© Jeff Chiu/Associated Press
Welcome to this edition of The Intelligence Brief... This week, the United States, China, and other world powers are developing increasingly sophisticated military capabilities in space, raising concerns that Earth’s orbit could become a critical battlefield in future conflicts. In our analysis, we’ll be looking at 1) how China’s secretive Shenlong spaceplane and recent orbital maneuvers reveal Beijing’s growing counterspace capabilities, 2) how the U.S. and its allies are responding as spacecraft increasingly demonstrate “dogfighting,” rendezvous, and other potentially military operations, 3) why Russia’s longstanding pursuit of anti-satellite weapons—including potentially nuclear-armed orbital systems—adds another dimension to the emerging threat, and 4) how growing military dependence on satellites could create dangerous new vulnerabilities and pathways for escalation between nuclear-armed powers.
“We must be well-prepared for conflict in space. And if deterrence fails, we will fight and win.”
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Military competition between the U.S. and China is ramping up, according to new developments that showcase how both nations are developing maneuverable spacecraft, counterspace weapons, and other technologies with the potential to shape the orbital battlefield of tomorrow.
The developments, first reported by Reuters, involve the revelation that China’s secretive uncrewed spaceplane had released a small satellite in orbit earlier this year, activity which was detected and analyzed by LeoLabs. According to the company’s analysis, the object released by the Chinese spaceplane was reportedly observed maneuvering around another Chinese satellite before returning to the spaceplane.
Launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the vast Gobi Desert, China’s spaceplane, known as Shenlong—a name meaning “Divine Dragon”—took flight on its current mission in February. With the new confirmation of an orbital test based on LeoLabs data, the recent developments offer a clear demonstration of the increasingly sophisticated operations China is capable of conducting in orbit.
Of course, the United States also has its own secretive reusable spaceplane—the Boeing X-37B—and similarities between the two spacecraft have drawn notable comparisons in the past. Although much about its missions remains undisclosed, the X-37B serves as an orbital test platform for experimental technologies, while the U.S. Space Force is developing both defensive and offensive capabilities intended to protect American interests in space and counter potential adversaries.
“The Chinese are rapidly developing capabilities,” including ground- and space-based weapons designed to interfere with or destroy targets, U.S. Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said in July, describing the threat as “substantial.”
Examples of what U.S. officials have characterized as orbital “dogfighting” have already been demonstrated by China, which includes incidents where multiple spacecraft reportedly maneuvered in close proximity, along with the apparent capture and relocation of defunct satellites. Orbital refueling capabilities are also believed to be in development that could significantly extend the operational lives of such spacecraft and their related orbital technologies.
In response to the Chinese demonstrations, the U.S. and other nations have engaged in similar efforts, which include an American military satellite that maneuvered near a British spacecraft last September as China’s Shiyan 12-01 experimental satellite passed roughly 83 kilometers below, an operation several experts interpreted as a demonstration of allied capabilities.
While such technologies also have legitimate civilian applications in many cases, the potential for their military use is becoming harder to ignore, and U.S. officials have warned that adversaries could attempt to target American space systems early in a future conflict—and China is by no means the only foreign adversary nation engaged in the development of such technologies.
In August, a research article funded by the Russia Strategic Initiative, U.S. European Command, examined Russia’s pursuit of anti-satellite weapons, which have deep roots in Soviet nuclear strategy. Such decades-old efforts focused on disabling U.S. satellites, which were viewed as a potential means of disrupting early warning, communications, and command-and-control systems during a major conflict.
Today, such Cold War-era concerns have resurfaced, as Russian military thinking has expanded to include more destructive counterspace capabilities, which may include nuclear-armed orbital systems designed to disable large numbers of satellites at once. This raises the prospect that Moscow could attempt to effectively take low-Earth orbit offline should a major conflict occur, thereby disabling critical communications systems relied on by the U.S. and other nations.
