August 3rd, 2026   1492 Columbus departs Palos de la Frontera, heading west  

Politics - IED in Moscow Restaurant, LtGen targeted, not killed

- Polish government summons Russian Ambassador 

Combat Ops - Ground grind continues, modest Russian gains

- Drone and missile strikes continue

Weather

Kharkiv

89 and sunny. Mostly sunny through next week. Daily lows near 70, daily highs around 90 80. Winds north-easterly, 5kts.

Melitopol

92 and sunny. Partly cloudy tomorrow, mostly sunny through the rest of the week. Daily lows around 70, daily highs in the low 90s. Winds easterly, 5-10kts.

Kyiv

84 and mostly cloudy, wind gusting to 20. Sunny or mostly sunny through next week. Daily lows in the mid 60s, daily highs near 90. Winds variable, 5-10kts.

Politics

Peaceful demonstrations continued through the weekend in support of Former MinDef Fedorov.

President Zelenskyy commented that Ukraine seeks to force Russia to end the war before winter.

An IED detonated in a restaurant - the Balzi Rossi - near the Kudrinskaya Square Building on Saturday, killing five and wounding 19. A young woman was later identified as the bomber. The guard who stopped the woman, and three others were also killed.

The restaurant’s web site had stated that the site was closed for a private function, but did not identify who would be in attendance. Speculation is that the incident was an assassination attempt against Col. Gen. Chayko, commander-in-chief of Aerospace Forces.

On Friday the Polish Foreign Ministry summoned the Russian Ambassador in response to the Kh-101 cruise missile that entered Polish airspace on the 30th.

The missile impacted in an open field some 50 miles or so inside Poland. There were no casualties and no damage to any buildings.

President Zelenskyy has appointed:

• Rustem Umierov - head the Foreign Intelligence Service
• Ihor Klymenko - secretary of the National Security and Defence Council 
• Oleh Luhovskyi, the first deputy head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, as acting chief of Foreign Intelligence Service
• Oleh Ivashchenko - Chief of Defense Intelligence (currently head of the Foreign Intelligence Service)
• 
  

Ground Operations

Reporting of fighting on the ground shows very little movement, amid multiple reports of small gains by each side. Each side has noted that the fighting is “hard” and “difficult,” but that is difficult to quantify.

Russian recon probes and infiltration efforts continue up and down the line, and Ukrainian forces continue to counter-attack when possible, but all of these are, by all accounts, small elements, rarely more than two squads in size. As noted last week, attacks that approach a full platoon in size are rare, enough that they warrant being singled out. There have been no such reports over the weekend. 

Russian infiltration efforts at several points are being supported by - per Ukrainian army sources - increased use of glide bombs, mainly 250 and 500 KG (550 and 1100 lb) glide bombs with the Russian equivalent of JDAM-ER - INS / GPD guidance and glide wings. This has been particularly noted in the fortress cities of Donetsk: Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, Kostiantinivka, and Druzhivka, as well as use in and around Zaporizhzhia. The Russian glide bombs have struck targets at ranges of 90 miles from the drop aircraft. 

Imagery also confirmed Ukrainian gains just outside Novoandrivka (3.5 miles west-south-west of Orikhiv)

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 Zelensky posted that Russian long range strikes from July 26th through August 2nd included: 1,900 strike drones, 144 missiles, and almost 1,600 glide bombs.

The Belgorod reservoir, just south of Belgorod City, appears to be nearly empty. The dam was struck by a drone and HIMARS rockets for the first time on October 25th, last year and has been hit several times since, most recently mid July. The reservoir, formed from the Donets River, was a major source of water for the city of Belgorod. The reservoir held 2.7 billion cubic feet of water, or 20 billion gallons. 

A Ukrainian Navy spokesman commented on the 31st that Russian forces conducted 56 strikes during July, targeting ships and port facilities, damaged “more than 20 ships,” in port or in approaches to Ukrainian ports, and that these strikes have slowed cargo movement through the ports, and resulted in the deaths of 26 sailors or dockyard workers.

Russian drone operators continue to expand the operational envelope as more jet powered drones are added to the inventory. Key to this is higher speeds and flying drones up to 10,000 feet AGL.

This “medium altitude” sanctuary denies anti-aircraft artillery, particularly small caliber weapons, from reaching drones.

