Ukraine is remaking its air force on NATO’s model, down to the way its squadrons are organized and the aircraft they fly. The reforms are planned to be completed by 2035 and include modernizing its F-16s while pursuing the Swedish Gripen jets, Air Force Spokesperson Yurii Ihnat says, per Tse Baza.

Ukraine’s fighters are working hard against Russia’s air war, and in the previous month alone the Air Force faced around 3,500 jet-powered targets, with F-16s heavily used to intercept Russian drones. The new reform is meant to build an air force that can be sustained over the long term and can contest Russian jets and glide bombs, not only survive the next wave.

Wings and universal air bases

The central change, Ihnat said, is a move to the “wing” units that NATO air forces use. The first steps have already been taken: Ukraine has set up the 107th F-16 wing, which now has its own Facebook page and may publish material about its work.

Ukraine also plans to build universal air bases on the operational airfields it has used through the full-scale war. In the future, Ihnat says, those bases should be able to receive and service different models of combat aircraft, as NATO does.

A worn fleet, and the jets Ukraine wants next

Currently, the F-16s Ukraine flies are older Block 15 jets, used by other countries before they arrived, and intensive combat has left them in need of repairs, service life restoration, and upgrades.

Ukrainian officials discussed modernization with the American manufacturer Lockheed Martin, while Kyiv would prefer the newer Block 70/72 version, which Ihnat says would let its pilots stand up more confidently to Russia’s Su-35 fighters.

Keeping the current fleet flying has been hard: fewer than half of Ukraine’s F-16s may be operational, held back by slow maintenance abroad.

At the same time, Lockheed Martin and Kyiv are discussing a special F-16 variant for Ukraine, with a modern AESA radar, longer range, and a wider choice of weapons, though no firm deal exists yet.

Ukraine is also counting on Swedish Gripen fighters. Ihnat says Ukrainian pilots are drawn to them for their lower operating costs and simpler maintenance, with the country likely to receive older C/D models first, before the newer Gripen E that Saab is developing.

Ukrainian pilots have already begun their training on the Gripen, a jet seen as a counter to the Russian aircraft dropping guided glide bombs on the front, though delivery timing depends on further agreements.

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.), on Monday indicated he would reintroduce articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should he remain at the Pentagon after Congress returns to Washington, D.C., following the November midterm elections. Massie, who kicked off the impeachment process against Hegseth in September over the war in Iran, wrote on social…

• China, India, and the US have the largest active armed forces in the world.
• The International Institute for Strategic Studies compiled data about the world's militaries.
• The world's top armies spend hundreds of billions of dollars on defense each year.

The US military may lead the world in budget size and in the ambitions of its warfare technology, but there is one measure by which it is outsized by other nations.

Using data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies' 2026 Military Balance report, Business Insider ranked the top 25 countries by the size of their active armed forces during 2025 and listed their defense budgets that same year.

Active-duty force size is a tally of a country's uniformed troops: airmen, soldiers, sailors, special operators, and Marines.

Armies, in particular, depend on size to gain and occupy ground during armed conflicts.

Militaries can also be a tool of domestic repression. North Korea, for example, is one of the world's most repressive states, led by a dictator who has repeatedly threatened neighboring South Korea — and it also has one of the world's largest militaries.

The number of active-duty military personnel is far from the only factor that matters when comparing military power between countries, but it reflects latent power.

"Numbers have value, but there's a lot more to military capability," Mark Cancian, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, DC-based foreign policy and national security think tank, told Business Insider.

IISS, a London-headquartered think tank, counts active armed forces, reservists, and paramilitaries as separate categories in its analysis, showing a fuller picture of each nation's manpower.

Some countries have significantly more reservists than others — Vietnam has the largest number in the world, estimated at 5 million — but the quality and longevity of their expertise can vary between systems.

"When you look at some countries' reserve numbers, you're often looking at people who haven't trained in 10 or 20 years," Cancian said. "It gives you a big number, but their military value is questionable."

Even when accounting for all of a military's manpower, personnel is only one of the factors that can qualify a nation's military strength, which also includes equipment and readiness.

There's also the role of technologies in global warfare, the size and sophistication of air forces and naval fleets, amphibious capabilities for landing assault forces, command-and-control systems, and nuclear forces, all of which shape military power.

Still, comparing global manpower offers insight into how countries prioritize military power.

