* Kiev, la Nato indossa l’elmetto di Jeff Hoffman
* Notte di fuoco, diplomazia in stallo di Jeff Hoffman
* USA e Israele armano il Marocco di Gionata Chatillard
* Bab el-Mandeb, Ansarallah sfida il patto della Mecca di Jeff Hoffman
* L’Asia brucia le riserve di dollari di Margherita Furlan
* Berlino vuole blindare il Mare del Nord di Ivan Bodyan
* Da Milazzo a Priolo, l’emirato mette radici di Margherita Furlan
* Svezia invia truppe e Patriot in Polonia di Ivan Bodyan
* Germania, arrestato ex capo intelligence di Ivan Bodyan
* Okinawa, l’ultima colonia sotto bandiera alleata di Jeff Hoffman
Buon giro intorno al Sole
A cura di Margherita Furlan
Con la collaborazione di Gionata Chatillard, Ivan Bodyan e Jeff Hoffman
Editing di Mia Tarulli e Isabelle Tonussi
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Syria is considering sending troops, including foreign jihadists, to help Saudi Arabia fight against Ansar Allah in Yemen, according to media reports, as Riyadh continues to seek international support for the war, which it reignited in July by bombing the Sanaa International Airport. Reuters first reported that Syria, which is led by former al-Qaeda Commander […]
With Hezbollah squarely in the political opposition, Lebanese officials have been hoping for awhile that the ongoing Israeli invasion would further alienate Hezbollah from the public, as an active combatant force and, at least by Israel’s framing, the reason for the conflict. That’s been a polarizing issue, however, and Hezbollah is likely to score a […]
At least 25 civilians were killed during a major Russian bombardment across Ukraine on Wednesday, according to Ukrainian officials, strikes that came a day after Ukrainian forces launched nearly 900 drones into Russia. The majority of the dead were killed by strikes that hit an apartment block in Pryluky, a city in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv […]
More than 800 gigabytes of Artemis II lunar science data – some of it previously unreleased – was released today, posted to NASA’s Planetary Data System. Most of the images from the mission were previously made public – although this Oct. 7 release is the official data archive with high resolution imagery and robust metadata. […]
The incidents of Israeli forces shooting Syrian civilians inside Syrian territory have continued to grow today, with reports that, after three were shot earlier this week in two separate incidents, a fourth was shot, wounded, and ultimately detained on Wednesday. The latest incident took place in the northern Quneitra town of Jabata al-Khashab, a town […]
A new report from the Congressional Research Service has found that at least 81 US military aircraft have been damaged or lost in the Iran war since it was launched by the US and Israel on February 28. The report’s authors said the tally was compiled from statements by the Pentagon, US Central Command, the […]
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.
Israeli attacks continued to pound Gaza on Wednesday, October 7, the day that marks three years since the Hamas attack on southern Israel and the start of Israel’s genocidal campaign in the Strip. According to the Anadolu Agency, at least four Palestinians were killed by Israeli airstrikes and gunfire across Gaza. Among those killed was […]
Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder visited a Moscow supermarket in his new role on the supervisory board. Schröder is no stranger to retirement stipends in Russia — or the scandal that accompanies them.
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More than 50 Russian companies could default on their bonds this year, the most since 2009, a rating-agency analyst told Russian newspaper Izvestia, which reported it on 6 October.
Russia's wartime economy is straining under high interest rates, and the budget is too: the 2026 deficit has nearly doubled from the earlier forecast to a record $88 billion, with more deficits planned for the next three years as Moscow raises taxes to fund the war and plans its biggest defense budget since the full-scale invasion began.
A default is a situation in which a company cannot make promised interest payments to investors on time or repay borrowed money. If a payment is not made by the agreed deadline, the company becomes delinquent, which under certain conditions is recognized as a default.
So far this year, 20 companies have defaulted for the first time, compared with 24 in all of 2025, said Mikhail Nikonov of the Expert RA rating agency. Most of the companies that missed payments are small issuers of high-yield bonds, Izvestia reported.
In 2026, Russian companies have missed payments totaling 41 billion rubles (about $490 million), compared with 34 billion rubles (about $410 million) the previous year, according to investment bank Sinara.
Russia faces a new wave of corporate defaults
By the end of 2026, the number of Russian companies unable to service their ruble-denominated debt on time could reach 40–50, the highest level since 2010, said Pavel Zholobov, junior managing director at the NRA rating agency.
The number of bond defaults in 2026 has already reached its highest level in a decade, Zholobov said. Similar figures were recorded in the mid-2010s: in 2014, 35 companies missed payments; in 2015, 52 did so; and in 2016, there were 44 issuers. This occurred in part after Western sanctions were imposed on Russia over its annexation of Crimea and its war in Donbas, as well as amid a halving of oil prices and a sharp weakening of the ruble.
So-called "little green men" (the Russian occupation troops comprised special forces who removed insignia, wear face masks to prevent identification and call themselves a "Crimean self-defense force") surround a Ukrainian military base in Perevalne, Crimea, during the Russian annexation of the peninsula in February-March 2014.
There were more defaults only in 2009. At the time, amid the fallout from the global financial crisis, more than 100 issuers faced payment problems, while the volume of distressed debt reached nearly 200 billion rubles, Zholobov noted.
High interest rates put pressure on companies
This time, the main reason for companies' difficulties in making bond payments has been the prolonged period of high interest rates, which has continued since 2023. Companies are raising financing at high interest rates but are unable to refinance their debt on more favorable terms, explained Ekaterina Sidorova, head of the Foreign Exchange, Commodities and Debt Markets Department at SberCIB Investment Research.
At the same time, the situation does not yet resemble a systemic debt crisis: defaults are primarily being recorded among companies with low credit ratings and high debt burdens, Sidorova said.
If a company fails to repay bond debt, it is given 10 business days to meet its obligations. If it fails to do so, the company may offer investors a restructuring—for example, by postponing payments in exchange for a higher interest rate.
The number of defaults will remain high in 2027, Sidorova believes.
High interest rates were a response to accelerating inflation in Russia. Domestic demand was outpacing production, Russia's Central Bank said in October 2023. Sanctions over the war and rising defense spending had also hit the economy and the ruble, which had lost about 25% against the dollar that year. The bank raised its key rate from 7.5% in the first half of 2023 to 15% by the fall.
Ukraine targets Russia's oil industry to weaken its war economy
Ukraine is also seeking to weaken Russia's economy as part of efforts to reduce its ability to finance the war. In particular, Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara said strikes on oil refineries are aimed at "bleeding the Russian war machine" and destroying its military and economic potential. According to the ministry, the attacks have knocked out more than 51% of Russia's oil refining capacity.
In the first half of July, Russian oil refineries processed about 3.9 million barrels of oil per day—the lowest level since March 2005. Due to the production cuts, Moscow was also forced to restrict fuel exports.
Trafigura Group bought seven oil tankers from New York-listed SFL Corp., in the latest example of how trading houses and state energy companies are acquiring vessels to ship crude and products.
Then, Zaid said, the beatings began. “It hurt so much I couldn’t breathe, and it’s then that I told them what they wanted to hear," - that he had been throwing stones
Protests demanding Gyanesh Kumar’s ouster and the scrapping of SIR protests have rejuvenated the opposition, uniting parties once at odds and making it harder than ever for the BJP to discredit its critics.
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