Humanitarian ceasefire begins in Oleshky… Ukrainian drone interception rate drops minimally during Starshield slowdown… Russian attacks on energy facilities are war crimes… Ukraine celebrates the day of Ukrainian literature and language…

OUR LEAD STORY:

KYIV, Ukraine – For several days in a row, Ruslan Alexeyenko and his wife were wrenched from their sleep by the roar of explosions. Their phones were silent, with no warning that the ballistic missiles were coming.

“They weren’t hitting us, but they were very loud,” Ruslan recalled, how his family immediately rushed to the underground parking, listening to the missiles tearing through energy infrastructure, critical facilities, and ordinary people’s homes, as he pushed his child’s stroller.

He left them there until morning. Ruslan, meanwhile, raced across Kyiv toward the strike site, where his fellow emergency responders were already heading. They had no way of knowing when the next Russian ballistic missile might hit, as fewer drones were being intercepted, which also posed a threat to them.

“During that week, there was one 24-hour period when six people were killed and nine wounded,” Ruslan recalls, describing the toll of Russian ballistic missile and drone attacks he personally witnessed amid unexpected U.S. restrictions on Starlink and ballistic warnings.

The last two weeks have been chaotic. The U.S. simultaneously restricted military use of Starlink and failed to warn of ballistic threats in time.

In Kyiv, it felt like Groundhog Day because something similar happened last year. Trump already suspended intelligence sharing with Kyiv in March 2025 to force Ukraine to the negotiating table. A year and a half later, the difference is that in March 2025 the U.S. openly confirmed a pause in intelligence sharing, while this time any restrictions may have been imposed quietly, partially, and behind closed doors. Washington still denies them.

For a few days in a row, on October 13–14 and on October 19, Ukraine received no early warnings of ballistic missiles, which are extremely vital for air defense. Civilians were among the first to feel the consequences this time, jolting awake to explosions before the air raid sirens even wailed. Some never woke up.

Along with the temporary Starlink restrictions and nearly month-long delays in approving Patriot missile deliveries, Ukraine and Europe face an uncomfortable question for the second time: what happens if Trump decides to cut off intelligence sharing altogether?

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The temporary intel pause became especially dangerous for first responders: without timely warnings, they could end up working in an area targeted for a second strike. For them, knowing whether something is coming their way is a question of life and death.

“We lose our bearings in the airspace. We don’t know what to expect. When we receive a warning, we move to a safe distance. Without one, we’re working at a site that could be hit again,” Ruslan said.

In the last two weeks, Ruslan and his colleagues were fortunate: none of the sites where they worked were struck again while they were there. But over the course of the war, he recalled witnessing at least four or five repeat strikes. It is a well-established Russian tactic to strike a location, then hit it again once first responders arrive.

That makes keeping his team safe one of Ruslan’s top priorities, and the lack of timely warnings makes that responsibility harder. His wife often texts him as he heads to a strike site: “Did you get there safely?”

But Ruslan can never be sure what he’ll find when he arrives. Ballistic missile strikes, he said, tend to leave more vast destruction and more people dead or injured than drone attacks.

“We can sometimes tell by the smell alone that there may be dead people at the scene. It has a sweet note, a smell you can recognize,” he said. “The smell at a fire is different — it’s just burning. Set a tire on fire, walk into a room, and it’ll smell the same … like a chicken someone burned when they were a kid.”

It is still difficult to understand how much the U.S. truly and willingly undermined the Ukrainian war effort. While Kyiv blamed the U.S. three times this month for suspending intelligence sharing after Ukraine refused to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries, Washington claimed that it did not do so. The U.S. officials cited weather and technical problems that allegedly affected missile detection. However, Ukrainian military experts and high officials trust this explanation little.

“Several systems failed at once: the missile warning system, ballistic missile detection capabilities, and Starlink,” believes aviation expert Bohdan Dolintse. “In highly reliable military systems, the probability of failure is one in a million, or even one in tens of millions.”

The truth is the U.S. remains unmatched when it comes to detecting ballistic missile launches and warning Ukraine in time; Washington has invested in these capabilities since the Cold War. Its early-warning system relies on satellites orbiting about 36,000 kilometers above Earth. Because they travel at the same rate as the planet rotates, they ‘hang’ above the same area, monitoring vast swaths of territory around the clock.

“They can detect any flashes on the ground, any unusual sources of heat. A missile engine produces an intense burst of heat at launch. They immediately warn us when a Russian ballistic missile is launched,” said Valerii Romanenko, an air defense expert.

Europe here can only provide warning data when one of its satellites passes over the launch site, Romanenko said. That is what makes Ukraine still so reliant on U.S. support: Russia can easily calculate when European satellites will be out of range and time its ballistic missile launches to coincide with those gaps. It doesn’t take much — the ballistic missiles can reach Ukraine within minutes.

Without early warnings, Ukraine’s air defenses must waste many more interceptor missiles, treasured more than gold by Kyiv. The U.S. has recently been supplying Ukraine with just 12 Patriot interceptor missiles a month. Russia, meanwhile, can launch 30 to 40 ballistic missiles at Ukraine in a single night.

Even for someone who has led teams of emergency responders in western areas of the Kyiv region throughout the war, this can be hard. When Ruslan held his breath as a 10th grader in the small town of Bobryn, watching the red fire engines, he couldn’t prepare himself for dealing with non-stop drones and missiles more than household fires or burning grass.

“The past four months have been endless work. I’m not ashamed to admit it — my body is exhausted. I asked for two weeks off, went to stay with my parents, got some rest, came back, and got back to work,” he said.

The Counteroffensive noticed exhaustion in all three first responders it spoke with, hidden beneath their smiles.

“Sometimes, all you need is a good night’s sleep. You just want to sleep. I spend my free time just with my wife and cats,” said Oleksandr Tkach, a Kyiv firefighter and rescue worker, who recently dealt with a drone double-tap hit on a cable spool warehouse.

He explained that when there is a threat, they drop everything and run for shelter whenever they can: “By the time we get back, two or three times as much will have burned.”

That makes warnings especially important for first responders, who need time to evacuate a strike site. “If you’re on a roof or working inside a building, it can take three or four minutes just to get out,” said Vladyslav (surname withdrawn for security reasons), head of a fire and rescue unit in Dnipro.

However, Vladyslav said that when people are killed or injured, his crew stays at the scene regardless of whether a threat warning is issued. They continue working even if Russia could strike the same location again.

“It would look pretty bad if people were trapped under the rubble and the firefighters ran away,” he said.

What is still surprising is that, unlike in March 2025, when Washington publicly suspended intelligence sharing, there have been no public reports that intelligence for planning military operations was also cut off this time. In August, Politico disclosed that Washington was helping Ukraine carry out deep strikes, including against Russian energy infrastructure.

After the March incident, France also stepped up to become Ukraine’s leading partner in that area. Europe now provides roughly two-thirds of Ukraine’s intelligence, with Paris playing the most important role here. But the methodology for calculating that figure, or the specific data Europe delivers to Kyiv instead of Washington, has not been disclosed. “This is classified information,” Michael Benhamou, a former political adviser to NATO and the French army, told The Counteroffensive.

Still, Russians managed to use the lack of ballistic warning reports to intensify attacks on energy facilities, killing at least 3 people and injuring around 30, a child included.

Rescuers under Ruslan’s command can always turn to the service’s psychologists when the emotional toll of repeatedly pulling bodies from the rubble becomes too much. He has never sought that support himself, saying he believes he has “gotten used to it” after so many years on the job.

But some scenes still get to him: “What’s most frightening for me during these operations is when there are small children involved. Especially, God forbid, when they’re among the dead.”

Eight months ago, Ruslan became a father for the second time. He devotes whatever free time he has to his two children, even though he must remain on call, ready to rush out whenever another Russian strike hits, day or night.

On October 20, Zelenskyy said Kyiv and Washington restored intelligence sharing as Ukraine began preparing for yet another round of negotiations, expected in November.

But as long as Trump can use intelligence sharing as leverage to pressure Kyiv, the threat will continue to hang over first responders like Ruslan and his colleagues, leaving them questioning: Will we save people’s lives or become another victim?

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Interested in reading more similar stories? Check these out:

Trump’s Starlink betrayal will cost lives by Mariana Lastovyria

What Trump’s intel pause cost Ukraine by Mariana Lastovyria

Can Russia cut off Ukraine’s internet? By Oleksandra Khelemendyk

THE LATEST NEWS AT THIS HOUR:

By: Mariana Stadnyk

Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.

HUMANITARIAN CEASEFIRE BEGINS IN OLESHKY: At 3:00 a.m. Kyiv time a ceasefire brokered by the U.S. First Lady Melania Trump came into effect in the Russia-occupied Oleshky in the Kherson region of Ukraine. A humanitarian mission is set to take place during the ceasefire. The roads to Oleshky have been mined and around 2,000 people, including children, have been left without food and medicine for months. Ukraine has previously delivered food and medicine using drones.

Civilian representatives from both sides, as well as an “impartial American media organization” will visit Oleshky, determine the needs of civilians and document the process. The mission will clear the roads of mines, deliver necessities and evacuate civilians. Zelenskyy was previously cautious that Russians would create evacuation routes only towards Russia, making it impossible to evacuate to Ukraine.

UKRAINIAN DRONE INTERCEPTION RATE DROPS MINIMALLY DURING STARSHIELD SLOWDOWN: As a result of the Starlink slowdown between October 14 and 24, which impaired Ukrainian air defense systems, the jet-powered Shahed interception rate dropped from 77 percent to 74 percent, the ISW reported.

Ukraine managed to keep up with its interception rates by relying more on fighter jets, than on interceptor drones, affected by the slowdown. The jets shoot down drones with air-to-air missiles or guns. However, this requires extremely skilled pilots and increases aircraft maintenance requirements and diverts them from other missions.

RUSSIAN ATTACKS ON ENERGY FACILITIES ARE WAR CRIMES: The UN Commission of Inquiry believes that Russian authorities knew that the strikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure would affect civilians, especially in the winter, and carried them out intentionally. The Commission believes that it was Russia’s state policy to deprive Ukrainian civilians of basic necessities.

The consequences of Russian attacks were particularly severe last winter, when temperatures dropped to more than minus 20 degrees celsius. Prolonged periods without heating, electricity and water impaired people’s physical and mental health, especially affecting the elderly and families with children.

UKRAINE CELEBRATES THE DAY OF UKRAINIAN LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE: Each year on this day Ukrainians write a nation-wide dictation contest to test their knowledge of Ukrainian and remember its importance. The Counteroffensive has already covered this holiday.

Our reporter Daria and her family joined the dictation contest today.

DOG OF WAR:

In this weather, Aster wants to do nothing but sleep.

Stay safe out there!

Best,
Mariana.

Ukraine violated Starlink terms of use, Musk said; N Korea expands missile and drone production with Russian assistance; Black Sea security and the war in Ukraine take center stage in Bulgaria’s elections.

OUR LEAD STORY:

Today, 14 years after leaving far-right extremism behind, Axel Reitz is alarmed to see the radical ideas he once promoted finding a much larger audience in Germany’s political mainstream.

“I am just a normal guy with a not-so-normal past,” is how Reitz describes himself.

Once a neo-Nazi activist, Reitz now works with the German nonprofit Extremislos to warn young people away from the far-right movement he once belonged to. Speaking in schools and leading seminars about radicalization he’s open about his past, using his own experience to explain how people become drawn to extremism — and how they can find a way out.

As the far-right Alternative for Germany party — or Alternative für Deutschland, AfD — gains support, Reitz feels a new urgency as he sees dangerous ideas gaining traction while public trust in the ruling party is eroding.

This September, the party won in two German state elections: in Saxony-Anhalt, situated in central Germany, by 25 percent more votes than its nearest opponent, and in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, in the north-east of Germany, by a narrow margin. AfD did not secure a majority vote and forming a government is still up in the air due its radical views. However, the party managed to secure speakership in Saxony-Anhalt parliament with the help of left populists. Its first victories are a worrying sign, especially as Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) loses ground.

AfD is notorious for its populism and a hard-line approach to immigration. It opposes Germany’s support for Ukraine and believes Germany should renew its ties with Russia. AfD’s victories also concern German security agencies: they fear the party may pass on sensitive information to Russians. Some members of AfD were accused of antisemitism, racism and even connections with neo-Nazis.

AfD’s rise in popularity highlights a broader issue: far-right, populist, and pro-Russian parties are gaining ground across Europe, making the future of the EU and further support for Ukraine uncertain. And the extremist ideologies that many Europeans believed were a thing of the past are making a comeback.

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Ukraine to purchase arms through NATO agency… Putin to resume peace talks with Ukraine and the U.S… Bulgaria refuses to fund arms for Ukraine…

OUR LEAD STORY:

KYIV, Ukraine – In the morning, you find your phone clear from any notifications. You might shrug and carry on, but something immediately feels off. You pack your lunch in silence, as both Spotify and YouTube are dead.

The low howling of sirens startles you on your way to the rapid tram station, and your phone cannot tell you what’s coming. You gasp on the crisp autumn air, rushing to the shelter just in case there’s a ballistic missile alert.

After waiting out several loud explosions, you can still grab something for lunch. At a nearby store, the line seems endless as people are frantically searching their pockets for cash. No digital IDs and no payments via your banking app are available.

If Russia cut Kyiv off from the internet, many people would picture such an analogue nightmare, but not Artur Veles. After almost 20 years of working for various Ukrainian internet providers, he dismisses the worst-case scenario.

“The only thing we wouldn’t be able to deal with is a nuclear strike,” he joked.

Today, we largely rely on the web to work, purchase, socialize and relax. For Ukrainians, the internet is crucial during wartime for receiving state services, applying for aid, staying informed about aerial attacks, and reporting on enemy troops in areas under Russian occupation.

In late September, Russian drones targeted 8 data centers in Kyiv within a week, disrupting the signal for a dozen internet providers, a handful of leading TV channels, and a major online public broadcasting platform. As a result, about 100,000 consumers were cut off from internet in the Kyiv region. New reports about data center destruction keep emerging almost every day.

But two can play at this game. From October 8, Ukraine also started targeting Russia’s largest data centers after ceasing strikes on oil refineries due to pressure from the Trump Administration. Russians are facing difficulty ordering food, booking taxis online, accessing their bank accounts, instant payments, and even their electronic keys for luxury apartments.

As data centers become a new focus of modern warfare and a potential bargaining chip in political negotiations, this exposes the fragility of global infrastructure, largely dependent on the internet and telecommunications.

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Artur knows better than most why the internet should be safe and sound. He has worked for multiple internet providers since 2008. With two degrees in industrial electronics and economics, it took a long time to find where he belonged and to learn the necessary skills. Now, he is sincerely passionate about telecommunications and takes pride in giving people access to the internet — something just as vital as electricity and water.

