Ukrainian company Robotic Complexes is developing CASEEVAK, an armored module that lets the Murakha unmanned ground vehicle carry wounded soldiers off the battlefield, the company told Militarnyi on 28 October. The casualty rides in a closed capsule with ventilation, heating, lighting, and a first-aid kit, and side and rear doors let medics load and reach the soldier from any side.

Drones that can fly long distances pose a threat to both wounded soldiers and the crews evacuating them, making transportation the main challenge, said Ukrainian military medic Daryna Boiko, The Independent reported. Developers are looking for new ways to counter this threat. The current Murakha model is being equipped with passive anti-drone protection elements, the developers say.

An armored capsule that keeps the wounded connected

After a wounded soldier is loaded onto an evacuation platform, it is important not only to transport them to a safe location but also to protect them and monitor their condition during transit.

The module is built around a closed armored capsule made of 3.5 mm-thick Armox 500T steel with an inner lining of HDPE 1000, the media outlet reports. Side and rear doors allow the wounded to be loaded from different directions and accessed during evacuation.

To enable the operator to monitor the person inside and maintain contact with them, the capsule is equipped with a camera with day and night channels and two-way audio communication. The system can be controlled via ELRS, LTE, Starlink, or fiber-optic communications. Militarnyi reports that even if the capsule is detached from the main platform, it retains two independent communication channels.

The developers are also working to integrate vital-signs monitoring systems intended to provide medical personnel with information about the wounded person’s condition during transport.

An electric platform and protection against FPV drones

The evacuation module requires a platform capable of carrying it as it moves through dangerous areas. The Murakha is equipped with two electric motors, delivering a combined torque of 1,600 N·m, and a 35 kWh battery. The system’s stated range is up to 80 km, according to the media outlet.

Another area of development is protection against drones. Measures intended to protect the system include net launchers and electronic warfare (EW) equipment. However, work on a protective cage against FPV drones is still ongoing, according to the report.

The company has already conducted ballistic tests of the armor steel at a distance of 50 meters, using ammunition of various calibers, Militarnyi reports.

The Murakha-Mini logistics platform

The same company previously developed the Murakha-Mini logistics platform. Ukrainian military personnel began using it on the front line to deliver equipment, provisions and other supplies, Militarnyi reported on 24 October 2025.

The UGV can carry up to 250 kg and travel up to 40 km on a single charge, the media outlet reported. During one combat mission, it transported 150 kg of cargo and towed a six-metre platform carrying another drone and provisions, covering 16 km in one direction, Militarnyi reported.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Russian forces have damaged 165 schools in Sumy Oblast and destroyed 21 beyond repair, according to the head of the regional administration. The administration’s answer is to move classrooms underground. Design documentation for 14 new underground schools has already been prepared, Oleh Hryhorov, head of the Sumy Oblast Military Administration, said in an interview with Ukrinform published on 28 October 2026. In addition, 13 such schools are already operating in Sumy region, while nine more are under construction, the media outlet reported.

Sumy region is one of the areas regularly shelled by the Russian military, making it dangerous to hold classes in above-ground school buildings. Of the region’s 280 schools, 225 have shelters, mostly basic ones, while more than 70 have radiation-protective shelters, Hryhorov noted.

“The process is ongoing and is being scaled up as much as possible,” he said, adding that the region is bringing in partners.

Underground classrooms provide a safer learning environment in Sumy Oblast

The construction of new underground schools is primarily focused on the larger cities of Sumy Oblast, where most schoolchildren are concentrated, Hryhorov explained.

The learning process at such a school differs from the usual format. This was explained by Oleksandr Vaniushenko, the principal of one of the first underground schools in Sumy, Suspilne reported on 23 December 2025.

“We have the first shift—entirely younger children, and fifth- and sixth-graders also go out to the open locations. The second shift brings in just as many more children. The total number studying per day is 360–370,” Vaniushenko noted.

The shelter has backup power supplies, allowing children to continue their lessons during air raid alerts and power outages, according to the project, media reported.

Currently, 22 schools operate entirely in person, while 193 use a hybrid learning format, the head of the regional administration said. A total of 75,000 children are currently attending school in Sumy Oblast, he noted.

A Russian bomb hit a Sumy school during lessons in September

On 29 September, Russia struck a school in Sumy with a 250-kilogram aerial bomb while children in grades 1 to 4 were there, Serhii Kryvosheienko, head of the Sumy City Military Administration, reported. He said the Russians aimed the bomb at the school on purpose. About 40 students were in the school’s shelter when the bomb hit, a school employee told Suspilne.

"With no pity or compassion whatsoever, they strike at children? There is nothing human in the enemy! He is not fighting on the battlefield—he is destroying a nation," Kryvosheienko said.

The Ukrainian government has instructed Kyiv to establish alternative routes after Russian attacks stopped traffic on one of the capital’s main bridges. The city authorities will bear the cost of the new crossings, with Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko saying the city needs an additional $22 million.

This year, Russia has launched tactics to spread panic among civilians and trigger more people to leave the country. In the latest attack, several Russia's ballistic missiles struck the Southern Bridge, used for vehicle and metro traffic, breaking a huge hole and paralyzing all the pathes. The bridge was closed. Now, there is a fear that more bridges can be targeted this way, dividing Kyiv in two parts.

The situation is urgent, as Ukrainian Transport Minister Mykola Kalashnyk says about 600,000 vehicles cross the Dnipro in Kyiv every day.

What is Kyiv’s response to the winter terror? 

According to Klitschko, Kyiv convened the capital’s Defense Council on 28 October to find an answer to this difficult question.

The agenda included implementing a project to build combined water crossings over the Dnipro River and access roads to them.

“The military command will determine the locations, with approval to be granted, among others, by the Kyiv City Military Administration,” Klitschko said.

Under the government’s recommendations, the Kyiv city authorities must find $22 million for the project.

Klitschko had previously faced heavy criticism after it emerged that the city lacked sufficient shelters and last winter exposed serious shortcomings in preparing infrastructure for Russian attacks. These included a lack of alternative energy supply routes, poorly distributed energy, burst heating pipes that flooded apartments, and the inability of people with disabilities to reach shelters without elevators.

The mayor himself said the problems stemmed from the central government withholding funding, which had stalled numerous energy resilience projects and delayed their implementation.

The latest announcement also indicates that Kyiv has once again taken on the financial burden itself.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has been working with Japan on backup crossings. Tokyo has already delivered 720 meters of prefabricated bridge structures to Ukraine. The two sides are currently exploring how this equipment could be used to establish alternative crossings.

Step two: strengthening existing infrastructure

Another option is to reinforce existing bridges. City specialists are developing additional technical solutions to protect bridges across the Dnipro River, Klitschko said in his statement on 27 October, adding that proposals from the military had also been heard.

The issue of installing mobile shelters was also raised on the same day, the mayor of Kyiv said in a separate statement on his Telegram channel on 27 October. Despite intensifying Russian attacks and about, as Radio Svoboda reported in its article on 30 September, $11 million set aside in 2025, Kyiv still has only a handful of mobile shelters: LB reported in December 2025 that district tenders failed. Donors paid for the first one at a bus stop, the Kyiv City State Administration said on 15 October.

