Units of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces have killed or wounded more than 100,000 Russian troops since the start of 2026. That is more than 150,000 since the force was created on 11 June 2025, the force said on Telegram.

Drones have become the deadliest weapon of this war, accounting for about 96% of Russia’s battlefield casualties earlier this year. These hits are verified on video in the military’s Delta system, which is how the force counts only the losses its own pilots confirm.

“Behind these figures is the daily combat work of our soldiers, thousands of sorties, precise strikes, and the constant improvement of unmanned technologies,” Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces said.

Each strike reduces Russia's combat potential and reflects the coordinated work of the force’s units, it added.

A toll that keeps climbing

Overall, drone branches of the Ukrainian Army had carried out more than 1 million verified strikes on enemy targets since January, killing or seriously wounding about 193,500 Russian troops, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry reported in July.

Those strikes roughly doubled over the first half of the year, from about 105,800 in January to more than 200,000 in June, the ministry noted.

Meanwhile, Commander of the separate Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces Robert “Madiar” Brovdi says the numbers are still growing. In the first five days of October, the force’s pilots killed or wounded 2,699 Russian soldiers, 39.7 percent more than in the same period of September.

He tied the rising number to Russia's assaults in Donbas, as the offensives for the fortress-belt cities that have been Ukraine's protection against full region's occupation since 2014, were ongoing.

Why the drone branch matters

The force fields are the cheap, fast weapons that now do most of the killing on the front. Interceptor and strike drones let Ukraine hit troops, logistics, and command posts while keeping its own soldiers farther from the fight.

SpaceX will not cut Ukraine off from Starlink satellite communications, Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov, presidential adviser on defense technology, says. The reason is that the company could lose a large share of its revenue.

Ukraine’s troops and drones lean heavily on Starlink, a network Kyiv neither owns nor controls, and Elon Musk has used that control against it before. The latest shutdown fears spread after Elon Musk supported US President Donald Trump's criticism of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“Not a year goes by without it coming up again: ‘They’ll cut off our Starlink.’ The enemy’s Telegram channels fuel these rumors. We have good and stable partner relations with SpaceX,” Flash writes.

Musk is first of all a businessman, and Ukraine brings SpaceX significant profit, so he is sure no one will switch Starlink off in Ukraine, Flash said. Unexpected moves are possible, he added, but of a different kind, such as turning Starlink on for Russia inside its own territory.

The rumors come amid real US pressure

The fears did not appear in a vacuum. After Trump allowed Russian diesel back to US markets, talk spread of "sanctions" on Ukraine if it keeps hitting the Russian refineries that fund Moscow, with the Financial Times reporting, citing European officials, that Trump’s administration has threatened to halt the mechanism for buying US weapons for Ukraine, known as PURL.

Axios has also reported, citing a Ukrainian and an American official, that Washington has threatened to stop sharing intelligence with Ukraine if it continues striking Russian refineries.

Ukraine is building a backup

The scare feeds a longer effort to reduce dependence. Ukraine is working on a satellite system of its own, something similar to Starlink but beyond Musk’s control, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 4 October.

The timing is the reason, he said: some states will share the technology with Russia late this year or early next, and the Chinese are among them. Moscow is already fielding its own Starlink-style constellation, Rassvet, though for now it reaches Ukraine only in brief passes.

Aviation is one of the most effective ways to counter Russia’s jet-powered drones. Its effectiveness continues to grow due to pilots’ skill and better coordination, Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara says, Glavcom reports.

Russia’s jet-powered Gerans fly several times faster than the propeller Shaheds Ukraine learned to shoot down, and they remain the main challenge for its air defense. Ukraine downs more than 90% of the slow drones but only about 55% of the jet ones.

“Due to them, our aviation now uses fewer munitions per aerial target. We plan to improve this further,” Khmara states.

Air defense works as a layered system because no single type of weapon is enough, he explains. The layers run from surface-to-air and shoulder-fired missiles to turrets, electronic warfare, interceptor-drone crews, and small-scale air defense, topped by aircraft including Mirage and F-16 jets.

Scaling what works against jet drones

Ukraine already has combat results against the jet drones, Khmara notes. In one engagement, five Bars interceptors destroyed five aerial targets, a 100% hit rate in that case, and the task now is to raise the overall destruction rate and quickly scale the solutions that prove themselves.

