Australia has no need to buy fuel from Russia, despite US President Donald Trump’s move to bring Russian diesel back to world markets. Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen says that imports from Russia will remain banned to ensure the country does not benefit from its invasion of Ukraine, Bloomberg reports.

Trump has agreed with Russia's President Vladimir Putin to release Russian diesel onto global markets, a move Ukraine says funds a war that has killed more than 80 Ukrainian civilians in two days.

“We don’t need or want Russian fuel in Australia. We do not want Vladimir Putin to benefit from this war in the Middle East. What the United States does is a matter for them, but we won’t be changing our approach,” Bowen said.

The deal Australia is turning down

Trump announced on 9 October a series of cargoes beginning this month totaling about 13.5 million barrels of Russian diesel. The release upends years of sanctions, as the White House looks for ways to tame soaring fuel prices before the US midterm elections.

Bowen draws a clear line between that approach and Australia’s. What the US does is its own affair, he stresses, but Canberra will maintain its arrangements with trading partners to keep Russian fuel out of the market.

Enough fuel to hold the line

Australia can hold out without Russian supply, Bowen argues. The country has 43 days’ worth of petrol, two days more than a week earlier, and 31 days’ worth of diesel, one day less, he notes.

He adds that Australia stays in close contact with domestic refiners to keep them running at full capacity. The stance lets Canberra wait out high prices rather than buy fuel that would send money to Moscow.

Australia’s fuel costs have stayed high since the war between the US and Iran disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the route that normally carries about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas.

Washington has put its sanctions on Russian diesel on hold. The US Treasury has authorized the sale, delivery, offloading, and import of Russian-origin diesel fuel, effectively suspending sanctions on that trade until 7 April 2027, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said on its website on 9 October.

The waiver lets Russian diesel back onto world markets and, Ukraine argues, hands Moscow fresh revenue for its war, which has killed more than 80 Ukrainian civilians in two days. Until now, it was unclear whether Washington would roll back the sanctions it imposed on Russia in 2022.

OFAC has issued the measure as General License 135, signed by the office’s director, Bradley Smith, according to the report. It authorizes transactions in Russian-origin diesel that sanctions would otherwise block.

The license sets one limit. It does not permit any debits from accounts at US financial institutions held by Russia’s central bank, its National Wealth Fund, or its finance ministry, the document says.

Trump’s promise of cheaper fuel

On 9 October, US President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that Russia would immediately supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel, then 500,000 tons in November, and another million tons right after.

Moscow would later send the US up to 3 million more tons, depending on the state of Russia’s refineries, Trump added, framing the deal as a way to bring down energy prices.

Why the volumes fall short

Analysts say the amounts are too small to move prices much. Together, the first tranches would cover about a day and a half of US demand, while US diesel use alone runs near 16 million tons a month. Experts read the move as politics ahead of an election rather than a real shift in the market, pointing out that Trump cited volumes in tons, which look larger than the barrels traders track.

The deal drew fury in Kyiv, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it a weak decision by strong partners. The EU is moving the other way, with ambassadors approving the bloc’s largest sanctions package against Russia’s war machine, due for final adoption on 12 October.

Europe will not loosen its pressure on Russia after the US-Russia diesel deal, EU Foreign Policy chief Kaja Kallas says. She has announced that EU foreign ministers will approve the bloc’s largest set of sanctions against Russia’s war machine since the full-scale invasion on 12 October.

Washington has just eased the pressure on Russia, letting Russian diesel back onto world markets and handing Moscow more money to wage war. This comes as Russian strikes have killed more than 80 Ukrainian civilians in two days, 22 of them on Russian President Vladimir Putin's birthday on 7 October.

Moreover, Russia has stepped up its hybrid attacks against Europe, both EU Member States and NATO Allies. It is now the time to tighten sanctions, not loosen them, Kallas says.

“Suspending sanctions on Russian diesel provides Moscow with more revenues to wage war. This is not the time to ease pressure on Russia, and Europe won’t,” she claims.

A split with Washington

On 9 October, Trump claimed he had agreed with Putin to put more than 300,000 tons of Russian diesel on world markets immediately.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the deal a weak decision by strong partners, arguing that Russia turns oil-product revenue into weapons against Ukraine's civilians, according to the BBC.

The package aims at the missile chain

On 7 October, EU ambassadors approved the 22nd package of sanctions, with about 1,700 listings, Ukrainian President’s Commissioner for Sanctions Policy Vladyslav Vlasiuk notes. It is expected to be formally approved on 12 October.

This package contains the largest number of sanctions targeting Russia’s defence industry. Of these, 60% were drawn from Ukrainian decrees and proposals. The package includes measures targeting machine tools, Lancet drones, ballistic weapons, and related technologies.

