s and 20 Mi-28s. These helicopters were not all lost to MANPADS, nor were they all shot out of the sky. But together, the figures reveal that operating close to the front line has become an increasingly costly gamble for attack helicopters.

The "flying tank" has not become obsolete. The term, used to describe heavily armed attack helicopters built to combine firepower, armour and mobility, now describes a platform that has lost much of its freedom of manoeuvre. Its armour can protect against small-arms fire and battlefield debris. Still, it cannot keep an attack helicopter hovering for long over enemy positions where MANPADS, mobile air defence systems, anti-aircraft artillery, radars and unmanned aerial reconnaissance are all operating at once.

Survival through distance: rocket "lofting" tactics and missiles as a stopgap solution

The initial response to the strengthening of air defences was to move weapons further away from the front line. Ukrainian and Russian crews began using unguided rockets more frequently in rocket "lofting" manoeuvres. The helicopter flies at low altitude, using terrain for cover, then briefly raises its nose by 15-30 degrees before launching munitions. The crew fires a salvo of S-8 or S-13 rockets – unguided munitions of different calibres carried in under-slung pods. The rockets travel towards the target area on a ballistic trajectory, while the helicopter immediately turns away and releases heat decoys. This is the method of operation described by RUSI.

The accuracy of the strikes is limited because the crew cannot see a specific target at the moment of launch. Instead, the rockets are aimed towards a pre-calculated area. They can force infantry to take cover or temporarily restrict movement, but are far less effective against individual armoured vehicles or fortified positions. It is a compromise: the helicopter can deliver fire without approaching enemy positions, but the tactic cannot replace precision fire support.

Another avenue of adaptation has been the use of longer-range missiles. The most notable Russian example is the Light Multipurpose Guided Rocket (LMUR), also known as Product 305. The missile weighs around 105 kg, carries a 25kg warhead and has a range of approximately 14.5-15 km. A nose-mounted camera with a thermal imaging channel allows it to identify targets. It is guided by inertial and satellite navigation systems during flight.

The LMUR can operate in two modes. In the first, the operator selects a target before launch, and the missile then autonomously tracks it. In the second, the missile first flies to a designated area and transmits images back to the helicopter, enabling the operator to select or change the target during flight. According to Oryx, these missiles have primarily been used in combat against buildings, pontoon crossings and nearby equipment.

The extra range gives the Mi-28NM and upgraded Ka-52M a valuable advantage: they can strike while staying beyond the reach of many man-portable air defence systems. But distance does not equal safety. The helicopters are still vulnerable to longer-range air defences, fighter aircraft, drones and attacks on the bases where they are stationed.

A RAND study notes that Russian aviation has retained the ability to operate effectively from behind the front line by relying on long-range weapons and exploiting gaps in Ukrainian air defences to limit the effectiveness of mechanised attacks.

This approach did not return helicopters to their former role above the front line, but it did demonstrate the conditions in which they can still be effective. With target data provided by drones or ground reconnaissance, a helicopter can launch guided weapons from a safer distance without entering the most dangerous areas of enemy fire. The platform is therefore evolving from a close-support attack aircraft into a carrier for precision weapons.

A renaissance behind the lines: helicopters as an effective air defence weapon against drones

As the skies above the front line became increasingly dangerous, helicopters found a new role deep inside Ukraine: intercepting long-range strike drones.

The Russo-Iranian Shahed loitering munition is a difficult target for a fighter jet. It flies low and slowly, and using an expensive air defence missile against a mass-produced drone quickly becomes an inefficient use of resources. For the Mi-8 or Mi-24, however, the Shahed's slow speed is an advantage. The Shahed-136 flies at approximately 180 km/h, and the CSIS think tank notes that the Mi-8 has sufficient speed to pursue the drone, match its course and allow the gunner to engage it.

The full operational framework for these interceptions is not publicly available, but the general logic is clear. Air Command receives data from radars, acoustic sensors and observation posts before directing helicopter crews towards the target area. Once there, pilots locate the drone visually or with thermal imaging, approach from the side or behind, and open fire over a safe area. The distributed Ukrainian network of acoustic sensors, described in a US Army report as Sky Fortress, is crucial because it provides early target information to mobile fire groups and aviation.

In this scenario, the helicopter effectively becomes an airborne mobile fire group. Unlike ground-based crews tied to a specific area, helicopter crews can quickly move between multiple possible routes, close gaps between air defence positions and intercept targets in locations where they can be destroyed more safely. These interceptions are particularly valuable on approaches to cities, over the sea and in sparsely populated areas, where the risk from falling debris and stray rounds is lower.

Changing missions also requires upgrading older aircraft. In July 2026, Andrii Lebedenko, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said that Soviet-era helicopters were being fitted with modern communications, navigation, reconnaissance and strike systems. The goal is not simply to improve their ability to detect drones, but to integrate helicopter crews into the wider air defence network: they must receive target coordinates in time, maintain situational awareness and operate alongside, rather than interfere with, ground-based air defence systems.

For this role, Ukrainian Mi-8s are being fitted with thermal imaging sights and rapid-fire machine guns, particularly the six-barrelled M134 Minigun. In March 2026, the Ukrainian Navy released a video showing a single crew destroying 12 Shahed drones over the course of three hours. Oleksandr Syrskyi, former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, also said that in certain designated areas, helicopters were intercepting up to 40% of drones entering their zones of responsibility. This does not represent the share of all UAVs launched across Ukraine, but it indicates that the tactic has become an established element of the country's air defence system.

Its main economic advantage is not that it is a cheap helicopter – flight hours, maintenance and crew training all come at a high cost. The benefit lies elsewhere: machine-gun fire can conserve NASAMS, IRIS-T, or Patriot missiles for faster, more dangerous targets. By comparison, a single PAC-3 MSE interceptor costs around US$4 million, according to US Army budget data, while machine gun ammunition is several orders of magnitude cheaper. However, this calculation must also account for risks to both personnel and the aircraft.

Russia has begun adapting to this new threat. In December 2025, a Shahed-136 fitted with a Soviet-era R-60 air-to-air missile, designed to engage aircraft and helicopters, was spotted in Ukraine for the first time. The effectiveness of this combination is not yet known, nor is the number of modified drones in service. Even so, the appearance of such a variant suggests that aerial interceptions have become a problem for Russia. The new threat also increases risks for helicopter crews and creates a demand for relatively inexpensive guided weapons that could destroy drones from greater distances, without requiring aircraft to approach within machine-gun range.

A reversal of roles: when the hunter becomes the prey of FPV drones

Another development is that attack helicopters, which are primarily designed to engage ground targets, have themselves become targets for small FPV drones. A typical radio-controlled FPV drone costs around US$500, although the price varies depending on its range, equipment and control method. Fibre-optic models are generally more complex and expensive.

In August 2024, drone operators from Ukraine's Special Operations Centre Alpha for the first time successfully struck a Russian Mi-28 helicopter flying over Kursk Oblast with an FPV drone. The drone hit the area around the tail rotor, damage to which can result in a loss of control. A Ukrainian source said the helicopter had been shot down, but the footage released does not show what happened to it afterwards. According to one Russian account, the helicopter made an emergency landing and was later sent for repairs.

Two days later, a video emerged showing an attack on a Mi-8 helicopter, but there was no confirmation that the aircraft had been destroyed. In March 2026, however, operators from the 59th Brigade hit a Ka-52 near Nadiivka in Donetsk Oblast with a fibre-optic FPV drone. The damaged helicopter made an emergency landing. A helicopter of this type is estimated to cost around US$16 million.

Such attacks remain relatively rare for now. An FPV drone's speed depends on its size, motors, battery and payload weight. Most armed FPV drones are slower than combat helicopters and cannot pursue them at top speed for long. They are most likely to score a hit when a helicopter is hovering, slowing down, preparing to land or flying low in an area where the drone has already been launched. In practice, this makes such attacks more akin to an aerial ambush or a well-timed interception than a prolonged chase.

Conventional helicopter countermeasures are largely ineffective against such a threat. Thermal decoys are designed to divert infrared-guided missiles by creating false heat sources. An FPV operator, however, guides the drone using a live camera feed and may simply ignore the decoys and continue the attack.

Electronic warfare systems can jam the control or video link of a conventional FPV drone. Fibre-optic drones, however, receive commands through a thin cable that unspools behind them in flight rather than via a radio signal. As a result, they are effectively immune to electronic warfare. That does not make them invulnerable, however: they can still be detected and physically destroyed.

However, the defensive systems fitted to most combat helicopters were designed to detect radar threats and incoming anti-aircraft missiles, not small quadcopters. In the future, these aircraft may therefore require optical, thermal imaging, acoustic or compact radar detection systems, together with onboard electronic warfare systems and drone-interception capabilities.

Meanwhile, helicopter crews are having to adapt their tactics by changing flight routes, reducing the time spent hovering and monitoring the surrounding airspace more closely. There is currently no off-the-shelf system capable of automatically detecting and destroying FPV drones around a helicopter, meaning protection will have to rely on a combination of complementary measures.

Lessons learnt. Rethinking weaponry and future prospects

In February 2024, the US Army cancelled the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) programme after several years of development. At the time, Bell and Sikorsky were already building prototypes of two competing aircraft. Randy George, the then US Army Chief of Staff, explicitly cited the lessons of the war in Ukraine when explaining the decision. He said aerial reconnaissance had changed significantly as unmanned and space-based systems have become more accessible, cheaper and capable of operating over longer distances.

However, it would be an exaggeration to suggest that the FARA programme was cancelled solely because of the war in Ukraine. The US Army was reassessing its entire aviation spending structure and faced competing priorities: funding the new MV-75 tiltrotor, modernising the Black Hawk and Chinook fleets, expanding unmanned systems and developing long-range weapons. The lessons from Ukraine were one factor behind the decision, but not the only one.

One of the main areas of development is the concept of Manned-Unmanned Teaming, the coordinated operation of manned and unmanned aircraft. American AH-64E Apache helicopters can already receive video feeds from RQ-7 Shadow and MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones and control their sensors. In Europe, Airbus and Leonardo are testing the MUSHER system, which allows helicopter crews to receive information from multiple unmanned aerial vehicles and assign them tasks.

As a result, a different model is gradually emerging in Western programmes: instead of conducting reconnaissance over the front line independently, the helicopter is being transformed into an airborne command post operating behind the battlefield to coordinate a group of unmanned aerial vehicles. The drones enter the danger zone first, locate targets and transmit data, while the crew directs their operations and engages targets from a greater distance.

A recent example of this approach is the Thunder unmanned tiltrotor, unveiled in July 2026 by Anduril and Archer Aviation. According to the developers' plans, the aircraft would operate ahead of the Apache or future MV-75, conducting reconnaissance, identifying targets, carrying additional weapons and protecting manned aircraft from enemy drones. For now, however, it is only a concept represented by a full-scale mock-up, with the first flight planned for 2027.

The Ukrainian experience demonstrates how such a system could operate in a real war. A drone enters the dangerous area first, checks the route, identifies enemy positions and transmits data. The helicopter remains at a greater distance, where the crew receives information from multiple platforms and, if necessary, employs long-range weapons.

Nevertheless, drones cannot completely replace military aviation. Helicopters remain essential for transporting troops and cargo, evacuating the wounded, deploying small teams and operating in areas without prepared airfields. Intercepting slow-moving drones has also become a separate mission area.

That said, this is no longer solely a Ukrainian practice. Russia has also deployed Ka-52s and Mi-28s against Ukrainian long-range drones. In the Middle East, helicopters have been used to destroy Iranian and Houthi UAVs.

An Israeli AH-64 shot down an Iranian drone in 2018. In 2024, a French naval helicopter intercepted a Houthi UAV over the Red Sea. Countering drones is therefore gradually becoming another mission for helicopters.

Consequently, the war does not signal the end of helicopters, but rather a transformation in the conditions under which they operate. Manned aircraft will increasingly struggle to operate independently directly over the front line. Instead, they will serve as carriers for long-range weapons, transport platforms and control stations for drone fleets.