His company provides internet across the Kyiv region. In case of emergencies with the internet network, rapid response is key, Artur thinks. As the network operation center engineer, he is the first to know when something goes wrong.

“It takes some time to determine the cause: whether the power went out, a cable was severed, or the equipment itself failed,” Artur said. “Depending on the capabilities of the system administrators and network engineers, we can fix some issues on our own. If the cause is physical, we dispatch repair crews to fix it.”

The network can be damaged even without Russian missiles or drones — for example, if construction workers accidentally cut a cable, it might leave an entire neighborhood without internet, communication, and electricity.

According to Artur, small towns, such as Irpin, Bucha, or Borodianka, are more vulnerable to physical damage from human errors or a Russian drone strike than large cities, where most cables run underground. These towns also used to host most network nodes owned by Artur’s provider, so the Russian occupation in the first weeks of full-scale war nearly ruined the business.

“Our network survived the occupation, during which we’ve lost approximately 80 percent of our clients and network infrastructure… Everything up to Borodianka, all the way to the Zhytomyr region, all of it was destroyed.”

After months of “titanic labor,” as Artur put it, the provider consolidated smaller server nodes into the larger ones and transferred them to secure spots like deep basements. This way, it’s much easier to ensure power supply and protect equipment from Russian strikes.

“We have several network cores, and if one goes down, it won’t bring down the entire network,” he said. “We have reserve servers, so if equipment fails at one of our data centers, it only takes about five minutes to switch to the backup. So there won’t be any major network outages.”

This flexible network structure is what makes some internet providers more resilient than others.

According to the Ministry of Digital Transformation, about 128 nationwide and regional providers could work with no electricity in 2025, delivering internet to over 96,000 households. Since then, this number has been growing steadily, as more and more companies are investing in backup power supplies. Still, most of them operate in large cities, such as Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, and others, so smaller towns and villages are likely to lose the signal if the energy infrastructure is damaged.

93 percent of Russian internet providers might be compelled to close under stricter licensing standards. Ukraine’s market is far more decentralized with a wide array of small local companies.

On October 11, Ukraine needed to target only Russia’s biggest cloud service provider Yandex, often dubbed ‘Russian Google,’ to disrupt over 80 online services, including several nationwide media channels, mobile network operator MegaFon, and the Russian Railways online platform.

Ukrainian online services are not completely immune to disruptions, either. Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi stated that the war poses a direct threat to all informational infrastructure of Ukraine.

In mid-September, several TV channels halted broadcasting after Russia damaged a data center of the provider Cosmonova in Kyiv. Also, major disruptions were reported in one of the largest banks, PrivatBank, and on the ‘digital state’ platform Diya, though the latter were attributed to maintenance operations.

According to Artur, some internet and communications operators that sustained recent Russian attacks lost their signal for half a day due to slower network renovation and greater reliance on old copper cables. As a result, they remain dependent on a centralized electricity supply, and their clients lose signal during every power cut.

Expanding the optical networks proved to be a relatively easy but effective solution to keep users online, Artur believes.

“This requires our customers to power only their own router at home. When all clients are connected via optical cables, this allows us to be independent of the building’s electrical power supply,” Artur said.

He uses this approach even at home. In autumn of 2023, when widespread blackouts first began, the wait for switching to optical cables dragged on for up to three months. Artur made sure that his building always stayed connected to the internet.

“[I] talked to my neighbors, and we put together a little crew of six people, six guys who got it all set up in literally one day. We connected about 30 apartments [to the internet with the optic fiber],” he recalled. “My neighbors even messaged me personally, saying, “Thanks — we don’t have electricity, but we do have internet.”

As an alternative, more and more Ukrainians are switching to Starlink services, even though recent signal restrictions showed this is not a panacea. In March, about 5 million users relied on satellites, and this number is expected to reach 12 million by 2027.

Even though a total internet blackout is less likely, attacks on data centers still might disrupt individual online services.

Besides ensuring internet connection, data centers also store information of businesses, state institutions, banks, or any other organizations that work with large volumes of data.

That’s why if a company or online platform itself doesn’t have a cloud backup and their data is damaged, it could lead to disruptions in certain services.

“When all data centers currently operating in Ukraine were built, no one expected… missile strikes. There could be problems with the providers,” Artur acknowledged. “But the provider only ensures connection between point A… and point B. Organizations like PrivatBank, Diya, and others have their own data centers, they have to take care of their own power supply, the security of their data, and their equipment.”

Between these adjustments, Artur believes Russia won’t be able to throw Ukraine’s diverse and flexible network back to the Stone Age, although Ukraine might face significant challenges and have local disruptions.

As someone who developed his skills from scratch to become a Microsoft Certified Engineer and switched to telecommunications, Artur sees constant growth as key to survival.

“You have to build up your capacity all the time. If you ever stop, you’ll get eaten by your competitors,” he said. This advice reaches far beyond his field.

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A winter completely without internet doesn’t seem likely, but Ukraine is bracing for other hardships. To find out more, look to our earlier stories:

Why Ukraine’s heating is so vulnerable to Russian strikes by Mariana Lastovyria

U.S. poop parasite is familiar Ukraine nightmare by Oleksandra Poda

Blackout roulette in Ukraine’s elevators by Tania Novakivska

Trump’s Ukraine betrayal will get people killed

THE LATEST NEWS AT THIS HOUR:

By: Daria Shtonda

Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.

UKRAINE TO PURCHASE ARMS THROUGH NATO AGENCY: Ukraine is set to gain access to NATO’s centralized procurement agency to purchase arms, ammunition, and military equipment, the Financial Times reports.

Ukraine will join the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA), giving it an additional procurement channel beyond bilateral agreements. This could help speed up deliveries and reduce costs.

The move also creates new opportunities for Ukraine’s expanding defense sector to compete for NSPA contracts to supply military equipment.

PUTIN TO RESUME PEACE TALKS WITH UKRAINE AND THE U.S.: Following a meeting with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, the Kremlin said the Russian President had agreed to resume U.S.-mediated peace talks with Ukraine next month.

The last round of U.S.-mediated peace talks took place in February this year.

Witkoff’s visit to Russia also resulted in the release of Stephen Hubbard, a retired U.S. schoolteacher who had been held in Russia. Trump personally asked Putin to release the American. Hubbard was captured in 2022 in Izyum, in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, when Russian forces occupied the city during the early stages of the full-scale invasion.

BULGARIA REFUSES TO FUND ARMS FOR UKRAINE: Bulgaria’s Council of Ministers’ press office announced that the country will not fund lethal weapons for Ukraine through the European Peace Facility (EPF). The government of Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev said the decision reflects its support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, while also opposing any prolonged military confrontation.

The Council of Ministers added that the country will continue to finance only non-lethal aid for Ukraine, with funding directed primarily toward Ukrainian regions with Bulgarian population.

Earlier this year, the country provided more than 6 million euros in assistance to Ukraine through the EPF, following a decision from the government of former Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov.

CAT OF CONFLICT:

This kitten is tired of the blackouts.

Stay safe out there!

Best,
Oleksandra.

The U.S. administration withholds Patriot missiles for Ukraine… Witkoff and Zelenskyy head to Norway, for a new round of talks… Russians can’t access money after Ukraine hits data centers.

OUR LEAD STORY:

KYIV, Ukraine – The U.S. midterm elections are just weeks away – and the results could shape Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.

Congress has the power to approve military assistance, allocate funding, impose sanctions on Russia, and scrutinize the president’s foreign policy.

These powers matter all the more as President Trump pressures Kyiv to make concessions while moving to ease sanctions on Moscow.

The upcoming U.S. midterm elections will help determine whether Kyiv receives renewed American military and financial aid. Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, Congress has not authorized any major assistance packages for Ukraine.

On November 3, American voters will elect all 435 members of the House of Representatives and roughly one-third of the Senate.

As of today, Democrats are leading Republicans by 9 percent on the generic congressional ballot.

For Ukraine, the decisive factor is not just which party prevails, but the fate of a specific group: vulnerable Republican incumbents in tight swing districts who have consistently opposed aid, amplified skepticism of Kyiv, or pushed to halt military provisions.

Their re-election would not automatically determine U.S. policy toward Ukraine. Yet if these seats are flipped, the balance of power may shift — and with it the future of American support for Ukraine.

The Counteroffensive identified the most vulnerable lawmakers whose Ukraine records could make their electoral losses particularly consequential.

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Read more

Trump signed an order waiving Russia sanctions… Trump wants Russia to sell gas to Europe… Hungary won’t block Ukrainian grain transit…

OUR LEAD STORY:

NEW YORK, U.S. – When Sofiia walks into her next job interview, she plans to bring two documents. The first is her work permit, which expires October 19. The second is a printed screenshot of a federal law that says the permit is still good for another six months.

Back home, just outside of Kyiv, Sofiia ran her own company in human services. (Sofiia is a pseudonym; she still has family in occupied territory.) Now, living in the southern U.S., she’s applying for jobs as a cashier’s assistant at Kroger and a kitchen worker at a small restaurant.

She has met with countless lawyers, trying to understand the true expiration of her legal status. “You need to understand that the situation is very serious and very dangerous for you,” she recalled one lawyer telling her. “Because nobody, nobody can predict what will happen.”

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A week after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration offered temporary protected status, or TPS, to Ukrainians already in the U.S. for 18 months, which would allow them to live and work legally.

On October 19, that TPS for more than 100,000 Ukrainians in the U.S. is technically set to expire. But the law gives the Secretary of Homeland Security a deadline to make a decision on whether to extend or end a country’s TPS, and it must be made at least 60 days before expiration. For Ukraine, that was August 20, and that day came and went without DHS ever announcing a decision. So, legally, TPS for Ukrainians is automatically extended for another six months.

Now, people like Sofiia are just assuming they have a little more time to continue the lives they’ve built in the U.S. But many employers don’t know that or really care to understand the technicality, and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) website still lists October 19 as the expiration date.

Read more

Trump considers easing sanctions on Russian shadow fleet… U.S. proposes unfreezing Russian assets… Ukraine to resume strikes on Russian oil refineries…

Editor’s note:

This newsletter comes to you from a newsroom running on power banks. Our team in Kyiv has been without electricity after Russia spent the past few days hammering Ukraine’s energy grid, all while Kyiv held off on strikes against Russian refineries in the name of a so-called ceasefire.

We felt the ballistic strikes hard, too. For two nights in a row, missiles flew in without the early warnings Ukraine usually gets from its partners.

Want stories like this from Kyiv in your inbox, blackout or not?

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OUR LEAD STORY:

KYIV, Ukraine – Overnight on October 14, the Ukrainian army suddenly understood that it could not carry out some of its missions. Drones were losing communication and control, significantly limiting mid-range capabilities. Frontline logistics was also affected.

That day, an air defense serviceman with the call sign Kit, who serves in Kyiv, was driving the car on his shift when the equipment suddenly stopped working as he was accelerating the vehicle.

“Everything just went out on our way. It all stopped working, so we stopped and rebooted the system, but that didn’t help. We realized something was wrong,” Kit said.

According to him, rumors had already begun circulating that the military’s access to Starlink had been restricted. They were right.

SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, partially restricted Starshield connections, a military version of Starlink, without warning or explanation to Ukrainians. Widely used to operate drones live, especially in mid-range strikes, Starlink disconnected from the unmanned vehicle if its speed exceeded 100 miles per hour. Some media citing Ministry of Defense sources reported disruptions starting at 45 miles per hour during the day.

Unable to launch drones, some units needed to postpone their missions. Communication restrictions have also affected jet-drone interception. Yes, the very capability Ukraine struggled to maintain even before this event.

Zelenskyy’s advisor Serhii Beskrestnov believes the move is tied to the recent “political situation,” hinting at Trump’s pressure on Kyiv to halt deep strikes on oil refineries. Musk claimed that speed restrictions for military operations are imposed by the U.S. Army and Donald Trump personally. The White House says it has nothing to do with this.

This marks a new chapter in the tense relationship between Kyiv and Washington, unlike anything seen since the Oval Office meltdown. As in Groundhog Day, the U.S. pressures Ukraine to make concessions while Russia refuses to budge. But instead of bringing a made-up ceasefire closer, the Trump administration is once again putting Ukrainian lives at risk as the country braces for another brutal winter.

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“This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. One person has so much power that they can decide the fate of an entire country… It’s just completely fucked up,” said Kit, reflecting on Musk’s potential involvement in Starlink restrictions.

Kit is deeply frustrated by the situation. The past two months have been grueling for someone tasked with shooting down Russian missiles and Shahed drones. Kit, an IT specialist, has been serving in Kyiv’s air defense since the start of 2024.

In late August, Russia began attacking Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities day and night, barely leaving him any time to catch his breath. “[The Russians] got help with the engine. That’s it — they started scaling up. Before that, [jet-powered Shaheds] were flying, but there were very few of them,” Kit said.

Over the past two months, Kit’s duty schedule has changed dramatically. Before, he would engage targets only when a threat emerged; now, Kit and his fellow service members stay on their feet almost nonstop.

As Ukraine developed ways to counter jet-powered Shaheds — from interceptor drones to F-16s and turrets — Kit faced another setback: new Starlink restrictions now interrupt his work, disrupting long-distance communications and slowing the movement of air defense assets, making them vulnerable to Russians.

Over the past 36 hours, Russia has tried to exploit Starlink issues, according to Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It launched 850 drones as satellite connectivity issues disrupted Ukraine’s interceptor drones — reportedly the most effective way to down jet-drones for now.

The Starlink decision is also being felt on the front line. Oleksii*, an operator in a brigade specializing in mid-range strikes, saw the news early that morning while traveling with his fellow service members to collect after testing drones that rely on Starlink. “We’re at a loss,” Oleksii said.

The restrictions have not directly affected Oleksii’s work yet, as he switched to slower drones this fall, typically flying below 75 mph and continuing to strike Russian forces in occupied territories. Before that, they used Shahed-like drones capable of reaching 125 mph — the type most affected by the restrictions and widely used to hit Russian logistics and military targets.

“When heavy drones launch, they accelerate very quickly because of their weight. They can exceed 100 mph right at takeoff. This can also put the crew at risk. You don’t know your speed is being restricted. Your drone gets catapult-launched, Starlink is down, and it immediately crashes to the ground,” Oleksii said.

In late July, Ukraine asked the U.S. to enable Starlink for drone strikes inside Russia, where the service is blocked. But that has yet to happen. If one is concerned about deep strikes, they remain unaffected, as they rely on a different type of communications link. However, mid-range strikes are vital because they target the distance where Russia concentrates much of its critical infrastructure: air defense systems, electronic warfare assets, and command and logistics hubs.

“When you have Starlink, you can take an absolute garbage, strap a terminal to it, and get a crystal-clear view of the target,” Oleksii said. “Everyone has become heavily reliant on Starlink because it’s cheap and easy to use.”

