This is the second strike there this week. The previous one hit two hangers, destroying at least one aircraft (one hanger was smoking afterwards, indicating a fire inside)
This one is significantly more damaging:
At the Saky airbase, seven aircraft storage hangars were hit. They housed Su-30SM, Su-30, and Su-24 fighter jets and frontline bombers. According to preliminary information, at least seven aircraft were destroyed or damaged.
Ukraine also struck two hangers at Hvardiiske airbase, destroying shaheds in storage as well as aviation equipment.
I can't fully express how big this is. While it's not as damaging as Operation Spiderweb - this is like getting punched in an arm that was already broken. Ukraine has managed to inflict severe losses to Russian aviation again and again and it all adds up to catastrophe for Russian aviation. Russia can load them down with questionable tire-armor, paint almost passable decoys, and even house the planes in hangars and nothing works, Ukraine destroys them regardless.
Russia's airforce is caught in a death spiral similar to the Black Sea fleet or Russian tanks. Being less and less of a factor in the war.
The Russians set up a publicly accessible online map designed to help Russians figure out which gas stations still have fuel and which are empty. It would be terrible if hypothetically, someone or a group of someones who don't live in Russia were to hop on a VPN, set their location to Russia, and deliberately mess with the map by feeding it incorrect data. That would waste the time of lots of Russians, many of who cheered on military aggression and genocide, so them being deliberately inconvenienced would be a very bad thing. This fuel crisis is already pretty bad, so online troublemakers and activists shouldn't take this opportunity to make it worse.
Kyiv was bombarded hard again. Pretty much the same places as last time. Demolishing apartments with people still inside. The combined death toll so far is 25.
He said Ukraine has already ordered more Patriot missiles, which are currently in short supply worldwide, and is asking NATO countries to lend missiles from their own stocks, promising to return them later. However, many countries want to keep their reserves amid fears of possible Russian aggression, he added.
Zelenskyy has said that this is ridiculous, and I agree. Imagine if a house in your neighborhood was on fire and they begged for you to hand over your fire extinguisher and you said no because then you'll have nothing left to fight against a fire that might happen in your own home. Does this make any moral or even logical sense? People are dying. They need help. FFS.
Oreo-maker Mondelez stayed in Russia throughout the war, failing to withdraw. The result is that it pays taxes to Putin which go into Russian missiles that slam into sites across Ukraine, including their own business. A Russian missile recently hit a Mondelez factory in Ukraine, injuring two people. Next time, and there will be a next time, maybe someone dies. This is exhibit A as to why it's a good idea to no longer do business with aggressor countries. Besides, funding war crimes isn't exactly a great PR move.
Last edited by Hydra009 on Tue Jul 07, 2026 1:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
Hydra009 wrote: Thu Jul 02, 2026 3:45 amUkrainian drones fly near Omsk refinery (largest refinery in Russia, one of the very few undamaged by Ukraine. If Russia were to lose this, it'd greatly exacerbate the current fuel crisis)
No joy. But Ukraine has proven that it can reach this refinery. And if at first you don't succeed...
Update: Ukraine tried again. Multiple successful impacts, including one caught on video slamming into it - the old "drone debris" excuse is demonstrably false.
Russia knew this was coming and tried very hard to prevent this - they used an AWACS and at least one SU-57 to defend this site. And they still failed.
It's Russia's largest oil refinery and the only thing standing between the fuel crisis and fuel disaster and it's been knocked off the board. Now, the vast majority of Russian oil refineries have suffered damage - some moderate, some severe, some severe enough to shut them down entirely for an unknown amount of time. There's no mitigating this crisis. Things will get very, very ugly in Russia soon.
One Russian pro-war milblogger Yevgeny Golman films videos from his vehicle and has been increasingly angry about this fuel crisis but thanked his lucky stars that he was still supplied by the Omsk refinery, which kept him on the road. Well, now even that silver lining is gone and he gets to enjoy the effects of Ukrainian sanctions along with the rest of Russia. Have fun.
Ukraine also struck a Russian oil depot, a radar station, and two S-400 AA systems in Crimea. Ukraine has been hitting Crimea hard, especially its power grid. Ukraine has reportedly hit 38 electricity-related targets, mostly substations, over the past week. Crimea is now subject to scheduled blackouts and Crimea is very dark at night. A couple of years ago, it was the opposite - with free Ukraine under blackouts and occupied Crimea shining in the night. The situation has reversed and the aggressor is now being harmed more than he's harming others.
Putin ordered the Russian military to capture all of Donetsk and Luhansk by the end of this year. At their current rate of advance, that would take 14 years.
Russia’s casualties have risen to catastrophic levels of 1,298 per square kilometre taken in June [2026], compared to 68 casualties per sq km in June 2025
No military in the world can make that math work.
Almost a year ago, during Putin’s meeting with US President Donald Trump in Alaska, they reportedly agreed to force Ukraine to hand over Donetsk.
"Diplomacy"
Zelenskyy flatly refused when presented with the proposal.
In the intervening year, the military situation has changed dramatically, with Russia now on the back foot.
Apparently, he was right to do so. Because the terms of any sort of peace deal would be written with the "reality on the ground" in mind. If that reality is disastrous for Russia, Ukraine gets much better terms. It also lessens the risk of a re-ignition of war.
Russian officials appeared to advertise their readiness for another US mediation based on what was discussed in Anchorage.