Translated by Artem Yakymyshyn

Edited by Susan McDonald

In recent weeks, the nature of these operations has also evolved, as drones are now increasingly targeting Russia's maritime logistics. Tankers, cargo ships, tugboats and ferries operating in the Azov and Black Seas have all come under attack.

The campaign's key objective is to make it increasingly risky for Russia to use the maritime routes that supply occupied Crimea, transport military cargo and carry crude oil and petroleum products to foreign markets.

As repeated strikes on the Kerch Bridge and disruptions to overland supply routes have constrained Russia's land-based logistics, these maritime connections have become one of the Kremlin's most important lifelines for sustaining its forces in Crimea.

Small river-sea class tankers use these routes to deliver petroleum products to the peninsula and to transport fuel for transfer to larger ocean-going tankers. Read on to find out what makes this operation unique, what it has achieved so far and the strategic objective behind it.

Surgical precision

The latest phase of Ukraine's campaign against Russia's energy and logistics infrastructure has taken the form of Operation MoLoChKa [Ukr. "Москва Ляже Через Крим", literally "Moscow Will Fall Through Crimea" – ed.]. It stands out even against the backdrop of Ukraine's previous successful campaigns. Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces reported that their drones had struck 196 vessels supporting Russia's maritime logistics during the first 18 days of July. Of those, 126 were hit in the Sea of Azov and 70 in the Black Sea.

The targets included tankers, bulk carriers, ferries, tugboats and specialised vessels transporting petroleum products and military cargo. What sets the operation apart, however, is not the number of strikes but their nature. According to Mykhailo Honchar, President of the Strategy XXI Centre for Global Studies, Ukrainian forces deliberately avoid sinking the vessels.

"Tankers are targeted with surgical precision," he said. "If a naval drone is used, it strikes the propeller and rudder assembly at the stern, causing the vessel to lose manoeuvrability. If the attack is carried out by an aerial drone, the target is the bridge, where the ship's controls are concentrated. The vessel is put out of action and requires repairs. This does not result in an oil spill or pose the risk of an environmental disaster."

Damaged vessels are left adrift and require towing, disrupting the movement of other ships. Russia, meanwhile, is forced to divert resources to repairs, recovery operations and the replacement of damaged vessels.

In this way, Ukraine turns even relatively minor damage into a problem for Russia's entire logistics system. The more vessels are put out of action, the harder it becomes to maintain uninterrupted fuel supplies to Crimea and sustain exports of Russian petroleum products.

The tactic also minimises the risk of large-scale marine pollution from oil spills while achieving the primary military objective of paralysing the operation of Russia's transport fleet. However, fuel spills cannot always be avoided.

The impact of the attacks

Despite nearly 200 successful strikes, the operation has not brought Russian maritime exports to a standstill. Its first effects, however, are already becoming apparent. The greatest impact has been on logistics in the Sea of Azov, where Russia relies on a feeder fleet of small tankers to transport petroleum products to occupied Crimea and the Kerch Strait.

"The paralysis of Russia's feeder fleet makes it impossible to export crude oil from Russian transshipment terminals and loading facilities via the Volga-Don Canal and the Sea of Azov to larger tankers," said Robert "Magyar" Brovdi, Commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces. "Unable to enter the ports, those tankers instead load cargo from shuttle tankers anchored in the Black Sea, each taking on the equivalent cargo of 12 to 15 feeder vessels."

Read more: Drone strikes on "Russia's Amazon": the story of Wildberries

The campaign has effectively made the route too risky to use. Seaborne exports of petroleum products from Sea of Azov ports have come to a halt, according to Andrii Klymenko, editor-in-chief of BlackSeaNews. Even before exports ceased altogether, export volumes and the number of voyages had fallen by half during the first half of July.

The campaign has also taken a toll on Russia's Black Sea ports. "During the first 20 days of July, petroleum product exports from the Black Sea ports fell by almost half, to one million tonnes, while the number of tankers dropped from 55 to 27. This is most likely due to disruptions in logistics chains caused by the attacks," Klymenko said.

Moscow must now repair its damaged fleet. According to Klymenko, every damaged vessel must first be towed to a safe location, and limited repair capacity has created a backlog. "There are huge queues at shipyards. Repairing a single vessel can cost between US$2 million and US$5 million," he said.

Honchar argues that the campaign's impact should be assessed alongside Ukraine's strikes on Russian oil refineries. "All these strikes have halted exports of Russia's main petroleum products. Russia no longer exports petrol, jet fuel exports have ceased, and diesel exports have fallen to negligible levels – just 4% of what they were before the drone strikes on refineries and other oil and logistics infrastructure began," the expert said.

In his view, if Ukraine maintains the current pace of strikes, Russia's financial losses in 2026 could amount to tens of billions of dollars. "It is impossible to put an exact figure on it now, but if the pace of strikes does not decline, Russia will lose several tens of billions of dollars," Honchar said.

What comes next

At first glance, the main objective of Operation MoLoChKa may appear to be disrupting fuel supplies to occupied Crimea. However, experts interviewed by Ekonomichna Pravda believe its real aim could be far broader. According to Honchar, Ukraine is gradually laying the groundwork for a full maritime blockade of Russia's Black Sea ports.

"Not only oil tankers but also bulk carriers are coming under attack. The aim is to gain fire advantage over the eastern part of the Black Sea," he said, using the Ukrainian military term for the ability to strike targets throughout an area and deny the enemy freedom of movement.

The campaign is also affecting Russia's agricultural exports. "You'll get jack shit in foreign currency from Black Sea grain exports, you worms," Robert "Magyar" Brovdi said, announcing that shipping through the Azov-Don Canal has come to a halt. Before the campaign began, Russia exported about 30% of its grain via the route.

Russia continues to wage its own campaign against Ukraine's grain exports. Strikes on the ports of Greater Odesa – Odesa, Pivnichnyi and Chornomorsk – have reduced Ukraine's export capacity by about one-third. Traffic through Ukraine's maritime grain corridor came to a halt on 22 July. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has acknowledged that Russian attacks on commercial vessels are likely to intensify.

As a result, exports from both Ukraine and Russia – which together account for more than 25% of global wheat exports – are at risk of disruption. While global grain prices continue to rise, domestic prices in Ukraine have fallen. Russia, meanwhile, cannot fully exploit the situation while Ukrainian drones keep its maritime logistics under pressure.

Russia has warned ships of the dangers of operating within its exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea. It has also redeployed drone operators from Rubikon, its elite unmanned systems unit, from the battlefield to protect its shadow fleet against Ukrainian drones.

Honchar argues that the campaign will only deliver meaningful results if it remains sustained and relentless. "This is an operation with no fixed end date. It has to be maintained continuously. As soon as the pressure eases, Russia's logistics will begin recovering very quickly," he said.

He believes the next logical step would be to integrate long-range missiles into the campaign. "Adding a missile component to naval and aerial drones could further restrict Russia's foreign trade through the Black Sea. This is exactly how Russia once blockaded Ukraine's ports," he said.

Magyar has clearly set out the strategic objective: the shadow fleet must be eliminated: "Every tanker has been identified. They are all part of the shadow fleet and are subject to international sanctions. We will turn every vessel into a drifting barge – blind and deaf. We'll keep hitting them for as long as it takes."

Translated by Myroslava Zavadska

Edited by Artem Yakymyshyn

The full interview is available on Ukrainska Pravda's YouTube channel.

"It's like performing open-heart surgery with no electricity and not enough instruments"

Let's continue our discussion about mobilisation reform. You came in for a lot of criticism about this as defence minister. What do you think was the main problem? Why wasn't the reform completed, what went wrong, and why did it result in public criticism, including from the country's leadership?

This was the issue that people were most concerned about, so it was also the easiest way to attack our team. But as for why we didn't complete it – we were progressing exactly as set out in our plan.

I even had a meeting scheduled for Wednesday, before my dismissal, with all the key stakeholders involved in mobilisation. I was due to sign an order at that meeting [that would have required military enlistment offices' notification teams] to stop wearing balaclavas, introduce body cameras, bring all the enlistment offices into proper order, implement the digital processing system, and so on. It was meant to be the first step of the reform.

So we were on track according to the plan.

In June we launched the first phase, which covered length of service, deferments, pay, the recruitment of foreign nationals, transfers and more. There were over ten separate projects, and we completed them. Remember, there was no budget for this at all, so we had to optimise existing resources in order to launch the reform.

There are a lot of challenges when you're trying to reform the Defence Ministry during a full-scale war with limited resources. I'd describe it as performing open-heart surgery when there's no electricity, not enough instruments and the patient is still alive. You have to save them while keeping them alive.

We've talked about long-range strikes, and we've seen how effective they are – warehouses are on fire, Moscow's on fire. One of your innovations was mid-range strike drones (known as "middle strikes"), and it's something you really focused on. In particular, you announced a tender to produce 150 middle-strike drones...

We called them "Crimea-strikes".

Tell us what was achieved. I understand these drones have already begun to reach the military?

We started buying middle-strike drones in February. This was part of the plan we came in with – essentially to shift the war into the operational domain, into the enemy's operational depth. That has a direct impact on the front line.

We have dashboards tracking some corps where we can see that the more enemy assets we destroy at an operational depth of 40-60 km, the less pressure there is on infantry units on the front line, and the fewer offensive operations the enemy is able to conduct.

As we were unable to organise a sufficient number of large tenders fast enough, we even started transferring funds directly to military units so they could buy middle-strike drones themselves, because this is a window of opportunity that could soon close.

Has that window closed now?

Not yet, but it has its limits. Our objective was to win every technological cycle. Our objective was to get a foot in the door before it closed and create new opportunities.

But did this strategy work in Crimea?

The procurement of middle-strike drones has been completed, and deliveries will continue for some time. The money we allocated directly to military units is still being used. So now we need to keep on buying middle-strikes and adapt this strategy.

What happens next will depend on the decisions that are made now, because the Russians are adapting as well. They've started using drones that operate on mesh networks with AI. They've also redirected large numbers of Shahed and Molniya drones to frontline regions in an effort to isolate our logistics. This is a separate strategy that requires dedicated funding and many new solutions that are not yet obvious.

At the beginning of the summer, people were saying that Ukraine had gained the upper hand on the front line for the first time. Has that advantage been maintained as of the end of July 2026?

We had record results in May and June in terms of the amount of territory we liberated compared with what Russia occupied and how far it advanced. We also downed a record number of aerial assets – tens of thousands during that period. Even people living in frontline regions can't imagine the scale of the work being done by the Air Force and the corps. A lot do get through, but huge numbers are intercepted.

In Zaporizhzhia, for example, 97-100% of the Molniya drones launched are shot down – that's dozens, sometimes even hundreds, every day.

We'll see how the situation develops. The task is to ensure this [downing of targets] continues. We have the potential and all the resources needed to finally defeat and stop the Russians.

"I was never fighting particular people – only the system"

As we understand it, one of the criticisms voiced by the military and political leadership was that you exceeded your authority: that in making decisions, you encroached on the responsibilities of other officials, including the commander-in-chief.

Were these conflicts related to you overstepping your authority as defence minister?

That's fake news that people keep passing around.

We've heard it from very senior sources.

I understand. So have I. But there isn't a single fact to support it. The reality is that I never interfered at the tactical level – deciding what brigades, battalions or regiments should do. I always worked at the strategic level.

Of course, the Defence Ministry is responsible for procurement, but procurement itself can also be a way of winning the war. If you procure the right mid-range strike capabilities, the situation changes.

We carried out a number of operations at the strategic level, but that doesn't mean we were interfering in how the war was fought. For example, we had the idea of destroying all the equipment within a depth of 50-70 km simultaneously over the course of a few days. Last year we did that – we called it Operation Auchan. We destroyed 800 pieces of Russian equipment, and they were unable to conduct any mechanised offensives for six months.

So is that interfering in the war or not? I don't know. It doesn't seem like it, because it's an asymmetric idea that delivers rapid results without affecting the military's organisational structure in any way.

And this year, when I was defence minister, we carried out Operation Auchan 2 and destroyed 250 artillery systems. How did we arrive at the idea of that operation? We saw that casualties caused by artillery were increasing. So we developed specialised drones, worked with several military units, used cheap one-way drones, and we destroyed 250 pieces of artillery. As a result of that operation, our losses fell.

