Last night Russia unleashed another large-scale attack on Kiev, targeting various defense enterprises as well as a major warehouse for Ukrainian supermarket goods, which appeared to burn down to the ground:
Warehouses belonging to the “Fora” chain of Ukrainian supermarkets, located near Boryspil, Kyiv, were destroyed as a result of a nighttime missile strike.
In addition, reports indicate the destruction of warehouses belonging to the companies Yves Rocher and Faynie Lyody.
The aftermath of the overnight strike on the KLO oil depot in the Brovar district of the Kyiv region.
It is worth noting that the recent strike is characterized by an unusually large number of images and videos, both of the missile strikes themselves and their consequences.
It is possible that the surge in publications is related to Ukraine’s desire to draw additional media attention to its problem of a shortage of interceptor missiles for its Patriot air defense systems, as seen in a recent, emotionally charged report by CNN about an empty launcher.
The attack utilized dozens of Russian cruise missiles fired by the Black Sea Fleet stationed in Novorossiysk, as well as hypersonic Zirkons, Iskanders, and reportedly even North Korean KN-23. Once more, Ukrainian authorities revealed not a single one of the hypersonic missiles was shot down.
Some observers believe the KN-23s can be distinguished from the Iskanders by their more diagonal terminal trajectory, rather than purely vertical, as well as what some believe is the visible burn of their motors down through the terminal range, which differentiates them from Iskanders which have a burnout phase that ends much earlier:
A French analyst has precisely mapped recent strikes:
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Various reports now show empty store shelves in supermarkets all across Kiev due to Russia’s retaliatory strikes on Ukrainian warehouses.
Ukraine is now threatening to unleash its own copy of the Iskander soon—Firepoint’s FP-9 ballistic missile—with estimates it will be “launched against Moscow by this October”.
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Ukraine claims it has a range of nearly 900km, which would allow it to reach Moscow. This is difficult to believe, given that Iskander’s official range is 500km, and there is rumor that the true range is actually much smaller, about ~350km. This is validated by the fact that Iskanders have never been used to hit one of Ukraine’s most important airbases, Starokostiantynov, which is just under 500km from Iskander launch positions near Russia’s border.
It’s possible to reduce the warhead size and increase the fuel payload to increase range, however. Plus, as some have noted, both Russia and the US were militarily gimped by the INF Treaty which limited the range of ground-launched medium range ballistic missiles, while countries like Iran were able to ironically develop IRBMs that surpassed anything Russia or the US had in range. Ukraine can technically do the same thing, but it would require a completely different design. The FP-9 appears to be a direct copy of an earlier generation Iskander which would likely preclude it from achieving those higher ranges.
Interestingly, on that topic the Atlantic brings us a new piece today which makes some remarkable admissions about the origins of Zelensky’s last-ditch 2026 campaign to “bring down Putin” via mass strikes on Russian civilian targets.
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It begins:
Early this year, Ukrainian officials came to President Volodymyr Zelensky with a risky new plan to end the war with Russia. It would require expanding their bombing campaign to include a set of targets and a class of weapons they had long avoided. In addition to Ukraine’s ongoing strikes against Russian military bases, oil refineries, supply lines, and logistics hubs, the officials wanted to launch waves of AI-enabled drones at Moscow’s airports, hoping to stop international carriers from flying in and out of the Russian capital, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the plan, which has not been previously reported.
In short, they wanted to plan a mass terror attack on Russian airports to completely shut down all civilian flights in and out of Moscow as a way to ramp up pressure and make Russian civilians in the capital city feel the consequences of the war.
The article claims Zelensky thought better of it, fearing that “accidentally” killing civilians would be seen as “piracy” at the hands of Ukraine.
By the middle of spring, the plan to force a more permanent shutdown of Moscow’s airports had advanced far enough to receive a code name: M&Ms, a reference to the many small, cheap, and nearly identical drones that the mission would require. To overwhelm Russian air defenses, the operation would need to send as many as 1,000 drones a night to airports in and around Moscow, said one of the sources familiar with it.
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The article details how it was ex-Defense Minister Fedorov that was responsible for driving the plan, but that even newly-appointed Yevhen Khmara is said to be carrying the reins forward.
Both sources told me planning for the operation was halted in July, when Zelensky abruptly fired its mastermind, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. As the architect of Ukraine’s military drone program, Fedorov had worked on the plan for most of this year, keeping it a secret even from some of his closest aides. He helped assemble a team of Ukrainian computer programmers to develop the AI guidance system, and he secured financing from Ukraine’s allies in Europe to produce the autonomous drones at scale, the two sources said.
The article notes this tracks with Fedorov’s begging of Elon Musk to enable Starlink to be used over all of Russia. This gives us a general overview of what to expect from Ukraine in the coming months. The closer Ukraine comes to battlefield defeat, the more it will redirect all of its available resources to targeting Russian civilian infrastructure in order to spur some kind of popular uprising of discontent against Putin.
The problem for Ukraine is, this creates an accelerating feedback loop of self-defeat: the more resources Ukraine pours into hitting militarily insignificant targets, the more Russia’s actual military might remains unaffected by Ukrainian combat power, which means the faster Ukraine’s collapse will accelerate on the real front. In essence, Ukraine is vesting its entire strategy into a war against Russia’s civilian sentiment, which is as risky a move as it was for the US in Iran, wherein strikes against civil infrastructure turned even the diehard anti-clerical contingent against the US and enshrined their support of the Iranian leadership.