See how the world's largest militaries stack up in terms of active troop numbers.

The Pentagon is pressing Congress to keep measures in the annual defense policy bill that would formally authorize the name change from Department of Defense to “Department of War.” “President Donald Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth had the conviction to say so plainly. Many in Washington would have left the name alone. The…

Ukraine has held its first international course in military surgery and resuscitation, under instructors from the American College of Surgeons and other Western trauma bodies, the Defense Ministry says. “Tryzub”, or Trident, has been conducted for front-line surgeons and anesthesiologists.

The week-long drills put 16 doctors, eight surgeons, and eight anesthesiologists through three standard Western trauma programs: Advanced Trauma Life Support, Definitive Surgical Trauma Care, and Advanced Surgical Skills for Exposure in Trauma. All of them work at stabilization points close to the fighting.

The course has been run with the International Association for Trauma Surgery and Intensive Care and the Global Medical Knowledge Alliance, a non-profit that helps rebuild Ukraine’s healthcare, with support from Razom4Ukraine and Expertise France.

The wounds have changed

The course answers a battlefield that has grown deadlier. Ukrainian combat medics say modern combat trauma has fundamentally changed: drones and shrapnel now cause most of the complex wounds, often tearing through several parts of the body at once.

Bleeding has become the main cause of death on the battlefield, and the window to stop it is measured in minutes. That is the gap a well-drilled surgical team near the line is meant to close.

“People who will do everything to save his life”

Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara has framed the course as a promise to troops at the front.

“When a soldier goes into battle, he must know that if he is wounded, there will be people beside him who will do everything they can to save his life,” Khmara says.

Experience, he added, is a kind of trust that matters enormously at the front.

“That is why we want our medics to have the best knowledge and skills, and to be able to act as one team," he states.

Ukrainian front-line medicine already draws international notice: one Azov brigade medic was named Europe’s best military medic of the year, and off-duty Ukrainian medics recently saved a man’s life at a London crash scene.

• Ukraine has been waiting nearly a month for the US to sign off on crucial missile interceptors, its president says.
• Kyiv said it is specifically waiting for the Pentagon to approve Patriot and NASAMS missiles.
• Ukraine has repeatedly faced low stockpiles of interceptors as it defends against Russian missiles.

Kyiv has been waiting nearly a month for US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to sign off on crucial missile interceptors, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine has been waiting on approval to procure interceptors for its Patriot and NASAMS systems. The former is the country's most reliable defense against Russian ballistic missiles.

The Ukrainian president said that he instructed his team "to raise this with the American side once again. Conversations with other countries are also ongoing."

Most of the interceptors for Ukraine's air defense systems, including its Patriot batteries, are supplied through NATO's Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) initiative, in which allies and partners buy weapons from the US and then transfer them to Kyiv.

It is unclear how many interceptors have been held up, or why Hegseth had not signed off on their transfer.

A senior Pentagon official told Business Insider "there has been no change" to department policy "regarding intelligence sharing or any capabilities we are enabling Europeans to provide to Ukraine."

The PURL initiative "continues unaltered," the official added.

Ukraine has faced repeated interceptor shortages, making it difficult to effectively defend against worsening Russian ballistic missile attacks, which, alongside armed jet-powered drones, have hammered Kyiv in a series of deadly bombardments.

The American-made MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air missile system is a key piece of Kyiv's defensive umbrella. Ukrainian officials have urged the US and European allies to send more interceptors — PAC-2 and PAC-3 models in particular. Global munitions stockpiles, however, are under increased strain.

"We are working on several tracks — with the United States, Europe, and other partners that have stocks of PAC-2 and PAC-3 missiles," Zelenskyy said Monday in a social media post.

The Iran war has put tremendous stress on munition stockpiles. Col. Yurii Ihnat, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force, said on Monday that the Patriot interceptors fired by the US and its Middle East allies during the Iran war could have supported Kyiv's defenses for several years.

The NASAMS (National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System) — a joint US-Norwegian project — is another important element of Ukraine's air defense network. It is not designed to engage ballistic missiles like the Patriot, but rather short- and medium-range targets such as aircraft, cruise missiles, and drones.

Zelenskyy's comment comes amid broader tensions between Ukraine and the US, which have escalated in recent weeks.

The Trump administration has publicly denounced Ukrainian drone strikes targeting Russian energy facilities, with Washington blaming Kyiv for high oil and diesel prices. Industry experts, however, have identified the Iran war as a major source of disruption in global markets.