Klitschko raised the issue of shelters again after a court on 12 October ruled that local authorities must urgently install mobile shelters in public areas, including near public transport stops, parks, and squares, according to Kyiv’s Prosecutor’s Office.

Russia hits the Southern Bridge again

On 2 October, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview with the Financial Times that Russian ruler Vladimir Putin had ordered the lifting of previous restrictions on airstrikes. Among new targets, according to him, were bridges, data centers, internet, mobile networks, hospitals, kindergartens, schools, and universities.

The night of 26–27 October showed what that looks like. Russia launched ballistic missile attacks in a few waves, and the second of them hit the Southern Bridge and the metro infrastructure on it, Klitschko said. The structure carries six lanes of road traffic and two metro tracks.

Zelenskyy put the night’s total at 16 ballistic missiles and blamed delays in deliveries of Patriot and NASAMS interceptors: “Every such delay is a new Russian hit on one target or another.”

A Russian court sentenced Yuri Belenky, director of the IT company DiHouse, to 13 years in prison on terrorism financing charges, Radio Liberty reported on 26 October. The case concerns cryptocurrency donations that investigators believe were meant for Ukraine’s Armed Forces, the outlet said. The court also fined Belenky 500,000 rubles ($6,200), according to the report.

Since 2022, Russian courts have imprisoned Russians and Ukrainians under treason, terrorism, and other national-security laws over donations to Ukrainian causes. Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, left Russia in 2023 but says it cooperates with lawful law-enforcement requests in different countries.

Belenky had lived in Bulgaria with his wife and child since 2015. In September 2025, he traveled to Moscow on business, and police detained him at the airport for allegedly using obscene language, Radio Liberty reported. In court, Belenky denied swearing, but the judge gave him 13 days of administrative detention. On the 10th day of his detention, Russia’s Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against him under an article on terrorism financing, based on a report from the Federal Security Service, according to the report.

Binance shared account records with Russian investigators, rights group says

In October 2025, Russia’s Investigative Committee contacted Binance to request information on six users who had transferred funds to a cryptocurrency wallet published by journalist Arkady Babchenko, the Russian human rights project First Department said on 17 August 2026. The exchange provided investigators with Belenky’s detailed account history, including his personal information, copies of identification documents, and cryptocurrency transaction records, according to the organization. The human rights project said the materials helped investigators identify nine more transfers, which went into the final charge against Belenky. Binance told his lawyer it does not give law enforcement user account data without a court order or an equivalent ruling, the group said.

Belenky’s alleged offense was transferring donations totaling 126,000 rubles ($1,560) between 2022 and 2024 to an account published by Babchenko, Radio Liberty reported. The court ordered that sum confiscated.

The court said the money in Babchenko’s account went to Ukraine’s Armed Forces and the Azov battalion, which Russia designates as a terrorist organization, Radio Liberty reported.

In a statement dated 14 October 2025, Babchenko said he had not received transfers from Belenky to the cryptocurrency wallets he had published. He emphasized that he had raised money for civilian humanitarian needs, not to support the military.

Binance’s exit from Russia and previous data-sharing concerns

In September 2023, Binance announced that it would sell its entire Russian business to cryptocurrency exchange CommEX, according to the company’s website. Operating in Russia was incompatible with Binance’s compliance strategy, the exchange’s chief compliance officer, Noah Perlman, said in the announcement. Binance said it would fully exit the Russian market, receive no share of future revenue from the sale, and retain no option to buy back the business.

CommEX said on 29 September 2023 that it was not owned by Binance but confirmed that it had hired some former Binance employees during the platform’s six-month development, Cointelegraph reported.

The exit came after earlier questions about Binance’s dealings with the Russian state. In April 2021, Russian financial intelligence officials met with Binance’s head of Eastern Europe and Russia in Moscow and asked the exchange to provide customer data, including names and addresses, Reuters reported in April 2022. The Binance executive agreed to the request in a message to a business associate, saying he didn’t have “much of a choice,” the outlet said. Binance told Reuters it had never been contacted by Russian authorities about Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

In February 2026, 11 US senators asked the Treasury Department and the Justice Department to investigate Binance’s compliance with sanctions and anti-money laundering rules, Cointelegraph reported. They cited reports that about $1.7 billion had moved through Binance to Iran-linked entities, as well as possible activity related to evading Russian sanctions. The senators also warned that Binance payment cards launched in parts of the former Soviet Union could facilitate sanctions evasion. Binance rejected the allegations.

The Trump administration has encouraged former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to run for UN secretary-general and discussed a joint US-Russia-China candidacy with Moscow and Beijing, the Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) editorial board wrote on 25 October, citing sources in three countries. Russia’s biggest ally in the EU, Orbán has been out of office since May, when Péter Magyar became Hungary’s prime minister.

The UN secretary-general can influence the war through diplomatic negotiations, mediation, and by drawing the Security Council’s attention to Russia’s aggression. António Guterres’s term ends on 31 December, so the council has to settle on a successor within weeks.

According to the WSJ, US officials discussing the next UN chief kept saying they wanted “someone like Orbán,” and their Russian and Chinese counterparts agreed. The US then brought the idea to Orbán himself. Russia and China are believed to support his bid based on those earlier talks with Washington, and the plan is for him to be the three countries’ joint candidate.

Ukraine warns of Orbán’s veto tactics at the UN

Orbán is receptive but has not decided, and he does not want to enter the race unless he is sure he can win, the editorial board wrote. A State Department official counted eight Security Council votes as safe for him and 10 within reach. A candidate needs nine of the 15 votes and no veto from a permanent member. The editorial board asked whether Britain and France, typically cautious in using their veto, would stand in the way. Any announcement is being held until after the 3 November US midterm elections.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X that Orbán as secretary-general would put to good use “the masterful veto and blackmail skills” he developed over years of derailing major EU decisions. Ukraine, he added, could share its “great experience of taking him out for coffee at the right moment,” a reference to the December 2023 EU summit, where Orbán left the room so the other leaders could open accession talks with Ukraine without his veto.

Orbán ran Hungary for 16 years as Putin’s closest EU partner

Orbán’s 16 years of “illiberal democracy” eroded democratic values in Hungary. Since 2010, Fidesz has built an enormous partisan media ecosystem. Before the vote, it amended the electoral law twice and gerrymandered more than a third of the electoral districts, so the opposition might need around 55% of the popular vote to win a simple majority. Orbán still lost the 12 April election. Magyar’s Tisza won 138 of 199 seats, a two-thirds majority in parliament.

Orbán kept close ties with Moscow throughout the full-scale war. When he met Putin in Beijing in October 2023, he spoke of “the military operations and the sanctions” rather than a war. In summer 2024, while Hungary held the EU Council presidency, he flew to Moscow on what he called a peace mission, and the EU distanced itself from the trip. In November 2025, he went back to Moscow, seeking to keep Hungary’s access to Russian oil and gas. He is widely considered Putin’s closest partner among EU leaders. After that visit, he said the only solution was for Ukraine to become a buffer state again, and that the longer peace was delayed, the more people and territory Ukraine would lose.

