In the latest twist on battlefield innovations, Ukraine has used both flying drone carriers and drone boats to send ground robots armed with weapons or explosives into battle.

The drone-assisted deployments have enabled slower wheeled robots to bypass tough terrain and Russian defenses, and to carry out an unusual robotic amphibious assault on a contested position. Such tactics also showcase the Ukrainian military’s ongoing experimentation with using drones and robots to offset a Russian military advantage in manpower while also sparing Ukrainian soldiers from making dangerous assaults.

On July 19, a Russian military Telegram channel posted a video showing a Ukrainian hexacopter drone carrying a ground robot suspended below by a cable, according to the Ukrainian government-run news platform United24. The Russian Telegram channel described the Ukrainian heavy bomber drone as deploying a four-wheeled ARK-1 robot armed with explosive anti-tank mines on the ground where it continued toward Russian military positions—and apparently generated plenty of outraged comments from pro-Kremlin social media users.

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BAE Systems announced at the Farnborough International Airshow that it has signed a licensing agreement with an unnamed strategic defense partner to support local manufacture of the Light Gun artillery system inside Ukraine, giving Kyiv’s defense industry direct access to the technical know-how behind a weapon British and Commonwealth forces have relied on for half […]

A Ukrainian F-16 pilot did something no American-made fighter jet had confirmed doing before in this war: shoot down a Russian warplane in air-to-air combat. General Dan Caine, the four-star Air Force officer who serves as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and holds the highest military rank in the United States, told the […]

A Ukrainian drone maker that helped push the Russian Navy out of much of the Black Sea is bringing its combat-tested kamikaze boats to American shipyards. UFORCE, the London-registered parent of Ukraine’s MAGURA unmanned surface vessel program, signed a memorandum of understanding this week with RECONCRAFT, the Alaska-founded builder of Special Operations combatant craft, to […]

An unmanned robot the size of a small truck just proved it can drag an artillery piece across a battlefield while hauling more than a ton of extra cargo at the same time, a feat that could let front-line units cut the number of vehicles and soldiers needed for a single resupply run. ABRIS DG […]

Ukraine has turned its signature long-range kamikaze drone into something considerably more dangerous: a standoff strike platform. The outlet Oboronka reported that its correspondent, present at the Farnborough International Airshow in the United Kingdom, saw an An-196 Liutyi drone displayed on a Ukrainian stand carrying four missiles mounted beneath its airframe, a configuration that would […]

Russia will likely come out of its war against Ukraine as a more dangerous military power than it was before the invasion began, despite losing equipment and troops at a scale no major military has suffered in a conventional war since World War II, according to an analysis by Jakub Janovsky published on Fronts.co. That […]

Russian engineers have turned one of their most common military helicopters into a flying jammer built specifically to blind Ukraine’s long-range strike drones, Militarnyi reported, after a Russian propaganda Telegram channel accidentally revealed the previously unknown system in its own footage. The outlet identified the aircraft as a Mi-8, a twin-engine transport helicopter the Soviet […]

Britain’s longest-serving Conservative defense secretary since Winston Churchill says he personally urged Israel’s government to help Ukraine early in the war, and that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government turned him down because it didn’t want to anger Moscow, the UK Defence Journal reported. Ben Wallace, who ran Britain’s Ministry of Defence from 2019 to 2023 and became […]

A satellite photograph taken Sunday appears to confirm what Ukraine’s president claimed just two days earlier: a Russian strategic bomber sitting at Engels air base did not survive a recent drone strike. The open-source monitoring community AviVector published commercial satellite imagery from Planet Labs PBC, dated July 19, showing what the group identified as a […]

Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney traveled to General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada’s facility in London, Ontario, alongside National Defence Minister David J. McGuinty, to formally announce a new Strategic Partnership between the Canadian government and the company, along with a contract worth roughly $1.4 billion for 190 additional Armoured Combat Support Vehicles for the Canadian military […]

Russian forces have grown increasingly willing to sacrifice a fake air defense system rather than a real one, a pattern that keeps surfacing in drone strike footage even as Ukrainian units continue to celebrate each new video as a confirmed kill. A recent example centers on footage released by Ukrainian military showing a Hornet kamikaze […]

Somewhere in a Russian drone factory, an engineer looked at a satellite-jamming crisis that has cost the Kremlin countless drones and countless rubles, and solved it with the same tool Boy Scouts use to find their way out of the woods. A Ukrainian radio technology specialist says Russia has started bolting a basic magnetic compass […]

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Friday that Ukraine’s Security Service, known as the SBU, destroyed a Tupolev Tu-95 strategic bomber at the military airfield in Engels, Russia, part of what he described as a new round of successful long-range strikes deep inside Russian territory. Zelenskyy made the announcement in a socail media, saying Ukrainian forces also […]

A Ukrainian government official just told the country’s electronic warfare industry to stop overselling itself, and the missiles falling on Kyiv this month are the reason why. Vladyslav Vlasiuk, Ukraine’s Commissioner for Sanctions Policy, posted a blunt public rebuke this week aimed at claims that Ukrainian jamming technology can reliably knock Russian ballistic missiles off […]

Tell the Russian people about the carnage in Russia’s war with Ukraine. Tell them about the Russian lives lost and the crushing financial cost of a five-year invasion of a sovereign nation. Former President Ronald Reagan ensured that he got information into the former Soviet Union to truthfully speak to the people about their government’s lies about the cost – in lives and money – of their war in Afghanistan. After ten years, in 1989, the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, the final chapter in the Cold War.

