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DISPATCH 03/26 · 25 Jul 2026
BATTLEPOLICY
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Russia Coverage
Ukraine · Russia · PolicyPro

Ukraine Fired Its Reformer, Then Fired the Generals He Fought

Six days of protests cost Zelensky both his commander-in-chief and his chief of the General Staff. The new command team carries Mykhailo Fedorov's reform agenda without Fedorov, who is still refusing to come back.

Ukraine · Russia · Naval

Ukraine's Drone War Just Closed a Pipeline Kyiv Says It Never Targeted

Four tankers hit in four days shut the Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal at Novorossiysk, halting roughly 80% of Kazakhstan's crude exports. Most of those barrels belong to Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell, and Kyiv denies responsibility.

Europe · Russia · Ukraine

Germany: The Enemy in Your Own Country

Russia can't bomb the factories arming Ukraine, so it targets the will behind them: a 50,000-account bot network, Kremlin money in the AfD, and Germans recruited to spy and set fires.

Russia · Space · electronic-warfarePro

Volna Kupol Garant

Volna Kupol Garant ("Wave Dome Guarantor") is Russia's trailer-mounted electronic-warfare complex built to jam Starlink's Ku-band uplink, denying Ukraine's Starlink-guided strike drones their control link across a roughly 20-square-kilometer bubble.

Ukraine · Russia · drones

Ukraine Finished the Refinery List. Now It Has to Keep Them Offline.

A $50,000 drone flew 2,500 kilometers to Omsk and completed a target list Kyiv worked through for two years. Reach is no longer the problem. What remains is a race between repair crews and strike tempo, and a second front against the tankers that move whatever Russia still refines.

Russia · Space · electronic-warfarePro

R-330Zh Zhitel

Russia's R-330Zh Zhitel is a truck-mounted electronic-warfare station built to detect, direction-find and jam GNSS, satellite-phone, cellular and selected radio communications.

Russia · Space · electronic-warfarePro

Pole-21

Pole-21 is Russia's distributed R-340RP GNSS-jamming network, built to mount on cell towers and deny GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and BeiDou navigation over protected areas.

Russia · Space · electronic-warfarePro

Shipovnik-Aero

Shipovnik-Aero is a Russian truck-mounted electronic-warfare complex built to detect, jam, spoof and reportedly hijack small UAVs, with wider communications-suppression functions.

Russia · Space · electronic-warfarePro

Divnomorye

Divnomorye is a highly secretive Russian ground-based electronic-warfare complex, reported as a strategic successor to Moskva-1 and Krasukha systems with radar- and satellite-jamming roles.

Russia · Space · space-ewPro

Tobol

Tobol is Russia's secretive 14Ts227 ground-based space-electronic-warfare system, publicly documented as a satellite-protection complex and reportedly tested against Starlink links in Ukraine.

Russia · drones · uavPro

Kronshtadt Sirius

Kronshtadt Sirius, also called Inokhodets-RU, is Russia's larger twin-engine successor to Orion: a MALE reconnaissance-strike UAV with claimed SATCOM control, 450 kg payload and an uncertain path from prototype to service.

Russia · drones · uavPro

ZALA 421-16

Russian tactical fixed-wing reconnaissance UAV family used for front-line ISR, target acquisition and Lancet strike cueing, with variants ranging from short-range electric airframes to long-endurance hybrid-electric models.

Russia · drones · uavPro

Forpost-R

Forpost-R is Russia's indigenized, armed derivative of the Israeli IAI Searcher II UAV, used for reconnaissance, targeting and light precision strike in Ukraine and Syria.

Iran · Russia · missilesPro

Shahed-101

The Shahed-101 is Iran's small one-way-attack drone — the quiet, catapult-launched progenitor of the Shahed-107, used by Hezbollah and Iraqi militias since 2021, confirmed in Ukraine from late 2025 (all-Iranian parts), and refielded in an electric, near-silent variant for Iran's 2026 Gulf strikes.

Russia · missiles · one-way-attackPro

Chernika-2

The Chernika-2 ("Blueberry") is Russia's foam flying-wing strike drone — 3.5 kg warhead, 100 km reach, ~$10k all-in, with Russian-claimed machine-vision navigation that flies under jamming. Over 11,000 claimed built; hitting Kharkiv since June 2025.

Iran · Russia · missilesPro

Shahed-107

The Shahed-107 is Iran's mid-range strike drone reportedly built for Russia's war — announced as a 1,500 km HIMARS hunter, revealed by Ukrainian teardown as a ~300 km, 15 kg-warhead X-tail drone hitting the near rear. The gap between those two descriptions is the story.