He used Hungary’s veto against Ukraine until his last weeks in office. In February, Orbán vetoed a €90 billion EU loan to Ukraine amid the disruption of Russian oil supplies through the Druzhba pipeline to Hungary and Slovakia. Hungary lifted its veto in April after repairs to the pipeline were announced. Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó phoned Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov from EU meetings for years with “live reports on what’s been discussed,” a European security official told The Washington Post. Szijjártó did not respond to the Post’s request for comment.

Journalists from 17 European public service broadcasters, coordinated by the European Broadcasting Union’s (EBU) Eurovision News Spotlight network, published an interactive map on 23 October 2026. It documents hybrid incidents linked to Russia across 17 European countries between 1 April and 15 October. Journalists compiled a database of hundreds of reported incidents, categorizing each by type and the source and strength of its alleged links to Russia, then verifying them through open-source research.

The map comes as officials warn the campaign is growing. On 28 September, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said in Brussels that Russia was planning more acts of sabotage to divide societies and intimidate them into abandoning their support for Ukraine. The points on the map represent an incomplete list of publicly known cases attributed to Russia or suspected of being linked to it, the report states.

The map covers airspace violations, sabotage attempts, “disposable” agents with no formal intelligence training, migration used as a weapon, and Russian military activity near or across European borders. It excludes cyberattacks, influence operations, and espionage by trained intelligence officers.

The EBU calls the result a very conservative estimate, not an official tally. Russia has consistently denied responsibility for the incidents. Many single points represent several incidents of the same type in one area or in quick succession. In Moldova, for example, Defense Minister Anatolie Nosatîi said on 30 September that the government had recorded 84 drone incursions.

Four German incidents are on the map, out of many more

The map shows four incidents in Germany, according to BR.

• On 2 August, German authorities arrested a 33-year-old Ukrainian man in Thuringia on suspicion of photographing a Bavarian weapons manufacturer for a foreign intelligence service as part of an alleged sabotage plot.
• On 4 August, a drone carrying explosives and a detonator struck the wing of a Ukrainian An-124 cargo plane at Leipzig/Halle Airport but failed to explode.
• On 3 September, attackers threw firebombs from a car onto a construction site next to defense firms in Munich, and German security authorities suspect Russian intelligence.
• On 14 September, investigators learned of a crashed drone found near the Bundeswehr’s Wunstorf air base.

Internal papers from the new Joint Hybrid Defense Center, seen by Correctiv, record 163 suspected sabotage cases in 2026 up to 19 August. The targets included rail lines, military facilities, substations, and radio masts. The same papers record 1,034 drone overflights of critical infrastructure, military sites, and defense companies, and 25 espionage investigations. The papers cover possible attacks by Russia, China, and Iran, and media did not report a breakdown of the sabotage cases by country.

European leaders sound the alarm over Russian hybrid attacks

On 15 April, Swedish civil defense minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin said pro-Russian groups had moved from denial-of-service attacks to attempts at destructive cyberattacks, including one on a Swedish power plant in 2025. On 1 September, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul named Russia as the perpetrator of the Leipzig attack and accused Moscow of “blatant hostility” toward Germany.

On 18 September, French President Emmanuel Macron said Russia’s hybrid attacks would not go unanswered and ordered a plan to protect France’s critical infrastructure. On 1 October, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Germany was preparing for new hybrid attacks, “including serious ones.” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on 14 October called the attacks a sign of Russian weakness at a press conference in Tallinn and said NATO would react where needed without being “rattled.”

On 20 October, the Lviv Oblast Council voted to declare 2027 the year of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), its commander Roman Shukhevych, and Oleh Olzhych, a poet and member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). The vote on the UPA and Shukhevych took 45 seconds, Ukrainska Pravda reported, citing the council's online broadcast. It reopened a dispute Kyiv and Warsaw had only just settled. In May, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a special operations unit the honorary name "Heroes of the UPA," and Polish President Karol Nawrocki later stripped him of the Order of the White Eagle in response.

Poland is the main hub for Western aid to Ukraine, and that role rests on Polish trust, which every new fight over the two nations' shared past erodes. Since 2022, Poland has also paid for nearly 30,000 Starlink terminals for Ukraine, Rzeczpospolita reported. The sorest point is the UPA. Poland recognizes the UPA's 1943 Volhynia massacres of Poles as genocide, a classification Ukraine disputes, pointing to the broader Polish-Ukrainian conflict of World War II, in which both sides killed civilians.

A batch vote, then a "catastrophe"

The resolution honoring the UPA commander and his fighters passed with 52 of the 55 deputies who voted, none against. The one on Olzhych passed 49 of 54. A source in the council told Ukrainska Pravda that, after a lunch break and an air raid alert, deputies voted through 30 to 40 minor items one after another without discussion, and the UPA year passed among them.

A source in the Office of the President called the situation a "catastrophe."

"Ukraine looks irrational. We only just settled the previous crisis, and now this. Everyone knew it was not allowed, the head of the oblast knew about it personally. But the chase for cheap one-day hype won out. The consequences are already here, and they will only grow," the source told Ukrainska Pravda.

The same source said the decision put the next Polish military aid package at risk. Polish Defense Ministry spokesperson Janusz Sejmej said this was "not true," and Deputy Defense Minister Cezary Tomczyk said Poland would keep helping Ukraine.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry called the decision counterproductive, noted that oblast deputies are not subordinate to central authorities, and urged Poland to refrain from sharp steps that could hinder the normalization of relations. "Only Russia stands to gain from tension in our relations with Poland," Iryna Vereshchuk, deputy head of the Office of the President, wrote.

Warsaw holds Kyiv to its word, but Lviv won't budge

Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz called the decision unacceptable. Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Bosacki told Polsat News on 21 October that it was hard to imagine a worse decision for Polish-Ukrainian relations. He said Zelenskyy's aides had assured Warsaw it would not take effect, and that the resolution had disappeared from the council's website after Poland intervened, which he called promising. Warsaw would hold the Ukrainian authorities to their word, he added.

The council itself does not plan to revoke or revise the decision, its representatives told Liga on 21 October.

On 23 October, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he had received a signal from Zelenskyy that he "will in no way support this decision" if further steps depend on him. "Ukraine will simply have very serious problems with integration if it does not also respect our sensitivity," Tusk said.

Poland bans proposal's initiator, who took part in search in Łasków, from Schengen Area

Poland has barred Sviatoslav Sheremeta, the Lviv Oblast Council deputy who initiated the decision, from entering the Schengen Area for five years, until 20 October 2031. Polish Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński announced the ban on 21 October at the request of Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski. Sikorski described Sheremeta as a reenactor of the Galizien Waffen-SS division.

Before the ban was announced, Sheremeta told Zaxid.Net that he had never taken part in military-historical reenactment, and noted that Sikorski's post had at first named a "P. Sheremeta." He found Polish officials' reaction strange, since Lviv and other oblast councils had declared years of the UPA and Shukhevych before. "This is nothing new," he said. He added that the decision was not aimed at anyone, least of all Poles or Poland, and that a ban would hurt the two countries' cooperation on commemoration.