Concerns over such capabilities apparently aren’t mere speculation. In 2024, the Pentagon revealed that Russia had launched a satellite it assessed was likely a counter-space weapon, believed to be capable of attacking and disabling other satellites in low-Earth orbit.
The broader challenge facing the United States and its allies is that space has become indispensable to modern warfare, while also simultaneously becoming increasingly vulnerable to attack.
Western militaries are heavily reliant on satellites for communications systems, as well as GPS navigation, missile warning, precision targeting, intelligence gathering, and a range of other capabilities. Equally problematic is that many civilian and commercial systems rely on the same orbital infrastructure.
Right now, Russia and China are believed to be developing counterspace capabilities ranging from electronic jamming, cyberattacks, and directed-energy systems to anti-satellite missiles and maneuverable spacecraft capable of approaching other satellites.
Fundamentally, this creates a difficult issue in terms of deterrence, since an adversary might disrupt a critical satellite without physically destroying it, making attribution and determining an appropriate military response far more complicated than simply responding to a conventional attack. Further, the ongoing integration of commercial systems with military operations may increase the likelihood of attacks that could target non-military targets.
Altogether, the emerging picture is more than just one involving whether the next major war could extend into Earth’s orbit: it is a question of how, and to what extent, future attacks on spacecraft by adversary nations could affect events back on Earth, and what the longer-term implications could be for communications, navigation, and other capabilities upon which civilians increasingly rely—all while creating new pathways for escalation between nuclear-armed world powers.
That concludes this week’s installment of The Intelligence Brief. You can read past editions of our newsletter at our website, or if you found this installment online, don’t forget to subscribe and get future email editions from us here. Also, if you have a tip or other information you’d like to send along directly to me, you can email me at micah [@] thedebrief [dot] org, or reach me on X: @MicahHanks.
Here are the top stories we’re covering right now…
Russia's attempt to replicate SpaceX's Starlink satellite network seems to be moving as slowly as the front lines in eastern Ukraine.
The Rassvet program, often billed as Russia's answer to Starlink, started launching its first operational satellites earlier this year. Two launches, one in March and a second in July, have delivered 32 Rassvet satellites to low-Earth orbit, some 10 percent of the roughly 300 Rassvet spacecraft Russia aims to put into orbit by the end of next year to provide connectivity for military and civilian users. The company in charge of Rassvet, Bureau 1440, wants to deploy 924 satellites by 2035.
But none of the 32 satellites launched so far have reached the 500-mile (800-kilometer) orbit they were designed to operate in. The rockets that launched the first two batches of Rassvets released the satellites much closer to Earth, and the satellites were expected to use their own plasma engines to raise their orbits over the next few months.
© Bureau 1440
The reason for CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s recent surprise visit to Moscow hasn’t been officially revealed. However, indications suggest that at least part of the unusual trip was meant to warn the Kremlin against possible provocations targeting NATO.
Given its current situation, the idea that Russia might deliberately pick a fight with NATO right now seems, on its face, absolutely insane.
Moscow has failed to achieve anything close to its original objectives in Ukraine. Its military remains heavily committed there, and Kyiv is increasingly taking the war inside Russia, creating additional economic and political pressure on the Kremlin.
Why the hell would Putin want to pick a fight with NATO now?
For starters, there’s an important distinction between provoking NATO and actually wanting to start a war with it. The former may very well be the objective. The latter is something Putin almost certainly wants to avoid.
A deliberately murky incident designed to test NATO’s political resolve and widen the growing divide between the United States and Europe, however, is a different story.
Take, for example, a Ukrainian-made drone, or a convincing Russian copy, that crosses into Lithuania or Latvia and strikes critical infrastructure or a military target. Polish and Baltic intelligence officials have recently warned that Russia could be gearing up for precisely this kind of false-flag operation.
Whatever form the provocation takes, it only needs to be serious enough that NATO cannot ignore it, but ambiguous enough that its members can’t agree on how to respond. And that’s the point.