Heavy-caliber turrets are adding to that. Their number in service already runs into the hundreds, he adds.

“This direction is being scaled, and systems with greater range are being worked on. In parallel, surface-to-air and shoulder-fired missile systems are also proving effective,” he says.

Preparing for the next generation

Ukraine is also looking past today’s threats, the minister stresses. The ministry is working to supply interceptor drones, aviation and its munitions, missile and artillery systems, turrets and electronic warfare gear, and to plan several steps ahead with enough stock in reserve.

“We also know what solutions Russia is developing, which concern jet drones with a speed of 800 kilometers per hour. We are working on finding countermeasures to the next generation of threats,” Khmara says.

Producers have been tasked with offering proposals and prototypes, he concludes.

Russia hit the CHP-5 thermal plant in Kharkiv on the evening of 11 October. It came hours after US President Donald Trump announced an energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address.

Trump had announced the energy truce earlier that day, though Kyiv reported no part in any such deal, as well as Moscow. Yet in this one week, Russia carried out more than 200 strikes on Ukraine’s power generation and transmission and 17 on its gas and oil sites, killing more than 150 people and wounding more than 700, according to Zelenskyy.

“All day today, there were Russian Shaheds in the sky. There are Shaheds in the sky now, too. There were strikes by aerial bombs. There were strikes on our energy. Just now there was a strike on CHP-5 in Kharkiv,” Zelenskyy states.

Ukraine welcomes the agreement Trump announced and is ready to stop striking Russian energy if Russia does the same. For that to mean anything, he stresses, it has to become part of reality.

A one-word answer from Moscow

Ukraine has offered many de-escalation steps, Zelenskyy notes, but Russian ruler Vladimir Putin met them all with the same refusal. He voices hope that the Russian leader would finally tell the US, Ukraine, and the world something other than killing and deception, something that leads to a real and dignified peace.

Ukraine wants peace, and the question is whether Russia does. The Armed Forces have received all the relevant orders to defend the country, he confirms.

Allies line up fresh support

Zelenskyy says he also spoke with members of the US Congress and, the day before with the UK prime minister, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Norway’s prime minister, all of whom offered help.

Ukraine is also working with the EU on financing for its defense and budget stability, and preparing new steps on European integration.

Ukraine’s Defense Procurement Agency has contracted about 5.5 times as many drones of various types in recent months as in the same period of 2025. It is roughly 300% more over the year as a whole, the Defense Ministry said.

Drones are the weapons this war runs on, from short-range strikes to hits deep inside Russia, and Ukraine has raced to build and buy more of them while sparing its troops. The agency contracted for about $8 billion worth of drones in the first half of 2026 alone, double the amount for the same period last year.

The ministry wants to arm the force at every level, Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara stresses. Deep-strike drones hit targets far inside Russia, while middle-strike drones kill enemy drone crews and burn logistics and command posts, lowering the risk to Ukrainian soldiers.

“Technology and having enough of these systems raise combat effectiveness and at the same time reduce the risks for our soldiers,” Khmara said.

FPV drones lead the surge

The sharpest growth is in FPV drones, the cheap first-person-view quadcopters that do much of the killing on the front. Contracting for them in 2026 already exceeds the total for all of 2025 by 54%, and deliveries have risen almost 3.7 times, the ministry notes.

International support and the scaling of Ukraine’s own defense industry made the jump possible, Khmara adds. Much of the buying now runs through the DOT-Chain Defense marketplace, where units select what they need, and the agency handles contracts and logistics, cutting the average delivery time for in-stock items to 9 days.

Making supply predictable

The ministry is trying to make deliveries steadier, Khmara explains. It is aligning the front’s needs, purchase planning, and the production capacity of the Ukrainian industry, making supply more predictable.

Predictable contracting lets manufacturers build their production lines step by step, plan logistics and order components in advance, he says. The ministry frames the push as a larger order book for the domestic industry and a way to scale the solutions that work in combat.

Ukraine wants to build more weapons at home while making it easier to draft the people who build them. Kyiv has proposed cutting the draft-exemption quota for defense-industry enterprises from 100% of their workers to 85%, while the Ukrainian Council of Arms Manufacturers says the limit should stay at the previous level for qualifying critical plants.

The change would strip the draft shield from 15% of the workers at plants the Defense Ministry has deemed critical to the economy. Those are the people who set production volumes, delivery dates, and new designs, the council argues, so losing them would hit output just as Ukraine pushes to make more of its own weapons.