Yeah, I bet they did. They essentially asked Trump to ignore how terribly this is going for them and to not make a peace deal based on that. Instead, they want a peace deal based on what things were like back in Anchorage, before all that, back when Trump was hearing all about how Russian victory was inevitable based on lots of fake reports. I'm sure the Russians would love to rewind the clock and make a deal when they weren't losing, but that's not how reality works.
Putin ordered the Russian military to capture all of Donetsk and Luhansk by the end of this year. At their current rate of advance, that would take 14 years.
Russia’s casualties have risen to catastrophic levels of 1,298 per square kilometre taken in June [2026], compared to 68 casualties per sq km in June 2025
No military in the world can make that math work.
Almost a year ago, during Putin’s meeting with US President Donald Trump in Alaska, they reportedly agreed to force Ukraine to hand over Donetsk.
"Diplomacy"
Zelenskyy flatly refused when presented with the proposal.
In the intervening year, the military situation has changed dramatically, with Russia now on the back foot.
Apparently, he was right to do so. Because the terms of any sort of peace deal would be written with the "reality on the ground" in mind. If that reality is disastrous for Russia, Ukraine gets much better terms. It also lessens the risk of a re-ignition of war.
Russian officials appeared to advertise their readiness for another US mediation based on what was discussed in Anchorage.
Yeah, I bet they did. They essentially asked Trump to ignore how terribly this is going for them and to not make a peace deal based on that. Instead, they want a peace deal based on what things were like back in Anchorage, before all that, back when Trump was hearing all about how Russian victory was inevitable based on lots of fake reports. I'm sure the Russians would love to rewind the clock and make a deal when they weren't losing, but that's not how reality works.
Some scholars suggested that one reason Russia invaded Ukraine when it did was because their birth rate was low. Ukraine as part of Russia would help their dire demographic situation.
Key facts on Russia's birth decline since the war:
Record Lows: There were about 272,000 births in the first quarter of 2026, the lowest figure for any quarter in roughly 200 years.
Fertility Rate: The total fertility rate sits around 1.37, well below the 2.1 rate needed to naturally replace the population without migration.
Demographic Deficit: Deaths heavily outpace births by roughly 500,000 to 600,000 per year, leading to severe labor shortages
What a massive backfire between the war casualties and the emigration wav out of there. The Russian state introduced severe pro-natalist incentives. These include state benefits, tax breaks, and reviving the Soviet-era "Mother Heroine" award, which grants a 1 million ruble ($13,000) cash prize for having 10 or more children.
Yeah, there have been a lot of theories. The demographic crisis is one.
Also, solidifying Russia's hold over Crimea, picking up more freshwater ports, and linking up with Transnistria for a future major push into Moldova, as Lukashenko essentially showed on a map presentation.
Natural resources in the form of grains and minerals, especially lithium. (Russia triggered a food crisis from blocking Ukrainian sea trade, imagine the leverage they'd have with complete control)
Unfortunately both Russia and Ukraine are having a demographic crisis now. In Ukraine, there are about 3 deaths per 1 birth. Ukraine also needs the majority of Ukrainians who fled the country because of the war to return after the war. That becomes more and more difficult every year this war drags on.
Like you pointed out, in Russia they were consistently below replacement before the war and it's even worse now. I've heard about small Siberian towns with no men left. "Worker shortages" even in Russian cities. And also, people have fled the country - mostly at the start of the war but we might see another round if the rumors of Putin starting another mass mobilization are true.
Russia recently hit 1.4 million casualties. Consistently over a thousand a day. Every year this goes on plunges Russia into a deeper and deeper demographics crisis.
No details from the Ukrainian side, but from Russian telegram posts about it, it was a rare air-air fight where Ukrainian planes outnumbered and overmatched the Russian plane. Previously, this was basically impossible, since Russian jets could detect Ukrainian jets at a longer range and could quite literally pick their battles. If they were in a disadvantageous position, they'd just leave the area. Afaik, this is no longer possible and the Ukrainians now have the technological edge in the sky. Russian jets either have to lob glide bombs from the relative safety of behind the front lines or make very risky missions into Ukrainian-held territory.
The Russian telegram downplays the impact of this loss and bizarrely praises the pilot of the Russian jet for engaging in a three-on-one fight and "not chickening out" (the Russian pilot ejected and survived, according to them). Not sure why fighting a hopeless battle and losing is a good thing, but that's Russian culture for ya. *shrugs*
The Russians say they have plenty more planes where that came from so it's not a big deal (they used to say the same about tanks lol) but expressed frustration with the Russian pilot taking a "formulaic" (read: predictable) approach while the Ukrainians acted more unpredictably. The Russian milblogger also expressed worry about the Ukrainians receiving more advanced air-to-air missiles. Specifically, the Meteor missile, which is often equipped on Gripen jets and it just so happens that Ukraine in the process of acquiring Gripen jets. Basically, Ukraine's air-to-air capabilities will grow considerably when they get Gripen jets.
The Military Informant Telegram channel wrote, "For the third day running, the enemy has been attacking tankers in the Sea of Azov. This time, the Ukrainian Armed Forces targeted 14 vessels at once, bringing the total number hit to 35 over the past three days."
The channel questioned whether, by tomorrow, "anyone on our side will realize that keeping tankers out at sea in groups like this, without any cover, is not such a great idea after all."
Additionally, the Voevoda war channel stated: "It's sad, very sad.... this huge structure called the Navy doesn't show itself in any way."
Ships, especially cargo ships, don't normally benefit from cover, but some sort of military escort would be prudent. Like the Moskva or an AWACS. Oh wait...
