August 12, 2026
Prepared by Diana Bozhyk
Ukraine struck Russia’s naval base at Novorossiysk overnight, damaging four warships and forcing Russia’s two largest grain terminals to suspend operations — a strike Zelensky called a “unique operation” against the Black Sea Fleet’s last real stronghold. Ukraine’s Air Assault Forces announced the results of a seven-month counteroffensive in the Oleksandrivka direction: 745 square kilometers liberated and nearly 10,000 Russian soldiers killed. And in a CNN interview, Zelensky put Ukraine’s Patriot shortage in the starkest terms yet: “I have 1 percent” of what’s needed, and if Washington sold Ukraine just 10 percent of its own interceptor stockpile, “we will destroy all the Russians’ ballistic missiles.”
This handout satellite image taken and released by Vantor, shows heavily damaged ships at the Black Sea port naval base of Novorossiysk in Russia, following Ukrainian strikes. (Satellite image ©2026 Vantor / AFP via Getty Images)
THE DAY’S RECKONING
Somewhere off the coast of Novorossiysk, a Ukrainian jet-powered drone, a Neptune missile, and an unmanned boat found four Russian warships in a single night — frigates, a missile ship, a patrol vessel, all damaged badly enough to need inspection before anyone could say how badly. Zelensky called it a unique operation, more than 300 kilometers from the nearest trench, and by morning Russia’s largest port city had declared an emergency of its own, water mains ruptured, grain terminals gone quiet. Nine hundred kilometers away, in a CNN studio, Zelensky reduced Ukraine’s entire air defense predicament to a single number: one percent, the share of America’s Patriot stockpile Ukraine currently receives, against a country that could stop every Russian ballistic missile outright with just ten times that much. And in the Oleksandrivka direction, seven months of quiet, grinding fighting finally got its own headline: 745 square kilometers back under Ukrainian control, a counteroffensive most of the world never noticed happening at all. Some wars announce themselves in a single dramatic strike. This one kept announcing itself in numbers — ships damaged, kilometers reclaimed, a percentage point that might decide a winter.
Servicemembers of Ukraine’s 121st Brigade appealed to the Army command, to withdraw them from their positions after four months without rotation and restore their supply lines. (Screenshot from a video posted on Tatiana Kravchuk’s Facebook page)
NOVOROSSIYSK: UKRAINE’S “UNIQUE OPERATION” DAMAGES FOUR WARSHIPS
Ukraine’s Defense Forces and Security Service confirmed a joint overnight strike on Russia’s naval base at Novorossiysk, damaging two Project 11356 frigates, the Admiral Makarov and Admiral Essen, along with the missile ship Buyan-M and the patrol vessel Vasily Bykov. Zelensky said Ukrainian forces used domestically produced Palianytsia jet-powered drones, Neptune anti-ship missiles, and unmanned surface vehicles to hit Russian air defense positions, piers, and port infrastructure at what he called the Black Sea Fleet’s last major stronghold, more than 300 kilometers from the front line. Ukrainska Pravda reported the strike also hit a 30N6E radar tied to an S-300 air defense system, a mobile fire team at Pier No. 2, and infrastructure at three more piers alongside the tunnel portal leading to the Sheskharis oil terminal.
The damage forced Novorossiysk’s mayor to declare a citywide emergency after the strikes ruptured two major water pipelines and sparked fires across the port. Reuters reported that two of Russia’s largest grain terminals — the Novorossiysk Grain Terminal and the Novorossiysk Grain Products Plant — suspended operations entirely. Krasnodar Krai Governor Veniamin Kondratyev acknowledged the strikes and said an 8-year-old boy was killed by falling drone debris, with eight more wounded, including a child, and 21 residential buildings damaged. Ukrainian officials distinguished the military targets from the nearby Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal, which carries Kazakh oil to global markets — Kyiv has reportedly agreed to spare non-Russian tankers and CPC infrastructure there specifically, partly, the Financial Times reported, because Ukraine is seeking US authorization to build its own Patriot interceptors and hopes to purchase several hundred more before winter.
Aftermath of a Ukrainian drone attack on the port city of Novorossiysk in Krasnodar Krai, southern Russia, overnight. (Exilenova+/Telegram)
THE OLEKSANDRIVKA COUNTEROFFENSIVE: 745 SQUARE KILOMETERS, NEARLY 10,000 RUSSIAN DEAD
Zelensky announced the results of a counteroffensive that ran quietly from January 29 to August 12: Ukraine’s Air Assault Forces liberated 745 square kilometers and 26 settlements across Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, while clearing another 300 square kilometers of Russian infiltrators. “During the operation, we managed to liberate a territory of 745 square kilometers. Twenty-six villages in the Dnipro, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions were returned to the control of Ukraine,” Zelensky wrote, putting Russian losses at 9,550 killed and 6,600 wounded, plus an unspecified number captured. Major General Oleh Apostol, commander of the Air Assault Forces, credited coordinated headquarters, intelligence, and fire-support work for letting Ukraine “maintain the initiative” and “impose our own tempo of battle on the enemy.”
