One drone launched another drone, which then shot down a third. All three were unmanned, and all at sea off Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Navy has destroyed a Russian Shahed attack drone with a Sting interceptor launched from the Sargan 3000 unmanned surface vessel, the Navy said, showing sailors adapting to new aerial threats with sea-launched interceptors.
Russian Shaheds threaten Ukraine’s ports, coastline and the ships that approach them, so meeting those drones out at sea, before they reach land, matters for the whole southern defense.
A Ukrainian Navy sea drone, the Sargan 3000, destroyed a Russian Shahed kamikaze drone with a Sting interceptor drone
Ukrainian troops continue to adapt to new threats to protect civilians and infrastructure Ukrainian Navy pic.twitter.com/kXvnqaebAw
The Sting is built to destroy Russian kamikaze drones such as the Shahed, Geran and Lancet, as well as reconnaissance drones, with quick deployment, a short training course and a top speed of 280 km/h, its producer, Wild Hornets, says.
The interceptor that has become Ukraine’s Shahed-killer
The Sting has earned its place at the front. The Ukrainian FPV interceptor has proven highly effective in combat, with a typical hit rate of 80 to 90% depending on the unit, and on some days reaching 100 percent, one launch for one kill.
It is currently Ukraine’s most productive Shahed interceptor, according to the Wild Hornets, having destroyed more than 3,000 drones in its first seven months of use. Mounting it on a sea platform extends that record from land into the Black Sea.
A drone boat that keeps finding new ways to kill
The Sargan 3000 has become a multi-purpose hunter. In July, Ukrainian naval personnel used a Sargan 3000 to sink a Russian second-rank border patrol ship.
In October, the same drone boat shot down a Russian Shahed with a turret-mounted machine gun over the Black Sea. Ukraine’s Navy took the Sargan 3000 into service in April 2026, and the drone boat has a combat radius of up to 1,600 kilometers, letting it clear the sky far from shore without putting a sailor in range.
Stringing wire in the open is one of the deadliest jobs at the front, and Ukraine is handing it to a robot. Ukraine’s Ground Forces have shown a ground robotic vehicle from the 16th Separate Support Brigade laying wire obstacles in open terrain, letting combat engineers do the dangerous work remotely.
Laying obstacles in the open exposes sappers to Russian drones and artillery, so moving the task to a machine takes a soldier out of the kill zone. The vehicle carries a sloped frame holding a heavy coil of wire and unrolls the barrier on its own while the operator drives it from a safe distance.
Ukraine’s Ground Forces have shown a ground robotic vehicle laying wire obstacles in open terrain. Source: The 16th Separate Support Brigade
“Laying obstacles in open terrain always means risks for combat engineers. But today this hard work is done by ground drones,” the Ground Forces said.
Ukraine’s Ground Forces have shown a ground robotic vehicle laying wire obstacles in open terrain. Source: The 16th Separate Support Brigade
From supply runs to combat engineering, one machine at a time
The wire-laying robot is one of many jobs in a fast-growing fleet. Ukraine’s ground robots ran more than 100,000 missions in the first eight months of 2026, with monthly runs logged in the Delta system climbing from 7,511 in January to nearly 20,000 in July. Kyiv has contracted over 22,000 of the machines since January, nearly double the total for all of 2025.
The number of units operating them grew from 117 at the end of 2025 to 230 by mid-2026, and those machines already haul supplies, evacuate wounded and carry out strikes.
From laying wire to leading the assault
Robots are increasingly going where the fighting is hardest. For the first time in the war, Ukraine air-dropped kamikaze ground robots more than 10 kilometers behind Russian lines from heavy drones during Operation Vivaldi near Lyman, a counteroffensive in which the 3rd Army Corps retook more than 125 square kilometers of Donetsk Oblast.
“In assault operations, drones and ground robots always go ahead of the infantry,” corps commander Brigadier General Andrii Biletskyi said. In another Vivaldi tactic, ground robots each fitted with two Bullspike grenade launchers attacked Russian positions and then detonated inside their shelters.
This year, Ukraine’s Defense Procurement Agency began tendering logistics and strike ground robots against Defense Ministry specifications, with no manufacturer allowed more than half the order.
One of Ukraine's best and fastest interceptor drones is an air-to-air version of the Bars one-way attack drone
Bars are some of the best defenses against Russia's fastest Geran-4 and Geran-5 drones
But there may be too few small jet engines to rapidly scale up Bars production
Russia's latest jet-propelled Geran-4 and Geran-5 one-way attack drones fly at 500 km/h or more, nearly three times as fast as an older, propeller-driven Geran-2.
That's too fast for many of Ukraine's air defenses. In particular, the inexpensive interceptor drones that Ukrainian forces deploy by the thousand.
Russia launched more than 2,700 jet Gerans at Ukraine in September, and Ukraine is shooting down only about 55% of them, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The speed disparity is a big part of the problem.
Ukrainian forces are scrambling for new defenses against the speedy Gerans. Among the best is actually a Ukrainian take on the Geran-4 and Geran-5: a fast, jet-propelled one-way attack drone that the Ukrainians have modified for air-to-air use.
Against jet drones, the air-to-air Bars have a hit rate of around 30%, Zelensky said during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Kyiv on 4 October. "The Bars have shown positive results," Zelensky said. "They currently have the highest percentage. Others are also catching up."
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In July, Ukraine and Germany agreed to jointly produce Bars, with Germany financing the first phase. Ukraine has reportedly been launching Bars at targets on the ground since at least the summer of 2025. But it was only recently that clear photos and videos of the drones have circulated.
Over the weekend, Ukraine’s 1021st Anti-Aircraft Missile and Artillery Brigade released footage of one jet drone hunting another. Observers identified the interceptor as a Bars and its target as a Geran-5. After launching from an elevated ramp with help from a rocket booster, the drone's operator—seeing what the drone saw through a front-facing infrared camera—steered the drone toward the Russian drone, possibly destroying it.
Exactly how the operator controlled the Bars—whether by satellite or mesh radio or some other command and control system—is unclear. Equally unclear: what kind of warhead a Bars would employ in the air-to-air role. Many smaller interceptor drones lack warheads. Instead, they simply slam directly into their targets, wrecking them in the collision.
