All Manner of Drone Strikes, Food Scandal, Stingers and P1-Suns

Stefan Korshak, Kyiv Post’s military correspondent, shares his perspective on recent developments in Russia’s war in Ukraine. Make us preferred on Google Share Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Bluesky Email Copy Copied Trooper, 93rd Mech Bde “Kholodny Yar,” April 21, 2026. (Photo 93rd Mech Bde “Kholodny Yar”) Content Share Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Bluesky Email Copy Copied Flip Make us preferred on Google This was a busy week with several pretty impressive news items that in normal times would be a week’s worth of leading news all on their own. From the POV of images, it was the huge fire the Ukrainian drones set at the refinery in Tuapse, Krasnodar region, but from the POV of Hollywood suitability, it probably was the Ukrainian drone strike operation that appears to have assassinated two or three dozen FSB (Russian security service) agents. Not making that up. There was also a juicy Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) command failure scandal, a couple of new tech jumps that went public, a proper Taranto-type naval strike, and talking heads holding forth about The Future. Follow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official . The area with the most ground activity, my read, is around the city of Konstiantynivka in the Donetsk region. It’s pretty well-known to soldiers, volunteers, and journos working in that sector as it’s been pretty much the gateway for going to Chasiv Yar for something like the last 18 months, and Soledar and Bakhmut before that. It’s difficult to be sure, but the general opinion is that the Russians have probably decided to make a big push towards Kramatorsk and Sloviansk whenever they can manage it, because that would be Donetsk region pretty much captured and then Russia might be able to declare a victory and stop getting its soldiers killed and making its civilian population madder. Other Topics of Interest Explosions Heard Across Kyiv as Russia Launches Midday Drone Attack Journalists in the Kyiv Post newsroom in the city center reported several loud blasts and the distinct sound of air defense systems intercepting drones overhead. The precursor to doing that is getting through a fortification belt to the east of those two cities, in the heart of which is Chasiv Yar, and a longstanding Russian operational doctrine is that if the Russian army encounters Ukrainian fortifications that are too tough, the drill is to push to the flanks and cut supply to the fortified area. This routine, by the way, became more or less standard Russian Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) following the bloodbath at Bakhmut, which the Russians captured head-on at the price of, well, no one really knows, probably 20,000-30,000 casualties, most of them Wagner. The town of Kostiantynivka is nicely placed to serve as a platform/route to move forces westward to cut Ukrainian supply routes to Chasiv Yar. In the past week or so, there’s been a visible uptick in ground contact and fighting with the Russians trying to push into the town, more from the northeast than anywhere else. One Sunday, there was a pair of actual mechanized assaults, about three armored vehicles each, 20-30 men in each group, that appeared to have produced casualties but done little else. At least one ran into 24th Mech. The AFU is reporting very heavy Russian fire, generally working to level the city where it can reach it, but at this point, it’s long-range artillery rockets and aerial bombs, so the destruction is relatively slow compared to artillery. An outlying village to the north called Raihorodok, on the most direct route the Russians have to Sloviansk, is being particularly hard-hit; basically, it’s already in artillery range. Ukrainian units in the vicinity seem to be 19th Corps with elements of 24th, 28th, 44th, and 93rd Mech Brigade (including Alcatraz battalion). Drone units in the sector include the Unmanned Systems Forces (USF) battalion Spalakh and the USF unit Phoenix. That’s a pretty solid force grouping, and the 24th (seems like they’re in the east end of the city), 93rd, and Phoenix are considered especially well-commanded. Graphic depicting forces around Kostiantynivka (Graphic: Donald Hill) Above is a useful graphic showing how forces are laid out around Konstantinyvka, produced by the outstanding Donald Hill, original is here . More generally, the Russians are trying to infiltrate the city and hide in ruins, and reportedly, the area the Russians appear to be trying to accumulate is in the private homes sector southeast of the city. Deep State reports a drone shortage that is preventing the Ukrainians from hitting Russians moving in in sufficient numbers. Over the week, Russian patrols appear to have reached eastern Kostiantynivka and then been pushed out. Southwest of the city, the village/suburb Berestok changed hands in the first part of the week, then in the middle of the week, it was the village/suburb Novodmimitrivka, then there was a push against the gentle hills/gravel and sand pits due east of the city. It