Russia’s Vladimi Putin seemingly doesn’t care about the Russian lives lost or the crushing financial cost of a five-year invasion of Ukraine. Over 1.4 million Russian casualties (killed, wounded, missing, or captured), and over 500,000 killed at a cost of over $500 billion. Are the people in Russia aware of the magnitude of this tragedy? Are they aware of Mr. Putin’s view that Ukraine has no right to exist and he is justified in invading a sovereign Ukraine that gave up its nuclear weapons for security assurances?

Indeed, Ukraine’s casualties are over 600,000, with close to 140,000 killed, including 16,000 civilians. The cost so far is close to $600 billion, with a price tag of $U.S. 1 trillion to reconstruct a devastated Ukraine. This is the price Ukraine is paying because of the Russian invasion and Mr. Putin’s goal of attempting to recreate the Russian empire.

President Donald Trump has reached out to Mr. Putin numerous times to secure a cease fire and an eventual peace treaty. To date, those efforts have been unsuccessful, but Mr. Trump persists, fortunately. But until we secure a cease fire, Ukraine needs the support of the U.S. and the European Union, for the weapons and missile defense systems needed for its survival.

Fortunately, the recent NATO Summit of 32 allied countries reaffirmed their strong support to Ukraine, pledging 70 billion Euros to Ukraine and giving Ukraine a green light to produce PATRIOT missile interceptors.

But the U.S. – and our NATO allies -- can do more to get the truth to the Russian people. The truth about the hundreds of thousands of Russians killed in Ukraine and the bereaved families that are paying the ultimate price.

Although the United States Information Agency closed in October 1999, it transferred its important mission to the Department of State. And hopefully our colleagues at State are working hard to ensure that we are getting the message to the Russian people that the war must end; that they and the people in Ukraine have suffered enough. That Mr. Putin and his cronies need to explain why so many men and women died, in a war Mr. Putin created, as he enriches himself. A war that has made the Russian Federation a pariah state.

This should be a whole government mission: to disseminate primarily in Russia the truth about the hundreds of thousands of Russians (and Ukrainians) killed and maimed in a war created by an arrogant and inept Putin.

Although the audience for this important message is the Russian people, China should also be mindful of the tragedy of the war in Ukraine. Indeed, China is aligned with a Russian pariah state, heavily sanctioned by the international community. Is this the image China wants to share with the world?

The NATO Summit was clear in its support of Ukraine, the victim of a cruel and brutal Russian invasion. It’s time for the Russian government to listen to the Russian people and end this bloody war.

The author is the former associate director of national intelligence. All statement of fact, opinion or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the U.S. government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

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One week ago, three widely respected European news outlets published the results of an investigation into what they described as a "joint plan" by China and Russia to "defeat Elon Musk's Starlink."

The story was the product of a long-running inquiry by The Insider, Der Spiegel, and Le Monde. Reporters at those publications said they reviewed a cache of documents detailing growing military cooperation between China and Russia. The documents covered discussions between the nuclear powers on integrated air and missile defense systems, autonomous "swarm" loitering munitions, next-generation armored vehicles, and military aviation, the report said.

According to the papers, the investigation found evidence of a partnership between China and Russia in the field of space weapons far deeper than either country has acknowledged. One particular focus for China and Russia has been developing strategies to counter SpaceX's Starlink satellite broadband network.

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Ukraine’s government collapsed and a new ballistic missile flew successfully on the very same day, a coincidence the country’s outgoing defense chief made sure nobody missed. Mykhailo Fedorov, who stepped down as Ukraine’s Minister of Defense this week after just seven months in the post, announced that Ukraine conducted a successful test of a domestically […]

Ukrainian drones reportedly struck Russia’s Engels air base, officially known as Engels-2, in the Saratov region overnight into July 16, according to Russian Telegram channels and independent monitoring groups, with residents of both Engels and the neighboring city of Saratov reporting a barrage of low-flying drones followed by a string of powerful explosions. Engels-2 sits […]

Ukraine now builds roughly 10 million drones a year, a tenfold jump from the target President Volodymyr Zelenskyy first announced just three years ago, Radio Svoboda, the Ukrainian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, reported. Zelenskyy delivered the figure during a ceremony in Kyiv marking Ukrainian Statehood Day, framing it as proof that a goal […]