“The core of the package is Russia’s missile programme and electronic components: electronics, capacitors, resistors, and semiconductors. It also covers electronic warfare, shipbuilding, and explosives,” Vlasiuk says.

It took just a few weeks from Ukraine's decision to the European one.

"But we are already working on further measures, including sectoral sanctions targeting energy, the defense industry, finance, and trade,” he stated.

US President Donald Trump said on 9 October that he had agreed with Russian leader Vladimir Putin to bring Russian diesel to world markets to lower energy prices. However, energy analysts say the deal, which drew fury in Ukraine, is unlikely to lower diesel prices meaningfully, CNN reports.

Trump wrote on social media that Putin would “immediately supply” more than 300,000 tons of diesel, with another 500,000 tons in November. Together, those volumes would cover about a day and a half of US demand, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

Meanwhile, former head of the Center for Countering Disinformation Andrii Kovalenko says that US diesel consumption alone is about 16 million tons per month, and global consumption is roughly 120 million tons.

The US experts read the move as politics more than a market shift. Trump spoke in tons rather than barrels because the figure looks bigger to an ordinary observer, said Dan Pickering, founder of Pickering Energy Partners, calling it “more politics than a game changer.”

Doubts Russia can even deliver

Former US officials question whether Putin holds the diesel Trump described, as Ukrainian strikes strain Russia’s refineries. A former senior State Department official says it hardly matters whether the fuel arrives, because Putin “has already achieved the result he wants,” with Trump believing he has a pre-election card that could move markets.

Even if the fuel flows, it would be a temporary measure. Gregory Brew of Eurasia Group says that he suspects Putin expects Ukraine to halt its strikes on Russian refineries in return, and that he cannot imagine Zelenskyy agreeing.

A win for Putin without conditions

For Putin, the gain is plain, Kovalenko says: he pushes for sanctions relief and for no new US sanctions, all without any demand to end the war in Ukraine.

"Trump’s bet was more on the news itself, driving prices down somewhat, because, in reality, figures like these shouldn’t bring prices down," Kovalеnkо believes.

He adds that Trump will "make a big fuss about diesel ahead of the elections, nothing more," and that the average American is unlikely to feel any lasting effect.”

Earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that allowing Russia to sell petroleum products abroad without securing a lasting de-escalation agreement would help finance Moscow's war against Ukraine.

He criticized the decision, calling it "a birthday gift for Putin," per Axios.

The next day after the announcement, Russia launched six bombs on Zaporizhzhia, killing 17 people.

Ukraine is offering Estonia something no ally can buy off the shelf: how to fortify against Russia, learned under fire. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry announced, following a meeting between Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara and his Estonian counterpart, Martin Herem, that Kyiv and Tallinn plan to develop joint defense projects, share data, and establish joint ventures.

Both sides agreed to strengthen their defense cooperation in a declaration signed in June, according to the President’s Office. The partnership is gaining momentum as German intelligence warns that Russia may be preparing military action against the Baltic states, Welt reported.

At the talks, the two sides went over the battlefield situation, Ukraine’s priority needs, and practical steps to deepen the partnership, the ministry said.

Ukraine’s war experience, packed for export

Ukraine’s experience of modern war was a central theme of the meeting, and it can already help Estonia strengthen its own defense against new threats, the ministry reports. During the visit, the Ukrainian delegation walked the Estonian representatives through its work on modern fortifications, including underground shelters.

“Ukraine is scaling up fortification solutions based on real war experience. We already know how to build defenses and adapt them to new threats. I am sure this expertise will be useful to Estonia,” Khmara said.

A debt of thanks to a steady backer

Khmara thanked Estonia for its consistent help, singling out its decision to give 0.25% of GDP each year to support Ukraine. He also noted Estonia’s leading role in the IT coalition, a group of states that helps build Ukraine’s military communications and cyber capabilities, as well as its active work with other partners.

The meeting was one of Herem’s first with Kyiv as defense minister. A former commander of Estonia’s armed forces, he took the post on 16 September after Hanno Pevkur resigned over a 70-million-euro procurement scandal involving artillery shells meant for Ukraine, Euronews reported.

The minister confirmed Ukraine is ready to deepen practical defense cooperation with Estonia and to work on joint solutions that strengthen the security of both countries.

Ukraine has published data on 20 vessels that carry Russian oil and liquefied natural gas or refuel the sanctioned fleet, parts of the logistics network the Kremlin uses to fund its war, Ukraine's Defense Intelligence reports. All 20 are under British or Ukrainian sanctions, and only one faces US restrictions.