seems very much that the probes, or attacks, or whatever one calls them, are getting detected and attacked in good time. I’ve attached a map for reference, but the important news really is that if this is the most intense fighting across the front for the week, that’s a pretty good indicator the Russians aren’t generating a lot of offensive power. Hulyaipole/Russian reserves through Mariupol I’ve seen reports of “large-scale troop transfers from Russia’s Rostov Oblast toward the Berdyansk–Melitopol direction passed through Mariupol for nearly three days,” including more than 80 trucks carrying ammunition, more than 75 vehicles transporting personnel, and 15 trucks with armored personnel carriers, and also the national guard. This was on April 16-17. Mariupol is the main rear area for Russian forces operating around Hulyaipole, so possibly this is a precursor to more attacks there. But this week also saw, I think, three Russian milbloggers acknowledge that over the past two months, Russia has lost ground here, while at the same time, Deepstate said Russian forces advanced in this area. On Thursday-Friday, a scandal blew up concerning the commanders of the 10th Army Corps and the 14th Motorized Rifle Brigade, and feeding of soldiers. This is the Kupyansk sector, so not the easiest, but by and large, Ukrainian forces have been holding fairly solidly here, and as many of you remember in the past few months, Ukrainian troops cleared Russians from the center of the city. Brigade psychologist works with frontline troops, 67rd Mech Bde, Wednesday (Image by unit) However, thanks to Russian strikes against bridges and crossing sites on the Oskil River nearby, Ukrainian positions on the far side were cut off from ground supply, and the supply of frontline troops by air drones only is difficult because of range and carrying capacity. During winter, this was less of a problem because a lot of the water obstacles were frozen, but now it’s not winter. The upshot of this was that by mid-April, some Ukrainian frontline troops basically were starving, not really so much because of bad command per se, but because of no easy way to get supplies to them, either boats across the Oskil or by heavy drone, both of which get intercepted fairly easily. Connectivity isn’t perfect, so there’s more delay when resupply is being coordinated. In such circumstances, a local command should, of course, pull those troops out; this is a brigade and corps-level decision in an emergency, and in day-to-day ops, it gets cleared by HQ at Kyiv. In this case, however, the commander of 14th Motorized and 10th Corps decided the better solution was not to report the problem to higher and hope for the best. Since this is Ukraine, the next thing that happened was predictable: Eventually, images of starved soldiers reached the internet via wives, because even frontline troops need to have communications, meaning Starlink. That got to Ukrainian media, and the story broke in Ukrainska Pravda, which is one of Ukraine’s oldest and most respected publications. These dudes looked like concentration camp detainees. The situation had been getting worse and worse for eight months. This is the social media post that got a corps commander and a brigade commander sacked, in Kupyansk sector. It was posted by one of the soldiers’ wives. (Image i.petrovna_) What happened after this was also predictable, but it happened a bit more quickly than perhaps one might have expected: HQ in Kyiv sacked the corps commander and the brigade commander, put in replacements who made it a point to get food and water deliveries to the soldiers and record their communications with the soldiers on video, and get THAT out onto the internet. Colonel Taras Maksimov was appointed as the new commander of the 14th Motorized Rifle Brigade, while Brigadier General Artem Bogomolov was put in charge of the 10th Army Corps. Supposedly, the failure was in the 2nd Battalion of the 14th Brigade. General Oleksandr Syrsky, to no one’s surprise at all, ordered an internal investigation. I have defended Syrsky at times against critics, but really, here, there is no excuse. The last time I showed that he physically visited the Kupyansk sector was in late December. It’s a general’s job to make sure his troops are fed and that his officers know that it is more important than just about anything. If you want to look for silver linings, OK, once again, Ukrainian civil society and professional media have acted as an effective check on bad generalship, but that’s not how to fight a war. Theoretically, President Volodymyr Zelensky should react because news of troops not getting fed on the line is a terrific way to convince young Ukrainian men (even more) that volunteering to fight may be too risky to consider.. NATO should be paying Ukraine for this. The Ukrainians overnight on April 18-19 took a serious swing at ending – I say again, ending – Russian capacity to conduct amphibious operations in the Black Sea. It’s not clear whether they succeeded, but the intent is clear. Over that night, two elite USF units, TsSO Group A of the SBU (state security service), and