Is that interfering in the war? I don't know. We did it together with the military. It's not as though I sat in my office, came up with the operation on my own and carried it out myself. It was done together with effective units. That's precisely where our strength lies – in this network-centric approach.

We need to understand the role of the Defence Ministry as an institution at this stage of the war. To me, it should be like a platform – an effective partner that supports the very best. Your job is to constantly look for the best ideas and help implement them as quickly as possible together with the General Staff.

In this network-centric war, where units know better than anyone what needs to be done, you don't need to take over operational planning. Your job is to have a vision and, within that vision, support ideas that are developing fast and delivering results.

For example, a regimental commander comes to you and says: "Look, if you invest a certain amount of resources in this sector of Donetsk Oblast, I can reduce the pressure on the first line by fivefold." And we say: "Deal. We'll invest." That's it – the pressure eases. Result.

That was our role. If anything, I think the General Staff should appreciate that and act as a partner working alongside you.

Your critics also say that some companies received disproportionately large contracts through the Brave1 system. Did manufacturers ever approach you seeking to secure contracts outside that system?

It isn't possible to circumvent the e-points system. Manufacturers didn't approach me – they know me, and they know how the system works. Everything happens directly between the company and the military unit.

Besides, the e-points system is only one procurement mechanism. There are also direct government contracts, through which units receive a huge amount of drones.

What about those direct government contracts? Did anyone approach you regarding those?

During the first couple of months there were a few attempts to test the waters, but those were people who didn't know me yet. The ones who knew me didn't even bother.

Within two weeks we'd changed the approach to procurement. We came in and immediately changed it. After all, I'd been studying the Defence Ministry as a management system for four years. It's not as if I walked in thinking, "Right, how does this place work?"

We also succeeded in introducing competitive tenders for artillery procurement. We achieved savings of 16% on the first procurement – that's over US$100 million. A second tender worth US$2 billion is now underway. Thanks to competitive tendering, we cut the cost by US$1,000 per shell.

Every defence minister, particularly since the start of the full-scale invasion, has faced questions about their relationships with particular companies. Were there any companies that received a disproportionately large share of government contracts as a result of your decisions as defence minister?

I'll say it again: within two weeks of my taking office, we changed the rules of procurement. A ranking system was introduced, and the General Staff selected procurements based on that ranking. Our goal was to remove the human factor entirely and ensure that no official in either the Defence Ministry or the General Staff could influence which contracts were awarded.

Throughout my time as defence minister and minister of digital transformation, no company ever received any preferential treatment in order to secure a contract and achieve a particular outcome.

"Would I return as defence minister? 100%"

You've probably heard the claims that the protests taking place almost every day in Franko Square in Kyiv and the central squares of other Ukrainian cities are being paid for. I understand that this narrative is being actively pushed to the president as well.

Honestly, I don't know what's being pushed to the president. But I'm sure he doesn't believe that. It's usually either Russians or corrupt officials who think that sort of thing. I don't think any reasonable person could believe it. Anyone who does simply doesn't understand Ukrainian society.

We can see this narrative being extensively spread on Telegram channels, with various people being named as the sponsors of the "cardboard Maidan"...

That's just not how it works. Look, Trukha and other Telegram channels have been churning out stuff about me and the mobilisation reform every single day. But at the end of the day, we've seen tens of thousands of people at the protests who have a good grasp of the issues. Despite all that propaganda, they know exactly what's going on.

They're still just a passionate minority, Mykhailo.

I'm not convinced that's the case. I'm convinced there are millions of Ukrainians who aren't going out and protesting because they're working and getting on with their lives, but they know about these issues and understand exactly what's happening.

Our people are a lot wiser than some decision-makers give them credit for. So I don't believe this strategy can work. They can buy up every Telegram channel they like, they can open another thousand or even two thousand criminal cases – that's simply not how things work in this country. It always ends very badly for anyone who tries it.

Suppose President Volodymyr Zelenskyy comes back from his visit to the US, calls you into the President's Office and says, "Mykhailo, I've thought it over, and I think you should have another year to implement these reforms. Come back to the Ministry of Defence" – would you be willing to return?

One hundred per cent. What would I say, not only to the president, or even to myself, but to the active part of the public, which has made its position clear? There's no walking away from this situation anymore.

This is the second part of our interview with Mykhailo Fedorov. You can read the first part here.

Translated by Myroslava Zavadska and Anna Kybukevych

Edited by Teresa Pearce

Officially it was part of a broader government reshuffle, but questions were almost immediately raised. Was this really just a reshuffle, or was it the result of a conflict over the future of the Ukrainian armed forces, defence procurement, and the principles of managing the war?

Following his dismissal, Fedorov publicly stated that it was driven by resistance to his reforms at the Ministry of Defence and influence from groups that have no interest in the rules of the game changing in the defence sector.

He also declined the other positions President Zelenskyy offered him, saying he saw no point in taking on a role where he would have no real authority to influence the course of the war.

In this interview with Ukrainska Pravda, Fedorov opens up for the first time about how he learned of his dismissal and answers our questions about his conflict with the General Staff, the pressure surrounding defence procurement, and why he believes his reforms met with such strong resistance.

He also discusses the war plan his team developed at the Defence Ministry, the future of mobilisation reform, and his role following his departure from the ministry, and explains why he believes that today's key debates should focus not on personalities, but on the strategy for achieving victory.

"Half an hour or an hour before the faction meeting, I was told Klymenko was going to be nominated"

Let's start with the most important question. What was the real reason for your dismissal?

I'd rather not speculate about that or recount my conversations with the president. There was nothing in those discussions that hadn't already been said publicly. There's been a lot of talk about a conflict, but I actually think the reasons lay elsewhere.

There were a lot of people swarming around the Defence Ministry, and me as minister, because we'd started to overhaul a wide range of internal processes. Judging by what started happening in the public discourse – the pressure, the involvement of certain law enforcement agencies in our work – it became clear from around early April that tensions were rising. It was obvious that it would eventually lead to something.

The changes we were making to procurement, tenders, and the overall way these processes are organised made a lot of people very unhappy. They began constantly trying to exert influence and spread negative narratives, not only around the president but across the wider media space.

Is it true that many major weapons manufacturers, some of which may be linked in one way or another to influential political figures, have no interest in seeing a clear and transparent arms procurement market emerge?

I think that's entirely plausible. A great many people in this country have ties to defence businesses. There were a lot of different signals and a lot going on within the Defence Ministry.

I spent seven years working in government, and I could never have imagined that there would be people in the Defence Ministry who were effectively appointed by private companies to head departments. Or that elements of the law enforcement system would have influence over certain processes. That gives you an idea of just how deeply entrenched the problem has become.

I was never fighting a particular person or group of people. Our focus has always been on building systems.

Our goal was to tackle the root of the problem as quickly as possible. First, to introduce competitive tenders. Second, to rebuild the management system within the Defence Ministry and recruit people differently, based on the objectives we set when we came into office.

I regarded pressure from various sides as simply part of the process. The priority was to rebuild the foundations, and once that was done, the problem would resolve itself.

What form did that pressure actually take? How did people try to stop your reforms, and who was behind it? Ukrainska Pravda sources in political circles say that David Arakhamiia, the leader of Servant of the People, the president's parliamentary faction, actively represented the interests of certain weapons manufacturers.

I would rather not name specific individuals. There were no direct threats. Everyone knows me and knows where I stand on these issues. I think the fundamental problem is that far too many senior officials simply cannot imagine that someone could hold a high-ranking government position without having ties to the defence industry.

It is entirely possible to change the rules of the game, open up markets and help those markets develop without pursuing your own commercial interests within them. That problem of culture and values is influencing decision-making today.

Why do you think the president ultimately sided with those groups within the defence sector in this conflict?

We don't know the ultimate reason for my dismissal. I think that when 90% of people are coming to you [to President Zelenskyy – ed.] and saying, "Something isn't right there, there's a problem, he has his own interests," then it may become difficult to see the situation objectively under that kind of pressure.

But I warned the president back in April. I said: "Look, people are going to come and tell you that there's something wrong with me, that I have political ambitions, that I own drone companies, that I've disrupted certain processes, and so on. You need to cross-check those claims with me, because I've trodden on the toes of a lot of people and companies. I need your support here."

You can see that Ukraine's largest Telegram channels were effectively bought, and they began working exclusively against me and my team. Criminal cases started to appear involving people who worked with me. The pressure ratcheted up month after month. And under that kind of pressure, it became increasingly difficult to continue implementing the reforms.

In the end, we saw where it led: to a government reshuffle, and today I am no longer in office.

So you also believe that the government reshuffle served as a cover for your dismissal. Is that correct?

It certainly looks that way. Unfortunately we lost several highly capable managers as a result of the reshuffle, including [former PM] Yuliia Svyrydenko.

I spent seven years working as part of the president's team. Together we delivered a great many projects and reforms and worked systematically. The defence minister is appointed by the president. If I'd been asked to resign and the reasons had been explained to me, I would have done so without hesitation. I've never fought to keep a position. I never wanted to become a minister; it was never an ambition of mine. I'm a manager. I know how to build systems and ecosystems. What matters to me is delivering results.

How were you informed that you were being dismissed? Did you have a conversation with the president?

About half an hour, maybe an hour, before the parliamentary faction meeting, I was told that Klymenko was being nominated.

Was it the president who told you?

Yes.

And what reason did he give?

The conflict with the General Staff. I don't want to recount my conversation with the president; those discussions were private. And I have nothing new to add beyond that.

About this conflict between the Defence Ministry and the General Staff that the president has repeatedly referred to: if there really had been such a conflict, wouldn't it have undermined the military's ability to function effectively?

In reality, there was no personal conflict between me and the commander-in-chief [Oleksandr Syrskyi]. It was more of a difference in worldview. We both came into office with a particular vision of how the war should be fought. That vision is broken down into specific reforms, projects and operations that need to be implemented.

I presented that vision to the president even before I was appointed, I believe. I've been developing it since 2023, continually refining it. I then presented it to the commander-in-chief and the chief of the General Staff. We had more of an institutional conflict about how that vision should be implemented. There was also a cultural difference. Young leaders should be given more freedom, decisions should be made more quickly, and reforms that have already been started need to be seen through.

As the Ministry of Defence, we did not block a single decision made by the General Staff or the commander-in-chief. That was my position both as a citizen and as defence minister: that regardless of our differences in outlook, we should never obstruct the army's work. The military is fighting around the clock and it must be as effective as possible, even if I disagree with some of its decisions.

But the president has said publicly that you and the commander-in-chief would not sit down and speak without him being involved.

I don't know; I can't comment on that. Actually we had a great many meetings, briefings and phone calls. We were, of course, working together on a day-to-day basis.

Without the president?

Of course.

Given that the president's initial decision was to remove you and keep Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi in post, that suggests he chose Syrskyi over you. Why do you think that happened?

I think you'd have to ask the president that. I really don't want it to seem as though we're trying to invent explanations after the fact or find reasons that may not exist. Nor do I want it to look as though I'm fighting to get my job back simply for the sake of returning to office. That's what concerns me most.

There's been a lot of commentary in the media claiming that 'Fedorov issued an ultimatum.' I did no such thing. I left office together with the rest of the government. The protests only began afterwards.

I did a press briefing, and after that I was offered several positions. I simply said that I have a clear vision of what should happen next. Wherever I am, I will continue pursuing that vision, but I have no interest in holding a purely token position. I see myself as a manager who knows how to build systems and deliver results. If I don't see results, it's extremely demotivating for me.

So there was no ultimatum. I was offered positions, and I replied: "No thank you. I'll continue working in another capacity." But if I am needed to implement this vision for the war, then as defence minister I would be able to continue that work and deliver the results I set out to achieve.

Why do you think the role of deputy prime minister for defence, or deputy prime minister for wartime innovation, would not have been enough to implement your plans?

From my experience in government, I can tell the difference between roles with real authority and roles that are mostly ceremonial.

