Russian

Ukraine has cut an irreplaceable Russian Tu-95 bomber in two

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A Russian strategic bomber literally split in two on the runway of an air base. So they show it satellite images confirming one of the most symbolic blows that Ukraine has dealt Russia in recent weeks. Below all the details. what has happened. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) affirms having destroyed a Tu-95 bomber at the Engels-2 air base, in the Russian region of Saratov, after an attack with drones that traveled nearly 800 kilometers to reach their target. According to the agency itself, the device suffered critical damage, since the tail section was completely torn off. The news has circulated for days in different specialized media, although it is the images captured by satellite from the AviVector open source intelligence group that they have finished confirming the factlater corroborated with Planet Labs photographs obtained by Schemes. The images show a burned and broken Tu-95MS on the asphalt of Engels-2. Why it matters. The Tu-95 is a relic of the Cold War, with its first flight in 1952, which remains one of the key pieces that Russia uses as a deterrent weapon. The Tu-95MS variant, derived from the Tu-142 maritime patrol aircraft, is the main launch platform for the Kh-101 cruise missiles, the same ones that Russia has used on many occasions against Ukrainian cities throughout the war. Each device can carry up to six of these missiles on an internal rotating launcher, while the modernized Tu-95MSM version can carry up to eight, including the nuclear-capable Kh-102. That is to say, a single one of these bugs can execute a nuclear war mission from the air on its own, so the enthusiasm of the Ukrainian troops in shooting it down is understandable. The fact that hurts Moscow the most. Russia can no longer manufacture Tu-95. The industrial infrastructure that produced them disappeared decades ago and their theoretical replacement, the PAK DA stealth bomber, remains on paper. According to collectKyiv Post, it is estimated that in 2023 Russia would have 45 units of the Tu-95MS and 18 of the modernized Tu-95MSM. Other sources cited by specialized media They place the current operational fleet at around 60 devices. In your own words. The S.B.U. spread the coup on its Telegram channel as follows: “The SBU systematically destroys important elements of the Russian military machine. Each strategic bomber liquidated means dozens of missiles that will not be launched on Ukrainian cities, Ukrainian lives saved and tens of millions of dollars in irrecoverable losses for the enemy.” The agency added that Russian strategic aviation “can no longer feel safe even in its most remote air bases.” The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, also celebrated the operation on his Telegram account, calling it a new success in what he calls Ukraine’s “long-range sanctions” against Russia, and defined it as an exercise in “active and fair defense” by his country. It is not the first time that Russian aviation has been nullified in this way. And months before, the so-called Operation Cobweb had already dealt a heavy blow to Russia through the massive use of drones. And now what. As might be expected, one less bomber does not change the course of the war. And just as they count According to TechRadar, Russia will most likely continue launching salvos of cruise missiles, beefing up its air defenses, hardening its hangars, and resorting to painted decoys to try to confuse Ukrainian drone operators. Cover image | Sergey Kustov (Wikipedia) In Xataka | The men who closed the new Chernobyl hole: “Destiny gave us an opportunity to test ourselves to the limit”

When Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, no one dared to cross it. Nobody except a 300 million Russian superyacht