the Privid from HUR (military defense intelligence), flew to Sevastopol bay and attacked all the Russian warships they could find. The primary targets appear to have been four heavy amphibious assault ships (Yamal, Azov, Nikolai Flichenkov and Olshansky), and a command ship (Slavutych). At the same time, a naval command post/transmitter was attacked as well. These are, in effect, all the warships Russia has left for amphibious operations in the Black Sea. So this wasn’t just a positive for the Ukrainians: Turkey, Georgia, Bulgaria and Romania were direct beneficiaries of having that Russian amphibious threat reduced. Video showed probable hits on all of that, and according to the Ukrainians, all ships were damaged, and at least two (Yamal and Azov) certainly were damaged sufficiently to put them out of action. There were no claims of sinkings, but the important thing here is that this wasn’t anti-ship missiles, or surface-to-surface missiles, or sea drones. It was bog-standard FP-2 drones, probably because of the short range, carrying bigger-than-normal warheads. This was a week of continued intense bombardment. The compact list is: Sevastopol, Crimea and Taganrog were pounded on the April 18, Sevastaopl got hit again on April 19, Samara (oil refinery) and Rostov (RR + HQ) on April 20, break on April 21, Samara again on April 22, and Feodosia, Melitopol, Nizhniy Novgorod, Samara and the Arbat spit on April 23 (various targets, mostly energy). Tuapse, Monday, April 20, 2026, one day after the strike (Photo: Russian internet) It is worth noting that that list subsumes a drone strike hitting four Russian warships in port (previous item), and an in-your-face attack that hit Druzhba pipeline infrastructure (That was Nizhniy Novgorod), details in the link, and a Neptune cruise missile strike that badly damaged a high-tech drone factory (Taganrog). In other words, Ukraine’s bombardment campaign of Russia has become so intense and persistent that an event like several Ukraine-made cruise missiles shutting down a Russian aviation plant, with Russian air defenses seemingly unable to stop the salvo, is a footnote. Useful graphic showing how man fuel reservoirs remain intact at the Feodosia oil base. (Image source indicated in image)  Feodosia oil refinery burns, Thursday, April 23, 2026. (Photo: Russian internet) But without question, the most visible, and for Russia, appalling, Ukrainian strike of the week was the one that hit Tuapse’s oil refinery on April 19. It was FP-2 drones, and they seem to have been carrying heavy or more powerful warheads, so multiple hits, major fires, minimal air defenses. Ukraine’s USF, SBU, and 3rd SSO (special operations forces) – this is possibly a hint about ground controllers operating behind Russian lines – were the operators. This was on Saturday, about 24 hours after local firefighters had stopped the previous fire set by drones – that one lasted three days. This time, it took the Russians until Friday to put the fire out. Tuapse, Monday, April 20, 2026 (Photo social media) As a result of the fire and damage, besides the smoke and flames, soot and ash blew back onto the city and covered everything, leaving behind black sticky tar on every flat surface, so you can imagine how the motorists felt about that. The fire apparently breached holding tanks, and crude poured into the Black Sea. At this point, there isn’t a clear estimate of how much contamination there has been so far, but the slick from the burning refinery has already combined with slicks offshore caused by the previous strike, and two leaking tankers that sank offshore last year. None of this is being made up. Hundreds of birds covered with oil, volunteers mopping down beaches with rags. Oil-coated Grebe, Tuapse, Friday, April 24, 2026 (Photo: Krasnodar Ecological Society) This is easily one of the worst ecological disasters of the war, although when the Russians blew up the Dnipro River dam in 2023 and flooded an area the size of Switzerland and drowned most of what was in it, it certainly has to be competition. But if you ever wondered what it would be like if an oil refinery got blown up in a really big war and the refinery was right next to the sea and sensitive wetlands, look at Tuapse, that’s what’s going on right now. Reports are that the oil slicks combined cover 10,000 square kilometers (3,861 square miles), and it’s growing. The great Black Sea oil slick, Wed, estimate.dsa (Graphic by prozrachny mir) Authorities are telling residents to stay inside. Locals are complaining that breathing the air makes them ill. For three days, health officials kept saying the air is fine, but it was only on Thursday that they admitted the air is more polluted than normal. Remember, besides all that horrific stuff that arguably the Kremlin doesn’t care so much about, Tuapse is also the main processing site for refined products exported by Russia via the Black Sea. Some residents have been reduced to recording TikTok appeals to the world to save them from this horrific situation. Tarred beach, Tuapse, Friday, April 24 (Photo social media) One Russian woman recorded an appeal