Moscow launched overnight what authorities in Kyiv said was the biggest drone attack of the war. The latest Russian strikes began only hours after U.S. President Donald Trump had pledged to restart weapons deliveries to Ukraine while leveling unusually fierce criticism at his Russian counterpart, saying that “we get a lot of bullshit thrown at us” by Vladimir Putin. “I’m not happy with Putin. I can tell you that much right now,” Trump added.
“This is a telling attack — and it comes precisely at a time when so many efforts have been made to achieve peace, to establish a ceasefire, and yet only Russia continues to rebuff them all,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces reported this morning that Russia had attempted to strike 741 targets across Ukraine using 728 one-way attack drones and decoy drones, launched from locations in the Bryansk, Primorsko-Akhtarsk, Kursk, Oryol, and Millerovo regions of Russia.
According to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the drone strikes were accompanied by 13 missiles: seven Kh-101/Iskander-K cruise missiles launched from the Saratov and Kursk regions and six Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missiles launched from MiG-31 Foxhounds in the airspace over the Lipetsk region.
Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat claimed that almost all the Russian drones and missiles were brought down by air defenses, most of them via electronic countermeasures. However, Ihnat also admitted that the six Kinzhal missiles had caused unspecified damage.
Ukrainian authorities say the main target of the attack was the city of Lutsk in northwestern Ukraine.
“We have fires and damage to garages at one of the garage cooperatives, as well as a fire at one of the enterprises. The extent of other damage is still being determined,” the mayor of Lutsk, Ihor Polishchuk, said.
Targets in the Kyiv region and several other cities were also attacked.
The Russian attack was so intensive that NATO-member Poland was forced to scramble its and allied aircraft to protect Polish airspace early on Wednesday. Lutsk is located only around 125 miles from the Polish border.
The Polish Armed Forces said it had also placed its ground-based air defenses and radar systems on “the highest state of readiness.”
“The measures taken are aimed at ensuring security in areas bordering the threatened regions,” the Polish military said in a post on social media, adding it was “fully ready for immediate response.”
The latest Russian strikes began shortly after Trump had pledged to send additional Patriot air defense missiles to Ukraine, while also venting his frustration at Putin. On Monday, the U.S. president announced that U.S. weapons deliveries to Ukraine would resume, only days after they were halted by the Pentagon, which had cited concerns about American stocks running low.
Speaking at a cabinet meeting yesterday, Trump said of Putin: “He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
Trump confirmed that he was looking at the option of putting further sanctions on Russia. On the table is a proposal to put 500 percent tariffs on nations that buy Russian oil, gas, uranium, and other exports.
In the meantime, U.S. weapons deliveries to Kyiv will resume, albeit on a small scale:
“We’re gonna send some more weapons we have to them,” Trump said. “They have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard now.”
Reports suggest that only 10 additional Patriot interceptors — fewer than had been planned in the paused shipment — will be headed to Kyiv.
The number of Patriot interceptors was described by Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine’s Ministry for Strategic Industries, as “minuscule.” You can read more about concerns over the Patriot missile stockpile in our recent report here.
If it wasn’t already clear, Ukraine’s demand for additional air defense capacity was underscored by the scale of last night’s Russian attacks. The situation isn’t going to improve as Russia now produces over 2,000 Shahed-136 long-range attack drones a month with that number soon climbing to 5,000.
The Latest
On the battlefield, there are reports of a recent Ukrainian advance in the northern Sumy region, as part of a series of ongoing counterattacks involving some of the best troops from both Russia and Ukraine. In recent weeks, Russia has amassed a very large force to try and take the Sumy region, although Ukrainian military officials say they have so far thwarted this summer offensive. Russian sources, meanwhile, claim that the advance is “inevitable.”
Here are some other key takeaways from the latest Institute for the Study of War Assessment on the situation on the ground in Ukraine:
- Kursk: Fighting continued in Kursk Oblast on July 8, with claims from Russian milbloggers that Ukrainian forces were attacking from Ryzhivka (near the international border in Ukraine) toward Tetkino.
- Kharkiv: Russian forces continued offensive operations in the northern Kharkiv region on July 8 but did not make confirmed advances.
- Luhansk: Russian troops continue to try to capture the remainder of the Luhansk region and push westward into the eastern Kharkiv region and northern Donetsk region toward Borova, Kupiansk, and Lyman. They have not made any confirmed advances.
- Donetsk: Russian forces continued their offensive operations in the Siversk direction as of July 8, but had not advanced. Here, the overarching Russian objectives remain the capture of the entirety of the Donetsk region, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas, and possibly an advance into the Dnipropetrovsk region.
- Zaporizhzhia: Russian forces continued their offensive operations in this region as of July 8. A deputy commander for a Ukrainian battalion operating in the Zaporizhia direction reported on July 7 that Russian forces were attacking in groups of three to four soldiers, usually without equipment but sometimes with motorcycles and buggies.