The draft resolution has already been sent to the Cabinet of Ministers for approval.

“We consider that the proposed reduction of the limit does not account for the staffing needs of defense production,” the council says.

A workforce that takes years to build

Ukraine’s defense industry is still growing, with new plants, expanding capacity, and new technologies, the council adds. Raising the share of Ukrainian-made weapons in the forces, localizing components, and cutting reliance on imports all require more specialists, not fewer.

These teams are built over the years, the manufacturers add. Companies invest in finding and training people who master specific technologies and production processes, and keeping them is what lets firms plan expansion and take on new commitments to the military.

Uncertainty at the worst moment

Cutting the exemption limit would add uncertainty, just as the state expects producers to raise output. The fallout could affect both manufacturers and military units awaiting their weapons.

The council urges the Economy Ministry to drop the cut to 85%and asks the Defense Ministry and the Cabinet to maintain exemptions of up to 100% for qualifying defense workers. It offers to share data on the industry’s staffing needs and help assess how the change would affect defense orders.

The reservation rules must reflect the growth of the defense industry and Ukraine’s need for more of its own weapons, it concludes.

US President Donald Trump has announced an immediate energy ceasefire in the war between Russia and Ukraine, saying both sides agreed to stop striking each other’s energy facilities, in a post on Truth Social. Ukraine, however, knew nothing about the deal.

Russia has spent the war hitting Ukraine's power plants, refineries, and grids, while Ukraine answered with strikes on its refineries and plants that produce missiles. If confirmed, a halt before winter would be a major break. Yet about seven minutes before Trump’s announcement, Russia struck at Kyiv’s thermal plant, cutting power to several districts of the capital at once.

“Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE in the War between Russia and Ukraine. Both parties have agreed. Do not break it!” Trump wrote.

News for Zelenskyy

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Axios the announcement “was news" for him. But if Russians agree to an energy ceasefire, Ukraine will agree, he added. Moscow gave no immediate confirmation.

The announcement follows days of friction over energy. Washington has just eased sanctions on Russian diesel and pressed Kyiv to stop hitting Russian refineries, while Russian strikes killed more than 80 Ukrainian civilians in two days.

A truce no one in Kyiv confirmed

Zelenskyy had already signaled Ukraine’s terms. He said on Sunday that Kyiv was ready to stop striking Russian refineries if Moscow halted its attacks on Ukrainian energy, so the condition was on the table before Trump spoke, not settled by him.

If Trump negotiated it with Putin, then he should say when the ceasefire begins, Zelenskyy added, underlining that Ukraine had not been party to any such agreement.

Ukrainians greet it with doubt

The reaction in Kyiv was wary. Trump already declared an energy ceasefire once, and Putin broke it within five minutes, said Andrii Kovalenko, former head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, asking whether Trump was now “announcing it to himself.”

Meanwhile, lawmaker Yaroslav Zhelezniak called for an explanation, warning that Trump’s “energy ceasefire” might mean Ukraine stops hitting Russian refineries and tankers while Russia merely promises not to strike Ukrainian oil tankers it would struggle to find in the first place.

Ukraine, which long kept its weapons at home, is now clearing its arms makers to sell abroad. Its Commission on Export Control has granted 18 Ukrainian companies permission to send their finished weapons abroad and has processed more than 400 export applications, with over 90% approved, the National Security and Defense Council says, citing commission head Davyd Aloian.

Ukraine now produces far more weapons than it can afford, with defense production growing from about $1 billion a year at the start of the invasion to a projected $55 billion in 2026.

The exports are reportedly conducted under the Drone Deals framework that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy unveiled in April, which allows controlled sales of surplus weapons to partner countries while the Defense Ministry and General Staff retain first claim to everything the front needs. Some categories already run up to 50% beyond what Ukraine can use or finance.

From a stalled commission to 18 approvals

The commission’s work had been halting. It resumed in February after an eight-month freeze and issued the first permits then, and its updated membership has been working since, Aloian notes.

Building partnerships abroad

Aloian framed the goal as scaling Ukrainian technology rather than one-off deals. The state wants domestic producers to expand abroad while partners get working solutions, he says, and is open to dialogue with the defense industry to fix problems as they arise.