Ukraine’s 1021st Anti-Aircraft Missile and Artillery Brigade has released the first footage of the Ukrainian Bars jet-powered drone in its interceptor configuration engaging a Russian Geran-5 drone. https://t.co/FRBKZQR9lFpic.twitter.com/njPJWXsDwo
Bars isn't small. It likely packs an explosive warhead. Potentially one that the operator can remotely trigger when the interceptor passes near its target.
Bars is adaptable. Its maker has reworked it from a 22-kg warhead and a 700-km range to a 60-kg warhead and a stated range of more than 1,000 km, and a heavier variant can carry a 105-kg warhead.
In the air-to-air interceptor role, long range is terribly important but speed is everything. There's an obvious way for the Ukrainians to boost the Bars' speed from its reported 700 km/h top speed to potentially even faster. They could shrink the drone's warhead and its fuel load, making it lighter in order to make it faster.
That may explain how a Bars can chase down a Geran-5 even as the Russians, by one Ukrainian analyst's estimate, try to push the Geran-5 toward 700 km/h or more.
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Cost is important, too. Russia churns out Gerans for an estimated $100,000 or so per drone. The cheaper the drone, the more copies the Russians can fling at Ukrainian cities. If it takes three or more interceptor drones to take down each of those 2,700 jet Gerans, Ukraine may need to deploy 8,000 to 10,000 interceptors a month.
Ukraine already builds more than 2,000 Bars a month, its maker says, but mostly in strike versions. How many go to air defense, and how much each costs, isn't public.
The supply of small jet engines could be a constraint. “Engines are a key element; we really import them in large quantities,” Zelensky said in an interview with Financial Times. "There are also domestically produced engines, but there are not enough of them.” A Ukrainian-made engine for Bars passed final tests in September.
Russia is now hitting the German investment that helps keep Ukraine’s economy running. Russian strikes have forced one of the Zhytomyr Oblast's largest employers, the German-invested Kromberg & Schubert plant, to shut down completely, putting 3,600 jobs at risk, the Zhytomyr Regional Military Administration said.
Germany is Ukraine’s single biggest partner by volume of security aid, providing about a third of all support the country receives, according to Ukraine. Russia’s destruction of a German-owned factory strikes at the economic ties Kyiv most depends on.
The plant produced electrical onboard cable systems for world-class cars. Its closure will cost the region millions of hryvnias in tax revenue. Some of its workers may leave the country, while others move to company sites in other cities.
Regional Administration Head Vitalii Bunechko said the plant’s management and owners are working out options for the workers’ future. The authorities also promise maximum support if a decision is made to restart operations.
A war that now reaches every corner of the economy
The factory is one loss in a campaign that has widened far beyond the front. Russia has escalated its drone and missile attacks through 2026, striking first at power plants and residential blocks, then trains, factories, retailer warehouses and medicine depots across Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Economy Ministry expects losses from Russian strikes to reach up to $10 billion this year, the same report noted. By late August, officials said Russia had destroyed about 90% of retail chains’ food logistics, a measure of how deep into civilian commerce the attacks now cut.
The slow bleed on businesses that survive
Even companies left standing lose working days to the strikes. Russia’s air war cost the average Ukrainian shopping mall 166.8 working days between 2022 and mid-2026, more than eight months of closed floors.
For Zhytomyr, the Kromberg & Schubert shutdown turns that slow erosion into an outright closure, removing a budget-forming employer at a stroke.
Russia bombs Kyiv almost every day. Inside the same city, a single account spent two years pumping out nearly 100,000 posts in Russia’s favor. Ukraine’s Security Service has served notices of suspicion on six more pro-Kremlin agitators across the country, among them the Kyiv woman behind those posts, which included calls to kill Ukrainians, the agency said.
Social media has become a channel for spreading hatred during the war, and the scale is striking. Except for Russian narratives, the Kyiv suspect also incited violence against a national minority and called for destroying the churches of religious communities, the agency said.
The agency framed the six as part of a wider effort to justify Russia’s aggression and inflame ethnic and religious hatred. Investigators notified them of suspicion.
Six accounts, one message from the Kremlin
The others span the country. In Mykolaiv, SBU cyber specialists detained a person they say acted on a Russian handler’s orders, administering a local Telegram channel of more than 13,000 subscribers in support of Russian forces, investigators said.
In Cherkasy Oblast, the wife of a priest of the Moscow-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church allegedly praised Vladimir Putin and denied Russia’s aggression in Telegram chats, while a Russian citizen with permanent residence in Ukraine allegedly called the full-scale war an “internal civil conflict.” In Zakarpattia region, two women allegedly urged the region’s “separation” from Ukraine.
What the suspects face, and where this fits
The charges are grave. The suspects were notified under several articles of Ukraine’s Criminal Code, including inciting ethnic and religious hatred combined with threats and justifying Russian aggression, and face up to 12 years in prison with confiscation of property, the agency said.
The sweep continues a long campaign against homegrown pro-Russian propagandists. In February, the SBU detained three suspected agitators who used Telegram and TikTok to call for missile strikes on Kyiv and to justify Russian war crimes, part of a pattern in which Moscow recruits users online to spread its narratives.
Ukraine receives Western weapons, but the code that teaches soldiers to aim them is increasingly its own. Developers of the Ukrainian battlefield reconnaissance and coordination system ComBat Vision have released a new plugin that turns the abstract math of artillery fire into a visual tool, letting crews simulate firing and learn to adjust it, the team says.
The developers built the tool around a problem they name plainly: the quality of specialists entering the military is falling rapidly.
“Artillery soldiers are sometimes yesterday’s TikTokers or "tanks" players,” the team explain, so the plugin makes firing and aiming as visual as possible to teach indirect fire quickly.
On screen, it draws a round’s flight path from the weapon’s firing tables and the dispersion ellipse for that gun and munition, warns of obstacles on the calculated trajectory, and simulates the shell after the shot with a training error added. It then shows real or simulated bursts, averages the correction across a series of hits, and lets the user enter corrections, including by voice, and watch the result.
The plugin draws its ballistics from MyGun, an app by Yaroslav Sherstiuk that automates ballistic and fire calculations for artillery. ComBat Vision itself coordinates troops and shares object data, integrating with optical sensors such as drones, ground robots and security cameras to fix targets in space.
