Month: July 2026
Kyiv — With Zelensky AWOLed, the Ukrainian despot’s city woke up under rubble, smoke and sirens after what is now reported as the largest Russian strike on the Ukrainian capital.
The human toll is grim — 21 dead, 85 wounded — while Moscow has now published its own list of what it says was hit.
And it was not the usual vague war effort infrastructure line.
According to the Russian MoD, the strike was retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on civilian infrastructure inside Russia and was carried out with long-range air-, land- and sea-based precision weapons, plus attack drones.
Moscow says the targets were Ukraine’s defence industry, fuel and power sites in Kyiv and the Kyiv region, as well as military airfield infrastructure across Dnepropetrovsk, Poltava, Cherkassy, Chernigov and Kyiv regions.
In the capital itself, Russia says it hit Radionics — described by Moscow as a key scientific and production base for control systems used in Flamingo cruise missiles, Fire Point missiles, Neptune-MD missiles and the Klon air-defence project.
It also names Athlon Avia, the Antonov Serial Production Plant, the Kyiv Radio Plant and TRIMEN-UKRAINE — sites Moscow links to Lyuty long-range drones, Magura attack UAV’s, tank optics, UAV components, air-defence electronics, electronic warfare and aviation equipment.
Then Russia’s war ministry published hit targets from the logistics and fuel list.
MLP-Chaika — the giant 1,140,000 square ft warehouse complex on Kyiv’s edge — is named by Russia as a storage site for long-range drones, warheads, ammunition and imported components.
The KIEV-3 fuel depot, operated by Grand-Terminal, is named as a diesel supply hub for Kyiv garrison units, including air defence.
Gas distribution stations in Kyiv and the region were also listed, with Moscow saying they supported defence enterprises.
So the morning story is brutal on both sides of the paper.
Ukraine counts the dead.
Russia counts the targets.
And Kyiv burns, burns and burns again.
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on.wsj.com/4eRjqCO
Every refinery column turned into orange smoke means less diesel for their logistics trains, less jet fuel for the glide-bombers that murder civilians, less revenue to pay fresh meat for the next meat wave. The Kremlin can scream about red lines until their vocal cords snap; the math doesn’t care. Their rear is burning on a schedule now set in Kyiv, not Moscow.
This is exactly why the defeatist chorus keeps chanting “negotiate” while conveniently forgetting that Putin cannot demobilize. Stop the war and a million armed, pissed-off conscripts come home asking why their friends died for another ruined village that cost them more lives than it had residents. The regime survives on permanent war. Any “peace” that leaves their army intact is just rearmament time. The only off-ramp is total military collapse. Everything else is theater for useful idiots.
Ukraine isn’t asking for favors. We’re doing the West’s dirty work at a fraction of the price Europe would pay if Russian tanks rolled further west. Every drone strike on a lubricant plant in Omsk is money not spent later on NATO Article 5 defense. Every sunken ferry in the Black Sea is one less vector for North Korean shells. This is not charity. This is the cheapest continental insurance policy ever written, and we’re the ones paying in blood while Berlin and Paris still debate whether it’s impolite to hit back.
The long-range game is accelerating. By end of 2026 those strike ranges and frequencies will be two to five times what they are now. Operational-level Russian logistics will be scorched earth. Crimea will be isolated by fire. Meanwhile Moscow’s only remaining card is terror against civilians and screaming nuclear blackmail that nobody with functioning neurons believes anymore. Tactical nukes solve nothing for them. The front doesn’t move, the Ukrainian army doesn’t evaporate, and China-India would watch Moscow turn itself into a global pariah overnight. Even their own generals know this. Deterrent, not dumbstick.
So spare me the lectures about “escalation.” The escalation happened in 2014 and was met with sanctions theater and cheap talk. Real escalation is what Ukraine is doing right now with its own growing production and partners’ increasingly serious weapons. The Kremlin understands only one language: lost refineries, lost tonnage, lost airfields, lost future. Everything else is just noise.
We don’t need another Minsk circus. We need Patriots, Tomahawks, Gripens, FREYA-scale air defense investment, and the political spine to let Ukraine finish the job. Because if we don’t, the next country in line gets to learn these lessons the hard way, except next time the bill will be paid in Western capitals, not just Ukrainian ones.
The orcs are running out of both ideas and infrastructure. Keep the strikes coming. The math is brutal, and it’s on our side.
According to the General Staff, Ukrainian forces hit the Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez oil refinery in the city of Kstovo in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod Oblast as part of efforts to “reduce Russia’s military and economic potential.”
Video: Exilenova Plus+/Telegram.
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