Ukrainians have the right to choose their own heroes and honor them, Sheremeta believes. He suggested that recent statements by Polish officials may be linked to the discovery of Ukrainian civilians killed by Polish armed groups in Łasków in 1944.

Sheremeta also directs Dolia, a memorial search center. In October, Dolia carried out a search in Łasków, a village in Poland's Lublin Voivodeship, and found the remains of more than 40 Ukrainians, including women and children. The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, which commissioned the search, says they were killed by units of the Polish Home Army and the Peasants' Battalions in an attack on 10 March 1944 in which more than 300 people died. Exhumation is planned for spring 2027.

The dispute over shared memory has shaped relations between Kyiv and Warsaw for a decade. After local authorities in Hruszowice removed a UPA monument in 2017, Ukraine's Institute of National Memory halted exhumations of Poles in Ukraine. Despite a 2019 pledge by the institute to stop blocking them, the first exhumation took place only in April 2025, in Puzhnyky, after Tusk announced a breakthrough.

About 1,500 Ukrainians held in Russia and occupied Ukraine are facing criminal prosecution even though the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has never confirmed them as prisoners, Petro Yatsenko, representative of Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, said on 19 October at an event on missing persons at UN headquarters in New York. The event was organized by the permanent missions of Ukraine and Poland to the UN.

Without ICRC confirmation, there is no official record that a person is alive or held, which leaves captives without proper protection, the headquarters said. Amnesty International calls this enforced disappearance, a practice that puts people outside the protection of the law. The ICRC itself has been shut out. Under the Geneva Conventions it is supposed to visit prisoners of war, but on 18 September it told Reuters that Russia has given it no access to Ukrainian POWs since 2024. UN investigators have gathered evidence of systematic torture in the detention centers where they are held. Russia denies torturing or mistreating POWs.

Families lose track of captives as Russia moves them between prisons

Kateryna Nazarii, who coordinates families of the 24th Mechanized Brigade, is the wife of a Ukrainian serviceman held by Russia. The ICRC has not been able to confirm his status as a prisoner of war. Russia does not let the ICRC or other humanitarian organizations into the prisons where Ukrainians are held, and does not hand over complete lists of prisoners, Nazarii said at the event. When families do find out where a relative is held, she said, that person is moved to another prison, and contact is lost again.

Many of those whose captivity Russia has not confirmed are civilians. Among them, Yatsenko said, are about 200 young people born after 2000 and nearly 400 people over 60. None of them has been confirmed through the ICRC, according to the headquarters.

Secrecy and torture in Russian captivity

Most Ukrainian POWs are cut off from the outside world. In a March 2025 report, Amnesty International found that 24 of the 43 families of confirmed POWs it interviewed had received no word at all from their relative. Counting prisoners allowed only one brief call or text at the start of captivity, 72% of those 43 were held incommunicado. The UN monitoring mission found that only 21 of 174 former POWs it interviewed had been able to correspond with their families, Amnesty noted.

Silence is what makes the abuse possible, Amnesty argues. The UN monitoring mission found that 97% of former POWs it interviewed had been tortured or ill-treated, the report notes, and methods include beatings, electric shocks, burns, and sexual violence. A UN commission of inquiry concluded in 2024 that the torture amounted to a "coordinated state policy," the report adds.

When the Red Cross did get in, it saw what Russia chose to show. An OSCE expert mission reported in September 2025 that, according to former prisoners, Russian staff presented only prisoners in relatively good physical condition during ICRC visits and kept the sick and tortured out of sight. The experts also found that Russia blocked visits to some facilities and gave incomplete prisoner lists.

The unconfirmed are not a small group. A quarter of the 3,767 POWs who returned to Ukraine by November 2024 had never been confirmed by Russia as captives, the Coordination Headquarters said, as cited by Amnesty. Hundreds or possibly thousands more may still be held without Russia notifying the ICRC, Amnesty concluded.

Those who come back describe the conditions. Anatolii Zemlianyi, a soldier of the 2nd Assault Brigade released in the May 2025 exchange, told Frontliner that he spent eight months in a hospital in occupied Donetsk with a grenade wound in his leg and got no proper treatment. In captivity, he said, prisoners drank water from puddles.

Russia continues to hold Ukrainian civilians unlawfully

Nobody knows how many Ukrainian civilians Russia holds. "It is not known," the UN human rights office said in a September 2025 report, which cites Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office as having identified 15,250 civilians detained by Russia between February 2022 and August 2025. Exchanges bring very few of them back: of 5,941 people released from Russian captivity between February 2022 and 14 August 2025, 352 were civilians, Ukraine's human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets told The Week.

Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, an occupying power may intern civilians only for imperative reasons of security, and only under a regular procedure with periodic review, the same UN report notes. Russia instead treats detained civilians as criminals, Oleksandr Kononenko, a representative of Ukraine's human rights commissioner, told relatives of civilian hostages in 2023.

"This convention clearly states that civilian hostages should not be detained. They should be released. What is Russia doing? It 'makes all these people criminals' and accuses them of terrorism, opposition to a special military operation, and assistance to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which is completely absurd from the point of view of an independent state and those people who are patriots of their state," Kononenko said.

Kyiv believes Russia detains civilians partly to trade them. Regular civilian swaps risk signaling to Russia that by detaining more Ukrainians it could get more Russians released, so it may seize more people to replenish its "exchange fund," Lubinets said. Ukraine therefore demands that civilians be released unconditionally. Amnesty sees a second motive. It concluded that Russia has long used arbitrary arrest, torture, and enforced disappearance to intimidate civilians in areas it controls.

Ukraine's Defense Forces advanced more than 15 km through underground utility tunnels into Russia's rear on the Kupiansk axis in Kharkiv Oblast, the Khartiia Corps of Ukraine's National Guard reported on 22 October. The corps called it Operation Veles. The underground advance was paired with attacks on the surface and drone strikes, hitting Russian forces from two directions, the corps told Militarnyi.

Russian troops have repeatedly crawled through gas pipelines around Kupiansk to get behind Ukrainian lines, even after Ukraine reported confident control of the city in February. This time, Ukraine went underground itself. The operation took away Russia's chance to get into Kupiansk's rear, the corps said.

The corps reported more than 30 Russian soldiers captured and Russian losses of more than 100. Militarnyi, citing the unit, put the number of Russian troops killed at over 100.

Khartiia studied how Russian troops moved through pipes before going underground itself, the corps commander, Brigadier General Ihor Obolenskyi, said.

"We watched how the enemy works underground and studied how they do it. The Russians intended to use gas pipelines to get into the rear of our troops. So we went underground ourselves. We anticipated the enemy's actions and mastered the tactics of underground combat," he said.

Boots under ground!

Asymmetric breakthrough in the Kharkiv Region: Khartiia Corps conducts the subterranean counteroffensive Operation VELES, advancing 15 km underground.

