In One Month Alone This Year, Ukraine Launched 7,000 Ground Drone Operations

A year ago, the Ukrainian military's use of ground drones was rare and largely experimental. Now, it has become routine. 

Ukraine currently has 13 approved UGV models. It expects to upgrade those it has while expanding both the number and type. Most uses are logistical, from delivering supplies to evacuating wounded, but as more armed UGVs become available and their performance continues to improve, they will increasingly accompany, if not entirely take over, combat duties as well. JL

Tech Ukraine reports:

In January alone Ukrainian Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) completed over 7,000 combat and logistical missions on the front lines, marking a critical pivot toward autonomous warfare designed to mitigate human risk. The vast majority of last month’s deployments were logistical.  Today, robots regularly enter high-risk zones: delivering ammunition, providing logistics, and evacuating the wounded in areas where human presence creates an additional threat. The Ukrainian military currently hosts 13 different UGV models. 

'Putin Has Lost His Winter Offensive' As Ukraine Recaptures 460 Kms In 2026

The worst of winter is beginning to end in Ukraine and it is now apparent that Putin's so-called winter offensive not only failed, but that Ukraine has actually advanced, primarily in the country's south. 

The implication is that the Russian military is a spent force. It can continue to field troops, but their ability to achieve significant gains is now being called into question. JL

New Voice of Ukraine reports:

Ukrainian Defense Forces have recaptured 460 square kilometers of territory since the beginning of 2026. In February 2026 — for the first time since the Kursk offensive operation — Ukrainian Defense Forces regained control over more territory than the enemy managed to capture. “Effective active operations” are currently continuing in the Oleksandrivkai and Huliaypole sectors. "Putin lost his winter offensive. Now the Russians will try spring offensives, but they will lose again; many soldiers will die in vain.”

Ukraine Liberates More Territory In South As Panicked Russians Reel

Last month, for the first time since the Kursk offensive in 2024, Ukrainian forces took more territory than did the Russians. It is worth noting that this also coincides with the Ukrainians inflicting more casualties on the Russians than the Kremlin is able to replace with new recruits and conscripts. 

Ukrainian forces have already liberated 9 villages, towns or settlements in the Oleksandrivka sector in Ukraine's southeast and are continuing their offensive in that area in addition to keeping up their successful defenses of Pokrovsk, Myrnohrad and Kharkiv oblasts. In short, the Russians have failed to achieve their ostensible 2026 'winter offensive' goals of targeting Ukrainian civilian heating and electricity as well as attempting to advance anywhere along the front. JL

Tania Myronyshena reports in the Kyiv Independent:

Ukraine has breached Russian defensive lines and liberated nine more settlements in the Oleksandrivka sector along the southeastern front line, Ukraine's Air Assault Forces said on March 2. Since the launch of the operation on Jan. 29, Russia has lost 6,537 troops, including 4,355 killed, 2,167 wounded, and 15 captured. Ukrainian forces regained more territory in February 2026 than Russia captured during the same period. Air Assault forces are continuing their offensive operations in this sector. 

Amazon Web Services Lost 3 Data Centers To Iranian Drone Strikes in UAE, Bahrain

In the midst of an existential threat to its sovereignty, the fact that Iran thought to target tech facilities - and, specifically, Amazon Web Services data centers - illustrates both the centrality of such technology to contemporary economies - and the degree of vulnerability to which such facilities and services are exposed. 

Amazon is already acknowledging that restoration will be 'prolonged' and that customers should transfer their needs to other regions. But in an interconnected world, what region is safe and to what degree are all the dependent variables similarly endangered? This will also raise additional concerns, as if more were needed, in communities facing construction of new data centers. The larger lesson is that these facilities are crucial to the functioning of the global economy, meaning that their security and defense will have to become a greater priority to their owners and those who rely on them. JL 

Annie Palmer reports in CNBC:

Amazon Web Services said late Monday two of its data centers in the United Arab Emirates and one in Bahrain were damaged by drone strikes, taking the facilities offline. The company acknowledged the outages were caused by drone strikes tied to the “ongoing conflict in the Middle East. These strikes have caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to infrastructure, and required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage.” The company’s EC2 service, which provides virtual server capacity, S3 storage service and DynamoDB database service were among applications experiencing “elevated error rates and degraded availability” AWS expects restoration to be "prolonged."