This is not the first time SpaceX has restricted Starlink access in ways that disrupted Ukrainian military operations. In 2023, connectivity was reportedly unavailable near Crimea for a period, reportedly preventing Ukraine from carrying out a potential strike on the Russian fleet. Musk previously restricted Starlink’s use on attack drones.

So, this incident once again exposes the vulnerability of Ukraine’s military, which heavily relies on Starlink. Changing this stance will take time: no satellite communication system of equal scale exists, and alternatives are far more complex and expensive to implement.

Meanwhile, political tensions between Ukraine and the U.S. are escalating. The White House again threatened Ukraine, warning it would cut intelligence sharing if Kyiv continues to strike Russian oil refineries. Against this backdrop, Ukraine went two consecutive nights, October 13 and 14, without timely warnings from its partners about Russian ballistic missile launches. At that time, Russia launched massive attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, triggering prolonged power outages for more than 600,000 people. Trump has officially denied suspending intelligence sharing with Ukraine.

On top of that, the U.S. has also threatened to halt weapons supplies to Kyiv under the PURL program.

Kyiv has indeed stopped strikes on Russian oil refineries over the past three days. But amid disruptions to intelligence sharing and Starlink connectivity, Ukraine is now lifting the ban on attacks, FT reported. “The block [on attacking refineries] is out. We’re done,” said Zelenskyy.

“I hope this will be the last winter of the war. But things never go smoothly. We’ve started hitting the Russians hard. And instead of helping us, they’re just throwing a wrench in the works,” Kit said.

*We don’t disclose servicemen’s names for security reasons.

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Interested in reading more similar stories? Check these out:

Can Ukrainian soldiers survive without Musk’s Starlink by Artem Moskalenko

What Trump’s intel pause cost Ukraine by Mariana Lastovyria

How Elon’s satellites nearly led to Ukrainian disaster by Oleksandra Poda and Mariana Lastovyria

THE LATEST NEWS AT THIS HOUR:

By: Daria Shtonda

Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.

TRUMP CONSIDERS EASING SANCTIONS ON RUSSIAN SHADOW FLEET: The U.S. is considering easing sanctions on Russian shadow fleet vessels that transport oil and petroleum products from countries including Russia, Iran, and Venezuela to lower record-high global freight rates, Reuters reported, citing a U.S. official.

The Department of Energy argued the proposal would allow previously sanctioned tankers to carry oil and petroleum products not subject to U.S. restrictions, rather than lifting sanctions on Russian or Iranian oil.

U.S. PROPOSES UNFREEZING RUSSIAN ASSETS: The U.S. proposed European countries to unfreeze some Russian assets in an effort to renew peace talks, the Financial Times reported.

The proposal includes transferring the assets to a new special-purpose financial vehicle overseen by Washington. It was raised at a meeting in Miami last week between Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and officials from Ukraine, France, Germany, the UK, the EU, and NATO.

European delegates rejected the proposal. Western allies immobilized about €260 billion in Russian sovereign assets. Previously, most European allies have opposed using the frozen assets to provide fund aid to Ukraine, citing legal concerns.

UKRAINE TO RESUME STRIKES ON RUSSIAN OIL REFINERIES: Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the Financial Times Ukraine would resume strikes on Russian oil refineries after Russia intensified its attacks despite the “energy ceasefire” announced by Trump. This comes after the U.S. weakened Starlink services and disrupted their intelligence sharing with Ukraine.

Zelenskyy said he had suspended strikes on energy facilities for three days at Washington’s request. Russia nevertheless continued to target Ukraine’s energy and civilian infrastructure. More than 100 people were killed over the past week, he said.

CATS OF CONFLICT:

These are Daria’s parents’ cats, Betty and Selena, back home in Pavlohrad, Dnipropetrovsk region. They’re sisters, but it’s rare to see them curled up peacefully together.

Stay safe out there!

Best,
Mariana.

Ukraine struck with ballistic without warning from partners… Trump forces Kyiv to surrender… NATO $1 billion+ drone defense investment expands to Poland…

OUR LEAD STORY:

KYIV, Ukraine – Each time Viktoriia recorded the final lines of her video, tears welled in her eyes, and her voice cracked.

“It was difficult for me to record a video about the hijacking of a bus carrying children. The children were later released, and they all survived. But what about their lives after that incident? Some struggled with alcohol, and some took their own lives. In these stories, even if you survive, how do you go on living?”

She was referring to the 1976 Chowchilla kidnapping in California, one of the largest mass abductions in U.S. history.

Viktoriia Barkova is living through war and the daily nightmare of Russian missiles and drones, but it was not that harrowing reality that brought her to tears.

It was the faraway reality of distant strangers from decades ago that hit her like a gut punch. Viktoria is the creator of a Ukrainian-language YouTube channel that covers real-life crimes. She launched it during the full-scale invasion, and even though she posts new videos about once a month, the channel is growing extremely fast, reaching 40,000 subscribers in two years.

At first glance, it’s a paradox. Ukrainians read about their fellow countrymen killed in missile strikes every day and spend nights in hallways bracing for certain death amid air raid sirens. They are literally living in a ‘true crime’ scenario. Yet, every evening, thousands of them watch hour-long YouTube videos about serial killers.

It makes more sense than you’d think. More than four and a half years into the war, Ukrainians are exhausted. Last winter, 91 percent reported severe stress, and nearly half now deliberately avoid news about the war.

The content people consume reveals how a country copes when the danger never ends. True crime offers a story with a clear ending where the culprit is usually caught.

“[In true crime] there’s a certain structure and a timeline. Eventually, the criminal is apprehended… I think this gives the mind a sense of relief,” said Viktoriia.

As Ukraine prepares for another winter of Russian attacks, the rise of the genre shows how millions are trying to regain a sense of control.

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Since 2022, many Ukrainian-language true crime channels have emerged, with the biggest reaching 300,000 subscribers. Viktoriia was among those who launched their own true crime channels in 2024, while the war was already underway. Before that, she grew her Instagram by sharing beauty products with her audience.

“Before the war, life felt like a field of daisies, butterflies fluttered and birds sang,” said Viktoriia. “I don’t feel that way anymore. That’s why I have a true crime channel [now].”

When she launched her own channel, Viktoriia understood Ukrainian viewers’ need for Ukrainian content. Five years into the war, 71 percent of Ukrainians still regularly consume Russian-language content. Researchers cite the lack of high-quality Ukrainian alternatives as the main reason.

The popularity of the true crime genre is not unique to Ukraine. According to Edison Research, true crime surpassed comedy for the first time in the second quarter of 2026 to become the most popular topic among podcast listeners in the United States. In 2019, it ranked fifth.

“I spend a very long time choosing each topic,” Viktoriia said. “Sometimes I find one that seems really interesting and substantial, and it turns out [another Ukrainian true crime creator] has already done it. I try to pick a story that I’m interested in researching myself, and it also depends on how much material there is.”

Viktoriia often draws on American case files when putting together material for her videos. These include photos, videos, and interrogation transcripts. For Ukrainian cases, however, there is often only one article since data transparency regarding such cases in Ukraine is significantly lower.

“It’s rare to find a substantial amount of information on a Ukrainian-language case,” she said.

Now, as her channel grows more popular, Viktoriia feels especially responsible for the result. “I feel people’s expectations. They know I try to cover everything in depth, that every detail has to be there. So I keep asking myself: did I really find everything? Did I really work through everything? I have a notebook where I write down every point that needs to be covered,” she said.

In one of her videos, Viktoriia asked her viewers why they watch true crime content. The responses fell into two categories.

Some wrote that they were interested in understanding the logic of criminals and trying to figure out if there were warning signs that could have been spotted earlier. Others explained that, during wartime, stress levels are so high that they need a different kind of controlled stress.

Viktoriia agrees with this logic, which is precisely why she doesn’t take on unsolved cases. “My brain can’t handle it when there’s no captured criminal,” she said.

According to research from University College London, uncertainty causes far more stress than the stressor itself. For Ukrainians, uncertainty has become a way of life. No one clearly knows where enemy missiles are headed, whether there will be heat in the winter, or when the war will end.

True crime offers the opposite. The viewer knows in advance that the criminal has been caught. In this way, controlled stress can build resilience. During the pandemic, horror fans reported fewer symptoms of depression, anxiety, and insomnia. Additionally, people interested in killers and violence were found to be more psychologically resilient.

This genre’s audience is predominantly female, and Viktoriia’s viewers specifically want more stories about women. They are particularly drawn to stories that teach them how to defend themselves against an attacker.

This trend also has a dark side. A third of Americans believe the genre exploits victims and their families, and almost a half believe that it sensationalizes violence. In Ukraine, where photos of people killed by Russian attacks are published daily, the question of where to draw the line between news coverage and sensationalism is particularly pressing.

Viktoriia is careful to respect the victims. “I don’t like it when true crime stories romanticize criminals or treat victims like names on a list,” she said. “By telling the victims’ stories, these people are remembered.”

The way she sees it, understanding a criminal’s background is important in some situations.”If someone had noticed back then that he [the killer] was very aggressive toward animals… It’s important to look at the background and understand what we, as people who could have dealt with this person, might have missed, and how we could have prevented what happened next,” Viktoriia said.

For viewers, this is another way to feel a sense of control, to make sense of what is otherwise senseless violence — something Ukrainians have no choice but to be all too familiar with.

Christa Pike, for example, became notorious for an extremely brutal and sadistic 1995 murder that was back in the headlines last month after Pike survived her execution by lethal injection. For years, her lawyers have argued that physical and sexual abuse she suffered as a child should be taken into account.

“I don’t think we can excuse it with childhood,” Viktoriia said. “But maybe for us, as viewers, it shows a certain cause and effect.”

In Viktoriia’s opinion, sensationalism begins when an author focuses on a high-profile criminal while forgetting about the victims. She believes that is exactly what happened in the Lindsay Clancy case, which is why she does not plan to cover it until there’s a resolution in court.

On September 4, a Massachusetts court declared a mistrial in the case of Clancy, a former nurse who strangled her three children in 2023. After seven days of deliberation, the jury could not reach a verdict on her criminal liability because the defense argued that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis. Talks are still underway on when, or if, there will be a retrial.

True crime narrators often sound low and ominous, but Viktoriia’s own delivery is serious and measured. Some subscribers told her that, with a voice like hers, she should be reading fairy tales instead of true-crime stories.

“Maybe I really should be reading fairy tales. Maybe when the war ends, I’ll be able to return to a place where I can feel a field of daisies again. Time will tell,” said Viktoriia.

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Interested in reading more stories about crime in wartime Ukraine? Check these out:

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Should Ukrainians have legal guns? by Kateryna Antonenko

Dead journalists. by Myroslava Tanska-Vikulova and Tim Mak

THE LATEST NEWS AT THIS HOUR:

By: Petro Gordon

Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.

UKRAINE STRUCK WITH BALLISTIC WITHOUT WARNING FROM PARTNERS: Russia recently has struck Kyiv with five ballistic missiles, however Kyiv received no warning from western partners, according to Zelenskyy. The air alert came moments after the missiles had already hit, showcasing the importance of western intelligence for Ukraine’s warning systems. Without these warnings, it is not possible for Ukrainians to reach shelters in time.

This comes after the Trump administration threatened to end intelligence sharing with Kyiv and block the arms sales through the PURL mechanism if Ukraine continues to bomb Russian oil refineries.

TRUMP FORCES KYIV TO SURRENDER: Trump’s administration is attempting to force Ukraine to surrender, to prevent Ukraine from attacking Russian oil refineries, Anne Applebaum writes for The Atlantic. Trump has repeatedly tried to blame rising global fuel prices on Ukraine, but in reality Trump wishes to profit from business deals with Russia, including ones in the energy sector.

Yesterday, Donald Trump announced an “energy ceasefire” without notifying either side. Russians promptly violated the ceasefire by striking a power plant in Kharkiv. In the past, Trump has said that Putin is more willing to reach a ceasefire deal than Zelenskyy.

NATO $1 BILLION+ DRONE DEFENSE INVESTMENT EXPANDS TO POLAND: With the threat of Russia on its eastern flank, NATO is looking to invest into drone defense technology. The joint fund of more than a billion dollars is expanding into Poland, looking for direct investments into the latest dual-use technologies to counter the rising drone threat from Russia, Reuters reports.

The war in Ukraine is pushing NATO to shift its defense strategy, focusing on drones, which has become a key instrument in Russia’s hybrid attacks against NATO member states.

DOG OF WAR:

This dog followed Ally on her way home today.

Stay safe out there!

Best,
Ally.

U.S. offers Russia incentives in exchange for an energy ceasefire; Trump calls on Ukraine to change its president to reach a deal with Russia; Russia is planning assassinations of European def company executives; Assassination plots against the pm and DefMin were being planned in Poland.

OUR LEAD STORY:

KYIV, Ukraine – Russia spent September intensifying attacks on Ukraine, with jet drones relentlessly launched to bring civilian life to a halt and plans for an inexpensive new missile that can be used to terror bomb Ukrainian cities. It also pushed its sabotage campaign deeper into NATO territory. Ukraine, meanwhile, was quietly retaking villages in the east.

In this month’s military review, The Counteroffensive spoke with drone manufacturers, defense engineers and a former British Army officer. They explained why Ukraine still cannot reliably stop Russian jet-powered drones, the weapons that Moscow is preparing next, how Russian sabotage is spreading across Europe, and how a covert operation named after an Italian composer pushed Russian troops back near Lyman.

The war is encroaching more and more on NATO’s borders

September provided the starkest proof yet that Russia’s war has spread beyond Ukraine. In a single month, Moscow was linked to sabotage and the recruitment of saboteurs in at least five NATO countries, as well as military provocations.

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On September 1, Germany officially held Russia responsible for the attempted attack at Leipzig Airport in August, when a drone loaded with explosives was found near a Ukrainian cargo plane. In response, Berlin closed the Russian consulate in Bonn and terminated the lease on the ‘Russian House’ in Berlin.

“What we’re seeing now is a steady increase in the number of attacks and their [Russian] severity,” said Glen Grant, a retired British Army lieutenant colonel. “It means that they [Russians] think Russia is going to win. And it also means that they’re getting more resources, more explosives.”

The attacks increasingly target industries that supply weapons to Ukraine. On September 3, German police detained two suspects in connection with an attack on a weapons manufacturer in Munich. Meanwhile, Denmark accused Russia of recruiting Danish citizens to sabotage defense companies working with Ukraine. Estonia concluded that Russian intelligence ordered an August arson attack on the Tallinn office of Milrem Robotics, a military robot manufacturer.

Read more

Following a call with Vladimir Putin, President Donald Trump just announced the release of hundreds of thousands of tons of Russian diesel over the next few months.

Shortly after, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued a temporary license for Russian diesel fuel sales through April 7, 2027 — giving them a pass on the sanctions that have acted like a vice on Russia’s economy.

