July 24th, 2026    

Politics - Rubio calls for “New Ideas”

- Russian attacks: Ukrainian maritime trade, grain

Combat Ops - Minor Russian gains on ground

- Missile and drone strikes continue

Weather

Kharkiv

74 and cloudy. Partly cloudy to mostly cloudy through the weekend, showers Sunday. Daily lows near 60, daily highs in the mid 70s. Winds northerly, 5-10kts.

Melitopol

78 and cloudy. Mostly cloudy through the weekend, showers and thunderstorms Saturday and Sunday. Daily lows near 60, daily highs in the low 80s. Winds northerly, 5-10kts.

Kyiv

68 and mostly cloudy. Partly cloudy through the weekend. Daily lows in the mid to upper 50s, daily highs in the low to mid 70s. Winds variable, 5-10kts.

Politics

SecState Rubio called for an end to the war, saying that “new ideas” must be brought into the discussion. 

“New ideas” are needed, what has already been proposed were “not acceptable to Ukraine at the time, and I don’t think it’d be acceptable to them [Russia] either; in fact, probably less acceptable to them. If, when peace comes, it’ll be because of some new idea and some new concepts, and we’re prepared to offer some of those in the right setting and form if the opportunity presents itself and the conditions are right. We’re prepared to play that role in a positive way.”” 

“We want a peace deal. We want the war to end. We’re prepared to play whatever positive role we can to end the war, and that in order to end this war will require something that both Russia and Ukraine can agree to. That’s not going to happen at a press conference. That’s not going to happen in one meeting here in the Philippines. That’s going to require a lot of work. We invested in the past in it. It was unsuccessful, at least unfruitful at the time. If conditions and factors have changed to make that possible, we’re ready to go."

Rubio added that for President Trump, the most important thing is for people to stop dying, for people to stop being killed, for Ukraine to finally be able to live in peace.

Following a series of strikes on ships Ukrainian ports over the past week, ship traffic has slowed to zero in Odessa, with reportedly no ships entering port in the last 24 hours. In the last month Russian strikes have hit 28 merchant ships and killed 21.

As reported last week, about 1/3 of the grain loading capacity in Odessa has been damaged and is currently inoperative. Odessa has a nominal 6 million tons per month to about 4 million tons per month (as of July 14th).

The last grain export from Odessa was on July 12th - 20,000 tons of corn, the last grain export from Chornomorsk was on July 19th (65,000 tons of corn, and nothing from Pivdennyi in more than a week.

Ground Operations

Overall, there are minor change on the ground, as recon probes - infiltrations continue along much of the line, the bulk of it by Russian forces. There are three areas of interest:

Russian forces continue to expand the area of infiltration in and around Kostiantinivka, pushing further north-west into the city, and have now conducted infiltrations into essentially every area of the city. This does not mean they control the city, far from it. It would appear that the Russians control the city on the “south” side of the T0504 roadway (the road runs roughly south-west — north-east), as well as portions of both the east and west side of the city, but more than half of the city is still contested. But, the Russians have now managed to put small elements (anywhere from 5 to 20 troops on average) in each section of the city and leave them there for short periods of time, up to several days (though some longer). They have also managed to infiltrate into the towns on either side of Kostiantinivka and have reportedly conducted patrols up to the south-east edge of Druzhkivka.

To the west, in the Pokrovsk area, Russian forces continue to push in several salients to the north-west (toward Kucheriv Yar and Dobropillia, and Ukrainian reporting suggests some hard fighting but it is impossible to quantify. There are at least 3 Russian motorized rifle brigades and 1 Russian Marine regiment in the area, but at least another 6 brigades are less than 10 miles behind the front - based on Ukrainian maps, and that only relates where the brigade HQ is located. Where all those battalions are and how deployed is unknown.

Further to the south, in the terrain about 10 - 15 miles north-north-east of Hulyaipole, Ukrainian forces continue to both clear small villages they rolled over in March, and there is some indication that they have made some small gains along the front lines between roughly Maliivka and Novomykolaivka.

Air and Maritime Operations

Both sides continue the long-range drone / cruise missile strikes. 

Both sides also continue the drone sniping across the front lines into the immediate rear (the vast majority less than 5 miles out); this involves thousands of FPV drones per day by both sides.

A Ukrainian Army spokesman claims that Russian forces are now using the Rassvet constellation for command and control of drone strikes.

