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News and views from Ukraine that matter for the world 🇺🇦

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Ukraine's new commander-in-chief is telling his commanders that people are the army's most valuable combat capability, and that wasting them weakens it.

"War demands resolve, but never recklessness. Every unjustified loss weakens the Armed Forces," Mykhailo Drapatyi writes in the leadership principles he published. He took command on 21 July.

The second change is in buying. The General Staff now orders by real front-line demand, says lawmaker Yehor Cherniev of the parliament's defense committee: "not just pointing a finger at the sky, but this product is needed in this quantity."

Cherniev calls both changes a break with Drapatyi's predecessor, Oleksandr Syrskyi.

🔗 Link in bio Two Ukrainian soldiers on mud-covered quad bikes at dusk. Illustrative photo from the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade. Text: Ukraine's new top commander puts soldiers' lives first. "Every unjustified loss weakens the Armed Forces," Mykhailo Drapatyi tells his commanders. by @euromaidanpress

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This week, an order from the White House slowed the satellite link Ukraine's military relies on. Europe is now moving so the same can't happen to it.

The EU plans to fast-track antitrust approval for Project Bromo, which would merge the satellite businesses of Airbus, Thales, and Leonardo into one company, Bloomberg reports. Bloomberg calls it the bloc's answer to SpaceX.

Why now: after the White House ordered the Pentagon to slow Starshield, the military version of Starlink, its terminals in Ukraine stopped working on anything moving faster than 160 kph, a Defense Ministry source told Reuters. Ukrainian officials say that slowed the interceptor drones that shoot down Shaheds.

A fast review is not a free pass. Competition Commissioner Teresa Ribera says Brussels will still enforce its own rules.

🔗 Link in bio Illustration of Earth from space with a glowing satellite network over Europe. Text: The EU is fast-tracking its own SpaceX rival, days after US satellites failed Ukraine. Airbus, Thales, and Leonardo would merge their satellite arms. Brussels wants it cleared fast. by @euromaidanpress

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Roman Maksymiuk, a former footballer for Ukraine’s national team, has been killed in combat at the front. His wife, Vira Maksymiuk, announced his death on social media, and DNA analysis confirmed it.

For a time, Maksymiuk had been listed as missing in action. During Ukraine’s match against Canada, the national team’s players came onto the pitch wearing a military tunic and a shirt bearing his name, honoring him and drawing attention to a Ukrainian soldier whose fate was still unknown at the time, the Association of Sports Journalists of Ukraine reported.

Maksymiuk played for several Ukrainian clubs, including Dynamo Kyiv, Dnipro, Chornomorets, and Volyn, and made five appearances for the national team.

Eternal memory by @euromaidanpress

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If Ukraine falls, 20 million Ukrainians will come to Europe because Russian President Vladimir Putin will destroy the country and push them out, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 16 October. His statements were made during a press conference at a summit of European Union leaders in Brussels.

His warning came just before the fifth winter of the full-scale war, expected to be especially hard because of the сumulative effect of Russian bombardment. Russia has already knocked out power in many central cities, such as Vinnytsia and Lutsk, and the capital Kyiv has introduced scheduled blackouts.

Russian strikes are forcing people to leave the country, Zelenskyy said, and Moscow shows no readiness to stop the war.

“Russia is killing us,” he said, stressing that Ukrainians are being “pushed out” of their own country. Russia, he added, “does not want to stop.”

At the start of the full-scale invasion, millions of Ukrainians were forced abroad, triggering Europe’s largest and fastest refugee crisis since World War II. Today, according to Eurostat, more than 4 million Ukrainian citizens are living in EU countries. by @euromaidanpress

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On Monday, Anna Danylenko sat in the Kyiv apartment where she grew up. Two days later, she was looking into a hole where its window had been.

Her cousin Andrii Dubenko, a volunteer, dentist, and medic, was inside with his girlfriend and a 72-year-old aunt when the strike hit their building in Lisovyi masyv on 13 October. All three survived. The rule of two walls saved them, Anna wrote: if you can’t reach a shelter, keep at least two walls between you and the street. Rescuers lifted them out in a basket 15 minutes after the blast. The strike killed other residents.