Article 5 says an armed attack against one NATO member is considered an attack against them all. However, it neither requires every member to respond in the same way nor automatically commits the alliance to war. Each ally ultimately determines what action it considers necessary. Critically, the treaty itself does not explicitly define what constitutes an “armed attack.”
Create enough ambiguity over whether that threshold has even been crossed, and suddenly 32 governments are left debating not only what happened, but what they are willing to do about it.
This type of hybrid attack would put Washington in an especially uncomfortable position.
With the Iran crisis still ongoing and the midterm elections just months away, the Trump administration would likely be deeply reluctant to risk a direct military confrontation with Russia over an ambiguous incident—even if European governments were pushing for a stronger response.
That alone will deepen political divisions at home while simultaneously widening the existing rift between Washington and Europe.
For Moscow, that’s a hell of a payoff from a relatively small provocation. And ultimately, driving the U.S. and Europe further apart would very likely be the larger strategic objective.
U.S.-European relations are already under extraordinary strain. But one thing often gets overlooked is that for nearly 80 years, the U.S. has served as much of the political glue holding NATO, and indirectly, the wider European security order, together. That role has never been based solely on America’s military strength.
The United States occupies a distinct position within NATO as one of only two members—along with Canada—located distinctly outside the European sphere. As an “outside” ally, America is powerful enough to help guarantee European security while remaining geographically removed from the historical rivalries that have repeatedly divided the continent.
Today, Western Europe and the EU can look like a collection of regional best friends. However, historically, they most definitely were not.
For centuries, European powers competed over territory, resources, influence and security, often with disastrous consequences. One of the great achievements of the post-WWII order was finally breaking that cycle.
In fact, NATO expressly notes that preventing renewed destructive competition in Europe—including “the revival of nationalist militarism in Europe through a strong North American presence”—was one of the founding purposes of the post-World War II transatlantic security order.
We shouldn’t assume Europe’s extraordinary period of tranquility and partnership is somehow its natural state or that it would continue indefinitely under radically different security conditions.
That doesn’t mean European countries will suddenly start shooting at each other if the American “glue” substantially weakens. But national interests, regional rivalries and competing security goals could begin to reemerge. And history gives us plenty of reason to take seriously the possibility that renewed political competition in Europe could eventually become military competition.
In the near term, European governments will begin asking whether resources currently devoted to collective security objectives might eventually be needed closer to home.
And that’s where Ukraine comes into the equation.
If European governments become less certain that the United States will guarantee their security, continued support for Ukraine will look very different in their wider strategic calculations.
Britain, France, Germany, Poland, and the Baltic states will still view Russia as a threat. However, they won’t necessarily agree about how limited defense resources should be allocated, which threats are most urgent, or how much risk each country should accept on Ukraine’s behalf.
The more national security becomes national again, the harder it is to preserve a unified European position.
Russia doesn’t have to defeat NATO militarily. It just has to create a situation where NATO cannot agree on what to do.
That strategy exploits a basic reality of international politics that often gets overlooked because we talk about countries as “friends.” Nations don’t have friends in the same way people do. They have allies with shared strategic interests.
Shift those interests, even slightly, and allies can become competitors. Competitors can become rivals. And history has repeatedly shown what can happen when rivalries in Europe are allowed to spiral out of control.
So if Putin believes he can start pulling at the threads holding NATO together without triggering a war, there is every reason to believe he will try.
The most consequential part of any Russian provocation will not be the incident itself, but how NATO chooses to respond.
Moscow may be betting that distance, domestic politics, and competing national interests can pull the alliance apart. The best answer would be to prove otherwise.
The Atlantic may physically separate North America from Europe. Still, in today’s interconnected world, geography provides far less insulation from shared threats than it did 77 years ago when NATO was founded.
Whatever disagreements exist between Washington and European capitals, both sides would do well to remember a fundamental strategic reality. Strong allies make each member stronger, and preserving those relationships remains firmly in everyone’s national interest.
Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter: @LtTimMcMillan. Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email: LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com
This week, Romania accused Russia of sending a drone boat loaded with explosives to a vital European natural gas platform in the Black Sea. A Romanian F-16 fighter jet used its cannons to disable the surface drone so that explosive ordnance experts could blow it up safely.
On August 20, the Romanian Coast Guard first spotted the maritime drone a few hundred meters away from the Neptun Deep project’s main drilling platform, where several hundred workers were busy with the platform’s ongoing installation, Defense Minister Radu Miruță said in a Facebook post. The offshore gas project would make Romania the largest gas producer in the European Union once it starts full production in 2027.
To protect the lives of the workers and the offshore gas infrastructure, the Romanian military scrambled two F-16 fighter jets to stop the drone with cannon fire, Miruță said. Army specialists later carried out a controlled detonation, as seen in a Facebook video shared by the defense minister.
© Romanian Ministry of Defense
Welcome to this edition of The Intelligence Brief… This week, a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster bound for Antarctica was forced to return to New Zealand after its crew received a warning of a “potentially hazardous” space-related activity reportedly involving a planned Russian missile launch. In our analysis, we’ll be looking at 1) how a Russian air traffic management warning prompted New Zealand authorities to issue a NOTAM affecting international airspace, 2) why the alert caused the Antarctic-bound U.S. military flight to reverse course, 3) the lingering uncertainty over whether the reported Russian missile launch ever actually occurred, and 4) why some analysts suspect the mysterious warning may represent another example of Russia’s broader campaign of information operations and “hybrid warfare” against the West.
“The plane turned around on the advice of New Zealand authorities who indicated that there was a space-related hazard enroute.”
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This week, an alarming story from the southernmost continent made headlines, as it was reported that a United States Air Force C-17 Globemaster aircraft on its way to Antarctica required an unexpected change of course after its crew was warned of a “potentially hazardous” space activity occurring in the area.
Within just hours of departing from Christchurch, New Zealand, at approximately 9 a.m. on Tuesday, the American military aircraft was forced to turn around following the release of a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) issued by New Zealand’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
Early reports offered few details, indicating only that an unspecified “space hazard” had been what prompted the NOTAM, inevitably prompting speculation about what might have caused the unusual turn events.
So what do we currently know about the space-related mystery near Antarctica this week that caused a U.S. military aircraft to change its course?
Departing Christchurch under the call sign ICE28, the American C-17 Globemaster was on its way to Antarctica’s famous McMurdo Station. A logistics hub operated by the U.S. via the National Science Foundation, the station supports as many as 1,200 residents at the height of Antarctica’s busy summer science season—a number that shrinks back to around 200 workers who weather the colder Antarctic months.
The aircraft had only been traveling for three hours when a NOTAM came to its crew’s attention, prompting the Antarctic-bound aircraft to return to New Zealand. Early reports indicated that some kind of potential “hazard” had been identified; it was soon revealed that knowledge of this had reportedly been conveyed to CAA officials by the Russian State Air Traffic Management (ATM) Corporation.
Little else was known at that time, and on Wednesday, the New Zealand Herald reported that the country’s Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, had reached out to Moscow for more information after it was learned that Russian officials had reportedly planned to launch a missile in the area.
Officials with New Zealand’s CAA later confirmed that the Russian State ATM Corporation had alerted them about a “planned missile launch and associated potential hazard to international airspace,” specifically impacting New Zealand’s Oceanic Flight Information Region, an area of international waters over the South Pacific Ocean, Southern Ocean, and Tasman Sea covering as much as 29 million square kilometers, which is managed by Airways New Zealand.
Responding to the alert, the CAA issued a NOTAM for the area, which did not restrict all flights through the area, but which reportedly advised pilots to “make their decisions based on the information available,” according to a CAA statement issued this week.
To date, there is little evidence that any real weapons test ever even occurred. According to The Diplomat, there were reportedly never any Russian ships or aircraft confirmed around the time of the alleged launch. By contrast, a significant Russian presence was visible in the region earlier this year during a long-range ballistic missile launch conducted by China.
