June 2nd, 2026

Politics - Schroder is Moscow

Combat Ops - Large strike on Ukraine

- No changes on the ground

- Bomb Damage Assessment 

 

Weather

Kharkiv

72 and partly cloudy. Cloudy or mostly cloudy through the weekend, rain showers Thursday and Friday. Daily lows in the 50s, daily highs in the 70s. Winds variable, 5-10kts.

Melitopol

73 and cloudy. Partly or mostly cloudy through the weekend. Daily lows in the upper 50s, daily highs in the 70s. Winds easterly, 5-10kts.

Kyiv

78 and mostly cloudy, gusting to 20. Partly to mostly cloudy through the weekend, rain showers Wednesday night, Sunday and Monday. Daily lows in the 50s, daily highs around 70. Winds variable 5-10kts.

Politics

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who is said to be a friend of Putin, and has been offered by the Kremlin as a possible representative to bring EU into peace negotiations, was seen in Moscow.

Ground Operations

Russian recon probes and Infiltrations continue along the entire line, but there were no confirmed changes in the lines. Imagery of various spots along the line resulted in minor changes as to what pieces of property were controlled by whom, but none of it is of any tactical significance.

Various analytic sources continue to fine-tune their identification of who controls what, and how much land is in the gray zone between the terrain clearly controlled by Ukrainian forces and terrain clearly controlled by Russian forces. Depending on which analytic shop, this results in some overall gains by Ukrainian forces in the past 5 months and can, depending on how much land is labeled no mans land, result in a net Russian loss of perhaps 100 square miles - spread along a 1,000 mile long front. Russia still has firm control over a bit more than 45,000 square miles of Ukrainian terrain.

And as these probes and infiltrations continue, so do the thousands of daily FPV drone strikes - the drone strikes that make the actual taking of land by either side that much more difficult. 

Air and Maritime Operations

As warned two days ago, during the night of June 1st-June 2nd Russian forces launched strikes into Ukrainian airspace, with at least 33 x Iskander ballistic missiles, 8 x Zircon hypersonic missiles, 27 x Kh-101 cruise missiles, 5 x Kalibr cruise missiles, and 656 x Strike drones. The UAF claimed it shot down, or defeated with EW, 11 Iskander ballistic missiles, 26 Kh-101 cruise missiles, 3 Kalibr cruise missiles and 602 drones.

Damage was reported in Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Khmelnitsky, Mykolaiv, Poltava and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. 

Targets included the power grid and transportation infrastructure; power outages were reported in several sections of greater Kyiv.

There were at least 18 civilians killed and 118 civilians wounded.

Imagery confirmed damage to an oil pumping facility in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast (about 225 miles east-north-east of Moscow), caused by one of the Ukrainian strikes in late May. (See BDA and my thoughts for comments on oil facility damage).

During the night of May 31st-June 1st Russian forces launched strikes into Ukrainian airspace, with at least 265 x strike drones. The UAF claimed it shot down, or defeated with EW, 228 drones.

Damage was reported in Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Odessa oblasts. 

Targets included the power grid and transportation infrastructure; power outages were reported in Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Odessa, Sumy, Zaporizhzhia and Zhytomyr oblasts. 

There was no civilian casualty reports.

RuAF tacair struck 3 Ukrainian town.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense reported that for the month of May Russian strikes into Ukraine included 7500 glide bombs (down slightly from 7900 in March), but keeping the average well above 200 per day. 

There were, in addition an average of 3,100 MLRS strikes per day (96,000 for the month).

Bomb Damage Assessment (BDA)

Meduza, an independent news outlet which engages in some substantial analytic efforts, has taken a detailed look at the Ukrainian long range drone and missile strikes into Russia and arrived at several interesting points.

I’ll note that Meduza is the most objective and analytically rigorous of the various analytic efforts and they are the first ones to point out that the data is incomplete and that both Kyiv and Moscow downplay (and cover up) losses and exaggerate their own successes. 

Their key findings:

The number of Ukrainian deep strikes per month rose in 2025, from 16-17 per month in 2024 to 35 in 2025. So far in 2026 the Ukrainians have averaged 32 per month. Despite the various editorials, there has been no “turning point” in the last 6 months, or in the last year. As Meduza notes, this is the sign that this is a long-term plan that the Ukrainians are executing.

Strikes on Russian oil infrastructure are about 1/3rd of the long range strikes, as has been the case since August of 2025. 

Ranges have increased recently: as of last year the average was 400 KM (250 miles) but as of this May it jumped to 800 KM (500 miles).

The most significant drop in Russia oil production was in late summer and early fall 2025. By mid-fall oil faculties and oilmen in Russia had adapted to the strikes and were quickly repairing or bringing on excess capacity. An increase in strikes on oil facilities in August 2025 caused a spike in the number of facilities going off line, with 1.6 million barrels per day production capacity off line by mid September. However, by mid October Russian refineries had returned to normal off-line numbers (per the US EIA Country Study on Russia, Russia’s excess capacity is around 600,000 barrels per day).

Economic Reporting

Feb22  Feb9 Mar9 Apr8 May8 Jun1 Jun2

Brent      94.71   68.57 106.40 91.78 100.50 94.21 94.60

WTI     92.10   64.04 103.60 93.53 94.91 97.38 91.87

NG       3.97      3.20 3.37 2.73 2.79 3.35 3.13

Wheat     8.52  5.29 6.25 5.79 6.14 6.08 6.02

Ruble     85          77.40 78.20 78.54 74.26 72.07 72.71

Hryvnia 28.6 43.03 43.93 43.45 43.90 44.30 44.31

Urals 91.66 56.37 90.97 124.85 92.56 82.56 86.70

ESPO 94.52 59.77 84.99 103.27 105.56 93.11 96.44

Sokol 99.31 62.85 101.55 96.88 95.96 88.40 87.99

Thoughts

As has been known by every soldier and sailor and airman from time immemorial, the enemy gets a vote. One simple example: how many roads and runways in North Vietnam were cratered yet were operation again seemingly in minutes? And if it is very important, the enemy will keep adapting, the more something is attacked, the better it will be defended, by better defensive systems, dispersing the assets, changing operations, etc. German fighter aircraft production peaked in February 1945. 

As detailed by the Meduza study, we are seeing this very thing in Russia right now. Ukraine strikes at the Russian oil industry and Russia repairs the damage. The US and EU put up sanctions, Russia gets around them. 4 years and 4 months into the war and Russia is still selling oil. Russia has not gone broke, the economy has not collapsed, society isn’t revolting against the Kremlin. And Putin is still very much alive.

My point is that we have had a small, but steady flow of reports that Ukraine has turned the tide, that Russia is on the ropes, that the Ukrainian strike campaign has the Russians reeling. Those reports seem to have grown in number in the last several months.

The Meduza report suggests something different. Russia is not unhurt, but Russia has learned how to cope with the problem. 

Keeping up morale is important. But spinning a web of half truths to keep up that morale has risks. I’m not sure anyone has ever identified a case of an entire nation suffering from the Stockdale Paradox, but… 

v/r pete