From a single app to a platform with a plugin store
ComBat Vision’s bigger move is becoming a platform rather than a single app. The developers say they will open a plugin store within a week, where units can download the new artillery feature and others, such as repeater-coverage calculations and remote control of minefields.
The team has announced plans to open it, not results from using it, so its payoff, letting one platform add new tools without building a separate system each time, is a claim to watch rather than a proven gain.
As Washington leans on Ukraine to make a deal with Russia amid its diesel agreement ahead of the US elections, its European partners are meeting to keep it armed against deadly weapons.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he met Kongsberg CEO Eirik Lie and Norwegian Defense Minister Tore Sandvik in Oslo on 21 October to discuss more NASAMS air defenses, a day after meeting US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff in the same city.
Washington has spent the past two weeks easing pressure on Russia and leaning on Kyiv, with a diesel deal, throttled Starlink, and talk of cutting intelligence, while Ukraine’s European partners move in the other direction. Russia pounds Ukrainian cities almost nightly, and the Norwegian-made NASAMS is one of the systems holding that barrage off critical infrastructure.
Kongsberg opened an office in Ukraine in 2025. Its NASAMS uses the AIM-120 AMRAAM missile built by the US defense giant RTX, the same firm behind the Patriot launchers that are Ukraine’s only means of downing Russian ballistic and hypersonic missiles. The same missile is also used in F-16s.
“They effectively protect our people and critical infrastructure from Russian missile and drone attacks virtually every day,” Zelenskyy said.
He added that Ukraine is counting on additional defense support packages next month.
A European shield Ukraine wants tested this year
The visit also advanced a joint missile-defense project. Norway is actively involved in FREYJA, a European anti-ballistic missile program that Ukraine is helping to build.
“There are already first results in creating individual elements of the system. Today we determined where we can and must speed up to reach testing by the end of this year,” Zelenskyy said.
FREYJA now draws in 10 countries and is built around an interceptor missile designed to stop ballistic threats, a capability Europe largely lacks against Russia’s fastest weapons.
A push for satellites as Starlink falters
Zelenskyy also raised satellite communications amid the scandal over speed limitations on Elon Musk’s military Starlink service that disrupted a series of front-line missions.
“We discussed in detail the start of work on new satellite-communication capabilities for our soldiers,” the president said, adding that Kyiv would bring in partners able to support them.
The push comes after SpaceX throttled the StarShield military package Ukrainian drones use. Ukraine’s 7th Air Assault Corps said the connection began dropping as drones moved at speed, negatively affecting their missions.
Intercepting a jet-powered Geran can cost anywhere from $2,000 to $4 million depending on the weapon used. Cheap interceptor drones are the only option that keeps air defense affordable, the foundation of Ukrainian top war volunteer Serhii Sternenko said on Telegram.
Russia’s jet Gerans now carry every characteristic of a small cruise missile, and Russians keep raising their speed in answer to each Ukrainian countermeasure. Former commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi has framed the shift bluntly: an expensive Cold War missile has become a cheap weapon fired in bulk, and the drone is now “a missile in all but name,” affordable to any side, not only wealthy countries.
Sternenko heads a charitable foundation that has purchased 291,502 FPV drones, which have helped Ukraine’s military down more than 12,954 aerial targets. Also, has advised the team of former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov.
Three ways to kill a jet Geran, and what each costs
The foundation laid out the price of each method:
Aircraft (F-16, MiG-29, Su-27, Mirage 2000): $25,000 to $1.2 million per kill. Effective, but the stock of missiles is critically low, and some air-to-air types are no longer being replenished.
Surface-to-air and shoulder-fired systems (IRIS-T, NASAMS, Vampire, Avenger): about $30,000 to $4 million. Good for shielding key sites, but a missile capable of reaching a jet Geran at 6 to 7 kilometers costs $0.5 million to $4 million.
Interceptor drones (makers undisclosed): from $2,000. Cheap, with trained operators ready, but not yet scalable.
Why the cheapest option is the one that matters
No single tool is enough, the foundation stresses. Downing jet Gerans still needs aircraft, small aviation and missile systems together, but it is the interceptors that make the defense affordable, taking out the cheaper Shaheds and saving costly missiles for targets nothing else can reach.
The foundation says it has found a way to counter drones that already match small cruise missiles, working with Ukrainian manufacturers, without disclosing details. The method is far cheaper than other ways of downing jet Gerans and significantly strengthens air defense, it says, as part of a wider Ukrainian push to field interceptor drones fast enough to catch Russia’s fastest weapons.
During an expedition from 2 to 16 October in the Polish village of Łasków, a Ukrainian team uncovered the remains of more than 40 Ukrainians, including women, men, and children, the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, which commissioned the search, said on 20 October.
Ukraine and Poland disagree over how to interpret their shared history. One of the most contentious issues is the Volhynia tragedy, a series of massacres of Polish and Ukrainian civilians during World War II, the largest of which took place in Volhynia. Amid unresolved disputes over this history, Ukraine halted Polish search and exhumation work on its territory. Both sides have since resumed the work, and Łasków is the first Ukrainian search in Poland to find remains since 2016, the institute said.
During Poland’s 2025 presidential campaign, Karol Nawrocki said that unresolved historical issues could stand in the way of Ukraine's accession to the EU and NATO. The dispute is still live: on 20 October, Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz called on Kyiv to distance itself from the Lviv Oblast Council’s decision to declare 2027 the year of the UPA and Shukhevych. The searches, meanwhile, continue on both sides of the border.
More than 300 Ukrainians were killed in Łasków
On the final day of the investigation, specialists partially uncovered a mass grave containing the remains of eight people and documented all the findings. The victims’ ages, sexes, and causes of death will be established during exhumation work planned for spring 2027.
An expert photographs human remains, likely belonging to a Ukrainian killed in 1944 in the village of Łasków, Lublin Voivodeship, Poland. October 2026. Photo: Ukrainian Institute of National Memory
“According to witness accounts, a large number of the Ukrainian victims were buried—or, in fact, simply covered with a thin layer of soil—in hiding places, fields, and the yards of their own homes in the village of Łasków. They were buried only 10 days later by Ukrainians from the neighboring village of Smolihiv, who were then also killed and shot near the forest,” director of the Dolia memorial search center Sviatoslav Sheremeta said, according to Istorychna Pravda.