A deputy prime minister without a ministerial portfolio is essentially little more than an adviser. You can suggest how the system should work, but you don't get to build a team or influence the final result. You could find yourself in an institutional conflict with the ministries you're supposed to be overseeing because you have no say in who leads them. You could fundamentally disagree with the policies they are pursuing. In practice it's more of a symbolic role, and one that would not allow me to use my strengths effectively.

You worked alongside the president for seven years, so you probably have a clear understanding of how Volodymyr Zelenskyy makes decisions. Who do you think influenced him in this decision?

Honestly, I don't know. It could have been anyone.

The decision itself was not unexpected. I had discussed it with the president many times.

Before or after your dismissal?

Both. I would say to him: "Look, a decision will have to be made, and a certain company could lose, say, US$100 million because of it. There could be a backlash.

For example, we don't need short-range shells; we need long-range ones, because our troops need ammunition that can hit targets more than 30 km away. But some companies have already invested money or they've been promised that contracts or international framework agreements are going to be signed. That could create problems, including political ones. How should we proceed?"

He would say: "Follow your conscience. Do what you believe is right. There are no instructions – act as you see fit."

So I wouldn't say the president gave me specific instructions or was directly involved in anything...

And yet here you are.

It's not a bad place to be.

"The president and I never had a final conversation, and we didn't fall out"

Turning to your dismissal, was there an ultimatum from Syrskyi and the senior military leadership along the lines of "It's either us or Fedorov"? Have you heard anything about that?

Honestly, I haven't, no. There might have been, or there might not have.

Your most recent public statement was about your decision to turn down the job of deputy prime minister. You said that only three positions in the state truly have the power to shape decision-making and influence the course of the war: commander-in-chief, president and defence minister. Many people interpreted that as a political statement.

Are we right, then, to understand that you see the rest of the government as largely decorative? And do you not consider your remark political, as many people have read it, including in the President's Office?

No, I don't see it as a political statement. It was an explanation of how the military-political chain of command shapes events on the battlefield.

What's happening with your team now?

Some members of the team are still at the Defence Ministry. I have no intention of taking everyone with me and leaving the ministry unable to function.

Some are gradually leaving the ministry, some have stayed at the Ministry of Digital Transformation, some are working with me. It's an ongoing process – nothing has been finally settled yet.

The president and I never had a final conversation. We didn't fall out, and we didn't agree to cut off contact. As far as I'm concerned, communication remains open. The main thing is to make sure Ukraine comes out of this situation stronger.

We've seen how enthusiastically the Russians reacted to your dismissal.

They shouldn't celebrate just yet – it's much too soon for that. I'm going to keep hunting them in every sector and killing them on an industrial scale. Everything will be fine.

Your press briefing following your dismissal caused quite a stir. We know how President Zelenskyy views members of his team speaking to the public. Did you discuss the terms of your departure with him – for example, whether you should avoid speaking publicly, holding press events or raising certain issues, including your disagreements with Oleksandr Syrskyi?

No, we didn't talk about that. The president knew I intended to hold the briefing. The point of it was to explain what we had achieved, point out the problems that remain and warn of the risks. And I think the fact that a new commander-in-chief has been appointed is a major victory for an engaged civil society. The Armed Forces now have renewed hope. A leader and a team with a different organisational culture have taken charge, and I am convinced this is exactly the kind of environment in which real leaders can emerge and develop.

It is a significant opportunity, and it must be seized. But there also needs to be a clear vision of what has to be done to make the Defence Ministry fully functional.

Did you propose Mykhailo Drapatyi to the president as a candidate for commander-in-chief?

My main recommendation was that the president meet a wide range of commanders – corps commanders and perhaps even brigade commanders and the heads of troop groupings – assess them personally, and make the decision himself. I did put Drapatyi's name forward. But there was, shall we say, a broader framework that still needs to be worked through: the overall approach, the structure and the specific people involved. That said, it's no secret that Drapatyi and I have worked together before and are closely aligned in terms of our values and organisational culture.

Many people are now saying that Drapatyi may struggle to achieve much without a dedicated structure around him to support him and reinforce his authority. They also argue that the structure will only work if certain other people are appointed to key posts.

Do you not think that in the current circumstances, replacing Syrskyi with Drapatyi will not be enough to counter the enemy effectively?

I think this conversation needs to be taken to a completely different level. Right now everyone is talking about certain people and the relationships between them. We should be talking about the plan. What do we want to achieve? What are our objectives, our vision? Organisational structures and specific people should always be chosen to serve a specific plan and vision.

When we arrived at the Defence Ministry, we had a clear vision: to force Russia towards peace through asymmetric action while preserving Ukraine's human capital. That vision did not depend on "black swan" events or partners that might step in tomorrow. It was based on the principle that we have to rely on ourselves.

In the air, the objective is to intercept as many threats as possible. To do that we need to build layered short-range air defence and systems that can identify every asset, and ultimately seize the initiative in the air. That's why Pavlo Yelizarov was brought into the Air Force and why we began strengthening short-range air defence. That's the air domain.

On land, the priority is to halt the enemy's advance. We need to inflict 200+ Russian casualties for every square kilometre they capture; at that rate, it would take them years to occupy the whole of Donetsk Oblast. We need to complete the corps reform, resolve the mobilisation problem, and continue to inflict the highest possible losses on Russian forces – up to 50,000 [a month] – while using technology to replace as many of our people on the battlefield as possible.

And the economic dimension, what the president calls "long-range sanctions": developing the technologies needed to achieve that result, targeting Russia's shadow fleet and imposing broader sanctions on the Russian economy as a whole.

And then there's cognitive warfare, which has now become a separate domain in its own right.

There is a document setting out the final vision, which rests on four essential pillars.

The first is building win-win relationships with our partners. That is why we've opened up our data for AI testing and have been providing weekly updates on our battlefield results – so that our partners would buy into the vision and stay committed to moving forward with us.

The second is staying ahead of Russia in every technological cycle. Disabling Russian Starlink terminals, for example, set them back years, because they currently have no comparable battlefield alternative. Or creating a jet-powered interceptor drone to engage fast-moving aerial targets.

The third is comprehensive digitisation. We can now track in real time how drones are operating, how many Russian troops are being killed per square kilometre, and how effective our defences are against Shahed-type attack drones, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles.

The fourth is fighting corruption. Unless inclusive institutions are built, strengthened and protected, corruption could undermine every other part of the war plan.

Out of everything you've just described, which element is now most at risk after your dismissal? Which reform is most likely to be abandoned?

It's hard to say. It depends who the next defence minister is.

For now, Yevhen Khmara is in place.

What became clear to me through my conversations with Yevhen, and with partners from various countries, is that you have to have a coherent vision of the war: what needs to be done, how the Russians can be defeated, how the war can be ended.

Secondly, you need a team – around 100 new people, at least, need to be brought into the Defence Ministry. A lot of people need to be replaced because the ministry still includes representatives of private companies, law enforcement agencies, and people who simply shouldn't be there. There are many highly capable professionals there too, but the organisational structure itself needs a comprehensive overhaul. We changed it three or four times in just six months.

You have to be able to change the rules of the game and adopt regulations. We've reached a point where we've started adopting three or four regulations a week, and they are fundamental. For example, opening up the private air defence market or opening up military service to foreign nationals, creating entirely new rules of the game.

By the way, something we didn't manage to do which I think the Defence Ministry should follow through on, is paying drone operators real money, straight into their bank accounts, for every Russian they kill. In other words, monetising e-points [earned by Ukrainian units for confirmed strikes on Russian soldiers and equipment – ed.] into cash payments for the operators, because we've now introduced high salaries for assault troops and infantry, but there is a problem with pay for UAV operators.

"Parliament removed me as defence minister, but it can't take away my vision or my ideas about what should happen next"

In your view, does the current structure have any kind of plan, even a temporary one? Because this is extremely important for everyone. Or will they implement your plan?

I think there are definitely discussions about a plan now. This has become a public debate. Ukrainians are incredibly wise people. I honestly didn't expect so many Ukrainians to understand, in such detail, what we're doing and that we actually have a plan.

And why is that important?

We never presented it publicly or spoke about the details. But so many Ukrainians understood that the plan existed, that we have managed to seize the initiative not simply because of the weather or the season, but because of specific actions taken according to that plan – and that the plan is now under threat.

That's why I don't think the Ukrainian public will let things move in a different direction now. The level of public engagement is a positive sign that our state institutions have started to falter.

I think our shared task is to emerge from the situation we're in today with an understanding that parliament needs to engage more with citizens and fulfil its responsibilities. We need a plan, and it needs to be updated. Perhaps the new team will come up with an even better plan, and that would be great.

Do you actually believe that?

I believe in Ukrainians. I believe anything is possible. Even the discussion we're having today is really about why we need a plan. Because the plan will determine who should be appointed, how everything will function going forward, and how society will be able to track the results.

Right now, the war plan has become part of politics, because the decision on how to protect the regions lies with both the local authorities and the central government. We face a number of challenges that need to be addressed, and not all the decisions are for the government to make. For example, there needs to be a dedicated fund to protect frontline regions. That also requires decisions by the local authorities.

So one of the aims of our conversation today, at least for me personally, is to talk about why the plan matters, why it needs to be updated, and why we need to keep moving forward. I'm certain that one way or another, there will continue to be discussions around it.

My team and I will definitely continue working on updating this plan and implementing it, wherever we are and whatever tools we have at our disposal.

In what way?

There are various tools. I think this will become clearer once we've finished our discussions with the president about the current situation. I believe we've come a long way together, and what is happening now – and what will happen next – depends, among other things, on how those discussions conclude. We'll see what comes next. But there are many tools. I've been approached by major international foundations, and by defence ministers as well.

We know the Italian defence minister offered you a role as an adviser, for example.

There are so many opportunities in Ukraine right now – to work, to teach, to establish innovation funds... One thing I can say for sure is that I'll stay in Ukraine. I won't go and work in another country. And I can also say for sure that whatever I do next will be connected with implementing this war plan.

I might focus on one particular domain within the plan, or on a specific technology that I believe has the potential to change the battlefield, and work on developing that technology. But I simply no longer have the moral right to do something unrelated, to leave Ukraine, or to walk away from everything we've been working on.

I have a good, effective team, and I know what needs to be done next. Parliament removed me as defence minister, but it can't take away my vision or my ideas about what should happen next.

During your meetings with the president, did you spend more time discussing the war or the political crisis that has unfolded?

You're determined to find out what happened there.

We don't have the opportunity to ask the president these questions, but we do have the opportunity to ask you, so we can't pass it up.

I don't want to repeat myself. The conversations I had with the president, despite their obvious public importance, were conversations between the two of us. I'd like them to stay that way.

But are we right in understanding that you don't consider that door to be completely closed? That there's still room for dialogue?

That may be my personal view, but our conversations didn't end with a final conclusion. That's why I believe that, in the interests of our country, we need to find the right way out of this situation.

"We need to look at mobilisation as a funnel"

Let's talk about mobilisation reform. To what extent do you think the criticism directed at you over it is justified, and what is the main problem?

I think mobilisation should be viewed as a funnel. At the end of that funnel is the final product – military service. That includes service conditions, length of service, pay, opportunities for career progression within the armed forces – in other words, a wide range of incentives and motivations that encourage people both to join the military and to stay there.

After all, Ukrainians are fighting for their freedom. In 2022 we saw hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians volunteer to fight without any terms and conditions, incentives or financial motivation. They did so because they wanted to defend their country. So we need to go on giving Ukrainians freedom and a sense of fairness within the armed forces.

Mobilisation is just one stage in that funnel – it's simply a process by which people enter the military. But people don't join, because either they don't want to or they're afraid of dying. That's a natural fear. We need to explain that not everyone who joins the armed forces dies, and that there are different ways to serve.

That's why we've opened up recruitment to foreign nationals. I believe that 50% of frontline service members or assault troops could be foreign citizens. We're already seeing this on the Zaporizhzhia front: large numbers of soldiers from African countries are fighting for the Russian Federation. In some sectors of the front, they even outnumber Russian troops. So opening the market to foreign nationals is one direction we can move in.

Secondly, we've increased pay for assault troops and infantry. Starting next month, they will begin receiving the US$7,000 [per month] we announced.