In October, Ukrainian officials reported multiple instances where Kyiv did not receive any advance warning of Russian ballistic missile launches from international partners through usual channels, leaving it little to no time to detect them before impact. The apparent suspension of intelligence sharing was lifted after a few days.

Ukraine also experienced a sudden disruption of its Starshield services, the military-grade version of Starlink, earlier this month, with speed caps affecting drone operations, logistics, and communication, said sources in Kyiv's defense ministry.

On Saturday, Ukrainian Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara said that monitoring systems had recorded speed recovery for Starshield and Starlink, SpaceX's commercial satellite internet service.

The incident has raised alarms among Ukrainian officials. Elon Musk, the SpaceX CEO, accused Kyiv of breaching Starlink's terms of service by using the civilian service for drone strikes and said last weekend that this ultimately led to the disruption. Some of Kyiv's top drone advisors have pushed back on that argument.

Imagine how Russia would fare against 32 Ukraines.

Ukraine has been waiting “for nearly a month” for U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to allow missiles for its air defense systems to be sent to the country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday. “We have been waiting for nearly a month for Mr. Hegseth to sign off on missiles for Patriots and NASAMS,” Zelensky…

Russia attacked Ukraine with 140 drones, including Shahed and Gerbera attack drones and Parodiya decoys, and four missiles overnight on 26 October, the Ukrainian Air Force reported. The missiles were one Kh-31P anti-radiation missile and three Kh-59/69 air-launched guided missiles, launched from occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts.

Jet-powered Shaheds are becoming a larger part of Russia’s aerial campaign, challenging Ukraine’s air defenses and prompting efforts to develop faster interceptors. Alongside guided bomb attacks and strikes on energy infrastructure, these attacks add to the pressure on Ukraine’s defenses as winter approaches, and Ukraine says Russia has a plan for it.

Air defenses downed or suppressed 112 drones, including 56 of the 70 jet-powered Shaheds, and three Kh-59/69 missiles, according to preliminary Air Force figures. Hits were recorded at 15 locations, and debris fell at four more.

Four wounded in Zaporizhzhia

Russian strikes on Zaporizhzhia overnight wounded two women aged 22 and 30, and two men aged 40 and 61, the State Emergency Service (DSNS) said. The strikes damaged the windows of a hotel and two buses, a private house, and four outbuildings, and three cars caught fire. The oblast administration had first reported one wounded.

Russian strikes injured 8 people in Ukraine overnight on 26 October

Russia injured 2 women, aged 22 and 30, and 2 men, aged 40 and 61, in Zaporizhzhia overnight, Ukraine's State Emergency Service said. Russia also shattered windows in a hotel and 2 buses and damaged a house, and… pic.twitter.com/42bvnHt0qk

— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) October 26, 2026

Later in the morning, Russian forces hit a shopping center building that had already closed, the administration said. The building caught fire. According to preliminary information, no one was hurt.

Guided bombs hit two districts of Izium

At about 02:40 on 26 October, Russian forces struck two districts of Izium in Kharkiv Oblast with guided aerial bombs, and three people needed medical help, the city military administration said, as Suspilne Kharkiv reported. More than 10 private houses and a youth sports school were damaged, and several streets lost power and internet.

Russia struck a burning Odesa Oblast plant twice more as firefighters worked

Overnight, a Russian attack destroyed an industrial enterprise in Odesa Oblast and set it on fire, the DSNS reported. As firefighters put out the blaze, Russian forces struck the site twice more. The rescuers were in shelter and were not hurt, but fire equipment was damaged. At another address, four garages were damaged and a car was destroyed. The oblast administration said there were no casualties.

Energy facility hit in Khmelnytskyi Oblast

On the evening of 25 October, a Russian attack damaged an energy facility in Kamianets-Podilskyi district of Khmelnytskyi Oblast, causing emergency power outages, the oblast administration said. Windows were also damaged in two residential buildings. No casualties were reported.

Meanwhile, Russian drones attacked the Nikopol district of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast more than 10 times overnight, damaging a high-rise and an administrative building, the oblast administration reported. No one was hurt. Mykolaiv Oblast also came under Shahed attack overnight, with no casualties, according to its administration.

The attack continued into the day. On the morning of 26 October, a Russian strike hit a civilian infrastructure site in Vinnytsia, the oblast administration said. Preliminary reports showed no casualties.

