Russia has fired more than 925,000 shells at Ukraine’s Kherson Oblast since late 2022 and now sends up to 6,500 drone attacks against it every week. Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson regional military administration, set out the toll at the Council of Europe’s Congress of Local and Regional Authorities in Strasbourg.

Approximately 70% of Kherson Oblast remains under Russian military occupation, primarily across the left (east) bank of the Dnipro River, while Ukrainian forces control and have liberated the right bank, including the regional center of Kherson city.

“Everything except nuclear weapons”: the toll Kherson carried to Strasbourg

Prokudin told European partners that his region has spent nearly five years at the epicenter of the war, a few kilometers from Russian positions.

“It used everything except nuclear weapons. A separate danger is the ‘drone safari,’ today up to 6,500 drone attacks a week. This is deliberate, targeted terror against civilians, children, medics and rescuers. But we stayed, adapted and learned to counter this terror,” Prokudin said.

What nine European countries are now coming to learn

The region has answers that are already keeping 140,000 residents alive, he said: coordination among local authorities, the military, emergency services and volunteers; underground schools and hospitals; the pace of demining in deoccupied areas; and anti-drone defenses that let Ukraine’s forces bring down most of the incoming UAVs.

“We paid an extremely high price for this knowledge. That is why our unique experience of civil-military administration is already being studied by nine European countries, from the Baltics and Scandinavia to Germany and Poland,” he stressed.

His central message, he added, was that a large-scale crisis leaves no time to prepare, and that Europe must ready its communities, energy, medicine and local government, not only its armies, while it still holds the one thing Ukrainians lacked in February 2022, which is time.

“Our pain must gain meaning, and our lessons must save thousands of lives,” Prokudin added.

He thanked the Council of Europe and international partners for their solidarity with the region.

The lesson for NATO is not to abandon armored warfare, but to rethink how it is conducted. That is the argument Ukrainian military observer Oleksandr Kovalenko draws from Operation Vivaldi, the Third Army Corps’ counteroffensive near Lyman, which he says proves tanks still have a place on a battlefield many had already written them off.

Vivaldi is Ukraine's counteroffensive aimed at disrupting Russian forces' plans to encircle the fortress-belt cities in Donetsk Oblast from the north and south that protect the region from the entire occupation. Among them are Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, and Kostiantynivka. These cities have helped hold back Russian forces since 2014.

Kovalenko's claim runs against a view that hardened as drones came to dominate the front: that massed armor is finished, kept alive only by habit.

It matters because NATO’s own recent exercises have fed that view, with small Ukrainian drone teams beating Alliance armor again and again. Kovalenko says the Alliance now risks taking the wrong lesson from its own defeats.

What NATO’s war games got wrong about the tank

Kovalenko points to two drills. At Estonia’s Hedgehog exercises in May 2025, Ukrainian FPV-drone units ran rings around NATO troops, who he says lost vehicles by the dozen and failed one task after another.

In one episode, Ukrainian pilots notionally knocked out a large combat group built around a British brigade.

A year later, during the Aurora 26 exercises on the Swedish island of Gotland, the pattern repeated, and the NATO units, in his telling, in a sense lost control of the island.

The skeptics’ case leaned on exactly these results, Kovalenko says, with many concluding that the Alliance faltered in part because it still fielded large amounts of armor, a tool they believe has lost its relevance in modern warfare.

How the Third Army Corps made armor move again

Vivaldi is the counterexample, Kovalenko argues. During it, the Third Army Corps carried out two mechanized assaults that pushed into the Russian rear, not armor used the old way.

A similar idea appeared in the 2024 Kursk operation, he notes, paired there with intense electronic warfare; Vivaldi widened the package, with deeper reconnaissance and dedicated work against the enemy’s own strike systems.

The vehicles carried extra passive and active protection, and crews trained for the task, and Ukrainian forces moved to suppress Russian surveillance and communications.

None of these ingredients is new on its own, he says. What mattered was adapting the working formulas to attack a heavily outnumbered enemy.

“Ukrainian forces are showing that even what seems at first glance to be a battlefield anachronism can be adapted and given a new function,” Kovalenko says.

The corps’ commander made the same point about armor specifically.

“These operations prove that maneuver by armor remains possible on a battlefield increasingly dominated by reconnaissance drones, loitering munitions and precision weapons,” Brigadier General Andrii Biletskyi, who leads the Third Army Corps, said in a comment Kovalenko cites.

His own conclusion is a warning: NATO armies are stuck near Cold War templates for attack and defense, and unless they study and absorb what Vivaldi did, the Alliance could one day find itself routed not in an exercise but on a real battlefield.

The US is delaying PAC-3 interceptors for Ukraine’s Patriot air defense systems while older PAC-2s keep arriving, a NATO source told Radio Svoboda on 29 October. PAC-3 is the Patriot missile built mainly to stop ballistic missiles.

The delay comes as Russia leans on ballistic missiles against the capital. In two weeks, Russia launched more than 100 at Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his 27 October evening address. “And above all, we do not have enough missiles for Patriots,” he added. On 29 October, Zelenskyy said Ukraine has intelligence that Russia is preparing new ballistic missile attacks. Kyiv is “awaiting the relevant decisions” on interceptor packages, “primarily for Patriots,” he said.

A question for politicians

The PAC-2s, used mostly against aircraft and cruise missiles, arrive through PURL, the NATO mechanism under which allies pay for US weapons for Ukraine. The PAC-3 delay is under discussion at a high political level, the NATO source said. It is unclear when the situation will change.

What Washington said before

On 20 October, Hegseth said in Wisconsin: “We haven’t changed our posture in any way toward the Ukrainians, but certainly with things like interceptors, we want to make sure our guys have the most possible as well.”