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For months now, the Strait of Hormuz has been one of the places more dangerous of the world to navigate. Oil tankers anchored for weeks, freighters turning around with their empty warehouses and marine insurance with unattainable prices due to the high risk of receiving a missile strike from the coasts of Iran. No one wants to cross those waters while Iran and the United States launch cross-threats and naval mines at each other. In the midst of this chaotic scenario and without warning, a superyacht shaped like a futuristic submarine set sail from Dubai. It crossed one of the most guarded maritime stretches on the planet at the moment and, as if nothing had happened, set course to the paradisiacal coasts of the Maldives islands. A yacht with a single letter. The ship that challenged the maritime blockade of the ayatollahs and the United States is called Motor Yacht A or simply TOin honor of the initial of its owner: the Russian coal oligarch Andrey Melnichenko and that of his wife Aleksandra. The superyacht does not exactly go unnoticed. It measures 129 meters in length and its designer Philippe Starck, who also designed he Venus by Steve Jobs, he had in an interview for Boat International which took just a few seconds to sketch the first strokes of the yacht’s futuristic design TO. “Sometimes a design takes me only 30 seconds,” the designer acknowledged. A floating mansion with all the luxuries. He Motor Yacht A It combines a futuristic exterior with an interior of excessive luxury with capacity for 14 guests in seven cabins and up to 42 crew members. As and how he shelled Robb Reportthe superyacht has three outdoor pools in the aft area (one of them with a glass bottom over its own yacht club), a jacuzzi with aqua massage seats and a helipad. Inside, a large silver-lined staircase with a railing valued at $60,000 stands out, while the master suite, measuring more than 240 m2, incorporates televisions that descend from the ceiling, a rotating bed and bulletproof glass in the windows. In addition, the owner’s suite includes a private bathroom with a bathtub and shower also covered in silver. Altogether, a 2,200 m2 floating mansion worth approximately $300 million, according to the specialized medium SuperYatch Fan. The feat that no one saw coming. As indicated by the last location of your AIS beaconhe Motor Yatch A still was found at Dubai’s Rashid Port on July 4. Something that confirms the specialized YouTube channel The Yacht Reportwhich tracked his movements. According to the information obtained, the TO It sailed along the coast of the United Arab Emirates and took the safe corridor provided by Omani waters, not the Iranian corridor used by tankers and cargo ships, to reach an Omani port the next day. He stayed there for ten days. On July 14, he set sail again, crossed the US military blockade and entered the open waters of the Arabian Sea. Their declared destination, according to your AIS signal, They are the Maldives. The choice of destination is not accidental. In addition to transparent waters and fine white sand, the country serves as a refuge for the yachts of Russian tycoons who want to avoid confiscation of your assets due to sanctions for the war in Ukraine. He Motor Yatch A He was saved, his brother was not.. Melnichenko and his wife They were sanctioned by the European Union in March 2022, just days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Although, according to what was published by Reutersthe millionaire managed to circumvent the blockade by protecting his assets abroad. However, the older brother of Motor Yatch Athe 142 meter sailboat Sailing Yatch Awas trapped in the port of Trieste where still in dispute with the Italian government and today is, almost unintentionally, a tourist attraction of the city. He is not the first millionaire to gamble. It is not the first time that a Russian yacht defies Tehran’s missile batteries or the US blockade by flouting prohibitions. In April, the Northowned by tycoon Alexei Mordashov, followed almost the same route to Oman. He TO has used the same formula based on the unexpected presence of a luxury yacht tiptoeing across the most stressed area of ​​the planet for a geopolitical conflict what has in a lifelessness to energy markets around the world. In Xataka | Anti-drone systems, swimming pools, jacuzzis and live lobster tanks: the price of the most expensive yachts in the world Image | Wikimedia Commons (MatthiasKabel), Superyatch Fan, Boat International.

Something unusual happened in Chernobyl when the Russian soldiers arrived. The cameras that monitored the animals have never stopped recording

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In April 1986, just a few days after the Chernobyl accidentSoviet scientists feared that radiation had turned the area into a biological desert for generations. Occurred exactly the opposite. With the disappearance of human activity, the forest recovered the lost ground and the exclusion zone ended up becoming one of the largest wildlife refuges in Europe. The animal cameras that recorded the war. I told it this week in a report The New York Times. When Ukrainian conservationist Svitlana Kudrenko installed dozens of camera traps throughout the Chernobyl exclusion zone in 2020, her goal was much more routine: to study how populations of wolves, lynxes, deer, foxes and other species that had thrived after decades without human presence were evolving. Two years later, Russia invaded Ukraine and turned Chernobyl into an improvised military base. The soldiers arrived, the tanks went through the forests, the explosions began… and the cameras never stopped recording. An unprecedented experiment. The Russian occupation barely lasted a little more than a month, but it left behind a extraordinary scientific opportunity. Because the cameras continued to operate throughout the invasion, the researchers were able to compare the behavior of eleven species before, during and after the passage of the troops. In addition, they crossed these images with testimonies from people who remained in the area and with satellite data capable of detecting fires, building an almost real-time portrait of how fauna responds to a war. The uneven reaction of the animals. One of the most interesting findings was that did not exist a universal answer. Roe deer, especially shy animals linked to the forest, began to appear much less as the intensity of military activity increased. Red deer, on the other hand, were detected more frequently, probably because They fled from open areas where tanks, vehicles and explosions were concentrated, thus increasing the chances of being recorded by cameras. The war changed the forest’s schedules. The differences were not limited to the number of animals observed. red deer They modified their routines and they began to be more active during the day and less at night. Foxes and hares also reduced part of your activity night, although the latter reappeared precisely on the days when the satellites detected fires, an indication that they were trying to escape the fire caused by the fighting. Spaces that did not move. On the contrary, not all the inhabitants of Chernobyl reacted in an obvious way. Researchers found few changes in species like wolves or Eurasian lynxesalthough recognize that the conclusions are more limited because they were photographed much less frequently. They also propose another possibility: The enormous size of the exclusion zone and the scarce human presence accumulated over decades perhaps cushioned part of the impact that a similar conflict would have had on a much more altered ecosystem. The war left another invisible victim: nature. The study, published in Science magazinedoes not aim to measure the total ecological damage of the invasion, but rather to observe how the fauna reacted while everything was happening. Even so, its authors remember that armed conflicts also destroy habitats, cause fires, introduce pollution and increase the mortality of numerous species. As resume ecologist Kaitlyn Gaynor, animals are involuntary spectators of human wars and we still know very little about the consequences that these episodes leave on them. Chernobyl and the paradox. For decades, the exclusion zone symbolized the biggest nuclear disaster of history. Then it became an unexpected refuge for wildlife. Finally, the Russian invasion added a third, equally improbable chapter: a natural laboratory where the very cameras installed to study animals ended up recording one of the few involuntary experiments on how an entire ecosystem responds when war breaks out in the middle of the forest. Image | Ministry of Defense In Xataka | The men who closed the new Chernobyl hole: “Destiny gave us an opportunity to test ourselves to the limit” In Xataka | We had been wondering for years why the Chernobyl wild boars were so radioactive. The answer was not in the accident