“So it appears that Russia’s warning is a dummy warning of a dummy missile,” Anne-Marie Brady wrote of the incident at The Diplomat, further characterizing the situation as a likely “information operation” evincing Moscow’s ongoing hybrid warfare efforts.
Similar incidents have been occurring for several years now. In December 2024, Andrea Kendall-Taylor with the Center for a New American Security characterized such events as part of a broader “hybrid war” Moscow has been continually waging against the West.
“While individually all these acts seem not to be important, when you bring them all together, they’re part of Russia’s hybrid war against the West,” Kendall-Taylor said.
As of Thursday, it remains unclear whether the alleged Russian missile launch ever really occurred, or if the incident that interrupted a U.S. Air Force aircraft’s annual flight to Antarctica was simply a false alarm prompted by a Russian “warning”—one that may yet prove to have been part of a broader issue the West has encountered with Moscow in recent years.
That concludes this week’s installment of The Intelligence Brief. You can read past editions of our newsletter at our website, or if you found this installment online, don’t forget to subscribe and get future email editions from us here. Also, if you have a tip or other information you’d like to send along directly to me, you can email me at micah [@] thedebrief [dot] org, or reach me on X: @MicahHanks.
Here are the top stories we’re covering right now…
Romanian army divers used explosives to destroy two Russian-made drones found floating in the Black Sea near Romania’s largest natural gas project, according to the NATO member country’s defense minister.
Defense Minister Radu Miruță posted a Facebook video supposedly showing one of the drones being blown up in the water by explosive ordnance disposal divers of the Romanian army on August 11, as reported by Reuters and other news outlets. The drones were first spotted in the water by a ship working in the vicinity of the Neptun Deep—an offshore gas project under development in the Black Sea that will make Romania the largest gas producer in the European Union.
A Romanian Coast Guard ship that responded with army soldiers aboard found two drifting Gerbera-type drones of Russian design along with other debris. Miruță also disclosed that Romania had reached out to “Ukrainian partners who confirmed that the systems do not belong to them.”
© Romanian Ministry of Defense
Sometimes, you just need an icebreaker and some classical music to make your day better.German police disarmed a drone carrying explosives after it was discovered near Ukrainian cargo aircraft parked at Leipzig airport—and authorities are looking into the possibility of a second drone after an approaching aircraft collided with something midair.
The drone, first spotted by an airport employee, was hovering close to the ground between two parked An-124 cargo aircraft owned by Ukraine’s Antonov Airlines shortly before midnight on August 4, according to The Guardian. It had apparently been modified to help avoid detection by the airport’s drone defense sensors, said Alexander Dobrindt, federal minister of the interior for Germany, during a press conference.
Dobrindt described the drone as carrying a fist-sized package of a substance believed to be the plastic explosive Semtex. Only a failed detonator prevented the drone from exploding near the Ukrainian cargo aircraft, he said.
© Jens Schlueter/Getty Images
German police disarmed a drone carrying explosives after it was discovered near Ukrainian cargo aircraft parked at Leipzig airport—and authorities are looking into the possibility of a second drone after an approaching aircraft collided with something midair.
The drone, first spotted by an airport employee, was hovering close to the ground between two parked An-124 cargo aircraft owned by Ukraine’s Antonov Airlines shortly before midnight on August 4, according to The Guardian. It had apparently been modified to help avoid detection by the airport’s drone defense sensors, said Alexander Dobrindt, federal minister of the interior for Germany, during a press conference.
Dobrindt described the drone as carrying a fist-sized package of a substance believed to be the plastic explosive Semtex. Only a failed detonator prevented the drone from exploding near the Ukrainian cargo aircraft, he said.
© Jens Schlueter/Getty Images
Russia’s anti-monopoly watchdog has opened a formal case against Apple after the U.S. technology company failed to comply with an earlier warning requiring the pre-installation of Russian applications on its devices, state news agency RIA reported on Monday.