“We haven’t changed our posture in any way toward the Ukrainians, but certainly with things like interceptors, we want to make sure our guys have the most possible as well.” Hegseth said in Wisconsin

The same day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio conceded that some interceptors bought for Ukraine through PURL may not have been delivered, Reuters reported. “There’s nothing being deliberately denied to Ukraine,” he said, adding: “We have our own needs, too.”

Novaya Gazeta will turn off its servers and leave its office on Moscow's Potapovsky Lane on 9 November, ending more than 30 years of work, the editorial staff said in a statement published on 30 October. The paper will publish one final issue.

The closure removes what The Economist called Russia's "last free newspaper." Novaya Gazeta had repeatedly exposed evidence of Russia's aggression against Ukraine: in 2015, it published a memo that, it said, apparently reached Putin's administration in February 2014 with a plan to annex Crimea and eastern Ukraine, and in 2017 it published a witness account backing the identification of a Russian colonel linked to the downing of MH17. Some 1,500 journalists have left Russia since the full-scale invasion, and over 100 independent media projects now work from exile, according to a CEPA report. Novaya Gazeta kept working in Moscow through the war, until pressure rose sharply this year and, the paper says, left it with no office and no money.

The eviction and the donations cut off together

The eviction became public on 29 October, when The Insider reported a letter to readers from editor-in-chief Sergei Sokolov and journalist Irina Gordienko. The newsroom had worked in the Potapovsky Lane building for 29 years, according to The Insider, or 30, according to the paper. The letter said the paper had very little time to leave and had no new office. The reasons for the eviction and the position of the building's owner have not been made public.

According to the statement, the platform the paper used to collect reader donations was shut down at the same time as the eviction letter arrived. Banks cited internal corporate rules, but the editors called this a coordinated campaign and blamed the FSB, the Justice Ministry, and the Prosecutor's Office.

The museum of Anna Politkovskaya, set up in 2021 in her former office in the same building, will also close, according to The Insider. On 7 October, the 20th anniversary of her murder, the museum received the restored memorial plaque from the Moscow building where she was shot.

Murders, attacks, and a criminal case against an editor

The statement lists six colleagues killed for their work: Igor Domnikov, Yuri Shchekochikhin, Anna Politkovskaya, Stas Markelov, Anastasia Baburova, and Natalya Estemirova. It also recalls the attack on Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov, who nearly lost his sight, and says no criminal case was opened. Columnist Elena Milashina was abducted and beaten in Chechnya in 2023.

Earlier this year, in April, security officers raided the newsroom for 13 hours, and Oleg Roldugin, whom the paper calls its managing editor, was detained in a criminal case over the alleged illegal use of personal data, The Insider reported. The paper says Roldugin was in effect taken hostage for working as a journalist and that his trial is coming. In mid-October, Sokolov's apartment was searched. In early September, the Justice Ministry added Novaya Gazeta to its "foreign agents" register, listing more than 100 journalists and contributors, according to the statement.

Nearly five years of shrinking room

Novaya Gazeta suspended publication in March 2022 after warnings from the media regulator Roskomnadzor. In September 2022, a Moscow court stripped the paper of its media license, Reuters reported. Then-editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov called the ruling "a political hit job, without the slightest legal basis."

Meanwhile, staff who left Russia launched Novaya Gazeta Europe in Riga, according to RFE/RL.

Euromaidan Press has drawn on Novaya Gazeta's reporting, including its interview with Oleg Sentsov, and marked Politkovskaya's legacy in 2019.

Ukraine is opening grant money for home-built air-to-air missiles and radars, aiming to shoot down Russia’s fastest drones without paying a huge price. The Defense Ministry, the Ministry of Digital Transformation, and the Brave1 defense-tech cluster are launching the competitions, Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara announced in an address to manufacturers, adding that a grant contest for turbojet engines will follow.

Ukraine is being forced to use expensive air defense missiles against relatively inexpensive Russian drones and cruise missiles. Developing cheaper interceptors, domestically produced radars and engines could change the economics of warfare.

The move comes as Russia leans harder on faster, jet-powered drones that strain the cheapest layer of Ukraine’s defenses. It also follows an earlier round of Brave1 grants that had already flagged anti-bomb systems and Ukrainian radars as priorities.

What Kyiv wants built, from navigation to radars that see the faint targets

Khmara laid out the threats the money is meant to answer: ballistic missiles, cheap cruise missiles, high-speed drones and guided bombs.

From Ukrainian producers, the ministry wants domestic navigation systems, stronger electronic warfare, radars able to pick out low-signature targets, and affordable designs that can be developed in quantity.

“Our requirements are clear: effectiveness, affordable cost, interoperability between systems, and sufficient volume of supply,” Khmara says.

The grants are one tool among others, meant to carry developments that can later scale for the Security and Defense Forces. Earlier, the ministry and Brave1 ran a large-scale test of drones with AI-assisted targeting.

The next contest targets the guided bombs Ukraine still cannot reliably stop

The minister singled out a separate job for manufacturers: new ways to counter Russia’s guided aerial bombs, known in Ukraine as KABs, and to blunt their use.

These are the glide bombs Russian aircraft release from a distance, and Ukraine has struggled to answer them without reaching the launch aircraft themselves.

“It is important to create innovative solutions that let us act ahead and prevail. We need asymmetric effect. We need technologies that change the rules of the game in our favor,” he argues.

Grants for turbojet engines, the ministry says, are the next step after the missiles and radars.

Fighters of the 1st Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine "Azov" struck more than 100 Russian trains carrying fuel and other supplies for occupying forces, the corps reported on social media on 28 October. The strikes disabled locomotives, fuel tank cars, and other equipment, the statement said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed on 16 October that seizing all of Donetsk Oblast remains one of Russia's main tasks. Azov notes that these strikes help "destroy" Russia's offensive capabilities.