Read more

Ukraine attacks critical targets in Russia… Ukrainians in the U.S. might lose protection… African countries to return citizens Ukraine holds as POWs…

OUR LEAD STORY:

KYIV, Ukraine – “There is quite possibly panic [in Russia] because even if something like that did happen, maybe they can’t hide it.”

For Andrii Aleksandrin, a person that deals with infections every day, one unconfirmed plague case reported in the media is not enough to stress about. Even if it’s something as dangerous as pneumonic plague.

A suspected plague outbreak occurred in Russia’s Irkutsk region in Siberia. 28-year-old Darya Shipilova, a researcher at a Russian anti-plague institute, was admitted to a hospital in the town of Shelekhov on September 29 due to severe pneumonia and died within the next 72 hours.

The woman allegedly broke a tube containing a pneumonic plague pathogen in a lab on September 25, according to Russian media.

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Although Russian authorities officially denied that plague caused her death, approximately 200 people who were in contact with her were placed under medical observation — which immediately increased concerns regarding the incident. Although there have been media reports of a second anti-plague institute employee with pneumonia of undetermined cause, they haven’t been verified, and no new incidents have been reported.

On October 8, the quarantine measures in Irkutsk were reportedly lifted. Since Soviet times, Russia has tried to hide the real situation during similar outbreaks. Still deeply traumatized by the COVID-19 pandemic, the world fears that this may lead to the spread of disease.

Andrii Aleksandrin is a Ukrainian epidemiologist with more than 20 years of professional experience. He has first-hand experience dealing with many dangerous infections, including tuberculosis, rabies, leptospirosis and AIDS.

“An epidemiologist is the detective of healthcare,” Andrii said. The work is highly investigative, focusing on finding the cause of the disease. Epidemiologists also work within the healthcare system, helping ensure society survives any disease outbreak.

Today, Andrii is very active in the Ukrainian public health sector. He is the founder and CEO of the National Expert Group of Infection Control (NEGIC), a Ukrainian infection prevention consulting company.

For epidemiologists, the first step in tackling any outbreak is establishing the type of infection that they’re dealing with.

Plague as it is medically defined is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and is transmitted to humans by infected small mammals and fleas. Pneumonic plague is the most virulent type; it can spread among humans through respiratory droplets. Its symptoms appear quickly and include shortness of breath and coughing, sometimes with blood.

“A person develops a very high fever, chills, and shortness of breath…. The illness can progress to respiratory failure, sepsis, and shock,” said Andrii.

Pneumonic plague can be fatal unless treated with antibiotics within the first 24 hours after the first symptoms appear.

Russia’s Siberia region has been historically used to study dangerous pathogens like the different types of plagues that can occur naturally in wild animals there. The Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute, where the supposed outbreak occurred, was established in 1934 as a Soviet scientific body for plague control. It also worked on other dangerous diseases like cholera and anthrax.

Throughout Soviet history there were plenty of plague or other highly lethal outbreaks of different scales. But in all cases, the USSR government kept the real state of things top secret, even from epidemiologists tasked with tackling the outbreaks. Soviet citizens were often simply misinformed about whether the catastrophe was big or small.

For example, in 1979 an anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) was caused by the release of spores from a military biological research facility in a restricted military compound. For years, Soviet authorities concealed the outbreak’s true cause, claiming it was the result of contaminated meat sold at a local market. Dozens of people ultimately died from the disease.

The practice of hiding the real causes and consequences of similar outbreaks may still be deeply ingrained in modern Russia, as a post-Soviet heritage.

This is something Andrii came across himself even in Ukraine in the early 2000’s. “Perhaps it also goes back to Soviet times.… The sanitary and epidemiological service was used to cover everything up,” he recalled.

Back then Andrii worked for the sanitary and epidemiological service in the Luhansk region, and he witnessed a major hepatitis A outbreak.

Thousands of people fell ill, he recalled, due to problems with the centralized water supply. Epidemiologists and the military set up a field hospital and organized water deliveries, while infectious disease specialists and general practitioners treated large numbers of patients. However, Andrii says official Health Ministry figures for the number of victims were significantly lower than the actual.

Andrii has no doubt the Russian authorities might be covering up the real situation. He especially does not believe the narrative suggested by the Russian media that the researcher in the Irkutsk region died because of the broken tube.

The last time Andrii personally used a glass test tube in his work was about 10 years ago. This was not even in a town but in a rural area, where more modern equipment is often unavailable. Instead, plastic Vacutainer tubes are more commonly used for dangerous infectious diseases, especially when a live strain is involved.

“I’m surprised by all this chatter in the Russian media suggesting that they’re still playing around with these pathogens. They’re talking about a young female lab technician, implying that she lacks experience,” Andrii believes. “But specialists without the necessary experience aren’t allowed to work with live [bacteria] cultures, especially those of particularly dangerous infectious diseases.”

The initial version of the circumstances of the incident is denied even by the mother of the researcher who died, who says it’s impossible to simply break the tube with plague as they are usually well-protected.

The World Health Organization has asked Moscow for more details on the potential plague incident on October 7. Russia’s neighbor Kazakhstan, along with other Central Asian nations Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, announced health checks at border crossings. Armenia, another of Russia’s neighbors, set up a special task force to coordinate measures to prevent the infection from spreading into the country.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow again urged U.S. citizens to leave Russia and strongly advised against traveling there.

Since Russian authorities had already used numerous civilian research institutions for secret military-biological programs during the Soviet era, it has also provoked some thoughts about whether the death of the researcher was related to the development of a biological weapon.

On October 8, Donald Trump said U.S. officials don’t believe this speculation. “We’re going to find out soon enough, but we don’t think so,” he said.

Although Russia officially states that it abides by the Biological Weapons Convention, there are signs that it has its own biological warfare program.

In its 2025 Arms Control Treaty Compliance Report, the U.S. Department of State asserts that Russia continues to develop the bioweapons program it inherited from the Soviet Union. In 2024, The Washington Post reported that Russia was modernizing its Soviet-era research center for biological weapons, Sergiev Posad-6, near Moscow. The renovated and newly built buildings resemble a high-containment biological facility. Another biolab complex was reportedly built in Russia’s Tver region.

Plague has been used as a biological weapon before. During World War II, the Japanese dispersed disease-carrying fleas in China. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union researched using plague in aerosol form as a bioweapon. The WHO investigated this scenario and concluded that if 50 kilograms of Yersinia pestis were dispersed over a city with a population of 5 million, 150,000 people would contract the plague, and 36,000 of them would die.

“Biological weapons have the viable characteristics to kill a huge city like Kyiv in just a single working day…In my opinion, it is a hundred percent worse than nuclear weapons,” Andrii said.

Andrii doesn’t believe a major pneumonic plague epidemic or pandemic is possible in the modern world. Antibiotics can now cure it in standard pharmacies if it’s identified in time. Moreover, limited plague outbreaks still happen in different parts of the world, but according to him they are diagnosed pretty quickly and “in a week everyone forgets about it.”

“In the Middle Ages, this [major epidemic] was possible because there were no diagnostic methods. There were no antibiotics, and naturally, any treatment for the plague was simply in vain,” believes Andrii.

To an experienced professional like Andrii, even the deadliest plagues aren’t scary, since humanity already knows how to deal with them.

“Our biggest threat is [national healthcare] management’s irresponsibility. This is a big problem for our society. But everything else, we will beat, for sure.”

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Ukraine’s new Ecocide war crime theory by Mariana Lastovyria, Myroslava Tanska-Vikulova, Anastasiia Kryvoruchenko and Tim Mak.

Russia’s increasing illegal chemical weapons usage in Ukraine by Tim Mak, Alessandra Hay and Oksana Ostapchuk.

THE LATEST NEWS AT THIS HOUR:

By: Oleksandra Khelemendyk

Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.

UKRAINE ATTACKS CRITICAL TARGETS IN RUSSIA: Ukrainian FP-1 deep strike drones have hit Russia’s largest oil refinery in Omsk, over 2,500 km away from Ukraine’s border. It supplies about 50 separate petroleum products, including jet fuel, lubricants, and the biggest share of Russia’s domestic gasoline output. As a result, lines formed at the gas stations. This is not the first attack on the oil refinery, with the previous successful strike launched on July 6.

Over the past two days, two data centers of Russia’s IT company Yandex in the Ryazan and Kaluga regions were also damaged. The strikes disrupted 38 of 70 Yandex Cloud services, social media, banking platforms, mobile operators, postal services, and the Russian Railways site. President Zelenskyy called the attacks a mirror response to Russia’s actions.

Still, Ukraine has to prepare for a harsh winter, as Russia plans to cut off major Ukrainian cities, such as Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa, from their electricity, heating, and water supplies. It would need about 770 jet drones, 170 aerial bombs, and 75 ballistic missiles specifically to target power plants, power lines for energy imports from Europe, water pumping stations, and boiler rooms in densely populated areas.

UKRAINIANS IN THE U.S. MIGHT LOSE PROTECTION: Donald Trump’s administration may cancel temporary protection status for Ukrainian refugees in the U.S. and put over 100,000 people at risk of deportation.

If it is not prolonged by October 19, protection will expire automatically in 6 months, in mid-April. According to Politico, some lawmakers support this option ahead of the midterm elections to avoid a major political backlash from both anti-immigrant hardliners and those who oppose a mass deportation to a war zone.

AFRICAN COUNTRIES TO RETURN CITIZENS UKRAINE HOLDS AS POWs: The governments of two African nations are calling on Ukraine to repatriate their citizens who were illegally recruited to fight for Russia and captured as POWs.

Botswana is working to return one man, while Kenya wants the other five prisoners repatriated and asks to treat them as victims of international human trafficking rather than POWs.

According to Ukrainian estimates referred to by Bloomberg, Russia has recruited over 28,000 foreign fighters from 135 countries. At least 5,000 of them have been killed, and 213, excluding North Koreans, have been captured by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. 37 of them are nationals of African countries.

CAT OF CONFLICT:

Mariana’s parents sent her this picture of their cat Simba to lure her back home. In Kyiv, it’s not that easy to find a bottle of her favorite Coke Zero these days.

Stay safe out there!

Best,
Mariana, Mariana and Petro.

Hungary is set to drop the veto on Ukraine’s entry to EU… South Korea supplies fuel to Russia… U.S. seeks updates on unknown plague outbreak in Russia…

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Western diplomats have no plans to leave Kyiv; Orban may face trial for the raid on Oschadbank cash collectors; The U.S. and Russia are discussing a multi-billion deal as part of negotiations on Ukraine.

OUR LEAD STORY:

KYIV, Ukraine – “I can’t. Simply can’t. I can’t bring myself to sacrifice my own dignity for a ‘steady family life.’ I can’t stand by abroad, living my own egotistical life…”

I wrote these words in my notes in the fall of 2025. It marked a turning point in my life, after I had sacrificed my first love and a chance for a safe life in Europe to come back and live under constant Russian strikes in Kyiv.

I’m now almost 24 and plan to join the military when I turn 25 years old, the age of conscription in Ukraine. I still have a year left, so presently I’m looking for a place to serve while preparing myself, both physically and mentally.

The 2022 Russian invasion saw the whole country unite against an invader, with lines forming outside draft centers of volunteers ready to defend their country. The conscription age in Ukraine is 25, while the borders were closed to men over 18 years old. They would be the manpower necessary to continue the military resistance against overwhelming Russian forces.

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After nearly five years of grueling war, Russia has already begun so-called ‘hidden mobilization’, supplemented by North Korean troops fighting in the war. In Ukraine, however, few volunteers are lining up to serve in the military. The Ukrainian army has been struggling to recruit more soldiers and is also faced with the problem of troops deserting. In that landscape, volunteers are worth their weight in gold, and you can choose the exact brigade and position to serve if you enlist on your own.

But some young Ukrainians have made a conscious decision to stay in the country and fight. To them, it is a question of dignity. At the same time, they define the country’s ability to resist Russia. With the average age of the Ukrainian Army being 43 years old, the responsibility for the survival of the state lies with these young people.

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Russia to increase military spending by 27%; Norway increased aid to deported Ukrainian kids; Sanctioning Russia gets harder.

OUR LEAD STORY:

KYIV, Ukraine – “Fuck off, fucking Ukrainians,” a man shouted as the security guard pulled him out of the grocery store at the bus station in Wrocław, Poland, in April.

Moments earlier, a young Ukrainian security guard asked the man to pay for his goods and behave while in line — in Polish, but with a slight Ukrainian accent. The man exploded, shouting at the guard and demanding to see the store’s administrator to complain about the Ukrainian. When no one helped him, the man grew even more aggressive, shoving the guard and getting into a physical figh t.

Ivanna Spivachenko was watching from the line at the checkout, frozen. She wanted to stand up for her fellow countryman, but was afraid to say anything, fearing she could become the next target of the attack.

The fighting only stopped when a stronger security guard came, separated the Ukrainian and the aggressive customer, and pulled him out of the building.

One of the cases of attacks on Ukrainians in Poland. A man insulted Ukrainian teenagers on a bus in Bielsko-Biała on July 12, 2026. Video posted on Andrii Sybiha’s Facebook account.

It is difficult to imagine something similar happening in 2022: Poland has been one of Ukraine’s closest allies since the start of the full-scale war. But this summer the relationship between the neighbors has escalated. What started as a dispute over different views on the shared past — in particular the Volyn massacre in 1943-1944, when the Ukrainian Insurgent Army slaughtered Poles living in the Volyn region — spiraled into rising xenophobia and violence against Ukrainians living in Poland. In the first half of 2026, Ukrainian citizens filed 180 reports of suspected hate crimes, which is a 30 percent increase compared to the same period in 2025.

There have been attacks on people of different ages, including teenagers. Some of the attacks have happened when the assailants heard people speaking Ukrainian or Polish with a Ukrainian accent. Not only Ukrainians have become victims: there have been a few incidents when Poles were attacked because assailants mistook them for Ukrainians.

Such instability in relations raises concerns about whether Ukraine can maintain earlier strong alliances, needed not only for Kyiv but for other European countries as well, amidst Russian hybrid warfare against the EU. In addition, Ukraine’s EU accession may also be under threat, as some Polish politicians, including President Karol Nawrocki, have said they would block Ukraine’s accession to the EU and NATO and curtail aid.

“I never planned to emigrate at all; I always insisted that I would live in Ukraine, that I could only see my life in Ukraine, and so on. But how often do we make firm declarations, only to end up in exactly the situations we said we’d never be in?” Ivanna said, having eventually emigrated to Poland.

She met her future husband, a Belarusian, who planned to continue living in Europe, at a youth exchange in the Czech Republic in 2022. Ivanna decided to stay in Europe with him until the war was over — she thought it would only be a few months. When they were choosing where to live, Ivanna remembered her visit to Gdańsk — a port city in northern Poland which she really liked. That’s why they decided to live there.

