Sitrep for Aug. 31-Sept. 3, 2026 (as of 10 a.m. UTC+3)
Frontline Situation Update
In the Orikhiv direction, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed to have captured the villages of Chervona Krynytsia (northeast of the town of Orikhiv) and Novopavlivka (northwest of Orikhiv). Given last year's claims that the villages of Mala Tokmachka and Novodanylivka had been captured, this means that, according to the MoD, Orikhiv is already almost surrounded. At the same time, only a flag-planting photo op was shown from Chervona Krynytsia, while no such footage has emerged from Novopavlivka. At present, these villages can be considered part of the contested area.
In the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk direction, the Russian Armed Forces continue to advance near the town of Mykolaivka. Video filmed about a kilometer from the town has emerged showing Russian soldiers clearing positions: the footage shows the soldiers throwing mines into dugouts. In this way, they are attempting to gradually bring the area under their control. At the same time, infiltration into Mykolaivka itself continues: according to a local Telegram channel, assault troops are hiding in basements on the eastern outskirts of the town, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine are attempting to "smoke them out." Footage has been published showing two captured assault troops, aged 25 and 55. For now, the active infiltration phase is underway, and it is premature to speak of fighting for the town—the fighting phase will begin once a sufficient number of assault troops have assembled in the town. By comparison, fighting is still ongoing in the built-up areas of the town of Kostiantynivka.
Strikes on bridges in the area of Sloviansk continue, with the RuAF systematically destroying crossings over the Kazennyi Torets River. Footage has emerged showing a destroyed bridge near the village of Seleznivka, with several overturned passenger cars that fell into the gap left by the collapsed span, as well as the body of a civilian woman. This may have been the result of an airstrike, for example, on one of the bridge supports. However, some commentators, including pro-Russian ones, noted the absence of visible signs of an explosion or shrapnel damage on the road surface and suggested that the bridge had been mined by the AFU in case of a retreat and was subsequently detonated by Russian forces. We have repeatedly seen this practice on both sides: both the AFU and the RuAF often mine bridges in their immediate rear areas so that they can destroy them in the event of a forced withdrawal and complicate the enemy's subsequent advance, while drones fly under bridges in search of explosives in order to bring them down, thereby making logistics more difficult.
After Vladimir Putin made a similar claim, the Russian MoD announced the capture of the town of Sviatohirsk in the Lyman direction. Although the Russian command regularly claims to have captured villages that are in fact located in the AFU’s rear, this case has surprised even pro-Russian bloggers, some of whom acknowledge the problems faced by the RuAF on the Shandryholove salient. Sviatohirsk is located southwest of the salient, which the AFU are attempting to cut off. The situation there is becoming dangerous, as Russian troops could find themselves encircled if the AFU succeed.
Ukrainian and Russian Strikes
In the early hours of Aug. 30, the AFU struck a "drone port" near the village of Tsimbulova, Oryol region, which we had long argued should be targeted. Researchers had long observed the facility being built and expanded in satellite imagery. It is now one of the largest facilities of its kind, and we had long found it strange that it was not subject to regular Ukrainian strikes. In late 2024 and early 2025, it was targeted by Storm Shadow missiles. In the latest strike, one launcher and a drone storage area were hit.
On Aug. 31, Ukrainian UAVs again attempted to strike a Wildberries warehouse in the city of Yekaterinburg, but the UAV again crashed in a parking lot, injuring four people. Notably, there have been no similar cases of two consecutive misses against warehouses in other regions. It is possible that this was the result of jamming.
The Russian side, in turn, has now also begun targeting logistics hubs operated by international companies. On Aug. 31, a DHL facility in the village of Pohreby in the Kyiv region was hit, injuring eight people. The Russian MoD claimed that drones were stored there. On Sept. 2, a FedEx warehouse in Kyiv was attacked.
In the early hours of Sept. 3, one of Ukraine's largest pharmaceutical warehouses in the Boryspil district of the Kyiv region was hit. One person was reported injured, while three others were injured elsewhere in the Kyiv region. That same night, during an attack on the city of Odesa, a multi-story residential building was hit, injuring 17 people, including a child. According to the Russian MoD, warehouse facilities were among the targets. On Aug. 31, a Nova Poshta warehouse in Odesa was also hit, although the resulting fire was quickly extinguished. Also on Sept. 3, during a UAV strike on Nova Poshta in Dnipro, one person was killed and another five were injured.