The article ends with a potential compromise on the idea of directly attacking Russian airports:
Zelensky raised concerns about unintended targets being struck when it came to the plan to attack Moscow’s airports, one of the sources familiar with these conversations told me. The officials behind the plan offered work-arounds, the source said. They suggested, for example, that Ukraine would warn civilian airlines to avoid Russian airports and evacuate their planes before the swarm of Ukrainian drones arrived. “If they say to themselves, You know what, it’s getting too risky. Why even continue flying there?” the source said. “That would already have quite an impact on the Russian elites. Those are their main connections to the outside world.”
As stated, now we know what to expect in the coming months.
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And here’s what Ukraine should expect. Let us dive into a brief battlefield summary.
Russian forces have continued advancing on three key fronts, capturing several important settlements today.
The Southern Group has reportedly taken control of Nikolaypole on the Kramatorsk axis:
Units of the Southern Group of Forces have taken control of the village of Nikolaypolye, located south of the city of Druzhkovka, which is temporarily occupied by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
It can be seen circled in red below in the Ukrainian spelling:
Note also the area north and east of Toretsk, also circled in red, has been captured by Russian forces which are collapsing the pocket between there and newly-captured Nikolaypole to the east.
The wider map shows things in relation to the greater campaign, clearly aimed at Druzhkovka, which is the last major stronghold to the south of Kramatorsk:
Just north of there, Russian forces are also advancing on the Slavyansk front. One Ukrainian military account reports that Russian forces have begun infiltrating Nikolayvka, not to be confused with the above settlement:
Here is how that looks:
If you zoom in close, you will see that the Slavyansk Thermal Power station is in the light-red area and has now been reached by Russian DRGs—the orange line delineating alleged Russian ‘soft-control’:
To put things in perspective, here’s our Sitrep from July 2nd of this year, which showed Russian forces had only begun viewing the Slavyansk TPP from drones several kilometers out:
As can be seen, in about a month-and-a-half’s time, Russian forces have covered that distance and are now beginning to storm the plant area.
In Nikolaevka, Russian army continued to infiltrate the town from the north, where some troops managed to entrench themselves at the Sloviansk Thermal Power Plant and in the houses around the square where Myru Street and Kotsiubynskoho Street meet (48°51’53.0″N 37°45’53.2″E) – the main Ukrainian escape and supply route in the town. Meanwhile, the centre of Nikolaevka has been under heavy Russian shelling since mid-May, which has caused significant damage to many of the high-rise buildings, as forces await the start of assault operations. 🇷🇺🇺🇦
The other major area where Russia has been expending a lot of effort is in the Dobropillya direction, on the Pokrovsk axis. After several major armored assaults in this area, including the one that used tanks armed with Arena-M APS systems, Russian forces managed to embed themselves in the town and are slowly capturing it, according to reports. Recall that Ukraine claimed all the Russian assaults had “failed”, which always seems to happen right before the Russians are recorded as being precisely inside their target of capture.
Suriyak again writes:
In Dobropillya, Russian army continues to infiltrate and build up troops in the outermost streets of the town, so we may see an increase in their control of the eastern part in the coming days. However, it is premature to suggest that the battle will unfold rapidly until Russian forces have secured control of a significant section of the T-05-14 road, from which they can launch an attack on neighbouring Bilozerske. It is then that we might witness a breakthrough in Dobropillya, possibly from the second half of September onwards if the pace of advances on this front is maintained.
As an honorable mention, Russian forces have been chewing through the Orekhov basin on the Zaporozhye axis , closing in from both sides to collapse the entire central pocket. This week Russian forces began an assault on Orekhov itself, with advance units reportedly lodging inside the southeastern outskirts of the settlement, circled in red below:
As can be seen the units on the eastern side of the bowl have been steadily advancing toward the T0408 highway running north of Orekhov.
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Lastly, to bring things full circle—Berliner Zeitung writes that Zelensky’s time is up, and he should walk away a “hero”.
The authors write that Zelensky has boxed himself into a corner, particularly with the recent removal of Fedorov. Now the only remaining option to salvage what’s left of his legacy is to face the music and resign:
A resignation by Zelenskyy—orderly, voluntary, and prepared in accordance with the constitution rather than forced—would therefore not be a surrender, but the wisest political decision he still has left. Zelenskyy has led Ukraine through the darkest months of its history; he has given the country a face and the world a symbol. No one can take that part of history away from him now. But Zelenskyy is increasingly squandering his political capital. The longer the former actor clings to power—while mountains of corruption files pile up at the Ukrainian anti-corruption agencies NABU and SAPO and the trust of ordinary people dwindles—the more the present reality overshadows the image of the war hero with that of a president who wants to protect his own system at any cost. Zelenskyy should step down.
The authors have a good point: they argue that by dragging things out, Zelensky invites the danger of being forced to leave later on in a far more politically messy, and perhaps even dangerous, series of circumstances, whereas now lies a final chance to still bow out in a controlled manner, with dignity intact.
Since 2022, Ukraine has repeatedly proven itself to be more resilient than people are willing to admit. But the future of Europe’s second-largest country—after Russia—will not be decided solely on the Donbas front. Will Kyiv find the courage to resolve its leadership crisis before Putin does it for Ukraine? Zelenskyy should take action now; his time is up.
With even Western publications now seeing the writing on the wall, it feels increasingly likely that this winter will mark a pivotal turning point in Ukraine. But recall that Fedorov is technically even more fanatical than Zelensky, particularly about tightening mobilization and going after Russia offensively. And so, even with him in power, there is little hope for any kind of cessation of hostilities, but rather an acceleration that could only bring Ukraine’s demise even closer.
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