Corps Commander General Ihor Obolenskyi explains a unique operation. pic.twitter.com/qRQ93kckpK

— Khartiia Corps in English (@khartiia_eng) October 22, 2026

For the operation, troops trained physically and psychologically to fight in confined spaces, sappers and engineers prepared the underground route, and special communications, navigation, silent logistics, and life-support systems were put in place, Khartiia told Militarnyi. The operation was named after Veles, the Slavic pagan god of the underworld.

Khartiia's brigade, the R.U.H. assault regiment, the Lava drone regiment, the Achilles drone brigade, and units of Ukraine's military intelligence, including the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps, took part, the corps said.

Russia has used pipelines to infiltrate before

By September 2025, Russian forces had used pipelines to move troops behind Ukrainian lines three times, Ukrainian monitoring project DeepState reported on 12 September 2025. The first was in Avdiivka, the second near Sudzha, and the third near Kupiansk, where groups crossed the Oskil River through a gas pipe.

Near Sudzha in March 2025, Russian special forces walked through a pipeline that until recently had carried Russian gas to Europe, the Associated Press reported. A pro-Kremlin blogger claimed they covered about 15 km and that some spent several days inside.

Russian troops kept using the pipeline near Kupiansk this year. On 27 September, Khartiia's reconnaissance drones recorded Russian forces leading nine civilians, including children, elderly people, and a person on crutches, through the gas pipeline out of the Kupiansk community. Men of military age in civilian clothes walked alongside them, and the corps believes they were Russian soldiers using the group as cover to withdraw. Ukrainian troops held fire because of the civilians, the corps said, adding that the case has been documented for a war crimes investigation.

Why the war is moving underground

Drones, constant surveillance, and AI-assisted targeting have made the battlefield surface transparent and deadly, argue John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at West Point's Modern War Institute, and Col. Drew Craig, principal military engineering staff officer at NATO's Allied Rapid Reaction Corps. In an August analysis, they write that soldiers in Ukraine describe a "death zone" of some 30 km, where moving above ground can draw an attack within minutes. When firepower makes the surface too dangerous, armies have historically gone underground, as they did in World War I and Vietnam, and more recently in Gaza and Lebanon.

"Armies that cannot survive above ground must adapt below it," the authors write.

Fighting in tunnels brings its own requirements, the authors write: detecting the enemy by sound and vibration, and specialized unmanned systems that cannot rely on GPS or stable radio links. Long stretches underground also take a severe psychological and physical toll on soldiers.

Western militaries are not ready for this, Spencer and Craig write. No NATO partner maintains even general capabilities for large-scale underground warfare, and US and British efforts focused mainly on detecting and clearing tunnels rather than occupying and operating in them.

Russian forces are preparing to resume mechanized assaults in southern Ukraine after a pause of several months and are moving armored vehicles toward areas where they plan to launch offensives, Anastasiia Shevchenko, deputy spokesperson for the Southern Forces Grouping, told Ukrinform on 22 October. The Huliaipole axis remains the hottest in the Southern grouping’s zone, with 10 to 20 combat engagements reported on an average day, she said.

On the Huliaipole axis, one of Russia’s largest force groupings is fighting Ukrainian forces, comprising units from several Russian combined-arms armies, the spokesperson says. Over the past week, as the weather worsened, Russian forces began local assaults there with infantry, motorcycles, and armored vehicles, seeking to break through toward Zaporizhzhia and blockade the city, Ukraine’s 7th Air Assault Corps reported, adding that the area is one of Russia’s key priorities in southern Ukraine. Russia has used fog this way before: last November, Russian troops moved under its cover to avoid detection by Ukrainian drones as they advanced on Huliaipole, the Institute for the Study of War assessed.

Russian forces have abandoned large-scale assaults across a broad front and are attempting to infiltrate Ukrainian positions in small groups. They periodically use motorcycles and quad bikes for assaults, Shevchenko said, adding that these vehicles are fast and maneuverable.

However, Russian forces should not expect to advance unimpeded, the spokesperson noted. Ukrainian units control Russian supply routes and systematically detect and strike Russian personnel and equipment while they are still moving toward their launch positions, she added.

“Specifically, speaking in numbers, since the beginning of October alone, units of the Southern Forces Grouping (Forces) have destroyed more than 3,000 occupiers and 1,300 pieces of weapons and military equipment. Thus, the enemy is suffering significant losses in the operational zone of the Southern Forces Grouping (Forces),” the spokesperson concluded.

Ukrainian drones disrupt Russian logistics

Russian forces had stopped using military vehicles because Ukraine’s unmanned systems forces controlled their logistics, Shevchenko said in comments to Ukrinform on 16 September. Ukrainian drones spotted Russian troops and equipment in time and struck them mostly on their routes of advance, she said.

Ukrainian air strikes destroyed bridges near Polohy in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, complicating Russian supply operations along the Huliaipole axis, Ukraine’s 7th Air Assault Corps reported on 21 September. Russian forces had used these bridges to move personnel, heavy equipment, and ammunition for their offensive toward Orikhiv. Disruptions to logistics have forced Russian units to rely more on motorcycles, which are more vulnerable to Ukrainian strikes, the corps said.

Russian forces are also expected to use fog and rain as cover for assaults, Mykola Zinko, deputy commander of the unmanned systems battalion of the 5th Assault Brigade, said on 19 October. Russia has brought up reserves, and its heavy equipment will move out under the fog, he said.

During an expedition from 2 to 16 October in the Polish village of Łasków, a Ukrainian team uncovered the remains of more than 40 Ukrainians, including women, men, and children, the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, which commissioned the search, said on 20 October.

Ukraine and Poland disagree over how to interpret their shared history. One of the most contentious issues is the Volhynia tragedy, a series of massacres of Polish and Ukrainian civilians during World War II, the largest of which took place in Volhynia. Amid unresolved disputes over this history, Ukraine halted Polish search and exhumation work on its territory. Both sides have since resumed the work, and Łasków is the first Ukrainian search in Poland to find remains since 2016, the institute said.

During Poland’s 2025 presidential campaign, Karol Nawrocki said that unresolved historical issues could stand in the way of Ukraine's accession to the EU and NATO. The dispute is still live: on 20 October, Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz called on Kyiv to distance itself from the Lviv Oblast Council’s decision to declare 2027 the year of the UPA and Shukhevych. The searches, meanwhile, continue on both sides of the border.

More than 300 Ukrainians were killed in Łasków

On the final day of the investigation, specialists partially uncovered a mass grave containing the remains of eight people and documented all the findings. The victims’ ages, sexes, and causes of death will be established during exhumation work planned for spring 2027.

“According to witness accounts, a large number of the Ukrainian victims were buried—or, in fact, simply covered with a thin layer of soil—in hiding places, fields, and the yards of their own homes in the village of Łasków. They were buried only 10 days later by Ukrainians from the neighboring village of Smolihiv, who were then also killed and shot near the forest,” director of the Dolia memorial search center Sviatoslav Sheremeta said, according to Istorychna Pravda.

The Ukrainians were killed in an attack by units of the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) and the Peasants’ Battalions (Bataliony Chłopskie), the institute said when the search began.