Europe believed that the Russian ghost fleet moved oil. Report points to something much worse: drone “aircraft carriers”

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During the First World War, the United Kingdom created the called Q-ships: Seemingly harmless merchant ships that hid cannons under their decks to attract German submarines and surprise them when they approached. The idea of ​​turning a commercial ship into a weapon It wasn’t new.. The striking thing is that, more than a century later, it could have evolved much more than we imagined. It all started with some drones. At the end of 2024 they began to register drone raids on several American military bases in England and, shortly after, on other strategic facilities in Germany. The devices appeared and disappeared without a trace, forcing investigations to be opened that they never identified publicly to those responsible. Those flights seemed like another episode in Europe’s growing hybrid war, although a new report maintains that the true origin could have been much further from the coast. Capture of the IISS report The hypothesis. a study from the International Institute for Strategic Studies maintains that it is “highly probable” that Russia used ships linked to its well-known ghost fleet as platforms to launch and recover drones. This network of oil tankers and merchants had been associated until now with crude oil transportation to avoid Western sanctions. If the hypothesis ends up being confirmed, those ships would have also played a military function much more sophisticated covert. A tanker can become an aircraft carrier. They counted TWZ analysts that the great advantage of a merchant ship is precisely that no one expects it to act as a military platform. A ship can remain for days in international waters, discreetly approach the coast, launch a reconnaissance drone and continue its trade route without raising suspicion. Compared to an aircraft carrier, whose presence is impossible to hide, a cargo ship offers perfect cover for operations that are difficult to attribute. The chosen bases. The targets included facilities such as RAF Lakenheathwhich is being prepared for host nuclear weapons American, as well as RAF Mildenhall, RAF Fairford, RAF Feltwell and Ramstein air base in Germany. The researchers collected around of 170 citizen noticesof which approximately half were considered credible after being corroborated by several witnesses or images. They also detected coordinated flight patternsdifferent types of aircraft and trajectories incompatible with recreational use. The sea offers an explanation. The report poses that some drones were able to take off from Russian-related ships located out of visual range of the coast. Among the possibilities is the Orlan-10a military drone with sufficient autonomy to cover these distances and equipped with intelligence sensors, surveillance, reconnaissance and even electronic warfare capabilities. The authors themselves recognize that using an identifiable military model would increase the risk of attribution, so they do not rule out the use of modified commercial drones to make it even more difficult to trace their origin. The boss worries. Plus: the study’s authors admit that their conclusions rest on a combination of cluesknown capabilities and geographical coincidences, not on definitive public evidence. No European government has officially linked a specific ship to a specific incursion, although various policymakers have called for new investigations. For their part, both the British Ministry of Defense and the US Air Force in Europe have confirmed drone flights, but remain silent on any intelligence information related to their possible authorship. The hybrid war. If the hypothesis is correct, the problem would no longer be solely the existence of a ghost fleet dedicated to transporting Russian oil. Europe would also have to assume that some of those same ships can serve as discrete platforms for espionage operationsreconnaissance or electronic warfare hundreds of kilometers from the front. In other words, the biggest threat of the report is not to identify who launched those drones, but to propose that a simple merchant ship could play part of the role that until now was only attributed to an aircraft carrier. Image | Google In Xataka | Europe has encountered a problem bigger than Russia: drones cannot be stored for more than eight weeks In Xataka | Cities such as London or Madrid appear on Russia’s new objective map. The reason: drone production

The trick against all logic of Ukrainian drones to hunt the fearsome Russian shahed

