Don's Weekly, 17 August 2026: Part 4 (Russia & Ukraine, Diplomacy)

(…continued from Part 3…)

Ukraine’s HUR intelligence service say they destroyed a train carrying North Korean ballistic missiles and ammo in Siberia. Remotely controlled explosives detonated the warheads, destroyed the train and severely damaged the infrastructure.

In November 2025, a section of railroad was destroyed near Sosnovka in Siberia. In October 2025, three fuel lines of Moscow’s ring pipeline that were protected by drone netting were damaged by sabotage.

The Kombinat Kamensky military-industrial enterprise was attacked and a fire resulted but the extent of the damage hasn’t been reported. The facility produces solid rocket fuel for rocket launchers and cruise missiles, like Onyx and Zircon.

Wildberries in Voronezh were destroyed and one in Chishmy, Bashkortostan was burned. The Tver site was superficially damaged. The largest Wildberries, Koledino, Moscow, was attacked for a second time and there won’t be a need for a third. A logistical warehouse 20 km away in Domodedovo was burned. Both targets were inside the outer air defenses of Moscow.

The commander of Ukraine’s only submarine defected to Russia in 2014. Last week he was killed in Sevastopol when he walked by a trash can that had a bomb in it.

Russian Railways planned tariff increases in October but is raising freight prices by 8.5% and passenger prices by 9.2% now because it is short of money. When the tariffs are increased in October, tariff increases since 2022 will reach 56%. Cargo volumes continue to decrease. The government refused requests for more money so the company will fire 6,000 people.

In April, Chinese workers building a Russian refining unit in a far east facility demonstrated against unpaid wages. There are no reports of them receiving their money. Last week, 1,000 Chinese construction workers demanded their back pay at the Baltic Chemical-Gas complex in Leningrad oblast.

The Yabloko political party that wants a ceasefire and peace has been banned from running in the September elections. The reason given was copyright infringement, even though the holders of the copyright did not object. A vote for Yabloko would be viewed as disapproval of Putin. The party has been criticized for not condemning the war but one member that called out the Russian war crimes of 2022 was sentenced to 7 years in prison, and another member was recently arrested and then fled the country.

Ukraine

Last winter, Ukraine was short of 7,000 megawatts of power. They planned to build smaller decentralized power plants to meet that deficit. Being decentralized meant a single airstrike would do a smaller amount of damage. Ukraine only built 700 megawatts, but Mindich, Yermak and others were able to steal $100 million from the project until they were caught.

Russia dropped 8,300 glide bombs in July, which is 268 per day. 50% of the bombs are falling in open fields due to jamming. There have been instances in which 50 bombs were used on a single treeline with varying degrees of accuracy. Molin estimates that 450 bombs hit actual positions in July and there may or may not have been personnel in those positions. Another 1,000 bombs in cities or fields hit close enough to positions to possibly cause casualties. The size of the bombs varied from 250 kg to 1,000 kg. Some struck within 5 km of the front line and others were 20 km behind the lines. He believes that these airstrikes cause up to 2,000 casualties a month, both dead and wounded.

Ukraine conducted 449,000 unmanned missions in July, a 3% increase from June, and they struck 226,000 targets, which is a 13% increase. 7,800 mid-strike drones were used, which is a 126% increase. They used 376,00 FPV drones, a 6% increase, and used 1.6 drones for every drone Russia uses. Ukraine conducted 23,700 UGV (ground drones), which is a 41% increase.

The Zaporizhzhia steel plant stopped operations after a major attack by ballistic missiles. Russia attacked a Ukrainian tugboat that was towing a damaged cargo ship.

Russia destroyed yet another book warehouse in Kyiv.

A 14-person GRU unit was arrested for passing on information to Russia about take-offs and landings and other info from various airbases. A Ukrainian aviation squadron commander was one of those arrested.

A 12 minute interview with the founder of the Druk (Print) Army, a decentralized organization of 3,500-4,000 volunteers with more than 6,000 printers. Ukrainian units leave requests for 3D printed parts on a web site. Volunteers fulfill those requests with their 3D printers and mail the parts to the units through Nova Poshta, a delivery company that Russia has been bombing. In 2025 they sent 527 tons of printed items to the front lines. At market prices, it would have cost $62 million but most of the items were sent for free.