All mobile phones and tablets in Russia must have the state-backed MAX messenger app pre-installed, the Russian government announced in August 2025.
The case centers on Apple’s alleged non-compliance regarding the mandatory pre-installation of Russia’s MAX messaging app and a domestic Russian app store. The move follows a warning issued by the regulator that the company did not fully address.
The development marks the latest escalation in Moscow’s efforts to enforce rules aimed at promoting local digital services on foreign devices sold in the country. No further details on potential penalties or next steps were immediately available.
Reuters
MacDailyNews Take: MAX is criticized for potentially enabling user tracking which aligns with Moscow’s push for tighter internet control amid tensions with the West over Ukraine.
As Glenn Greenwald said, “The way things are supposed to work is that we’re supposed to know virtually everything about what [government officials] do: that’s why they’re called public servants. They’re supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that’s why we’re called private individuals.”
But, the Russian government obviously fears its population, hence its diktats.
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Após anos de ameaças, a Rússia iniciou oficialmente uma investigação contra a Apple por não ter pré-instalado aplicativos apoiados pelo governo em dispositivos no país. Os aplicativos em questão são o MAX, serviço de mensagens apoiado pelo Kremlin, e a RuStore, loja de aplicativos nacional.
O caso representa o mais recente embate entre a Apple e as autoridades russas, que buscam ampliar o controle estatal sobre o mercado digital do país e exigir que empresas de tecnologia estrangeiras concedam aos serviços nacionais maior acesso às suas plataformas.
Posts relacionados
O Serviço Federal Antimonopólio (FAS, na sigla em inglês) afirmou ter alertado anteriormente a Apple para que removesse o que descreveu como “condições discriminatórias que afetavam mecanismos de busca russos” e para que cumprisse as exigências de pré-instalação de softwares nacionais em seus dispositivos.
A Apple atendeu parcialmente à advertência ao permitir a pré-instalação de um mecanismo de busca russo; no entanto, o FAS alega que a empresa ignorou a exigência referente ao mensageiro nacional e à loja de aplicativos doméstica — referindo-se ao MAX e à RuStore.
A Apple poderá ser alvo de uma multa de até 4 bilhões de rublos (cerca de US$50 milhões) caso seja constatada a violação da legislação russa de concorrência.
via AppleInsider
One of the Russian government’s most elite hacking groups has adopted an attack, known as Clickfix, to compromise devices belonging to sensitive organizations in Ukraine, the latter country’s CERT center is warning.
Clickfix has emerged as an effective attack technique that attackers, primarily financially motivated criminals, began using in the last year or so. Websites under the control of the attackers display a CAPTCHA that requires the visitor to copy a jumble of text and paste it into the terminal. The text contains scripts that, once entered, perform malicious actions, typically by installing malware or exfiltrating sensitive data. Ukraine’s CERT said Wednesday that Sandworm, an advanced hacking unit inside the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence arm, is now using the technique.
The Clickfix attacks began in the spring and have continued through the summer. The campaign has resulted in the network compromise of at least one organization when a connected device was found to be infected by FreakyPoll, the name of one of Sandworm’s custom malware packages. Ukrainian authorities discovered 10 compromised websites that displayed a PowerShell command as part of a fake CAPTCHA that said it had to be passed to ensure a real human was behind the visiting device’s keyboard.
© Getty Images
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.
© SpaceX
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.
© SpaceX
Mysterious drone flights that disrupted major European airports and flew over NATO member military bases hosting US nuclear weapons may be the work of a coordinated Kremlin campaign launched from Russian-linked commercial ships.
That recent assessment from the UK-based International Institute for Strategic Studies used automatic identification system (AIS) maritime tracking data and other publicly available data to show how Russian-linked ships and “shadow fleet” vessels that transport sanctioned Russian oil were often located nearby during various drone incidents. The report suggests that the drone incidents—which impacted a dozen NATO member countries and Ireland between August 2024 and February 2026—also revealed the vulnerability of European air defenses against surveillance and harassment incursions by low-cost drones.
