Ukraine presents fresh weapons. 1280th day of war

The Russians entered further towns in Djepropetrovsk Oblast. According to military movements, their main task is to wing the last positions of the opponent in the border region of Donetsk south of Pokrovsk. Ukrainian forces managed to comparatively stabilise the situation in the area of the Pokrów agglomeration and the front line north of Kamjanśke in the Zaporo region.

The aggressor's forces pushed the defenders distant from the northwest outskirts of Torećek, which allows to conclude that the fighting for this city has been completed since January. According to any sources, invaders have mastered most of the Sieriebrian Forest on the border of the Donetsk and Luhansk circuits, for which the fighting has been taking place since 2022. They did not change the overall situation of the clash on the remaining sections of the front, where field advancement had been made by both sides (according to any reports, the Ukrainians recovered Newmychailleka north of Lyman).

On August 21, the Russians conducted a massive air attack on western Ukraine. Serious harm occurred at Flex plants in Mukaczew, which supply microelectronics, among others, to Ukrainian drones and owned by the American company Flextronics. 2 Kindzarz hypersonic missiles hit them. 21 people were injured, and the fire was put out for 2 days. The missiles besides hit Elektron plants in Lviv. Lutsk, Plain and Dubno were besides attacked in the Equatorial District, where fires broke out at the military airport there, as well as railway infrastructure in the Rytomier Region. any drones and rockets hit industrial facilities in Zaporozhrad and in Pawlohrad, where a compressor station was hit (the Ukrainian power department reported an attack on gas transmission infrastructure in an overview). According to Ukrainian data, the enemy has utilized a full of 574 impact drones and their attraps (the second largest number of them since the beginning of attacks) and 40 ballistic and maneuvering missiles. The defenders declared to neutralize 546 unmanned and 31 rockets.

The main mark of the attacks was the logistics of defenders in the immediate back of the front. 3 times (August 21, 24 and 26) drones or rockets hit Sumy. Pavlohrad (20 August) and Slavic (25 August) besides suffered. On 20 August, a fuel base close the city of Izmaił was hit in the Ode region. Massive, systematic attacks by drones of various classes (mainly FPV drones) led to paralysis on the M-14 motorway between Cherson and Mikołajów, the main supply way of the first listed centres. A full of 1006 drones and 51 rockets (including a massive attack on August 21) were to be utilized by invaders from August 19 to morning. The defenders announced to neutralize 861 drones and to shoot down 34 rockets.

Ukrainian drones attacked further Russian fuel sector facilities. On 20 August, a refinery in Nowoszachtyńsk was hit in the Rostov region, and the fight against the fire continued for the next 3 days. On 24 August, the oil processing plant of the refinery in Sisran in the Samar Region and the gas condensate in the port of Ust-Ługa close St. Petersburg was to be damaged – as a consequence of the fire the plant stopped operation. On August 21, the Ukrainians hit the distribution station of Uniecz erstwhile again, with the consequence that they again stopped oil pumping with the Druzba pipeline. As a consequence of the diversion, the fuel depot and railway infrastructure in the area of the city of Jankoj in occupied Crimea were damaged. In addition, according to the message of the Ukrainian General Staff on 21 August, a base of propellants and lubricants in the Vorone region was to be hit. On the another hand, Russian sources reported harm to the energy infrastructure there.

Visitor in Kiev for Ukraine independency Day Prime Minister Mark Carney announced his intention to donate $1 billion worth of military aid (out of the 2 billion announced in June this year at the G7 summit. These will include armored vehicles, ammunition and drones, and deliveries will start in September. On August 25, Norwegian government chief Jonas Gahr Støre declared that in 2026 the country plans to allocate $8.5 billion to support Ukraine. Oslo announced the designation of $696.3 million for Ukrainian air defense. Together with Germany, 2 Patriot systems with missiles will be financed. The state will besides invest in the acquisition of German radars and Norwegian air defence systems. The British Ministry of Defence announced an extension of Ukrainian military training within Interflex missions at least until the end of 2026.

