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Workers at Russia's Typhoon production plant in Kaluga have not been paid for over two months, and have sent a video appeal asking Ukraine to blow it up.

The President of Azerbaijan is very annoyed about Russia's refusal to acknowledge having shot down their airliner, noting that when Azerbaijan accidentally shot down a Russian helicopter in 2020, they immediately apologised and paid reparations. He also reiterated Azerbaijan's support for a resolution to the conflict with Ukraine's full borders restored.

Trump has apparently talked Orban into supporting the EU accession of Moldova and Ukraine, through some details still need to be worked out regarding Ukraine.

Former "Donbas governor" Pavel Gubarev has said that the Russian army's trust in the Kremlin is zero. Simultaneously, a Russian priest giving a morale-boosting message on television has said that the Russian army is full of "thieves," which is preventing victory in the invasion.

A big explosion has rocked the Ryazan-Moscow pipeline in the Ryazan region. This carries a lot of fuel towards Moscow. Unclear if the pipeline has been breached, but deliveries through the pipe were suspended earlier today. 

An American Poseidon P-8 operating over the Black Sea was intercepted by a Russian fighter in international airspace. The Americans ignored the Russian fighter and completed their mission.

The Ukrainian counterattack south of Pokrovsk is interesting. Ukrainian armour is engaging Russian forces at pointblank range amidst some heavy drone traffic. A Leopard 2A4 cleared a building and narrowly avoided an FPV drone strike in return. This is more of heavy slug fight than we've seen for a while. There's a sense that the Russian effort around Pokrovsk may be culminating and Ukraine has a chance to end the year still holding the city, which would represent a major strategic failure for Russia this year. However, Russia is pushing hard.

A Russian submarine apparently passed within the exclusion zone around the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier group, currently in exercises off Norway, triggering a massive NATO response with other submarines being despatched to intercept and American sub-hunting aircraft combing the area. The Russian sub apparently beat a hasty retreat in view of the amassed firepower.

This seems incredibly dumb of them.

Russian forces have conducted another breakthrough advance, this time north of Kupyansk where they crossed the Oskil. Ukrainian forces are counter-attacking, with heavy combat. Ukrainian armour and IFVs engaging Russian forces at pointblank range. The Russian forces are trying to widen their bridgehead across the river but are under heavy drone attack. Unclear how the general direction of fighting is going; Russia being able to cross the river is a tactical achievement which could have strategic implications, but only if they hold it. If Ukraine snips off the bridgehead, a lot of Russians are going to be killed or captured. The situation remains very fluid.

The fire at the Novoshakhtinsk facility has burned out after five days. The storage area of the refinery has been destroyed, significant other parts were damaged by the heat and smoke.

Ukraine destroyed a refuelling train parked at Dzhankoy, Crimea, severely damaging local rail infrastructure.

Belgium has confirmed it will be willing to put boots on the ground to patrol a post-ceasefire peace in Ukraine. The only other country has has confirmed it is willing is France. The UK had been exploring the possibility but its military had advised the numbers would be too small to be significant, instead suggesting the UK provide naval and air assets.

Russia has withdrawn from the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture, on the grounds it wasn't following it anyway.

Russia is down over 1.1 million barrels a day in oil production.

Burst water mains in Mariupol, with water flooding the streets rather than reaching peoples' homes.

Ukraine has launched an attack on Kotlyne, at the SW end of the Pokrovsk front. This settlement has exchanged hands several times, with Ukraine retaking it earlier this year, but Russia getting a foothold back in. Ukraine has been hitting the industrial zones where Russian forces have taken cover.

Ukraine claims to have made its "Long Neptune" cruise missile operational. The missile is a variant of its Neptune anti-ship missile (the one used to sink the Moskva). The missile has a longer range and heavier payload, but is almost as fast and has been modified for ground and sea targets. Long Neptune has apparently already been used in combat, unlike Flamingo, but it's unclear where or when.

Ukraine's recent targets have included Russian command centres, destroying forward headquarters in Soledar and Korenevo, amongst others. 

Ukraine has retaken Novomykhailivka on the Donetsk front. Russian forces on this front have been depleted with a lack of reserves, with allocated reinforcements in some cases diverted to Pokrovsk and Zaporizhzhia, allowing Ukraine to retake some territory.

Ukrainian forces have engaged Russian forces along the Zaporizhzhia front, where Zelensky has suggested Russia is massing for a large-scale offensive. Ukrainian aircraft destroyed a Russian operating position in Stepnohirsk with a 500-pound JDAM-ER, suggesting that Russian anti-air cover remains degraded.

Ukrainian drones have destroyed oil terminal infrastructure in Ust-Luga near St. Petersburg. The Suzran Oil Refinery was also hit, with some reports of 20 drone strikes in rapid succession (others suggestion 20 explosions, originating from a much smaller number of drones). The Novoshakhtinsk refinery fire is entering its fifth day, with the firefighters reporting a lack of not just chemical retardant, but also basic water supplies.

The US is replenishing Ukraine's supply of ERAM missiles, sending 3,350 over the next several weeks.

All Russian gasoline sales in Kurilsky District (on the Kuril Islands) have been halted, sparking widespread anger.

Finland is beginning the trial of the captain of the oil tanker Eagle S, accused of damaging power and communications cables in the Gulf of Finland.

The residents of Donetsk City in occupied Donetsk Oblast have staged a major protest about the lack of clean water in the city. They have appealed to Putin directly to sort out the city's water supply problem, which has been ongoing for substantial amounts of time. There have been irregular delivers by truck from Rostov to Donetsk, but not enough to cover everyone's needs.

Volodymyr Mykolaienko, the former mayor of Kherson City who was arrested after Russia captured the city (and subsequently lost it), has returned to Ukraine in a prisoner swap.

