Ukraine Doubles Ground Drones To Increase Use For Assault, Defense, Supply

Ukrainian forces are doubling the number of ground drones they will deploy this year to 25,000.

Their intent is to replace as many as 30% of human infantry with the drones and to have all logistics tasks near the front carried out by the ground drones, which can transport approximately 200 kilos vs 20 kilos for a human. As these drones become more sophisticated, they are also being used for a growing number of combat tasks, including defending positions and attacking Russian strongpoints. JL

Alex Croft reports in The Independent and Katie Livingstone reports in Defense News:

Ukraine will (deploy) 25,000 unmanned ground vehicles in the first half of 2026, more than double the 2025 total, to shift all frontline logistics off soldiers and onto robots. Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade wants to replace 30% of its infantry with UGVs to cut down on troop losses on the (Donbas) front. They deliver supplies, evacuate wounded troops, hold territorial positions, destroy enemy defenses, carry out sabotage missions and lay mines. The unit has carried out more than 100 strike operations using UGVs in the past few months. “During these missions, we’ve destroyed enemy troops, shelters, command posts, and other high-value targets. This is daily, systematic combat work.” 

What Russia's Captured Soldiers Reveal About Its Failing War

As Russia's winter and then spring-summer offensives have faltered this year, Ukrainian forces are finding that there has been something of a change in the composition of the Russian troops they are capturing. Long gone are the professional soldiers who tried to take Kyiv four years ago. And  the convicts offered a second chance have largely disappeared. Even the opportunists who signed financially beneficial contracts are declining.

The latest batches are often men who have been coerced because they could not pay debts or faced trumped-up legal charges, suggesting that these troops are ever more desperate. But one thing has not changed: they all realize that, in their own words. they are being sent to be slaughtered. JL

Josh Olley reports in United 24:

In the first three months of 2026, 89,000 Russian troops were killed or seriously wounded. The Kremlin has increasingly relied on contract soldiers rather than conscription, now recruiting 400,000 contract troops annually, 70-80% of its deployed forces. Only one of five POWs interviewed said he had been formally mobilized. The others were either detained on minor drug charges and given a choice between long prison sentences or the front line, or were burdened by significant debt. A common factor linking every prisoner interviewed was that Russian troops openly speak of being sent “to be slaughtered.”

"Welcome To the Stone Age:" Ukraine Extends Drone Kill Zone Into Russia

Ukraine's drone kill zone was originally intended to cover a few kilometers on either side of the front 'zero' line. Everything in that area was a target. When the front line, as such, became more of a gray zone because in many sectors neither side had firm control in the historical sense, the kill zone extended to 20 kilometers into the rear, though that has now increased with the introduction of more powerful drones to 50km. 

But the latest extension announced by Ukraine now moves in Russia itself. And as recent attacks on logistics, command and control headquarters, as well anything that moves suggests, the Ukrainians are making good on their threats. Ukraine's drone commander is a former grain trader who understands the power of setting quantitative objectives. He started by announcing that the Ukrainians would kill or severely wound 35,000 Russian soldiers a month - which they have now done for four months in a row, with a goal of increasing that number to 50,000, far more than the Kremlin could replace. He has now said that his intent is to bomb Russia back to the stone age (though some informed observers believe much of the country never left it...). And he appears to be beginning to make good on that promise, as well. JL

Yuri Zoria reports in Euromaidan Press:

Ukraine's Drone Forces struck Russian locomotives, communications, ammunition depots, drone landing sites, and logistics hubs in occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts between 23 and 25 April as it expands the kill zone, scaling up depth in occupied areas. The SBS established its Deep Strike Center earlier this year to coordinate long-range drone ops against high-priority Russian targets. It has accelerated the tempo of strikes, hitting Iskander missile bases, air defenses, and the elite Russian drone unit Rubikon's facilities. Ukraine's drone forces have hit 240 targets across Russia and occupied territories in the first 48 days of 2026 alone, including 26 Russian air defenses. "Welcome to the stone age," Ukraine's "Madyar" Brovdi told Russian troops in occupied territories as rail logistics will become "dog sleds," and warehouses and fuel depots will retreat "beyond the Urals." 

OpenAI Is Missing Key Revenue, User Targets Affecting Plans For IPO

Companies miss targets sometimes. It is never a good outcome, but it need not be catastrophic. For normal companies in normal times, that is. 