Independent analysts urge caution reading gains like these too literally. ISW’s own more conservative mapping puts the confirmed total closer to 627 square kilometers — likely an undercount, given the Airborne Forces Command’s own admission that some flag-raisings were staged at a “safe distance” from actual front-line positions for operational security, suggesting Ukrainian troops have already advanced beyond several of the newly announced settlements. Finland-based analyst Emil Kastehelmi has previously cautioned that recaptured “gray zones” are often only nominally under either side’s control. Even accounting for that uncertainty, the operation stands out for what it demonstrates: a rare instance, seven months running, of Ukraine reintroducing genuine mechanized maneuver rather than simply holding ground.
ZELENSKY TO CNN: “I HAVE 1 PERCENT” — THE PATRIOT MATH
In an interview with CNN, Zelensky reduced Ukraine’s air defense crisis to blunt arithmetic: “This year I’m asking American partners to sell me 5% of missiles, what they have in their stocks. If they sell us 5% we will go through the winter and save people’s lives. If they can sell us 10%, we will destroy all the Russians’ ballistic missiles.” Asked what share Ukraine currently receives, he answered simply: “I have 1%.” He described near-daily deal-making with allies just to keep interceptors flowing: “With everybody, I try to exchange something for missiles.”
The numbers behind his frustration are stark. Ukraine intercepted just 29 of 195 Russian ballistic missiles fired in July — the same month the UN confirmed was the deadliest for Ukrainian civilians since the full-scale invasion began. Zelensky said Russia now produces roughly twice as many ballistic missiles monthly as it did in 2025, with Ukrainian intelligence putting some production lines 10 to 20 percent above official targets. Washington’s own shortage compounds the problem — Trump said days earlier that the US “needs missiles too,” and US Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker has said a Patriot co-production deal with Ukraine is unlikely before winter regardless. Ukraine’s own domestically built ballistic missile system, Zelensky said separately, could be combat-ready by fall — a partial answer arriving months later than the crisis it’s meant to solve.
THE REGIONAL TOLL: EIGHT KILLED, AND TWO FIREFIGHTERS LOST TO DOUBLE-TAPS
Russian attacks killed at least eight civilians and wounded 57 more across Ukraine over 24 hours. Odesa Oblast lost two people when a Russian strike hit an oil truck that then set a nearby passenger car ablaze; Kherson Oblast lost two amid strikes on 33 settlements, with 14 wounded; Sumy Oblast lost two men, aged 61 and 62, with four more wounded; Donetsk Oblast lost one in Druzhkivka, with 14 wounded regionally; Zaporizhzhia Oblast lost one, with nine wounded, after Russian forces struck an Epicentr shopping center in the city, sparking a fire that caused extensive damage. Kharkiv Oblast reported eight wounded, including a 15-year-old boy; Chernihiv Oblast two; Dnipropetrovsk Oblast two in Nikopol district; and Kyiv Oblast one, a 65-year-old man hospitalized in Brovary district.
Two of this week’s deaths came from the same deliberate tactic. In Kramatorsk, Russian forces struck firefighters responding to an earlier shelling-caused blaze, damaging a fire truck. In Zaporizhzhia, 45-year-old Master Sergeant Oleksandr Prodan of the Civil Protection Service was killed when Russian forces struck the scene of an earlier attack a second time, wounding two more responders; officials disclosed his death publicly this week after he was killed days earlier, on August 9. Prodan had spent more than 20 years in firefighting and rescue work, continuing the job even after Russia occupied his original post in Polohy. He leaves a wife and a 17-year-old son. “Until his final breath, Oleksandr remained faithful to his oath and his calling,” Ukraine’s State Emergency Service wrote.
A BRIGADE’S PUBLIC PLEA FOR ROTATION
Soldiers from Ukraine’s 121st Separate Territorial Defense Brigade published a video appeal directly to Commander-in-Chief Mykhailo Drapatyi, describing four months without rotation in a Zaporizhzhia Oblast position accessible only by drone resupply. Platoon commander Anatolii Syshchuk said food deliveries were sometimes delayed a week or more — once, 12 days passed with nothing at all — leaving his troops in what he called a “semi-conscious state.” “We are not refusing to serve, but we have no other choice. We are asking for safe passage out of the area and transportation for our evacuation,” he said. “All the other authorities we have approached have failed to help us. You are our only hope.”