Diplomacy

Turkey was part of the US F-35 program until they bought a pair of S-400 systems. The US warned against it because if Turkey had F-35’s and flew them around the S-400 systems, they could learn how to detect the stealth planes and Russia could gain that knowledge. Because Trump likes granting boons and making deals, he agreed to sell F-35’s to Turkey if they sold the S-400s. So now they are trying to sell them to a Gulf state country…where the US flies F-35s all the time. Since Russia sold the systems to Turkey, they need to approve the re-sale to someone else. Turkey refused to sell the systems to Ukraine in order to avoid crossing that line with Russia.

The US used over 1,500 Patriot missiles in the war against Iran and has less than 1,700 left. “Claims of U.S. munition shortages are false,” the chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement. “When the fake news media irresponsibly amplifies these lies, the real-world consequence is clear: Our enemies are emboldened to provoke — or attack — American troops.”

Trump said Ukraine could produce Patriot missiles without talking to Lockheed and Raytheon. Then Lockheed and Raytheon said they didn’t want Ukraine to produce their missiles because they are afraid Ukraine would improve the missile and produce them faster and for less money.

The predictable happened again. In April and May, a US brigade took part in the Combined Resolve exercise in Hohenfels, Germany and used armored vehicles, infantry, helicopters, drones and other equipment. Ukrainian drone teams aided the defenders and destroyed the brigade multiple times over two weeks. Each time, the US became better at dispersing their forces, hiding their movements and using their electronic warfare to make them harder to be observed and attacked. Eventually, the Ukrainian drone teams switched sides and showed the US brigade how drones could be used offensively. The education of NATO forces continues, and it’s a good thing.

The Caroline Bezengi is a sanctioned oil tanker that was carrying one million barrels of Russian oil from Novorossyisk to India. On 8 June, the crew reported an explosion on board. The ship was run aground near a small island 45 km from the shore of Oman to prevent it from sinking and was abandoned by its crew three days later. Heavy waves are damaging the ship. Each of its tanks have been breached and are leaking oil and the ship is sinking lower in the water. The oil fumes in the double hull spaces are at risk for an explosion.

In July, Oman ordered the owners of the Cameroon-flagged ship to remove it from the shore but it is unclear if anyone answered the phone. The address is a dead-letter box in a residential block of Shanghai, which is typical for shadow fleet tankers. The ship was among 39 vessels de-listed from Cameroon’s ship registry in June.

As of a week ago, there was a 400-600 square kilometer oil slick in the nature reserve that was created last year. If the oil remains off shore then it will have less of an impact than if it reached the beaches. The effects of an oil spill can last more than a decade and can eliminate local wildlife populations. There have been no efforts to offload the oil from the tanker. No one has taken credit for the assumed attack.

After receiving threats about an Iranian assassination attempt while he was in Turkey, Trump publicly switched from using the airplane Qatar gave to him to an older presidential plane that had more defenses and the press boarded that plane with him. Trump was then secretly moved from the older plane to a third military plane in a catering truck. The press remained on the decoy plane. All three planes moved to the UK and Trump was secretly moved from the military plane back to the older plane and disembarked in public view. He used the Qatar-provided plane for the flight to the US.

Iranian reaction?

Simple:

Russia supported the Assad regime in Syria for 13 years and killed almost 7,000 Syrian civilians, including over 1,000 children. Syrian rebels overthrew Assad in 2024. Ahmed al-Sharaa was the leader of the rebel forces and is now the leader of Syria. He’s visited Russia twice, praised Russia’s “historic role” in Syria and allowed Russia to maintain two bases in Russia. Syria also wants Assad extradited from Russia to Syria.

Surprising no one, it was announced that Meta was paying political extremists to post on Facebook.

No doubt: that was an isolated instance.

Croatia denied a visa to a Russian gymnast that participated in a pro-war rally. She thinks that’s bad for the sport.

This article talks about the race to develop high-end lithography to build increasingly powerful microchips, with US and Japanese research leading the way, but eventually a single Dutch company having a monopoly on the market.

This video describes how China was barred from using Dutch equipment to make the leading-edge chips but is developing less efficient but potentially equally effective methods of creating leading-edge chips without reliance on foreign tools.

(…to be concluded tomorrow…)