Search operations to locate the remains of Ukrainians killed in 1944 in the village of Łasków, Lublin Voivodeship, Poland. October 2026. Photo: Ukrainian Institute of National Memory
The Ukrainians were killed in an attack by units of the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) and the Peasants’ Battalions (Bataliony Chłopskie), the institute said when the search began.
“Most of the graves are located at a depth of 40–70 centimeters from the ground surface,” Sheremeta said.
Historical records indicate that more than 300 people were killed in the Polish village of Łasków on 10 March 1944, the media outlet reported. Ukrainian and Polish historians and experts have identified 327 village residents who were killed, although some researchers estimate the death toll at around 350, the report said. Further historical research and search operations may help establish the final number of victims.
Ukraine imposed a ban on exhumations but allowed the work to resume several years later
In response to the widespread destruction of Ukrainian monuments in Poland between 2015 and 2017, and what the Ukrainian side considered an inadequate investigation into these incidents, Ukraine imposed a moratorium on search operations and the exhumation of Poles killed by Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) fighters in 1943–1945, Ukrainska Pravda reported.
In January 2025, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced a “breakthrough,” saying there was a decision on the first exhumations of Polish victims of the UPA.
By April 2025, exhumations of Polish residents killed in 1945 had begun in Ukraine’s Ternopil Oblast. A joint Polish-Ukrainian team of experts took part in the work.
Searches in Ukraine have found mostly Polish soldiers from 1939, while Ukraine waits for permits in Poland
Most of the Polish remains recovered in Ukraine since the moratorium ended belong to soldiers killed fighting the Germans in September 1939, not to victims of the Volhynia killings. In Lviv, searchers exhumed at least 31 soldiers at Zboiska in 2025 and found 113 more at Holosko this autumn.
Of the 1943–1945 victims, joint Polish-Ukrainian teams have recovered 42 in Puzhnyky, Ternopil Oblast, which were reburied in September 2025, and 55 in Ostrówki and Wola Ostrowiecka in Volyn Oblast, which they found this summer. Polish historians attribute the Puzhnyky killings to a UPA unit. Ukraine’s Institute of National Memory first described the dead as victims of Soviet repression, then changed the wording to victims who died in 1945 after Poland’s Foreign Ministry objected. A search in Uhly, Rivne Oblast, this spring found no mass grave.
Ukraine’s first search in Poland in years, for UPA fighters in Jureczkowa in autumn 2025, found no remains. The Ukrainian team waited more than a year for permission to work in Łasków, which came on 31 August. Its requests for Sahryń, where Home Army units killed between 200 and 800 people on the same day, according to PAP, and for Przemyśl were still pending in July, with Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance asking for more documents.
The history row reaches the search permits
Kyiv has said it will keep issuing permits for Polish searches despite the tensions. In August, before the Łasków permit came through, Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland, Vasyl Bodnar, said Ukraine could not get a single permit to search for its dead in Poland while it kept approving Polish work in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Warsaw has kept raising the stakes over how Ukraine remembers the UPA. Nawrocki stripped President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Poland’s Order of the White Eagle in June after Zelenskyy named a military unit after the “Heroes of the UPA.” In July, the head of Nawrocki’s chancellery, Zbigniew Bogucki, spoke in the Sejm of genocide “in Volhynia and Eastern Lesser Poland,” using the interwar Polish name for what is now western Ukraine. In August, Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Bosacki warned that placing Stepan Bandera or Roman Shukhevych in Ukraine’s National Pantheon would damage relations with Poland and Europe.
Nawrocki has also sent the Sejm a bill that would punish promoting the ideology of the OUN and the UPA, which had its first reading on 3 July. Polish members of the European Parliament proposed adding the Volhynia tragedy and the UPA to the parliament’s report on Ukraine’s progress toward EU membership.
The two sides also disagree on the numbers the exhumations are meant to help settle. Polish estimates put the number of Poles killed in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia at about 100,000. Ukraine’s Institute of National Memory counts about 30,000 Polish and 10,000 Ukrainian victims identified so far.
Norway has put into force a new round of sanctions against Russia that hits banks, listed oil refineries, ports, airports, and suppliers of Russia’s military industry, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry announced. The rules mirror the EU’s 21st sanctions package, which Brussels adopted in July.
The EU’s 22nd package, adopted on 12 October, is principally a list of names, while the 21st brought significant new measures, lawyers noted. Among them are new tools against the shadow fleet, the tankers with murky ownership that Russia uses to move oil around sanctions. That fleet also sails along Norway’s coast, and a new Norwegian Coastal Administration report found that it poses a growing threat to security and the environment there.
Banks, refineries, and Sheremetyevo
Norway is not an EU member, but it has joined every EU sanctions package against Russia, with a few exceptions and national adjustments. Oslo backed this one politically on 11 August, and the rules took effect on 21 October. Part of the package was already in force. It placed travel restrictions and asset freezes on 48 people and asset freezes on 168 entities, and it listed 41 shadow fleet vessels on 14 August.
Norway’s transaction ban now covers 33 more Russian credit and financial institutions. A separate ban covers 22 more abroad, including in India, Mongolia, Nigeria, and the UAE.
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Another transaction ban reaches listed refineries in Russia and third countries that process Russian oil or help dodge sanctions. A Georgian refinery joins that list on 25 January 2027. The same ban adds two Russian ports and four Russian airports, including Moscow’s Sheremetyevo.
Drone gear and the shadow fleet
Export curbs on dual-use goods now cover 51 new entities that back Russia’s military industry. Some are in China, including Hong Kong, and others are in India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Türkiye, and the UAE. The banned-exports list adds nickel and beryllium powder, along with drone gear such as jamming and interception systems, launchers, and servo motors.
Oslo can now also list ships that service sanctioned shadow fleet tankers or swap cargo with them at sea. Elsewhere in Europe, France’s navy and UK forces have boarded sanctioned shadow fleet tankers this year.
