• The Ukrainian army stays in control of front lines, but safety in cities deteriorates.

• Kyiv was on fire again as Russian attacks on cities intensify.
• Rubikon published stats on destroyed Ukrainian drones, decoys being the second most prominent.
• Russia’s defence ministry will not let go of the Armata: it wants to turn it into an air-defence system, drawing ridicule.
• Maps of the day: Sloviansk-Kramatorsk direction; Orikhiv direction, Oleksandrivsk direction, Kupiansk direction.
• Videos of the day: a burning Tu-95MS strategic bomber; a Ukrainian firefighter showed how they extinguished the Academy of Sciences building.

The Ukrainian army stays in control of front lines, but safety in cities deteriorates. The war has reached a stage in which two separate conflicts appear to be taking place simultaneously.

While Ukraine is currently losing the battle in the air and its cities are continually suffering missile and strikes by jet drones, the situation on battlefields is far better.

Last week, Denník N spent time in Ukraine with former chief of the general staff Daniel Zmeko. During the trip, reporters met commanding officers from several brigades and battalions operating from the Izium area to Zaporizhzhia, and all of them said they had the situation under control.

The officers spoke about the accuracy of Russian maps, which they said did not correspond to reality. In some places, Russian soldiers are as far as 20 km from the locations where, according to the Kremlin, they are supposed to be.

Northern flank of the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration: This is a specific section of the front where the Ukrainian army has been reporting its advances only very slowly, while Ukrainian analysts have remained silent so as not to disclose anything sensitive. Russian bloggers, by contrast, are depicting the situation more closely to reality.

Yet official Russian maps persist with utterly nonsensical lines. We do not know to what extent this is an effort to deceive domestic and foreign audiences, and to what extent they genuinely believe it in Moscow. It is worth looking at how the regime wants the situation to appear, and what it is really like.

The first map in the overview was produced by the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti and depicts the area around Lyman, on the northern flank of the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk direction, as of 29 September. Lyman is shown as occupied in the middle of the map. The map’s author also continues to insist that the Russian army had captured Sviatohirsk — at the tip of the red salient in the centre of the map — and that Russia controls the entire, now non-existent salient with the village of Novoselivka at its centre. Yet Russian outlets Rybar and Two Majors write that fighting is taking place on the Zherebets river around the villages of Terny — on the far right of the map — and Yampil.

The following map is much closer to reality. According to it, the front line roughly follows the Zherebets river, which corresponds to Rybar’s claims.

In the Lyman direction, in Donetsk region, Ukrainian defenders successfully repelled three attempts by the russian fascist invaders to advance near the settlements of Ridkodub, Novoselivka and Drobysheve.

1/2 pic.twitter.com/Zs9VdLLnAr

— Michael MacKay (@mhmck) September 28, 2026

Rybar’s map looks like this:

Kupiansk direction: The city of Kupiansk is a similar case to Sviatohirsk. Putin declared it captured in August last year. And once the commander-in-chief had declared this, his news agency continued to draw the map as though it were true. Kupiansk is shown as occupied in its centre, but there are further inaccuracies.

For example, the Kremlin agency claims that the Ukrainian bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Oskil river south of the city no longer exists. Ukrainians do face major difficulties supplying it, and various analysts have repeatedly warned of an impending disaster, but the Russian map is nevertheless hopelessly inaccurate.

Also note the small town of Borova at the bottom centre. RIA Novosti also shows it as occupied, although this is not the case.

This time, we will compare the Russian agency’s data with a map by Ukrainian analysts at DeepStateUA, because they updated it on Tuesday to reflect a new advance by Ukrainian units north of Kupiansk — again in the centre of the map — near the village of Dvorichne. In recent weeks, they have succeeded in reducing the Russian bridgehead on the western bank of the Oskil; the change since the end of August is marked in blue. Borova is again at the bottom centre, while below Kupiansk is the Ukrainian bridgehead that Russia claims does not exist.

Orikhiv: This is one of the places where Ukrainian officers said during reporters’ trip to Ukraine that Russian maps were particularly inaccurate.

The Russian map is again from RIA Novosti and again ignores reality along the entire length of this section of the front. Its main target is the city of Zaporizhzhia, with a population of three quarters of a million, in the centre left, while the small town of Orikhiv, at the bottom centre, is a defensive hub.

Putin’s news agency places soldiers roughly 12 km from the southern edge of Zaporizhzhia; in reality, they are around 24 km away. It shows Orikhiv as occupied and the Russian army advancing from the east towards the village of Novorozivka, north of Orikhiv.