Small Ukrainian drones strike Russia's 100-ton locomotives

Azov emphasizes that neither mobile fire groups nor electronic warfare systems can protect Russian logistics routes.

"The enemy is doing its utmost to create an image of successfully capturing settlements, but is unable to protect key railway stations through which the fuel supply chain runs toward the front," Azov said.

The rail hubs hit had carried Russian military trains to the fighting in Donbas and southern Ukraine, Defense Express reported on 29 October. The count of more than 100 trains covers Azov's operations over the past four months, the outlet said.

The mass of any diesel locomotive exceeds 100 tons, yet the Ukrainian military struck these large Russian targets using small UAVs, the outlet also notes.

Donations helped make the strikes possible

Donations and the work of the Come Back Alive foundation contributed to the operation's results, Azov said. In particular, the foundation provided the military with 440 Starlink Mini terminals, the corps added.

War on Credit: Over 100 Trains Hit

The enemy is doing all it can to create the image of successfully capturing settlements, yet it cannot protect the key railway stations through which its fuel supply chain toward the front runs. Neither mobile fire groups nor electronic warfare… pic.twitter.com/QpqEQHyxvp

— First Corps Azov of the National Guard of Ukraine (@azov_media) October 28, 2026

Azov announced Operation Hell back in the summer

On 2 July, the Azov Corps announced Operation Hell and released the first footage of strikes on Russian railway equipment. The video shows a strike on a diesel locomotive that was likely used by Russian forces for military logistics.

Operation "Inferno." Coming soon.

This wasn't just about our distaste for old Soviet cartoons. Demilitarization is the priority. Decommunization's just a bonus.

So what's happening in the video? This isn't a random hit — it's part of a carefully planned operation by First Corps… pic.twitter.com/feNc72isUk

— First Corps Azov of the National Guard of Ukraine (@azov_media) July 2, 2026

The corps said the strike was part of a carefully planned operation and promised details soon.

A year ago, Ukraine’s 125th heavy mechanized brigade was written off as beyond saving, manned at 17% with not a single tank, gun, or drone crew to its name. A year on, the brigade says it now ranks first among the army’s heavy brigades and that 1,500 soldiers who had gone absent without leave have returned to serve.

The 125th, part of Ukraine’s Third Army Corps, drew the comparison as it summed up its first year under new command. It comes as Ukraine struggles with a force-wide shortage of soldiers and leans on the Third Army Corps, the formation the 125th now fights under, for its counterattacks around Lyman.

The figures behind a brigade rebuilt from 17% strength

In the unit’s telling, the collapse was never the whole story.

“We were told the brigade couldn’t be saved. But they didn’t account for the main thing, people,” the brigade recalls.

By its own count, manning has risen 430% over the year, and its main units now stand at 95-100%. The crews that grew fastest were the ones flying drones: the number of aerial-reconnaissance teams is up 1200%, FPV crews 950%, heavy-bomber crews 1400%, and fixed-wing drone crews 600%.

The brigade also built units of uncrewed ground vehicles from scratch and stood up its own training, air defense, electronic warfare, reconnaissance, and medical structures.

Now, it is among the most effective brigades for destroying Russians, mining, artillery, air defense, ground robots, and reconnaissance, and for three months running it has placed first among the army’s heavy mechanized brigades on those combined measures.

From two pickups and a minibus to Bradleys and Leopards

The starting point was close to empty. At the beginning of the reform, the brigade had almost no combat equipment, its commander, Volodymyr Fokin, told ArmyInform in June.

“For the whole brigade we had two pickups and one minibus,” he said.

In the first six months, he added, the brigade replaced about 90% of its commanders in key posts and stood up a tank battalion, a drone battalion and a ground-robotics company.

Today it fields American Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, German Leopard tanks and artillery of various calibers.

A captain with the callsign “Skamer” told ArmyFM in July that the new equipment came with new ways of running the brigade, with more authority given to commanders who had real combat experience.

The Trump administration is assessing an application from the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) to be removed from the US sanctions list, a US official told The New York Times (NYT). A day later, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said the two sides were in talks over it.

Washington has been easing pressure on Moscow piece by piece. On 9 October, the Treasury issued a general license allowing sales of Russian diesel, including into the US. A week later, President Trump waived new sanctions under the Graham Act, a Russia sanctions law he had signed on 18 September. Meanwhile, Kyiv is still waiting for the next round of three-way peace talks. Freeing a Kremlin fund now would lift another cost from Moscow before any settlement on Ukraine.

A review in Washington

The fund is run by Kirill Dmitriev, Vladimir Putin’s envoy in talks with Washington. The official said the administration was weighing the application through established procedures, as part of an effort to “improve US-Russia relations and help end the war.”

The official also praised Dmitriev as “a helpful envoy.” Russian officials pushed for delisting during talks on the fund’s role in shipping Russian diesel to the US, people familiar with the negotiations told the NYT. The Treasury, however, held that its 9 October license already let the fund handle diesel transactions, the paper reported.

Talks, according to Moscow

Ushakov described a two-way conversation rather than a review. He said on 28 October that it had been going on for some time and that he did not know the outcome. He pointed in particular to Dmitriev’s active contacts, saying that was why the issue had come up.

Blocked four days into the invasion

The Treasury fully blocked the fund and Dmitriev on 28 February 2022, four days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion. At the time, it said the fund was widely considered a slush fund for Putin. The Treasury is handling the new request under its normal process, and the fund will have to prove the grounds for its sanctions no longer apply, people familiar with the process told the NYT.

Eric Green oversaw Russia policy at the White House National Security Council under President Joe Biden. He told the paper that lifting the sanctions would send a strong message. In his view, Washington would be relaxing its position of not easing sanctions and other costs until a settlement in Ukraine.