“Most of the graves are located at a depth of 40–70 centimeters from the ground surface,” Sheremeta said.

Historical records indicate that more than 300 people were killed in the Polish village of Łasków on 10 March 1944, the media outlet reported. Ukrainian and Polish historians and experts have identified 327 village residents who were killed, although some researchers estimate the death toll at around 350, the report said. Further historical research and search operations may help establish the final number of victims.

Ukraine imposed a ban on exhumations but allowed the work to resume several years later

In response to the widespread destruction of Ukrainian monuments in Poland between 2015 and 2017, and what the Ukrainian side considered an inadequate investigation into these incidents, Ukraine imposed a moratorium on search operations and the exhumation of Poles killed by Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) fighters in 1943–1945, Ukrainska Pravda reported.

In January 2025, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced a “breakthrough,” saying there was a decision on the first exhumations of Polish victims of the UPA.

By April 2025, exhumations of Polish residents killed in 1945 had begun in Ukraine’s Ternopil Oblast. A joint Polish-Ukrainian team of experts took part in the work.

Searches in Ukraine have found mostly Polish soldiers from 1939, while Ukraine waits for permits in Poland

Most of the Polish remains recovered in Ukraine since the moratorium ended belong to soldiers killed fighting the Germans in September 1939, not to victims of the Volhynia killings. In Lviv, searchers exhumed at least 31 soldiers at Zboiska in 2025 and found 113 more at Holosko this autumn.

Of the 1943–1945 victims, joint Polish-Ukrainian teams have recovered 42 in Puzhnyky, Ternopil Oblast, which were reburied in September 2025, and 55 in Ostrówki and Wola Ostrowiecka in Volyn Oblast, which they found this summer. Polish historians attribute the Puzhnyky killings to a UPA unit. Ukraine’s Institute of National Memory first described the dead as victims of Soviet repression, then changed the wording to victims who died in 1945 after Poland’s Foreign Ministry objected. A search in Uhly, Rivne Oblast, this spring found no mass grave.

Ukraine’s first search in Poland in years, for UPA fighters in Jureczkowa in autumn 2025, found no remains. The Ukrainian team waited more than a year for permission to work in Łasków, which came on 31 August. Its requests for Sahryń, where Home Army units killed between 200 and 800 people on the same day, according to PAP, and for Przemyśl were still pending in July, with Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance asking for more documents.

The history row reaches the search permits

Kyiv has said it will keep issuing permits for Polish searches despite the tensions. In August, before the Łasków permit came through, Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland, Vasyl Bodnar, said Ukraine could not get a single permit to search for its dead in Poland while it kept approving Polish work in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Warsaw has kept raising the stakes over how Ukraine remembers the UPA. Nawrocki stripped President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Poland’s Order of the White Eagle in June after Zelenskyy named a military unit after the “Heroes of the UPA.” In July, the head of Nawrocki’s chancellery, Zbigniew Bogucki, spoke in the Sejm of genocide “in Volhynia and Eastern Lesser Poland,” using the interwar Polish name for what is now western Ukraine. In August, Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Bosacki warned that placing Stepan Bandera or Roman Shukhevych in Ukraine’s National Pantheon would damage relations with Poland and Europe.

Nawrocki has also sent the Sejm a bill that would punish promoting the ideology of the OUN and the UPA, which had its first reading on 3 July. Polish members of the European Parliament proposed adding the Volhynia tragedy and the UPA to the parliament’s report on Ukraine’s progress toward EU membership.

The two sides also disagree on the numbers the exhumations are meant to help settle. Polish estimates put the number of Poles killed in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia at about 100,000. Ukraine’s Institute of National Memory counts about 30,000 Polish and 10,000 Ukrainian victims identified so far.

Fighters of the Bratstvo Battalion, part of the Timur Special Unit of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR), captured three Russian servicemen and gave first aid to one of them, HUR reported on 19 October. They also found and destroyed Russian sabotage groups, HUR said, adding that counter-sabotage operations in the Zaporizhzhia direction are ongoing.

Russian forces have spent months trying to get closer to Zaporizhzhia, one of Ukraine’s largest cities. They may try to use the dried-up bed of the Kakhovka Reservoir to infiltrate north toward it as autumn fog and dense vegetation set in, the Institute for the Study of War reported on 26 September. Ukrainian troops are now clearing the area of Russian saboteurs trying to get into the rear of Ukrainian positions, according to HUR.

HUR’s video shows the fighting and the captures, with one dead Russian soldier blurred. At the end, a captured Russian says two of the three men in his group were killed by a “Baba Yaga,” the nickname Russian troops use for Ukraine’s heavy bomber drones.

HUR described what the Russian groups are trying to do:

“Using small sabotage groups, the enemy is attempting to penetrate deep into the rear positions of Ukraine’s Defense Forces, build up forces to destabilize the situation, disrupt logistics, and neutralize Ukrainian defenders’ combat crews.”

Russia seeks to bring the front closer to Zaporizhzhia

Russia’s objective in the Zaporizhzhia direction is to advance within artillery range of the city, hold forward positions, and protect its rear from Ukrainian strikes, the Institute for the Study of War noted.

In January, Russian forces were trying to capture Stepnohirsk and advance along the shore of the former Kakhovka Reservoir toward Zaporizhzhia. Taking the settlement would let Russian troops place long-range artillery or fiber-optic drones there to strike the city’s outskirts, Southern Defense Forces spokesperson Vladyslav Voloshyn told Ukrinform on 14 January.

On 22 September, Anastasiia Shevchenko, spokesperson for the Southern Forces Group, said there were no signs of preparations for a direct offensive on Zaporizhzhia and that Russian forces lacked the troops and means to advance directly toward the city.

Dense vegetation and limited visibility: combat on the reservoir bed

The Kakhovka Reservoir was a vast artificial body of water on the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine that supplied water to millions of people, as well as to agriculture and industry. On 6 June 2023, Russian forces blew up the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant, the Southern Operational Command reported.

After the dam was destroyed, the bed of the former reservoir quickly became overgrown with willows, poplars, and shrubs, creating a new battlefield. Ukrainian troops have fought there before.

In November 2025, fighters from the same Bratstvo unit carried out a reconnaissance and sabotage operation 7 kilometers from the shoreline of the former reservoir, HUR said. They found and eliminated Russian troops, then raised the Ukrainian flag over the islands there and took control of the area.

In April, the Bratstvo unit’s chief of staff, who goes by the call sign “Dyviziia,” described the conditions on an earlier raid across the reservoir bed:

“You’re just constantly moving through these thickets, with no way to figure out which direction to go. You can literally see everything just two meters ahead of you.”

Six people were killed in a Russian strike in the settlement of Nova Vodolaha in Kharkiv Oblast, including girls aged 1 and 11. Another 15 people were injured, including seven children, Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleh Syniehubov said on 20 October. Russian forces struck a park with a drone while families with children were there, Ukraine’s Minister of Internal Affairs Ivan Vyhivskyi said.