President Donald Trump's administration agreed to sale 3350 guided air-to-air rockets to Kiev, with an extended scope of 24 km to 450 km. According to The Wall Street Journal, a US$850 million arms package would mainly finance European countries. Rockets would scope Ukraine in six weeks, but the Pentagon's approval is needed to usage them. However, the next article indicates that the U.S. Department of defence has been blocking the usage by Kiev for respective months of another American weapon capable of damaging Russia's territory – ATACMS missiles. It cannot be excluded that information about the agreement to sale ERAM missiles is part of Washington's force on Moscow.

On 22 August, national defence minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamish announced that since 1 September a fresh training camp for Ukrainian and Polish soldiers will be opened in confederate Poland. The initiative is created in cooperation with Norway, and the construction of the facility began on 14 July and is now coming to an end.

As part of the alleged Czech initiative, Ukraine has received over 1 million artillery ammunition from the beginning of this year. As planned by the end of 2025, it is expected to receive a full of 1.8 million from 16 countries. According to the head of the Czech Ministry of abroad Affairs, Jan Lipavský received 1.5 million missiles on the Czech ammunition initiative of Kiev, which allowed 5 times to reduce the disparity in the usage of artillery between defenders and aggressor.

In late 2025 or early 2026. Ukraine is to launch mass production of land-flamingo missilesOn 21 August, president Volodymyr Zelenski informed. 3 days earlier the first photographs of the fresh rocket were revealed, and in subsequent days in Ukraine and the West, with the appointment to Ukrainian sources, many material appeared about it. According to the possible maker – Fire Point – it has a scope of 3,000 km and carries a head weighing 1150 kg. The production of 200 rounds a period is planned. On independency Day, Ukrainians presented a modified R-360 Neptune maneuvering missile, which was described, among others, in connection with the scope extended to 1,000 km, as Long Neptune. It has been under improvement since at least 2023. Unlike the predecessor, an anti-ship missile, it is designed to fire ground targets.

The Flamingo rocket was first presented at the beginning of this year as FP-5 by Milanion Group registered in the United arabian Emirates, operating originally on Asian markets. It has been cooperating with Ukrainian companies since 2021 and provides Ukraine with FP-1 shock drones. Declared tactical and method parameters of the fresh rocket, as well as the capacity declared by the Fire Point (Milanion Group announced 50 pieces per month), make FP-1/Flamingo possibly the most powerful and many manufactured kind of maneuvering rocket in the planet (the weight of the head in modern maneuvering missiles oscillates around 400 kg, but in Russian Ch-101 they besides have a half smaller range). According to the Ukrainian manufacture portal defence Express, specified parameters can only be achieved with large size/mass and maximum simplification of rocket design, and it resembles American missiles from the 1950s to 1960s.

Due to the structural conditions, the ability of FP-1/Flamingo to effectively destruct its targets in the interior of Russia is called into question. A large and dense rocket, devoid of the STEALTH rockets utilized today, would be susceptible to fast detection and destruction. It is improbable that the number of engines appropriate to the declared production scale will be obtained. According to defence Express, it would be essential to usage power units akin to those utilized in light jet aircraft, e.g. manufactured before the war by the Motor Sicz dam plant. It cannot be excluded that reports on FP-1/Flamingo are part of Kiev's information policy and are intended to keep first of all the conviction about the capabilities of the Ukrainian arms industry. The start of production of Neptun Long missiles at a rate of up to respective pieces per period should be considered besides much more likely – a model of another types of rockets produced under conditions of Russian aggression (although the transfer of parts of production outside Ukraine Kiev has not yet been able to organise large series production).

20 August The Ukrainian Defence manufacture (Ukroboronprom) Supervisory Board appointed Herman Smetanin – erstwhile Head of the Ministry of strategical manufacture – to be President. The recruitment was carried out by global company Odgers Berndtson, and Smetanin defeated 13 counter-candidates. After his election, he announced the continuation of the erstwhile priorities: expanding military arms production, combating corruption and global cooperation. Smetanin had already served as president of Ukroboronprom from June 2023 to September 2024 erstwhile he entered the government.