This is not Dmitriev’s first push this year. On 7 February, Zelenskyy said Ukrainian intelligence had shown him a so-called “Dmitriev package” of US-Russia cooperation, worth about $12 trillion, that Dmitriev presented in the US. In April, he arrived in Washington as a US oil waiver for Russia neared expiry. US delisting would not touch UK and EU restrictions on the fund. But it would reopen American finance to a fund the Treasury said Putin’s inner circle relied on to raise money abroad.

Warsaw police have arrested a man suspected of stabbing two Ukrainians on a bus over their nationality, police said. A court ordered him held in custody, and the charges he faces carry long prison terms.

Russia's full-scale war drove nearly a million Ukrainians to seek protection in Poland, and attacks on them for their nationality grew this year. Polish police received 180 reports of hate crimes against Ukrainians in the first half of 2026, over 30% more than a year earlier.

Police tracked the suspect to a forest

The attack took place on a Warsaw city bus in mid-October. The attacker stabbed and slashed two passengers, both Ukrainian citizens, and fled before police arrived. Both victims went to hospital with multiple stab and cut wounds. Police found that he attacked them because of their nationality.

Officers quickly identified the suspect but spent days locating him. The 30-year-old was hiding and living in a forest in Warsaw's northern Bielany district, where police detained him last weekend.

He faces three charges. Two concern the bus attack: attempting to cause grievous bodily harm, and causing injuries lasting more than seven days. The third covers threats against another man at a Warsaw venue in August 2024.

Police said he acted as a repeat offender, within five years of serving a prison term for a similar crime. The charges carry three to 20 years in prison. At prosecutors' request, a court ordered him held for three months.

This year's attacks on Ukrainians in Poland

In early August, Ukraine's ambassador to Poland, Vasyl Bodnar, said anti-Ukrainian remarks and attacks had risen by about 30%. Days later, people rallied in 22 Polish cities against violence toward Ukrainians and other minorities.

Other recent cases this year include:

• In late July, police in Wrocław detained two of three men suspected of beating a young Ukrainian couple.
• On 14 August, a woman allegedly attacked a Ukrainian girl and her younger brother in a Bydgoszcz park after hearing them speak Ukrainian. Prosecutors charged her four days later.
• In September, a man punched a 20-year-old Ukrainian tourist in the head at a crossing in central Warsaw, knocking him unconscious. Police detained the attacker, who gave no motive.

Tensions rose again in late September, when a Ukrainian man allegedly killed a priest in a knife attack at a monastery in Jarosław. Bodnar said some Polish politicians and journalists used it to argue for deporting Ukrainians.

Meanwhile, police in southwestern Poland detained a Russian citizen suspected of spying, after catching him photographing trains and railway infrastructure. Russia's suspected sabotage campaign keeps reaching Poland and the rest of Europe, and Ukraine's intelligence warned last week that Russia may stage sabotage in Eastern Europe and try to pin it on Kyiv.

Automated gun turrets now serve in Ukraine’s Air Force and are destroying Russia’s jet-powered weapons, the Defense Ministry reported on 29 October. It gave no count for those jet kills, and it did not say what type of drones the turrets downed over Kyiv.

Jet drones are where Ukraine struggles most. From 1 to 26 September, Ukraine downed 55% of jet-powered drones against 90% of slower ones, partly because its interceptor drones fly at about 300 km/h, too slow to catch them. Yurii Cherevashenko, Deputy Commander of the Air Force, told a parliamentary inquiry commission on 6 October that jet-drone interceptors would arrive in the needed numbers no earlier than late November. Guns have limits too. On 5 October, Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said turrets had already downed Geran-5s, but that their range is short because their main weapon is a machine gun.

Air Force turrets against jet weapons

According to the ministry, Brave1, a defense innovation cluster, began developing automated turrets in 2024. The systems have since “moved beyond the experimental stage and become an integral part of air defense,” it said. In Air Force service, the turrets are destroying jet-powered Banderol munitions and Geran-5 drones.

Russia first used the Geran-5, a 6-meter jet-powered strike drone, in early 2026. The Banderol, a jet-powered cruise missile, flies at 520–560 km/h and can reach 650 km/h.

Private teams, a familiar number

Separately, the ministry said turrets have destroyed more than 60 targets within the private air defense project. The project lets companies form anti-drone teams that work under Air Force command.

Yet on 14 October, the ministry gave the same 60-plus total for all private teams. At the time, it named interceptor drones and heavy machine-gun turrets as their main weapons. Groups from six companies were on combat duty, about 50 groups had been formed in total, and some were still training. Nearly 100 companies had joined by then, up from 81 in mid-September.

The ministry says the project expands air defense “without placing an additional burden” on the military’s own air defense. It and Brave1 say they will keep integrating automated turrets into the air defense system.

Another of Russia's Su-57 stealth fighters has burned out on the ground, Ukrainian military news outlet Militarnyi reported. A Ukrainian Telegram channel blamed an engine start gone wrong and published satellite images of the scorched airfield.

Russia's war against Ukraine leans on warplanes that strike from standoff range, and Ukraine has spent this year hunting them on their airfields. Its newest fighter is a rare sight in that fleet: Ukrainian intelligence estimated Russia had about 20 Su-57s, against 135–140 Su-35S and 140–145 Su-30 jets, and could not tell how fast more are built.

Satellite images show where the jet burned

The fire broke out at the Akhtubinsk airfield in Russia's Astrakhan Oblast on 29 October. The Ukrainian Telegram channel Absolutely Reliable Source said the multirole fighter caught fire during a malfunction at engine start. It said the jet burned out completely. Militarnyi called the cause preliminary.

The channel's satellite images show a dark scorch mark and debris on open ground between the airfield's taxiways.

Akhtubinsk has seen Su-57s hit before. Ukrainian drones first damaged Su-57s there in June 2024, and Ukrainian intelligence said two were likely hit.