Ukrainian Forces

Ukrainian forces continue to hit Russian oil facilities and various logistics centers, as well as striking a wide range of facilities in Crimea. 

During the night of July 30th-July 31st Ukrainian sources Lukoil refinery in in Volgograd as well as the Port Facility in Tamen.

During the night of July 31st- August 1st Ukrainain forces struck the three refineries in Ufa, Republic of Bashkortostan.

In each of the cases above imagery confirmed fires at the facilities but the extent of the damage haas not been independently confirmed.

During the night of Augustus 1st- August 2nd Ukrainian forces struck the oil refinery in Saratov, and this fire, too has been confirmed in imagery. Ukrainian forces also restrict the oil complex in Omsk. Extent of the damage has not been confirmed.

Russian government sources noted that they had shot down 635 Ukrainian drones; no numbers were given on total number of drones. 

Ukrainian drones also struck Engels Airfield during the night, causing a fire, but there were no reports of damage to any aircraft of Russian Air Force facilities.

Ukrainain drone and missile strikes during the night of July 29th-July 30th, confirmed by open source imagery, set fire to port facilities in Taman, Krasnodar Krai, on the Kerch Strait.

The Financial Times commented that its own independent analysis of Russian oil faculties suggests Ukrainian strikes have “disabled” 30% of Russian capacity.

Reuters reported that the Ryazan refinery complex had “shut down” on Wednesday after strikes over the weekend.

Ukrainian Forces claims they have now hit 205 Russian tankers in the Sea of Azov and eastern Black Sea since July 6th.

Russian Forces

During the night of August 2nd-August 3rd Russian forces launched at least 181 x strike drones. The UAF claimed it shot down or defeated with EW, 163 drones.

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

Targets included power, transport, logistics infrastructure. 

Civilian casualties include at least  4 killed and 33 wounded.

During the night of August 1st-August 2nd Russian forces launched at least 139 x strike drones. The UAF claimed it shot down or defeated with EW, 109 drones. drones.

Damage was reported in Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Poltava, Sumy, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.

Targets included power, transport, logistics infrastructure. Slovyansk suffered a temporary blackout.

Civilian casualties include at least  4 killed and 24 wounded.

RuAF tacair dropped glide bombs into at least 2 towns.

During the night of July 31st-August 1st Russian forces launched at least 27 x Iskander ballistic missiles, 4 x Zircon missiles, 2 x Kh-31 cruise missiles, 2 x Kh-59/69 cruise missiles, and 185 x strike drones. The UAF claimed it shot down or defeated with EW, 1 Kh-59 cruise missile and 154 drones.

Damage was reported in Kharkiv, Kherson, Odessa, and Pavlohrad oblasts.

Targets included power, transport, logistics infrastructure.

Civilian casualties include at least  9 killed and 44 wounded; all the killed and 30 of the wounded were in Kyiv.

During the night of July 30th-July 31st Russian forces launched at least 1 missile - not further identified, and 255 x Strike drones into Ukrainian airspace. The UAF claimed it shot down or defeated with EW, 185 drones.

Damage was reported in Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Khmelnitskyi, Kyiv, Odessa, Sumy, Vinnytsia, Zaporizhzhia and Zhytomyr  oblast. 

Targets included power, transport, logistics infrastructure. Power outages were reported in Donetsk, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv and Sumy oblasts.

Civilian casualties include at least  11 injured.

RuAF tacair struck at least 2 towns.

Economic Reporting

Feb22  Apr8 May8 Jun8 Jul9         Jul31 Aug3

Brent      94.71   91.78 100.50 93.82 77.93 90.00 83.45

WTI     92.10   93.53 94.91 90.59 73.11 85.27 79.51

NG       3.97      2.73          2.79  3.14 3.12 2.75 2.76

Wheat     8.52           5.79 6.14   5.82          6.06 6.39 6.39

Ruble     85          78.54 74.26 73.10 76.31 79.42 80.15

Hryvnia 28.6         43.45 43.90 44.64 44.51 44.67 44.89

Urals 91.66 124.85 92.56 86.33 57.80 84.56 87.50

ESPO 94.52 103.27 105.56 95.51 73.53 82.88 87.62

Sokol 99.31 96.88 95.96 89.90 71.56 81.04 78.30

The Hryvnia has been slowly weakening since early October, moving from 41 to the dollar to the current 44, almost 45 (before the war, late 2021, the Hryvnia was trading around 25 to the dollar). 