To Fully Take Donbas, Russia Needs 18 More Months, Loss Of Entire Current Army

Russian negotiators continue to insist that Ukraine cede the entire Donbas region to them. 

The problem with that position, though, is that objective analyses reveal even if they could take it by force - which they have been unable to do for four years - succeeding would require at least another year and a half - and would also require losing their entire current army to do so. Which is especially problematic as the Ukrainians are now killing or disabling more Russians than the Kremlin can produce to replace them. JL

Vlad Litnarovych reports in United24:

Russia would need a year and a half to fully capture the Donbas region—and could achieve that only at the cost of losing the entire Russian force currently deployed against Ukraine. The pace of Russian advances remains extremely slow despite sustained offensive operations. Throughout 2025, Russian forces captured less than 1% of Ukraine’s total territory, paying an enormous human cost. Russia’s offensive operations are producing limited territorial gains despite sustained manpower and equipment losses, suggesting that any attempt to fully seize Donbas would come at an exceptionally high strategic cost for Moscow. Due to a severe shortage of frontline troops, the Russian military leadership on the Kherson front has begun reassigning medical personnel to active combat roles

Ukraine To Provide Air Defense To Help Stop Iran Drone Attacks

Experience counts. With Iran launching a far more robust assault on Middle East countries following the US and Israeli air attacks, the countries under attack like the UAE and Saudi Arabia, as well as NATO bases in the region are asking for help from the world's leading experts in anti-drone defense: Ukraine. 

Ukraine had already volunteered to provide its expertise and that offer was expedited by a request from the UK whose thousands of expats in the region, as well as its base in Cyprus, have now been attacked. JL

Leo Chiu reports in the Kyiv Post:

The UK is bringing in “experts from Ukraine” to help the Gulf states shoot down Iranian drones amid the recent US and Israeli strikes on Iran. Ukrainian President Zelensky offered to help Kyiv’s European allies fend off Iranian drones and missiles based on lessons learned in Ukraine, with Russia relying heavily on Iranian weapons in its Ukraine invasion. “The situation in the Middle East shows how difficult it is to provide protection from missiles and Shaheds, even in the Gulf countries, which have better air defense systems than our partners have provided us so far." On Saturday, Iran hit a military base in Bahrain, narrowly missing British personnel and attacked a British air base on Cyprus. 

Why Musk Cut Off Russian Access To Starlink, Enabling Ukraine's Winter Offensive

Widespread reports have confirmed that Ukraine's surprisingly successful counteroffensive in the country's south has been significantly enabled by Elon Musk's decision to deny Starlink access to Russian military use, most of which is non-paying or stolen. The big question is not about the impact of that decision, but why it was made by a quixotic tech businessman who had previously been sympathetic to Russia and even intervened earlier in the war in its behalf. 

While no concrete reasoning has been provided, it appears that Russian use of Starlink terminals to guide aerial drones to attack Ukrainian President Zelensky's office crossed some sort of red line for Musk. He may also have been motivated by the rampant illegal use of his product and service, which was definitely not good for business as paying customers complained - or decided to hack it themselves. As a result, a 'white list' of approved, paying customers has been created by the company. This benefits Ukraine - and has severely degraded Russian command and control since virtually none of their terminals, acquired mostly on the gray or black market, are approved or paid. But the larger question for everyone involved is, do you really want your defense to be dependent on one guy's whims? JL

Simon Shuster reports in The Atlantic:

Ukraine and its allies first realized the depth of their dependence on Starlink in the fall of 2022, when Musk used the system to stop a Ukrainian plan to sink Russian warships stationed in Crimea. Late last month, a Russian attack drone slipped through Ukraine’s air-defense systems and glided into Kyiv’s government district, heading in the direction of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office. It crashed, injuring no one. (But) the incident set in motion events that would allow Ukraine to seize momentum at the front with the help of an unlikely ally: Elon Musk. This time, Musk assisted Ukraine in the war. But dependence on his good graces still worries the Europeans. “We need to be independent from Musk. That is a strategic necessity.”