The war didn’t end in a few months. Ivanna understood she had to learn Polish, not only to feel comfortable in the country she was living in, but also out of gratitude and respect for the Poles, who helped Ukrainians a great deal at the beginning of the war.

Ukraine received about $4 billion from Poland in the first two years of the war, and about $417 million in military aid through July 2026. Poland also welcomed millions of Ukrainians seeking refuge, with more than 900,000 refugees still having temporary protection. It is second only to Germany.

“I started learning little by little, and as soon as it clicked [the understanding that Ivanna will stay in Poland for longer], learning came easily,” Ivanna said.

Ivanna likes Poland: it’s pretty cities, cleanliness, comfort, and safety. Now in Szczecin, where she moved because her husband had good job opportunities there, she has some Polish friends and feels she has started integrating into Polish society, like many other Ukrainians.

A 2025 survey found that 63 percent of Ukrainian refugees speak Polish fluently or well. By working in Poland and paying taxes, Ukrainians have contributed to the Polish economy more than they have received in assistance

Although the current anti-Ukrainian sentiments and violence against Ukrainians surged this summer, the sentiments of Poles towards Ukrainians started worsening during the presidential elections in 2025. Karol Nawrocki, who was elected president, has repeatedly addressed historical disputes between Ukraine and Poland, in particular the Volyn massacre, when the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) slaughtered Poles in the Volyn region.

The issue of the Volyn massacre is a complex one. Part of the Ukrainian territory was under Polish control during the interwar period. Poland employed a repressive policy against Ukrainians living there: they went through forced assimilation and pacification that radicalized the youth. This led to the Volyn tragedy in 1943-1944, which resulted in 35,000 to 100,000 Poles and around 10,000 Ukrainians being killed, according to different estimates.

The heated conflict started after the naming of the elite Ukrainian regiment after the ‘Heroes of the UPA,’ to which Poland reacted sharply. As politicians debated the history, an attack on a Ukrainian couple in Wrocław this July became one of the notorious examples of changing Polish sentiments towards Ukraine. The assailants attacked Anastasiia Kitsai and her boyfriend outside a grocery store after identifying them as Ukrainian. The couple was hospitalized.

Video of the attack on a Ukrainian couple in Wrocław, July 26, 2026. Video from Karina Kitsai’s Facebook account.

Ivanna and other Ukrainians she knows have been feeling a little uneasy in Poland for about two years now. Recent xenophobic attacks have made Ivanna even more anxious. Now she is slightly scared to speak Ukrainian when groups of people walk past her outside. She and her husband have already started discussing the possibility of leaving Poland. They have considered either moving to another European country—Austria, Spain, or Norway—or returning to Ukraine, if the security situation permits.

“In a couple of years, I hope that we’ll become parents. And when I thought about the fact that my child would have to live in this country, I wouldn’t want them to grow up in an environment like this,” Ivanna said.

And she feels her fears aren’t groundless. Ivanna’s nephew, who is a teenager now, was picked on at school because he’s not a Pole, she said.

Future parliamentary elections, set for autumn 2027, also fuel anti-Ukrainian sentiment. On July 13, the Prime Minister candidate from Nawrocki’s Law and Justice party, Przemysław Czarnek, said that the EU “should suspend funding for Ukraine’s military and reconstruction efforts until it changes its policy toward Poland” and that there was no place in Europe for Ukraine “based on anti-values that glorify Bandera’s ideology”.

According to Ivanna, cases of hatred towards Ukrainians are now more visible in the media and on social media: “If you open Facebook, you might as well jump straight into a dying pit, because it seems like every single comment there is just: ‘Ukrainians are so bad — get out of here!’”

For example, recently, in the village of Raszyn, the residents were furious about the blue-and-yellow parking spaces, believing they were created for Ukrainians. In fact, these are the ‘kiss and ride’ spaces near the school for parents to drop off their children.

At the same time, Ivanna has noticed support from the Poles, both on social media and in real life. At the beginning of August, demonstrations under the slogans “My Poland doesn’t hit, doesn’t insult, doesn’t incite” and “Don’t be indifferent” took place in 22 Polish cities. The demonstrators protested against discrimination targeted at Ukrainians and other minorities. And Radosław Sikorski, the Polish Minister for Foreign Affairs, announced the largest package of military aid to Ukraine on September 17.

History is a tough issue in Poland-Ukraine relations.

Ivanna is from the Volyn region herself. She recalls that when she first started living in Poland, the friendly taxi driver found out that she and her mother were from there and said: “Yes, where our people were slaughtered.” The conversation didn’t really go anywhere after that.

“I understand that terrible things could have happened back then — both to Poles and to Ukrainians. But this history, which took place long ago, is something we should remember; we should draw our own conclusions from it and move forward.”

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Interested in reading more stories about Ukraine’s relations with its neighbors? Check these out:

1940s massacre threatens to tear Ukraine & Poland’s friendship apart by Mariana Lastovyria.

As Poland heads for the polls, Ukrainian refugees get a colder reception by Myroslava Tanska-Vikulova and Tim Mak.

Why Zelenskyy’s photo is all over Hungary by Mariana Lastovyria.

THE LATEST NEWS AT THIS HOUR:

By Oleksandra Khelemendyk

Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.

RUSSIA TO INCREASE MILITARY SPENDING BY 27%: The Russian government documents obtained by Reuters show that Russia aims to raise its military and defense expenditures to 17.1 trillion rubles ($202.58 billion) in 2027. This is about 27 percent more than this year’s military budget. In the next three years, Russia’s defense spending will amount to 50 trillion rubles, which demonstrates Russia’s willingness to fight a protracted war in Ukraine and, probably, escalate tensions in Europe.

Meanwhile, Russia’s current economic crisis is deepening. According to the documents, its projected oil and gas revenue for ​2026 fell from an expected 8.9 to 7.6 trillion rubles. Consequently, the estimated budget deficit for 2026 doubled from 1.6 to 3.2 percent of Russia’s GDP. To ease underfunding, the government plans to rely more on borrowing, raise taxes on metal and mining industries, and spend about 11 percent of the liquid assets in Russia’s National Wealth Fund.

NORWAY INCREASED AID TO DEPORTED UKRAINIAN KIDS: The Norwegian government is set to allocate 25 million crowns (about $2.6 million) to bring Ukrainian children deported to Russia back home, search for missing persons, and rehabilitate detained civilians and POWs.

According to Norway’s Minister of Foreign ​Affairs Espen Barth Eide, the money will be transferred to UNICEF and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). $1.6 million will fund the effort to find and reintegrate deported children, and another $1 million will help to trace the missing.

This week, Norway and Ukraine will co-host a ministerial conference ⁠on humanitarian efforts in Toronto.

SANCTIONING RUSSIA GROWS HARDER: To avoid sanctions, Russia denies access to information about its key industries. On Monday, Vladimir Putin further restricted disclosure of data on energy industries and oil production to avoid sanctions from the U.S. and Ukraine’s other allies. His decree nearly banned publication and use ​of information about certain energy exports, their price, destination, and the involved companies. Some data on crude oil production has been classified earlier because of the risk of progressive sanctions.

Lately, EU capitals have also started using sanctions to bargain for their national interests. Last week, the EU extended individual sanctions on people close to the Russian government but excluded oligarchs Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman from its blacklist after France, Slovakia, and Luxembourg pushed for it. This set a dangerous precedent for Ukraine’s defense and European unity. In response, Lithuania keeps the oligarchs on its national list of persona non grata, while Latvia and Estonia also plan to impose national sanctions on them.

DOG OF WAR:

Oleksandra saw this dog preparing to accompany her owner in a charity run to support Ukrainian veterans.

Stay safe out there!

Best,
Mariana.

U.S. must use $100 mil of Ukraine military aid before it expires on Sept 30… Fire at Starlink facility in Poland being investigated as sabotage… Poland will pay U.S. soldiers $15k a year to put on its territory.

OUR LEAD STORY:

KYIV, Ukraine – “I hope God is merciful. If I die, let it be instant; if I am wounded, let the injury be minor,” Kyiv resident Valentyna Shabranska recalls repeating to herself last winter.

Her apartment building was dripping with water. It ran down the stairs, through the entrance hall, and out of the pipes. A nauseating stench came from some of the apartments. Huge icicles hung from the building’s archway like stalactites in a cave, threatening to come crashing down on someone’s head at any moment.

In the middle of the yard was a portable toilet, tilted at an angle. Just one toilet for more than one hundred people living in the eighteen-story building. It was installed so crookedly that Valentyna worried it might topple over at any moment. “It’s humiliating,” she said, letting out a dry chuckle.

She survived the humanitarian catastrophe that unfolded in her building after Russian attacks first knocked out the electricity and heating, causing pipes to burst, leaving the building without running water or functioning sewage.

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Now, it looks like the same nightmare is due to play out in other districts of Kyiv this year.

Ukrainian officials have warned of an extremely difficult winter since early this summer, and there are mounting signs of their predictions coming true.

Despite Trump’s earlier claims about a bilateral energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia, the Kremlin shows almost no signs of being interested. Instead, Russia may have started stockpiling ballistic missiles over the past few weeks, concentrating their efforts on jet drones. There is no doubt Putin is preparing for new deadly energy attacks.

However, this time it might escalate far beyond energy and heating. On Thursday, Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said Ukrainian security forces had obtained Russian documents, disclosing Russian plans to attack heat and water supply facilities, wastewater treatment systems, and power plants. They are also planning to target interconnectors, which help deliver electricity from Europe. This creates new challenges for Ukrainians. During blackouts, people can at least rely on backup power supplies. But what do you do when you’re trapped in a freezing apartment with no water or a functioning sewage system?

On the sixth floor of an apartment building in Teremky, a large residential neighborhood on the outskirts of Kyiv where Valentyna lives, things were not initially so catastrophic. In the panel building, the heating and electricity went out concurrently, as high-rise apartment buildings are usually not connected to gas.

“There are no generators, no equipment for that. The elevators didn’t work, so people had to walk. That’s still half the trouble. We’re on the sixth floor, so it’s a little easier for us. Then the water started to disappear,” Valentyna recalled.

It helped that before the full-scale invasion, the family had insulated one of the rooms in their apartment that had been constantly drafty. During prolonged power outages, Valentyna went to her daughter’s place in another district of the city, which was on a different power outage schedule (implemented to keep the damaged power system from collapsing).

Memories of what her family experienced in early January 2026 still send shivers down Valentyna’s spine. Russia had launched its largest strikes on Kyiv’s thermal power plants, effectively knocking them out and leaving thousands of people without heating. Temperatures outside dropped as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius. It wasn’t only the people who were freezing — the water in the pipes was too.

This winter, Ukraine, and Kyiv in particular, is facing a situation where, on the one hand, it has learned to restore the power system quicker after attacks, but on the other, it has less resilience than previous years, as it has not recovered from systematic attacks, said Mykhailo Babiichuk, General Manager for Security and Resilience at the think tank DiXi Group, which focuses on the energy sector. While the approaching winter will not necessarily be worse, the risk of severe scenarios remains very high.

“Russia’s strategy is shifting from attempts to create a blackout — a systemic cascading failure — to attempts to disrupt the entire network of systems that keep a city functioning… For an average resident of a big city, this is no longer just a few hours without electricity, but simultaneous problems with electricity, heating, and water,” Babiichuk said.

Outage schedules may be introduced not only for electricity but also for water. Valentyna does not need to imagine living under such conditions, as she already knows how it feels to live without water for weeks.

In some apartments in her building, pipes burst. Sewage backed up through sinks and bathtubs. Some residents were not home — they had left Kyiv.

Valentyna’s neighbors tried to thaw sewage pipes in the apartments on January 25, 2026. Video provided by Valentyna.

“We were already getting ready to simply break down the doors to get inside, because we couldn’t deal with the problem across all 18 floors on our own. The sewage had leaked everywhere. There was a crust of frozen feces on the floor, mixed with water that was about ten centimeters deep. All the furniture, all their belongings, everything in the apartment was covered in it. The neighbors were scooping it out,” Valentyna recalls what happened to some people’s homes in her apartment building.

Valentyna stayed at the clinic where she worked on Kyiv’s Left Bank, laying out a couch to sleep on, or spend the night at her daughter’s small apartment. Staying home was unbearable.

“My husband would text me: ‘Don’t come. The apartment is filthy; you can’t wash anything. There was no water.’ We have water pumps near us, but they weren’t working because they run on electricity,’” Valentyna said.

She said the pumps were turned on only once during the freezing weather. They rushed to collect water as soon as they heard, gathering as many bottles and containers as they could.

According to Babiichuk, a water supply loss poses a more dangerous scenario than power outages.

“It’s not just about having no water coming from the tap. It means problems with toilets, hospitals, food preparation, firefighting, and sanitation — and a very rapid increase in the risk of disease outbreaks,” he said.

Water utilities in major cities, particularly in Kyiv, depend on a centralized power supply, and backup power sources can only run for a few hours, energy expert Hennadii Ryabtsev explained.

“And this, understandably, caused major problems whenever Russia struck those very power supply facilities,” Ryabtsev said. “The priority of the measures currently being taken by the authorities is to install autonomous power sources for water utilities.”

Beyond water supply facilities, Russia could also target wastewater facilities. Kyiv’s single aeration station, which treats wastewater for Kyiv and surrounding cities, is seen as an especially vulnerable site. As Babiichuk notes, serious damage to it could risk not only a sewage crisis but also pollution of the Dnipro — Ukraine’s largest river — which would pose risks to other cities as well.

Some residents who suffered sewage issues in Teremky, according to Valentyna, bought portable toilets for their homes, but her family could not afford one. Instead, local authorities placed a single portable toilet in the courtyard for their building.

She stayed home for only a night or two a week, bringing her husband food and supporting him as he opted to look after the place. She sent him encouraging messages with “nice emojis,” she said, and they prayed together every morning and evening. “My husband was shivering, freezing, simply guarding the apartment because a pipe could burst somewhere and start leaking at any moment. He tried little by little to thaw the pipes, but it didn’t work. So he just guarded the home,” Valentyna recalled.

Now Valentyna dreads what awaits her this winter.

“I don’t know what will happen. We don’t see any sign that they’re preparing for winter in any way [in her apartment building]. And most likely, we won’t prepare at all,” she said.

Babiichuk says the scale of planned work for Ukrainian regions seems too big to be done before winter. As of now, Kyiv has carried out only half the measures approved by the government to make the energy system more resilient. About 65 percent of damaged energy facilities were repaired as of early August, and around 66 percent of facilities had physical protection, he said. There are also plans to boost energy capacity and to expand the backup water supply, along with mobile boiler units. Although Babiichuk says the city will be more prepared this winter than last winter, this doesn’t eliminate the main vulnerability — the shortage of ballistic interceptors.

