SAS veterans are training Russians to fight in Ukraine, according to a leaked intelligence memo obtained by The Telegraph.
An assessment compiled for Five Eyes intelligence agencies found, with “strong confidence”, that Western military veterans had been recruited to train Russian citizens as well as “active duty military” personnel.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general has resigned after investigators used ladders to raid his office in connection with a major corruption scandal that threatens to embarrass Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Ruslan Kravchenko quit his post on Monday after allegations that some of his officials were involved in large-scale money laundering. They received cash to protect call centres involved in illegal phone scams, it was claimed.
Kravchenko, who denies wrongdoing, left his job after meeting Zelenskyy. Ukraine’s president also spoke to the heads of Nabu and Sapo, the two anti-corruption agencies that have uncovered a sprawling criminal scheme involving government officials.
A Chinese state-owned company supplied Russia with materials to build hundreds of kamikaze drones.
The parts were sent to a firm linked to Russia’s largest energy producer, which builds the Geran drones used to attack a shopping mall in central Ukraine in August, killing at least 16 people.
The disguised transfer of the components is detailed in internal Russian documents, reviewed by The Telegraph in a joint investigation with Politico.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he expects the war with Russia to continue into the winter, following a round of talks with Donald Trump’s top envoys in Kyiv.
The discussions finished without an announcement of a major breakthrough, after Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner travelled to Ukraine for the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion. The previous day, the pair had held talks with Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
Ukraine is considering dismantling its ban on pornography as lawmakers seek to bring a large online adult industry into the tax system and redirect millions of dollars toward the country’s wartime needs.
Yaroslav Zhelezniak, an opposition lawmaker who chairs Parliament’s finance committee, estimates legalization could generate as much as $25 million a year, according to The Wall Street Journal.
He says that would be enough to finance about 30,000 drones.
President Volodymyr Zelensky is holding talks with Donald Trump’s top envoys, in their first visit to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The Ukrainian leader greeted Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner at Kyiv’s St Sophia Cathedral, close to where a Russian drone hit the headquarters of Ukraine’s security services on Friday.
Ahead of the meeting, Zelensky said Ukraine was ready to talk about bringing “the end of the war closer”. But he said security guarantees would be required as well as a dignified post-war peace.
Ukraine’s static war front has gone electronic. Even as news headlines focused on the dynamic U.S. air campaign over Iran, a threshold moment in military history was playing out in the frozen trenches of eastern Ukraine. For the first time, soldiers were surrendering to robots.
Drone footage shows a group of Russian soldiers in white winter camouflage emerging from a trench with their arms raised, surrounded by explosive-laden, remotely operated mini-tanks bristling with machine guns and rocket launchers. Written messages, instructions, and signals — exchanged via drone-mounted surveillance cameras — direct the surrendering Russians to follow the beeping and pinging ground robots, rolling like R2-D2s toward Ukrainian positions.
Russia hasn’t yet killed large numbers of Europeans outside Ukraine, but it’s getting closer. The night of 4-5 August, an airport bus driver discovered an armed drone lying near the tarmac of the Leipzig-Halle airport, which is a central hub of Europe’s logistical support to Ukraine’s war effort. A cargo jet, meanwhile, may have struck a second drone shortly after takeoff, forcing an abrupt landing, and investigators found a third drone laden with military explosives nearby.
In 2024, incendiary devices hidden in parcels ignited in DHL cargo at the same airport. Had these detonated in the air, a major air catastrophe and large-scale civilian casualties would have ensued, probably resulting in a broader war.
The Guardian has only one setting – Blame Trump.
The German government said on Tuesday that it held Russia “responsible” for an attempted drone attack at Leipzig/Halle Airport on August 4.
“The federal government concludes that Russia is responsible for the hybrid attack in Leipzig,” said Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt at a press conference in Berlin .
It was, perhaps, the highest praise ever offered by one intelligence agency to another – and it was certainly the most British.
As chief of MI6 in 2022, Sir Richard Moore publicly declared that “pound for pound”, the “brilliant” Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service (EFIS) “probably knock us into a cocked hat”.
Kaupo Rosin, the director general of that service, is delighted by the compliment, though he asks with polite bewilderment what this expression about cocked hats could possibly mean.
So Russia is going to attack NATO while consumed by revolution?
A Russian drone strike on a warehouse near Kyiv late Friday has killed at least 37 people, Ukrainian authorities said.
“Unfortunately, the death toll in the Bucha district has risen to 37,” Kyiv region governor Tymur Tkachenko said in a post on Telegram on Saturday.
Among those killed was Taras Didych, head of the Dmytrivka community, who was one of the first to rush to the scene to rescue people, Tkachenko earlier said.
🇺🇦🇷🇺 The death toll from last night’s massive Russian strike on the Bucha district outside Kyiv has risen to 37, with at least 42 others injured.
A Russian drone triggered a huge fire and secondary explosions that tore through the surrounding area of the warehouse it struck,…
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) August 29, 2026
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.
How would a Russian attack on Nato unfold?
John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, flew to Moscow this week to warn Vladimir Putin against attacking any member of the alliance – something that increasingly appeals to the Russian president, according to recent intelligence reports.
Bogged down in Ukraine, Moscow has escalated its hybrid attacks on the West.
John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, made a secretive visit to Moscow this week to privately share his bleak assessment of the state of the Russian war against Ukraine, and to urge the Russians to cut a deal before their military and economic situation gets worse, current and former officials said.
Mr. Ratcliffe delivered the message to Aleksandr V. Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s F.S.B. intelligence service, and made no threats about potential consequences for the Russian side should President Vladimir V. Putin ignore the C.I.A. director’s assessment and choose to continue fighting.
Russia has said it could retaliate against the UK for its support of Kyiv by striking military targets inside and outside Ukraine, amid reports that the director of the CIA warned the Kremlin against attacking Nato during a secretive visit this week.
Andy Burnham, Britain’s prime minister, said on Monday the UK would allow Kyiv access to classified technology to start its own production of Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles. France has also agreed to supply missile technology. Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, said on Thursday Britain and France were “playing with fire”.