We've also made a number of other changes, such as allowing transfers within a corps. In other words, we started by improving the most important part of the system in order to fix mobilisation as a whole.

The next step is to introduce fixed durations of service and contracts, and we've already done that. We made several mistakes in the way we rolled these changes out. We should have engaged more with the public and opened up these reforms for public discussion. We can see that people are tired of so many decisions being made behind closed doors. We should have published the reform plan and said: let's discuss it with different expert groups.

We have everything we need to ensure that a Ukrainian who joins the armed forces feels free, is treated with dignity, understands their path within the military, and knows how the military is protecting them and fighting for their life. We've started analysing how we are losing personnel and what the underlying causes are.

Only then do we come to mobilisation itself. We had a clear vision of what needed to be done, who should be responsible for it, and how to build the right recruitment pool – how to identify exactly who we need and how to work with those people. I don't want to spoil anything now because I'm confident this reform will continue. I'll leave it to those who will implement it to present and explain it.

How long do you think it will take to implement?

Our goal was to present it in July and launch it in August so that by September this problem would no longer exist. That was the timeline. I presented it to MPs, and I believe I spoke about it publicly as well.

I know discussions on this reform are continuing within the Defence Ministry, and there will now be new appointments. The deputy minister who will be responsible for it – someone I wanted to appoint but didn't have time to – will continue to work on it. So I hope this reform will move forward.

Was the criticism justified? I think it probably was. Because the very conditions of military service – an awful lot of things – had to be changed in the space of six months. And you're working within a system that's doing all it can to ensure those changes don't happen. Now that system has been broken, and there is finally an opportunity to implement them.

When you say "the system", who do you mean?

I mean the system as a whole. The culture within it.

Do you think it has been broken now?

I think Drapatyi now has every opportunity to implement the asymmetric ideas for transforming the armed forces that we started. He has the opportunity to keep driving those changes forward.

For the first time, we've introduced fixed durations of service, deferments, and a number of other measures. Now these need to be fully embedded through the military's internal regulations so that service personnel can begin signing contracts.

This is the first part of our extensive interview with Mykhailo Fedorov. The second part will be published soon.

Sevgil Musaieva, Mykhailo Tkach

Translated by: Myroslava Zavadska, Ganna Bryedova and Anna Kybukevych

Edited by: Teresa Pearce

It wasn't the first time she had walked out of the President's Office in tears. In late 2020, at the very beginning of her rise within Volodymyr Zelenskyy's team, Andrii Yermak, then head of the President's Office, decided to appoint Svyrydenko as his deputy for economic affairs. At the time she was little more than the "seventh deputy minister" under then-economy minister Tymofii Mylovanov. An interview with Oleh Tatarov and whatever was in his notorious "folder" [a dossier containing compromising material – ed.] proved to be a deeply distressing experience for her. [Oleh Tatarov is the deputy head of the President's Office who oversees law enforcement coordination and has long been regarded as one of Ukraine's most influential officials. A former Interior Ministry official under President Viktor Yanukovych, he remains a controversial figure because of past corruption allegations (which he denies) and his perceived influence over Ukraine's law enforcement agencies. Svyrydenko was deeply upset during her 2020 interview with Tatarov, reportedly because of the contents of the dossier that was presented to her before she was appointed as a deputy head of the President's Office – ed.]

Nearly six years have passed since then. Svyrydenko climbed to the very top of Ukraine's government hierarchy, yet even that wasn't enough to protect her. Her years of devoted service to Zelenskyy, finding ways to implement even his most populist ideas, did not earn the prime minister even the courtesy of a proper explanation for her dismissal.

"The president simply presented Yuliia with a fait accompli: you're leaving. She was deeply hurt," recollects one senior member of the governing team, describing the final meeting between the president and the former PM. "There were no obvious reasons to remove her from the Cabinet. She'd spent a year working tirelessly, finding the money for the one-off payments programmes, doing everything that was asked of her, only for the president to tell her: 'Time to go.'"

And so Yuliia Svyrydenko's nearly year-long tenure came to an end. It has to be said, it was the sort of year you wouldn't wish on your worst political enemy. Her very first week saw the shocking scandal surrounding the attack on the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the "cardboard Maidan" protests. That was followed by an autumn overshadowed by the Mindich tapes scandal (Operation Midas) and Russia's overwhelming advantage on the battlefield. Then came Ukraine's most difficult winter on record as relentless Russian attacks crippled the country's energy infrastructure.

By a twist of fate, when Svyrydenko passed the baton to Serhii Koretskyi, it was once again against the backdrop of demonstrators chanting slogans and holding cardboard signs.

The new Cabinet has entered its first weeks in office amid a major political scandal, mass protests, and growing tensions with Ukraine's international partners.

Last year President Zelenskyy, encouraged by members of his inner circle who themselves faced potential scrutiny from NABU and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO), "authorised" the attack on Ukraine's anti-corruption institutions. Now it was largely that same circle of trusted advisers who convinced the president to dismiss Svyrydenko's government in order to get rid of the increasingly troublesome defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov. In their view, Fedorov had become too aggressive in excluding shadowy industrial groups from defence procurement contracts and was, as they put it, "clearly playing politics".

The wave of public protests and an unusually candid press briefing by Fedorov generated such a powerful media reaction that the appointment of the new government and the start of its work went almost unnoticed. Although Prime Minister Koretskyi had no involvement in the decision to dismiss the popular defence minister, his government's performance is now being judged largely through the prism of the conflict surrounding the Defence Ministry.

That is not entirely fair, however, because this will be far from the only challenge facing the new administration.

Ukrainska Pravda has already examined the causes, key players and consequences of the Defence Ministry scandal. In this article, we take a look at the main challenges confronting Koretskyi's government and consider who is likely to influence the new prime minister and how his strengths and weaknesses will shape the work of his government.

The president's choice

Koretskyi's appointment is perhaps the first clear sign of a development that many within the corridors of power had anticipated with a degree of apprehension: the president has begun selecting people on his own, without advice from anyone else.

Zelenskyy's first prime minister, Oleksii Honcharuk, was brought into the team by Andrii Bohdan, then head of the President's Office; Denys Shmyhal became PM with the backing of Davyd Arakhamiia, leader of Zelenskyy's parliamentary faction; Yuliia Svyrydenko owed her appointment to the active support of Andrii Yermak. Koretskyi is the first prime minister chosen entirely by Zelenskyy.

"This was his choice. Recently, the president and the first lady have taken a number of young and promising public-sector managers under their wing. They've been working with them on various projects and, so to speak, keeping a close eye on them," one senior member of the president's team, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Ukrainska Pravda.

According to the source, Koretskyi was one of those managers. For quite some time, the president had been observing how the CEO of first Ukrnafta and later Naftogaz responded to challenges, the decisions he made, and the projects he put forward.

"This is actually the first prime minister whom nobody lobbied into the job," another Ukrainska Pravda source close to the president explained. "He's genuinely a CEO hired from the market whom the president personally selected. Koretskyi is a pure technocrat who suited everyone precisely because he wasn't aligned with any particular group."

Of course, Zelenskyy also approved every previous prime minister and every member of the Cabinet, and exercised direct influence over each of them. Nevertheless, Koretskyi's appointment is unique.

For the first time, Ukraine has a prime minister with no background in politics whatsoever. There is a certain paradox in that.

The Cabinet of Ministers is, above all, a political body. The role of a government is to implement the programme of the political parties that formed the governing coalition, relying on a politically neutral civil service and state bureaucracy to do so.

Yet in the seventh year of Zelenskyy's presidency and the term of the current parliament, Ukraine has a prime minister who is not merely unaffiliated with the ruling majority but has no connection to politics at all.

That's neither good nor bad, just a statement of the current situation. In effect, the Cabinet has evolved into a presidential executive body that is formally endorsed through parliamentary voting.

"What we have now is essentially a client – or owner, if you like – in the form of the president, and a hired CEO serving as prime minister. That's the model we're operating under now," is how one influential member of the Servant of the People party summed up the situation.

It's important to understand this in order to appreciate another noteworthy aspect of Koretskyi's appointment: the new prime minister has virtually no team of his own within the government.

"He's the first truly corporate prime minister. He's coming into government with just one person of his own [the economy minister – ed.] who he was allowed to bring with him. But when a CEO joins a company, they don't arrive with 15 new board members. They work with the team that's already there. And it's their job to build relationships to ensure that the organisation functions and delivers results," a government source told Ukrainska Pravda, explaining the new governing philosophy.

Like Koretskyi, Yuliia Svyrydenko did not appear to have strong personal political ambitions. But she was very much a product of Ukraine's civil service, having worked her way up through every level – from deputy regional governor to positions in the ministry and the President's Office – before eventually becoming prime minister.

Koretskyi, by contrast, is entering the system of government for the first time and going straight into its highest level.

On the one hand, this gives him an opportunity to introduce a genuinely corporate management culture into public administration, if only because he has never worked within the traditional bureaucratic culture and is therefore not shaped by it.

On the other hand, that corporate background could prove to be his greatest vulnerability.

After all, a government is not a company. A state is about far more than profit, efficiency or dividends. Like it or not, the office of prime minister is an inherently political one.

"The prime minister has already changed the atmosphere inside the Cabinet considerably," one long-serving Cabinet official observed. "Unlike Svyrydenko, he works with almost no emotion at all – it's pure pragmatism and a cool-headed approach. He assigns tasks, hears about problems and proposes solutions. That's how he's used to working in the corporate world. But he's in for a shock when he discovers that some of his instructions simply won't be carried out and will vanish into the labyrinths of bureaucracy. In a company, he'd just dismiss those managers and hire new ones. He can't do that in government, because ministers are appointed by parliament, not by him."

Last week the new prime minister reportedly had a lengthy conversation about precisely this issue with Ruslan Stefanchuk, Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada.

According to Ukrainska Pravda sources who witnessed the meeting, one of the speaker's main pieces of advice for Koretskyi was to find an experienced and capable lawyer as soon as possible.

"Koretskyi urgently needs someone he trusts who can tell him, professionally and honestly: this can be done, this can't, this needs to be handled differently, and this isn't worth getting involved in at all," a parliamentary source familiar with the conversation told Ukrainska Pravda. "The prime minister is only just beginning to grasp the scale of the system. Before long, that realisation may turn into genuine astonishment at just how vast the whole machine really is."

Sources close to the prime minister insist that he understands the importance of maintaining control over the system.

"He will definitely preserve everything that is working effectively. Where something needs strengthening – or, conversely, removing – he won't hesitate to make quick decisions," a member of Koretskyi's team said.

For now, the Cabinet Secretariat remains staffed by the team that served under Yuliia Svyrydenko. Meanwhile, Koretskyi has assembled a small circle of economists and advisers, including former deputy economy minister Denys Kudin and former MP Oleksii Riabchyn, who worked with him in the energy sector, have government experience, and could potentially join his team.

"Koretskyi builds strong teams fairly quickly. He has a clear set of criteria by which he assesses people and decides who to trust: professionalism, integrity and accountability. Each minister is expected to deliver results in their own area. If they don't, heads will roll," a source close to Koretskyi's team told Ukrainska Pravda confidently.

"When Shmyhal became prime minister, he too arrived with almost no people of his own in government," one senior member of the president's team told Ukrainska Pravda. "Yet within a few months he managed to put together a more or less united team, winning some people over personally and others through the machinery of government. A prime minister's formal powers are limited, but most government business still passes through that office, and that gives you leverage."

In other words, Koretskyi does have tools with which he can try to persuade a politically diverse group of ministers – many of whom barely know him – to implement the priority objectives set out in the government's programme.

Which brings us to the programme itself. The second piece of advice Stefanchuk reportedly gave the new prime minister was to draw up a concise but specific government programme as quickly as possible, submit it to parliament, and secure enough votes for its approval. Koretskyi himself announced during his first few days in office that ministries had already been instructed to submit proposals for a new programme of action.

Speaking to Ukrainska Pravda, Koretskyi said he had already set a clear timeline.

"The government's programme will be submitted to the Verkhovna Rada within 30 days. During my first week in office, I instructed all ministries to prepare their proposals. They are now being reviewed. We expect to complete the internal drafting process by 5 August and submit the document to the Cabinet for approval. Each policy area will include three to five clearly defined priorities, with specific deadlines, responsible officials and measurable outcomes," the prime minister said.