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The first documented aerial shootdown in history, in 1914, was not won by the fastest plane, but by the one that knew how to position himself better and hold the exact moment to shoot. More than a century later, the drone war in Ukraine is rediscovering the same lesson: in the air, sometimes patience outweighs speed. The new hunt for the Shahed. we have been counting: the air war over Ukraine has entered into a new phase where defense no longer depends only on expensive anti-aircraft missiles, but on drones designed to hunt other drones. One of the most advanced examples It’s Stingdeveloped by the Ukrainian company Wild Hornetsan interceptor created specifically for take down the Russian Shahed that bomb cities and infrastructure every night. With more than 200 km per hour of speed, Sting represents a radical evolution with respect to conventional FPV drones: it is no longer about attacking trenches or armored vehicles, but rather intercepting aerial threats en route to their objective. The initial error. The engineers’ first intuition seemed obvious: to catch a fast drone they had to build something even faster. The first Sting prototypes They exceeded 250 km per houra figure much higher than that of the Russian Geran-2 and comparable to some jet variants. But the reality of combat dismantled that logic. The higher the speed, the less autonomy. The higher the speed, the less patrol time. And in a war where detecting and waiting is as important as striking, that became a tactical problem. The key: the other way around. Here appears the crux that changed everything. After combat testing and conversations with the Ukrainian military, Wild Hornets reformulated the concept: “Speed ​​is not the key. Time in the air is important,” They told Insider. The phrase summarizes a counterintuitive but fundamental lesson. To intercept a Shahed it is not enough to reach it, you must first find it, follow it, maneuver and have room to react. An interceptor that is too fast consumes energy, reduces its operational window and limits its flexibility. The result was a almost heretical decision in military engineering: make the slowest drone to do better. Slower, more useful. Reduce speed allowed gain more than 20 minutes of flight, increase mechanical reliability and simplify preparation for each mission. That transformed the Sting from a simple flying projectile into a real aerial hunting tool. It can operate at altitudes of up to 7,000 meters, although it performs better somewhat lower, and its cost (less $2,000 per unit) makes it an extremely cost-effective solution against Shaheds that cost tens of thousands and, above all, against much more expensive interceptor missiles. The war of mutual adaptation. But the battlefield does not stop. Russia too is modifying his Shahedincorporating cameras, improving maneuverability and making them more difficult to shoot down. Every Russian improvement forces a Ukrainian response, and every new version of Sting is born from that constant exchange. Wild Hornets now has developed variants with specific cameras for different light conditions and night operations, showing the extent to which this war is an accelerated evolutionary race. The pilot away from the front. The last great revolution It’s Hornet Visiona remote control technology that allows Sting to be piloted hundreds of kilometers from the launch point. This completely changes the defensive logic: the best operators can be far from the front, safe from Russian attacks, managing multiple interceptors at the same time. Instead of exposing pilots near impact zones, Ukraine begins to centralize talent and multiply efficiency. Air defense, in that sense, looks less and less like a system of batteries and radars and more like a distributed network of invisible hunters. The economy of the new war. Sting represents something deeper than just a drone. It is the demonstration that modern war rewards efficiency above sophistication. While a surface-to-air missile can cost millions to shoot down a cheap target, Ukraine is proving it can be fought saturation with saturationbut intelligently. The great discovery, therefore, has not been to build the fastest interceptor, but to understand that, sometimes, to win a chase, the most important thing is not to run further: it is hold on longer in the air. Image | Wild Hornets In Xataka | Ukraine can’t take back Crimea, but it’s making sure Russia drowns inside its own peninsula In Xataka | We have to start thinking about the Ukrainian war in terms greater than those of the First World War.

Ukraine has found Russia’s weak point in Crimea. And now there is a line of Russian trucks that cannot move forward