Russia’s shadow fleet runs on roughly 500 aging ships of uncertain ownership that dodge sanctions and keep oil money flowing. That seaborne oil trade is worth more than 80 billion euros a year.

The headline vessel is the Russian ship Portovyy, an LNG carrier and floating gas store owned by the sanctioned Gazprom since 2021, according to the agency. On 15 August 2026, it left the Gulf of Finland with Russian LNG for the first time since November 2021, sailing the Northern Sea Route to the Chinese port of Beihai to unload.

Portovyy is now at the Zhoushan Huafeng Shipyard in China, which has been set as the site for its maintenance, intelligence says, an example of the foreign yards Kyiv wants closed to the sanctioned fleet.

Russia buys up gas carriers through shells

Two more gas carriers show how Moscow expanded the fleet in spring 2026 through front companies, intelligence said. The Avacha, once owned by China’s Jovo Energy, was bought by the little-known Tudor Maritime of the Marshall Islands, took the Russian flag in June, and now ships gas from the Arctic LNG 2 project to Beihai.

The Chaivo, formerly owned by Greece’s Maran Gas Maritime, was also bought by Tudor Maritime and moved under the Russian flag in July. Now it carries cargo to Beihai from a floating gas storage facility off Kamchatka, intelligence says.

A call to close the loopholes

Intelligence urged partners to act together: tighten control over sales of commercially owned ships, block servicing of the sanctioned fleet at foreign yards, and cut off the energy revenue that Russia turns into weapons against civilians.

Russia is building ice-class ships at home and, at the same time, widening its shadow fleet through offshore networks. The UK Foreign Office made the same point on 1 October, saying Moscow is assembling a new shadow fleet to keep its gas revenues flowing.

A Russian air strike with guided bombs on the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia has killed at least 17 people, including three children, according to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has tied the attack to a US decision to let Russian diesel reach world markets without demanding Moscow halt its strikes on Ukraine first.

On 9 October, President Donald Trump said that Russia would immediately supply more than 300,000 tonnes of diesel fuel to the US and global markets, a further 500,000 tonnes during November, and 1 million tonnes immediately thereafter. The move has already drawn criticism from US lawmakers in both parties.

“Today, Russia expressed its gratitude for the lifting of sanctions on diesel exports by dropping five guided aerial bombs on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram.

Zelenskyy vows to keep hitting refineries

These figures were accurate at the time the post was written. Later, the State Emergency Service reported that the death toll had risen by two. Meanwhile, Zelenskyy stated that Ukraine would not stop striking oil refineries that bring additional revenues for the Kremlin, which spends them on the war.

“There will be responses to Russian attacks. Thank you to everyone who is helping,” Zelenskyy concluded.

According to Zelenskyy, two of the injured are in critical condition, and doctors are fighting to save their lives. Information is also being verified regarding another 12 people who may have been at the strike site.

“Thirteen of our regions came under attack overnight. Residential buildings, infrastructure, and railway facilities have been damaged,” the Ukrainian leader said.

More pressure on Kremlin

Zelenskyy stressed that the latest Russian strikes further demonstrate the need to increase pressure on Russia. In his view, easing restrictions is interpreted by the aggressor as a signal that it can continue the war and attack Ukrainian cities.

“This night provided yet another confirmation that Russia interprets any easing of pressure as a signal that it can supposedly continue fighting and that it can supposedly drop bombs on cities,” he emphasized.

He also noted that Ukraine’s long-range strike capabilities are inflicting such losses on Russia and stressed that Ukraine would respond to Russian attacks.

The German Bundestag has made a historic decision, officially recognizing Germany’s special responsibility to Ukraine for the crimes of Nazism. On 9 October, it adopted two resolutions ahead of the 85th anniversary of the Babyn Yar massacre and linked that responsibility to Germany’s current help for Ukraine amid Russian aggression, Oleksii Makeiev, Ukraine’s ambassador to Berlin, says.

Babyn Yar in Kyiv became one of Europe’s largest sites of the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust, where more than 100,000 people were killed over two years of Nazi occupation. Germany now casts a debt from that war as a moral duty to help defend Kyiv against Russia today.

Both motions stress the importance of researching Nazi crimes in Ukraine and preserving the memory of their victims. One came from the governing CDU/CSU and SPD parties, the other from the opposition Greens, a rare alignment of coalition and opposition on a single theme.

“The situation is unique: two motions on this subject were approved at once, from the coalition and the opposition. By the usual parliamentary logic, that should not happen,” Makeiev says.

A debt turned into support for Kyiv

The coalition motion backs research and documentation of Nazi crimes in Ukraine and closer work among German, Ukrainian, and other European archives and memorial institutions. It also calls for countering antisemitism, racism, and historical revisionism, and for continued political, economic, financial, humanitarian, and military support for Ukraine.