First of all, the programme will give both politicians and the public at least a rough idea of what the change of prime minister is meant to achieve and what to expect from the new Cabinet.

Secondly, parliamentary approval will grant the government a year of immunity from dismissal, providing at least a degree of stability and predictability. Svyrydenko's experience (her programme was submitted late and never approved) has demonstrated that such guarantees are far from meaningless.

Ukrainska Pravda has also learned that Koretskyi has decided to place particular emphasis on the relationship with parliament right from the start. Every member of the Cabinet received a signed letter from him instructing them to significantly improve communication with the Verkhovna Rada.

"The prime minister has already introduced new rules for ministers. They are now required to present government bills in person, attend key parliamentary sessions, work actively with the relevant committees, and ensure MPs are invited to attend government meetings and join regional working visits," sources in Koretskyi's team explained to Ukrainska Pravda.

A baptism of fire

Even before the new Cabinet was approved, it was clear just how difficult its job would be.

To understand the level of tension around the process, it is worth noting that on the very day the coalition approved its nominations and parliament convened to vote on the new Cabinet, some MPs began receiving calls from influential people in various state-owned institutions urging them either to withdraw the submission or vote it down.

It was a last-minute attempt by acting Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko and his allies in government to replace the coalition's nominee for interior minister – National Police chief Ivan Vyhivskyi – with Klymenko.

Within the space of a single day, Klymenko unexpectedly found himself pushed out of the political process despite having been regarded as a relatively successful minister.

The most shocking part for Klymenko, however, was that the issue was not his own performance, but his refusal to get involved in the biggest political scandal of recent months – the attempt to oust Mykhailo Fedorov as defence minister.

Ukrainska Pravda has already reported on the reasons behind the conflict within the Defence Ministry. The key point here is that as the new government enters the critical autumn and winter phase of the war, it will have no appointed defence or foreign ministers for at least a month (!), since parliament is not expected to reconvene until 18 August.

This can safely be described as one of the Cabinet's greatest challenges – and certainly its most pressing.

Although President Zelenskyy has repeatedly insisted in interviews that the reshuffle was intended to improve cooperation between the government and the armed forces, in its current form those "improvements" could prove disastrous.

Defence procurement and technological development operate on timelines measured in months. Any missed opportunities to purchase equipment today will have appalling consequences in two, three or four months' time – just as winter approaches.

Over the past six months, Fedorov has carried out a comprehensive overhaul of both planning and procurement at the Defence Ministry. The system had only just started to adapt to these new principles. No one knows how those reforms will now proceed.

What will happen to the ongoing weapons tenders, the new procurement evaluation procedures, arms exports, governance reforms, the recruitment of foreign nationals, mobilisation, the new contracts, pay rises, and the many other initiatives already launched? No one has any answers.

One of the country's key institutions, on which Ukraine's very survival as a state depends, has effectively been left in limbo.

The defence minister is appointed under the president's quota, so the prime minister is unlikely to have any direct influence over the appointment. Yet any future failures in the defence sector will inevitably reflect on the PM as well.

Koretskyi's own team is aware of these risks. Sources close to the new prime minister say their immediate priority is to "ensure there is no interruption whatsoever in the work of the defence sector and maintain continuity across all ongoing processes".

Whoever becomes defence minister – even someone as distinguished a combat officer as Yevhen Khmara – will inevitably face a huge range of issues requiring an entirely different skillset once they assume political office.

Being appointed minister doesn't automatically come with an understanding of the bureaucracy, the defence industry, procurement procedures, cooperation with manufacturers and international partners, and dozens of other complexities.

Learning about all that takes time. And time is not on Ukraine's side.

The second major challenge facing the new PM and his Cabinet was outlined by Zelenskyy himself in the run-up to the government reshuffle: getting Ukraine's energy sector and regions ready for winter.

The President's Office clearly recognises now that the rapid elections it had at one stage been discussing and preparing for are not feasible. Neither Valerii Zaluzhnyi nor Kyrylo Budanov was willing to withdraw from consideration.

Moreover, the heavy-handed attempt to remove Fedorov has done nothing to diminish the number of potential candidates capable of challenging Zelenskyy – if anything, it's increased.

As a result, elections have receded into the background, and another scenario has become increasingly apparent: the war will grind on, extending, at the very least, into the autumn and winter.

For the past month, Russian forces have been systematically attacking petrol stations, storage facilities and energy infrastructure. Through missile and drone strikes, they are attempting to undermine Ukraine's ability to sustain normal life both along the front line and deep in the rear.

So protecting the energy system and preparing for the heating season will be among the government's top priorities. But first the country has to make it to winter. And every week the Russians present new – and increasingly serious – challenges.

"We have already begun a comprehensive audit of the implementation of the Resilience Plan," a source in Koretskyi's team told Ukrainska Pravda. "Unfortunately we can see a number of significant shortcomings that need to be promptly addressed. By the end of this week we'll have a complete picture for every region: what's been done, where there are still gaps, and which decisions need to be taken as a matter of urgency."

Another major challenge already facing Koretskyi's Cabinet is Russia's attempt to use missile and drone strikes to disrupt the operation of Ukraine's ports.

The most important period of the year for Ukrainian exports – the grain harvest – has now begun.

If Russia succeeds in significantly restricting grain exports, simultaneously destroying grain elevators and other storage facilities, Ukraine could face a major economic crisis.

This would deprive the country of substantial foreign currency earnings and export revenues. Domestically, the resulting shortage of foreign currency could trigger a sharp depreciation of the hryvnia and a surge in prices.

"The situation is objectively difficult, but the government is already working on diversification. Diplomatic efforts are ongoing. Most importantly, our military continues its work," a source in Koretskyi's team assured Ukrainska Pravda.

The new PM will have to tackle all these problems right off the bat – and, for the time being, without a defence minister.

***

"Serhii is very thoughtful and perceptive as a manager," one senior executive who used to work with Koretskyi in the energy sector says of the new PM. "He has a talent for quickly grasping the essence of a problem. He tries to listen to everyone, gather as much input as possible, weigh it up carefully, and only then make a decision.

He takes time to analyse things, but ultimately seeks the most effective and optimal solution.

In the corporate world that has always been a strength, because it helps avoid impulsive decisions that can prove costly for a company. In politics, however, this approach may turn out to be a weakness. Politics often demands instant decisions.

They may turn out to be wrong. They can be revised, adjusted or even reversed later. But the response itself has to be swift," the source adds.

It's hard to disagree with that. Ukraine's political history has seen more than a few instances where delaying a decision by a day – or even just a few hours – came at a very high cost.

Political leadership is rarely like running a company, where there are long-established corporate procedures that provide a framework for decision-making. Politics demands decisiveness, a willingness to take risks, and the ability to act asymmetrically.

"Koretskyi is a very creative person," one senior member of the president's team told Ukrainska Pravda. "The ideas he's been putting forward so far are quite bold. We'll just have to see how well Serhii will cope with the bureaucratic hierarchy, which has clipped the wings of more than one bold reformer. Quite literally, everything will depend on that."

Roman Romaniuk, Ukrainska Pravda

Translated by Myroslava Zavadska

Edited by Teresa Pearce

While the company's founder, billionaire Tatyana Kim, has portrayed the attacks as targeting "regular people", and Wildberries sellers have complained about financial losses and strikes on "civilian sites", the marketplace has long been a major player in supporting both the Russian military and the country's wider economy – supplying everything from body armour, combat helmets and fibre-optic cable for drones to helping circumvent Western sanctions.

How did Wildberries grow into Russia's equivalent of Amazon? Why are the strikes on its logistics centres being described as retaliation for attacks on Nova Poshta (Nova Post), Ukraine's largest private postal operator? And what is the estimated scale of the damage?

What happened

On the night of 17-18 July, Ukraine began carrying out drone strikes on Wildberries logistics centres. Warehouses in Kotovsk (Tambov Oblast) and Elektrostal near Moscow were hit. Fires broke out, and the company reported that eight people had been killed.

The targets were not chosen randomly. Wildberries has described its more than 360,000-square-metre warehouse in Elektrostal as its largest and most technologically advanced logistics centre. It was there that Tatyana Kim gave an interview to the Kremlin-aligned news outlet Vedomosti in October 2024, boasting about testing autonomous transport vehicles to make deliveries between warehouse buildings.

The warehouse in Kotovsk, which opened in May 2025, was a key logistics hub for Russia's Central Federal District and stored up to 54 million items.

On the night of 21-22 July, Ukrainian drones struck Wildberries warehouses for a second time. This time, major logistics centres in Krasnodar and Nevinnomyssk in Stavropol Krai were targeted, with large fires breaking out at both sites.

The Krasnodar hub is also one of the largest in the Wildberries network, covering around 150,000 sq m. The logistics centre in Nevinnomyssk is smaller but is likewise considered one of the company's key facilities.

Why Ukraine is targeting Wildberries facilities

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the question following the first wave of attacks on 18 July. He described the "long-range sanctions" against warehouses in Moscow and Tambov oblasts as a response to Russian attacks on Ukraine's civilian infrastructure.

The president was likely referring to Russia's repeated strikes on Nova Poshta terminals. On 18 July, the Financial Times' Kyiv correspondent Christopher Miller, citing a senior Ukrainian official, said that the attacks on Wildberries were retaliation for the strikes on Nova Poshta.

"It has been a terrible night, with terrible events for our company and our country. It is a pain that cannot be described in words. There are simply no words to express the feelings and emotions caused by attacks on ordinary people, on our employees, on all of us who are simply doing our jobs," Wildberries owner Tatyana Kim wrote after the second attack.

However, her claim that the attacks are targeting ordinary people with no connection to the war is a blatant manipulation. In reality, the warehouses in Moscow and Tambov oblasts were used to supply sanctioned components for the production of drones and navigation equipment, Zelenskyy stressed.

The logistics centres in Krasnodar Krai and Stavropol Krai were also involved in supplying the Russian military with drone components, navigation equipment and military gear, the president said.

Wildberries openly sells goods used in the war, including body armour, camouflage uniforms and fibre-optic cable for drones.

Although many Russians have reacted angrily on social media, claiming the strikes targeted "civilian sites" as if Russia itself does not strike residential buildings in Ukrainian cities every day, experts agree that Wildberries warehouses are legitimate military targets. Among the goods destroyed in the fires were numerous military-use items purchased independently by Russian servicemen and their family members.

Serhii Kuzan, head of the Ukrainian Centre for Security and Cooperation, described Wildberries as "a vital component" of Russia's logistics network.

"The rationale for striking Wildberries warehouses is to disrupt Russian logistics and the supply of dual-use goods, critical electronics and sanctioned products to the Russian military and defence manufacturers," he explained.

According to Kuzan, such strikes could have a significant impact on the Russian economy while also producing a psychological effect on Russian society and its support for the war.

Wildberries launched operations in Ukraine in autumn 2020 but immediately came under criticism. T-shirts bearing Vladimir Putin's portrait, as well as clothing displaying Russian police and Airborne Forces (also known as VDV) insignia, were found on its website, prompting Ukraine's Ministry of Culture to propose sanctions. Restrictions against the marketplace and its founders were introduced in 2021.

In 2026, WB Bank, which is controlled by the company, was sanctioned by both the UK and the European Union. "The sanctions target financial networks that help circumvent Western sanctions and support military procurement," the UK government said.

The marketplace also has close ties to the Kremlin. In the summer of 2024, Wildberries merged with the outdoor advertising operator Russ. The merger received Vladimir Putin's personal approval, with the stated aim of creating a global competitor to Amazon, Alibaba and Google.

Moreover, the divorce of co-founders Vladislav Bakalchuk (who held a 1% stake) and Tatyana Kim (99%), along with the corporate conflict between them, escalated into a battle for control of the business, complete with shoot-outs in Moscow between two Putin-aligned clans – Chechen and Dagestani.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the Head of Chechnya, who had defended Bokalchuk's interests and his own concealed investments in the company, has lost. Control passed to Dagestani senator Suleiman Kerimov, who has repeatedly been described as one of Putin's "wallets".