The fourth Su-57 hit or lost this year

Militarnyi counted the fire as the fourth time a Su-57 was hit or lost in 2026. Ukraine's General Staff said drones hit several Su-57s and a Su-34 at the Shagol airfield in Chelyabinsk Oblast on 25 April. Ukrainian intelligence later said the state of those jets was unknown.

On 23 July, a Su-57 crashed in Moscow Oblast. A Russian Telegram channel said Russia's own air defenders shot it down.

Russia's air force received two new Su-57s in September, its second batch this year, Militarnyi reported.

Ukraine keeps hitting Russian warplanes on the ground. On 29 October, Ukraine's Navy said its Neptune missiles destroyed two Su-34s at the Marinovka airfield in Volgograd Oblast. Two weeks earlier, it reported hitting six Su-34s at Borisoglebsk in Voronezh Oblast. Russia uses those bombers to drop glide bombs on Ukrainian towns.

Russia’s Geran-5 jet drones have sped up to 1,000 km/h while maneuvering, Ukraine’s presidential adviser on defense technology Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov said in Kyiv on 29 October. He added that Chinese engineers help develop Russia’s Geran drones.

When Russia moved to faster Geran versions, Ukrainian developers had to look for new ways to intercept them, Beskrestnov said, and Ukraine must learn to stay a step ahead. From 1 to 26 September, air defenses downed only 55% of Russia’s jet-powered drones. On 29 October, one such drone hit Dnipro’s railway station, and the death toll has since risen to 15. Over the past three months, air defenses downed nearly 60% of the jet-powered Geran-4, the General Staff said on 27 October, noting a shortage of guided anti-aircraft missiles. That update gave no Geran-5 figure.

A peak well above cruise speed

That peak, about 620 mph, came during maneuvers. Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) puts the Geran-5’s cruise speed at 450–600 km/h. By Beskrestnov’s count, the earlier Geran-3 flew at 280–300 km/h.

Russia’s best engineers work against Ukraine, and China’s do too, Beskrestnov told journalists. Russia’s Alabuga drone plant sets Chinese engineers tasks such as work on the control module, he said. Key components inside Russia’s Shahed-type drones are Chinese, he said. Meanwhile, China will require licenses for Geran engines from 18 November, Ukraine’s sanctions commissioner Vladyslav Vlasiuk said. Licensing is not a ban, he stressed.

Speed is the easy part

Some interceptors are being designed to match the Geran-5’s cruise speed. US firm CHAOS Industries claims a top speed of 540 km/h for its Vespid Mk 1 interceptor. On 14 October, Ukrainian defense outlet Defense Express judged that may be enough against the Geran-5’s 450–600 km/h cruise speed.

Ukrainian manufacturers have already shown jet-powered interceptor drones, Beskrestnov said. But they have run into problems with control, guidance, automatic target lock, and scaling up production. A model that flies fast is only one part of the job, he said, and an easy-to-use serial product is a different question entirely.

In recent weeks, the Pentagon has urged several NATO allies, among them Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, to tone down their public warnings about the threat from Russia, four people familiar with the matter told Reuters. Pentagon officials argued that some European statements undermined Europe's security, the sources said. Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby recently advised a Baltic official against any "poking" of the Russians, one of the people said.

Russia's full-scale war on Ukraine is in its fifth year, and Moscow has spread a deniable arson and sabotage campaign across Europe. As Washington offers Moscow sanctions relief and presses Kyiv to stop hitting Russian energy, the restraint it seeks appears to fall on those Russia threatens, first Ukraine and now NATO's eastern flank.

An Estonian delegation was told to be "measured"

As an example of unhelpful rhetoric, Colby cited Europeans' public suggestions that Russia was "cornered like a rat," the person said. Reuters could not determine whose words he meant. In late September, Estonia said Russia had ordered the arson at Milrem Robotics, a Tallinn company supplying ground robots to Ukraine, and Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal likened Putin to a "rat in the corner." Michal said Putin was stepping up activity in Europe to erode the West's backing for Kyiv, and that the surest deterrent was to "back Ukraine."

At another meeting, Pentagon officials asked an Estonian delegation to keep its communications "measured," a person briefed on the encounter said. Another European official described the Pentagon's private messaging this way:

"We are helping you. The Americans are there… Just don't be loud. Don't make noise."

One European official called the advice cordial but baffling, since the Baltic states' own intelligence services have repeatedly judged it unlikely in recent months that Russia would test NATO's mutual defense provisions.

The Pentagon refused to discuss "private conversations among allies," and the Baltic defense ministries did not reply.

One messenger is a key figure in the review of US troops in Europe

Colby is a key figure in the Pentagon's ongoing review of US force posture in Europe, which could lead to a sharp troop drawdown. In September, the Pentagon was weighing pulling up to 40,000 troops from Europe.

Russia has lately stepped up its deniable attacks on NATO members, Western intelligence officials say. Its suspected arson campaign against Starlink sites serving Ukraine has reached Lithuania, and on 28 October German prosecutors announced the arrest of two Belarusians suspected of plotting arson near Nuremberg. Russia denies running a sabotage campaign. Meanwhile, US officials have discussed business deals with Russia, which many European officials oppose.

Destinus has completed 1,750 Ruta B1 cruise missiles and reached monthly output of nearly 300, the company said on 29 October, telling Reuters this exceeds Europe’s annual cruise-missile production before Russia’s full-scale invasion.

That gives a date for easing a shortage. A looming shortage of mini jet engines threatened to hold back Ukraine’s deep-strike drones, Reuters reported in April. Czech maker ZofiTech was then producing about 200 a month, nearly all for Ukraine, and expected demand to reach thousands within months. Both Ruta versions use the 1.5-kN engines Destinus is promising. Ukraine plans to build more jet drones and cruise missiles, so engine output next year will have to keep up, Defense Express notes.