Earlier, an industry group that represents more than 400 companies warned in September that the mechanism was choking. A new 20-to-30% fee on export permits priced Ukrainian goods out of the market, it said, and a joint-production program had stalled with hundreds of foreign bids pending.

Euromaidan Press cannot verify whether the Commission on Export Control has taken the issue into consideration.

The council recently met a UK Defense Ministry delegation to discuss closer cooperation, including a Drone Deal, an anti-ballistic coalition, and joint production, Aloian adds. Reaching foreign markets enables producers to attract new orders and investment, scale up, and build long-term partnerships.

Europe keeps buying record amounts of Russian gas even as it plans to punish its war machine against Ukraine. The EU ports took in a record 12.18 million tons of Russian liquefied natural gas from January to September, 9.5% more than in the same period of 2025, according to a study by the German group Urgewald based on Kpler tracking data.

Europe spent about 7.88 billion euros on that Russian gas in nine months, revenue that helps fund a war Russia wages with daily missile and drone strikes on Ukrainian cities. The flow continues even as the EU prepares its largest-ever package of sanctions against Russia’s military industry.

The gas comes from Russia’s Yamal project, which sent 167 cargoes to EU ports over the nine months, roughly one every 1.6 days. Europe took 85% of the project’s recorded deliveries by volume, remaining by far its biggest market, Urgewald reports.

Europe’s share grew even as Yamal’s worldwide deliveries fell 1.3%, so the EU absorbed a larger slice of Russia’s Arctic output. In September alone, EU ports received 792,440 tons worth an estimated 818 million euros, nearly three-quarters of it going to France.

Washington could pull the plug by 18 October

The imports run up against a looming US decision. The Trump administration has until 18 October to complete its first review under the Lindsey Graham sanctions act, signed into law on 18 September, which allows Washington to sanction this gas trade at any time, the group notes.

However, after the US allowed Russian diesel to enter the US and global market, the decision will likely remain stalled.

Originally, the law covered Yamal’s leadership, foreign vessels that knowingly carried Russian LNG, and foreign ports that serviced US-sanctioned ships. Yamal depends on specialized Arc7 ice-class tankers and on nearby European ports where they can unload and quickly return, so closing that route would make the Arctic trade far harder to sustain.

Europe’s own ban is still months away

The EU’s measures so far have barely dented the trade. A ban on short-term LNG contracts took effect in April and has had no visible effect, while the full import ban under long-term contracts only starts on 1 January 2027, Urgewald says.

Every month of largely uninterrupted trade means more revenue for Russia while Ukraine suffers daily attacks, sanction campaigner Sebastian Rötters says. The next EU package should close the remaining loopholes, above all those keeping the Arc7 tanker fleet running.

Estonia’s answer to the US-Russia diesel agreement: deals with dictators lead to hell. Prime Minister Kristen Michal wants the European Council to discuss giving Ukraine more aid so it can destroy Russia’s oil refineries, after sharply criticizing the US decision to strike a diesel deal with Russia, ERR reports.

Washington has eased sanctions on Russian diesel, a move Ukraine says funds a war that has killed more than 80 Ukrainian civilians in two days. Estonia’s answer is to go the opposite way and help Ukraine hit the source of that fuel, the refineries, harder.

"It is worth discussing in Estonia and at the European Council next week whether we can quickly contribute more to Ukraine so they can blast Russia's oil refineries to smithereens," Michal says.

He casts the US deal as a historic error. Innocent people are being killed for gas and fuel money, Michal warns, saying that the promised fuel may never arrive. For years, the US urged allies to drop Russian fuel, and Estonia did, so cutting Moscow’s revenue must continue, not reverse, he adds.

Mihkelson: Russia's strategic goals remain unchanged

Meanwhile, Marko Mihkelson, chair of the Riigikogu Foreign Affairs Committee, says that Russia's strategic objectives remain the same as they were before: to rebuild its empire, beginning with the subjugation of Ukraine, and to dismantle the Euro-Atlantic system of collective defense.

"That is why European allies still have only one way to prevent this war of aggression from spreading: to do everything possible to ensure that Russia’s strategic objectives fail and that the imperial wars launched by the Kremlin end in defeat," he says.

This clear strategic objective should also serve US interests, he continues, adding that "Russia’s long-standing ambition, pursued in concert with China and Iran, to undermine America’s global leadership is entering a decisive phase."