Filming a drone strike and posting it online may be quietly teaching Russia’s drones to aim better. Russia is collecting footage of its Geran attack drones striking Ukraine, probably to check how its optical target-recognition and guidance algorithms perform in combat, presidential defense-technology adviser Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov says.

Russia has fitted its jet-powered Geran drones with machine vision that lets them recognize and track targets on their own in the final seconds of flight, a capability Ukraine’s electronic warfare cannot easily defeat. Now, Moscow is paying people inside Ukraine to film where those drones land, which Flash says is no coincidence after four years of not asking.

“Across many Telegram channels, the enemy is asking traitors to film videos of ‘Geran’ impacts and transmit information for a reward. For four years they didn’t ask, and suddenly it has become so crucial,” Beskrestnov notes.

The reason, he believes, lies in those optical guidance systems. Russian forces need impact footage to see how its algorithms are performing in real combat conditions, according to the expert.

The warning Flash is pressing on civilians

His takeaway for them is blunt: stop posting the videos of Russian assaults. He stresses the serious danger of publishing footage of impact sites and urges people not to film or share it.

“This serves as a signal to everyone: do not film and do not publish videos of ‘Shahed’ hits. You see how vital and necessary this is to Russia,” Beskrestnov adds.

Earlier, Ukrenergo board chairman Vitaly Zaichenko said that a Russian drone severed a unique power transmission tower at the Dnipro River crossing in Kyiv, and it cannot be restored. He added that the company was developing new technical solutions "on the fly, and very fast."

It would start the procedures for those solutions from 15 October. Russia’s use of drones able to sever metal towers is a new and serious challenge for Ukraine’s power engineers.

The EU General Court has upheld the European Commission’s decision to classify Stripchat as a very large online platform, establishing important limits on how technology companies can challenge the calculation of their European user numbers.

The European Union’s General Court has rejected a legal challenge to the European Commission’s classification of adult entertainment platform Stripchat under the Digital Services Act, strengthening Brussels’ authority to determine which online services must comply with the legislation’s most demanding obligations.

In its judgment delivered on 14th October, the Luxembourg-based court dismissed the action brought by Technius Ltd, the company operating Stripchat, against its designation as a very large online platform.

The dispute centred on how the Commission calculated the platform’s average monthly active users in the European Union, which determines whether additional regulatory obligations apply.

Under the Digital Services Act, platforms exceeding 45 million monthly active recipients in the EU are subject to enhanced supervision, including requirements concerning systemic risks, transparency, content moderation and independent auditing.

The judgment addresses a fundamental question for European digital regulation: whether companies can exclude particular categories of website visits when calculating the number of people using their services.

How Brussels challenged the platform’s figures

In February 2023, Technius reported that Stripchat had approximately 31.8 million average monthly active recipients in the EU, placing it below the threshold for very large online platforms.

The company relied on information provided by Similarweb, a commercial service measuring website traffic and user behaviour.

However, the Commission questioned the methodology used to reach that figure. Technius had discounted certain visits on the grounds that users entered the website but departed without engaging with its content.

Such visits are commonly described as bounced visits and frequently appear in commercial website analytics.

The Commission concluded that the company’s deductions had significantly underestimated its audience because the original Similarweb calculation of unique visitors already incorporated a filtering process excluding many bounced visits.

On that basis, Brussels calculated that Stripchat had more than 62 million monthly unique visitors in the EU, well above the statutory threshold.

The Commission consequently designated the platform as a very large online service on 20th December 2023. Technius challenged the decision, arguing that the figures were unreliable and that the absence of a prescribed calculation methodology undermined legal certainty.

The EU General Court rejected both arguments.

Court rejects challenge to calculation methodology

According to the court’s official explanation, the Commission had adequately explained its calculation and was entitled to rely on the data available when the designation decision was adopted.

The judges found that Technius had effectively applied deductions to figures from which relevant traffic had already been filtered, producing an artificially reduced estimate of active recipients.

The judgment also addressed a potentially significant complication.

After the Commission adopted its decision, Similarweb revised its methodology. Using the corrected method, Stripchat’s estimated monthly active audience for the relevant period was approximately 37.3 million.

That figure was below the threshold for classification as a very large online platform. Nevertheless, the court held that the subsequent correction did not invalidate the original designation.

The judges determined that the Commission’s decision had to be assessed according to the facts, applicable law and permissible evidence available when the decision was taken.

The ruling therefore does not establish that Stripchat currently exceeds 45 million monthly users. It confirms that the later recalculation was insufficient to annul the Commission’s December 2023 decision.

A significant precedent for digital regulation

The consequences extend beyond one adult entertainment website.

The Digital Services Act covers online intermediaries operating in the European market, including social networks, marketplaces, hosting services and other platforms.

Its obligations increase according to the size and nature of a company’s operations. Very large online platforms must assess systemic risks associated with their services, introduce appropriate mitigation measures and submit to independent audits.