to Ukrainians, that they understand that Russians are “just simple people and pawns” and to stop blowing things up in Russia, and to think of Russian children. She even cries. Some of the Ukrainian comments are brutal. Tone-deaf Russian bosses planting trees and talking about civic beautification, as Tuapse oil refinery burns, this appears to be real and not AI (Photo social media) Sometimes the very best soldiers picked as members of elite, small units achieve impossible results on the battlefield thanks to marksmanship, physical fitness, exacting selection standards, dedication to excellence, individual skill, grit and initiative, the commando spirit, and years of hard, unforgiving training. And sometimes, in this war, the super-skilled special operators armed with personalized rifles, Gucci tactical kit, five-day beards, top secret clearances, and cool Oakley sunglasses get killed in groups pretty helplessly, by a swarm of drones. Overnight on Wednesday-Thursday, eight Ukrainian FP-2 drones zeroed in on a Donetsk apartment allegedly the scene of a meeting of Russian special operations commandos and intelligence personnel, and flew into one of the apartment windows one after the other. According to the USF, it was (more of the workhorse) FP-2 drones, each carrying a 60-100-kilogram warhead. Ukrainian FP-2 drone zeroes in on a Donetsk apartment allegedly the scene of a meeting of Russian special operations commandos and intelligence personnel. The flash is from an initial hit from another drone. Ukraine’s SBS forces claimed 12 spetsnaz troopers killed and 15 hospitalized in the early Thursday morning strike taking place at about 8 a.m. (Image by SBS forces) The image is from at least the second hit. The flash in the image is from the explosion of the first hit. Ukraine’s USF forces claimed it was 12 Russian spetsnaz troopers killed and 15 hospitalized in the early Thursday morning strike taking place at about 8 a.m. Some reports identified them as FSB wet work specialists. That the strike took place and hit the building where the reports said it was is very likely. In Donetsk, Russian operational security is notoriously bad because Donetsk people feel it is important to express their opinions and pass information in public, so the Donetsk internet is pretty much always a goldmine of information about Ukrainian strikes, posted in close to real time. The graphic showing where the hits were on the building is, however, from the Ukrainian open-source intelligence (OSINT) community, doing its traditional battle damage assessment (BDA) reporting of a quality most professional air forces would envy. The 1st Special Center USF, the strike group that usually carries out high-priority attacks against high-value targets, was credited for the strike. The Ukrainian drones hit this Donetsk skyscraper and supposedly the FSB spetsnaz inside, in the red circled area (Image by Dnipro Osint (Garbuza) Thursday) The next day, a similar strike hit Kavdiievka, in the Luhansk region. This time, the target was reported to be a two-story school used by Russian forces as the headquarters for the 58th Combined Arms Arm. The attack took place in the early morning hours of Friday, with at least eight FP-2 drones used to hit the building. Video – yes, there was an observation drone recording the proceedings – showed four explosions and one end of the building reduced to rubble. USF forces claimed nine Russian officers and headquarters staff killed and five hospitalized. Robert Brovdi, commander of USF, in a post about the attack, said it was successful but that out of eight drones, three warheads did not explode, and that Ukrainian munitions manufacturers need to do better. USF drones demolish a school used by Russian forces as the headquarters for 58th Combined Arms Army, Kadiievka, Luhansk region. The attack took place in the early morning hours of Friday. At least eight FP-2 drones were used in the strike which concentrated on one end of the building and reduced it to rubble. SBS forces claimed nine Russian officers and headquarters staff killed and five hospitalized. Robert Brovdi, commander SBS, in a post about the attack said it was successful but that some warheads did not explode, and that Ukrainian munitions manufacturers need to do better. The next day, overnight Thursday-Friday, a similar strike hit an “FSB base” in the village of Schastlivstevo, Kherson region, specifically a cheap hotel/pensionate called Ekspress. According to the Ukrainians, five buildings were destroyed, including a cafeteria, an arms storage site, and an ammo depot. Four vehicles burnt, two FSB officers killed, 10 wounded. Fires visible from space. USF operators prepare a Vampir heavy drone for a night mission, (Image by Genshtab) You didn’t have to be Feliks Derzhinskiy to figure out the Ukrainians have (1) probably several means of identifying FSB operations nodes in Ukraine and (2) they’ve decided to act on the intelligence and (3) the intelligence is probably perishable because three strikes in three days is a pattern and the FSB will probably, looking at the pattern, be able to figure out how the