Ukraine fired more than 10,000 Hornet loitering munitions into Russia in three months, most with AI terminal guidance — but the drones are American-built by Perennial Autonomy, the company founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. The campaign marks a new era of autonomous deep-strike warfare that international law has yet to regulate.
Russian strikes on Kyiv data centers have disrupted internet, television and digital services for roughly 100,000 households, but the latest KIIS polling — conducted before the September 23–27 strikes — does not yet support claims of a new phase in public attitudes toward the war.
On the morning of September 25, a Russian drone slammed into a 16-story apartment building in Kyiv's Pecherskyi district, killing a 14-year-old boy and wounding at least 20 people. The same day, the United States proposed a new round of trilateral peace talks.
EU states agreed on the conditions to release €6.6 billion from the European Peace Facility after Hungary's veto. But the fund reimburses EU capitals, not Kyiv — and Ukraine still faces a $27 billion defense gap with winter drone orders due in October–November.
Zelenskyy urged the UN to keep choking Russia's revenues as a US-carried energy truce reached Moscow with no answer from the Kremlin and no verification mechanism described by any party.
Zelensky meets Trump at the UN in New York. Washington wants Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries halted over global diesel prices; Kyiv offers a mutual energy truce and asks for Patriot air defenses. The outcome of the meeting was unknown at the time of writing.
United Russia is taking about 58% of the party-list vote in Russia's first wartime State Duma election. The count is still under way: A Just Russia has reached the 5% threshold, so the earlier projection of 355 seats remains provisional. The vote was held without OSCE observers, without Yabloko's anti-war list and in occupied Ukrainian territory.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe secretly visited Moscow on August 25 and met senior Russian intelligence officials. The U.S. asked Ukraine to temporarily avoid strikes around Moscow, St. Petersburg and parts of northern Russia. Here is what is confirmed — and what remains secret.