Valentyna is already planning to ask to spend nights at work if the situation from last year repeats itself or gets worse. But after her colleagues saw her staying overnight in the doctors’ office last time, they’re now planning to do the same.

The office may find itself packed if the Russians prepare even more cynical strikes and render entire districts, or even whole cities, unable to sustain life.

“You feel like a piece of meat, simply not a human being, when you can’t drink, can’t wash, can’t even go to the bathroom, nothing,” Valentyna said. “You can’t — you’re freezing, you can’t think, you can’t work. On top of that, you could be killed. It’s a horrific situation.”

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Want to see how Ukraine made it through past winters under Russian attack? Check these stories out:

Why Ukraine’s heating is so vulnerable to Russian strikes by Mariana Lastovyria

U.S. poop parasite is familiar Ukraine nightmare by Oleksandra Poda

I once craved the polar cold. Now I fear it at home. by Mariana Lastovyria

How Ukraine’s homeless are faring in freezing conditions by Tania Novakivska and Oksana Stepura

What if Somali militias had drones in ‘Black Hawk Down’?

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THE LATEST NEWS AT THIS HOUR:

By Myroslava Tanska-Vikulova

Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.

U.S. MUST USE $100 MIL OF UKRAINE MILITARY AID BEFORE IT EXPIRES ON SEPT 30: The Trump administration has legally committed to allocating the remaining $93 million of the $400 million military aid package approved in 2025, before the aid expires on September 30, Reuters reports, citing sources, that missiles for the Patriot systems will not be included.

The funds do not need to be spent by the end of the year, but they must be contracted to avoid expiring. The first deliveries began earlier this month, and the remainder will be delivered by October 2029, after Trump’s presidential term has ended.

FIRE AT STARLINK FACILITY IN POLAND BEING INVESTIGATED AS SABOTAGE: The Polish Prosecutor’s Office has launched an investigation into a fire at a Starlink station in the village of Wola Krobowska, in the central-eastern part of the country, according to the National Prosecutor’s Office. The case is being investigated as an act of sabotage, arson and an act of terrorism committed by foreign intelligence services. Investigators also have evidence that the perpetrators may have acted on behalf of Russian intelligence services but no suspects have been identified yet.

The prosecutor’s office believes the attack may have been intended to disrupt regional internet connectivity.

POLAND WILL PAY U.S. SOLDIERS $15K A YEAR TO PUT ON ITS TERRITORY: Poland is offering to pay $15,000 a year for each U.S. service member stationed in Poland, in addition to covering infrastructure costs, said Polish Deputy Defense Minister Paweł Zalewski in an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Discussions are currently underway regarding the establishment of a permanent U.S. base on Polish territory. Warsaw and Washington are discussing how to implement the plan, including how to deploy troops, their capabilities, and where exactly to station them. Funds for the maintenance of U.S. soldiers will be allocated from Polish tax revenues.

This decision underscores Warsaw’s determination to ensure a permanent U.S. military presence amid the Pentagon’s review of the deployment of U.S. troops in Europe.

CAT OF CONFLICT:

This is Myroslava’s Sherri, today’s Cat of Conflict, who delights everyone with her charm.

Stay safe out there.

Best,
Mariana.

Trump lavishly welcomes Xi Jinping in the U.S.… Moscow's envoy is heading to U.S… A Taiwanese company is looking to buy into Ukraine's cement business…

OUR LEAD STORY:

TAIPEI, Taiwan – For the U.S. and China, Taiwan could be the last puzzle piece to decide who wins the tech war. As AI takes off, Taiwan’s tech industry — which produces more than 90 percent of the most advanced semiconductors used in AI servers around the world — finds itself in the middle of a contest between two global powers.

But there is a trick: while Washington deepens its cooperation with Taiwan and uses the islands as leverage against Beijing, the nation’s economy remains deeply intertwined with China and its tech companies often rely on Chinese markets, suppliers, and business partners, which could make Trump’s administration hesitate with its support. Now, Taiwan is put in a difficult position. The country is divided in choosing who to economically align with.

This August, Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau examined about 60 cases in which Chinese companies allegedly changed the label on products from “made in China” to “made in Taiwan.” This helps Chinese companies import advanced AI chips or export Chinese products to the U.S. to avoid tariffs.

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These label-laundering cases are seriously sabotaging U.S. trust in Taiwan. It could not only put the relationship between the two countries at risk, but also damage trust in Taiwanese manufacturing labels.

While facing an increasingly likely attack from China, the Taiwanese government is building a “silicon shield,” connecting Taiwanese tech companies with the global economy. It made a commitment to help the U.S. to strengthen its AI boom.

Read more

Russia to ramp up drone production by 80%… Russian strikes cut 90 percent of Ukraine’s steel… Russia has attacked 300+ ships in Ukrainian ports… Election results in Russia and Germany are troubling…

OUR LEAD STORY:

KYIV, Ukraine – Through this fictionalized account of the Battle of Mogadishu in the presence of drones, we are exploring a new way to understand the realities of modern warfare.

The following people were involved in this simulation, with their input interspersed into the scenario:

• Retired Colonel Larry Perino, an infantry first lieutenant at Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, who led a platoon on the ground during the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu

• Luke Brawn, former military intelligence, deployed to Afghanistan, and current director of embedded operations at Sibylline, the world’s largest private intelligence firm

• Justin Crump, founder and CEO at Sibylline, former tank commander in the Royal Armoured Corps with experience in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq and Kosovo.

• Alexander Lord, lead Europe-Eurasia analyst at Sibylline

• Karan Vassil, intelligence analyst at Sibylline

• Tim Mak, founder of The Arsenal and The Counteroffensive, former U.S. Army medic

• Jacqueline Cole, Chief of Staff at The Counteroffensive Media

Black Hawks and Little Birds sat motionless on the tarmac at the American base in Mogadishu, Somalia. Their rotors still, their dark silhouettes shimmering in the humidity under the cloudless Somali sky.

That day was supposed to be an “off” day without the usual scheduled training. Members of Task Force Ranger were milling around the compound, playing volleyball, reading under rare pockets of shade, and working out.

Young American soldiers, many of whom were on their first deployment, were more relaxed than usual. That was until intelligence popped up indicating that a mission was developing. Soon, these men would load onto the choppers that would bring them to one of the most dangerous parts of the city: Bakara Market.

The mission was straightforward: capture two senior lieutenants of Mohamed Farrah Aidid, the leader of Mogadishu’s most powerful militia.

The U.S. Army believed capturing these two men would disrupt Aidid’s command structure as part of a broader effort to neutralize the warlord whose militia had become the primary obstacle to U.N. humanitarian and peacekeeping operations during Somalia’s civil war.

On the afternoon of October 3, 1993, Rangers obtained intelligence that a meeting between some of General Aidid’s deputies was happening in downtown Mogadishu, near Bakara Market, one of the most dangerous, armed parts of the city.

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The Battle of Mogadishu, popularly known as “Black Hawk Down,” is notorious for the death of 18 American troops and hundreds – perhaps even thousands – of Somali casualties.

In the real battle in 1993, the largest aerial threats were RPGs and heavy machine guns firing toward the sky.

But in the following fictionalized version of Mogadishu, aimed at understanding the ways in which emerging drone technology will change special operations thinking, the Somali militia has cheap drones that they are using to surveil, to track, and to kill U.S. troops.

Americans have access to emerging counter-UAV technology, and infantry leaders are learning how to navigate threats from overhead and threats in their direct line of vision.

The same systems that define the battlefields in Ukraine now define the Battle of Mogadishu.

MISSION PLANNING

The American airfield in Somalia offered little protection. It sat at the bottom of a bowl, the Indian Ocean on one side, the city rising on the other. From rooftops, Somali civilians and militia members kept watch of the base through reconnaissance drones that cost less than a thousand bucks.

The Americans were being watched.

Constantly.

Larry Perino: We were right on the airfield, completely vulnerable.

The constant hum of drones overhead was, simply put, irritating, until the moment it became something more.

Justin Crump: If they had these capabilities, they’d be making life in the base pretty unpleasant, potentially, and certainly persistently unpleasant targeting high-value assets we’ve seen.

One night on the base, while a group of soldiers sat around playing poker with differently sized twigs as their chips, a drone launched onto a parked Black Hawk. It wasn’t enough to kill any troops — one young soldier on his first deployment took shrapnel to the cheek — but it was enough to raise the threat level for an already wary group of soldiers.

The American base was no fortress. Its security depended on U.N. forces responsible for protecting the airfield.

Inside the mission planning room, the attitude was all about speed and violence of action.

But if the militia could see helicopters lift off through drone surveillance, they could begin to mobilize before the Americans reached their target. Then they could pre-position fighters and drones in advance and plan a quicker, and therefore more lethal, response.

Commanders were also working with a tightly constrained deployment. Washington wanted a limited footprint: roughly 400 troops.

Both sides, in different ways, now had better pictures of each other’s strategies.

That is one of the asymmetric features of modern drone warfare – complex tools once thought to be the exclusive domain of powerful militaries are now available to much less sophisticated actors.

Luke Brawn: They’re getting a far more advanced warning than they would have done anyway. So [we’re] looking at the likelihood of better tracking of rotary assets moving into the area, a more immediate and coordinated response, and potentially looking at ambush on infill…

Black Hawks, though a large, juicy target for drones, were the fastest way to reach the target in the Bakara Market, and speed was foundational to success in this era of rapidly deployable drones.

The larger goal: do not get pinned down.

Justin Crump: The commander of this would be [thinking], ‘We can’t afford to get fixed because when we get fixed, they’re going to start flying things in quickly, and then that’s going to hurt us very fast.’

In Bakara Market, with drones overhead, stopping would be the most dangerous thing a soldier could do.

MISSION LAUNCH — ‘IRENE’

Seven Black Hawks and eight Little Birds lifted off from the airfield, heavy and loud, rotors chopping through the hot afternoon air. The Little Birds rose behind them, smaller and quicker, banking low toward the city.

From takeoff to target, the Americans had perhaps 10 or 15 minutes, and any minute longer was a minute closer to getting bogged down.

Below them, Mogadishu tightened into streets, alleys, and rooftops. Somewhere beneath the helicopters, men looked up. A few ran parallel to the path of the American helicopters, as if trying to keep up. Someone reached for a radio. Someone else shouted from a roof.

The American troops sat on the floor of the aircraft, rifles between their knees, boots dangling over the city.

While many Somali fighters knew that something was incoming, knowing was not the same as being able to form an organized reaction.

The helicopters reached the Olympic Hotel, one of the few buildings in the area that rose taller than surrounding rooftops, and stood just about a block away from where Aidid’s men were meeting.

Dust and debris whipped through the air as the Black Hawks settled into a hover above the street near the Olympic Hotel. The Little Birds peeled off, circling low, scanning rooftops and alleyways.

Ropes dropped out from the sides of Super 6-1, the first Black Hawk to hit the target area.

Rangers slid down, their boots hitting pavement just seconds later. Delta operators move straight for the target building, disappearing from beneath the helicopter within seconds. The assault is already unfolding exactly as planned.

Then, someone shouted, “Drone!”

The pilot of the Black Hawk abruptly jolts the aircraft, a split-second correction that was hardly felt inside, but for one ranger mid-slide down the fast rope. He lost his grip and crashed to the ground.

The drone veered, just missing the propellers by a few inches. It disappeared behind a building, leaving an unsettling sense of confusion in its wake.

Delta operators still hit the target building, and the assault moved with the speed it was designed for, but casualties were already a factor.

The raid seemed like a massive success. Delta forces captured Aidid’s lieutenants alive and shoved them into humvees.

But while most things were going to plan 40 minutes in, enemy drone operators were revving up, ready to engage in the action.

FIRST BLACK HAWK DOWN: SUPER 6-1

Then, the call came through: “BLACK HAWK DOWN.”

An FPV drone operator, alerted early to the operation, had managed to clip an American helicopter as it flew overhead.

Larry Perino: We had taken out the two key lieutenants and all the bodyguards, not a casualty [during the actual capture phase], and had them frog-marched out of the buildings, loaded them up into trucks. We were even starting to grab the fast ropes and put them into bags and start to exfil and move to the vehicle right when it got shot [down].

Seconds later, a column of smoke rose four blocks away, cutting above the rooftops of Mogadishu. Super 6-1 had been sent spiraling at fierce velocity toward the ground. Two crew members were killed upon impact, the other two were severely injured.

There was no pause, nor was there a formal reorganization. Rangers and Delta operators broke from the perimeter and started moving toward the crash site, some running straight through the streets, others cutting around buildings to find a faster route. The convoy was diverted under fire, pushing into the city to reach the wreck. Within minutes, roughly 40 troops were converging on the crash.

But the Somali militia was doing the same.

Now, with plumes of smoke rising from a massive, dormant, black vehicle, it was easy for drones to know where to go, even without strong coordination and communication efforts from Somali militias.

One lifted off from near the market. Another from a rooftop closer to the crash. Within minutes, several were overhead, their cameras locking onto the wreck and the Americans moving around it.

But Americans had new technology, too. What could have been a paper-map-based sprint through Bakara Market was now supplemented by live, continuous video feeds. Voices over the radio adjusted routes, corrected direction, and identified threats that soldiers on the ground could not see themselves.

Perino: “It would have been nice to have a GPS at that point because the maps sucked.”

But even with better navigation, the drones had changed the shape of the fight itself.

A small explosive fell from the sky and detonated the wall that had been shielding a group of rangers from incoming gunfire. A kamikaze drone landed near a Humvee that was attempting to push toward the crash site.

Luke Brawn: A lot of the pressure would be on the vehicles.

The small explosions were exposing the American troops, who were now seeking to take cover from ground-level gunfire and overhead munitions all at the same time.

Justin Crump: If you’re pinned down being shot at and you’re in cover and you’re either hiding for firing back, that’s one thing. If you’re doing all that, and effectively someone’s just standing 20 feet overhead dropping grenades on your head, I just think automatically that’s definitely a worse situation.

The Americans were also operating with more information than ever before: video feeds and aerial surveillance gave commanders real-time footage of the city, allowing them to redirect troops through crackling radio messages. That posed its own challenges .

Justin Crump: The human commander now is having to process so much information so quickly and act on it in real time. You’re almost immersed in this decision-making. You no longer get the luxury of sitting back and having a good assessment game… and if you stop, you’re going to come under fire.

SECOND BLACK HAWK DOWN — SUPER 6-4

Then, a drone hit another Black Hawk, Super 6-4, which crashed deeper inside the Bakara Market than the first.

Two members of the crew died upon impact, but the pilot survived. Rangers, Delta operators, and Somali fighters raced toward the wreckage almost simultaneously.

Now, there were two crash sites to rapidly secure. And cheap drones swarming over both made the task to secure them even harder — the Somalis had eyes on both crash sites. The Americans were fixed in place by the multitude of threats..