Russian forces continue to attack Ukrainian cities, killing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure. The Kharkiv Oblast Prosecutor’s Office has opened a war-crime investigation into the strike. The strike was aimed at people, Yurii Yurchenko, head of a police department in Kharkiv Oblast, said in a comment to Suspilne.

The 14-month-old girl was named Anhelina

The Russian drone circled the park several times before crashing, Yurchenko said. He said the drone struck a tree near a café, and the blast wave and shrapnel hit people at the establishment. The attack came at around 16:30, the prosecutor’s office said, adding that Russian forces had preliminarily used a Geran-3 drone.

The Russian strike killed three women, aged 28, 34 and 36, a man around 40 years old, and two girls, aged 14 months and 11 years, Syniehubov said in his statement.

The youngest girl, named Anhelina, was born in August 2025, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. Her mother, Inna, died in the hospital, he added.

Zelenskyy shows US senators photos of the aftermath the same day

Zelenskyy met with US Senators Richard Blumenthal and Thom Tillis, along with their colleagues from both parties and both chambers of Congress, according to a 19 October post on his social media accounts. During the meeting, he discussed the Russian attack in Kharkiv Oblast and showed lawmakers photographs from the scene, including one of the infant who was killed in a stroller.

“This is how Russia responds to the lifting of sanctions and the easing of pressure,” he said in the post.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine needs air defense and that no one should think about making money with Russia while it continues its war. He asked that sanctions on Russia stay in place until the killing stops, urged the US to “be strong” and apply Lindsey Graham’s law, and called on Europe to keep supporting Ukraine.

Ukrainian forces have liberated more territory since the beginning of the fall than Russian troops have captured during the same period. This trend has persisted throughout 2026, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his 18 October address. He also reported that Dobropillia, Kostiantynivka, and five other settlements remain under Ukrainian control.

Russia systematically exaggerates its battlefield gains. A recent briefing by Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, in which he claimed that Russian forces had captured 92 settlements since the beginning of September, as well as Kostiantynivka and Dobropillia, and advanced to within 5 kilometers of Zaporizhzhia, was based on “outright lies, manipulation, and exaggerations,” Ukrainian General Staff spokesperson Andrii Kovaliov said.

Ukraine also continues to defend areas near Kramatorsk, Zelenskyy said. He dismissed Russian claims about Zaporizhzhia.

“We are destroying Russians 20 kilometers from Zaporizhzhia, not five, as someone in Russia is fantasizing to Putin,” Zelenskyy said.

Ukrainian forces continue to hold back Russian assaults and destroy groups of occupying troops attempting to infiltrate Dobropillia, the president said. The Defense Forces are also defending positions elsewhere in Donetsk Oblast and in Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.

Zaporizhzhia axis: Russians seek to move artillery closer to the city

Russia seeks to advance on the Zaporizhzhia axis to bring the regional capital within range of its tube artillery, hold forward positions, and protect rear areas from Ukrainian strikes, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said on 18 October.

Maksym Kravchuk, spokesperson for Ukraine's Southern Group of Forces, refuted Gerasimov’s claims that Russian forces had captured Malokaterynivka, located south of Zaporizhzhia, stressing that the settlement remains under Ukrainian control, the Center for Countering Disinformation said on 18 October. Ukrainian troops recorded a video directly from Malokaterynivka to confirm this.

As of 18 October, Russian forces had advanced or infiltrated to within 24 kilometers of Zaporizhzhia, ISW said.

Dobropillia remains under Ukrainian control despite Russian assaults

Dobropillia is now a fortress anchoring Ukrainian positions along the highway leading northeast toward Kramatorsk. Russia first tried to take Dobropillia in August 2025 and is now trying again.

Russia is redeploying reinforcements to the Dobropillia axis and continues to send assault infantry through the village of Nove Shakhove despite heavy losses. Russian command will likely try to encircle or at least envelop Dobropillia and cut off Ukrainian supply routes from the direction of Bilozerske, Ukrainian military analyst Kostiantyn Mashovets wrote on 9 October.

Mashovets sees the push as the southern flank of a Russian effort to envelop the whole Sloviansk–Kramatorsk urban area.

Dobropillia remains under Ukrainian control, Zelenskyy said. On 18 October, footage located by analysts showed a Russian soldier hoisting a flag in the town's southeast after an infiltration, yet ISW has found no sign that Russian troops have dug in there.

Russia claimed to have captured Kostiantynivka, but ISW found no evidence

Ukrainian troops in and around Kostiantynivka are stopping Russia from locking in its gains in the city or pushing on toward Druzhkivka and Kramatorsk, ISW said on 17 October.

Russian officials claimed that capturing Kostiantynivka was an important step toward establishing control over the Sloviansk–Druzhkivka–Kramatorsk urban agglomeration and the entire Donetsk Oblast, ISW said in August. The Kremlin also claimed that Russian forces had captured the city as early as 5 July, the institute added.

A Russian military blogger claimed that Russian forces had full control over Kostiantynivka, but ISW found no evidence to support this claim, the institute said in its 16 October assessment. Russian troops had only infiltrated parts of southern and central Kostiantynivka without consolidating positions, and there was no evidence of their presence in its northern part, ISW added.

Temporary restrictions on aircraft arrivals and departures were imposed at 27 Russian airports, Deutsche Welle reported on 16 October, citing its own calculations based on reports from Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned airlines on 1 September that “Russian airspace is becoming completely unsafe.” Overnight, most of the airspace over European Russia was closed.

By morning, more than 200 flights had been canceled or delayed at Moscow airports, Deutsche Welle reported, citing figures compiled by a Russian Telegram channel.

Тим часом у російських аеропортах – справжній апокаліпсис через нальоти дронів останніми днями.

Про це ниють росЗМІ. Було відмінено десятки рейсів, у терміналах – дуже багато людей. Пасажири скаржаться на задуху, дикі черги до туалетів та повну невідомість. pic.twitter.com/ZlXxY5c2mq

— Breaking News (@breakingUAnews) October 16, 2026

The list included airports in the capital. All four Moscow airports temporarily suspended arrivals and departures, the Russian outlet Astra reported on 16 October. Russian authorities said they had shot down dozens of drones, while flights were delayed and diverted to alternate airfields, according to the report.

Massive drone attack on Russia: 644 UAVs in one night, 94 shot down near Moscow

The temporary airport shutdowns were likely a consequence of a massive drone attack on Russia. From 8:00 p.m. on 15 October to 8:00 a.m. on 16 October, Russian air defenses allegedly intercepted and destroyed 644 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles across 26 Russian regions, occupied Crimea, and the Black Sea, according to Russia’s Defense Ministry.

According to the list of regions published by the Russian Defense Ministry, the drone attacks covered a vast area of Russia, from regions bordering Ukraine to the Moscow region, the Volga region, the country’s northwest and southern regions, as well as occupied Crimea and the Black Sea.

Russian air defenses shot down a total of 94 drones approaching Moscow over the evening of 15 October and overnight, according to calculations by the Russian outlet RBC Radio, citing statements by Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin.

In the Kaluga region, air defenses destroyed 27 drones over the evening and night, the regional governor reported. At 9:27 a.m., he updated the figures, saying another 48 UAVs had been shot down overnight, bringing the total to 75. According to preliminary information, there were no casualties or infrastructure damage.