Makeiev says he felt a sense of deja vu watching the debate from the visitors’ gallery.

“I was in that same gallery in the fall of 2022. I saw how German democratic parliamentary groups can demonstrate unity on what matters most. At that time, the Bundestag recognized the Holodomor of 1932–1933 as genocide,” he adds.

A clause on the deported children

A separate point of the resolution concerns Ukrainian children and teenagers who Russia has illegally taken from Ukraine. The document calls for efforts to return about 20,000 of them to their parents or relatives, folding the issue into Germany’s wider policy toward Ukraine.

The director of the Babyn Yar National Historical and Memorial Preserve, Rosa Tapanova, considers the Bundestag’s decision an important step toward re-examining the shared history of Ukraine and Germany and overcoming distortions of historical memory propagated for decades by the Soviet authorities and now being exploited by Russia.

“The Bundestag’s decision marked an important step toward Germany’s recognition of its historical responsibility toward Ukraine," she says.

The Bundestag’s decision and the participation of German representatives in commemorative events underscore the importance of continued Ukrainian-German dialogue. For the Babyn Yar National Historical and Memorial Preserve, this work encompasses historical research, the documentation of testimonies, educational and memorial projects, and international cooperation.

Air-raid sirens are quietly stealing the hours Ukraine needs to build its weapons. The alerts ate up 61.8 hours of the standard work schedule in Kyiv between 27 August and 29 September, almost eight working days in a little over a month, yet weapons makers still face unchanged contract deadlines, the Ukrainian Gunmakers Council and the League of Defense Enterprises of Ukraine say.

In September 2026, Economy Minister Oleksandr Kravchenko said that every hour of air-raid alerts costs Ukraine’s economy about $45 million as businesses halt and workers shelter. For arms makers, those lost hours collide with fixed delivery dates and the penalties that follow if they slip.

The council’s figure covers Kyiv alone, and each plant loses more depending on its location, schedule, and processes, the groups said. On top of the siren time comes the wait to shut equipment down safely, move workers to shelter, and restart once the all-clear sounds.

A missed deadline carries a daily fine, and after 30 days, an extra 7 percent penalty. Money meant for components and the next orders goes instead to penalties and court disputes.

A rule that ignores the sirens

The contract date stays fixed unless the customer agrees to move it, the groups said. That leaves producers paying for stoppages they do not control, while the weapons still have to ship.

The Gunmakers Council has drafted changes to Cabinet Resolution No. 1275 to establish a single method for confirming real downtime from alerts and its effect on each contract’s deadline, it said. A customer could check alert times against official data and verify stoppages and restarts against a plant’s own production records, with each request judged on a case-by-case basis.

Waiting on the ministry

The groups say they have repeatedly raised the issue with the Defense Ministry and sent official letters proposing changes, and they are urging the ministry and the Defense Procurement Agency to act without delay.

They want a defined list of supporting documents, a deadline for reviewing requests, and rules for applying the mechanism to contracts that have already been signed. Until a decision comes, enterprises keep losing production time, and the risk of delay grows, the groups say.

A Ukrainian company has played the enemy in a Pentagon drone contest, and the US liked what it saw. Phantom Defense, a Ukrainian defense-tech firm, was one of three companies whose systems built the counter-drone environment for Gauntlet II, the second stage of the US military’s Drone Dominance program, and has been invited to take part further, Defender Media reports.

Drone Dominance is the Pentagon’s four-phase effort to field cheap attack drones fast, a roughly $1 billion program to buy more than 200,000 low-cost attack drones by 2027. Phantom Defense brought a system that was already proven at home, where in one city it neutralized more than 7,000 enemy drones over an area of more than 100 square kilometers in a year, the company says.

Rather than enter a drone of its own, Phantom Defense supplied the resistance that the American drones had to fly through. Its setup paired the Specter PRO, L, X, and XL jammers with the Streamhunter video-interception tool and a command-and-control layer that detected and classified targets, coordinated the countermeasures, and confirmed the kills. The jammers suppressed drones and held up in heat and rain, it adds.

The arrangement lets American developers fly their drones under live electronic attack rather than calm conditions, recreating a battlefield where a drone’s performance swings with the jamming around it, according to the company.

One map to run the whole fight

At the center sits Phantom Defense’s C2 system, Kupol, which integrates separate tools into a single ecosystem on a shared map. It lets crews run electronic warfare remotely, without driving out to a position, and ties in sensors, interceptor drones, and turrets, the company says.

Kupol reads the terrain and a drone database to propose the best way to take down a target, then logs each mission automatically so its recommendations sharpen over time.