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During World War II, General George S. Patton It stopped its advance not because of a lack of tanks or ammunition, but because of something much more basic: gasoline. Their armored columns consumed so much fuel that logistics could not keep up. Since then, armies learned a brutally simple lesson: sometimes war is decided not by who fires the most, but by who keeps the tank full. The real Achilles heel. For months, the war in Crimea had been told in terms of missiles, air bases and attacks on the Black Sea Fleet. But Ukraine seems to have identified something much more vulnerable, the same thing we just saw with the US agreement with Iran to end the war: the fuel. It is not just about destroying military objectives, but about attacking the “blood” that makes the entire Russian machine work. Without gasoline, trucks do not move, projectiles do not arrive, drones do not fly, nor an offensive is sustained. And that’s exactly what kyiv is cutting. Hit the artery. I was counting this morning the financial times that the Ukrainian campaign has concentrated on the land corridor connecting continental Russia with Crimea, especially the “Novorossiya” highwaythe great logistics work inaugurated in 2023 and presented by Vladimir Putin as one of the great strategic successes of the war. It we counted recently. That road connects Rostov with the peninsula through occupied Mariupol and Melitopol, and has now become a shooting gallery: more than 375 documented attacks against trucks and vehicles since May, many of them precisely on that road. The message is clear: there is no need to destroy Crimea, enough is enough with disconnecting it. A peninsula that lives off what it enters. The problem for Moscow It is structural. Crimea neither produces oil nor has enough refining capacity to sustain itself. It has always depended on external supplies, before from Ukraine and now from Russia. This dependency turns each destroyed convoy into an immediate problem. The images of kilometric queuesdigital coupons and rationing at gas stations in Sevastopol show how the logistical impact translates almost instantly into social pressure. What at the front is a supply interruption, in the rear already seems like a siege. The Kerch bridge is no longer enough. For a long time, the bridge was the great russian lifeguard. But since the 2022 attack that damaged its stretches and set a fuel train on fire, Moscow has greatly reduced its use for sensitive shipments. Transporting fuel by road is much less efficient than by train, because a single rail convoy is equivalent to dozens and dozens of tanker trucks. And therein lies the problem: Ukraine is hitting both systems at the same time, forcing Russia to improvise floating bridges and much slower and more vulnerable secondary routes. The intermediate drone war. The most interesting thing is that this campaign is not being led by either small front-line drones or large strategic drones, but rather a new intermediate category that we have been explaining. We talk about systems like the FP-2, Behemoth or the Hornet that allow you to attack at distances of up to 200 kilometers with enough charge to destroy trucks, warehouses and bridges. They are cheap devices, difficult to intercept and operate with networks like Starlink that complicate Russian electronic warfare. It’s a major change, as Ukraine is turning logistics into its own front. Crimea is an island again. If you like, the great effect of this strategy It is psychological and military both. Crimea was conquered by Russia as a platform to project power, and now it is beginning to look an isolated enclave which needs to be fed daily to survive. If Ukraine keeps up the pace through the summer, the pressure will not only be on the southern front, but at full capacity Russian to sustain operations in the region. And there is the central idea: Moscow still has missiles, bases and soldiers in Crimea, but Ukraine has understood that the weak point was not so much in destroying them directly, it was in simply leaving them without gasoline. Image | Britannia In Xataka | We have to start thinking about the Ukrainian war in terms greater than those of the First World War. In Xataka | The drone war has left a clear lesson for Ukraine: you can’t leave home without a 100-year-old machine gun

In case there was not enough “gasoline” in 2026, the attack by a Russian drone has crossed a red line: that of Chernobyl

