Author: Michael

Russia’s Oreshnik missile is one of the country’s newest — and has garnered a significant amount of attention thanks to the war in Ukraine, particularly following the missile’s use in 2024 against the Ukrainian city of Dnipro in November of that year.

But the Oreshnik is also widely misunderstood.

Russian Mobile ICBM Nuclear Weapons. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

That initial Oreshnik strike generated a great deal of speculation that the Kremlin had, in fact, launched an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, against Ukraine.

Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz came to a near standstill after the US struck 90 targets in Iran for a second straight day, as it appears that the shaky Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is no longer going to be addressed as a negotiating benchmark.

With fresh fighting and strikes on both sides, ships are wary of attempting to transit the Strait.

President Donald Trump addresses members of the media in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, Tuesday, January 20, 2026. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N.

On 5-6 July, Russia launched what has been described as “one of the worst attacks” on the city of Kyiv since the war began. Moscow launched a combined total of 419 drones and missiles overnight, with Ukraine’s Air Defense Forces (PPO) intercepting only 363 of them.

But among those that got through these defenses were 23 Russian ballistic missiles and six anti-ship missiles that had been repurposed to attack land-based targets. The Ukrainian PPO failed to intercept any of these ballistic and high-speed weapons.

Patriot Missile. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

This video describes the military situation in

In the last moments of his life, Friedrich Lengfeld only saw a wounded soldier.
A lieutenant fighting for the Germans during World War II, Lengfeld noticed a wounded American service member in distress. The Nazi officer followed his instincts, not regarding the man as the enemy but as someone who desperately required assistance.
Also Read: A former violinist singlehandedly cleared a mountain fortress during World War II
Lengfeld reacted, leading a team of medics to where the American lay. They almost got there until Lengfeld stepped on a land mine. He died shortly after from his injuries.

The Commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, Robert Yosypovych “Magyar” Brovdi, announced on 8 July that his forces had struck 21 Russian-flagged vessels in the Sea of Azov over a period of 72 hours. According to Magyar, nine Russian tankers were hit by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) overnight on 8 July, adding to 10 attacks reported on 7 July and two reported on 6 July.

The ships were all operating in the Sea of Azov and were taken out as part of Ukraine’s attempts to choke off fuel supplies in Russian-occupied Crimea.

This video describes the military situation in

With Ukraine’s recent long-range drone campaign against Russia, many analysts and experts in the West are hoping that Putin will either cave under the economic pressure or be ousted from the Kremlin in a Soviet-esque coup. As fuel shortages persist throughout the country, there is a growing feeling of discontent among ordinary Russians that the Kremlin has mishandled the war.

Unfortunately, neither of these options is all that likely to occur.

Putin at a Conference 2026. Kremlin Handout Photo.

Speaking to the London Daily Telegraph, Czech President Petr Pavel says that a clock of sorts is ticking, with Ukraine having two months to restart peace talks. If no progress is made in this direction, Russia could begin escalating the war, he says.

His calculation is based on the expectation that mid-term elections will take place in Russia on 20 September. Even in Russia’s perennially rigged electoral processes, results for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party could be somewhere between lackluster and embarrassing, according to polling numbers.

Ukraine’s domestically designed and built missile industry has seen an incredible amount of transformation since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Prior to the war, Kyiv had an experienced but underfunded missile sector thanks in large part to its Soviet-era design bureaus, expertise that the country has since leveraged. While some rather ambitious projects did exist, such as the Neptune anti-ship missile and the Hrim-2 ballistic missile, production was slow, available funding was limited, and other, often political, projects took priority.