The high-power Specter PRO station, built to shield positions, critical infrastructure, and cities, serves as the hardware anchor.

An invitation, not yet a contract

Previously, Ukraine’s battle-tested drone makers also took part in Drone Dominance. However, they didn’t succeed in it, though some of their technology competed under Western partners. The program bars direct purchases from Ukrainian firms, which must set up a US legal entity to bid.

Russian forces appear to use AI to plan air attacks and recognize targets amid raids on Ukrainian cities. This may include recent air attacks on Odesa that have come in waves with short gaps, Deputy Air Force Commander for Air Defense Colonel Yurii Cherevashenko says, Ukrinform reports.

Russia has already equipped its jet-powered Geran-4 drones with machine vision, allowing them to recognize and track targets on their own in the final seconds of flight. Recently, a single jet drone hit a locomotive in Odesa Oblast in late September and killed two railway workers.

The scale of Russia's AI use is hard to measure, Cherevashenko continues, but Ukrainian specialists already see its elements in how attacks are organized. The long, wave-by-wave strikes on Odesa would be far harder to plan and coordinate without it, he believes.

"Russian forces use AI to lay out attack routes and to recognize targets," Cherevashenko says, framing it as his own assessment rather than a confirmed fact.

The sea is harder to defend than land

Odesa Oblast is home to the biggest port in Ukraine, "Southern". Protecting it is a challenging task as guarding the airspace over water is tougher than over land, Cherevashenko says. Some air defense assets do not perform as well at sea, and in some cases, crews can intercept a target only as it approaches.

Weather adds to the problem, with storms and fog, while the open sea gives Russia more freedom to choose drone routes and launch points. To protect ports and the coast, Ukraine uses drone motherships, platforms that carry other drones aloft to extend their flight time and keep watch over set areas.

Ukraine answers AI with AI

Ukraine is also building its own AI for air defense. Automated turrets using machine vision now help counter Russian drones. According to Army Media, the Air Force says such turrets have scored their first shoot-downs, including of Geran-5 jet drones, with one soldier saying 50 rounds were enough to bring down a Geran.

Ukraine's Defense Ministry is going further. In late September, it unveiled an AI system called SPECTR, built by its A1 Artificial Intelligence Center and already in testing with several combat units, to analyze battlefield data, predict Russian moves, and suggest options to commanders.

"Skipper", an FPV company commander in Ukraine's 413th Raid Unmanned Systems Regiment, has described destroying a Russian UR-77 mine-clearing vehicle with drones during the 2023 counteroffensive as the strike he is proudest of, according to Army TV.

The UR-77, nicknamed "Zmiy Horynych" after a fire-breathing serpent of Slavic folklore, carries a rocket-fired line charge to blow paths through minefields, as per Militarnyi. Each charge carries more than two tons of explosives, which is why a cheap FPV hit can trigger a blast far larger than the drone itself.

"It exploded so hard that I thought it was a small nuclear blast. There are more than two tons of plastic explosive inside, and when it went off after the second hit, it was something unbelievable," Skipper says.

Skipper joined the army at the start of the full-scale invasion and moved from infantry and aerial reconnaissance to commanding an FPV unit. His regiment now operates on the Zaporizhzhia front, where FPV drones conduct combat missions.

From sailing yachts to FPV drones

In civilian life, Skipper was a sailing instructor, and he says the sport partly helps in military work, especially his knowledge of navigation and radio communication. He is convinced that a technological edge can be one of the keys to victory.

He counts the UR-77 strike among his unit's early work, from a time when few Ukrainian units were using FPV drones at all, he says. The hit came during hard fighting in the counteroffensive, when his crews were among the first to work the FPV niche.

Russia turns a mine-clearer into a wrecking tool

The UR-77 was built in the 1970s for a different war, one of fast tank thrusts that needed enemy minefields cleared quickly. Its base rides on the chassis of the 2S1 Gvozdika self-propelled howitzer, and its charge can cut a lane six meters wide, with some anti-personnel mines detonated across a band up to 15 meters wide.

Modern combat changed that role. The classic mine-clearing use remains, but Russia now more often turns these machines on Ukrainian fortifications, using the line charge to flatten defenses rather than open a path.

Kyiv is bolting two Soviet-era missile systems together to knock down Russia's fastest Geran-4 and Geran-5 drones. Ukraine's 156th Maksym Kryvonis Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment has downed about 20 air targets using a Kub launcher firing under the radar and fire control of a Buk unit.

Russia has switched to jet-powered Gerans, faster drones that Ukraine's cheap interceptors struggle to catch, so more of them reach their targets. The damage from Russian strikes is set to reach up to $10 billion this year, according to Ukraine's Economy Ministry.