The OSINT project Playfra covers this area in the greatest detail. Its map appears to depict a different war altogether. Everywhere, Russian positions are significantly shifted compared with those shown by RIA Novosti.

The differences have a simple explanation. On the western flank near Zaporizhzhia, the Kremlin agency simply ignores the successful counterattacks carried out by Ukrainians there this year. On the eastern flank, it uncritically accepts every claim by the Russian defence ministry and, with equal lack of scrutiny, considers captured every small village where a Russian soldier raised a flag during a suicidal mission, even several months ago. Although those soldiers have since been killed or captured, RIA Novosti acts as though they still control the village.

Playfra also offers a more detailed view of the current fighting around Orikhiv, drawing on analyses by Ukrainian analyst Kostyantyn Mashovets.

Orikhiv direction.

Factually, no changes. Clearings are conducted constantly, but the Russians also continue to infiltrate: the global situation doesn't change.
The stalemate situation that I had reported some weeks ago, as well as the gray zone, remains both actual as of the… https://t.co/6rau9f7wcK pic.twitter.com/5uIK3K78Bm

— Playfra (@Playfra0) September 28, 2026

Of course, Russians too occasionally notice that they are living in a parallel reality. Most recently, the influential Aleksandr Kharchenko wrote about it:

“Comparing our maps with Ukrainian ones can be shocking. The zones of control differ by dozens of kilometres,” he acknowledged, adding that both sides lie, although he focused specifically on false Russian reports.

He described Russian soldiers who are the first to break into a village as heroes. But, according to him, wars are not won through heroism, but through a functioning system.

“Errors in our maps and information arise because they rely on heroes. Everywhere a Russian soldier is sitting is considered our territory,” Kharchenko argued that this had to change because “our territory is only where a Russian soldier is sitting with food, water and ammunition. This is territory from which we can fight the enemy”.

Kyiv was on fire again as relentless Russian attacks on cities intensify. In the capital, Russians particularly targeted energy infrastructure. “Not a single day has passed since the summer without the enemy attacking energy infrastructure. But this is the first such massive and complex attack since the end of the previous heating season,” Ukrainian PM Serhiy Koretskyi told NV.

In addition to causing serious damage, the attacks on Kyiv and other cities killed at least five residents and injured another 14.

President Volodymyr Zelensky also said that, thanks to the delivery of new surface-to-air missiles, five Russian ballistic missiles had been shot down.

Since last night, emergency services and repair crews have been working to address the aftermath of the Russian strike. It was a difficult attack – nearly 190 attack drones, as well as ballistic missiles. And the main target was energy infrastructure in the capital and the Kyiv… pic.twitter.com/wUNWEUdpTL

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) September 30, 2026

Rubikon published stats on destroyed Ukrainian drones, decoys being the second most prominent. Ukraine’s response is continuing in parallel with the Russian offensive against cities. But the stats currently weigh against Ukraine.

While the effectiveness of Ukrainian air defence has fallen dramatically since the arrival of Russian jet drones, Russia has successfully shot down Ukrainian ones. For example, the recent large-scale drone raid on Moscow involved several hundred drones — and, according to some sources, more than 1,000 — but only 10 penetrated the airspace above the Russian capital.

In this context, the Russian Rubikon unit published interesting statistics. Although it operates at and near the front, its data for September show that, of 827 Ukrainian drones hit, as many as 247 were Maya-type drones — unmanned decoys intended to deceive Russian air defences. They look very similar to FP-1 attack drones but, unlike them, carry no warhead.

For context, the top two most frequently intercepted Ukrainian UAVs by Russian forces are both decoy drones — the “Maya.” This suggests that Ukraine’s deception strategy is working, as the Ukrainian Defense Forces have increasingly begun deploying decoy UAVs to mislead Russian… https://t.co/NKPvbzm38U

— Oko Gora (@oko_gora_tg) September 29, 2026

Russia’s defence ministry will not let go of the Armata: it wants to turn it into an air-defence system, drawing ridicule. Zvezda News is a media outlet directly controlled by the Russian defence ministry. On Monday evening, it published technical news on the long-forgotten T-14 Armata tank, which Russian propaganda had claimed would revolutionise tank warfare.

Today, it is beyond any doubt that the project is dead and new information confirms this, but its authors presumably intended to convey precisely the opposite.

“Rostec has upgraded the Russian T-14 Armata tank into a short-range air-defence system,” the report stated, citing military expert Oleg Shaladin.

