“Ukraine – Russia”

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.

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”.

There aren’t many reasons for Americans to visit Moscow today. Red Square lacks the glamour that the first Pizza Hut and McDonald’s gave it in those days of optimism and openness that followed the Soviet collapse. Visitors today only go to carry a warning.

In 2021, Bill Burns, then head of the CIA, cautioned the Kremlin that the full-scale invasion of Ukraine would be a disaster. It would fail and would leave President Putin’s regime weaker. He was right.

According to the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Russia to warn against attacking a NATO country, which out of all the speculative scenarios in the information-space since the meet, was the most likely. It’s yet… pic.twitter.com/hJ3WBtFK2d

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) August 26, 2026

It’s official: Ukraine is out of Patriot missiles to defend against Russia’s intensifying air attacks, with less than one percent of its NATO-donated stocks left. Recent ballistic missile interception rates reflect its diminished defenses, as North Korea reinforces Putin for a final push to dismember Ukraine’s industrial base and complete the conquest of Donbas.

Iryna Mudra, the former deputy head of the Presidential Office, has been detained and is currently undergoing investigative actions at the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU).

Mudra will remain in a temporary detention facility overnight, Member of Parliament Oleksiy Honcharenko said in a statement on Wednesday.

A story the media won’t cover

On Tuesday, Ukraine’s anti-corruption police arrested Irina Mudra, who was the deputy head of the Zelensky’s office until prosecutors moved in.

Pravda reported, “Ex-deputy head of Zelensky’s office remanded in custody with bail set at $447,000.”

AP reported nada. In fact, Grok said in the wee hours of this morning, “No major US news outlets appear to have reported on the arrest (or court-ordered pre-trial detention) of Irina Mudra as of August 26, 2026.”

🇺🇲 🇷🇺 Trump dismisses speculation over CIA Director John Ratcliffe's surprise trip to Moscow.

Glenn Beck asked whether Ratcliffe had gone to Russia over Putin potentially testing NATO, preparations for a strike against Britain, or to personally deliver a U.S. warning involving…

— The Tectonic (@thetect0nic) August 26, 2026

The Germans have just caught another alleged member of the group that bombed the Nord Stream gas pipelines in September 2022. Volodymyr Zhuravlev, a deep-sea diver, was detained last week in the Croatian coastal city of Pula. In a fantastical turn of events, he had reportedly been acting as a consultant on the set of director Doug Liman’s next movie, Snake Island, about the team of Ukrainian divers that allegedly carried out the Nord Stream operation.

The bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines — which had up until then supplied Germany with cheap Russian gas — revealed an aspect of Ukraine’s military defense strategy that had previously been hidden. It became clear that the Ukrainians were seeking to break up the Russian-German relationship, which they saw as a direct threat to their own security.