The Commission is responsible for supervising their additional obligations and can impose substantial financial penalties for established infringements.

The distinction between the two categories can therefore have considerable financial and operational consequences.

Companies falling below the 45 million threshold remain subject to relevant DSA obligations but do not face the same additional requirements imposed on the largest platforms.

The General Court’s ruling confirms that companies cannot escape designation by applying an unreliable interpretation of website traffic data.

At the same time, the Commission’s published supervisory framework allows a designation to be revoked when a platform remains below the threshold for a full year.

European technology enforcement faces growing scrutiny

The judgment comes as the Commission faces multiple legal challenges to its enforcement of Europe’s digital legislation.

As EU Today previously reported, Washington has sought to intervene in proceedings concerning the Commission’s €120 million Digital Services Act fine against X, introducing an additional diplomatic dimension to European regulatory disputes.

The Commission is also pursuing separate investigations into whether major platforms comply with obligations concerning the protection of minors, advertising transparency and the management of illegal content.

In another case examined by EU Today, Brussels reached preliminary findings concerning TikTok’s default privacy settings for children, illustrating the practical consequences of the stricter duties imposed on very large online platforms.

The Stripchat judgment concerns designation rather than a finding that the company breached any substantive safety obligation. Its immediate consequence is to preserve the Commission’s original classification decision.

Technius may still appeal to the Court of Justice of the European Union on points of law within two months and ten days of notification of the judgment.

For European regulators, the decision provides judicial support for using established commercial analytics when assessing the reach of online platforms, provided that the methodology is adequately explained and the underlying evidence is reliable.

For technology companies, it confirms that the legal assessment of user numbers extends beyond the figures they choose to report to Brussels. The Commission can scrutinise those calculations and reject methods that fail to provide a reliable estimate of an online service’s European audience.

Ukraine’s Navy hit six Su-34M bombers at Russia’s Borisoglebsk military airfield in Voronezh Oblast with Neptune missiles overnight into 15 October, the Navy said. Residents filmed a large fire at the base after a missile alert, and the Navy’s count has not been independently confirmed. The facility is about 400 km from the frontline.

Glide bombs are now central to how Russia’s army fights, used to pin down Ukrainian defenders, including drone teams, before small infantry groups move in. They also hit frontline cities and the civilians who live in them.

Six bombers and flight equipment hit, the Navy says

The Neptune coastal missile system also hit technical equipment that supports flights, the Navy said. It recorded secondary detonations and a fire on the airfield and said details were still being clarified.

The Su-34M can carry several guided and high-explosive aerial bombs at once, along with missiles, the Navy noted. It called the jet one of Russia’s key tools for glide-bomb strikes on Ukrainian positions and frontline towns. In September, a Ukrainian Neptune missile reached a Russian warship at its own pier.

Fire over the airfield late on 14 October

Voronezh Oblast Governor Aleksandr Gusev declared a missile alert across the region shortly before 22:00 local time on 14 October. Within an hour, Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ reported explosions and a fire, preliminarily at the Borisoglebsk airfield. It later wrote that the airfield had come under missile attack and a fire was burning there. Ukrainian monitoring channel Supernova+ posted footage from the town showing the blaze.

A large fire is raging at the site of the missile strike. https://t.co/l4aqVvNJIg pic.twitter.com/JYjhM57GYh

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 14, 2026

On the morning of 15 October, Gusev claimed that 33 drones and several jet-powered aerial targets had been downed over the oblast overnight. He did not mention the airfield.

A base Ukraine has hit before

The airfield hosts the 783rd training aviation center and units of the 105th composite aviation division of Russia’s Aerospace Forces, which flies Su-34, Su-35S, and Su-30SM jets, Ukrainian defense outlet Militarnyi reported. In summer 2026, it had no permanently based combat jets, and Russia used it mainly as a stopover to refuel and rearm aircraft striking Ukraine, the outlet said, citing satellite observation.

Ukrainian drones hit the airfield overnight on 8 July, starting a fire, and satellite images later showed its fuel and lubricants depot destroyed. Drones also attacked the base’s pilot training center in July 2025.

The same night, Ryazan Oblast Governor Pavel Malkov reported a fire at an oil refinery in Ryazan. It came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine was resuming strikes on Russian refineries.

Update: Satellite imagery confirms the strike

New satellite images show damage at Borisoglebsk airbase and six Su-34 bombers positioned in the affected area two days earlier, although the extent of the aircraft losses remains unconfirmed.

The monitoring channel Exilenova+ reports that 4 airframes were completely destroyed, while 2 others sustained significant damage.

Un estudio de la ONG World Vision, realizado en junio de 2026, advierte que los efectos asociados al fenómeno El Niño, el encarecimiento de los alimentos y el alza de los fertilizantes agravan la vulnerabilidad de las comunidades rurales.