Russia keeps attacking civilian targets…..
Russia is losing thousand’s more troops that it can replace and is importing troops for North Korea again….
Western Intel people think the loss of troops IS creating economic and political problems for the Russian leader….
They also believe that Putin is hoping the he can scare European countries to abandon supporting the Ukraine, which seems kinda stupid since a weak Ukraine rolling over would see Russia CLOSER to European countries….
(Putin probably thinks Trump would just stand by if he tries to grab more ground?)
I have reported here on the mass exodus of Russian males to Baltic states instead of getting drafted….
Ukraine energy target’s and now some consumer goods locations….
Russia is desperately looking for oil and gas imports….
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The Ukrainian military said it shot down seven ballistic missiles and 258 drones as Russia carried out a lengthy attack that extended over Wednesday night and well into Thursday. “Overnight, Russia carried out a massive strike against Ukraine, targeting ports, grain storage, energy, industry and other infrastructure with ballistic and hypersonic missiles and combat drones,” said the foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha. Commuters went to work in Kyiv to the boom of air defences firing at waves of drones, Reuters reported. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week that Kyiv had received a small batch of US-made Patriot interceptors that can shoot down ballistic missiles.
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In Kharkiv, one person was killed and two were injured in a lunchtime attack on a shopping centre, said the regional governor, Oleh Syniehubov. The strikes also targeted a Kyiv-area retail distribution centre and a shipment hub for a toy company, their chief executives said. Chocolate firm Roshen, founded by former president Petro Poroshenko, said one of its warehouses outside Kyiv was destroyed. Russian strikes also hit industrial sites, energy facilities and other infrastructure in the central Poltava and southern Odesa regions, as well as the south-eastern city of Kryvyi Rih, officials said.
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A Russian attack on a thermal power plant in Ukraine’s southern city of Kherson resulted in the loss of all of its generating capacity, state oil and gas company Naftogaz said. “The Russians struck a purely civilian facility that provides heat to a significant portion of Kherson’s residential buildings,” said the company’s CEO, Sergiy Fedorenko. The Kherson regional governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, called for people to leave the city if they could, “especially families with children and elderly people”. “Last night, Russian forces again attacked Kherson’s district heating plant with glide bombs … the facility sustained very serious damage. Kherson may find itself without electricity or heating not for hours or days but for a long period.”
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Six Russian drones crossed into the airspace of Ukraine’s neighbour Moldova, local authorities said, prompting the president, Maia Sandu, to “strongly condemn this intimidation”. One of them was found on Moldovan territory.
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A Russian serviceman was killed by a car bomb in St Petersburg on Thursday, officials said. His wife was injured. Throughout the war, assassinations have targeted key Russian military personnel, military-industrial figures and prominent supporters of the war effort – both within Russia and in occupied Ukraine. Kyiv’s security services including the SBU have claimed responsibility for some of the killings.
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The Guardian’s Peter Beaumont has written about how far Russia is having to go to import diesel and gasoline because of the damage Ukrainian strikes have done to its petroleum industry. So many refineries are damaged that Russian oil is being sent to Kazakhstan for processing into fuels that are shipped back. For the first time, Russia this week bought 200,000 barrels of gasoline from Turkey – the fifth confirmed seaborne delivery of vehicle fuel this summer, after previous shipments from India amounting to 1m barrels in total.
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“In the space of a summer,” Peter Beaumont writes, “Russia, once the world’s second-largest producer of crude oil, has been plunged into a desperate scramble to find sources of gasoline to plug the ever-growing holes in its refining capacity.” Russia has signed a deal with the Kondensat oil refinery in western Kazakhstan this week to process Russian crude, with 70% of the refined fuel shipped back to Russia – by rail according to reports, because there is no pipeline. Fuel imports from war ally Belarus this June increased by a factor of 141 compared with June 2025.
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The Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden called on Thursday for the EU to look again at using frozen Russian central bank assets to finance Ukraine. The four countries have told the EU executive in a letter: “We believe now is the time to revert to the issue of how we can make further use of Russia’s immobilised assets for the benefit of Ukraine.” The EU has failed to strike a deal on tapping the roughly €200bn (£170bn/US$230bn) after objections from Belgium, where the vast bulk of the financial assets are held, that it could be deemed legally liable. EU countries instead loaned Ukraine €90bn.
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An arson attack planned by three suspects in eastern Slovakia targeted drone maker Skyeton, prosecutors said on Thursday. Skyeton, founded in Ukraine, says it produces drones for civilian and military use in Ukraine and other countries. “The attack was supposed to aim at the Skyeton company’s factory,” said a spokesperson for the regional prosecutor’s office in the eastern city of Presov. A German prosecutor told Reuters that a 26-year-old Latvian had been detained in Hamburg and extradition proceedings were under way. Slovak prosecutors said a Latvian and a Ukrainian had been detained in Slovakia….