Ukrainians found the target sites. I am not drawing any conclusions, but I note that in this week of very substantial Ukrainian strikes in Crimea and along the Krasnodar coast, for the first time in the war, an E3-Sentry AWACS plane patrolled above Turkey with its transponders on, pretty much opposite Crimea, and 48 hours later, it did it again. If I were a Russian, I would say NATO is obviously helping the Ukrainians with early warning on Russian interceptors trying to interfere with high-priority Ukrainian drone strikes. In four years of war, I have never seen an E-3A Sentry patrol over Turkey . In four years of war I have never, ever, seen E-3A Sentry AWACS patrol over Turkey twice in three days. UPDATE: The Sentry was above Turkey again on Friday. The alternative explanation is that a Europe-based Sentry got transferred to Turkey to help the Americans and the Israelis with their war against Iran. But I doubt the Kremlin sees it that way... One side-effect of last week’s green light to €90 billion ($105 billion) of loan assistance to Ukraine from the EU was that Ukraine opened up the Druzhba pipeline so that Hungary and Slovakia again could receive Russian oil. There was a “break” in the line on Ukrainian territory for almost three months. The crude officially started flowing on Wednesday. The fly in the ointment was, and I think that if we are honest about the Ukrainians, we could have predicted this, that within 12 hours of the Ukrainian drones hitting the Druzhba pipeline, in Russia, upstream enough so that not only the flow to Slovakia and Hungary through Ukraine (southern branch), but flow through Belarus to Poland and German (northern branch) was affected. Here’s a link to the details on that. The other side-effect was that all the sanctions that the EU had been sitting on, vs. Russia, since February, because of Hungarian vetoes, went into effect this week. As of Friday, no major Russian strikes had taken place, just the daily 100-200 Shaheds. However, Russian bombardments of cities within range clearly amped up, and glide bombs are hitting places that usually didn’t get hit with glide bombs before, like Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia. As to why, reports last week and this week are pointing to a previously-secret system developed by Ukraine, called “Lima” and its upgrade “Lima Quant,” which jams the GPS (or more exactly GLONASS) guidance on Russian glide bombs. It’s a fixed system that spoofs or disrupts satellite signals that make the bomb miss targets, and the new system seems to be widely deployed and clearly effective, starting in Feb.-March 2026. The manufacturer is a company called Cascade Systems. As a result, the Russian counter-tactic has been to saturate a target area in hopes that one or two bombs actually hit by accident; this seems to have become increasingly less effective as time has worn on, I assume because the Ukrainians have deployed the jammers more widely and because, with experience, they have learned better what frequencies to jam. Since a city is a big target for terror bombing, you don’t need to target specific buildings. Possibly, the increased Russian glide bomb strikes on cities at a time when their bomb accuracy is falling off is a tacit admission of the Ukrainian jamming protecting military targets. Graphic showing quantities of Russian glide bomb strikes. Information feeds are increasingly predicting a big Russian strike over the weekend with four to six bombers and 500+ drones. UPDATE: Word is likely it will be Friday-Saturday. UPDATE TO UPDATE : The word was accurate, the strike took place. Short version – It was big-ish, but Ukrainian air defenses mostly cut it to pieces. The exception was the ballistic missiles. None intercepted. However, not so many ballistic missiles. The only sea-launched cruise missiles were from the Caspian, meaning the Black Sea fleet (what’s left of it) stayed in port. Long version – Dnipro was the main target. Also attacked were Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Odesa, and Kyiv regions. 666 weapons launched, among them 47 missiles and 619 UAVs. - 12 Iskander-M/S-400 ballistic missiles/0 - 29 Kh-101 cruise missiles (air-launched)/26 - o Iskander-K cruise missile (ground launch)/0 - 5 Kaliber cruise missiles (sea launch - Caspian)/4 - 619 drones of various types/580 Stingers and P1Suns The image is something you will only see in Ukraine. It is a screen grab of a STING anti-drone drone that has just been launched from a hard point on an An-28 cargo plane. Normally, the STING is launched from the ground, and it does a fine job hitting Shaheds, but the STING has to be guided to the moving Shahed, so the launch has to be oriented toward the Shahed, and Shaheds fly. A STING costs about $3,000, a Shahed costs about $50,000. NATO and the US solve the problem of the encroaching – I am not making this up, nor is this theoretical, this is what happened over Poland and over the Gulf – by flying a $60-$80 million fighter plane close enough to the exact same Shahed, but instead of a cheap drone, shooting it with an air-to-air missile costing $100,000-500,000. The