Meanwhile, Western resupply has thinned too. Deliveries of air defense missiles from partners fell threefold in the first half of 2026 against 2025, even though those partners hold the missiles, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says.

So crews stretch what they have. In the Kub-Buk hybrid, a Kub launcher cannot aim on its own, lacking a radar to light up a target for its missile, according to Militarnyi. A Buk has that radar, so the two fire together, the Kub sending its 3M9 missile where the Buk points. The pairing is possible because both come from the same Soviet design line.

Western missiles in Soviet launchers

The same regiment reaches for a second workaround as Buk missiles run short. Its crews have rewired launchers to fire American RIM-7 interceptors, a Soviet-Western mongrel that troops nicknamed Frankenstein and the US calls FrankenSAM.

The patchwork earns its keep. One crew commander said some of these machines have more than 34 air kills each, and a single launcher has sent up RIM-7s 131 times, Ukrainian troops said.

A layered answer

The hybrids are one thread in a wider web. Ukraine is stitching together a layered defense against the jet-powered Gerans, leaning on electronic jamming, fighter jets, and a new class of homegrown interceptor drones. Each tool has limits, and the newest interceptors still bring down only the occasional jet drone.

The bet now is on numbers. Ukraine aims to build up to 400 interceptor drones a month by the end of October to chase the faster Gerans, Zelenskyy said on 2 October. Until that scale arrives, improvised launchers like the 156th Regiment keep filling the gap.

Russia is spending more on the war than at any point since it began. Russia's military funding is on track to hit a record this year after President Vladimir Putin added almost $60 billion to the outlays set in the budget, Bloomberg reports, citing people close to the government.

Defense spending is expected to approach about $199 billion by the end of 2026, roughly 40% above the plan Moscow announced in late 2025. That reverses the course of a year ago, when the Kremlin meant to slow military growth, narrow its deficit, and rebuild reserves drained by the war.

Alaska was the turning point

Putin ordered the shift late last year, after concluding that talks with the US in Alaska would not produce an acceptable deal to end the fighting, the report says.

By January, the Kremlin judged an agreement with Ukraine to be out of reach, and the government began accelerating advance payments to defense firms and raising other war-related spending.

"The government is finally budgeting for a prolonged war in Ukraine, but still understates its cost," Bloomberg Economics economist Ekaterina Vlasova said.

The deficit nearly doubles

Paying for the war has blown out the budget. The projected 2026 deficit has climbed to more than $81 billion, up from about $44 billion as first planned, and the government covered the extra spending through increased domestic borrowing and gold sales.

The budget plans years of war

The spending is not set to fall soon. Under the budget plans, Russia's military outlays reach about $200 billion in 2027, then ease to $194 billion in 2028 and about $191 billion in 2029, a signal that Moscow is planning for a long war.

Earlier, Euromaidan Press reported that Russia was raising 2027 defense spending by 27% to a record, even as its deficit widens and oil and gas revenues fall.

Russia's Kalashnikov concern has met its annual arms contract. The top producer of small arms has announced it delivered a batch of classic 7.62mm Dragunov sniper rifles to a Russian Security Forces customer and fully met its 2026 contract on time

The delivery shows how little the sanctions regime slows Russia's arms maker. In February 2026, Ukraine's Defense Intelligence said that nearly half of Kalashnikov's plants were still not subject to sanctions by any coalition country. Eight months later, the concern reports a full year's order delivered on schedule.

"The items were shipped on the set deadline, the obligations under the 2026 contract fully met," the manufacturer said.

A rifle in service for six decades

The weapon in that batch is not new. Designed by Yevgeny Dragunov between 1958 and 1963, the Dragunov sniper rifle entered serial production at the Izhevsk machine-building plant in 1963, so in 2026, it has remained in serial production for more than 60 years.

The self-loading 7.62mm rifle is meant to hit personnel and unarmored targets at ranges up to 800 meters, the concern said. It uses gas-operated automatics with a short-stroke piston and a gas regulator, and can fire any 7.62x54R round, though sniper ammunition yields the best grouping, according to the maker.

Sanctions chase a moving network

The sniper rifles are only one line in Kalashnikov's output. Russia's defense industry has leaned heavily on refurbishing Soviet-era armor as newer reserves run low, with Ukraine's intelligence reporting in June 2025 that Russia had begun deploying 1960s-era T-62 tanks.

The restoration work was centered primarily at the 103rd Armored Repair Plant in Atamanovka, Trans-Baikal Territory of Siberia. Ukrainian intelligence documented the transfer of 21 T-62 tanks from the eastern region to the western part.