21 August The ultimate Council of Ukraine adopted laws on the implementation of the Defence City initiative aimed at the improvement of the national arms industry. The fresh government introduces a preferential legal government for companies in the defence and industrial complex by 1 January 2036 or by the time of Ukraine's accession to the EU. These include income taxation exemptions (subject to reinvestment), land, real property and environmental, simplification of customs and export procedures, and support for relocation and protection of production facilities. The registry of Entities will be run by the Ministry of Defence.

The same day Parliament adopted a law limiting public access to the property registry for martial law and for 1 year after its completion. The explanatory memorandum states that this is intended to "increase the safety of defence companies". The regulation prevents information on the location of properties belonging to companies, the number of cadastral parcels belonging to legal persons and intellectual property objects related to defence and national security. The NGO Anti-Corruption Centre indicated that the rules would seriously impede investigative journalists from monitoring corruption cases, including the analysis of the assets of government officials. So far, the registry has served, among others, to detect suspicious transactions and hidden assets, especially during the war. A legal act, although formally justified on grounds of security, may importantly reduce the transparency of public life, which gives emergence to serious concerns in the fight against corruption and the transparency of the property of political elites.

22 August Defence Minister Denys Szmyhal stated that more than 1.3 million Ukrainian citizens have military veteran status. He stressed that they played an crucial function in the defence apparatus of the state. As an example of their contribution, he gave a contribution to the improvement of innovative solutions specified as DELTA – an advanced IT strategy integrating information about the situation in the battlefield.

24 August Romanian Border defender reported that since the beginning of the year the border with Romania has illegally exceeded more than 5.4 000 Ukrainian citizens. This is little than in the same period of 2024, erstwhile more than 7.6 1000 specified cases were reported. The Ukrainians who got to Romania in this way can benefit from temporary protection under EU rules – alternatively of being treated as illegal migrants.

The same day Ukrainian border service reported that 911 men have been detained since the beginning of the year trying to enter Belarus illegally. In the last year 336 specified trials were registered, in 2023 – 26 – and in 2022 – 61. Most of them took place in western Ukraine circuits. Since the beginning of the year, more than 13,000 citizens have been detained on all sections of the border Ukraine trying to escape the country.

Russian propaganda media has spread false reports of "1.7 million killed and missing Ukrainian soldiers" since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. The Ukrainian Centre for Combating Disinformation powerfully denied these data, calling them "absolutely absurd fraud". It was stressed that Ukraine never had an army of 1.7 million soldiers – according to president Zelenski, in January this year the number of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was 880 000 people. Propaganda Kremlin claims that this information was to come from the alleged hacking of Russian hackers into the database of the General Staff of Ukraine.

21 August The safety Service of Ukraine (SBU) reported the detention of a Russian agent operating in the ranks of the armed forces of Ukraine. It was intended to supply geolocation data to its own military unit, allowing for the correction of Russian shelling, assist in attacks on spare command stations and ammunition depots, and recruit another soldiers.

23 August resistance activists “Yellow Ribbon” on the occasion of the national festival have raised the flags of Ukraine in occupied towns in Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporosian and Khersonsk Oblasts and in Crimea. The organization was established in April 2022 and its primary task is to organize information projects to counter Russian business propaganda.

On August 25, Ukrainian Chief of State Migration Service Natalia Naumenko stated that Ukrainians who were forced to accept Russian citizenship during the business are inactive considered Ukrainian citizens. Kiev does not recognise compulsory passportisation carried out in occupied territories. Naumenko added that if individual accepted the FR passport voluntarily and actively supports its aggression by working for the authorities or business services, they could lose Ukrainian citizenship. specified cases shall be dealt with on a case-by-case basis on the basis of the evidence collected and the decisions of the applicable authorities.