Destinus builds its own engines, but hasn’t said how many

Destinus CEO Mikhail Kokorich said the company already produces turbojets in the roughly 1.5-kilonewton class in series, supplying them both for its own missiles and to other manufacturers. The Ruta B1 runs on the company’s own T150 engine. In June, Destinus announced its 1,000th T150 and said the line was designed to sustain production of thousands of missile systems a year. The company has not disclosed its current engine output.

Block 2 enters production, Block 3 is due to fly in 2027

Meanwhile, Destinus said it has begun production of the larger Ruta Block 2, designed to carry a 250-kg payload more than 700 km. Unlike the roughly 300-km Block 1, Block 2 is designed to be stored, transported, and launched from the same container. A third version, Block 3, is planned with a 2,000-km range, with flight tests scheduled for 2027.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged the Ruta’s combat use in October 2025. Days later, he said Ukraine expected mass production of Ruta and Flamingo missiles by the end of that year. In June 2026, then-Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said the Netherlands was ready to finance about 700 Rutas for Ukraine, without specifying the version.

Deterrence takes “tens of thousands of missiles”

At the same time, Kokorich said Europe’s problem is shifting from production to integration.

“To have sufficient deterrence, you need to have tens of thousands of missiles,” he said.

European customers, he added, still need to build the military units and logistics to operate missiles in such numbers. Those arsenals would also need storage, transport, maintenance, and targeting infrastructure, he said, and European militaries would need to rethink how they stockpile and deploy precision-strike weapons.

No Chinese parts, and a bet on cheaper, shorter-range missiles

Kokorich said Destinus uses no Chinese components, unlike wartime production in Ukraine, and said access to Chinese suppliers would make manufacturing cheaper, faster, and easier.

Kokorich also argued that cheaper missiles with ranges under 1,000 km would make up most future demand. Separately, Destinus is working with Rheinmetall on cruise missiles and ammunition for multiple-launch rocket systems, including a planned European equivalent of the GMLRS rockets fired by HIMARS.

Russian analysts can locate Ukrainian weapons plants from details in published photos and TV footage, Ukrainian defense outlet Oboronka reported on 29 October. Open-source researchers told the outlet how to hide those details.

Ukraine plans to build 7 million drones this year, and Russia is hunting the plants that make them. In June, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said Russia’s GRU military intelligence was gathering data to prepare air strikes on defense plants and attacks on their engineers.

A TV clip, then missiles

On 7 April 2022, Ukrainian channel 1+1 aired a report from a workshop at the Kyiv Armored Plant converting captured Russian military equipment for Ukraine’s forces. On 14 April, Rybar, an anonymous pro-Russian Telegram channel, posted the factory’s location. Russian missiles hit the workshop on 16 April, killing at least three civilians, the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) found.

Retracing the likely method, CIR wrote that wall colors, window size, and ceiling height could single out the plant, and Google Earth imagery the workshop. InformNapalm researcher Andrii Lisitsyn told Oboronka that matching a frame with old photos, satellite images, job ads, or staff profiles quickly narrows the search.

A Gaussian blur smears pixels but keeps part of the information, Oboronka wrote. In a 2020 blog post, aerospace engineering student Gonçalo Raposo showed it can be fully reversed if the exact filter and edge handling are known. Pixelation fails too: a 2022 neural network reconstructs plausible faces from pixelated images. Lisitsyn advises cropping or fully opaque masking instead, plus checking file metadata.

Leaks beyond photos

Some Ukrainian defense enterprises still keep accounts and procurement records in Russian 1C software, Oboronka wrote. Since 6 January 2026, 1C products have been on the State Special Communications Service’s list of banned software. The ban covers systems with state information resources and critical information infrastructure owned or managed by state bodies, state enterprises, and local governments, the service said.

Oboronka also wrote that days before the full-scale invasion, Spanish journalist Pablo González photographed production lines at engine maker Motor Sich. Poland held him from February 2022 until a prisoner swap sent him to Russia in August 2024. Prosecutors then indicted him under both his names, Pablo González and Pavel Rubtsov, for spying for Russian military intelligence.

Ukraine’s human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets and his delegation safely reached Russian-occupied Oleshky in Kherson Oblast on 30 October, with the local truce at 80 hours and holding. He said he was talking with residents to learn what help they need most.

Russia has kept Oleshky, on the left bank of the Dnipro River, cut off for months, leaving residents starving. Now the test is where the buses take people. The White House promised residents who wish to leave transport to their “preferred destination.” Lubinets said on 27 October that everyone who wants to go to Ukraine will be able to. Under agreement pages published by Fox News, his own delegation and the residents who choose Ukraine travel together via Anapa in Russia. From there, a Russian military transport plane to Homiel in Belarus is expected on 31 October.

Buses on standby, aid for those who stay

On the morning of 30 October, before reaching the town, Lubinets wrote from Armiansk in occupied Crimea that he was coordinating the mission with Yana Lantratova, Russia’s human rights commissioner. He said 25 buses with 750 seats had been prepared, plus ambulances for people with limited mobility. Anyone who wants to leave will get a safe way out, and those who stay will receive aid, he added. In delivering that aid, special attention goes to elderly residents and people with disabilities, he said.

We are in Oleshky! The Ukrainian delegation has safely reached the city.

The ceasefire has been in effect for 80 hours and remains in place. I am currently on the ground, speaking with local residents to hear about their needs and understand what kind of assistance they need… pic.twitter.com/AOhKIV0WLO

— Dmytro Lubinets (@lubinetzs) October 30, 2026

The evening before, he said people who want to leave could do so until 14:00, with aid distribution after 14:30, without naming a date. Speaking to journalists, he called it the first truce since 2022 to hold this long on such a large stretch of front.