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Russia is losing about 6,000 more troops in Ukraine each month than it can recruit, western officials have said.
While Russia is still acquiring new battlefield recruits at speed, with an estimated rate of 1,000 a day, in the last two months even this has not been sufficient to replace those killed or injured.
“We estimate that the gap between the number of people Russia is losing to casualties and the number they’re being able to recruit is around 6,000 a month at the moment,” one western official said.
“Putin’s response to this has been to escalate himself and to target civilian infrastructure and civilians in Ukraine, firing over 360 missiles since early July and exploiting Kyiv’s shortage of defence against ballistic missiles. It’s clear that Moscow intends to try and break Ukrainian morale by destroying its energy infrastructure this winter.”
Such tactics are in part because Putin has limited options for overcoming the huge losses on the battlefield with more recruitment.
Western officials believe further mobilisation would be a big risk both politically and economically, saying the last such event, in autumn 2022, saw about a million – often highly skilled – Russians leave the country, with less than half returning.
It is also unclear whether the Russian military could absorb the several hundred thousand new recruits which would result, given a lack of equipment and officers.
Ukraine has repeatedly attacked Russian targets connected to oil, creating fuel shortages, but has appealed repeatedly for more help from allies, both with offensive missiles and defence systems….
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One official said: “We are seeing a continuation of hostile rhetoric and various accusations against the UK. This is absolutely consistent with longstanding Russian military doctrine, which is to use rhetoric to both exploit fears in adversaries and to influence decision-making. So this is not a new phenomenon.”
Officials say Russia still has the capability to target the UK, with cyberattacks or physical attacks on civilian targets by proxies, for example on factories or warehouses. Last year, six men were jailed for their involvement in an attack ordered by Russia against a warehouse in east London housing aid to Ukraine.
But officials said their assessment was that Putin would limit any such action to avoid more direct conflict with Nato.
Putin’s overall aim in Ukraine, western officials believe, is to maintain a campaign of attrition, hoping that support from Ukraine’s allies will ebb away, particularly if governments are spooked by public alarm over Russian threats.
Such threats should be seen, one official said, as attempts to create a “fractured and more vulnerable Europe”…..
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ISW.…Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 27, 2026
- US Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe’s visit to Moscow suggests that Russia may be preparing to conduct an act of aggression against a NATO member in the relatively near term to invalidate NATO’s Article 5. A near-term Russian attack is highly unlikely to involve a full-scale conventional invasion of a NATO state.
- The nature of the Russian threat that the US is reportedly attempting to deter in 2026 is significantly different from the threat of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in late 2021.
- The Kremlin continues to deflect Western concerns and deny any intention of conducting aggression against NATO, but these statements are part of a larger effort to create ambiguity and to degrade the alliance’s resolve to counter Russian threats.
- Baltic state officials and government-affiliated analysts emphasized that NATO should take the Russian threat seriously but that their immediate threat assessment has not changed.
- Russia may conduct air, missile, or drone strikes or a limited incursion against one or more Baltic states to test and seek to break NATO’s resolve to invoke and respond under Article 5.
- Several unidentified drones entered Moldovan airspace on the night of August 26 to 27, demonstrating that the Kremlin continues to accept the risk that Russia’s war against Ukraine can cause damage to other states, including Moldova and NATO states bordering Ukraine.
- Russian Chief of the General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov continues to make greatly exaggerated claims of Russian advances that do not match battlefield realities in order to construct a narrative of pervasive Russian military success.
- Gerasimov’s exaggerated claims of advance are part of a broader cognitive warfare effort to falsely portray Russian advances as sweeping across the battlefield such that Ukraine and its Western partners should capitulate to Russia’s demands in negotiations.
- Russia launched two Onyx anti-ship missiles, an unspecified number of Iskander-M and KN-23 ballistic missiles, and 258 drones against Ukraine overnight.
- Ukrainian forces continued their long-range strike campaign against Russian military assets and Ozon (another Russian analogue to Amazon and Wildberries’ main competitor) logistics facilities in Russia.
- Russian forces recently advanced in northern Sumy Oblast and in the Kostyantynivka-Druzhkivka tactical area.
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Daily Kos grunt report for today…..
Trump Say’s Russia is NOT gonna attack NATO territory ….
Russia drones HAVE be spotted and/or shot down over Moldova, Romania , Bulgaria, Germany, Norway, Denmark and other EU countries ALREADY
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