Kyiv’s pilots prepare to fly cutting-edge Rafales against Russian jets, amid a bruising power struggle in Ukraine’s defence leadership.

Russia’s scramble to plug holes in its air defences is now exposing key bases, as Ukraine claws back ground in the south and steps up drone and naval strikes.

Ukraine’s 155th brigade chief, Luchanov, is on the run after murders of two men over insults to his wife in the village of Kalynivka, near Kyiv, in June.

Ukrainian drones are quietly mauling Russia’s Azov fleet and missile industry even as a single mis‑sited ammunition depot in Vyshneve shows how one strike can turn a Kyiv neighbourhood into a toxic war zone within minutes.

By closing Russia’s Azov route to Crimea and battering refineries deep inside Russian territory, Ukraine’s drone campaign is forcing Moscow to rethink how it moves fuel and troops across nearly every front of the war.

Moscow pushes ahead with a huge post‑election mobilisation to offset losses and stalled gains in Donbas. Europe could face a newly swollen Russian army whose strain on Russia’s economy and stability is impossible to predict.

Petrol shortages in Crimea trigger complaints among locals against Russian authorities. While such shortages persist, Russia soldiers appear to be closing in on Kramatorsk, a city in Ukraine.

Ukrainian drones and missiles torch Russian oil depots and arms plants. Putin is scrambling to stop fuel queues snaking through Moscow.

Soaring fuel prices, cash restrictions in Crimea, and growing talk of forced mobilisation mean ordinary Russians could soon feel the cost of the war.

Ukrainian drones and Western missiles methodically shred Russian supply lines from Crimea to Voronezh, forcing Moscow’s generals to scrambling to patch up damaged bridges.

By smashing ferries, fuel depots and key roads feeding Crimea, Kyiv is testing whether it can strangle Russia’s Black Sea stronghold faster than Moscow can rewire its supply network.

With Ukraine knocking Moscow’s key refinery offline for days, Russians are watching their own infrastructure burn, as hardliners fantasise about wiping Kyiv off the map in revenge.

Ukrainian drones hammer Russian fuel convoys and frontline towns like Kostyantynivka edge toward collapse while Moscow’s commanders scramble between jamming Elon Musk’s Starlink and rewriting its defeat near Kyiv.

Fuel limits have been introduced at all petrol stations from the border of Russian-occupied Donetsk all the way to the Russian city of Rostov‑on‑Don after drone strikes.

With Moscow’s troops close to closing a pincer around Kostiantynivka while Kyiv’s drones gnaw at Russia’s land corridor to Crimea, the war is turning into a test of which side’s supply lines break first.

Behind Moscow’s upbeat propaganda, Russian military channels fret over a “positional deadlock”.

Ukrainian drone strikes choking off fuel, bridges, and trains to Crimea, prompting pro-war Russian bloggers to turn on Putin, while tourists rush to cancel summer holidays on the peninsula.

As Russia burns through newly-built drones and missiles almost as fast as it can assemble them, Ukraine’s long-range strikes on ships and fuel depots are starting to reshape the strategic map from Crimea to the Baltic far more than Moscow’s modest advances on land.