The brigade and Operational Command “South” both responded, saying roughly 240 kilograms of supplies had reached the position over the past month and that rotation would happen once “the security situation allows,” without offering a timeline. Syshchuk’s sister, who published the appeal, said the actual amount delivered may have been far less than claimed: “In our reality, it’s usually the ordinary soldier who is blamed — the one who keeps the front line holding. But if even once a commander had been punished and held accountable for the lives and health of the troops, there would be no need for such appeals.”
NOTES FROM MOSCOW: COUNTER-DRONE DEMAND SURGES SIXFOLD
Russia’s own response to the strikes keeps outrunning its ability to actually stop them. FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov held a meeting on protecting Russian infrastructure from what he called Ukrainian “terrorist threats,” claiming Russia is conducting “significant work” to counter the strikes without specifying what that work involves. Russian business paper Vedomosti reported commercial demand for counter-drone systems inside Russia has jumped more than sixfold since the start of the year, roughly tracking the same months Ukraine escalated its long-range campaign. Even sympathetic Russian military bloggers have started saying the quiet part out loud: one aviation-focused commentator publicly criticized officials this week for shirking responsibility over air defense failures rather than actually funding the fix.
TWO RUSSIAN PRISON OFFICERS CHARGED WITH TORTURE
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office accused two staff members at Russia’s Pretrial Detention Center No. 1 in Kursk of torturing Ukrainian civilians held there, documenting at least five victims subjected to electric shocks and beatings with hands, feet, and a plastic baton. The suspects face charges under Ukraine’s Criminal Code carrying eight to 12 years in prison. It’s one entry in what rights groups describe as systematic abuse: released detainees have separately described Russian medical staff withholding medication until prisoners complied with orders to kneel, part of a documentation effort Ukrainian officials, former POWs, and families of the missing launched in May called “Made in Russia, Delivered into Captivity.”
AUSTRIA’S SANCTIONS-BUSTERS CONVICTED
A Vienna court convicted two Belarusian cousins — a 28-year-old mechanical engineering student who ran a Vienna-based shell company, and his 24-year-old cousin who served as its accountant — for smuggling metalworking machinery into Belarus and onward to Russian arms manufacturer Rostec, in violation of EU sanctions. The man received a 21-month sentence, 19 months suspended; the woman received a 15-month suspended sentence. Both pleaded guilty and declined to appeal. “This case demonstrates the lengths to which international networks go to circumvent existing sanctions,” said Austria’s intelligence chief Sylvia Mayer. Rostec’s products include the Pantsir air defense system, the Kh-101 cruise missile, and the Iskander ballistic missile — the same weapon type that killed 17 people in Kyiv on August 5 and four more, including a 3-year-old, on August 8.
JULY WAS THE DEADLIEST MONTH FOR CIVILIANS SINCE 2022
Independent monitoring group Conflict Intelligence Team confirmed at least 634 civilians were killed across Russia and Ukraine combined in July from strikes on civilian infrastructure — more than 20 deaths a day, and the deadliest month in at least two and a half years, with roughly 30 percent of the dead in Russia or Russian-occupied territory. The UN separately confirmed July was Ukraine’s own deadliest month for civilians since March 2022. CIT’s broader count puts combined civilian deaths from both sides’ strikes at 2,491 for the first seven months of 2026 alone, already closing in on the 2,919 recorded across the entirety of 2025 — itself the deadliest full year since the invasion’s opening months.
DRAPATYI MOVES ON MOBILIZATION REFORM
Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, said Commander-in-Chief Mykhailo Drapatyi’s team has begun reviewing recommendations to overhaul Ukraine’s mobilization system, following a meeting a day earlier where the team “urgently took up” his office’s complaints. As an immediate step, Drapatyi’s team suspended the head of Transcarpathia Oblast’s recruitment center and dispatched a large-scale inspection to the region — the same area where more than 1,000 alleged illegal draft exemptions are already under investigation. “There is no desire on Drapatyi’s team to turn a blind eye to the problem,” Lubinets said, adding he expects the inspection to surface “a very large number of violations, including possible criminal offenses and crimes.”