The list of new features appears impressive at first glance. The new version of the Armata has received new electronic equipment; its 125 mm main gun is to be replaced by a 152 mm gun, allowing the tank to fire Kornet anti-tank missiles with a range of 10 km. The new Armata will also be able to use Krasnopol guided artillery shells, which are used by more modern howitzers, while the tank is also to gain the ability to operate as the aforementioned short-range air-defence system.

Further changes have already been made to the project, but even the brief list above makes it clear that the Armata is no longer intended to be a tank, but rather some kind of hybrid capable of fighting everything and nothing at the same time.

Among others, the Russian Telegram channel Military Informant commented on the report, openly mocking it. It said Rostec had mixed together “all the old tales from 10 years ago” in its list of changes, but that in practice “the tank never got beyond parades and training grounds, because it was created for an entirely different war, which ultimately never happened. It became conceptually obsolete from the outset, without even having had the chance to fight”.

Videos of the day

Russia has lost another Tu-95MS strategic bomber. This is the 12th confirmed loss of this type — the Oryx website has not yet updated its figures, so it records only 11. According to available information, the aircraft crashed shortly after taking off from a base in Amur region. Six crew members were reportedly killed, while one survived with injuries. Armed with cruise missiles, the aircraft was probably heading for Olenya air base, from which Russia attacks Ukraine.

A Russian Tu-95MS Bear heavy bomber crashed on takeoff in Amur this evening during a training flight.

The airframe is a total loss, with no survivors reported. pic.twitter.com/tbujV6RVP5

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) September 29, 2026

Denník N wrote on Tuesday about the attack on the headquarters of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. A video has since emerged from the helmet camera of one of the firefighters involved in the rescue operation.

Helmet-cam footage of Ukrainian firefighters tackling the blaze at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv on Monday after a Russian drone strike. pic.twitter.com/DqEcz3wPlK

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) September 30, 2026

• Kyiv is currently in a worse situation than Kharkiv when it comes to air-raid alerts.

• The Russians struck the National Academy of Sciences, forcing scientists to flee through windows. Why did they target it?
• What upgrades they are testing on their Geran-5 drones.
• According to Rybar, Russia’s goal in attacking Kyiv is also to persuade Europe to stop helping Ukraine.
• Maps of the day: The situation near Lyman and the gap between the Russian ministry and reality.
• Videos of the day: an attack on the border crossing with Poland; footage from the cockpit of an Su-25; a robot avoids a drone; Russians flee among a crowd of civilians.

Kyiv has experienced its worst attacks since the start of the war in recent weeks. According to an analysis by French OSINT analyst Clément Molin, the capital was hit by 155 Russian missiles and drones in September, compared with 113 in August and 21 in March.

Denník N reporter Mirek Tóda, who visited Ukraine last week, said that Kyiv was currently worse off than Kharkiv in terms of air attacks, even though Kharkiv lies just 30 km from the front line.

Even smaller, FPV (first-person view) drones have recently begun flying on Kharkiv’s outskirts, hunting cars, but the number of air-raid alerts and air strikes there has still been far lower than in Kyiv in recent weeks.

Molin added that the Russians had struck the heart of the capital 10 times a day in recent days.

The Russian independent group Conflict Intelligence Team wrote that Kyiv and its surroundings would probably account for the highest number of civilians killed and injured anywhere in Ukraine in September — more than in the Donetsk, Kherson, or Kharkiv regions.

An at a time when attacks causing casualties occur every day, it is becoming harder for foreign journalists to engage readers with reports about an attack on the Ukrainian capital.

But on Monday, however, the Russians managed to do so.

During the working day, they struck the historic building of Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences. It caught fire, and footage of scientists and other employees attempting to climb out through smoke-filled windows circulated around the world.

A Russian strike against the building of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. A rescue operation is underway: crews are putting out the fire and searching for people who may have been trapped inside. All services are deployed. Today in Kyiv, a pharmaceutical company and… pic.twitter.com/ccfIHnGFNg

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) September 28, 2026

The images of people standing on a ledge may have recalled those seen after the 11 September attacks, although the terrorists then struck skyscrapers more than 100 storeys high in New York.

Horrific scenes out of Kyiv this morning as Russia used a jet-powered drone to blow up Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences. People are escaping through windows as the building burns. Just like they target kindergartens and schools, now they are bombing science. pic.twitter.com/yvwzLz9DXe

— Nate Mook (@natemook) September 28, 2026

🚨 BREAKING: Terrifying footage captured people climbing out of windows after a Russian attack struck the National Academy of Sciences in central Kyiv in broad daylight.

