August 31st, 2026

Politics - Zelenskyy speaks with Witkoff 

- Putin in Bishkek, meets with Xi

- Drone component factory - attempted sabotage

Combat Ops - Strikes continue

- Port Traffic down

- Marginal changes on the ground  

Economics - Wheat prices up, Black Sea port traffic down

Weather

Kharkiv

77 and partly cloudy. Partly to mostly cloudy for the next five days. Daily lows in the upper 50s, daily highs in the low 80s. Winds variable, 5-10kts.

Melitopol

80 and sunny. Mostly sunny through Wednesday, then cloudy at t end of the week. Daily lows in the upper 50s, daily highs in the 80s. Winds easterly, 5-10kts.

Kyiv

76 and cloudy, rain showers tonight. Partly to mostly cloudy all week. Daily lows in the 50s, daily highs in the 70s. Winds variable, 5-10kts.

Politics

President Zelensky spoke to Ambassador Witkoff and Special Counsel Kushner:

Good phone conversation with President Trump's representatives Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. It was detailed and constructive. It is important that the dialogue between the US and Ukrainian negotiating teams continues constantly, and now we are talking about setting a date for a visit to Ukraine. This trip would be very useful for working out solutions for peace.

President Putin is in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan for the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. He has already met with President Xi of China and PM Modi of India.

Kremlin spokesman Peskov commented that Putin and Xi discussed the war in Ukraine:

”The Ukrainian crisis was discussed as a refrain, in passing; there was no discussion as such.”

Per Peskov, the two spoke: "mainly spoke about bilateral relations: the full scope of trade and economic cooperation, which, of course, cannot be discussed publicly for obvious reasons, and briefly exchanged views on the main issues on the international agenda.”

Last night (23 minutes after midnight local time) the WB Electronics factory in Skarżysko-Kamienna, Poland caught on fire, the extent of the damage not yet been made public, though it was said to be “relatively small” and was extinguished quickly. The factory makes components for drones for Polish and Ukrainian forces. 

Surveillance film reportedly shows a masked individual entering the site just before the fire started and the site’s security sensors alerted.

Belgium’s Defense Minister Francken commented that the Belgian government is firmly opposed to the use of frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine, and that the issue is not open for discussion.

Ground Operations

Overall, there was very little change on the ground - marginal changes at most. For the most part what has happened - what has continued to happen - are small unit (squad sized and smaller) elements from both sides, trying to work forward (predominantly Russian forces), or counter-attacking (predominantly Ukrainian forces) across the ever expanding “no man’s land.” Neither side has a monopoly on the behavior and all along the front control of the terrain continues to look like a 3-colored checkerboard, a front divided up into hundreds of small squares, some Russia, some Ukrainian, and many controlled by neither.

Yesterday, near the northern end of the line, near Kupyansk, Ukrainian forces cleared a patch of forest that they claimed was as large as 2 square kilometers. What was of note was the size of the unit as it was the first definitive statement of a unit conducting an assault since at least mid July - and the unit referenced was a platoon.

The only point here is to again emphasize the small unit (very small unit) nature of this war. It is also worth noting that if a platoon (40 troops) cleared 2 kilometers of forest over the course of a weekend, it’s likely that it was unoccupied; neither side has shown any ability to move that quickly in the past year against dug-in forces.

Elsewhere, the one item of note is that Ukrainian forces report that a Russian engineering unit has been moved into Hulyaipole - the obvious purpose being to prepare defensive positions.

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).

President Zelenskyy reported that Russian forces launched 31 ballistic missiles, almost 2,000 strike drones and more than 1,600 glide bombs against Ukrainian targets between the 22nd and 29th of August.

The UAF reports that in the last 4 days, 800 of 1,500 strike drones were jet powered.

The Ukrainian Ports Association reports that total port traffic in Odessa ports has fallen from an average of 8 per day to 1 per day as a result of Russian strikes. The Russian Banderol missile is being used extensively in the Odessa area, loitering and waiting for waterborne targets.

Russia is claiming that they have developed a new “jammer”- the Volna Kupol Garant - that jams the uplinks to Starlink satellites (in low earth orbit).

The Russians have demonstrated effective jammers for a host of systems in this war, but this system is relatively expensive, $1.5 million per unit and stationary, and is reportedly mainly a point defense system, that is, it can defend a small target but has limited effectiveness in jamming an uplink signal over a large area.

Ukrainian Forces

During the night of August 29th-August 30th, Ukrainian forces struck the Kirishi Oil Refinery in Kirishi, Leningrad Oblast.

On August 28th Ukrainian forces struck a TU-95 Bear bomber at Engels airbase. Imagery showed damage to the right wing of one aircraft.

During the period of August 27th-August 28th Ukrainian forces struck the Slavneft-YANOS Oil Refinery in Yaroslavl City.

On August 27th Ukrainian forces struck warehouses in Blagoveshchensk and Orenburg City.