The Kremlin leader praised the marketplace, while Kim publicly thanked him "for his high praise of Wildberries' work".

Losses from the strikes

According to initial estimates, losses incurred by Wildberries and its sellers after the first strikes exceeded RUB 100 billion (US$1.28 billion). Up to 15% of the company's warehouse facilities may have been affected.

Under revised estimates, repairing the warehouses after the initial attacks could cost Wildberries RUB 22-36 billion (up to US$400 million). The total value of goods lost by sellers is estimated at RUB 150-235 billion (up to US$2.5 billion). Following the strikes on 22 July, this figure is likely to increase by a further RUB 100-120 billion (up to US$1.5 billion).

Formally, however, Wildberries is not obliged to compensate sellers for these losses. From 7 July, apparently in preparation for such a scenario, the company amended its terms of cooperation. Under the new rules, the marketplace is exempt from liability for goods damaged as a result of "force majeure". This category includes not only drone attacks but also any destruction caused by any type of weaponry or military equipment.

After the first attack, Kim wrote that the company was nevertheless "working out the amounts of compensation for sellers and other financial support measures". However, Russian social media was flooded with posts along the lines of "What did we do to deserve this?" and fears of not receiving the promised compensation.

"Another illusion has disappeared – that someone will protect entrepreneurs. The risks are being shifted onto us. The losses are becoming ours too. It will only get worse," – Russian social media is rife with posts like this .

On 22 July, Wildberries did eventually promise to compensate sellers for the value of goods that had been destroyed by fire. However, it did not specify how the payments would be calculated or when the money would be paid, merely stating that this would happen "as soon as possible".

Loans, Rosneft and a beautiful fairy tale: how Wildberries became the 'Russian Amazon'

"Autumn 2004. Rain. Tatyana Bakalchuk, an English teacher, travels across the whole of Moscow by public transport – metro, bus, ten minutes on foot – to collect yet another 20-kilogram parcel of clothing." This is how the first detailed feature on Wildberries in Russian Forbes began in 2012. At that time, the online store had already been operating for nine years and had just overtaken Ozon.ru, Russia's oldest online retailer, in popularity.

Through rare interviews, the marketplace's co-founder promoted a compelling narrative: that she had built the business from scratch without start-up capital, experience, partners or state support, ultimately becoming only the second businesswoman in Russian history to amass a fortune exceeding US$1 billion. In reality, things were quite different.

When Tatyana decided to launch the online store, her husband Vladislav was in fact already a successful businessman, and the Wildberries website – for which, it was claimed, there was barely enough funding – was created by his company.

Bakalchuk went into business in the late 1990s, initially trading in computers. In 2002, at the age of 25, he co-founded the internet provider UTech with a partner; within five years it was serving 15,000 clients. They later sold UTech for US$7.5 million.

Launched in 2004, Wildberries initially operated simply as an online clothing store rather than a marketplace, purchasing garments in the EU at wholesale clearance sales.

By her own account, Tatyana distinguished herself from her numerous competitors by introducing a single markup of 10% for customers across the country (other platforms charged 15% to Moscow residents and up to 30% to those in other regions) and by not requiring prepayment. She maintained that this proved sufficient for Wildberries to "expand and develop ever more rapidly".

Around the same time, Bakalchuk met a new business partner, Sergei Anufriyev, an employee of the Universal Gym fitness club. He proposed that they jointly purchase a very large consignment of Adidas goods worth US$1-5 million. The products were listed on Wildberries at half the price charged in the brand's official stores, and sales quickly soared. This enormous consignment took nearly two years to sell, forming the core of the store's product selection which was supplemented by other brands later.

While online clothing retail was still in its infancy, Wildberries gained a competitive advantage over Ozon.ru thanks to rapid delivery and the introduction of pick-up points. Discounts and promotions were also a novelty that quickly appealed to customers.

The company grew rapidly, expanding its product range and entering the Belarus and Kazakhstan markets. By the end of 2014, Wildberries had 2.5 million customers, and its founder's wealth exceeded US$380 million.

By 2017, Wildberries had taken the lead in sales volume among all online and offline retail chains in Russia. At the same time, the company was engaged in frequent disputes with suppliers. One of the key conditions for cooperation with Wildberries was deferred payment for goods. Timely payments were typically reserved for large suppliers and brands, while the interests of smaller sellers were often undermined. By October 2017, partners had filed 22 lawsuits against the company totalling RUB 283 million (US$3.6 million).

Despite the legal battles, the company expanded its discount programme, launched a franchise model and became Russia's market leader in clothing and footwear. Wildberries actively broadened its portfolio – from its own bank and large-scale logistics centres across Russia to supplies of sports equipment via "parallel imports", as well as the acquisition of an airport, transport aggregators, an online pharmacy and online sales of Lada cars.

However, its rise to the status of a "Russian Amazon" would not have been possible without loans and connections to influential families close to Putin. As early as 2006, Wildberries became a client of VTB Bank, and since 2011 it has maintained a credit line with Sberbank. According to estimates by The Bell, in 2019 alone the company borrowed RUB 73.8 billion (US$950 million) from banks.

In addition, Tatyana's sister, Marina Andreyeva (Kim), worked at Wildberries and mentioned her relative Albina Tsoy on her social media accounts. She is the sister of Yuri Tsoy – nephew of Sergei Tsoy, long-time Vice President of Rosneft, who previously headed the press service of former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov.

Sergei's wife, the singer Anna Kim (stage name Anita Tsoy), is described as a "family friend" of Rosneft head Igor Sechin, a long-standing associate of Putin. Wildberries, of course, denies that the Tsoy family contributed to the company's development.

Oleksii Pavlysh

Translated by Myroslava Zavadska and Yelyzaveta Khodatska

Edited by Susan McDonald

For years, Loomer was a vocal critic of Ukraine. She echoed some of the Kremlin's most persistent propaganda narratives, describing Ukraine as a "Nazi state", the Azov Brigade as "neo-Nazi", and Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a "criminal". She even claimed that Ukraine had started the war. Today, she publicly admits she was wrong and says she fell victim to Russian propaganda.

Her rhetoric has undergone a dramatic shift. Perhaps she genuinely realised she was wrong and expressed regret. Or perhaps this is to do with divisions within the MAGA movement, in which Tucker Carlson has already occupied the pro-Russian niche, leaving Loomer to seek her own space and become a situational ally of Ukraine.

After travelling to Kyiv, visiting frontline communities and sites hit by Russian strikes, Loomer declared that the United States should support Ukraine, called for Kyiv to receive Patriot missiles, and said she believes US representatives should travel to Kyiv for talks, not just Moscow. In her view, a Ukrainian victory would serve America's national interests, and Russia has become a direct enemy of the United States.

In this interview with Ukrainska Pravda, Loomer explains what made her rethink her views, why she blames Telegram and RT for shaping her perception of the war, and what she would say to Donald Trump after her first – but not, she says, her last – visit to Ukraine.

On the influence of Russian propaganda

You were opposed to support for Ukraine for years, and you recently said you realised that you were influenced by Russian propaganda. How did Russian narratives reach you? Was it through social media, politicians, or something else?

There was a lot of censorship in the United States. And as a conservative, I was banned on all social media for exposing anti-Semitism [according to the American media, Laura Loomer was banned for hate speech – UP]. And the Democrats were working with the big tech social media companies to silence people who supported President Trump.

As a result of that, I had no social media for a while except for Telegram. And as you know, Telegram was originally founded by a Russian. But even though the Russian – I think his name is Pavel Durov – even though he's in exile, the Russians still use Telegram as their main source of disinformation and their main way to distribute this propaganda. So I had been consuming a lot of my news on Telegram. And as a result – when you look at when Joe Biden was sworn into office in 2021, the war broke out in 2022, I didn't get my Twitter account back till 2022 [when Twitter was bought by Elon Musk and renamed X – UP] and I still remained banned on all those social sites. For me, a lot of my coverage in the news that I was receiving about the war was coming from RT [Russia Today, a Russian state propaganda media outlet – UP].

What specific claims did you believe that you now consider false?

Well, I believed that Ukraine started the war. I believed that Ukraine was a country full of Nazis. I believed that the Azov Battalion was full of a bunch of neo-Nazis. I believed that Zelenskyy was a cokehead. I mean, there are a lot of things I believed.

You have almost 2 million followers on Twitter now, and your posts shaped how many conservatives viewed Ukraine. Are you going to reconvince them somehow that you were wrong?

Well, I don't really have a way to change their minds. I can post what I'm posting, and ultimately it's up to other people, right? To come to see the light themselves. So people are going to have to do what I did, in the sense that they're going to have to admit they may have fallen for Russian propaganda and try to reconcile their views.

Some people will do that, some people will probably be too prideful to do that. So it's really going to be something that people have to come to terms with on their own individually.

Your fellow bloggers and influencers from the US are mostly pro-Russian. Maybe we can change their minds too, or maybe you can send them a message about how they can see Ukraine from a different perspective?

I don't think that we can change their minds because I think they're getting paid by Russia.

On her visit to Ukraine

You've visited areas affected by Russia in Kyiv, and you also travelled close to the front line. Was there a moment in Ukraine which changed your view on this war?

Yeah. I mean, seeing the devastation by the ballistic missiles and then also having to go to the bomb shelter myself – it really put things into perspective for me and opened up my eyes about the Ukrainian people having a right to defend themselves from Russia's aggression.

In 2024, you wrote, "I just really don't like Ukraine, never been there, but nothing good comes to mind when I think about Ukraine." What good things come to your mind now after visiting Ukraine?

Well, it's a beautiful country. I found the people that I've met to be nothing but kind and welcoming and very pro-America. For some reason, there's this narrative in the United States that the people in Ukraine are anti-American or that they don't like our country – and that couldn't be further from the truth. So, that's one.

Also two: I think it's a beautiful country despite all of the missile strikes and the Russians' efforts to destroy your infrastructure. I think that your country is very pretty and is a nice tourist location, but obviously the Russians have closed your airspace because they keep on firing drones and missiles.

So, you don't really have a tourist economy right now because people really can't visit unless they fly to Poland and then book a train. It's very inconvenient to get to Ukraine. But hopefully the war will end, and then people will be able to come see the country for themselves and realise how beautiful it is.

On MAGA

Your political influence comes largely from the MAGA movement. Have your followers criticised you because of the change in your position?

Yes. Some people are spreading a conspiracy theory that I'm paid by Ukraine. So, you know, people are now lying and saying that I'm being paid off to have this view, but that's just simply not true.

And if someone told you that you were paid, how would you respond to them?

"I'm not paid. Probably just Russian propaganda."

If President Trump asked for your opinion about Ukraine when you're back in the US, what would you tell him?

I would tell him that in my opinion, as somebody who has visited Ukraine, I think he should visit Ukraine in the future. I think that some of the peace talks should be held in Kyiv instead of Moscow. And I would also tell President Trump that I think that the United States should be pro-Ukraine in this fight. But I do believe that we already are. I mean, you saw our general, General [Dan] Caine, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth saying last week that they want Ukraine to win this war. They also said that Russia is supplying Iran with weapons to murder the US soldiers in Iran. And now, your President Zelenskyy has come out with intelligence that shows that Russia has been supplying the Iranians with satellite imagery that is helping them find and kill US soldiers.

From your perspective, what do you think the US representatives who took part in negotiations between Ukraine and Russia are getting wrong about Ukraine, and what should they do?

I mean, look, I don't want to speak for them because it's not appropriate for me to speak for them. I just personally think that the negotiations should be held in a neutral country, first of all. I don't think the negotiations should be held in Russia or Ukraine.

First of all I don't think the negotiations should be held in Russia or Ukraine.

But I think that it doesn't really make sense why there have been so many meetings in Moscow and yet there really hasn't been a single meeting in Kyiv. Especially knowing that Putin is actively undermining the US by sending weapons to Iran and trying to kill US soldiers.

So I would just encourage them to either hold negotiations in Kyiv or hold negotiations in a neutral country. I don't think there should be any more meetings in Moscow.