The attack killed one person and injured at least three others, triggering a massive blaze. pic.twitter.com/wiWTU51QaL

— UNITED24 Media (@United24media) September 28, 2026

The historic building had only three floors. Thanks in part to this and the firefighters’ rapid response, only one person was killed and six were injured.

It is quite likely that the attack on the Academy of Sciences was not accidental and that the Russians were targeting an important individual.

Ukrainian analyst Viktor Kovalenko believed that the Russians had wanted to kill 86-year-old Volodymyr Horbulin. He is one of the architects of Ukraine’s missile and space programme.

He headed Ukraine’s space agency in the 1990s and, for five years under President Leonid Kuchma, served as secretary of the National Security Council. Despite his age, he remains active: he is vice-president of the National Academy of Sciences and focuses on security issues.

And the elderly scientist was in the building at the time of the attack. The drone hit a room one floor above his office. He sustained only minor injuries, but his assistant was killed.

A few hours later, the Russians struck the building of the Dobrobut medical centre, which caught fire. Several people were reported injured there.

Russia bombed the Dobrobut Medical Center in Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, this afternoon, setting the facility ablaze. pic.twitter.com/gs0d1X3eB5

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) September 28, 2026

These attacks took place in the wider city centre and were felt by the EU ambassador to Kyiv, Slovakia’s Katarína Mathernová.

“Just moments ago, an explosion jolted me out of my chair in my Kyiv office. It was the loudest blast I have experienced here in three years. A jet-powered drone struck a building around 200 metres from the EU delegation. It happened in broad daylight. The target was a hospital,” Mathernová wrote.

While the Russians once attacked Kyiv mainly at night, attacks are now also taking place during the day. Although they target military and industrial sites as well, they frequently hit civilian facilities where many people are present during daytime.

“Today in Kyiv, a person can be killed in a supermarket, at a university, at a petrol station, on the street or at work. The campaign of indiscriminate attacks targeting the centre of the capital is unprecedentedly violent. The Russians are targeting data centres and regularly miss their targets,” French analyst Clément Molin wrote.

“What Russia is doing is pure terrorism. And we should treat neither its state leadership nor its military forces any differently. Why should we continue pretending that it is possible to negotiate with such terrorists on equal terms?” German analyst and former journalist Julian Röpcke wrote.

“Nothing expresses the ‘fight against Nato expansion’ quite as clearly as bombing the historic building of Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences in central Kyiv, forcing ordinary scientists to jump from windows to escape death in the flames,” Ukrainian journalist Illia Ponomarenko added.

The Russians are attacking the capital virtually constantly. It is not merely one or two attacks a day. As Ukrainian analyst Bohdan Myroshnykov wrote on Sunday, Kyiv had been without an air-raid alert for only 5 hours and 55 minutes in the previous 24 hours.

“The current alert has lasted 8 hours and 20 minutes. The enemy deliberately launches drones in order to prolong the alert. Once they arrive in Kyiv, they begin circling over the city and its suburbs to keep people on edge for even longer,” he wrote.

According to him, the main weapons currently used by the Russians to attack Kyiv are Geran-5 jet drones. These are essentially smaller — though still six-metre-long — cruise missiles. By contrast, Geran-4 jet drones have the classic delta-wing shape of older Shahed drones.

Myroshnykov wrote that Ukrainians had more or less learned how to shoot down Geran-4 drones, but were having difficulties with the fifth series. While they intercept Geran-4s with an effectiveness of 70 to 80 percent, the rate for Geran-5s is only 50 to 65 percent. “The fourth series is intercepted en masse while approaching the Kyiv agglomeration, whereas the fifth is only intercepted within it,” the analyst wrote.

Last week, we wrote that Ukrainians had released the first videos showing them shooting down jet-powered Geran drones, including Geran-5s, using jet-powered interceptor drones capable of matching their speed. A video has now emerged of another new drone that apparently can already do this.

The problem, however, is that none of these drones is yet being mass-produced. Ukrainians therefore do not have enough of them to counter the growing number of jet-powered Gerans that the Russians are launching at Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities — as well as other targets.

“There are prototypes that have delivered varying results, but considerable effort is needed to bring a prototype into large-scale serial production. Sometimes this is impossible because access to certain components is limited,” former adviser to Ukraine’s defence ministry Serhii Sternenko wrote.

“It took us 3.5 years to find a more or less reliable anti-drone defence against conventional Shaheds. We began this path five months ago in the case of jet-powered drones. It may take us eight to 10 months to find a reliable anti-drone defence,” Myroshnykov wrote.