- Kherson: Neither Ukrainian nor Russian sources reported any ground activity in the Kherson direction on July 8.
A remarkable battlefield account purportedly from a Russian soldier (serving in a penal battalion) was published on a pro-Kremlin Telegram account, after they were posted as missing in action. The account takes the form of a letter, addressed to President Putin, outlining various grievances, including the equipment his unit was provided with. He writes:
“I’m not a career military man, and not an officer, so maybe I don’t understand something, but I’ve always thought that assault is a complex offensive operation, which includes aviation, artillery, and intelligence support. What do I see with my own eyes? We are put in a UAZ or Niva without a roof, or on motorcycles, even on horses, and sent on the road in groups of two to three or six to eight people. After one kilometer, we are starting to get attacked by drones, artillery, and mortars, while we still have to drive for another seven kilometers. Naturally, there is no artillery preparation for suppressing enemy artillery or countering dozens of deadly drones. If we’re lucky, in one kilometer our car will get damaged, and we’ll be called back. Then there is a chance for almost the entire assault group to return alive or wounded. If the group travels two kilometers or more, the probability of returning is almost zero.”
Trump has often touted how the war would have never started if he was in office. Now a leaked audio clip from a major donor gathering has Trump stating that he warned Putin that he would bomb Moscow if he invaded.
Trump also says he is looking at sanctions to further punish Russia for not coming to the negotiating table and Speaker of the House Johnson is onboard:
One Russian fighting vehicle with no shortage of protection is seen in the following video. It is perhaps the most extensively protected tank we have seen so far in the conflict, to the extent that the original identity of the vehicle is no longer clear. Apparently operated by Russian forces, the tank is said to have been abandoned in the Donetsk region. It appears that its heavy protection meant it escaped destruction by several first-person-view (FPV) drones, which can be seen on top of the superstructure.
A leading international court has ruled that Russia committed multiple human rights violations since it began backing anti-Kyiv separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014. Key human rights abuses include the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) in 2014 and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the European Court of Human Rights has determined.
A panel of 17 judges found Russia violated the European Convention on Human Rights through “extrajudicial killing of civilians and Ukrainian military personnel” outside of combat, “torture,” “forced labor,” “unlawful and arbitrary detention of civilians,” as well as looting.
The judges also ruled that Russia had violated the convention through “the transfer to Russia and, in many cases, the adoption there of Ukrainian children.”
Speaking today, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia had no intention of complying with the decision of the court, whose rulings it considered to be “null and void.”
Not surprisingly, Russian military bloggers are anticipating a Ukrainian response in kind after last night’s unprecedented attacks.
One Russian monitoring channel claims that Ukraine is preparing to launch “a thousand” long-range one-way attack drones against Russia, including the Moscow region, over the coming days. The same account warns that strikes by Storm Shadow and Neptune cruise missiles could be expected.
Last month, Ukraine carried out 115 long-range drone strikes against Russian targets, according to Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Syrskyi did not specify whether this included only targets inside Russia or also in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.
Returning to the Neptune, there have been recent reports that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has detained two Chinese citizens on suspicion of stealing classified military technologies related to the production of the Ukrainian cruise missiles.
The SBU announced today that it had detained the two Chinese nationals in Kyiv. The two individuals, a 24-year-old former student of a Kyiv technical university and his father, are accused of attempting to spy on behalf of Chinese intelligence.
The younger man allegedly attempted to recruit a Ukrainian national with access to classified defense technologies in order to obtain technical data on the Neptune missile system. Originally developed as a coastal defense missile and famously used to sink the Russian Navy cruiser Moskva, the Neptune has since been developed as a long-range land-attack missile.
If convicted, the two men face up to 15 years in prison and confiscation of property.
Russian Shahed-136 attacks on Ukraine continue to rise and we are seeing new video of the drones pummeling Ukrainian cities. Below we see a ‘double tap’ attack on a target area in Poltava:
Additional recent strikes caught on video, with the terrifying wale of the Shahed-136 diving at full power heard in some of the clips:
Among the latest uncrewed ground vehicles (UGVs), a class of systems proliferating in the conflict, is the Snail, reportedly now in use with the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The locally developed Snail is said to have a payload of several hundred kilograms and to be capable of overcoming battlefield obstacles thanks to its electric drive and all-terrain configuration. As an alternative to its own payload, the UGV is reportedly able to pull a trailer weighing almost two tons.
Less sophisticated is the following UGV, the operational status of which is unknown, but which was apparently developed on the initiative of the 3rd Assault Brigade, a unit formed by former Azov Battalion soldiers in 2022. The wheels on this UGV are repurposed landmines, on which the robot rolls toward a Russian trench before falling in and detonating.
That’s it for now.
Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com