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In the early 1980s, a Soviet satellite detected what appeared to be the launch of several US nuclear missiles. The duty officer, Stanislav Petrov, suspected that something was wrong and decided not to report of an imminent attack. He was right: the sensors had mistaken reflections of the sun on the clouds for real missiles. That decision avoided a possible nuclear escalation during one of the most tense moments of the Cold War. Chernobyl, again. In a war where drones are already They attack strategic airfieldsmilitary bases and industrial centers located hundreds of kilometers from the front, it seemed difficult to find a new red line. However, a russian attack against a facility related to spent nuclear fuel near Chernobyl has revived one of Europe’s most persistent ghosts. There was no radioactive leak nor were safety limits exceeded, but the simple fact that a drone hit an infrastructure linked to the site of the worst nuclear accident of modern history was enough to generate international alarm. Almost forty years after the 1986 disaster, the name Chernobyl still have a unique ability to raise concern inside and outside Ukraine. Nuclear storage facility severely damaged in Chernobyl exclusion zone after Russian drone attacks The exclusion zone. According to Ukrainian authoritiesa Russian Shahed-type drone crashed into the reception building of the Centralized Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Facility located in the Chernobyl exclusion zone at dawn. The explosion caused significant damage into the structure and sparked a fire that was quickly extinguished. There were no victims and the stored nuclear fuel was not directly affected, since the containers were not in the area hit by the attack. Even so, the installation is part of the infrastructure intended to store for decades waste from Ukrainian nuclear power plants, which made the incident a matter of great political and strategic sensitivity. Why worry? The concern did not arise because of the material damage, but because of what could have happened in a worse scenario. The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that very close to the building reached there is a large amount of nuclear material stored under strict security measures. Although radiation levels remained normal, the episode once again brought to the table an issue that accompanies the conflict. from 2022: the vulnerability of nuclear facilities in a war where drones, missiles and long-range attacks are part of the daily routine. Each incident forces us to remember that infrastructure designed to operate in peacetime now exists within a combat zone. A constant pressure. The attack is not an isolated event. Over the past few years, war has repeatedly placed nuclear facilities Ukrainians at the center of international concern. The best known example is Zaporizhia power stationthe largest in Europe, occupied by Russian forces since 2022 and a common scene of cross accusations about bombings, sabotage and security threats. Added to this is the precedent February 2025when another drone damaged the gigantic confinement arch built to cover reactor number 4 at Chernobyl. Although a radiological emergency did not occur then, the incident damaged part of the structure’s protection capabilities. A symbolic dimension. Beyond its physical effects, the attack seems to have an enormous symbolic weight. Ukraine presents it as a demonstration that Russia is willing to take risks related to nuclear security to increase pressure over kyiv. Moscow, for its part, has not acknowledged any responsibility. The truth is that the episode occurred in a moment of intensification of long-range attacks by both sides, with drones hitting increasingly deeper and more sensitive targets. In this context, reaching a facility linked to Chernobyl sends a message that transcends the battlefield and also seeks to impact international public perception. The return of European nuclear fear. we have been counting. The war in Ukraine has shown that the nuclear risks of the 21st century are not limited to atomic weapons. Power plants, spent fuel depots, energy supply lines and complex security infrastructures can become targets or get caught up in the conflict. That’s why he Chernobyl incident has had such an impact despite not causing immediate radiological consequences. In a Europe already marked by war, the arms race and tensions between great powers, the attack has served to remind us that the legacy of Chernobyl is still present. He 1986 accident It belongs to the past, but the fear it inspires continues to be one of the most powerful psychological tools on the continent. Image | IAEA ImagebankEnergoatom/Telegram In Xataka | We had been wondering for years why the Chernobyl wild boars were so radioactive. The answer was not in the accident In Xataka | Cartography of a nuclear disaster: the maps that 40 years later reveal the real magnitude of Chernobyl

A Ukrainian stork has managed to outwit a Russian drone in flight. The video is the best clue about who will win the war

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Exactly a decade ago, the Dutch police presented a plan that seemed straight out of a medieval movie: training eagles to shoot down drones in full flight. That project lasted less than a year, because the birds They were too unpredictable and the propellers too dangerous even for them, but 10 years later it seems that they were not so wrong. The stork that left a Russian drone behind. In the middle of a war where Ukraine and Russia compete to automate battlefield, a seemingly trivial video has become an unexpectedly powerful metaphor. what we see: A Russian interceptor drone chases a Ukrainian white stork in mid-flight until the bird suddenly makes a sharp turn, leaving the device chasing shadows. The scene lasts just a few secondsbut it summarizes something much deeper: modern warfare is obsessed with creating machines that imitate capabilities that nature perfected millions of years ago, although we are still far from achieving it. The image is especially symbolic because the white stork is one of the national animals of Ukraine and because the video inadvertently exposes the enormous limitations that many drones continue to have when faced with an enemy as seemingly simple as a bird. The great military obsession. For years, military engineers they try to replicate the capabilities of birds flight. Modern drones can travel hundreds of kilometers, transmit video in real time or attack targets with enormous precision, but they remain much less agile than animals capable of instantly changing the shape of their wings, taking advantage of thermal currents or performing extreme maneuvers without losing stability. The video stork It does exactly that: detect danger, alter its trajectory and escape from a device specifically designed to intercept moving targets. The difference reveals a key problem with today’s autonomous war. Drones still rely heavily on relatively predictable trajectoriesimperfect sensors and reaction capacities much lower than those of biological organisms evolved to survive in the air. Drone warfare as an ecosystem. The conflict in Ukraine has accelerated the evolution of drones to unprecedented levels. Let us remember that at the beginning of the war they were relatively simple reconnaissance tools… and now there are coordinated swarmsinterceptors aerial FPVplatforms long range suicide bombers and autonomous systems capable of searching for targets by themselves. In parallel, the sky begins to fill with absurd situations and almost surreal where birds and machines share the same airspace. In the early years there were trained eagles to shoot down police drones. Today, just the opposite is happening: drones that chase birds because their radar signatures are too similar to those of enemy devices. Some species, such as storks or pelicans, are comparable in size to certain military drones and create enough confusion to cause real errors in combat. Nature is several steps ahead. The episode also leaves an uncomfortable conclusion for the military industry: the capabilities that militaries desperately seek already exist in nature. Birds master something that drones still cannot combine well: agility, energy autonomy, collective coordination and instant adaptation to the environment. An albatross, for example, can travel entire oceans taking advantage of wind currents Without spending much energy, Harris hawks or eagles coordinate extremely complex cooperative attacks. no centralized communicationand storks use thermals to gain altitude practically free. Meanwhile, defense engineers still experience with deformable wings, biomimetic systems and algorithms that allow drones to react with the same fluidity. The result is paradoxical: the more autonomous military technologies advance, the more evident it is that they continue to try to achieve abilities that a bird naturally possesses. A video that says much more. The Ukraine War will probably be remembered as the drone laboratory most important in modern history. Both sides are learning in real time how to automate attacks, saturate defenses and dominate airspace at low cost. But he stork video points towards something even more important: the winner will not necessarily be the one who has the most drones, but rather the one who manages to build capable systems to adapt to the environment with the flexibility of a living organism. Therein lies the great technological race that is beginning to take shape. Armies no longer just want fast or cheap machines, they also want platforms that learn, react, collaborate and survive like animals. And while Russia and Ukraine transform the sky into a permanent surreal experiment, a simple stork has just remembered that nature, for now, continues playing in another league. Image | Jean-Raphaël Guillaumin In Xataka | Ukraine has been terrorizing Russian soldiers with its heavy drones for years. Now they are literally giving it back. In Xataka | The war has entered the phase of mathematics: cheap Russian missiles are destroying the scarce Ukrainian interceptors