Ukrainian solution is to launch the interceptor drone not from an expensive 5th-gen fighter, but a Soviet-era cargo plane that can orbit for hours and costs very little to fly. As to how the Ukrainians would fly the STING dropped from the plane to intercept the SHAHED, maybe it would be complicated for an operator sitting in the plane. The other tech news this week is that the Ukrainians are getting ready to implement a system by which drones launched in one place use Starlink (or something like it) to be controlled from another place. In other words, the drone dropped from the An-28 can be controlled by an operator sitting hundreds of kilometers away from the drop. And to keep prices low, field testing is going on with a competing drone that also has performed well in combat, called a P1-Sun. This is not a laboratory; this is testing against real Russian drones in combat. Images of an air-launched STINGER drone, and a ready-to-launch rack of P1-Sun drones, collage by me. This is not absolutely new tech on the control side. The Americans have been flying killer drones in the Middle East using operators in Nevada for at least a decade. But the Ukrainians are the first to think about making it cheap, and linking cheap with digital fusion (using the internet to connect operators all over the place into a single operation, basically) so you have lots and lots of shots, cheaper than the incoming drones. I’ll leave it to you to speculate how many orders of magnitude cheaper Ukrainian military data fusion is than US military data fusion. Which is another thing. Two years ago, cheap interceptor drones didn’t even exist. Now the Ukrainians are working on ways to drop them from airplanes and have remote controllers fly them from somewhere else. This is tech advancement at wartime speed, and the only country even in the ballpark is Russia, but not even Russia is attempting to deal with drone strikes with this kind of tech. Longtime readers will know that Kyrylo Budanov, former head of HUR and now Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, has a track record for looking into the future accurately, which is already rare, but also sharing insights pretty much without spin or bias with the public from time to time, which is like hen’s teeth in this war. My read is that the man gives thoughtful answers as accurately as he can, within the limits of security. Kyrylo Budanov, Obozrevatel, 2025 Budanov had a circle pack session with a bunch of journos on Wednesday, and filtered down, he said: - Ukraine will never, ever agree to land cessions in Donbas or Kherson/Zaporizhzia or even Crimea. The implication is that if the Americans say the Ukrainians are thinking otherwise, the Americans are lying. However, he said, there is a “certain solution” on Donbas “that will suit us.” I guess that it would be an illegal status internationally, along with Russian troops out. Not that the Russians currently would even discuss a solution like that. - The way out of the stalemate on the front, if it exists, will be advances in AI and data-sharing. Translated to conventional speech, this means enough advances in drone operations tactics and equipment, and communications, that large-scale attacks would again become possible. He strongly hinted that the Ukrainian direction is autonomous targeting and strike execution, and particularly, getting this level of tech fielded at scale. This process is ongoing. The key quote is: “More tangible progress will become visible in the next six months.” The record is that when Budanov says “will,” he is picking that word specifically, and he is placing his credibility on the line. Translated to Common Speech, a reasonable guess would be that by the end of 2026, Budanov expects drones with autonomous targeting to be available in sufficient numbers, and control systems to operate the drone in the field at sufficient scale, so that tactical effects on the battlefield will be visible. Most sources: this is just bla bla bla. But Budanov has an almost perfect record – or more exactly, using his unique sources of information to come up with educated predictions – of telling the public what to expect a few or several months down the line. - The state of Ukraine’s energy system is a serious concern, and even though there is sufficient power right now, it is in the interest of national security to strengthen things before the next winter. Work on that is happening now, but the damage is substantial. A public opinion poll came out on Thursday, rating Ukrainian public figures and levels of trust in them by voters: Volodymyr Zelensky – 46.3% This is not to predict a presidential run by Budanov; my personal bet would be on Zaluzhny. Rather, just to show that I’m not the only person in Ukraine who thinks Budanov’s words mean something. On Saturday, the rumors started flying, and by Thursday, it was formally announced: French President Emmanuel Macron will make the pitch to Greece, during a Friday visit, that Greece “exchange” all 43 of its Mirage 2000 fighter jets for an equivalent number of Rafale aircraft at a reduced price. Four Greek Mirage 2000s (stock