How the truce came about

The White House announced the truce on 23 October, crediting First Lady Melania Trump. It took effect at 03:00 Kyiv time on 27 October. Its zone was later widened. By 29 October, the convoy was ready, Lubinets said. The truce is due to end at 22:59 Kyiv time on 1 November.

Russia attacked Kyiv with ballistic missiles late on 29 October, killing a man and injuring a 35-year-old woman, Kyiv city prosecutors said. The strikes damaged eight apartment blocks in Dniprovskyi district, a gas station, a restaurant, a dental clinic, warehouses, and cars. A warehouse building caught fire in Darnytskyi district, the city administration reported.

Overnight, Russia fired Iskander-M, S-400, and KN-23 ballistic missiles, four Kh-59/69 guided missiles, and 113 drones, 83 of them jet-powered, Ukraine's Air Force said. The attack mainly targeted Kyiv, Poltava, and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts. Air defenses downed three missiles and 96 drones, but strikes hit 17 locations.

Russia is waging its war on Ukraine's cities around the clock as winter approaches, striking homes, transport, and the power grid that keeps them running. On 29 October, including the late attack on Kyiv, Russian strikes killed at least 27 civilians and injured more than 140 across six regions, by EP's tally of regional authorities' reports. It was one of the deadliest days of the autumn. Most died in daylight, on a train platform in Dnipro, in an apartment block in Kremenchuk, in central Chernihiv, and under guided bombs in Izium.

Dnipro and Kyiv's right bank lose power

A Russian strike on Dnipro left more than 350,000 customers in the city and nearby towns without power, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast's administration said shortly after midnight. Water pumping stations switched to backup power. By morning, engineers had restored electricity to most customers in the oblast, but more than 200,000 were still without power.

In Kyiv, equipment damaged in earlier strikes failed on the right bank, forcing emergency outages, the city administration said. Russia attacked an industrial plant in Poltava Oblast's Kremenchuk district overnight and again in the morning, with no casualties reported, the regional administration said.

In the morning, a Russian drone hit a shopping center in Kharkiv's Kyivskyi district, injuring four women, Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleh Syniehubov said. In Chernihiv Oblast, Russian drones destroyed the house of culture in Mena late on 29 October, and in the morning a drone hit a house in Bobrovytsia and injured a woman, the regional administration said. In Chernihiv itself, 37 people sought medical help after the 29 October strike on the city center that killed two 15-year-old girls, Yana and Mariia.

Two oblasts in mourning as the Dnipro toll rises to 15

A 40-year-old man wounded in the 29 October jet drone strike on Dnipro's railway station died in hospital, raising the toll to 15, the regional administration said. Eleven people remain in hospital. Dnipropetrovsk Oblast declared 30 October a day of mourning.

Poltava Oblast also mourns three people killed when a Russian drone hit an apartment block in Kremenchuk on 29 October. Another 32 were injured, six of them children, the regional administration said.

In Izium, Kharkiv Oblast, Russian guided bombs hit a five-story building on 29 October, killing four people and injuring 14, police reported. In Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Russian attacks killed two people in Bilenke and injured 23 across the region, 13 of them when Russia sent seven FPV drones at vehicles and public transport in Zaporizhzhia city, police said. EP reported the city faced a record number of such attacks.

A Russian FPV drone struck a social bus operated by the Proliska Humanitarian Mission in the frontline village of Bilenke, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, while it was carrying 23 passengers and a driver. The mission’s head, Yevhen Kaplin, reported the attack on Facebook on 29 October. In a comment to Ukrainska Pravda, he later gave slightly different details: 20 passengers and around 14:50.

Earlier that day, Russian attacks on Bilenke killed a 49-year-old man and wounded three other men, acting Zaporizhzhia Oblast head Mykhailo Semikin said. The village of Bilenke is likely to face the most difficult conditions in Zaporizhzhia Oblast this winter, then-head of the oblast Ivan Fedorov said in an interview with Ukrinform on 15 August. Russian forces use the village as a testing ground because the front line runs roughly across the river, he said.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, this marks the 121st attack on the mission’s staff and volunteers while they were providing aid, as well as on its vehicles, offices, and warehouse infrastructure, Kaplin said.

The drone was reportedly lying in wait

The attack killed a female passenger born in 1952. The bus driver sustained serious injuries and was evacuated to a medical facility, Kaplin said. Another passenger, a man born in 1947, sustained multiple shrapnel wounds, while another woman suffered injuries from flying glass. The remaining passengers suffered acoustic barotrauma. Most of the people on board were elderly.

According to preliminary information, this was a drone that was lying in wait, Kaplin said. The attack took place at around 14:30 in the center of the village, on a section of road protected by an anti-drone net.

The bus was clearly marked with the humanitarian mission’s logo on the hood and roof, as well as the words “social bus,” Kaplin said.

National Police special units and military personnel evacuated the wounded, accompanied by aerial cover teams, due to the threat of further drone attacks.

It was the only transport serving the village, Kaplin said

Commercial transport operators no longer serve the village of Bilenke, but more than 1,600 people still live there.

As a result, residents had no way to reach the Oblast center to access essential services, or to buy food and medicine, Kaplin said. They also could not collect their pensions or winter aid payments from the state and humanitarian organizations.

The Proliska team launched the social bus at the request of regional and local authorities.

Russians attack public transport in Zaporizhzhia with drones

Russian drones also hit civilian transport in the Oblast capital several times on 29 October. The city came under a record number of FPV drone attacks that day, Semikin said, adding that Russia had changed its tactics and modified its drones.