Russia · missiles · cruise-missilePro

S8000 Banderol

The S8000 Banderol is Russia's AliExpress cruise missile — a Kronshtadt-built weapon around a Chinese hobby turbojet, launched from Orion drones: 500 km range, 114 kg warhead, agility Ukrainian intelligence says beats the Kalibr. First used on Kyiv in June 2026.

Russia · missiles · loitering-munitionPro

V2U

The V2U is Russia's autonomous AI strike drone — Nvidia Jetson brain, terrain-matching navigation, and late-2025 builds recovered with no radio link at all: nothing to jam. CSIS assesses Russia has likely fielded a fully autonomous weapon in combat. Maker unknown.

Russia · missiles · one-way-attackPro

Molniya

The Molniya is Russia's plywood-and-tape strike drone — a $300–1,600 fixed-wing weapon launched by the thousands each month against Ukrainian cities and supply roads, now spawning fiber-optic, FPV-carrier, recon and 13 kg heavy variants. Cheap mass as doctrine.

Russia · Land · artilleryPro

M1989 Koksan

The M1989 Koksan is North Korea's 170mm self-propelled gun — the largest-caliber tube artillery in service anywhere, built to range Seoul. Since late 2024 Pyongyang has shipped 120–200 to Russia, where they now fire on Ukrainian lines and are being hunted by drones and HIMARS.

Russia · drones · UGVPro

Uran-9

Russia's much-hyped "robot tank" — a tracked combat UGV bristling with a 30mm cannon, machine gun and anti-tank missiles that flopped on its 2018 Syria debut: it lost control links, couldn't shoot on the move, and its sensors were blinded by buildings. The cautionary tale of the UGV age.

Russia · missiles · cruise-missilePro

9M729

The cruise missile that killed the INF Treaty — a ground-launched, nuclear-capable weapon the US says flies far past the 500 km the treaty banned, and Russia insists stays just under it. The arms-control dispute became its legacy; its reported 2025 combat use in Ukraine is its grim sequel.

Russia · Ukraine · LandPro

2S7 Pion

The biggest self-propelled gun in the world — a Soviet 203mm monster firing a 110 kg shell up to 47 km, nuclear-capable, and dragged out of Cold War storage by both Russia and Ukraine for long-range counter-battery duels. Slow and exposed, but it hits like nothing else on the front.

Russia · Sea · corvettePro

Karakurt-class

Russia's small, stealthy "missiles-with-a-hull" corvette — an 860-ton Project 22800 ship that carries eight Kalibr or Oniks cruise missiles, the more seaworthy sibling of the Buyan-M. Cheap, heavily armed, and a recurring Ukrainian target.

Russia · missiles · anti-shipPro

P-800 Oniks

Russia's Mach-2.5 ramjet cruise missile and the Bastion-P coastal batteries that fire it — designed to kill ships, but used relentlessly against Ukrainian land targets because its speed makes it brutally hard to intercept. The parent design of India's BrahMos.

Russia · Ukraine · AirPro

Su-24 Fencer

The Soviet swing-wing bomber Ukraine turned into its hardest punch — a 1970s tactical strike jet improbably re-armed with British Storm Shadow and French SCALP cruise missiles, which it has used to gut Russia's Black Sea Fleet. The most obsolete airframe became the most potent strike system.

Russia · Ukraine · AirPro

Su-27 Flanker

The big Soviet air-superiority fighter built to out-range the F-15 — and the parent of the entire Flanker dynasty. Ukraine's pre-war top fighter, now an outclassed but still-fighting workhorse that flew night intercepts in the war's first hours and later flexed into a Western-bomb truck.

Russia · Ukraine · AirPro

MiG-29 Fulcrum

The Soviet lightweight fighter both sides fly — and the one Ukraine famously hot-rodded, bolting American HARM and JDAM and French Hammer onto a 1970s airframe with an iPad in the cockpit. Agile, short-legged, and attrition-heavy, it became an improvised SEAD jet over Ukraine.

Russia · Space · electronic-warfarePro

Leer-3

Russia's flying cell-tower attacker — a command truck plus Orlan-10 drones carrying a payload that mimics a GSM base station to locate phones, jam cellular networks and blast fake SMS at enemy troops and civilians. Electronic warfare and psychological warfare in one airborne package.

Russia · Space · directed-energyPro

Peresvet

Russia's mobile laser — unveiled in Putin's 2018 "super-weapons" speech, named for a warrior-monk — built to dazzle reconnaissance-satellite sensors and hide mobile ICBMs from orbit. Fielded since 2019, but almost everything about it is a Russian claim experts treat with caution.