Not sure what's going on around Pokrovsk, the Russian positions suddenly seem very shaky. Ukraine has launched an armored assault using Bradleys from Myrnohrad eastwards into the southern end of the main salient reaching NW and has achieved some successes, clearing multiple treelines and pushing Russian forces back hundreds of metres (at least), despite Russian drones operating in the area.

Updated assessment that Russia has lost 17% of its refining capacity since the start of the campaign.

Take with a grain of salt, but rumours swirling of a coup in Moscow. There's always rumours of a coup in Moscow, but this is slightly louder than previous ones, and maybe louder than any since Prigozhin's death drive on Moscow. A lot of anger about Putin apparently not doubling down on Trump's willingness to end the war on terms favourable to Moscow, and concerns that economic pressure may make future or even current gains unravel on the battlefield. The threat seems to be from within the military rather than the political spectrum (where, if anything, Putin often gets criticised - anonymously - for being too soft on the war).

Again, take with an extreme lump of salt. I would be surprised if this elevated above background grumbling.

Russian Telegram analysis of Ukraine's renewed campaign against Russian oil infrastructure. Ukraine's prior campaign in 2023-24 targeted a wide variety of oil facilities and hit them inefficiently, shutting down one plant for a few days to a couple of weeks but then it would be repaired, whilst another was hit, and then another different one. This had an impact in aggregate but it allowed Russia to switch between facilities and avoid having to invest in expensive air defence for individual refineries.

The renewed campaign is different, targeting the largest oil refineries and hitting them two, three, five, seven times in sequence in a week or fortnight, each time targeting different parts of the facility. In particular, they are targeting components and subsystems that are very hard to replace due to sanctions, even if they are less likely to result in a spectacular explosion that destroys or disables the whole facility (very difficult to achieve). With Russia unable to source spares for components from the likes of Shell, that makes it much harder to repair the facility, resulting in a low-key-looking, innocuous-looking small explosion that disables the facility for weeks or months, and can usually only be overcome with inferior Chinese-made replacement parts. Catalysts in particular are a huge problem as Russia effectively ran out of its Western-made catalysts last year, and the time between ordering Chinese replacements and them arriving is 12+ months. And of course they can be hit again immediately.

Ukraine is also hitting oil export terminals, making it very hard to get oil out of the country by sea (particularly on the Black Sea, but Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg-area terminals have been hit as well, and even facilities near Murmansk on the Arctic), and it's longer-ranged drones are also hitting facilities that could not be reached with 2023-era drones, and what had been lured into thinking they were safe and had taken no precautions in investing in air defences. Flamingo could hit targets as far away as Omsk, potentially shutting down most production and refining in the western third or so of the country (where the bulk of production, refining and storage is concentrated, because that's where the bulk of the population is).

The current estimate is that Ukraine's 2025 refinery-hitting campaign has caused as much economic damage to Russia in two months as the previous campaign did in eight to twelve, and with there not being enough air defences to go around, it's unclear what can be done to stop the campaign being much more effective.

The Novoshakhtinsk refinery is still burning after three days. Ukrainian drones have also repeatedly hit the Druzhba pipeline, rendering it nonfunctional for the third time in a fortnight. There is no fuel available at pumps in Yalta and several other parts of Crimea.

Ukraine's counteroffensive on the SW Pokrovsk front has widened into a successful operation, with Russian lines behind the former salient collapsing. This area is in front of the Mokri River and the Russians had been defending by attacking rather than stopping and digging in, due to manpower limitations. Now they're on the defensive against some of Ukraine's best units and have no lines to fall back on short of the river. In the last 24 hours Ukraine has liberated Zelenyi Hai and Tolstoi. Ukraine has also liberated Myrne, on the southern edge of the salient Russia formed by last week's incursion; this is significant as if Ukraine can outflank on that front, they could retake a lot of land around the salient and relieve pressure on Pokrovsk.

China has agreed to provide peacekeeping troops to a post-war Ukrainian border, but only under a UN mandate.

A Russian soldier has crossed the border into Norway, surrendered to Norwegian authorities and claimed asylum.

Ukraine has reduced Russian total oil refinery output by 12% in three weeks. That's ridiculous.

The Russians undertook a limited advance in Sumy, but appear now to have been beaten back again. Russian troops in Sumy are remaining on the defensive as troops are transferred from Kursk behind them to Zaporizhzhia for a new offensive push.

Ukraine has recaptured six settlements on the Pokrovsk front, including rolling back last week's breakthrough and also retaking some areas elsewhere on the front, to Russian commentators' surprise. Although Russia seems to still be advancing overall in Donetsk, it's a very broken-up front and Ukraine has regained the initiative in several areas, on a limited scale.

Trump seems to be intimating he may remove any restrictions on Ukraine using US weapons to strike targets on Russian soil, and may release new weapons to them. Take with a pinch of salt for now.

The destruction of the Novoshakhtinsk refinery storage yards in Rostov seem to be had an almost immediate, negative impact on Russian fuel prices.

Ukraine continues to strike Russian rail infrastructure across multiple oblasts, in both captured Ukrainian territory and on Russian soil.

The Ukrainian Flamingo missile is in full production, currently 1 a day rolling off the lines, with 7 a day being the target for the start of October. The missile has still not been fired in anger (as far as we know).

A drone has flown into Polish airspace and crashed in the town of Osiny, 110km from the Ukrainian border, damaging three buildings. It appears to be a Shahed. Astonishingly, almost no mainstream media coverage.

Some Ukrainian sources saying that Ukraine has initiated a major counteroffensive operation out of Pokrovsk, attacking towards Shevchenko (again). Unclear on the scale of the operation.