On Sept. 1, a massive combined attack on Kyiv killed eight civilians and injured five, while in the Kyiv region, four people were killed and another 13 injured. Iskander ballistic missiles equipped with cluster munition warheads were apparently used against a logistics complex near Boryspil Airport.
Russia appears to have begun conducting almost around-the-clock drone raids on Ukraine. As reported, it launched about 1,500 UAVs over four days, 800 of them jet-powered. Once again, Russia intensified its attacks after noticing that Ukraine's air-defense problems had worsened.
The Ukrainian Air Force again stopped listing in its reports the number of ballistic missiles Russia launched, providing only figures on intercepted missiles. At the same time, according to the service, the intercept rate for jet-powered Shaheds reached 80 percent on Sept. 1. Ukrainian military expert Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov had earlier put the figure at the same 80 percent, based on his own estimates. Yurii Ihnat, head of the Communications Department of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, speaking about intercepts of jet-powered Shaheds, said the rate was 60 percent. Those are very good figures given how difficult it is to intercept such fast drones. Ukrainian forces may well have taken advantage of the fact that virtually all the drones fly toward Kyiv along a single route.
Russia has apparently begun a new campaign of strikes on Ukraine's energy infrastructure. On Sept. 1 and 2, Russian forces carried out strikes on energy facilities in Odesa and the Odesa region, including the Odesa thermal power plant. The Sept. 2 strike left more than 350,000 families without electricity. On Aug. 27, a strike with aerial bombs on the Kherson thermal power plant destroyed all of its heat- and power-generating equipment. The plant had also been struck during the summer, and it has now become clear that the damage is critical. Going forward, we expect attacks to intensify primarily against frontline cities: Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Pavlohrad, Kharkiv, and Sumy. Russia may use various weapons against them, not only long-range missiles and drones. Kyiv and the Kyiv region will undoubtedly remain a priority target as well.
Meanwhile, Russia continues to prepare for Ukrainian retaliation in the form of strikes on Russian energy facilities. In northeastern Moscow, footage showed metal structures installed at one of the substations near the Izmailovsky Kremlin. The structures are probably supports for anti-drone nets. Warnings that businesses may be nationalized if their owners fail to protect them adequately may also hint at the threat to come.
Strikes on air defenses, including Pantsir-S1 surface-to-air missile and anti-aircraft artillery systems, have intensified further in recent weeks in Crimea, the Krasnodar and Bryansk regions. Those attacks, along with strikes on the infrastructure of the Millerovo airfield in the Rostov region, may also attest to the seriousness of Ukraine's intentions. Knocking some of these systems out of action could "open the way" for Ukrainian drones.
Because Russian attacks have become almost round-the-clock, Ukraine has had to change the way it issues air-raid alerts so that civilians better understand the level of danger and do not ignore the warnings, while cities can avoid being brought to a complete standstill. In response, Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that air-raid alerts would be differentiated, including geographically. There will now be different signals for drone attacks (yellow alert) and missile or large-scale combined attacks (red alert). The new system is also intended to tie alerts more precisely to areas facing an actual threat. During a "yellow" alert, some restrictions will be eased: traffic across bridges will remain open, including service on the metro line linking Kyiv’s left and right banks. Nighttime movement of freight vehicles will also be permitted, and the curfew will generally be relaxed.
One of the week’s main stories was Zelenskyy’s statement that civilian air traffic over Russia is becoming unsafe because of Ukrainian drones and the operation of Russian air defenses. He addressed the statement to airlines and insurance companies on Sept. 1, and the following day Ukraine’s infrastructure minister, Mykola Kalashnyk, sent a similar letter to the International Civil Aviation Organization, a move Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency called illegal. The statement brought to mind a plan described by Simon Shuster in The Atlantic and attributed to Mykhailo Fedorov: to launch as many as 1,000 UAVs a day toward Moscow in order to paralyze the aviation hub, force foreign airlines to abandon flights and thereby increase pressure on Russia’s elites.
We still do not understand either the ultimate objective or the economic rationale of such an operation. Even at a minimum estimated cost of $20,000 per long-range UAV, launching 1,000 UAVs a day would cost $20 million, or $600 million a month. That is an enormous expenditure given the $27 billion budget shortfall at Ukraine’s MoD, despite the $90 billion allocated by European countries over two years. At the same time, it is difficult to imagine that appeals from Turkish Airlines and other carriers could persuade Vladimir Putin to end the war.