PUTIN THREATENS TO “RESPOND IN KIND” OVER SHADOW FLEET SEIZURES
Putin warned that Russia would retaliate if European countries continue seizing vessels from its sanctioned shadow fleet, calling recent interdictions “nothing more than piracy” during a visit to Pacific Fleet exercises. “They even came up with the idea of seizing our ships and selling the property they stole from us,” he said, adding Moscow “will be forced to respond in kind.” The warning comes as Sweden, France, the UK, and Belgium have each intercepted shadow fleet vessels in recent months — Sweden’s courts this week agreed to hand one such ship, the grain carrier Caffa, directly to Ukraine — and as the environmental cost of the aging fleet keeps mounting: a separate sanctioned tanker has been leaking oil into a protected marine area off Oman for weeks, with the resulting slick estimated at up to 600 square kilometers.
POLAND’S DEPORTATION DEBATE
A new poll found 67.2 percent of Poles support deporting unemployed, military-aged Ukrainian men, following a hardline migration proposal from the opposition Law and Justice party ahead of next year’s elections — support that cut across party lines, with even 52 percent of governing coalition voters in favor. Poland’s Interior Ministry rejected the proposal as “pure absurdity and populism,” noting 95 percent of Ukrainian men in Poland are legally employed. Roughly 2 million Ukrainians live in Poland, about half under temporary protection as refugees — a population whose welcome, opinion polling increasingly suggests, is thinner than it once was.
INDIA STARTS SHIPPING GASOLINE TO RUSSIA
Russia received its first gasoline shipments from India last week, Bloomberg reported, as Ukrainian strikes keep Russian refining capacity roughly a third below seasonal norms. The fuel traveled aboard Russian-linked tankers from India’s Nayara Energy — itself partly owned by Russian oil giant Rosneft — transferring cargo at Egypt’s Damietta Port before continuing to Russian ports, with Bloomberg data suggesting more shipments are already in transit. “The severity of the current domestic gasoline imbalance” is what’s driving Russia to import fuel from as far as India, Kpler analyst Sumit Ritolia said — a small, telling sign of how much pressure Ukraine’s refinery campaign has actually applied, even as Moscow keeps finding new routes around it.
WHAT WEDNESDAY CONFIRMED
By the time Wednesday’s fires in Novorossiysk finally burned down, Ukraine had damaged four Russian warships, reclaimed 745 square kilometers of its own territory over seven quiet months, and heard its own president describe the country’s air defense in the plainest terms yet: one percent, against a war that needs so much more. Zelensky said Kyiv and its partners have a plan to force Russia to stop — “Putin does not want to stop this war, but he will stop it” — without saying what that plan actually involves. Nothing about Wednesday changed the war’s basic shape. It simply added one more set of numbers to the ledger both sides keep insisting will eventually tip in their favor.
A PRAYER FOR UKRAINE
1. For the Two Firefighters Lost to the Same Cruel Trick
Lord, Oleksandr Prodan spent twenty years running toward fires so others wouldn’t have to, and a second strike aimed specifically at rescuers finally took him. Hold his wife and his seventeen-year-old son, and hold every firefighter in Kramatorsk and Zaporizhzhia still answering calls knowing the danger doesn’t end with the first explosion. Let their courage never become something we simply expect.
2. For the Soldiers of the 121st Brigade, Still Waiting
Father, men holding a position for four months without rotation had to beg publicly just to be heard, rationing food that arrived a week late or not at all. Hold Anatolii Syshchuk and every soldier in his unit through exhaustion this deep. Give their commanders the will to actually answer them, not just to explain why they haven’t yet.
3. For the Eight-Year-Old Boy of Novorossiysk
Lord, a child on the Russian side of this war died from debris that fell in a night neither he nor his family had any part in causing. We hold no satisfaction in that loss, wherever it falls. Comfort his family, and let every child on every side of this war eventually grow up somewhere the debris can’t reach them.
4. For Ukrainians Held and Tortured Far From Home
God of justice, Ukrainian civilians in Russian detention are being beaten and shocked simply for having been caught on the wrong side of a border they didn’t choose to cross. Hold them through what their bodies are enduring, and hold their families waiting for any word at all. Let the documentation of what’s happening to them eventually become the justice it’s building toward.
5. For a Country Doing the Math on Its Own Survival
God of provision, tonight Ukraine’s president describes his country’s defense in a single percentage point, asking for more not out of greed but out of arithmetic that could save lives if the answer changes. Move the hearts of those holding the other ninety-nine percent, and give Ukraine’s negotiators patience for a math problem that shouldn’t take this long to solve. Let the numbers move before another winter proves how much they mattered.
In Your mercy, in Your justice, in Your time — bring this war to its end, and let the ending be worthy of what Ukraine has endured.