Ukraine’s defence minister, Yevhen Khmara, called on European partners at a meeting of his EU counterparts to help finance these interceptor drones, which have proved to be the best defence against conventional Gerans.

The Russians are also becoming increasingly creative in their efforts to strike targets in Ukraine. Serhii Beskrestnov, another former adviser to the defence minister, shared a video showing the Russians striking Incom’s office building in Kyiv. What is notable is that they filmed the strike themselves using a drone with a high-quality camera.

“The enemy attacked Incom’s office with a Geran-5 missile, while at the same time a jet-powered Shahed flew over Kyiv, circling above the attack site at an altitude of almost three km. It served as a radio-signal relay for the Geran-5 missile while also recording — and immediately transmitting — video of the attack on Incom. This Shahed then flew out of Kyiv and destroyed a McDonald’s warehouse,” Beskrestnov wrote.

He added that he was convinced the two operators had been sitting next to one another.

The Defence Express website also published an article about the Russians fitting their newest Geran-5-K5 jet drones with the Susanin navigation system, first reported by a Russian Telegram account. The system works by comparing current camera images with pre-recorded imagery.

“This enables the Geran-5 K5 to determine its coordinates even when satellite navigation is unavailable,” Defence Express wrote.

However, it works better during the day than at night, as it needs current images of objects on the ground.

It is often said that the Russians attack Ukrainian cities because they are unable to advance at the front. The aim may be to lower Ukrainians’ morale, degrade their economy and force them to surrender and accept Russian terms.

Although the attacks on Kyiv have been the worst since March 2022, they do not yet appear to have shifted Ukrainian public opinion. According to one recent poll, people were most concerned about government corruption (50 percent), with Russian air attacks only in second place (40 percent). Naturally, the poll was conducted not only in Kyiv but also in places where attacks are less frequent.

Recent polling by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) indicates that the most worrying issue for Ukrainians right now is government corruption (at 50%), followed by Russian missile and drone attacks (40%) and unprofessionalism and incompetence of the authorities… pic.twitter.com/OvEbFz5jNQ

— AMK Mapping 🇳🇿 (@AMK_Mapping_) September 29, 2026

The attacks are often compared to the “war of the cities”, during which both countries attacked each other’s cities in the 1980s Iran-Iraq war. According to the Russian propaganda channel Rybar, they are also intended to undermine support from Europe.

This may be a somewhat far-fetched theory, but it is worth mentioning because it may indicate that people in the Kremlin think along these lines as well.

Rybar asks what the attacks mean for Ukraine’s “sponsors”. In its view, it is time for them to write off Ukraine, because there is no point pouring money into such a country. A “Marshall Plan”, it says, would be “pointless”.

“The more effective the strikes by the Russian armed forces in the framework of the ‘war of the cities’, the more likely the scenario in which the EU, even in the event of a ‘freezing’ of the situation, will ‘write off’ so-called Ukraine because further support for it is unsustainable. And without sponsors, the Kyiv regime cannot survive,” Rybar wrote.

This might perhaps apply if it were a war on the other side of the world, in which the EU was supporting one side. But the war over Ukraine is a conflict on the EU’s border, and there is a high likelihood that, if Ukraine does not stop the Russians, scientists will be fleeing from burning windows in Tallinn, Vilnius or Warsaw.

Maps of the day

On Monday, we wrote about how Ukrainians were gradually releasing parts of Operation Vivaldi, which is liberating territory north of Lyman. Russia’s defence ministry, as well as the Russian state agency Ria Novosti, continue to maintain their claims that the front line lies much further west.

This map compares official Russian claims with reality. At the point of greatest divergence, the maps differ by 40 km. For comparison, that is roughly the distance between Trnava and Bratislava. Overall, the Russians claim to control 1,360 square km more in this area than they actually do.

The yellow line on this map shows what the current official Russian maps portray the situation in the Lyman direction as (or what they would now consider the Izyum direction).

At it's furthest point, their claimed frontline is 40 km (!) west of my frontline. This was achieved… pic.twitter.com/Nd2SP3HJur

— AMK Mapping 🇳🇿 (@AMK_Mapping_) September 29, 2026

Russian Z-bloggers and propagandists are, however, closer to reality. The Two Majors channel wrote that the situation was “continuing to deteriorate”.

“The enemy is conducting counterattacks and trying to push Russian troops back beyond the Zherebets. (…) The Russian foothold west of the river has shrunk,” it said.