• In the morning, a Russian FPV drone struck a municipal bus in the city, Semikin said on 29 October. He first said the strike injured a woman and a man, then said four people were injured.
• Russia launched two strikes on Zaporizhzhia, Semikin reported the same day. Two men, aged 66 and 41, were injured. The strikes damaged 15 vehicles, a warehouse building, a power line, and a nearby apartment block. A fire broke out at the site, he added.
• Later, a Russian drone struck a minibus in central Zaporizhzhia, Semikin reported. According to preliminary information, one person was injured.
• A Russian FPV drone struck a municipal trolleybus in Zaporizhzhia again, Semikin said. He initially reported one woman injured, then said the number rose to three. They included a 56-year-old woman in serious condition and two other women, aged 71 and 66, who sustained minor shrapnel wounds to their legs, he said.

Ukraine's Defense Forces hit the Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery in Russia's Samara Oblast with FP-1 drones early on 30 October, Ukrainian drone maker Fire Point said, adding that one of the units hit hydrotreats diesel fuel. The strike came hours after WSJ reported that Ukraine had paused strikes on Russian refineries under pressure from US President Donald Trump until after the US midterm elections on 3 November.

Russia is pounding Ukraine's power grid and cities ahead of winter, with a mounting civilian toll, including 14 people killed on a Dnipro railway platform on 29 October. Ukraine's long-range drone strikes on Russian refineries, one of its most effective operations against Moscow, target the oil money that pays for that war. Trump has pressed Kyiv for weeks to stop them, blaming them for high global fuel prices, and Ukraine went quiet without saying so and without getting what it asked for in return, WSJ reported. The Samara strike is the first on Russian oil since then. Kyiv has not said whether the pause is over.

Fires spread across a refinery that makes jet fuel for Russia's military

Residents of Novokuibyshevsk reported drones, explosions, and a fire before dawn. Ukrainian Telegram channel Exilenova+ posted the first photos on Telegram at 05:24 Kyiv time, and Russian Telegram channel Astra geolocated the fire to the refinery, citing its open-source analysis of residents' photos.

Novokuybyshevsk, Samara region: locals report an attack and a fire. pic.twitter.com/9UEgqmkAOU

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 30, 2026

By morning, Exilenova+ counted at least 11 separate fires at the refinery. Samara Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said air defense and mobile fire groups were repelling an attack, Astra reported. The region had declared a drone alert and closed its airport.

Fire Point said its FP-1 drones scored numerous hits on the refinery grounds, and that one of the units hit hydrotreats diesel fuel. The footage published so far shows several smoke columns over the plant but does not show which units burned. The Rosneft-owned refinery has a design capacity of 8.8 million tons of oil a year and is one of the main producers of jet fuel, according to its website. Astra says it supplies jet fuel to Russia's military. The plant lies about 910 km from the front line. Ukraine's General Staff has not commented.

pic.twitter.com/Ku6KRCKJ6v

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 30, 2026

Ukrainian drones have hit the plant before. Ukraine's military said its forces hit it in August and caused a fire.

It is the first fire at a Russian refinery since 15 October, when Ryazan's governor reported one at the city's refinery. It is also the first reported strike on Russia's oil industry since 20 October, when Ukrainian drones hit a Druzhba pipeline pumping station in Tambov Oblast. WSJ called that strike the last before the pause.

WSJ claims: Ukraine paused refinery strikes until after the US midterms

Ukraine's military paused its strikes on Russian refineries after weeks of pressure from Trump shook Kyiv's confidence in US support, people with knowledge of the operations told WSJ. The unofficial pause began early last week and is expected to last until after the midterms, and possibly deeper into November. Units carrying out long-range strikes were told in mid-October that the refinery campaign was effectively on hold once missions already under way were completed, two military officials said. Hours after the report, the Novokuibyshevsk strike called that account into question.

Ukraine's government has not announced a pause. Zelenskyy told reporters in Kyiv on 27 October that “our guys tried to be a little more careful during these days. But they do not have an order” not to hit refineries, according to WSJ. He said drone units were hitting other kinds of targets in Russia.

Trump's envoy Jared Kushner repeated the demand to stop the strikes at a meeting with Zelenskyy in Oslo on 20 October, two US officials told WSJ. One of them called the conversation “very tough.” Kushner, who joined remotely, said he and envoy Steve Witkoff were spending a lot of time, energy, and jet fuel on mediating with Moscow, and that a 30-day pause on refineries would be a way for Ukraine to show gratitude, the official said.

Zelenskyy had asked for something in return, WSJ reported: a mutual energy ceasefire with Russia, Patriot missiles for Ukraine's grid, or permission to use Starlink inside Russia so drones could destroy Russian missile launchers. None of those ideas got far. Some of Kyiv's European backers also nudged Zelenskyy to pause until after the midterms, a senior European official said.

The pause showed in Russia's oil industry. Russian refinery utilization at the end of October was 25% higher than at the start of the month as drone attacks subsided, Reuters reported, according to The Moscow Times.

Russia claims over 1,000 drones for a second night as Moscow's airports close again

Russia's Defense Ministry said it downed 1,043 Ukrainian drones overnight over 19 regions, including Samara Oblast, the Moscow region, and Tatarstan. The night before, it claimed 1,214.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin stated that 862 drones flew toward the Moscow region between 20:30 on 29 October and 07:30 on 30 October, that most were downed on the far approaches, and that 170 were downed on approach to the capital. Russia's aviation agency restricted flights at all four Moscow airports, Astra reported. A day earlier, more than 460 flights were delayed or canceled at Moscow and St. Petersburg airports, Astra counted.

In Starodub, in Russia's Bryansk Oblast, about 35 km from the Ukrainian border, a building of the Konservsushprod plant, which makes canned food for the Russian army, appeared to be on fire in readers' photos and videos, Astra reported, saying the plant was presumably attacked and that its open-source analyst had not verified the footage. The Atesh partisan movement reported a blast in Aleksandrovka in Rostov Oblast, and air defense fire and an explosion in Orel.