Justin: Once you’re fixed, things get bad much more quickly than what used to be the case.

Larry: You can’t solve [securing the crash site] with a drone… you have to put somebody on there.

Now, suddenly, infantrymen are starting to have to deal with technical items they’ve brought along: portable electronic warfare devices to jam incoming drone threats, a constant flow of radio intel from commanders back at the base receiving drone footage, and the unnerving reality of incoming small arms fire.

Now men trained primarily to fight had to process complex information the way drone operators and surveillance teams did in modern warfare. The defenders quickly became overwhelmed by a combination of threats and data.

Justin Crump: It’s almost like pre-smartphone era versus smartphone era. We’re getting more done, but we’re all frazzled.

The real EW advantage, though, is vehicle-mounted, in the form of devices strapped onto Humvees. But those Humvees arrived on a delay, not when drones were being launched from all sites at the onset of the crash, when they’d be most useful.

When the Humvees did finally arrive, they brought with them a bubble of protection: mobile protection, especially against radio-frequency-controlled drones.

Somali fighters compensated by posting on rooftops, watching American movement with their own eyes, and calling via radio to positions that were not within jamming radius.

Karan Vassil: This would have substantially compensated for the disruption to the [Somali] operator’s control/situational awareness, especially given the number of insurgents involved, their familiarity with the city, and their ability to observe U.S. troops.

In a drone-saturated battlefield, both crash sites became a magnet for incoming drones, which serve essentially as guided artillery rounds into the area.

For the sake of this scenario, we imagine that American forces suffered significantly more casualties than in the real-world Black Hawk Down episode.

Just how much worse is something even veterans and drone experts with careers in battlefield analysis can’t put a hard number on.

Justin Crump: It’s very hard to find the exact number of casualties, because actually …you’ve got better information coming into both sides. The Americans are getting a bit less in some ways, but they’re able to act on it faster. The insurgents aren’t able to act on it as well… but they have numbers… everything’s happening faster and more violently.

But what we can imagine is that every wall that had offered cover back in 1993 now had no protection from above, and presumably, those were life-saving walls. The conclusion is unanimous — casualties surely go up in the presence of cheap, accessible drones.

Every defensive position, casualty evacuation, and approaching rescue convoy could be spotted from above. American drones, while sophisticated, could not physically secure the position. Nor could they pull wounded crew members out from underneath burning helicopter parts.

Convoys attempting to reach the second crash site pushed aggressively through the city because slowing down risked turning every vehicle into an easy target.

Move too slowly, and drones will find you. Stop entirely, and the militia would close in around you.

And still, intense gunfights were lighting up the market.

RACE TO THE CRASH SITE AND NIGHT DEFENSE

By nightfall, the battle had slowed, but it had not stopped. Burned vehicles and helicopter debris lit parts of the city in an orange glow.

During the day, drones gave the Somalis a huge advantage, but at night, that advantage narrowed. American special operations forces were built for darkness. Rangers and Delta operators often carried night vision equipment – and were trained to fight, maneuver and communicate in low visibility.

The Somali militias, by contrast, only had a handful of night vision optics drones and limited ability to coordinate after dark.

Larry Perino: We had [an] even greater advantage of doing it at night anyway, but the problem is… it’s hard to find these guys in a city with a million people.

Now, the militias also faced another problem: ammunition and drone supply.

Hours into the battle, many of the small kamikaze drones and grenade-dropping systems had already been used. The commercial, off-the-shelf technology that the militias had adapted into weapons of war was no match for America’s superior logistics.

Somali drone operators became more selective, conserving what remained for high-value targets instead of throwing drones at every movement they detected.

For the first time since Super 6-1 went down, the Americans regained control over the chaos. The Americans, too, were low on medical supplies and ammo. No one had originally expected the mission to run into nightfall.

The Americans had air support from Little Bird circling overhead and AC-130s. Hundreds of Somalis were killed overnight, with little means to protect and fight in the pitch dark.

American casualties dropped, less than ten KIA that night.

DAWN RELIEF AND EXTRACTION — ‘MOGADISHU MILE’

By dawn, the city looked destroyed. Plumes of smoke lined the shallow skyline of the city; burned-out vehicles blocked major intersections, and the streets immediately surrounding the crash sites were littered with shell casings and dead bodies — mostly Somalian.

The relief convoy finally pushed toward the Americans at around 5 a.m. About 100 infantrymen from the 10th Mountain Division, Malaysian and Pakistani troops, and remaining U.S. Rangers and Deltas. At this point, less than 100 troops were left inside the perimeter.

The Somali militias now understood the Americans’ likely routes out of the city. Drone operators tracked the movement of armored vehicles from above, relaying positions as fighters rushed to establish new ambush points ahead of the convoy.

The relief convoy had to extract troops to a UN compound about a kilometer away on foot to the Pakistani stadium, the closest thing they had to safety.

Yes, the armored personnel carriers were limited, but whoever needed to get out of the market would get out.

This extraction needed to be fast, deliberate, and effective. The White House was watching. The world was watching. There was effectively real-time shaky drone footage of U.S. soldiers dying for the last 12 hours. The age of drones is also the age of social media, so what happened thousands of miles away in a desolate, militia-filled market had massive implications on politics back home.

CONCLUSION

Through trying to imagine the Battle of Mogadishu in the presence of modern drone technology, one thing becomes clear: we live in a world where small, cheap drones can take out massive, expensive things.

Two Black Hawks – each worth at least $20 million — can be downed and damaged by drones that cost a tiny fraction of that — sometimes as cheap as hundreds of dollars. The implication isn’t that helicopters are obsolete, but that militaries can no longer assume that technological superiority alone guarantees an overwhelming advantage.

There is an institutional question, deriving from the traditional, bureaucratic ways of the U.S. military, that complicates the idea that superior technology leads to superior outcomes.

A force built around drones from day one, like Ukraine, or like Somali militias in this thought experiment, adapts by necessity. A force that has built a command structure and best practices without the presence of drones has to unlearn centuries of habit, which is a more arduous fix.

Justin Crump: You can’t just shoehorn this in… [the Ukrainians] had to build their systems around having drones. We, on the other hand, have systems that work without drones, so we’re kind of challenged by their existence… It’s a fundamental reinvention of how we operate with this technology, and I think that’s what comes out of this scenario.

Modern drones also shift where the battle begins. Rather than waiting for helicopters over Mogadishu, Somali fighters could have struck Black Hawks and other critical equipment at their base, forcing commanders to protect their aircraft before they could even launch. In a drone age, the risk doesn’t always begin over the target.

We also live in a different information age. This whole incident is all on camera, for all the public to see. Back in 1993, a series of photographs turned this operation into a domestic political catastrophe. Within days, President Clinton had a timeline for withdrawal from Somalia in the next six months.

Now, imagine the extent of images and videos acquired by drones that would land on millions of civilian phones and TV screens with zero delay.

Drone feeds, filmed from angles no journalist could ever capture, uploaded live, of a Black Hawk spiraling out of control over a busy Somali street. Dead and injured American casualties broadcast by social media accounts with no sense of decency.

Before the Pentagon has even confirmed the crash, military analysts on Telegram and YouTube are dissecting each step and misstep. There is no way for the U.S. government to shape the narrative of its special ops on a mission-gone-wrong.

Finally, drones have changed the game of reconnaissance and surveillance – in the original Battle of Mogadishu, Somali fighters were constrained primarily to word of mouth and grassroots information-sharing.

In this simulation, drones gave them a constant view from above, allowing them to identify crash sites and coordinate attacks with rapid speed. Nowadays, almost anyone with a modest budget can obtain real-time intelligence in large quantities.

But the challenge that still remains, despite technological innovation, is the know-how to use that intelligence. Drones do not erase the advantages of elite training and logistics.

But they do allow lesser-resourced groups to exploit the vulnerabilities of stronger ones. If the Battle of Mogadishu took place in 2026, it would likely tell the story of how the cheapest technologies can reshape the tempo, and the outcomes, of modern war.

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Interested in reading more stories about drones? Check these out:

Nighttime with Ukraine’s drone hunting teams by Myroslava Tanska-Vikulova, William Glover Weiss, and Oleksandr Matviienko

Ukraine’s interceptor drones help arm pacifist Japan by Petro Gordon

Inside the first ever all-drone assault by Ukraine by Tim Mak, Oleksandr Matviienko, and Mariana Lastovyria

THE LATEST NEWS AT THIS HOUR:

By: Oleksandra Khelemendyk

Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.

RUSSIA TO RAMP UP DRONE PRODUCTION BY 80%: According to Russian plans obtained by Politico, Russia plans to scale up its production of drones by about 80 percent. By 2029, the Alabuga-Volokno plant in Tatarstan, Russia, will increase its yearly output of military-grade aerospace carbon fiber by about 500 tons, a material used to build drones. This will allow Russia to make another 28,000 attack drones per year, in addition to current production of 36,000.

Most likely, similar drones have been used to strike a passenger train carrying EU and U.S. officials near the Polish border on September 13 and have also been flown into NATO and EU airspace. As these provocations from Russia increase, Poland will install over 1,000 new sirens on its eastern border to notify civilians about potential drone and missile threats.

RUSSIAN STRIKES CUT 90 PERCENT OF UKRAINE’S STEEL: The Financial Times reported that Russian attacks earlier in September forced three major Ukrainian steel production plants to close indefinitely. Located in the Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions, these plants accounted for about 90 percent of Ukraine’s steel output. It may take months or even years for these plants to restore production.

The factories used to employ over 15,000 people and contributed significant funds to Ukraine’s tax revenue. Russian strikes on warehouses, steel plants and railways mean Ukraine’s tax revenue is set to take a hit of $1.5 billion.

RUSSIA HAS ATTACKED 300+ SHIPS IN UKRAINIAN PORTS: The head of the Ukrainian Port Association, Dmytro Barinov, said that Russia had damaged at least 1,000 pieces of port infrastructure and over 300 commercial vessels, killing more than 200 international crew members. Barinov also said that Russia “hunts” civilian vessels sailing under foreign flags.

Russia and Ukraine intensify attacks on each other’s Black Sea ports, prices of wheat have jumped to a three-year high, and combined exports from both countries have dropped by half, compared to 2025. As a result, Egypt, the world’s largest grain buyer, hasn’t received any shipments from the Black Sea in about a month. Ukraine is a major producer of grain and is a major supplier for many countries in the Global South.

ELECTION RESULTS IN RUSSIA AND GERMANY ARE TROUBLING: Over the weekend, Russia held parliamentary elections to the State Duma. Partial official results show that the current ruling party, Vladimir Putin’s United Russia, is set to win with 57 percent of the vote. Such high support is attributed to tight political control in Russia and might also indicate high approval of its war against Ukraine.

In the German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) came first with 38.3 percent of the vote. The Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s party got only 4.9 percent, below the 5 percent threshold to take any seats at the state parliament. This is the worst result for the Christian Democrats since 1949, while the strength of AfD is growing across German cities after it won the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt on September 6.

CAT OF CONFLICT:

Zoriana saw these cats cuddling in the straw. It’s getting colder outside, so a little hug wouldn’t hurt.

Stay safe out there!

Best,
Tim and Jackie.

Trump imposes new sanctions on Russia, Iran via Lindsey Graham Act; Russia holds parliamentary elections in occupied territory; Flights suspended at Luxembourg airport after drones detected nearby.

OUR LEAD STORY:

Serhii Kraianyn doesn’t talk much about his job, as almost every day feels pretty much the same. At dawn, he is already awake and having a quick breakfast before going to work. Then comes a shift at the lathe, draining his energy by half past two.

Evenings, on the other hand, always have something surprising in stock. After a brief rest, Serhii turns on his computer and goes live for thousands of subscribers, waiting for a Russian to join him in chat roulette. Every other stream brings a new face and a peek into the mind of another ‘ordinary Russian’ — proud to have started a war, eager to get the next ‘coffin payment,’ and totally unaware of how democracy works.

No wonder Russians are like this, because the life they live in is quite gloomy. From 18 to 20 September, Russia is choosing 450 State Duma members in the parliamentary elections. When voting ends, Russia’s ‘creeping’ mobilization may intensify, with plans to conscript 300,000 troops by the end of 2026 and another 300,000 the next year.

This might be the fastest way for Russia to compensate for increasing losses of its military personnel in Ukraine. According to Ukrainian intelligence, the number of men willing to sign military contracts fell in some Russian regions by 40 percent since 2025. More and more Russians are getting mobilization orders at military enlistment offices when they come to update their personal records.

Apart from outright coercion, Russia continues to bribe fighters into the army by writing off overdue loans and paying millions of rubles for signing military contracts. Some regions have increased such payments to over $51,000, despite local budget deficits. So-called ‘coffin money’ for the dead comprises 38 percent of all Russia’s military expenditures in 2026. Under federal law, families of Russian soldiers can have overdue loans below 10 million rubles written off, receive payment forbearance, and qualify for a wide array of subsidies, such as free professional or higher education.

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As signing a contract becomes the only social lift for many Russians from economically depressed regions, this has made Russian economic inequality not just a domestic issue but a catalyst to continue its war efforts in Ukraine.

Serhii saw the absurdity of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as soon as it began. By then, he and his wife had spent over 5 years in Poland. They were safe, but February and March of 2022 were truly devastating to Serhii, with part of his family suffering from constant shelling in Ukraine and his spouse fighting cancer.

As a person who finds peace in taking action, Serhii found a way to help Ukraine from abroad. Inspired by another chat roulette channel, Ukraine, not Russia, and its well-educated author, also Serhii, he started posting snippets of his conversations with Russians on TikTok. To his surprise, they got tens of thousands of views and attracted subscribers, who asked for a YouTube channel with full videos. Now, Kraianyn has over 185,000 viewers who offer new topics for his content and raise money for the Ukrainian army.

On his streams, Serhii is trying to show who Ukrainians are dealing with. He remembers how quickly Russians went from panic in the first weeks of the war to repeating propagandist narratives about their “historic right” to Ukraine and, finally, felt total impunity for their war crimes, which Serhii keeps documenting.

“One of my tasks is to document their opinions on war and in Ukrainians. If their words breach our Criminal Code… I am sure that someone is dealing with such cases and gathering such data. Several times, I shared information with [law enforcement] agencies,” he said.

Video: To this man, committing war crimes in Popasna (Luhansk region) was “a genuine entertainment.”

Subtitles added using AI assistance

In Serhii’s opinion, Russians are willing to fight the war of attrition in a foreign state because they, unlike Ukrainians, have it much worse at home than on the battlefield. A man joining the chat in a worn-out T-shirt right from the barn, because his wife won’t let him in drunk; a former soldier from a small village, unable to name Earth’s continents; a woman who offered beer to her little child and borrowed money to buy home appliances; multiple apartments with Soviet furniture and peeled-off wallpaper — Serhii has seen it all.