Small arms are a different line of production, built new rather than pulled from storage. That is why a 1963 design keeps rolling off the line while the sanctions net, as Ukraine's intelligence describes it, still has holes.

Ukrainian rescuers are still pulling bodies from a collapsed apartment block in Pryluky. A Russian missile strike on the five-story residential building in the city of Chernihiv Oblast that borders both Russia and Belarus killed 19 people, including five children, and injured 55, Ukraine's State Emergency Service reported on 7 October.

Russia hit Kyiv and a dozen other regions overnight. Air defense downed five ballistic missiles, 39 cruise missiles, and 117 drones, while missiles and drones hit 18 locations, the Air Force said. The nationwide strike killed at least 24 people, including four children.

Among the dead in Pryluky were three one-year-old boys, Oleksandr, Kyrylo, and Serhii, and eight-year-old Maksym, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says. Seven of the injured are children. Some residents are still unreachable, and all emergency services are working at the site. Russia keeps using missiles against Ukrainian cities and civilians by deliberate choice, he states.

"My condolences to all the families and loved ones," Zelenskyy says.

The strike comes on Putin's birthday

The attack came on Russian President Vladimir Putin's birthday on 7 October.

"Continuing to use missiles against Ukraine, against our people, our children, is an absolutely conscious choice of terror. This is what Moscow chooses despite all our efforts with partners to bring peace closer," Zelenskyy says.

He urges partners to increase pressure on Russia and bolster defense support for Ukraine, saying it is important that world leaders understand this and that the world not remain silent.

A pattern of strikes on Chernihiv Oblast

Pryluky, about 150 kilometers east of Kyiv, lies in a region Russia has hit repeatedly. The overnight barrage also damaged civilian and utility infrastructure across the Pryluky community, the city council said.

Ukraine had seen the attack. The day before, Zelenskyy warned that intelligence indicated a massive Russian strike was in preparation. Russia fired about 70 missiles overnight, killing two people each in the capital Kyiv and in the cities of Kremenchuk and Oleksandriia in addition to the Pryluky dead.

Ukraine is thinning its state bureaucracy. Central government bodies will cut more than 4,000 vacant positions in the first stage of a civil service reform, Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi says, with the number of deputy ministers to fall by about 20% and deputy heads of other central bodies by nearly 18%.

The reform aims to build a professional state apparatus that can carry out tasks quickly and effectively, Koretskyi said. It comes as Ukraine faces an economic crunch, and about $20 billion in EU aid is on hold, blocked by reforms Kyiv has not completed.

The cuts are only the visible first step, and the final headcount is not set yet. The number of deputies will be tied to the volume of tasks each office carries, Koretskyi states.

"The most important thing is that we are running a functional diagnostic of the state apparatus," he continues.

The Ukrainian government will assess which functions the bodies have and whether they align with the state's realities and priorities, and only then will it define the structure and final headcount.

Training is tied to the job

Another track reshapes how officials learn. Training will be linked to the tasks of each specific post, with outreach and internships for young people and a separate program for veterans, Koretskyi says.

The Public Administration Council, which brings together officials, members of parliament, and experts, has resumed work, presenting a detailed plan on the task and assigning responsibility for each area.

The squeeze that forces the cuts

The reform lands in a tight budget. The war is costing Ukraine about $155 billion a year, and with Western aid running late, Kyiv has frozen almost everything except the army, pensions, and public wages.

On 1 October, the state suspended a veterans' gym subsidy that had cost about $13 million and drawn more than 800,000 users, for lack of funds.

Russia keeps upgrading its jet-powered drones, and Ukraine's electronic warfare is racing to keep up. Kyiv has set extra tasks for its military and manufacturers to scale up the most effective electronic warfare approaches, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said after a meeting of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief's Staff on electronic warfare and infrastructure protection.

Russia keeps modifying its jet-powered Shaheds to beat each new Ukrainian defense, and Ukraine's answers have to keep pace. The race is tight: from 1 to 26 September, air defenses downed only 55 percent of the 2,730 new jet-powered drones, against 90% of the slower ones.

Hidden relays blunt Kyiv's jammers

Jamming has to improve because Russia keeps finding new ways around it. On 3 October, presidential adviser Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov said someone had installed Russian MESH radio repeaters in Kyiv, a short control channel that guides Shahed drones onto their targets. As long as they are there, he said, closing the city with electronic warfare will not be effective.

"As long as online control of drones exists, not only the bridges but the air defense assets will be under threat," Flash stressed.

Sanctions aim at the supply chain

Beyond the jamming task, the Staff turned to where Russia gets the parts for those drones. Defense Intelligence reported on Russia's technological priorities for this year and next, and on supplies of critical components and equipment for its weapons production, Zelenskyy said.