Strikes on 26 October kill three in Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts

On 26 October, Russian aircraft dropped four guided bombs on homes and shops in the center of Yasnohirka near Kramatorsk, killing one person and wounding 10, the DSNS said. Among the wounded is a 13-year-old girl, Donetsk oblast head Vadym Filashkin said. In Sloviansk, a Russian airstrike destroyed a private house, and rescuers recovered the body of its owner, the DSNS said.

A Russian drone strike on Pavlohrad in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast killed one person and injured seven, including two children, the DSNS said. The injured include two 10-year-old girls, the oblast administration said.

Six hurt in Kharkiv Oblast over the past day

Over the past 24 hours, Russian attacks hurt six people in Kharkiv Oblast, oblast head Oleh Syniehubov said. In Kharkiv, a 60-year-old man and a 14-year-old boy suffered acute stress reactions. Two women aged 51 and 71 were wounded in Krasnopavlivka. His count lists two wounded men in Izium, aged 72 and 52, while the city administration says three people there needed medical help. Russian attacks also set fire to a house in Kotliary, a production building in Vilshany, a building in Derhachi, a house in Mykolaivka, and a site in Kharkiv’s Kholodnohirskyi district, the DSNS reported.

In Sumy Oblast, Russian attacks over the past day injured five people, the National Police said, including two women aged 76 and 56 hit by a drone in Sumy community.

On 25 October: two killed in Kherson and Donetsk oblasts

In Chernihiv Oblast, Russian attacks on 25 October injured a man at a hangar in Pryluky district and a woman at a grain store in the Novhorod-Siverskyi area, the oblast administration said. Drones also damaged a school in a village of Koriukivka community, and a strike destroyed 700 metric tons of potatoes at an enterprise in Mena community, the administration said. A large warehouse fire broke out in Koriukivka district, the DSNS said.

In Kherson Oblast, Russian attacks killed one person and wounded eight in the 24 hours to 06:00 on 26 October, the oblast administration reported. On 25 October, a Russian drone strike on a minibus in Kherson’s Central district killed one person and wounded six, the administration said after one more man sought medical help. Police said the minibus was hit by an FPV drone.

In Donetsk Oblast, Russian forces killed one person in Kramatorsk and wounded 10 across the oblast on 25 October, Filashkin said. Russia hit Kramatorsk with drones and six KAB-250 guided bombs, and 18 hits on Sloviansk wounded four, police said.

On 25 October, a Russian attack on Synelnykove district of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast sent a 30-year-old man to hospital, the oblast administration said. In Vinnytsia, the number of people injured in the Russian attack on the morning of 25 October rose to seven, two of them hospitalized, the DSNS said. In Uman, an 86-year-old woman burned in the Russian attack on 21 October died in hospital, the Cherkasy oblast administration said.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Democrats will run Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “out of town” if they take the majority in the November midterms.  Jeffries told MS NOW that Democrats will take action to knock Hegseth off his perch atop the Pentagon if President Trump doesn’t push him out himself. Democrats have zeroed…

Ukraine has waited almost a month for US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to sign off on missiles for its Patriot and NASAMS air defense systems, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 26 October. He ordered his team to raise it with Washington again. Two other US holds on Ukraine, on Starlink speeds and intelligence sharing, have been lifted, leaving the interceptors as the last one.

Russia keeps firing ballistic missiles at Ukrainian cities and the power grid before winter, and Patriots are the only systems in Ukraine that reliably stop Iskander-M, Kinzhal, and Zircon missiles. Zelenskyy has told EU leaders Ukraine needs 300 interceptors to get through winter, diplomatic sources told Radio Svoboda. The holds came as Washington pressed Kyiv to stop striking Russian refineries, which Trump blames for high US fuel prices before the midterms.

Zelenskyy: almost a month waiting for Hegseth’s signature

Zelenskyy held a meeting on weapons supplies with Ukraine’s defense minister, foreign minister, and commander-in-chief. They reported on interceptors for air defense, above all for Patriot systems. Afterward, Zelenskyy wrote:

“We are working in several directions: with the United States, Europe, and other partners that have stocks of PAC-2 and PAC-3 missiles. In particular, for almost a month we have been waiting for Mr. Hegseth’s signature on missiles for Patriots and NASAMS. I have instructed the team to discuss this with the American side once again.”