Rassvet is a Russian analog to Starlink, a planned initial constellation of 288 low earth orbit satellites, reportedly optimized for 5G use. The plan is to begin launch of the operational (vice test) satellites in 2026 (38 are believed on orbit right now, including 6 test satellites), 250 satellites in 2027, with an initial steady pace of at least 150 satellites per year after that, rising to 700 in 2030, and 900 by 3025.

Ukrainian Forces

During the night of July 23rd - July 24th Ukrainian missiles struck the Aviatek facility in Kirov (about 500 miles north-east of Moscow), which makes components for “Tor” surface-to-air missiles, as well as comments for the Kh-101 and Kh-59 missiles. Pictures showed a large plume of smoke from the facility but the extent of damage is not yet known.

Overall, Russian forces claimed to have brought down 571 drones last night but there is no count of how many got through.

Local reporting noted 6 civilians killed and 32 wounded in Kirov.

Drones also struck a logistics center in St Petersburg; news coverage showed a large fire and a burning warehouse.

Strikes continued on Crimea, and on the 23rd Ukrainian missiles hit the electrical substations in Feodosia, Prymorske, Haspara, Hurzuf, as well as the Balaklava Thermal Power Plant.

Strikes continued on barge and ship traffic on the Sea of Azov and in the eastern Black Sea, and Ukrainian sources now claim to have hit 196 ships since early July.

Russian Forces

During the night of July 23rd-July 24th Russian forces launched strikes into Ukrainian airspace with at least 3 x ballistic missile (not identified), 5 x Kh-59/69 cruise missiles, and 180 strike drones into Ukrainian airspace. The UAF claimed it shot down or defeated with EW, 1 ballistic missile,  4 cruise missiles and 160 drones.

Damage was reported in Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kherson, Kyiv, Sumy oblast. The 2 ballistic missiles impacted in Kyiv - at the weapons demonstration. Two droens also hit 2 cargo ships pier side in Mykolaiv. 

Civilian casualties include at least 14 dead and 38 injured, in addition to the below:

The two ballistic missiles that were not intercepted struck an Army training facility where there was an ongoing weapons demonstration for the Ukrainian Defense Department. Casualties so far are “at least 10 killed and 100 wounded.”

The event had been advertised on line, with online registration and schedules. 

During the night of July 22nd-July 23rd Russian forces launched strikes into Ukrainian airspace with at least 1 x Iskander ballistic missile, 5 x Kh-59/69 cruise missiles, and 168 strike drones. The UAF claimed it shot down or defeated with EW, 2 cruise missiles and 154 drones.

Damage was reported in Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Odessa, Sumy, and  Zaporizhzhia oblast. The ballistic missile appears to have struck Odessa. Targets struck included power and transportation infrastructure targets.

Civilian casualties include at least 6 dead and 46 injured.

Economic Reporting

       Feb22  Apr8 May8 Jun8 Jul9        Jul23 Jul24

Brent      94.71   91.78 100.50 93.82 77.93 98.77 97.72

WTI     92.10   93.53 94.91 90.59 73.11 90.76 89.84

NG       3.97      2.73        2.79        3.14        3.12        2.95        2.95

Wheat     8.52          5.79 6.14         5.82 6.06          7.07 6.74

Ruble     85          78.54 74.26 73.10 76.31 78.45 77.89

Hryvnia 28.6        43.45 43.90 44.64 44.51 44.81 44.82

Urals 91.66 124.85 92.56 86.33 57.80 80.73 84.26

ESPO 94.52 103.27 105.56 95.51 73.53 93.07 87.98

Sokol 99.31 96.88 95.96 89.90 71.56 85.95 86.47

Thoughts

Another interesting escalation with the strikes on merchant shipping out of the major Ukrainian commercial ports (Odessa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi). Russia has, for the most part, let grain shipments leave since the Black Sea Grain Initiative went not effect in July 2022. That effort ended in 2023, but the Russian response since then has, for the most part, been to allow grain shipments to continue - though not always. 

It is of note that the price of wheat has not spiked. Prices moved briefly above $7 per bushel (first time since 2023) but have come back down a bit. But Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd have both suspended operations from Ukrainian ports. 

Also worth a note is the missile strike on the weapons show in Kyiv - with the “targeting” provided to Russian forces online… OpSec, OpSec, OpSec…

v/r pete