New sanctions packages will follow, with Defense Intelligence due to send proposals to the Ukrainian government and the National Security and Defense Council, and Ukraine is working to align its sanctions with partners' jurisdictions.

The Staff also set the main tasks for supplying Ukrainian forces with long-range drones next year.

"The main criterion is that we must be able to respond in kind to Russian strikes," Zelenskyy emphasized.

Those parts, and the drones built from them, keep changing

In August, Intelligence Deputy Chief Vadym Skibitskyi said Russia remained fully dependent on Chinese turbojets for the Geran-4 and Geran-5, each costing about $35,000 to $40,000.

However, two months later, Ukraine reported the Geran-4 had received a locally built engine and a new optical navigation system. Kyiv has to stay attuned to changes to keep pace with the technology race, and so far, it is still trying to catch up rather than get ahead.

Only the US and Israel were hit by more cyberattacks than Ukraine this year. Ukraine ranked third in the world and first in Europe among the countries whose organizations and users were most often targeted by cyberattacks in the first half of 2026, accounting for 4.8% of all victims worldwide, up from fifth in the world and third in Europe a year earlier, Microsoft said in its Digital Defense Report 2026.

Microsoft processes more than 165 trillion security signals a day, which lets it show how often attackers go after customers in each country. Russian state hackers aimed 14% of their recorded activity at Ukraine, more than at any country except the US.

The era of machine-speed cyberattacks is here

Government agencies and services were the most targeted sector worldwide at 27%, up from 17% in 2025. Phishing drove 23% of intrusions Microsoft investigated, up from 7% a year earlier, and the median time from finding a vulnerability to weaponizing it has fallen well below 24 hours.

The use of artificial intelligence is pushing cyberspace into an era of “machine-speed” attacks that operate continuously and without fatigue, according to Dev.

“Many AI agents act on behalf of users and with their access rights, so a compromised agent combines user-level access with machine-scale actions,” Natalia Burlakova, Security Sales and Engineering Lead at Microsoft, says.

Deception beats code in attacks on Ukraine

Ukraine's own agency data show a similar pattern. Malware accounted for 33% of cyber incidents in the first half of 2026, and social engineering 31%, the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection reported on 30 September. System infections made up 15%, and system compromises 4.5%.

Attackers rely less on technical complexity than on trust, according to the report by Ukraine's computer emergency response team, CERT-UA. Hacker groups create fake pages that mimic CERT-UA, Ukraine's Parliament's document management system, and the Brave1 defense technology platform.

Microsoft urges five government steps

Microsoft asks governments to prepare for faster-moving threats by assigning roles and coordinating agencies in advance of a crisis, and to treat AI security as part of national resilience. It also asks them to plan for incidents that spread, noting that 52.2% of intrusions involving valid accounts led to additional credential theft.

In September, Ukraine struck more Russian air defense systems than in each month since 2024. Its Defense Ministry reports that Ukraine stepped up strikes on targets deep in the Russian rear, and this is how it hit this amount of protective systems, radars among them, in the history of the ePoints program.

ePoints are points that Ukrainian units earn for verified combat missions, from strikes to reconnaissance and evacuation, and spend on drones, ground robots, and electronic warfare systems on the state's Brave1 Market. In September, units confirmed hits on 33,087 Russian soldiers under the program, more than in any month this year except March and April.

Every result is recorded on video in the DELTA battlefield system and verified by the Brave1 defense innovation cluster, the ministry said. Russian losses are also growing far from the contact line, it added, and units are finding new and unconventional ways to inflict them.

The strikes are meant for "bleeding the Russian war machine," Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara said on 4 October.

Deep strikes pass 11,000

In September, the number of hits more than 20 kilometers behind the front line exceeded 11,000 for the first time. Hits beyond 50 kilometers also set a record, most of them along the Russian logistics route between Mariupol and Crimea. One air defense system was hit 552 kilometers away.

Ukraine also now has a ballistic missile for such depths, not simply drones. It fired its first FP-7 in combat on 1 October, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced without naming a target. Its maker, Fire Point, plans an interceptor version that aims to achieve a first ballistic missile shoot down by mid-2027.

Troops down more propeller Shaheds

Even as Russia kept changing its air attack tactics and launched more jet-powered drones, Ukrainian troops shot down 28% more non-jet-powered Shahed drones in September than in August, the ministry said.

Jet drones remain the harder target. Ukraine shoots down 85 to 92% of propeller-driven Shaheds but only 50 to 60% of jet-powered ones, Zelensky said on 4 October, when he announced a new small missile called Nika for testing against them. Ukraine's military intelligence estimates that Russia builds about 3,000 jet-powered drones a month.