The IISS report identified 144 drone sightings over Europe during that time period that were unlikely to involve hobbyist recreational drones or drone activity related to the war in Ukraine. About 48 percent of the sightings took place over military bases, 26 percent happened over critical infrastructure such as ports and energy or industrial facilities, and 18 percent occurred over civilian airports. Most occurred at night or in the early morning hours before sunrise, and the drones themselves were typically described in media reports as resembling “professional” or “military-style” drones.
© DAMIEN MEYER/AFP via Getty Images
By any historical measure, the human cost of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has entered unprecedented territory. Now, a new analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimates that Russia has suffered roughly 1.4 million battlefield casualties, including as many as 450,000 deaths, since launching its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
If accurate, those losses not only dwarf those sustained by the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and Russia’s wars in Chechnya—they exceed the combined military fatalities Russia and the Soviet Union suffered in every conflict since the end of the Second World War.
More striking, researchers estimate that Russia’s battlefield losses have become increasingly lopsided relative to Ukraine’s, with the casualty ratio climbing from roughly two or three Russian casualties for every Ukrainian casualty during much of the war to nearly eight-to-one during the first half of 2026.
CSIS estimates Ukraine has suffered between 525,000 and 625,000 battlefield casualties, including between 125,000 and 150,000 fatalities, since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022. Combined, the report finds, Russian and Ukrainian battlefield casualties have now exceeded 2 million.
The evidence shows that while Moscow continues to push offensive operations, it is doing so at an increasingly staggering human cost.
The report, Russian Blood and Treasure: The Ballooning Costs of Putin’s War, examines battlefield casualties, fatalities, territorial gains, rates of advance, and more than 20,000 documented Ukrainian strikes against Russian targets.
Rather than relying on anecdotal assessments, the researchers compiled numerous datasets to evaluate how Russia’s military campaign has evolved over more than four years of fighting. Their conclusion: although Russia continues to wage war, its battlefield performance has deteriorated while the costs in manpower have reached historic levels.
“Russian battlefield costs continue to mount, with as many as 450,000 battlefield deaths and 1.4 million casualties between February 2022 and June 2026,” researchers write. “These rates are astounding.”
Those numbers place the war in a category unlike virtually any other conflict fought by a major military power since 1945.
According to the report, Russia’s estimated fatalities in Ukraine are more than four times greater than all U.S. military deaths in every war combined since World War II, including Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Persian Gulf War.
The report estimates that the United States has suffered approximately 102,000 combat fatalities across every major conflict fought over the past 80 years since World War II. Russia, by comparison, is estimated to have suffered as many as 450,000 battlefield deaths in Ukraine alone in just over four years.
The comparison is even more extraordinary when viewed through Russia’s own military history. The Soviet Union lost an estimated 14,000 to 16,000 troops during its decade-long war in Afghanistan. Russia’s First and Second Chechen Wars claimed between 12,000 and 25,000 military fatalities.
Even when combined with every other Soviet and Russian military intervention since 1950—including Georgia, Syria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and earlier fighting in Ukraine before 2022—the total remains dramatically below the losses estimated in the current war.
According to the CSIS analysis, Russian battlefield deaths in Ukraine are now more than nine times greater than all Soviet and Russian military fatalities in other conflicts since World War II combined.
Significantly, the casualty imbalance between Russia and Ukraine continues to widen.
For much of the conflict, researchers estimate Russia suffered between two and three casualties for every Ukrainian casualty. However, by early 2026, that ratio had nearly quadrupled to approximately 8:1, reflecting mounting Russian losses while Ukraine increasingly leveraged defensive positions and new technologies to inflict disproportionate damage.
Combined, both sides have now endured more than two million casualties, underscoring the extraordinary scale of Europe’s largest land war since World War II.