Russia · Space · electronic-warfarePro

Borisoglebsk-2

Russia's tracked tactical jamming complex — nine MT-LB vehicles that fuse four jamming-station types under one console to detect, locate and suppress enemy radio, GSM, satellite comms and GPS. A constant Ukraine-front presence, and a prized target: captured in 2022, hunted by FPV drones since.

Russia · Space · electronic-warfarePro

Murmansk-BN

Russia's strategic shortwave jammer — a truck-borne complex with 32-metre antenna masts built to detect and suppress NATO's long-haul HF radio at ranges Russian sources claim reach 5,000–8,000 km. Fielded in Kaliningrad, Crimea and the Arctic; reportedly sold to Iran.

Russia · software · c2Pro

Strelets

Russia's soldier-portable "find" half of the reconnaissance-fire loop — the KRUS Strelets links scouts, drone operators and artillery spotters to the guns. Capable on paper and improved in Syria, but Ukrainian accounts say its centralised, EW-fragile design lags Ukraine's apps.

Russia · missiles · cruise-missilePro

Kh-69

Russia's stealthy precision cruise missile — a low-flying, low-radar-signature weapon shaped to fit inside the Su-57's bays. Launched from tactical jets with little warning, it destroyed the Trypilska power plant near Kyiv in 2024 and now spearheads the campaign against Ukraine's grid.

Russia · drones · isrPro

Supercam

One of Russia's two workhorse spotter drones in Ukraine, alongside the Orlan-10. A small catapult-launched aircraft full of off-the-shelf civilian electronics, the Supercam is the eye that cues Russian artillery and Lancet strikes — slow, jammable, and shot down by the hundred.

Russia · Air · stealth-fighterPro

Su-75 Checkmate

Russia's "PowerPoint fighter" — a single-engine stealth jet pitched at export buyers as cheap fifth-gen without US strings. Unveiled as a mockup in 2021 with Putin watching, it has still never flown, lost its UAE funding, and has no customer. The story is non-delivery.

Russia · Space · counter-batteryPro

Penicillin (1B75)

A Russian counter-battery system that finds enemy guns without a radar — it just listens and watches. Fusing sound, ground vibration and thermal flash, it fixes a firing position in seconds while emitting nothing, so it can't be detected or jammed like the radars it replaces.

Russia · drones · ucavPro

Sukhoi S-70 Okhotnik-B

Russia's heavy stealth flying-wing combat drone, built as a Su-57 "loyal wingman." Its defining moment was a humiliation: in October 2024 a Russian fighter shot down its own out-of-control Okhotnik over Ukraine — handing Kyiv the wreckage, Western chips inside and all.

Russia · Space · electronic-warfarePro

Tirada-2

A secretive Russian ground system built to switch off communications satellites — jamming the relay birds that armies (and Ukraine) depend on. It is the counter to the transparent battlefield: if sensing is the new deterrent, this is the attempt to blind it. Ukraine drone-killed one in January 2026.

Russia · software · c2Pro

ESU-TZ

Russia's long-troubled attempt at a digital battle-management system for the tactical level — the "Sozvezdie system," meant to fuse reconnaissance, command and fires across a brigade. The adversary mirror to Ukraine's Delta, and a case study in why Russian C2 lagged in Ukraine.

Russia · Sea · corvettePro

Buyan-M

Russia's small, shallow-draft Kalibr-armed missile corvette — a ~950-tonne hull that can transit inland rivers between fleets and lob land-attack cruise missiles 1,500 km. It fired the first combat Kalibr at Syria in 2015 and has been a principal platform for strikes on Ukraine.

Russia · missiles · one-way-attack-dronePro

Geran-4

Russia's jet-powered Shahed: a purpose-built, ~500 km/h one-way attack drone designed for one job — to fly faster than the cheap Ukrainian interceptor drones that had been knocking the propeller Shaheds out of the sky. The speed comes at the cost of range.

Russia · Ukraine · dronesPro

Fiber-Optic FPV Drone

The jam-proof attack drone reshaping the front: a standard FPV flown down a hair-thin glass fiber instead of a radio link — immune to every electronic-warfare countermeasure, and the weapon that pushed the "kill zone" from 10–20 km out to 50.

Iran · Russia · missilesPro

Shahed-238

Iran's jet-turbine loitering munition — a faster, costlier successor to the Shahed-136, fielded by Russia as the Geran-3 and by Iran itself in the Gulf.

Russia · Air Defense · samPro

S-500 Prometheus

Russia’s strategic mobile air-defense and anti-ballistic missile system — claimed to engage ballistic missiles, hypersonic threats, and low-orbit satellites up to 600 km, now fielded by a single regiment.