Talks with other countries continue, he added. The meeting also covered preparations for November’s Ramstein meeting of Ukraine’s allies, where Zelenskyy wants decisions already on the table carried out faster.

Allies’ missiles need US approval

Some of the transfers come from friendly countries and need Hegseth’s approval, because the US must sign off on any re-transfer of its missiles, a US official and three people familiar with the matter said on 19 October. Hegseth has neither refused nor approved them.

A Ukrainian official said in mid-October that only “a couple” of interceptors were left. Hegseth has said the US wants “our guys” to have “the most possible” interceptors, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted nothing was “being deliberately denied to Ukraine.”

Two of three US holds lifted

In an interview aired on 25 October, Zelenskyy listed three problems from his Oslo talks with the Americans: air defense, Starlink limits, and limits on US intelligence sharing. Full Starlink speeds returned on 24 October, and missile warnings resumed after his 20 October call with Rubio. Progress on Patriot missiles is “very slow,” he said, “slower than the flight of Russian missiles.”

Kyiv has also tried to trade for the missiles. Zelenskyy told US senators he had offered US envoys a 30-day pause in strikes on Russian refineries in return for Patriot interceptors. The envoys showed no openness to the idea.

Trump has called those refinery strikes a disgrace that only pushes oil prices higher. He said it days after striking a deal with Putin to bring Russian diesel back to the US ahead of the midterm elections on 3 November.

Trump treats Ukraine as the weak link to squeeze and wants a visible win partly with US domestic politics in mind, Ukrainian diplomat Oleksandr Khara has argued.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is warning that President Trump’s efforts to end the war between Russia and Ukraine by “coddling” Russian President Vladimir Putin and limiting assistance to Kyiv is “certain to fail.” McConnell, who had been largely quiet on the issue of the war after Ukraine lost full access to the satellite-based Starshield network,…

A senior Ukrainian official previously told the Kyiv Independent that the batch awaiting U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's approval was "significant."

• Elon Musk has accused Ukrainian forces of using commercial Starlink in drone strikes.
• But two Ukrainian drone figures say the claim is impossible because of limits imposed on the terminals.
• It comes after Ukraine was hit by a 10-day slowdown on Starshield, the military version of Starlink.

Ukraine said its access to Starshield was restored this weekend, but Elon Musk isn't finished with Kyiv yet.

In an X post on Sunday, Musk accused Ukrainian forces of breaching Starlink's terms of service by using the civilian platform in drone attacks.

"Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week," wrote the SpaceX owner.

"Using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be," he added.

Musk made it clear he was talking about the commercial platform and not Starshield, the military version of the satellite communications service owned and controlled by the US government.

"Were Starlink to be turned off, the Ukrainian front line would collapse immediately. This is NOT a threat, it is simply a statement of fact," Musk added.

Ukrainian drone advisors hit back

Two prominent Ukrainian drone figures, however, disputed Musk's statement, saying that it was technically impossible for any of Kyiv's troops to have independently used Starlink in drone strikes.

"As someone who was inside the process at the Ministry of Defense, I can say for sure that this is not true," wrote Serhii Sternenko, a former advisor for drones to Ukraine's defense ministry, on his Telegram channel.

"It is very strange that Elon Musk does not know about the restrictions on Starlink operation in Ukraine," wrote Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov, another former advisor.

Both worked in the ministry in early 2026, when it negotiated with SpaceX to prevent Russia from using black-market Starlink terminals in the war. SpaceX agreed in February to block Starlink over Ukraine and Russia, allowing access only to whitelisted Ukrainian terminals.

Sternenko said that Ukrainian civilians and troops could register their terminals on the whitelist, but that these would only work while subject to a speed requirement.

For one to connect while moving, it would have to be put on a special list that uses Starshield instead, he said.

"That is, it was technically impossible to use civilian Starlink to perform missions on drones. All drone missions that required satellite communication could only be carried out using Starshield," Sternenko added.

Beskrestnov said the Ukrainian Starlink terminals were subject to a speed limit of 90 kmph, or about 55 mph. The civilian service is also completely cut off over Russia, he added.

"Thus, we physically cannot use commercial Starlink for deep strikes and middle strikes," Beskrestnov wrote.