The Ruble was 71 to the dollar as late as May but has traded between 76 and 83 since May of 2025. Just after the war started the ruble briefly dropped to 154 to the dollar, rebounded to 54 to the dollar just 3 months later, and has twice traded near 100 since. 

Thoughts

“Deep State,” an open source site that seeks to provide unbiased reporting on the war, reported yesterday that Russian forces captured more terrain in July than Ukrainian forces recovered., at least 20 square miles and perhaps 33 square miles…

I applaud their effort to report (they do an excellent job), but I think in a grand sense the numbers don’t really mean much. Both sides are now fighting a war of attrition; the Ukrainian leadership has stated repeatedly that the way ahead is to produce enough drones that the daily KIA count of Russian soldiers forces them to leave

Meanwhile, the Russian war of attrition grinds on and the only immediate geography that concerns Russian forces is causing enough losses in a given city that they can occupy it. Kostiantinivka is the next major target, but it will involve a great many KIAs before that happens.

About the assassination attempt against ColGen Chayko, this is the latest in a series of assassinations by Ukrainain intelligence. What is of note is that the Russians have not engaged in the same level of effort with regard to assassinations.

An online search - by no means definitive - yielded the following Ukrainain assassinations (claimed by one or the other Ukrainain elements)

Lt. Gen. Kirillov, chem/bio defense chief

Andrei Korotkiy, Zaporizhzhia plant official

Capt. Valery Trankovsky, Black Sea Fleet

Oleg Popov, occupation official

Mikhail Filiponenko, occupation official

Probable Ukrainain actions:

• Daria Dugina
• Vladlen Tatarsky (Maxim Fomin)
• Stanislav Rzhitsky, ex-sub commander
• Illia Kyva, defector-politician
• Alexei Kovalev, occupation official
• Vitaly Gura, occupation official
• Lt. Gen. Yaroslav Moskalik
• Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov, Dec 2025

Russian - or probable Russian - actions:

• Maksim Kuzminov, defected Russian helicopter pilot

Russian actions attempted but not completed:

• Plot to kill Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger
• NATO officials: several European defense-industry executives were targeted
• Multiple reported FSB/GRU plots against Zelensky

v/r pete    

 

The “Nuance” of Deterrence

August 2nd, 2026

One of those smart guys who reads my ramblings posed me a number of questions early this week and I have been wrestling with the answers… he raised several issues - huge issues: war and peace in the Mid East (writ large, not just the mess over Iran) the Pan Arab movement, such as it is, the issue of many key international choke points being in at least somewhat contested space (Strait of Hormuz, Bab al Mendeb, Suez, Strait of Malacca, Strait of Gibraltar, etc.) The question of nuclear weapons. The war in Ukraine. And, of course, Taiwan - which is a little bit of everything…

What I think this all reduces to is a question of deterrence. Or, more accurately,  why aren't nations deterred? Where have we gone wrong?

To begin, we need to remind our selves what deterrence is and isn’t. What it is NOT is simply a bunch of weapons or capabilities sitting “on the shelf.” Rather, deterrence, which really exists in the minds of the enemy, has two key components: a very real capability to inflict unacceptable levels of damage, and an understanding that the will exists to use it.

The first means that that it must be clear in the minds of the enemy that the other guy - the US - has the very real capability to inflict substantially more damage than any possible gain they might achieve by starting - or continuing - a war. Note that this is a very subjective measurement. What is an unacceptable level of pain? Both Ukraine and Russia have shown, once again, that most countries have much higher levels of pain than seems makes sense from 5,000 miles away. So has Iran. And Yemen. In fact, there are very few wars that stop simply because the level of destruction is high. Invariably, it is a host of factors added together that lead to breaking a nation’s will.

So, for deterrence to be effective the systems on hand must be destructive enough - and reliable enough - that it is crystal clear that if they cross some certain nebulous - but very real - line, the level of destruction will be far beyond what you they can accept, and far, far beyond what they thought they might gain in the war.

The second piece to this is that the enemy (or possible enemy) needs to truly believe that it is a credible threat: that is, that the will exists in the US to use those theater weapons to defend US interests and US friends and allies.

In the global nuclear standoff that the US and USSR / Russia have lived under for more than 60 years, that threat of a “nuclear holocaust” was and remains real, at least to some extent.