The commander of an interceptor battalion in Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps said his unit destroyed several thousand Russian aerial targets during Operation Vivaldi, ArmyInform, the Defense Ministry’s news agency, reported on 21 October.
Operation Vivaldi is a Ukrainian counteroffensive north of Lyman in Donetsk Oblast, where the 3rd Army Corps has reported liberating settlements. In its third phase, Ukrainian forces reclaimed five settlements and expanded their gains to 176 square kilometers. Strikes on Russian logistics and electronic warfare likely neutralized Russia’s drone defenses before Ukraine sent in armor, the Institute for the Study of War assessed.
The commander, who uses the callsign “Betsyk,” leads the interceptor battalion of the 1030th Anti-Aircraft Missile-Artillery Regiment “Aquila,” part of the 3rd Army Corps. He said Russian forces deployed large numbers of reconnaissance drones to locate Ukrainian positions after the corps began advancing.
Betsyk named Zala, Orlan, Supercam, Merlin, and Knyaz Veshchiy Oleg among the reconnaissance drones used by Russian forces.
Russia also brought in reinforcements and units operating strike drones, including first-person-view (FPV) quadcopters, Molniya fixed-wing FPV drones, and Lancet crews, he said. At one stage, Russian forces deployed crews from their Rubicon drone unit to disrupt the advance, but the move did not change the situation.
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Betsyk said his battalion’s work deprived Russian forces of the ability to strike Ukrainian troops and track their movements.
Jet-powered Shaheds: speed is the main challenge
The regiment also works against Russian strike drones heading for targets behind the front line. Betsyk said interceptor crews had destroyed some jet-powered drones, but not in significant numbers.
The main difficulty is speed, he said. Interceptor drones need to reach 500–600 km/h to intercept Russian jet-powered attack drones, according to Betsyk.
For now, the regiment mainly uses conventional air-defense systems against these targets: self-propelled anti-aircraft systems, surface-to-air missile systems, and portable surface-to-air missile systems. Betsyk said these systems were historically designed to engage jet-powered targets.
He compared the current challenge with the early use of piston-powered Shaheds. Those drones initially posed a serious threat but later became easier for Ukrainian air defenses to counter. Russia has largely stopped using piston-powered Shaheds on most fronts since summer, he said, but continues to use piston-powered Gerbera drones, which are relatively cheap and can partly exhaust Ukrainian air defenses. The main drones Russian forces use now are jet-powered Shaheds, he said.
Betsyk expects Russian forces to adapt if Ukraine fields effective interceptors against jet-powered drones. They will seek ways to evade the interceptors, increase speed, improve navigation, and change their tactics, he said. However, he added that the battalion had not observed a major evolution so far and did not expect the drones’ speed to double.
What the corps says Vivaldi achieved
Separately, 3rd Army Corps commander Andrii Biletskyi said Ukrainian forces retook 277 square kilometers and 16 settlements during Operation Vivaldi, Ukrainska Pravda reported. Biletskyi also said Russian losses exceeded 8,000 personnel, according to ArmyInform. These figures are Ukrainian claims and have not been independently verified.
Ukrainian drone maker Wild Hornets is rethinking projects it is currently working on, including launching interceptors from aerial platforms, because of limits on SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet. Spokesman Mike Orliuk told The War Zone (TWZ) this on 20 October. The company builds Sting interceptors, which it says destroyed over 15,000 Shaheds and Gerberas, a cheaper Shahed lookalike, in a year. Orliuk said Sting’s current operations are unaffected.
The stakes rise as Russia shifts to faster drones. Ukrainian defense technology adviser Serhii Beskrestnov counted more than 2,500 jet-powered Gerans, Russia’s version of the Shahed, in August. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 16 October that these drones fly faster than 400 km/h. He added that some Ukrainian interceptors chasing them work through Starlink. When the link was slowed, Ukraine could not intercept some of them, he said.
How Sting stays connected
“Our own communications system provides the basic connection to our interceptors,” Orliuk said. The company’s remote-control technology can draw on various internet sources, he added, though the military often uses Starlink. Even then, the terminal does not need to move at high speed. It only links the command center to a ground station, which Orliuk compared to a cell tower.
“For these needs, everything is operating normally with Starlink at the moment,” he said.
An air-launch project under review
“Some drones carry a terminal on board and need to fly at high speed with it,” Orliuk said. “In such cases, Starlink’s limitations make their operation impossible.”
That is why the company is rethinking the air-launch project. Wild Hornets has made no clear decision yet but will test alternatives, Orliuk said. He declined to describe them.
“I believe, in any case, depending on a single solution is very risky,” he said.
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Other firms share the concern
Orliuk said he has spoken with other companies that rely far more on Starlink and have expressed concerns. He pointed to growing interest in Europe’s Eutelsat network, though “creating something like Starlink won’t be easy.”
Who ordered the slowdown remains unclear. The order to slow Ukraine’s Starshield service came from inside the White House, two US officials and a Western official said. A US official told TWZ the president never made such a request. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on 17 October that the slowdown had “nothing to do with the White House” and called “a report on that”“categorically false,” without saying which report he meant.
Elon Musk ordered the speed cap on Starshield, the military version of SpaceX’s Starlink network that Ukraine’s drones rely on, The Wall Street Journal reported on 20 October. Earlier, Musk said that such limits are decided by the US military and “ultimately POTUS.” Speaking to reporters in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, on 20 October, according to WSJ, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “We haven’t made any directives or anything like that,” CBS News reported.
For a week, no one with a hand on the system said the decision was theirs. Musk pointed to the US military and the president, and Trump said he did not know who it was. Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials said the cap has hampered the drones they use to intercept Russian Shaheds and to strike Russian forces in occupied territory. Kyiv says the cap remains in place, and at about 160 km/h it makes intercepting jet-powered drones and missiles that fly about twice as fast virtually impossible.
Musk spoke with administration officials, including Trump, before the cap, a source says
Musk capped the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the network, people familiar with the matter told WSJ. The slowdown, which began on 14 October, left some of Ukraine’s strike and interceptor drones virtually useless, WSJ said.
WSJ’s sources differ on Trump’s role. Some US officials said Musk acted on his own and that Trump did not specifically order any retribution against Ukraine. One person said Musk spoke with several senior administration officials, Trump among them, before imposing the cap. Two people said Musk and Trump discussed the decision by phone soon after the slowdown became public.