According to the channel, Ukrainians had entered the village of Zarichne from several directions, while fighting was also under way for Yampil.

According to Two Majors, this sector remains one of the most problematic parts of the front from the Russian perspective. The Russians’ aim is to stabilise it and retain at least some units on this bank of the river.

The Rybar channel wrote that Ukrainians had intensified fire on the few places where the river can be crossed, as well as attacks on logistics far behind the front line.

“Despite the stabilisation measures that have been launched, the situation remains extremely difficult and tense. The enemy’s gradual release of footage is a tool of information pressure, but it conceals a very real deterioration of the situation in the Lyman sector,” Rybar wrote.

Videos of the day

In addition to Kyiv, the Russians are attacking other parts of Ukraine. They again struck the Yahodyn border crossing on the Polish-Ukrainian border. A Geran-5 drone landed in a car park, around one km from Polish territory.

Recently, after a similar attack in which they hit a train, they also struck a petrol station 800 metres from the crossing. These are the attacks closest to Polish territory since the start of the war, not counting drones and a Kh-101 missile that have already entered Poland.

An enemy UAV struck near the "Yagodin" checkpoint on the border with Poland, according to social media posts pic.twitter.com/COrcYKrUoJ

— kolibri.93 🇺🇦 (@viktorikolibri) September 28, 2026

Footage from the cockpit of a Ukrainian Su-25 military aircraft during a mission in the east. The pilot flew low over the ground, then climbed higher, released a French AASM guided bomb and turned away.

Rare cockpit view from a Ukrainian Air Force Su-25 Frogfoot on a strike mission over the eastern front, screaming low over the ground before pitching up, clawing for altitude, and launching a French AASM guided bomb at a Russian target. pic.twitter.com/DmX2Pvfftw

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) September 29, 2026

Ukrainian robot operators are also assisted by aerial reconnaissance drones during missions. This apparently helped the operator in the video skilfully evade a Russian drone at the last moment.

🤯 Insane operator skills!

A Ukrainian "Termit" ground drone dodges a Russian FPV strike mid-mission. pic.twitter.com/u2t4DMEj4L

— UNITED24 Media (@United24media) September 27, 2026

Ukraine’s Khartia Brigade released a video which it said showed Russian soldiers in civilian clothes, mixed in with actual civilians, trying to escape through a pipeline.

🚨 BREAKING: Drone footage from Ukraine’s Khartia Brigade reveals likely Russian soldiers disguised in civilian clothing, attempting to escape alongside elderly hostages and children.

Ukrainian troops refrained from firing to ensure civilian safety. pic.twitter.com/rByUK86i0E

— UNITED24 Media (@United24media) September 28, 2026

• The Ukrainian offensive continues on the northern flank of the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk sector of the front.

• Russia has begun targeting data centres in Ukrainian cities.
• Ukrainian drones struck a factory producing missile guidance systems.
• It is no longer discussed as often, but Ukraine’s medium-range campaign is continuing successfully.
• Maps of the day – a map of sites struck in Kyiv; Ukrainian successes around Lyman and Sloviansk.
• Videos of the day – a swarm of Russian drones approaches Kyiv; a Ukrainian drone carrying a flag flew over the occupied town of Hola Prystan; the Ukrainian army used drones to deliver food to residents of occupied Oleshky in Kherson region.

The Ukrainian offensive continues on the northern flank of the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk sector of the front. “The situation on the Lyman axis remains difficult. According to reports from the ground, the enemy is trying to push Russian forces beyond the Zherebets River, along which meeting engagements are continuing. Ukrainian forces are active in the Yampil area and on the approaches to Lyman. Heavy fighting is under way to stabilise the line and individual positions,” the Russian Z-channel Two Majors wrote on Monday (28 September) morning.

Last week, the Ukrainian army asked OSINT experts not to help Russia by publishing their analyses. We therefore currently have information mainly from Russian accounts and from what official Ukrainian sources selectively release to the public. By coincidence, several reports concerning this particular battlefield emerged on Monday morning.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was the first to announce, without further details, on Sunday afternoon that there were “important results from our units taking part in Operation Vivaldi on the Lyman axis”.

On Monday morning, the 3rd Army Corps, which is conducting Operation Vivaldi, released details. “The opponent was misled and slept through the real strike,” corps commander Andriy Biletsky said.

The 3rd Army Corps liberated the villages of Nove, Ridkodub, and Katerynivka, and “restored control” over Karpivka and Novomykhailivka. It should be noted that two different timelines intersect at this point.