Ukraine has resurrected one of the oldest tactics of warfare. And he is isolating Russian cities without the need for soldiers

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One of the many movie scenes that took place during the soviet blockade of berlin occurred in 1948, when the United States and its allies kept an entire city alive using an airlift that landed every few minutes with food, coal and medicine. The operation highlighted a lesson that military strategists never forgot: in any war, sometimes the most important thing is not to conquer a city, but to decide who can continue to supply it. A silent return. For centuries, sieges were one of the tools more brutal and effective of the war. Surrounding a city, cutting off supplies, and waiting for hunger, exhaustion, or lack of ammunition to do the job was a military logic as old as empires themselves. Ukraine is now recovering that same idea, but adapted to the drone era. The big difference is that you no longer need to physically surround a city or send thousands of soldiers to isolate it. It is enough to control the roads, monitor movements and constantly destroy everything that enters or leaves. What is happening around Mariupol It is beginning to look less like a traditional war and more like a medieval siege executed from the air and hundreds of kilometers away. Mariupol as a laboratory. After conquering Mariupol in 2022, Russia turned the city into one of the ggreat logistics centers of its southern front, using its roads and port to move fuel, ammunition, troops and equipment towards Donetsk and Zaporizhia. Ukraine has started to attack precisely that circulation network. Reconnaissance and attack drones patrol the main access routes to the city looking for tanker trucks, ammunition transports or logistical convoys. The logic is extremely simple and very old: There is no need to destroy a fortified position if you can prevent it from continuing to function. According to different military sources and published videos by Ukrainian units, some drones already operate up to 160 kilometers within of territory controlled by Russia, turning entire roads into permanent risk zones for any Russian military vehicle. Turn logistics into the new front. The most important transformation of this strategy is that the main objective is no longer necessarily soldiers, tanks or trenches. They are the supplies. Ukraine is exploiting a classic vulnerability: any army depends on fuel, food, ammunition and constant transportation to maintain positions. The drones greatly facilitate that job because logistics trucks are relatively easy targets: they follow predictable routes, have little protection and often transport extremely flammable or explosive material. Even small ammunition can destroy them completely. That explains why Ukraine is dedicating so many resources to chasing supply vehicles instead of directly attacking fortified positions that are much more difficult to neutralize. From Mariupol to Moscow. The same logic also appears behind the massive drone attacks against Moscow. They remembered in Insider that Ukraine no longer uses only small improvised FPVs near the front. Now deploy long-range platforms such as FP-1 Firepointthe RS-1 Bars or the new Bars-SM Gladiatorhybrid drones between a cruise missile and unmanned aircraft capable of traveling hundreds of kilometers and crossing one of the densest anti-aircraft networks in the world. The objective is not only to cause specific damage, but to force Russia to disperse defensesspending resources and living under constant pressure even far from the front. The attack with more than 120 drones on the Moscow region demonstrates the extent to which Ukraine attempts to transfer the logic of attrition and isolation far beyond the traditional battle lines. A battle for movement. What is really important is that Ukraine seems to be redefining a fundamental idea of modern warfare: it is no longer necessary to completely control the terrain to control the situation. Just control movement. If any road can be surveilled by drones, any convoy can be destroyed and any resupply can end up intercepted, maintaining a position begins to be much more difficult even if the enemy retains numerical superiority. There is no doubt, that profoundly changes traditional military logic. The future sieges They may no longer be represented with circles surrounding cities on a map, but with invisible networks of drones capable of slowly collapsing enemy logistics without the need for major ground offensives. The war in Ukraine is demonstrating precisely that: that today you can isolate a city, wear down an army and force it to abandon positions without moving practically a single soldier. Image | Pexels In Xataka | Once again, Ukraine has opened a missile launched by Russia. Once again, surprising manufacturers have been found In Xataka | Russia has been advancing at a snail’s pace in Ukraine for months. That’s about to change because of one season: summer.