The report identifies several reasons for Russia’s escalating losses. Russian commanders have increasingly relied on attritional tactics that send small, often poorly trained infantry squads forward to probe Ukrainian positions, supported by artillery, glide bombs, first-person-view drones, and armored vehicles.
If Ukrainian defenders reveal their positions by opening fire, those locations are identified, mapped, and then targeted with artillery, FPV drones, and glide bombs before additional Russian forces press the attack.
According to the report, the strategy has inflicted staggering casualties while producing only incremental territorial gains.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has spent years constructing dense defensive belts consisting of trenches, minefields, anti-tank obstacles known as “dragon’s teeth,” artillery positions, and increasingly sophisticated drone networks.
According to the report, the battlefield has effectively become a vast “kill zone” stretching roughly 12 to 25 miles from the front, where soldiers and vehicles are under near-constant surveillance from drones capable of detecting and directing attacks against almost any movement.
Estimates cited in the report suggest that more than 90 percent of Russian casualties may now result from drone attacks rather than traditional infantry engagements, showing how unmanned systems have radically changed the battlefield.
AI-enabled drones capable of autonomous target identification and terminal guidance provide further increased Ukraine’s defensive advantages while reducing the effectiveness of Russian electronic warfare.
Critically, this tremendous human cost has not translated into rapid military gains.
CSIS found that Russian offensives around key cities such as Kostiantynivka, Pokrovsk, and Sloviansk have advanced at average rates of only about 55 to 100 yards per day—roughly half the length of a football field on a good day and among the slowest offensive rates recorded in modern warfare.
The researchers compare these advances to the infamous Battle of the Somme during World War I, one of history’s most attritional campaigns, while noting that Russia’s early invasion advances in 2022 moved between 30 and 100 times faster than current operations.
Perhaps even more telling, the report notes that Russia’s territorial gains have begun moving in the opposite direction. After years of incremental advances, Russian-controlled territory actually shrank during April and May 2026, marking the first monthly net territorial losses since 2024. Ukrainian counteroffensives reclaimed roughly 155 square miles during the spring, suggesting Russia’s immense expenditure of manpower is producing diminishing strategic returns.
The staggering casualty figures raise questions about Russia’s ability to sustain its current strategy indefinitely.
Researchers estimate Russia is currently suffering between 30,000 and 34,000 battlefield casualties each month, while recruiting roughly 27,000 new soldiers monthly. If those estimates are accurate, Moscow may now be losing personnel faster than it can replace them, continuing to strain an already strained wartime economy.
Despite these staggering losses, the report concludes that neither side appears close to military collapse. Russia retains considerable manpower reserves and continues operating a wartime economy capable of sustaining prolonged combat.
In a June 28 speech to the ruling United Russia Party Congress, Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to project strength, insisting that Russia had the resources, political will, and national unity needed to pursue the war. He also rejected the idea that Western pressure could force a strategic defeat, claiming Ukrainian forces were retreating across the front, and framing Russian victory as equally inevitable and essential to the country’s core interests.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has demonstrated an ability to impose disproportionate costs through defensive tactics, long-range strikes, and rapidly evolving drone technologies that continue to reshape modern warfare.
Ultimately, this suggests the war remains locked in a brutal contest of attrition with no clear military end in sight. Although both sides continue adapting their tactics and technologies, neither has demonstrated the ability to achieve a decisive breakthrough.
As long as the conflict continues under these conditions, the report suggests the human toll—already unprecedented in post-World War II Europe—is likely to continue climbing, with both Russia and Ukraine facing the prospect of hundreds of thousands more casualties before the fighting ultimately ends.
“The war in Ukraine heavily favors the defender, a dynamic that has frustrated Russian offensives but also constrained Ukrainian counterattacks,” researchers write. “As the data in this analysis shows, Russia’s progress on the battlefield has been historically poor, with Russian casualties, fatalities, and average rates of advance among the worst of any major power in any war since World War II.”
Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter: @LtTimMcMillan. Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email: LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com
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