Starshield vs Starlink

Tactical drones operating on the Ukrainian battlefield at speeds below 55 mph, such as first-person-view attack drones, typically use radio-frequency signals rather than satellite communication to maintain contact with an operator. These are also often too small and lack enough onboard power to reliably carry even a Starlink Mini terminal.

What Ukraine usually uses satellite internet for — hence its reliance on Starshield — is mid-range and deep strikes on Russia's rear or Russian territory, with larger, more powerful drones that fly much faster.

Kyiv also relies on satellite communications for its small interceptor drones, which fly at up to 265 mph to catch incoming attack drones.

Musk followed up on his Sunday X post with a screenshot of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy writing on social media in mid-October that Kyiv's forces "also use Starlink for mid-range strikes" against Russian targets.

However, Zelenskyy's post was describing Ukraine's recent troubles with Starshield, and he repeatedly used the term "Starlink" to refer broadly to the military satellite service instead.

Musk and SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

Earlier this month, Ukraine raised the alarm that its access to Starshield was being throttled at high speeds, reducing its ability to conduct deeper strikes and to control interceptor drones.

The crisis lasted 10 days and came as President Donald Trump and Musk openly criticized Ukraine for targeting Russian oil facilities at a time when the White House was trying to ease fuel prices.

The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed US officials and sources, that Musk had personally ordered the speed cap. Musk and Trump have separately said they were not responsible for the slowdown.

On Saturday, Zelenskyy said Starshield services were running normally again.

Japan’s debate over nuclear-powered submarines is gaining momentum, but political deliberation should not be mistaken for a done deal. As Tokyo prepares to revise its three principal national security documents by the end of 2026, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has opened the door to a long-politically sensitive capability. On October 14, she told parliament that […]

The post Does Japan need nuclear subs? The debate is bigger than China appeared first on Asia Times.

• The UK has issued a three-day essentials checklist it hopes its people will prepare at home.
• Top leaders say they want to bolster national resilience amid fears of the world growing more dangerous.
• The list includes items such as 9 liters of bottled water per person and charged power banks.

The UK is telling families to prepare three days' worth of food, water, and essentials amid concern that natural disasters, armed conflict, and other emergencies are becoming more frequent.

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham's office launched the "Be Ready" campaign last week, urging British people to arrange household stockpiles including the following items:

• Three days of non-perishable food, such as dried fruit or tinned meat
• Nine liters of bottled water, or about 2.4 gallons, per person
• Hygiene and bathroom products, including wet wipes and hand sanitizer
• Warm clothing, sleeping bags, and blankets
• Light sources, such as flashlights with batteries
• A charged power bank
• An FM radio
• Cash and cards, copies of identification documents, and important information such as a note of personal medical dosages
• A first aid kit and other essential medical supplies
• Ready-made baby formula and diapers
• Pet food and bottled water

The idea is to give households the ability to hold out for three days while cut off from supplies or payment systems.

Burnham said the campaign was started as "unexpected events seem to be becoming more and more common," but urged people not to panic.

"It's about just taking sensible measures to have enough in the house to tide you over should there be a difficult situation," he told local media on Friday.

The campaign encourages people to build their stockpiles gradually, for example by adding some items to regular shopping trips, and to check them every six months to replace any that have expired.

It comes as government agencies and companies around the world temporarily shut down their websites last week after a major security flaw was found in an open-source programming language that powers about 70% of the internet.

"We're going to find these sorts of things happening more and more," said the UK's defense minister, Wes Streeting, on Friday. "And it's not just from foreign states engaging in espionage or sabotage. It's also organized criminals."

About 400,000 British homes also lost power at some point over the weekend as two back-to-back storms battered northern Europe.

But UK officials have also increasingly warned about the need to deter the threat of war in Europe, and are hoping to raise their country's national resilience in the face of such a possibility.

"Our adversaries' willingness to harm us is not new. What has changed is their capacity. By 2030, their force strength and war economy could put them in a position to attack," Streeting told The Telegraph on Sunday.

The defense minister added that the UK had 1,000 days left to prepare itself for war.

If you're based in the UK and have a reaction to share about the UK stockpiling notice, email our reporter: ghennessy@businessinsider.com.

The Achilles Shield marks Greece’s ambition to build a stronger defence network with Israeli technology amid rising tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean. From its multilayered missile-defence architecture to the growing rivalry between Israel and Turkey, the project reflects a changing regional balance of power. Yet, like Achilles himself, even the strongest shield may have vulnerabilities. […]