In the Tula region, air defenses allegedly destroyed a total of 32 Ukrainian drones. There were no casualties, according to regional Governor Dmitry Milyaev in his Telegram channel.

In the Vladimir region in western Russia, authorities repelled drone attacks overnight. In the city of Vladimir, a drone attempted to attack a heating infrastructure facility, but the attack was stopped, Vladimir Region Governor Alexander Avdeyev reported. Minor damage was reported, but there was no information about casualties.

Ukraine has not yet commented on its involvement in the attacks.

The practical consequences of canceled Russian flights

Passengers on flight SU6312 from Kaliningrad to Moscow were unable to land in Moscow because of airspace closure, so the aircraft was diverted to Nizhny Novgorod, Terravia reported. After landing, passengers remained on board for about two hours before being allowed to disembark at 3:30 a.m. Instead of continuing their journey to Moscow by air, they were supposed to be transported by bus, with the trip expected to take about seven hours, the outlet reported.

Passengers were not provided with food or drinks, and one woman could not find a seat on the bus, so she purchased a ticket for an early-morning train herself.

Since the beginning of the year, all four Moscow airports have been completely shut down simultaneously at least 19 times, the Russian outlet Agentstvo reported. During the first 14 days of October, the restrictions lasted 101 hours and 38 minutes, compared with 46 hours and 33 minutes in September, according to the report.

Ukrainian and Japanese officials discussed establishing backup bridge crossings in the event of Russian strikes, preparing municipal infrastructure for winter, and Japan's continued assistance with Ukraine's recovery, Ukraine's Minister for Restoration, Infrastructure and Transport, Mykola Kalashnyk, reported on 14 October.

Russia is targeting Kyiv's bridges to paralyze the city and break civilian morale, defense analyst Hamish de Bretton-Gordon wrote in The Telegraph. On 1 and 2 October, Russia attacked Kyiv's Southern Bridge, then struck the Northern Bridge on 3 and 4 October. Ukraine is now working with international partners to establish backup bridge crossings that could maintain connectivity even if major routes are damaged.

The discussions took place during a meeting between Minister Kalashnyk, Japan's Ambassador to Ukraine Yo Osumi, and Osamu Hattori, head of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) office in Ukraine, according to the statement.

Backup crossings could prevent logistical disruptions if major bridges are damaged

Kyiv's Southern Bridge, for example, plays a critical role in logistics because freight traffic uses it, transport planning expert Dmytro Bespalov noted in an article for Ukrainska Pravda. At the same time, installing additional metal structures to reinforce bridges could be dangerous given their technical condition and existing load levels, he said.

One potential solution is to establish backup bridge crossings.

Ukraine and JICA have agreed to continue working together on engineering solutions for setting up these crossings. Japan has already delivered 720 meters of prefabricated bridge structures to Ukraine, which are expected to be used to create alternative routes if Russia's attacks damage major bridges, Kalashnyk said.

The initiative is intended to help maintain transportation links, ensure the delivery of critical supplies, and preserve evacuation routes for civilians.

Ukraine prepares water utilities and boiler plants for winter amid the threat of Russian infrastructure strikes

During the meeting, Ukraine and JICA discussed equipping water utilities with backup power supplies, addressing the need for modular boiler plants, and obtaining equipment to ensure uninterrupted heating and water services. Ukraine has already submitted lists of the necessary equipment to JICA for consideration as part of a new emergency assistance project, Kalashnyk said.

An intercepted document outlining an alleged Russian plan for strikes against Ukraine this winter reportedly describes attacks on 60 critical infrastructure facilities using up to 1,000 missiles, drones, and aerial bombs. Potential targets include electrical substations, hydroelectric power plants, thermal power plants, boiler facilities, and infrastructure related to water supply and wastewater management.

The document also describes potential strikes on facilities in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and several other cities. Such attacks could disrupt electricity, heating, water supply, and wastewater services.

Debris from a Russian drone damaged Cosmogony, a painting that set a national record in Ukraine, the Korsaks Museum of Contemporary Ukrainian Art in Lutsk, where the artwork was exhibited, reported on 14 October. A fire destroyed part of the painting’s final section, titled The Future, according to the statement.

Russian drones continue to attack Ukraine. Overnight into 15 October alone, Ukrainian air defense forces downed or suppressed 536 Russian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In recent days, Lutsk, a city in northwestern Ukraine, has been among the cities damaged by Russian attacks. Russian UAV attacks set fire to an oil depot, a wholesale warehouse, and a shopping center. At the museum, located on the shopping center’s premises, the fire damaged Ukraine’s largest painting, which covers a canvas of more than 2,000 square meters.

Russian attack damages museum in Lutsk

A fire broke out at the Adrenalin City shopping and entertainment complex, where the museum is located, Suspilne Lutsk reported. The blaze damaged the last of the painting’s six sections, according to the report.

“By destroying art and culture, they are also trying to destroy Ukrainians,” Tetiana Repnytska, director of the Museum of Contemporary Ukrainian Art in Lutsk, told Suspilne Lutsk.

Museum staff also had to evacuate more than 300 works by Ukrainian artist Emma Andiievska, which were exhibited alongside Cosmogony, Oles Tomakh, the museum’s chief curator, told Suspilne Lutsk. Some works could not be removed in time, resulting in shattered glass. However, the museum’s other exhibition halls were unaffected, the chief curator said.

The museum is weighing whether to fully restore the damaged fragment or keep the fire’s traces as a reminder of the war, and will decide after consulting the artist, Petro Antyp, and restoration specialists, it said. Repnytska told Suspilne Lutsk that the painting’s authors could also create a new section.

“Despite the shelling, we will continue to develop contemporary Ukrainian art and preserve it,” the museum director said.

Cosmogony—Ukraine’s largest painting

Artist Petro Antyp began working on the painting in November 2022, Suspilne Lutsk reported, and it took almost two years to complete, according to the museum’s website. The painting covers an area of 2,086 square meters.

In September 2024, the project set a national record as Ukraine’s largest painting.

The artwork explores the evolution of the universe, Earth, nature, humanity, society, culture, and science. Its six sections combine myths, legends, scientific theories, and symbols from different cultures, according to the museum’s website.

The project extends beyond the canvas, as the museum presents a multimedia performance that combines light, sound, and art.

Civilians killed and injured in Russia’s latest attack on Lutsk

Around noon on 14 October, a Russian jet-powered Shahed drone attacked Lutsk. Drone debris damaged a wholesale goods warehouse and a residential building, Roman Romaniuk, acting head of the Volyn Regional Military Administration, told Suspilne.

Falling drone debris sparked a large fire at the Yevrohurt wholesale warehouse. A nine-story residential building on Sobornosti Avenue was also damaged, Romaniuk later reported on social media.

Six people were killed in the strike on the warehouse: five were found at the scene, and another person died in the hospital. Eleven more people were injured, Romaniuk said.

Two other people, including a child, were injured in the residential building. Twelve people remained hospitalized, one of whom was in serious condition, according to the report.