Russian Forces

During the night of August 30th-August 31st Russian forces launched at least 1 x Kh-59 and 121 x strike drones. The UAF claimed it shot down or defeated 96 strike drones.

Damage was reported in Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kherson, Kyiv, Odessa, Zaporizhzhia oblasts. 

Targets included power, transport, logistics infrastructure, particularly port facilities. A power outage reported in Kharkiv.

Civilian casualties included at least 11 wounded.

RuAF tacair struck at least 5 towns. 

Russian artillery struck 20 towns in cross-border strikes along Ukraine’s northern border of  Chernihiv and Sumy Oblasts.

During August 29th-30th Russian forces launched at least 2 x Iskander ballistic missiles, several Banderol loitering munitions, and 130 x strike drones. The UAF claimed they shot down or defeated 125 drones.

Elsewhere, 14 “missile hits” were reported.

Targets were struck in Kharkiv, Kyiv, Mykolaiv and Odessa oblasts.

On the 29th and 30th, north-east of Kharkiv, Russian tacair dropped 1 x FAB 3000 glide bomb (6,600 lbs) and 2 x FAB 1500 (3300 lb glide bombs) on one small town, 4 x FAB 250 glide bombs (550lbs), 4 x FAB 250s on another, and 3 x FAB 250’s on a third.

The only point is that these are 4 small villages and 1 town (Prykolotne had a population of1800 when the war started); these strike flatten Ukrainian positions while also destroying what little is left of the towns.

During the August 28th-August 29th period, Russian forces struck an ammunition facility on the west edge of Kyiv, killing at least 38 civilians. Multiple secondary explosions were reported, and there were  over 100 wounded. At least 130 residential buildings were damaged.

Economic Reporting

         Feb22  May8 Jun8 Jul9          Aug7 Aug28 Aug31

Brent      94.71   100.50 93.82 77.93 81.75 89.23 90.41

WTI     92.10   94.91 90.59 73.11 76.66 82.73 85.24

NG       3.97      2.79          3.14 3.12           2.64    2.85 2.92

Wheat     8.52          6.14   5.82          6.06  6.35 7.71 7.65

Ruble     85         74.26 73.10 76.31 82.61 85.75 86.16

Hryvnia 28.6         43.90 44.64 44.51 44.73 44.57 44.47

Urals 91.66 92.56 86.33 57.80 79.19 77.10 77.99

ESPO 94.52 105.56 95.51 73.53 78.79 87.70 87.81

Sokol 99.31 95.96 89.90 71.56 77.42 86.42 87.68

Global wheat prices are up sharply, 26% in the last 8 weeks, the market’s response to the war’s impact on both Ukrainian and Russian wheat exports. Russia is normally the world’s largest wheat producer and was the world’s largest exporter, Ukraine is the 10th largest producer, but the 7th largest exporter. Due to the war, Russian exports have fallen off and Australia and the US are now ahead of Russia in wheat exports.

Several droughts (Europe, and parts of the US) have also affected total harvest, pushing prices higher. 

Market analysts stress that there is physically enough wheat to meet normal consumption but that the price of wheat is a problem for many buyers.

Egypt is the largest importer of wheat and normally sources its wheat from Russia and Ukraine; Egypt imports a bit more than 12 million tons per year, more than 7% of the world’s internationally traded wheat.

Ukrainian agricultural products exports dropped 47% in August, from 3.29 million tons to 1.73 million tons (for the first 27 days of each month). Corn exports fell from 1.2 million tons to 190,000 tons, down 84%. Wheat exports totaled 486,000 tons, down from 970,000  - a drop of 49.8%.

Thoughts

Several items of interest, beyond the continued deep strikes by both sides.

That a platoon-sized assault (roughly 40 troops) stood out as exceptional serves to underline the nature of the war on the ground: small units - squads (8-10) and smaller and serves once again to reinforce the nature of the front line and the “no mans land:’ a huge, checkerboard of positions held by small groups of troops, who’ve snuck forward in 2s and 3s, have slowly assembled into positions that rarely exceed 20 men, and are often smaller, that then use drones and called in artillery to soften enemy positions in their immediate area, who are often resupplied by drones and autonomous ground crawlers, and are often dug into small positions (like the bombed out cellar of a house) for weeks at a time. 

What is disturbing (but also tactically of note) is that the Russians keep grinding forward, inflicting casualties and - very slowly - taking ground, and the Ukrainian army has not found a sure-fire way to stop them.

The other item of note is that a Russian engineer unit has moved forward into Hulyaipole, with machinery for digging and for pouring concrete. Russian prepared defensive positions are very good and their defensive lines have proven to be very tough over the course of the last dozen years, and have only been breached a handful of times. And the Russians have been improving their positions as they have learned more. But they move the major defensive lines forward slowly. Building a prepared line through Hulyaipole suggests they are now comfortable that they have control of the city and the surrounding terrain.

As for these strikes missile and drone strikes, I think at this point it is fair to say that both sides are hardening their political positions, and that the strikes will not simply continue but will increase in severity as winter approaches.

v/r pete