On support for Ukraine

Last year you wrote that you didn't want any more of your tax dollars going to Ukraine, and today you tweeted that it's time for the US to give Ukraine access to Patriot missiles. It's been quite a shift. What changed your position?

Well, now that Russia is directly supplying weapons to Iran, we see that Ukraine is also an ally in combating Iran. The reality is that the Iranians are using Russian weapons to kill American soldiers and to attack the United States currently in this conflict. There's a problem because we already have depletion and deficiency in our Patriot missile supply here in the United States. So we need to have a conversation about what this looks like.

But at the same exact time, if the Ukrainians were able to help combat the stockpiling of weapons by the Iranians via the Russians just like they did yesterday or the day before, by blowing up a cargo ship that was carrying weapons from Russia to Iran – or from Iran to Russia rather – that helps, right? They blew up an Iranian tanker. So ultimately, if Ukraine falls, we're going to see Russia try to attack and conquer the other neighbouring European allied states. I know that Ukraine is not a member of NATO, but I'm sure that Russia would try to go to war with NATO. Then, if they succeeded in conquering those countries, they would set their eyes on the United States.

It seems like it would just be cheaper and more efficient to support the defeat of Russia now than have a full-scale war in the future when Russia decides to have their Greater Russia expansionalist empire on steroids, if they get to claim Ukraine as a scalp.

Do you think the drone deal between the US and Ukraine will change US-Ukrainian relations?

Yes, I do.

In your interview with President Zelenskyy, you mentioned that Ukraine doesn't communicate enough about how the deal can be useful for the US. What do you think should change?

I think that they need to emphasise that they are grateful more frequently. I think that they need to also do a better job from the President's Office and your Defence Ministry, and your media in general, highlighting this relationship, but also highlighting what Ukraine does for America.

It should be all over the place saying, "Oh, by the way, we stand with America so much that we just blew up an Iranian ship because we don't support killing US soldiers." They should be highlighting the fact that the Russians sent a delegation to the Ayatollah's funeral, but Ukraine did not. They should be showing how they're different from Russia, because Russia tries to say that they're the same. That's their whole argument for trying to conquer you, right? "Oh, they have no culture. Oh, they have no anything. They're the same. They're the same. They're the same. There's no Ukraine. There's no Ukraine." Well, then show them how you're different.

As we have seen, President Trump has been more critical of Vladimir Putin recently. Do you think his position on Ukraine has evolved as well?

I never want to speak for the president, because it would be inappropriate. But I think it's obvious that his tone has shifted. I asked President Zelenskyy about this. When I interviewed him, I said, "Oh wow, what happened? You went from getting yelled at by Donald Trump and JD Vance in the Oval Office, and now Donald Trump is praising you and he said your interview was very good and you're going to Lindsey Graham's funeral." And the president is praising Zelenskyy in Ankara, in Türkiye – it's a shift.

Look, Donald Trump is not stupid. You saw his TruthSocial post yesterday where Donald Trump clearly said something along the lines of, like, "Oh, it's been brought to my attention that China and Russia have been possibly selling weapons to the Iranians. These leaders assured me that it's certainly not true, and they better make sure they're telling me the truth or else they're going to have problems." He's not stupid, he knows that they're doing that. [Trump later said he trusted Xi and Putin's assurances that they are not supplying weapons – UP.] So at the end of the day, the United States is well aware of the fact that these adversaries are standing with Russia. They're not our friends.

But unfortunately, our geopolitics are also very trying, and the president has to be diplomatic.

What message do you want your audience to take away from this trip to Ukraine?

I just want them to open their eyes and try to reevaluate who our friends are and who our enemies are. And just apply some common sense to the state of the world.

If Russia is supplying weapons to the Iranians to kill US soldiers, and the Ukrainians are helping us manufacture drones so that we can have an even stronger drone stockpile, that clearly shows me that Ukraine is our ally and Russia is our enemy.

You don't see Ukraine amplifying Iranian Lego IRGC videos in their media, but you see the Russians amplifying and supporting them and glorifying these videos. So it's pretty obvious to me who's our ally in this war and who's our enemy.

Alina Poliakova, UP

At the beginning of July, Russian refineries were meeting only about 65% of seasonal petrol demand. A wave of Ukrainian attacks on Russian fuel facilities reduced oil refining volumes in Russia to their lowest level in more than 21 years. In some regions, drivers queued for fuel, petrol stations imposed sales limits, and in occupied Crimea, fuel was not sold to ordinary motorists at all on certain days.

The Russian authorities expect imports, the use of reserves and the completion of refinery repairs to stabilise the market. Read on to find out who has sold Indian petrol to Russia, how much Moscow will pay for it and how much of the shortfall tanker shipments can actually cover.

A Russian plant with an Indian address

The petrol for Russia has been produced by the Nayara Energy refinery in Vadinar, western India. The plant is almost half-owned by Rosneft, a Russian state-controlled oil giant, which holds a 49.13% stake, is subject to EU sanctions and processes Russian crude. An equal stake is held by a consortium led by the Russian investment group UCP. Legally, the refinery is Indian, but Russian shareholders own more than 98% of its operator.

In July 2025, the EU imposed sanctions on Nayara, which prompted suppliers of non-Russian crude to stop doing business with the company. The plant switched entirely to Russian crude. The sanctions also complicated payments and shipping, so Nayara buys crude and sells the fuel it produces through traders.

This is how the petrol reaches Russia. Although the Indian authorities insist that the country's companies do not supply fuel to Russia, they have acknowledged that Moscow can purchase Indian petrol from traders. As a result, fuel refined from Russian crude at a predominantly Russian-owned refinery returns to Russia after travelling 14,000 km by sea. The refining process and the long voyage come at global market prices.

"Some of Nayara Energy's profits could ultimately flow to Rosneft through dividend payments. However, these are isolated shipments rather than sustained, large-scale exports that would materially affect Nayara's financial performance. In transactions like these, the largest share of the profit is typically captured by traders and shipping service providers," Yuliia Pavytska, Head of Sanctions at the KSE Institute, explained to Ekonomichna Pravda.

A route with tracking beacons switched off

The first shipment was carried by the Cameroon-flagged tanker Agni, which loaded its cargo in Vadinar on 20 June. Shipping documents listed Fujairah in the UAE (a major port just west of the Strait of Hormuz) as its destination. Instead, the vessel sailed past the port, transited the Suez Canal and continued north.

Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU) traced the vessel's subsequent route. According to the agency, the Agni transported nearly 67,500 tonnes of petroleum products from the Nayara terminal. Near the Egyptian city of Port Said, the tanker rendezvoused with the Garnet to transfer the cargo. During the ship-to-ship transfer, both vessels switched off their Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders. Tankers linked to the Russian and Iranian shadow fleets frequently do this to hinder tracking and conceal cargo transfers.

The Garnet then transmitted a message claiming that it was sailing empty and had passed through the Strait of Gibraltar by mid-July. DIU believes the shipment is likely destined for the White Sea port of Vitino or one of Russia's Baltic ports.

The DIU website lists both tankers as belonging to Russia's shadow fleet. The Agni is linked to India's Gatik Ship Management, which has transported oil in Rosneft's interests. The Garnet is linked to companies affiliated with Russia's state-owned shipping giant Sovcomflot.

"The sale of petrol from India to Russia does not, by itself, violate sanctions. There are no sanctions prohibiting trade in petroleum products between the two countries, and neither the EU nor the US has the legal authority to ban trade between third countries. For that reason, these exports should not, on their own, be regarded as a sanctions breach," Pavytska said.

She added that the continued operation of these vessels despite the sanctions imposed points not so much to shortcomings in the restrictions themselves as to weaknesses in their enforcement. Pressure should therefore be stepped up not only on the vessels themselves, but also on their owners, managers, operators, insurers and other parties involved in their operation.

Who will pay for the long journey?

The value of the shipment has not been disclosed, but it is certain to have exceeded domestic Russian prices. Petrol is cheaper in Russia than on international markets. Importing it from India means paying global market prices, with the additional costs of shipping, ship-to-ship transfers and insurance.

In June, the average wholesale price of AI-92 petrol in Russia stood at RUB 66,500 (about US$848) per tonne. The equivalent price on external markets, including export costs, was RUB 98,900 (US$1,261) per tonne.

If an imported tonne costs RUB 90,000 (US$1,148) after delivery and the current wholesale price is RUB 70,000 (US$893), the supplier will lose RUB 20,000 (US$255) per tonne unless it receives compensation. Under such conditions, it will either refuse to import or agree to supply only if its revenues increase at least to the level of its costs.

"From a financial point of view, importing petroleum products from India that are refined from Russian crude makes little economic sense. The final cost of such fuel will be significantly higher due to the lengthy and expensive logistics and the margins of all participants in this supply chain. This is not an economically efficient solution but a costly stopgap measure aimed at preventing even greater losses," Pavytska said.

The Russian authorities have decided to cover the price difference from the budget. To do this, they have extended the fuel damper mechanism to importers. Previously, under this mechanism, the state paid subsidies to Russian refineries to make it more profitable for them to sell petrol domestically rather than abroad. Now the budget will also be able to support importers.

For petrol from India, a reference price will be determined each month as the price of the Indian AI-92 benchmark plus the costs of sea transport, transshipment at a Russian port and excise duty. This amount will be compared with the wholesale price in Russia. If imports prove more expensive, the company will receive compensation from the budget.

"The Russian market is not ready for market prices. The authorities will have to spend large sums on subsidies and drain the budget or allow prices to rise, which will damage the authorities' reputation," said Serhii Kuiun, director of the Ukrainian fuel market consultancy A-95 Consulting Group.

According to Ekonomichna Pravda's calculations, with imported fuel costing RUB 80,000-90,000 per tonne, the first shipment of fuel from India will cost Russia RUB 5.4-6.1 billion (US$68.9-77.8 million), excluding storage, delivery to the regions and sellers' margins. The budget may compensate importers by RUB 43,500-53,500 (US$555-682) per tonne, or RUB 2.9-3.6 billion (US$37-45.9 million) for the first shipment.

Will imports cover the shortage?

At the beginning of July, Russia was consuming 115,000-120,000 tonnes of petrol per day, while domestic production covered about 65% of demand. The country faces a daily shortfall of 40,000-45,000 tonnes, or 1.2-1.35 million tonnes of fuel per month. The 67,500 tonnes of petrol from India would cover only a day and a half of the current shortage.

Meanwhile, Russia is seeking to increase supplies from India. Rosneft, Gazprom Neft and Lukoil have approached Indian oil refiners for additional petrol, but representatives of three state-owned Indian companies said they had no spare volumes available.

Overall, Russia plans to import up to 400,000 tonnes of petrol per month from various countries. Even if the plan is fulfilled, the imports would cover only about a third of the shortfall. The market would still face a deficit of up to 950,000 tonnes of petrol per month.

"Bringing in such a volume will be challenging, and even if it can be done, distributing the fuel across the country will pose logistical challenges," Kuiun said.

Belarus is expected to provide part of the planned supplies. In June, Belarusian refineries were supplying up to 6,000 tonnes of petrol per day to Russia. This amounts to 180,000 tonnes of petrol per month, or nearly half of the planned imports. Moscow also tried to purchase another 50,000 tonnes of petrol from Kazakhstan.

The Russian authorities plan to cover the remaining shortfall by drawing on reserves and bringing refineries back online after repairs. Russia has also banned exports of petrol, diesel fuel and aviation kerosene, while producers have been allowed to sell fuel that does not meet current environmental standards. The government is also discussing the temporary return of Euro-2 petrol, which has been banned since 2013.

Sergei Vakulenko, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, said that the amount of oil refining capacity available to Russia for the third year running has depended on whether Ukrainian drones or Russian repair crews move faster. According to Vakulenko, Kyiv gains the upper hand if it can keep up the frequency of its attacks and continue to increase the damage they cause. He said that is the current trend.

If there are no new strikes, Russia's situation may improve at the end of July. Experts believe that the resumption of operations at some refineries and fuel imports will stabilise the situation. However, if Ukrainian strikes continue and remain effective, the breathing space gained thanks to fuel from India will quickly disappear.

Artur Kryzhnyi

Translated by Myroslava Zavadska

Edited by Artem Yakymyshyn