While Two Majors and other Russian accounts refer to current events, the report by Biletsky’s corps only acknowledges events that took place at the beginning of the summer. The Ukrainian command has only now admitted them and described them as the third phase of Operation Vivaldi. It also reported the capture of 250 Russians.

The Ukrainians also released previously unknown footage from the operation, showing an outdated BTR-60 armoured vehicle loaded with explosives and remotely sent to destroy a fortified Russian position, which it succeeded in doing.

During Operation Vivaldi, Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps converted Soviet-era BTR-60 armored personnel carriers into a massive unmanned explosive vehicles, using them to breach some of the Russian fortified positions during the offensive. https://t.co/1dKZ6TtE3H pic.twitter.com/9SR9FbrZjx

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) September 28, 2026

The Ukrainians managed to convince the Russians that their target was the village of Shandryholove, to which they sent their reserves for counterattacks. However, the Ukrainians struck in the village of Nove, further east. This is where the footage of the BTR-60 attack was recorded.

French analyst Clément Molin said that Biletsky was referring in this case to events from May and June. According to him, the battlefield map looked like this at the time:

Ukraine 🇺🇦 just announced the 3rd part of "Vivaldi" operation, liberating multiple villages back in May and June

-> This confirms the main push was done in Nove direction
-> Russia didn't retreat in a good order (250 prisoners, more dead) https://t.co/WuemIHSSBC pic.twitter.com/orfn5wm1g6

— Clément Molin (@clement_molin) September 28, 2026

Today, the situation is even worse for the Russians. The Russian military channel Military Informant published two maps which still show the now non-existent salient north of Lyman, but the area without a Russian presence around the city has expanded.

“The Ukrainian army is advancing and pushing the Russian Armed Forces away from the city and surrounding villages. Russian forces, in turn, are trying to bring the situation under control and are conducting counterattacks. It is not difficult to see that the loss of these positions significantly complicates the entire operation towards Sloviansk,” Military Informant wrote.

Importantly, the improvement has not only occurred near Lyman, but also partly east of Sloviansk. “On the Sloviansk axis, Ukrainian forces carried out local counterattacks and pushed Russian forces out of positions east of Mykolaivka, as well as from the areas of Rai-Oleksandrivka and Velykyi Lis. However, the enemy advanced west of Fedorivka Druha towards the Siverskyi Donets-Donbas Canal,” the Ukrainian account Petrenko said.

Rybar also confirmed Ukrainian attacks on the approaches to Sloviansk last week:

Finnish analysts from Black Bird Group recorded the same development. On their map, one Ukrainian advance runs from Sloviansk directly towards Rai-Oleksandrivka, while the other is slightly further north. Mykolaivka is in the centre, Sloviansk to its left and Lyman above it.

Russia has begun targeting data centres in Ukrainian cities. “Today, in Kyiv alone, Russian jet-powered drones ‘destroyed’ two kindergartens and two schools, an ordinary residential building, a car repair shop, several warehouses and telecommunications facilities,” Zelensky wrote on Sunday evening.

The following map shows some of these sites.

Weekend Ukraine map thread for Sunday 27th September 2026

Russian strikes targeting specifically civilian areas continue to increase, leaving many dead. The map below shows some (but not all) of the recent strikes upon Kyiv, which has been pounded this week. Cities will be left… pic.twitter.com/SW2mrzWdwn

— Ukraine Control Map (@UAControlMap) September 27, 2026

The last category in Zelensky’s list of “targets” – telecommunications facilities – is worth noting. More specifically, these are data centres, which Russian drones have begun attacking in an attempt to cause internet coverage outages. They reportedly struck, among other sites, the headquarters of the major telecommunications operator Kyivstar. The Russian Z-channel Veteran’s Notes wrote that nine centres had been struck over the previous week.

The Russian Telegram channel Rybar, which consistently refers to Ukraine as “so-called”, assessed the results as “visible”, but said no “digital collapse” had occurred.

According to Rybar, some services were disrupted, but destroying several servers was insufficient to cause more serious damage. Moreover, digital infrastructure is decentralised and therefore more resilient.

Nevertheless, the Russians expect the new campaign to deliver longer-term results. “In addition to causing economic damage, it allows us to identify the opponent’s weakest points,” Rybar wrote. It expects that this will eventually make it possible to maximise the damage.

Ukrainian drones struck a factory producing missile guidance systems. This happened overnight from Friday to Saturday, when at least five production halls at the Azov Optical-Mechanical Plant in Rostov region were damaged. Satellite imagery also confirms the strikes.