Russian Tu-95MS bombers have just flown over the Arctic Circle with cruise missiles. And they were not alone

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At the beginning of the sixties, various military radars installed in the extreme north of Alaska frequently detected enormous echoes approaching from the polar horizon. For a few minutes, the operators did not know if they were seeing simple patrol flights or the beginning of something much more serious. These constant alerts ended up transforming the Arctic into one of the most monitored places on the planet. Because in the coldest and emptiest regions of the world, any air movement can have enormous meaning. The return of strategic bombers to the Arctic. It announced the same social networks of the Russian Armed Forces along with a video so that it was clear. Russian strategic bombers Tu-95MS They had just flown over the Polar Circle armed with Kh-101 cruise missile while they were escorted by fighters and supported by tankers near NATO airspace. There is no doubt, the image recovers a scene very typical of the Cold War: large nuclear deterrence platforms patrolling for hours on Arctic routes while Western forces monitor them from a distance. As we said, Moscow also wanted the deployment to be visible, disseminating images of the missile under the wings of the bomber and indirectly reminding that these devices can carry up to eight Kh-101 thanks to your AKU-5M systems. Although several analysts believe that the missile shown was an inert version training, the message remains evident: Russia wants to normalize the presence of armed strategic bombers near the borders of northern Europe. A patrol designed to send a message. The mission lasted more than seven hours over the Barents Sea and the Norwegian Sea and included two Tu-95MS, at least one escort Su-30SM2 and a Il-78M tanker aircraft to practice in-flight refueling. The Russian Ministry of Defense published detailed images of takeoff, aerial maneuvers and the return of the bombers still armed, something unusual even for this type of operations. Moscow insisted that everything was done over neutral waters and in accordance with international standards, although he added an important detail: during part of the route the planes were accompanied by fighters from other countries, probably NATO aircraft who followed the patrol closely. The Arctic thus once again shows signs of constant aerial surveillance between both blocks. The Kh-101 completely changes the meaning of flight. The presence of the Kh-101 missile turns these patrols into something much more serious than a simple routine exercise. This cruise missile, widely used for Russia in Ukrainecan reach targets located at approximately 2,800 kilometers and continues to evolve with new variants equipped with penetration systems, decoys or different types of guidance. Even if the version carried during the flight was only for testing, displaying it over the Arctic serves as a strategic demonstration towards the West. Russia makes it clear that it maintains active its ability to launch long-range attacks from polar corridors that are once again gaining enormous military importance. An increasingly constant air pressure. Plus: These flights fit into much broader Russian military activity around Europe and the Pacific. In recent months too Tu-22M3 have been seen armed with Kh-22 or Kh-32 missiles, MiG-31 carrying Kinzhal hypersonic missiles and Su-24 conducting raids near the Baltic airspace. Precisely one of those episodes recently forced the Rafale fighter deployment French from Lithuania within the NATO air policing mission, together with Romanian F-16s. At the same time, the Tu-95MS themselves have continued to carry out flights of more than ten hours near Alaska and the Sea of ​​Japan, forcing both NORAD and allied European and Asian forces to react. The north once again resembles the Cold War. For years, the Arctic was seen above all as a strategic region for its resources and sea routes, but for some time now it seems to be becoming a priority military corridor. The Russian decision to show armed strategic bombers flying over the Polar Circle with fighter escort and resupply support conveys precisely that idea. If you like, the Kremlin seems to assume that the military rivalry with the West will be long-lasting and that the northern routes will have a central role in any future scenario. The final image that remains is difficult to ignore: nuclear bombers, cruise missiles, Western interceptors and long-distance patrols once again cross paths over the frozen skies of the Arctic. Image | Telegram In Xataka | As we look to the Middle East, the Arctic has become the hiding place for Russia’s biggest challenge to NATO: Borei and Yasen In Xataka | A nuclear giant designed to make way in the Arctic: this is the most modern icebreaker in the Russian fleet

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