The war has turned into a war of cities. The enemy strikes our cities. We strike the enemy’s cities. They hit us with ballistic and reactive drones. We hit them with all the drones we have, and Flamingo missiles in an unknown quantity with unclear efficiency (yet somehow they announced the production of 100 Flamingos per month).
Our thermal power plants, railway facilities, warehouses, shopping centers, and book markets are burning. Their refineries, oil terminals, distribution stations, tankers at sea, Wildberries’ warehouses (and now Ozon), and queues for fuel across Russia are burning. Crimea is under economic blockade. Add to this Russia’s record budget deficit (6.46 trillion rubles or $78 billion, whereas last year it was 5.65 trillion rubles, that is $73 billion) and Wildberries’ debt of 600 billion rubles hanging on the practically state-owned VTB Bank (74% of shares – the state of Russia). Because of this, financiers are already discussing the prospects of a collapse of Russia’s financial system.
All of this is happening against the backdrop of the actual stabilization of the front. Moscow cannot achieve a breakthrough and advance in any of the sectors. Since February 2026, Ukraine’s territorial losses have been minimal (in May, Ukraine even regained more than it lost) against the backdrop of a record increase in the Russian army’s losses – in July, they lost a record 42,860 troops compared to 32,600 in January. Meanwhile, about 32.5 thousand troops are being recruited for the army in Russia per month.
This is all true. We report on the shelling of our cities, on losses, and on economic problems. But the Russians do the same. Reading their war correspondents’ channels increasingly resembles an old joke about a Jew who only read anti-Semitic newspapers.
What happened? What happened is that the war has significantly changed its character. Moscow is clearly increasingly losing hope of crushing Ukraine militarily and is trying to hit our rear to undermine our infrastructure and provoke internal dissatisfaction with the Ukrainian government.
In this context, the Ukrainian government behaves extremely illogically and childishly. For more than a month, the country was without a defense minister and a foreign minister. The country was shaken by several corruption scandals. President Zelensky says more money needs to be found somewhere – and this is against the backdrop of leaked recordings where money is loaded in bags as collateral for an official appointed by Zelensky.
Claiming that corruption scandals are Moscow’s doing is short-sighted of Zelensky’s team, since they themselves came to power thanks to stories about “unprecedented corruption of Poroshenko,” which not a single court has confirmed in 7 long years, neither Ukrainian nor European.
That’s the situation.
I’ll add that the types who claim Moscow started hitting warehouses and railways in response to our strikes on refineries are blatantly and brazenly lying. Because it was Moscow that first hit the capital of Ukraine. Moscow was the first to hit Nova Poshta and Ukrainian shopping centers. All last winter, Moscow was knocking out heat generation in Kyiv and didn’t hide that they wish to do the same this winter as well.
Our strikes on their refineries, on Wildberries, on tankers and the blockade of Crimea – this is a preemptive strike on the enemy. Russia has struck, is striking, and will continue to strike us.
We have two options. Either push Russia to economic collapse so that it simply cannot wage war anymore, or capitulation. There is simply no third option.
We are probably facing the toughest period in our struggle for our right to exist. The war of cities is becoming increasingly ominous, and the enemy will not stop.
And here arises an endless number of questions for the current government.
Why does the government continue the informational confrontation with the legitimately elected government of Kyiv, instead of cooperating with it to defend the capital?
Why doesn’t the government involve representatives of the opposition and personally the fifth president Petro Poroshenko in negotiations with Western partners? Is there no need? Then where are the air defense missiles from the West? The West doesn’t provide them? Then why not involve the opposition if they cannot do it themselves?
Where is the Ukrainian “iron dome” that Zelensky promised in 2022?
Hard times are coming. But what is being done to overcome them?
On the cover: Ukrainian drones attacked one of the largest logistics centers of the Russian marketplace Wildberries in Aleksin, Tula region, on the night of August 5. Photo: social networks