Satellite images from the Sept 26 strike on the Azov Optical-Mechanical Plant in Russia’s Rostov region show hits on 5 workshops across 6 buildings, foundry 022 burning, optics 008 hit twice, assembly 009 at least 3 times, galvanic 010 once, machining 024 twice with a roof… https://t.co/Zm6XEbdFl3 pic.twitter.com/lVLFPWjbY7

— WarTranslated (@wartranslated) September 27, 2026

The location of the factory is marked on a map published by the Ukrainian general staff. The Ukrainian army said that it produces optical and electronic systems for guiding artillery, missiles and anti-tank weapons.

⚡️⚡️ Azov Optical and Mechanical Plant hit

During the night of 26th September 2026, units of the Defence Forces of Ukraine struck production facilities at the Azov Optical and Mechanical Plant in Azov, Rostov region, russian federation.

A fire was reported in the foundry… pic.twitter.com/Aat2G1W3Z9

— Генеральний штаб ЗСУ (@GeneralStaffUA) September 26, 2026

The attack was complex. Ukrainian website Militarnyi reported that it involved, among other weapons, Neptune missiles originally designed as anti-ship missiles.

The same source wrote that Russia manufactures at the factory components for Kh-31P anti-radiation missiles, R-74 short-range and R-37M long-range air-to-air missiles, Kh-101, Kh-35U and Kh-59/Kh-69 cruise missiles, Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missiles, as well as guided glide bombs.

It is no longer discussed as often, but Ukraine’s medium-range campaign is continuing successfully. For the third consecutive month, Ukrainian drones have destroyed more than 600 trucks at distances of 35 to 300 km from the front, despite Russian countermeasures. The chart below, by Clément Molin, indicates that 640 Russian logistics vehicles have been destroyed so far in September.

When the campaign began with an effort to isolate Crimea, the Hornet drone was the most frequently mentioned. But even then, medium-range strikes were carried out by several types of drone. Military correspondent Francis Farrell wrote for the Kyiv Independent about one of them, named Zozulya.

“Its old-fashioned silhouette and simple piston engine driving a wooden propeller evoke the first fighters of the world wars. But without a pilot, and controlled from a command room anywhere in Ukraine via satellite coverage, this aircraft also represents the cutting edge of modern drone warfare,” the author wrote about the unmanned aircraft, a photograph of which was already shown by the Ukrainian army in April.

It does indeed show an almost primitive-looking weapon, on which nothing, apart from the panel receiving a Starlink satellite signal, evokes the 21st century:

Re are look at the Ukrainian "Zozulya" model strike drone https://t.co/WWLiIRP9nr pic.twitter.com/zcTUCMf3fA

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) April 25, 2026

Unlike Molin, the analytical account Playfra said that the number of so-called middle strikes had fallen slightly, but that they remained effective because the Russians “still cannot jam Starlink, which is essential if they want to stop Ukrainian medium-range strikes”.

The same source said that the smaller amount of video evidence was due to the Ukrainians no longer publishing it. This does not mean, however, that conclusive footage is not public. Some of it is also published by Russian sources, such as the Russian Telegram channel Military Informant in the images below:

Videos of the day

A swarm of Russian drones near Kyiv. Judging by the sound, these are older versions powered by a piston engine and a pusher propeller.

🇷🇺Shahed swarm near 🇺🇦#Kyiv pic.twitter.com/wsBAnkKBpL

— C4H10FO2P ☠️ (@markito0171) September 28, 2026

A drone carrying a Ukrainian flag flew over the occupied town of Hola Prystan in Kherson region, which had a population of 13,000 before the war. The town lies just 13 km south-west of the better-known Oleshky.

🇺🇦Над окупованою Голою Пристанню Херсонської області до 317-ї річниці міста пролетів український дрон із прапором громади. pic.twitter.com/2TcPlNwOXU

— МОСТ ХЕРСОН (@most_ks_ua) September 26, 2026

According to Ukrainian sources, the humanitarian crisis in Oleshky itself is deepening. Several thousand residents still live in the town and have very limited access to food. The Ukrainian army attempted to improve their situation using drones.

🔴 BREAKING: Ukraine delivered about 4 tons of food to temporarily occupied Oleshky in the Kherson region using drones.

The aid was delivered to 100 locations for residents, despite Russian forces reportedly shooting down aid drones and confiscating food. pic.twitter.com/TmGtZ9r3Bl

— UNITED24 Media (@United24media) September 27, 2026