During the uproar, SpaceX representatives called White House counterparts. They asked for a shared message that the company and the administration had coordinated before Musk’s directive, the people said. The White House ran an informal inquiry into who ordered the slowdown, WSJ said.
Musk held several conversations with administration officials before the order to understand the president’s thinking, CBS reported, citing sources. He dislikes his company being seen as profiting from the war, and it is unclear how his order was carried out, CBS said.
Hegseth said the US had not pulled anything back. He said Starlink “has the option” to make decisions under its terms of service, and that from the Pentagon’s view nothing had changed, CBS reported.
Speaking to reporters as he left the White House on 16 October, Trump said he did not think either he or Musk was responsible, The Telegraph reported. On 19 October, he said, “I don’t know who it was, but I’d like to find out.”
Last week, a bipartisan group of senators asked the Pentagon’s inspector general to investigate whether officials “directed” or “authorized” changes to Starlink and Starshield services and intelligence sharing affecting Ukraine.
Earlier reports pointed at the White House
On 15 October, Reuters reported that the order came from inside the White House. The officials said Pentagon leaders received a message that the Starshield service for Ukraine’s military needed to be slowed, but did not say who made the decision or who carried it out. A senior US official said “No such request was ever made by the president.”
On 16 October, The Telegraph reported, citing four sources, that Musk approached Trump with the idea of the speed limits. One of the sources said Trump agreed.
Analysts and Kyiv say the cap is still in place
Michael Kofman, a war analyst at the Carnegie Endowment, said, according to WSJ, that Ukrainian strike and interceptor drones remain limited to 160 km/h. He said actual connections run below 130 km/h, which still hampers strikes and air defense.
On 20 October, Ukraine’s top diplomat in Washington, Denys Sienik, said Kyiv was still waiting for answers from the Pentagon and SpaceX, WSJ reported.
The Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is short of cooling water, diesel, and qualified staff, Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence (HUR) said on 20 October, warning of rising risks to nuclear safety. The water level in the plant’s cooling pond fell to 12.27 meters on 12 October, down from 12.86 meters in July, while the plant needs at least 15 meters to fully meet its needs, according to HUR. Russian managers are also considering cutting the number of backup generators kept on automatic standby, which would inevitably raise the risk of emergencies, the intelligence agency said.
Europe’s largest nuclear plant has been under Russian control since March 2022. Its six reactors have been in cold shutdown since April 2024, but they and their spent fuel still need constant cooling, which depends on water, on a single remaining external power line, and on diesel generators as the last resort. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warned on 16 October that depleted diesel reserves increase the risk that nuclear safety is challenged if the plant loses power again, and that the situation may become acute in winter.
A pond with no source to refill it
The cooling pond has been sinking since Russia destroyed the Kakhovka dam in June 2023, cutting off the reservoir that fed it. Energoatom, Ukraine’s state nuclear operator, recorded 15.70 meters in October 2023. By June 2025, the level had fallen below 14 meters against a norm of above 16, Oleh Korikov, head of Ukraine’s State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate, said.
HUR’s figures show the decline continuing this year, from 12.86 meters in July to 12.63 in early August, 12.55 at the end of August, and 12.34 at the start of October. In 2025, the IAEA said groundwater wells on site were supplying cooling water for the safety systems. Its team had not been allowed to inspect a new dam in the cooling channel, access IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi called essential to assess the cooling water situation.
The cooling pond of the occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, surrounded by the drained bed of the former Kakhovka Reservoir, 12 October 2026. Image: Copernicus
Diesel for a blackout that Russia cannot supply
If the plant loses external power, its diesel generators would burn about 150 metric tons of fuel a day in a prolonged blackout, HUR said. The occupation administration cannot deliver enough, so reserves stay minimal. Russian managers are also looking for covert fuel supplies, including low-quality fuel, without informing the IAEA mission, according to HUR.
The IAEA has already reported fewer generators on automatic standby. Since late September, only four of the plant’s 20 emergency generators would start automatically in a blackout, with the rest needing manual connection, which Grossi said deviates from normal practice. No diesel deliveries have reached the plant since March, the agency said on 16 October.
The plant spent nearly three weeks on generators after losing its last external line on 20 August, EP reported, until the Ferosplavna-1 line was restored under an IAEA-brokered ceasefire. The main 750 kV Dniprovska line remains out. HUR said the Kremlin rejected Ukraine’s proposal to supply power through it, which raises the nuclear safety risks.
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A plant short of the people who know it
About 5,000 people now work at the plant, against roughly 11,000 before the full-scale invasion, and only 1,450 were on site, HUR said. The plant lacks specialists who know its equipment, as well as the experts needed for repairs and for reconnecting it to external power. Russian managers plan training courses for applicants from Russian regions to replace Ukrainian staff, according to HUR.
In Enerhodar, the city where the plant’s staff live, mobile, internet, electricity, and water supplies keep failing, HUR said.
Drones struck the seized Ukrtelecom building in occupied Luhansk overnight on 21 October, hitting the mobile operator Russia’s occupation authorities run there under the name “Lugacom,” Russian Telegram channel Astra and Ukrainian monitoring channels reported. The strike came a night after drones hit “Ugletelecom,” the occupation’s telecom operator in Donetsk, which reportedly runs on equipment seized from Ukrainian companies. Footage posted by Ukrainian monitors shows heavy fire damage inside the Luhansk building. Ukraine has not officially commented.
Ukraine has spent months hitting the supply lines, depots, and infrastructure that sustain Russia’s occupation of southern and eastern Ukraine, with mid-range drones striking trucks, trains, and communications towers well behind the front. This spring the commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, Robert “Madyar” Brovdi, promised Russian troops in occupied territory a “stone age.” This time the targets were the networks the occupation runs on.
The occupied Ukrtelecom building in Luhansk after a drone strike, 21 October 2026. Photo: Exilenova+/Telegram
A burned-out Ukrtelecom building in Luhansk
Residents reported explosions in Luhansk overnight, and the former Ukrtelecom building was attacked by a drone, Astra reported, citing its readers. The occupation runs its mobile operator, “Lugacom,” from the seized building, and built its network on equipment taken from Ukraine’s Kyivstar, according to dev.ua. The building also houses an occupation-run telecom services center. Luhansk is situated in the easternmost Ukrainian region and has been occupied since 2014.
Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ said Ukraine’s Defense Forces struck the building, which also hosts an information technology and technical support center. A video it posted shows extensive burning inside. Petro Andriushchenko, head of the Center for the Study of Occupation, said the drones hit a data center in the building.
Occupation officials had not commented, according to NV. In September, drones hit a hardware store in Luhansk, sparking a large fire. Earlier this month, fires broke out at a Russian supply base in Khrustalnyi, also in occupied Luhansk Oblast.
The occupied Ukrtelecom building in Luhansk after a drone attack, 21 October 2026. Photo: Astra/Telegram
Donetsk’s occupation telecom operator hit the night before
The night before, drones struck “Ugletelecom,” one of the key communications operators in occupied Donetsk Oblast, Exilenova+ reported. It operates from an office building at 60 Postysheva Street, where Ukraine’s state holding company Donbasugleobespechenie was registered before the occupation, according to RBC-Ukraine. Astra found about 27 organizations registered at the address, including internet provider Fticom, and damage on four floors.
Ugletelecom runs on equipment seized from Ukrainian companies, Donetsk-focused outlet Kochegarka reported, citing local sources. The occupation also moved local businesses that had used Ukrtelecom over to it, according to dev.ua. Residents had reported powerful explosions in the city.
The office building on Postysheva Street housing “Ugletelecom,” the occupation’s telecom operator, in occupied Donetsk after a drone strike, 20 October 2026. Photo: Exilenova+/Telegram
Power cuts across the occupied territories
In occupied Donetsk Oblast, drones attacked the 330 kV Pivdenna substation in Chystiakove, and locals reported outages, Telegram channel DroneBomber said, calling the report preliminary. Occupied Donetsk went into a blackout on the evening of 20 October after strikes on its power supply, Andriushchenko said. He also reported air defense activity and hits in the Mariupol area.
In occupied Crimea, residents of Krasnoperekopsk reported explosions and hits near the railway station, then partial power cuts, monitoring channel Crimean Wind said. In occupied Melitopol, drones tried to attack the city’s power facilities at around 03:30 but missed, Russian senator Dmitry Rogozin claimed.
French mapper Clément Molin counted 770 confirmed Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian trucks in the logistics zone 10 km behind the front line in September, up from 630 in August.
Russian drones struck a 24-story apartment building in Kyiv, a university building in Kremenchuk, warehouses, and hypermarkets overnight on 21 October, killing two people in the capital and an elderly couple near Kharkiv, Ukrainian officials said. The attack went well beyond Ukraine’s power grid, hitting places where people live, study, and shop. Over the past day, Russian strikes also killed three more civilians and injured dozens across several oblasts.
Russia has kept up nightly drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities through the autumn, mostly aimed at the energy system. It struck Ukraine’s energy 76 times during a US-declared truce, and fired 39 ballistic missiles at the grid three days after Washington announced it. This time the targets also included homes, a university, warehouses, and shops.
Overnight, Russia launched 186 Shahed-type and other attack drones, 88 of them jet-powered, along with Iskander-K cruise missiles, Ukraine’s Air Force said. Air defenses downed or jammed 150 drones. Hits were recorded at 27 locations, and debris fell at 13 more.
Two killed on the 20th floor in Kyiv
A drone hit a 24-story residential building in Kyiv’s Sviatoshynskyi district at the level of the 20th floor, starting a fire, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. The fire spread over about 70 square meters, and rescuers found the bodies of two people while clearing debris, the State Emergency Service said. Two people were injured and hospitalized, Klitschko said, including a 46-year-old man who was walking past the building, according to the police.
A rescuer carries a cat out after a Russian drone strike on an apartment building in Kyiv, 21 October 2026. Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine
In the Desnianskyi district, seven parked cars caught fire, the State Emergency Service said; police put the number at about 10. The evening before, drones hit a warehouse building in Desnianskyi and a transport facility in Solomianskyi district.
An elderly couple killed near Kharkiv
In the village of Korotych near Kharkiv, Russian drones killed an 81-year-old woman and an 83-year-old man, Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleh Syniehubov said. Rescuers recovered their bodies from the rubble of their house, the State Emergency Service said. Eleven people, including a two-month-old boy and an eight-year-old girl, were treated for acute stress, and 13 houses were damaged.
A house destroyed by a Russian drone strike in Korotych, Kharkiv Oblast, 21 October 2026. Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine
A university, warehouses, and hypermarkets
In Kremenchuk, a drone hit a building of the Mykhailo Ostrohradskyi National University, setting it on fire, the State Emergency Service said. Three people were injured, including a 16-year-old who was hospitalized with a concussion, Poltava Oblast Governor Vitalii Diakivnych said. In the Poltava community, drones damaged an administrative building and warehouses.
Firefighters put out a fire at an enterprise in Lviv district after a Russian attack, 21 October 2026. Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine
In Lviv Oblast, an attack set fire to an enterprise in a village in Lviv district and injured two people, while a house was damaged in a neighboring village, the State Emergency Service said. In Uman, drones hit a hypermarket and damaged a hotel, injuring one person, Cherkasy Oblast Governor Ihor Taburets said.
A hypermarket in Uman damaged by a Russian drone strike, 21 October 2026. Photo: Cherkasy Oblast Military Administration
On the evening of 20 October, a drone hit an Epicentr hypermarket in Pervomaisk, Mykolaiv Oblast, injuring eight people, acting Governor Heorhii Reshetilov said. Russia also struck a hypermarket in Rivne Oblast several times that day, injuring four and forcing rescuers to pull back while they fought the fire, the State Emergency Service said.
More dead and injured over the past day
The overnight strikes followed a day of attacks. In Kyiv, Russian strikes on 20 October killed one person and injured 21, three of them seriously, Klitschko said. An administrative building caught fire, rescuers freed four people trapped on its upper floors, and a healthcare facility was damaged, the State Emergency Service said. In Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, two men were killed and seven people injured that day, regional officials said.