Iran · Russia · dronesPro

Mohajer-6

Iran's twin-boom multirole ISTAR/strike UAV — a runway-operated, 12-hour endurance platform armed with precision glide bombs and Almas missiles, exported to Russia, Venezuela, Sudan and others, and seeing combat from Ukraine to the Caribbean.

Russia · missiles · decoyPro

Gerbera

Low-cost multi-purpose Russian drone, a Shahed-136 lookalike used as a saturation decoy, one-way attack, reconnaissance and signal relay, forcing costly air-defense engagements at extreme cost asymmetry.

Russia · drones · autonomousPro

Poseidon

Russia’s nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed autonomous intercontinental torpedo — originally leaked under “Status-6,” it is designed to approach coastal targets beneath missile defenses, and is now moving from propaganda to a slowly maturing force structure.

Russia · missiles · nuclear-poweredPro

Burevestnik

Russia's experimental nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed cruise missile of claimed unlimited range — designed to evade missile defenses through circuitous low-altitude flight, plagued by a troubled test record and not yet in service.

Russia · missiles · hypersonicPro

Zircon

Russia’s ship- and coast-launched scramjet-powered hypersonic cruise missile — a carrier-killer with nuclear capability, used sparingly against Ukraine since 2024.

Russia · Air · bomberPro

Tu-22M3 Backfire

Russia's supersonic variable-geometry long-range bomber — a stand-off launch platform for the near-unstoppable Kh-22/Kh-32 heavy missile, now contracting under the weight of attrition, precision-strike inadequacy, and a stalled modernization program.

Russia · Air · bomberPro

Tu-95MS Bear

Russia's Cold-War-era intercontinental turboprop bomber — the primary launch platform for Kh-101 cruise missiles and the air leg of its nuclear triad, now irreplaceable and facing historic attrition.

Russia · Iran · missilesPro

Geran-3

Russia's jet-powered evolution of the Shahed one-way attack drone — a turbojet engine, higher speed, and jam-resistant navigation designed to overwhelm mobile air defenses, now in experimental combat over Ukraine.

Russia · Ukraine · Air DefensePro

S-300

The Soviet-built S-300 family of long-range SAMs — a road-mobile system that continues to anchor Ukraine's air defense and has been repurposed by Russia for ground strikes in the Ukraine war.

Russia · Ukraine · LandPro

BM-21 Grad

The Soviet-era 122 mm Grad is the world’s most ubiquitous multiple rocket launcher — 40-tube burst fire, truck-mobile, and a massed-fire mainstay in both Russian and Ukrainian arsenals, now reliant on North Korean and Czech-brokered 122 mm ammunition pipelines.

Russia · Air · interceptorPro

MiG-31 Foxhound

The MiG-31 Foxhound is Russia’s Mach 2.83 interceptor and sole airborne carrier of the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal ballistic missile — an irreplaceable Cold War asset that dominates high-altitude combat and triggers nationwide alerts with every sortie, yet cannot be built anew.

Russia · Ukraine · AirPro

Su-25 Frogfoot

The Su-25 Frogfoot is a heavily armored Soviet-era close air support jet, now flying for both Russia and Ukraine. Rugged, simple, and armed with a massive 30mm cannon and up to 4,000 kg of ordnance, it has become the most attrition-heavy fixed-wing type of the Russia–Ukraine war, adapting from.

Russia · missiles · glide-bombPro

FAB UMPK

Russia's cheap, mass-produced glide-bomb conversion kit — turned Soviet-era free-fall bombs into standoff weapons and became the defining Russian strike capability of the war in Ukraine.

Russia · missiles · ballistic-missilePro

KN-23 Hwasong-11Ga

North Korea's solid-fuel quasi-ballistic short-range missile — an Iskander lookalike manufactured at the February 11 Plant, transferred to Russia, and combat-proven in Ukraine with evolving accuracy.

Russia · missiles · irbmPro

Oreshnik

Russia’s road-mobile, MIRV-capable intermediate-range ballistic missile — a post-INF dual-use weapon employed sparingly for strategic messaging rather than battlefield effect.

Russia · Land · thermobaricPro

TOS-1A Solntsepyok

Russia's T-72-based 220 mm thermobaric multiple rocket launcher — the Solntsepyok is a short-range assault-breaching weapon that incinerates fortifications and has become a prime target for Ukrainian drone hunters.

Russia · Air · strikePro

Su-34 Fullback

Russia’s heavy strike fighter-bomber — a side-by-side two-seat Su-27 derivative that became the principal launch platform for UMPK glide bombs over Ukraine and the most heavily contested Russian combat jet.