“They live in poverty... For Russians, life at home is worse than being at war. They’re trying to escape this life of theirs, where they’re completely insignificant, and they have to survive on payday loans. Russians want to fight because they’re offered great money for it,” he said.

Quite an illustrative example is Tuva, a region near the Russian border with Mongolia. In 2022, it was deemed the poorest. It has no railway; buses run irregularly; access to education, employment, and, in some districts, to basic utilities like water, sewage, and heating is a luxury.

In Tuva, one in 200 residents was killed on the battlefield in Ukraine. Other poor regions like Transbaikal, Chukotka, and Buryatia are also sending overwhelming numbers of their men to war to improve their economic condition.

The group that probably benefits from Russia’s war against Ukraine the most is the soldiers’ family members who receive millions of rubles for sending recruits to the army and even more for their death. Since 2023, the influx of contract payments and ‘coffin money’ into Russia’s poorest regions, which provide most of the recruits, has led to a sharp increase in household bank deposits. For instance, in Siberian regions, savings grew drastically, by about 19 percent in Altai, 33 percent in Buryatia, and the record-breaking 57 percent in Tuva.

According to The Wall Street Journal, locals can visit nail salons, eat out at cafes, and even afford cars and housing. For example, in Ulan-Ude, Buryatia, demand for real estate resale grew by 12 percent in 2025, compared to 2024, while supply also surged by 56 percent.

At the same time, recent data shows that these sudden riches are rather fleeting. Ukrainian intelligence reports that some regions started paying less for newly signed military contracts in 2025. Recently, at least six regions have cut ‘coffin money,’ too. Namely, soldiers from the Bashkortostan and Ulianovsk regions get 20 times less money than in 2025, while the Orenburg region canceled local bonuses and now provides only federal payments.

If this trend spreads across the country, it might further slow mobilization.

“I had a few conversations with [Russian soldiers] who fought [in Ukraine]. When I asked how many Russians would stay on the frontline if Russia stops paying money, they said, “About 10 percent.” “They won’t tell me that, but most of them are only going there for money,” Serhii said.

Not everyone is going bankrupt due to the war, though. For instance, a Russian wedding photographer told Serhii she is now making more money than ever by capturing weddings of Russian soldiers who receive millions of rubles for army service.

Video: This woman wants Russia to seize Odesa and thinks that Putin started the war to get more votes in the next election. She is glad when Russian women purposely marry men who fought in Ukraine, because she can earn more photographing their weddings.

Subtitles added using AI assistance.

Some industries openly thrive on death. Serhii once talked to a woman from Tomsk who designs gravestones. Having lost her friends on the Ukrainian battlefield, she admitted her job got more profitable during the war. In the past two years, this trend has been especially evident in Siberia and the Far East of Russia, with Buryatia in the lead. In December 2025, burial services in Buryatia cost about 190 million rubles in total. Irkutsk, Primorsk and Khabarovsk regions closely followed, indicating a surge in prices and hinting at a relatively higher number of dead there.

Video: A gravestone designer from Tomsk says she is getting more orders than before.

Subtitles added using AI assistance.

Serhii easily identifies Russian women who are receiving payments from relatives fighting in Ukraine. Many even look eager to receive ‘coffin money.’ According to his observations, from the southwestern city of Rostov to Siberia, they show off their riches in just the same way.

“It just immediately catches your eye. For example, some woman who looks like a wreck, living in a run-down apartment, has those long eyelashes and those full lips — and she’s definitely covered in tattoos. That’s a sign of her wealth. And she’s definitely smoking.”

Video: This woman looks modest but openly says that she’d rather see her husband dead and pay off the loan she took to buy a fridge.

Subtitles added using AI assistance.

Serhii, after more than four years of talking to Russians, believes they will take whatever the government does to them, to the point of forceful mass mobilization.

“I think they’ll try to implement forced mobilization in certain regions to gauge the reaction… And I’m sure… the Russians will put up with it. They have absolutely no desire to resist,” he said. “If we break it down by category, about 40–50 percent are Ruscists, Putinoids (strong supporters of Vladimir Putin and the war against Ukraine). About 40 percent... couldn’t care less. Many, let’s say 10 percent, don’t like what’s happening, but they’re scared.”

For them, even the ongoing election, with Vladimir Putin’s United Russia bloc expectedly topping the polls, will not make a difference. When a viewer suggested Serhii ask Russians about their hopes after the vote, they didn’t understand the question.

“You just have to see the look on their faces. When I ask them, “Will anything change for the better in your country?” They say, “What exactly should change?” “For them, it’s some kind of unfathomable question. On a subconscious level, they understand no changes will happen at all. They look at me like I’m an idiot,” he shared.

For Serhii, the best (and secretly desirable for many Ukrainians) way to force Russia out of the war is to respond to its massive attacks with tenfold damage — force is the only language criminals understand. Still, the only feasible option for a nation that respects international law is to move step by step, day by day, to defeat the enemy like water wearing away stone.

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Interested in reading more stories about life and mood inside Russia? Take a look at these:

This is my mom’s brain on Russian propaganda by Tim Mak and William Glover Weiss

Ukrainian sabotage groups operating behind Russian lines by Mariana Lastovyria

“When will war end” searches peak in Russia by Mariana Lastovyria

THE LATEST NEWS AT THIS HOUR:

By Myroslava Tanska-Vikulova

Good morning to readers, Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.

TRUMP IMPOSES NEW SANCTIONS ON RUSSIA, IRAN VIA LINDSEY GRAHAM ACT: Donald Trump signed the Lindsey Graham Act, which imposes new sanctions on Russia and Iran. The bill imposes new restrictions on Russian officials, banks, oligarchs, and Russia’s shadow fleet.

The Act also gives the U.S. president authority to impose tariffs of up to 100% on the 5 largest consumers of Russian oil and gas, and extends sanctions against Iran for another 5 years.

RUSSIA HOLDS PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS IN OCCUPIED TERRITORY: Russia is currently holding its first parliamentary elections which include votes from Russian-held Ukrainian territory occupied since the start of the full-scale invasion. In this territory, Ukrainian human rights activists have reported that public sector employees are being forced to vote under threat of dismissal, and Russian authorities have threatened to withhold pensions or other social benefits if local residents refuse to vote. Armed military personnel were spotted at some polling stations, monitoring the voting process.

On the second day of voting, Russia reported malfunctions in the electronic voting system due to alleged external cyberattacks.

Moscow hopes to use the elections to demonstrate what it claims is the public’s full support for the aggression against Ukraine.

FLIGHTS SUSPENDED AT LUXEMBOURG AIRPORT AFTER DRONES DETECTED NEARBY: On September 18, authorities at Luxembourg Airport reported that flights were suspended after an unidentified drone was detected. Flights from the airport have now resumed.

This comes as instances of unauthorised drones in European airspace have increased. Earlier this summer, Russian drones were detected at Leipzig Airport in Germany. It was not reported who was operating the drones detected at Luxembourg Airport or where their course started.

CAT OF CONFLICT:

This is Yukon, a cat Myroslava’s godmother took in. In 2022, the cat was evacuated from the occupied city of Energodar in the Zaporizhzhia region. Now he lives amid constant explosions and attacks in Zaporizhzhia, but with a wonderful, loving family.

Stay safe out there!

Best,
Oleksandra

Russian satellites likely helped Iran strike U.S. base… Belarus conducts military exercise near NATO borders… Russians destroyed humanitarian warehouse of Ukraine's first lady…

OUR LEAD STORY:

KYIV, Ukraine – Last winter Karina* watched people run around with clipboards, while other workers brought in a fridge with sparkling water to put somewhere in the office in central Ukraine. What looked like a scary workshop from the outside turned out to be a comfortable, neat space on the inside, with coffee machines, a kitchen, and other amenities.

“I’m Stacy,” one of her new colleagues introduced herself. “You will have to call me like that.”

Karina began to realize something was deeply wrong, as all the workers were Ukrainians using fake foreign names. She was right. The cozy office was a scam call center.

Karina’s experience is one of roughly 60,000 Ukrainians who may have passed through these offices, but it also shows something bigger.

At the beginning of August 2026, around 2,000 scam call centers were operating in Ukraine. Commonly referred to as ‘offices,’ they carry out telephone fraud schemes, targeting Russians, Ukrainians…and largely European citizens. Ukraine’s scam call center economy could allegedly generate around $1 billion a month.

On September 5, Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies, NABU and SAPO, revealed that the people allegedly protecting those fraudulent call centers were actually high-ranking officials at the Prosecutor General’s Office. According to the investigation, they laundered millions of dollars by promising such centers immunity from prosecution.

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Anti-corruption prosecutors may have also been preparing a notice of suspicion against Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko.

However, on Monday night, Kravchenko left Ukraine, saying he was traveling on a work assignment to “brief international partners on the situation involving the anti-corruption agencies.” Kravchenko also signed a notice of suspicion against the head of NABU. Anti-corruption watchdogs consider this part of a systematic attack against them that began last July.

Read more

U.S. put new sanctions on Russian bank for ties with Iran… Ukraine hesitant about energy truce with Russia… NATO fighter jet downs drone in Lithuania…

OUR LEAD STORY:

KYIV, Ukraine – Trump is trying to blame Ukraine for his domestic political woes.

It’s hard to compare apples to apples here. But an analysis by The Counteroffensive shows that the Iran War’s disruption to world energy markets – and in particular diesel – is an order of magnitude larger than the impact of Ukraine’s long-range strikes.

Ahead of the U.S. midterm elections and rising prices at home, the unpopular president is trying to argue that the real bogeyman is Ukraine’s pesky strikes on Russian oil infrastructure. But our estimates show that his war in Iran has had a ~10x greater disruption in diesel supply.

Trump’s Iran War has been helpful to Russia in at least two ways: first, in that it created a dramatic rise in prices that allowed Russia to extract additional revenue to fund its war machine; second, it gave Trump a target to attack over America’s own economic woes.

“Open all the reports of analytical agencies and banking institutions, and there it will be said what is causing the current situation on the oil market,” Hennadiy Ryabtsev, energy expert, told The Counteroffensive. ”And that is the war in the Gulf. That is the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz. That is attacks on the respective tankers and pipelines that ensure the export of Middle Eastern crude.”

Trump’s scapegoating might have worked – except the facts aren’t remotely in his favor.

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Let’s compare with the available data:

The best evidence shows that Ukraine’s long-range strikes reduced Russia’s diesel output by up to 1 million tons in April, and a further up to 600,000 tons in May — a cumulative shortfall of up to 1.6 million tons — per Reuters. Using the United Nations’ official energy conversion figure, this is a cumulative May loss of 373,000 barrels per day below the March baseline.

Meanwhile, energy economist Philip Verleger estimated in March to Reuters that the diesel supply loss from the Iran War is approximately 3-4 million barrels per day. Verlerger made this comment on diesel supply disruption due to the Iran War, during the height of the disruption.

Even if the numbers are not precise, the best figures we have show that the Iran War has had a significantly greater impact on world diesel supplies: between 8 and 10.7 times larger.

“As for whether [Ukraine’s strikes] influence the market, there is some influence, because before the Ukrainian attacks, Russia was an exporter of diesel. Now Russia is an importer of diesel,” said Serhii Fursa, deputy director at Kyiv-based investment firm Dragon Capital. “But is it a decisive factor of influence? No… diesel costs have risen since the beginning of the war in Iran. Therefore, this is an attempt to [make Ukraine] take responsibility before the elections and nothing else.”

On Sunday, Trump said he had made a peculiar request of Zelenskyy. He asked the Ukrainian president to halt strikes on the Russian oil refineries.

“Mr. Zelenskyy has to do one thing. He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia,” Trump stated. “Let him go after targets but not diesel fuel because he’s causing a shortage of diesel. This isn’t done by the Middle East; this is done by what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine.”

The following day, he posted on Truth Social that the war he started was not to blame. He further said that the two sides have agreed to a truce on striking energy targets, which was met with confusion on both sides.

“Russia will not agree to an energy truce. It is more profitable for Ukraine than for Russia, and that is why it still does not agree,” said Fursa.

This comes as oil prices in the United States have hit $103 per barrel and public opinion polling shows that 74 percent of voters think their cost of living is going in the wrong direction.

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Interested in reading more stories about the energy sector? Check these out:

How Trump’s war gives Putin’s war machine a chance by Tania Novakivska and Oksana Stepura

Trump’s weeklong ceasefire? Russia says 2 days by Tania Novakivska and Anastasiia Kryvoruchenko

Why Ukraine’s heating is so vulnerable to Russian strikes by Mariana Lastovyria

THE LATEST NEWS AT THIS HOUR:

By: Oleksandra Khelemendyk

Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.

U.S. PUT NEW SANCTIONS ON RUSSIAN BANK FOR TIES WITH IRAN: On Monday, the U.S. tightened sanctions on Russia’s second-largest bank, VTB, Reuters reported. According to Treasury officials, it has offices in Iran, maintains ties with Iranian companies, and planned to move billions of dollars in Iranian frozen assets between Tehran and Moscow.

In February 2022, VTB Bank was cut off from the dollar system due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Treasury’s new executive order puts companies that continue working with VTB at high risk of secondary sanctions.

UKRAINE HESITANT ABOUT ENERGY TRUCE WITH RUSSIA: Politico quoted Donald Trump saying that Ukraine and Russia agreed to stop exchanging strikes on energy infrastructure on Monday.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed doubt about a potential energy truce and Russia’s willingness to stop the war. He noted the pressure Ukrainian strikes put on Russia’s energy sector and weighed such an agreement only if the U.S. ensures that Russia follows through. In response, he offered further de-escalatory steps.

The discussion of the potential energy truce began after Donald Trump blamed a surge in diesel prices in the U.S. on Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s oil refineries.

NATO FIGHTER JET DOWNS DRONE IN LITHUANIA: According to Lithuanian media, NATO fighter jets were activated Tuesday night to shoot down a drone that breached Lithuanian airspace.

The drone, moving from the east, supposedly entered Lithuania from Belarus. About thirty minutes after threat detection, it was shot down by Italian aircraft in a rural area of the central Kaišiadorių district near Kaunas. President Gitanas Nausėda thanked the Allies for their timely reaction and noted that preparation for possible drone incursions is vital for regional security amid intensifying Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

As part of safety measures, the activity of Vilnius airport was limited during the air raid alert, and some flights may be delayed or cancelled.

DOG OF WAR:

Terra (copper) and Lora (black) are showing local birds what they would do to a Russian invader.

Stay safe out there!

Best,
Tim, Mariana, and Oleksandra.

Russian and Chinese hackers attempted to use Claude for cyberattack… House of Representatives to vote on new sanctions against Russia… Suspect in Leipzig airport sabotage linked to Russian GRU.

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