In Kharkiv Oblast, Russian attacks over the past day injured 11 more people in Kharkiv, Derhachi, and Shestakove, Syniehubov said. In Kherson Oblast, 13 people were injured, three of them children, the regional administration reported. In the Chernihiv region, an 89-year-old woman and a young woman were hurt in strikes on villages and on Novhorod-Siverskyi, Governor Viacheslav Chaus said, and a 21-year-old woman was injured in the Sumy community, according to the Sumy regional administration.
More than 5,000 subscribers lost power in Volyn Oblast’s Lutsk district, Governor Roman Romaniuk said. In Ternopil Oblast’s Kremenets district, 7,949 subscribers remained without power after earlier Russian strikes on energy facilities, the regional administration reported.
European Parliament Vice President Pina Picierno has announced a hunger strike to draw international attention to the humanitarian disaster in Russian-occupied Oleshky in Ukraine’s Kherson Oblast, she wrote on X on 20 October. The Italian lawmaker called on associations, citizens, and institutions to join her and demand a humanitarian truce, food and medicine for residents, and safe evacuation for those who want to leave.
Russia has occupied the left bank of the Dnipro in Kherson Oblast since 2022. Its forces have cut Oleshky off, leaving its remaining residents short of food and medicine, Ukrainian officials and UN monitors say. Oleshky had about 24,000 residents before the full-scale invasion. About 1,700 remain, including 47 children, Danielle Bell, head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said. Picierno’s protest adds to growing international pressure after Pope Leo XIV asked Russian leader Vladimir Putin for a truce to help the town.
“This battle cannot be mine alone”
In Oleshky, thousands of people are trapped in territory occupied by the Russian army, without regular access to food and medicine, Picierno wrote. Mined areas make escape extremely dangerous, she added.
“Those who stay risk dying of hunger, those who try to leave risk their lives,” she wrote. “To draw international attention to this emergency, I have announced a hunger strike. But this battle cannot be mine alone.”
She said the campaign is meant to support the efforts of Pope Leo XIV and others trying to avert a humanitarian tragedy. By the morning of 21 October, 277 people had joined the initiative, Liga reported.
Drones carry food packages across the Dnipro to starving residents of Russian-occupied Oleshky, Kherson Oblast, September 2026. Screenshot: Kherson Oblast Military Administration via Telegram
Picierno, who left Italy’s Democratic Party in June and joined the Renew Europe group, has backed military aid to Ukraine, tougher sanctions on Russia, and Ukraine’s bid to join the EU, according to Liga.
A town Kyiv calls a “death trap”
On 16 October, Pope Leo XIV expressed deep concern to Putin about the situation in Oleshky. He asked for a truce so that food and medical aid could be delivered and civilians could leave voluntarily and safely.
Oleshky, Kherson Oblast, has been under Russian occupation since 2022, following Russia’s capture of the city during the initial phase of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Photo: Dmytro Lubinets
A day later, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha urged the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross to help evacuate residents.
“Russians are trying to turn the Ukrainian town of Oleshky into a death trap,” Sybiha wrote. “Dozens of bodies lie in the streets or in homes, as Russians forbid residents from burying them.”
Ukraine has flown tons of food into the town by drone. Russian troops seize some of the parcels and accuse the people who receive them of cooperating with Ukraine, local officials say. A resident said eggs there cost nearly 20 times the US price.
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Russia holds 2,000 people hostage in Oleshky without food or water—Ukraine flew 4,000 kg of food to locals across the Dnipro
Evacuation talks “moved forward”
Talks with Russia on a ceasefire and evacuation are at the stage of “agreeing the final details,” Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said on 18 October. He estimated that about 6,000 civilians, including up to 200 children, remain in Oleshky and six nearby settlements. He gave no timeline.
On 20 October, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine was doing everything it could to help people in Oleshky, calling the situation there “simply terrible.”
Russian diesel shipments are returning to Türkiye and Brazil after Moscow lifted its export ban and the US temporarily suspended sanctions on Russian fuel supplies, Reuters reported on 20 October, citing shipping data from Kpler and LSEG.
The resumption of exports gives Russia another source of revenue to support its war against Ukraine, allowing Moscow to profit from fuel sales despite the domestic shortages that prompted its export ban. The US sanctions relief is helping Russia restore access to international buyers while its full-scale invasion continues.
According to Reuters, at least two tankers carrying Russian diesel have departed the Baltic port of Primorsk for Türkiye and Brazil in recent days. Each vessel is carrying around 300,000 barrels, according to Kpler data cited by Reuters. Morocco has also resumed importing Russian diesel since the export ban was lifted.
Russia ended its self-imposed diesel export ban on 9 October after reaching a deal with US President Donald Trump to resume fuel supplies to global markets. Moscow had introduced the ban to address domestic shortages triggered by Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian oil refineries.
Those supply problems have not been resolved, but the US temporarily lifted sanctions on Russian fuel supplies as part of the deal, allowing Moscow to prioritize export opportunities despite domestic shortages. EU and UK embargoes on Russian fuel imports remain in force.
Russian diesel exports remain below last year's levels
Russian diesel exports averaged around 345,000 barrels per day in 2026 so far, down 41% from the previous year, according to shipping data cited by Reuters. Exports had already fallen during the summer before Moscow imposed its ban.
Türkiye accounted for around 34% of Russian diesel loadings this year, followed by Brazil at 24% and Morocco at 10%, Kpler data showed.
Trump said Russia would initially export 300,000 metric tons of diesel, followed by 500,000 tons in November and 1 million tons afterward. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said Moscow could raise exports to as much as 3.5 million metric tons per month by the end of the year.
US seeks to ease diesel prices
The deal comes as Trump seeks to present a picture of bringing down diesel prices ahead of the US midterm elections on 3 November. Fuel prices have risen amid disruptions to global energy supplies caused by Trump's war with Iran, which has shaken oil markets and raised concerns about supply routes.
Trump has blamed Ukraine's attacks on Russian oil infrastructure for driving up energy prices, despite the broader market disruption caused by his war with Iran. The Russian diesel deal offers a way to increase global fuel supplies, but also allows Moscow to earn revenue from exports while its war against Ukraine continues.
However, the volumes from Russia initially outlined by Trump would cover only a small share of the global supply shortfall.
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