Airlines will be guided less by Zelenskyy’s statement than by the actual threat from the air, the frequency with which the so-called Carpet plan, which calls for the landing of all aircraft, is activated, and the ability of Russian air defenses to repel attacks. The cancellations that followed his remarks in the early hours of Sept. 2, including by Pegasus Airlines, are therefore more likely to have been related to the ongoing attacks or to other factors. A decision to suspend flights for the long term requires changes to schedules and routes, as well as compensation for passengers, and cannot be made within a few hours.
Even a sustained effort to restrict operations at Moscow’s aviation hub would require a huge number of drones, while closing a significant portion of the airspace over western Russia would probably require thousands of drones every day. It is unclear what specific military advantage would justify such an expense. In our view, even leaving aside strictly military targets, continuing strikes on oil refineries would be a more rational use of scarce long-range weapons. According to Sergey Vakulenko, an expert at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, about a quarter of Russia’s oil-refining capacity is currently out of service. That is painful for the Russian economy, but it is still not critical: even under these conditions, the oil industry is capable of functioning for quite some time.
Over the past weekend, fires broke out at two facilities in Poland linked to supplies to Ukraine. In the town of SkarĹĽysko-Kamienna, a fire at the WB Electronics plant, which manufactures UAVs, was small and was extinguished within two hours. Shortly before the fire, a CCTV camera captured a person in a balaclava hiding on the premises; a backpack and a sweatshirt that may have belonged to him were later found nearby. Several hours earlier, a production and warehouse facility belonging to JFG Composites in Lublin, which supplies Ukraine with composite materials for military aviation, caught fire. There is currently no information indicating the involvement of Russian intelligence services in either incident, although the coincidence is suspicious.
Germany has now definitively established a Russian link to the attempt to blow up a Ukrainian aircraft at Leipzig airport using drones carrying explosives. The suspects turned out to be a Russian-born man holding Russian and Latvian passports, who was allegedly responsible for the operation's logistics, and a Belarusian citizen with a Russian passport, who was identified through DNA found on the drone, explosives, and an antenna near the airport. He entered the EU on an Italian tourist visa. Authorities were unable to apprehend the saboteurs: both managed to leave the European Union.
As a result, on Sept. 1, the German government for the first time officially held Russia responsible for the sabotage and announced the closure of the last Russian consulate general in the country, the termination of operations of the Russian House, and tighter entry rules for Russian citizens.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy also stated that in September, Germany would provide Ukraine with new packages of air defense equipment and finalize the Drone Deal initiative for joint drone production. As far as we understand, these arrangements had been reached in advance and are not a response to the events in Leipzig.
Meanwhile, a homemade rocket resembling a firework was discovered near the Turnow-Preilack substation in Brandenburg. It was presumably intended to propel a wire onto a power line, cause a short circuit, and damage the line. The substation is connected to the Jänschwalde lignite-fired power plant, which climate activists had previously campaigned against, so at this stage neither their involvement nor sabotage involving an individual recruited by Russian intelligence services can be ruled out.
Conscription, Mobilization and Contract Military Service
The Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, said that by his preliminary estimate, only 2 to 3% of mobilized soldiers actually reach frontline positions. He said some of the rest go AWOL from their units, while others are deemed unfit for service on health grounds after arriving at training ranges and are sent back. This estimate strikes us as highly implausible. Head of Ukraine’s Presidential Office Kyrylo Budanov recently said that 30,000 people need to be mobilized each month. Even assuming that many are currently being mobilized, 2% would amount to just 600 people a month — far too few even to partially replace losses, and the situation on the frontline would be far worse than it currently is. Lubinets may have been referring only to soldiers assigned directly to frontline positions, excluding rear and support units, but he did not explain his methodology.
It has emerged that the criminal case against the commander of the Bashkir battalion Vatan, Ramil Ulmazbaev, who was accused of the particularly brutal murder of fellow soldiers, was closed after he returned to the frontline and received a state award for his service. According to case documents, in 2023 Ulmazbaev took part in the killing of three service members who had witnessed the murder of another battalion member. The victims were shot in the knees, were beaten with a crowbar and had their stomachs slashed open, then were loaded alive into a UAZ vehicle, doused with gasoline and set on fire. Grenades were then thrown at the bodies, and the remaining fragments were burned again the following day in an attempt to destroy evidence.
Despite the severity of the charges and the fact that the trial had already begun, Ulmazbaev avoided punishment, returned to the war and received a state award, which became the basis for closing the case. This sends a clear signal to other Russian commanders: even torture and the murder of one’s own subordinates can go unpunished if they sign another military contract and earn a state award at the front. In this way, Russian authorities are not only effectively granting the accused impunity but also encouraging the further spread of violence within the army.
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