image) The Mirages, some later models, and others not so much, but in any case, all about a quarter century old (delivered 2000-2007), would go to Ukraine. France would sweeten the deal by selling the Rafales to the Greeks at a really low price. The word from the media is, basically, the Greek starting negotiating position is that they will agree to the deal if the French will pay the Greeks to take back the Mirages they sold to the Greeks, and then also sold extreme cut-rate Rafales. I don’t get the impression the negotiations will go quickly. Best estimates are that Ukraine operates maybe six to eight Mirage 2000-5 Mk2 fighters, which are roughly the same vintage as the old Norwegian/Danish/Dutch F-16 fighters the Ukrainian air force also operates. More than usual, the Kremlin has been lying about the progress of the war in Ukraine. I honestly don’t know what the logic is, although as before, my best guess is institutional inertia: it’s easier for the people in charge to disseminate their version of “reality” to Russian society so that challenging it is challenging the powers that be, and in the short term, that heads off unpleasant questions. Russian internet, location unknown, a poster warns citizens not to use VPNs because that’s how NATO takes over. That being said, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and some other platforms speculated that what’s going on is the Russian national leadership signaling no intent to compromise on Ukraine to the Trump administration, and at the same time reducing chances of the US turning away from Russia, because the Trump administration gives so much more credit to Russian state pronouncements than everyone else. Among the demonstrable calumnies put forward by Russian General Valery Gerasimov in an April 21 speech were the assertions: - Russia has captured 700 square kilometers (270 square miles) of Ukraine, 34 settlements in March and half of April; the real figure, even if we are generous about how we define “capture,” is about one-third of that. - Russia captured all of the Luhansk region (third time they claimed that this year). Not so, 3rd Corps still holds a corner of the Luhansk region and has since mid-2024. - Russian forces have captured ground 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) from Kramatorsk and 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) from Slovkiansk. Not so, this is essentially the maximum distance Russian patrols advanced before being wiped out by drones and artillery. - Russian forces have captured more than two-thirds of the battleground city of Lyman. Not so. Best estimates are that there are Russians in a few of the outskirts, but the Ukrainians have good fields of fire and are solidly dug in; this is a place that’s been fortified since April 2022. - Russian forces have Hulyaipole and sectors around it under firm control. In fact, they’ve been kicked out. - Kupyansk was captured by Russian forces. In fact, the last Russian was killed and Kupyansk center was cleared of Russian forces in mid-April; right now, what fighting there is, is in the east of the city. The one-time/not-to-be-repeated US cancellation of exemption to Russian oil exports is canceled, and will in fact be repeated. The US will consider Russian oil not subject to sanctions for another month. This was on Saturday. On Sunday, the UN Ambassador/former national security advisor Mike Waltz went on TV and said this wasn’t the Trump administration helping Russia out at all because the oil in question had “already been exported.” The Russian internet control agency Roskomnadzor on Wednesday revoked approximately 2,000 internet service provider licenses, massively narrowing the number of companies from which Russian household users can buy internet access. The largest number of licenses revoked was in Moscow and the Moscow region – 286 from 42 operators. In St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, 42 licenses were revoked for 15 companies, and in the Krasnodar Region, 33 licenses were revoked for 11 operators. The report said there are currently approximately 20,500 active telecom operator licenses in Russia. The Russian general perception is that the state has two reasons for this. First, so that the providers that are left are well known to the authorities, and so that their servers are always open to the authorities. Second, because this is Russia, the assumption is that Roskomnadzor senior management has a personal financial stake in increased income for the internet providers that will be offering service in the future. This was all from Wednesday. The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.  Stefan Korshak is the Kyiv Post Senior Defense Correspondent. He is from Houston Texas, is a Yalie and since the mid-1990s has worked as correspondent/photographer for newswire, newspapers, television and radio. He has reported from five wars but most enjoys doing articles on wildlife and nature. You can read his weekly blog on the Russo-Ukraine War on Facebook, Substack and Medium. His new book on the 2022 Siege of Mariupol is available on Amazon UK and Amazon US .