But deterrence has, in many respects, unraveled. One might say the nuclear umbrella - under which most of the world found shelter - is now full of holes. If we are to find some sort of solution to many of our problems, if we are to step back from great power war - as we now have in eastern Ukraine (Ukraine plus Europe versus Russia), then we need to repair that umbrella.

But repairing the umbrella involves two major pieces.

The first is that the entire architecture: the weapons (the warheads themselves), the systems (the missiles, the aircraft, and all the ancillary equipment that supports our national and theater nuclear forces, all need to be modernized, brought to the highest level of readiness and reliability. This is essential. Without a clear awareness around the world that our nuclear force is in fact capable of the full spectrum of responses, and can respond in a timely manner, the deterrence loses its foundation. If the entire “system of systems” is not credible, there is no deterrence.

But there almost must be an awareness that we are prepared to use these weapons if our interests or our allies are threatened. 

For more than 30 years we have heard a wide range of experts deny the importance of nuclear weapons, particularly “tactical” or “theater” nuclear weapons (ie, not the ones used in response to a direct nuclear attack on the US). We have been told that precision weapons, now with what can only be called an exquisite level of precision, have supplanted the need for weapons with huge destructive potential. We don’t need to blow up an entire enemy naval base when we can hit the particular room in the command post that is the essence of the base.

This is a wonderful argument and it sounds very good the further you get from a battlefield.

But Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Somalia, and now Iran, have shown the limits to that concept. Very simply, the process of precisely poking out the enemy’s capabilities does not break his will. And in the end, all war is a struggle of will. Arguably, the opposite can be said, that relatively small levels of destruction on any given day, a slowly accumulating number of deaths, serve to steel the will of nearly any country. Ukraine fights on - and so does Russia. The Taliban never gave up. The IRGC has not broken. 

At the same time there appears to be a firm conviction among pundits left and right, that no one is going to use theater nuclear weapons. 

But, there is a problem in all this, and the man who really created the US “nuclear umbrella” first identified it. The man was Eisenhower, who knew a little bit about planning and executing a war, and about what deterrence did, and did not, mean. And his position was simply this: no conventional force alone would ever be large enough to deter a great power from going to war. That force might be large enough to eventually defeat the great power, but it would not deter another nation from starting the war. If you wanted to deter a great power, particularly a great power in its own “theater,” nuclear weapons were necessary.

This was his point in making it known that he would use atomic weapons on Chinese forces in Korea if the war continued. This was at a time when the US was spending in excess of 10% of GDP on defense. Simply put, the conventional forces were very large, but they did not deter. 

How can we possibly rebuild credibility in the nuclear umbrella? Very simply, we need to take it seriously. Training with nuclear weapons across most of the services needs to be returned to prominence. Major exercises need to include nuclear branches and sequels. Presidents and key cabinet offices need to be made aware of their potential roles. And yes, we need to go back to that “game” we used to play in which we never acknowledged whether a given ship or aircraft was carrying a nuclear weapon while admitting that it was possible. 

We need to make it clear to potential enemies that there are real limits beyond which we - and our allies must not be pushed. They must not know the exact line, but they must be certain that such a line exists and that we have the weapons and trained crews on hand to execute that mission. 

As for the sense that this would be escalatory, China has for a number of years suggested that the use of a nuclear weapon over an enemy fleet to generate a high altitude EMP would not constitute a nuclear attack, but views it as part of information and cyber warfare. 

I have a friend who has told me the story of being questioned by an Atlanta PD psychologist on his weapon use. In the course questioning he was asked how often he had used his weapon in the past; he answered that he used his weapon on a daily basis, usually several times per day. The psychologist was shocked. He then explained that every time he got out of his squad car and walked up to a bunch of young men standing on the corner, he was using his weapon, in one way or the other. Did he place his hands so that the weapon was hard to see? Or did he rest a hand on top of the weapon? On occasion he had taken the shotgun out of the vehicle and laid it on the roof of the car. Each was a use of his weapon, each had, to use the policy wonk phrase, a nuanced meaning that was fairly clear to a couple of 20 year old punks, acting tough on the street corner at 2 in the morning… 

Deploying DDGs and other ships and aircraft around the world capable of sending the same “nuanced” message would help rebuild real deterrence.