OpenAI is not a normal company and these are not normal times. AI has reset the business world's definition of success. Unheard of amounts of money are pouring into AI company coffers.  Investors' expectations are extraordinary to the point of being delusional. So when one of the two leading AI firms reveals that it has missed key revenue and user numbers at the same time as a growing number of analysts are asking uncomfortable questions about whether growth plans are realistic, the corporate world takes notice. And when that company's Chief Financial Officer is then reported in the Wall Street Journal to be concerned about the impact of those missed targets on its ability to launch one of the most highly anticipated IPOs of this century, pandemonium ensues. And justifiably so. The Silicon Valley hype machine has savagely attacked anyone who questions the 'inevitability' of AI's future. So when negativity emerges from inside the tent, do not expect the business world to just say, 'no biggie.' JL

Berber Jin reports in the Wall Street Journal:

OpenAI recently missed its own targets for new users and revenue, stumbles that have raised concern among some company leaders about whether it will be able to support its massive spending on data centers. OpenAI missed multiple monthly revenue targets earlier this year after losing ground to Anthropic in the coding and enterprise markets. Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar has told other company leaders that she is worried the company might not be able to pay for future computing contracts if revenue doesn’t grow fast enough, according to people familiar with the matter. In recent months, Friar has also expressed reservations about OpenAI’s plans to go public by the end of this year

How Ukraine Is Supplanting America As Leader of the Free World

Politics abhors a vacuum. When it became apparent that Donald Trump favored Putin's Russia versus Ukraine, the axis of power began to shift. No one - especially those in Europe and other democracies - wants to live under the blighted, oppressive economic and militaristic system that the Kremlin offers. 

The catalyst for this shift has been Ukraine's heroic but also intelligence, innovative and successful defense against a much larger adversary. The Ukrainians have not just fought the Russians to a standstill, they have begun, in places, to push them back. The Kremlin is running out of willing recruits and its finances are a shambles. The US could have taken advantage of this situation but chose to cast its lot with a dictator. The result is that Europe has discovered it can survive without the US - and the people of the US are starting to pay the price. JL

David French comments in the New York Times:

A remarkable thing has happened on the battlefield. Ukraine - a nation that was supposed to dissolve within days of a Russian invasion - has fought Russia to a stalemate, revolutionizing land warfare in the process. The largest and most battle-hardened land force in the western world may be the Ukrainian Army. It has become an indispensable security partner in the western alliance, including in the war against Iran. Now, Ukraine’s president, is, by word and deed, showing Europe and the world how the post-American free world can preserve its liberty and independence. Politics abhors a vacuum. When America stepped back, other nations were bound to step forward. It is forfeiting its role as the leader of the free world. The moral and strategic heart of the defense of liberal democracy s in Kyiv, where a courageous leader and people have picked up the torch America dropped. 

Why Russia's Spring 'Offensive' Is Running In Reverse

Russia is now in the middle of what was supposed to have been its spring offensive. But that word usually implies advance not retreat. This year, though, the Ukrainians anticipated not just when the Russians would launch, but where they would do so. They beat the Russians to the start, initiating their own attacks before the Kremlin could organize and give the go-ahead for its own. This disrupted Russian planning and execution with the result that, as of now, the Ukrainians appear to have a net gain of territory while - for the fourth month in a row - have killed or severely wounded approximately 35,000 Russian soldiers a month. That number is unsustainable because no Russian with an education or decent economic prospects wants any part of the one-way ticket that fighting in Ukraine offers them. 

Putin is trying to maintain the pretense of military might to impress Trump and cow Europe, but the narrative has clearly changed as few, if any, are buying the Kremlin line anymore. JL

Mark Sumner reports in The Journal of Uncharted Blue:

Russia  is supposed to be in the middle of a spring offensive. But, that offensive seems to be making only tiny gains while suffering losses of troops and equipment that are among the highest in the war. In the last year, even Russia's pattern of blasting the landscape until no shelter remained, then sending men forward in suicidal waves, seems to have stalled out. Russia continues to burn through its resources at an unsustainable rate, but it's no longer seeing much territorial gain for these expenditures.

Russians Try To Replace Starlink But Ukraine Blows Up Cell Towers, Signals Troops

Ever since Russian forces lost access to Starlink, they have lost cohesion, coordination and command decision-making. That the Kremlin also chose that moment to deny access to the widely popular Telegram system due to Putinesque paranoia about technology he couldn't entirely control didn't help. But the Russians have worked hard to try to come up with an alternative system that will provide similar, if not entirely satisfactory communications strength. In doing so, though, they have had to face an unexpectedly serious problem: the Ukrainians have been tracking their technology development and how it is routed, quickly identifying the use of wireless repeating towers. They have then targeted both the towers and the hapless Russian signals troops charged with installing or repairing them, takiing them out with drone strikes as the photo to the right illustrates. The result has been continued frustration for Russian forces attempting to execute battle plans for which there is no easy way of communicating and coordinating. JL  

Emily Rhodes reports in Medium, David Axe reports in Trench Art:

Three months after losing access to Starlink satellites, the Russians are getting desperate. Blowing up Russia’s wireless repeaters, Ukraine is working to prolong its advantage. Russian Wi-Fi communications can partially replace the loss of Starlink, but to be effective, the central nodes must be located as high as possible for radio line-of-sight. That makes communications towers such as this one easy targets for Ukrainian FPV drones. The repeaters aren’t hard to find and strike. When the Russians began climbing towers to install repeaters, the Ukrainians sortied drones to hunt them down. The poor radio troops are easy targets, as montages of Ukrainian drone strikes attest.