Firefighters worked through the night, so the family could only get back inside in the morning. “Charred ruins, lots of water in the hallway, which burned out. People are throwing broken things out the window, down by the building. The smell of burning is everywhere,” she told UP Life.

A porcelain fish her mother used to play with survived. Anna now calls it the “fish of unbreakability.”

The strike came during a Russian ballistic attack aimed mainly at one of Kyiv’s main power plants, two days after Washington announced an energy ceasefire that Moscow never confirmed.

🔗 Link in bio by @euromaidanpress

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Ukraine now makes more artillery shells than its state budget can buy, and could export the same amount again, says Vladyslav Belbas, who heads the arms maker Ukrainian Armor. At the start of the invasion, Ukraine depended on Western shell deliveries.

The problem now is orders, not production. Private makers built their plants with their own money and get paid only for finished shells, but they don’t know how much the state will buy next year, or when it will sign. This year, buying artillery ammunition took five months, leaving six for production.

“Private producers have not received a single coin of investment from the state. It is very hard to live and develop without forecasting,” Belbas says.

Contracting for next year hasn’t started, because the budget isn’t set yet.

🔗 Link in bio by @euromaidanpress

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Two days ago, Ukraine had a huge success: Neptune cruise missiles destroyed at least four Su-34 bombers at Borisoglebsk air base in Russia, and damaged two more.

It was no coincidence. For more than a year, Ukraine has been demolishing the Russian air defenses that were supposed to protect jets like these: at least 492 strikes on radars and missile batteries between June and early March, by Tochnyi.info’s count. And the jets were still sitting in the open, wingtip to wingtip.

Russian milbloggers are furious. “How is it that, four years after the start of the Special Military Operation, there are no protective structures for aircraft at airfields located within range of Ukrainian air strikes?” blogger Ramsay wrote. “And where did the billions of rubles allocated for their construction go?”

These are the jets that drop glide bombs on Ukraine almost every day. Russia has now lost at least 37 of them in the war, by open-source counts.

🔗 Link in bio Two satellite images of a Russian air base. Before: Su-34 jets parked in a row on an open apron, six of them boxed in red and blue. After, 15 October: burned wreckage in the same spots. An inset shows a Su-34 jet. Text: Russia still parks its best bombers in the open. Ukraine has spent a year knocking out the air defenses that were supposed to protect them. This week Ukraine’s Neptune missiles destroyed at least four Su-34s at Borisoglebsk. by @euromaidanpress

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Ukraine’s six-wheeled Frodo ground robot made its public debut only on 30 September, and its first reported mission was evacuating a wounded soldier. Now its armed version has fired on targets up to 1.3 km away in a demo for the Pomsta Border Guard Brigade in Kharkiv Oblast.

Its Buria turret takes either a Mk 19 automatic grenade launcher or a Browning M2 heavy machine gun. The maker, Frontline Robotics, sums up the idea as arrive fast, do the job, and leave very fast.

Combat models are the smallest group among the more than 22,000 ground robots Ukraine had contracted for 2026 by July, the Defense Ministry said.

🔗 Link in bio A six-wheeled ground robot with a weapon turret stands on a concrete floor in a dark studio. Text: Ukraine’s Frodo robot fired on targets up to 1.3 km away in a demo for border guards. Its first reported mission was an evacuation. Its turret takes a grenade launcher or a heavy machine gun. by @euromaidanpress

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Russian drones hit Ukrainian factories, warehouses, and power sites so relentlessly that the state cannot shield every one. So the Defense Ministry is letting the businesses defend themselves.

The program has grown fast: 24 companies in April, 81 by mid-September, nearly 100 now. About 50 air-defense groups have formed. They answer to Air Force commands, which set each group's targets and sector, and crews from six enterprises are already carrying out combat missions.

As of 14 October, the groups had downed more than 60 aerial targets, mostly Russian drones, with interceptor drones and automated turrets carrying heavy machine guns.

It means more of the sky over Ukraine's rear is covered without pulling air defense away from the front.

🔗 Link in bio by @euromaidanpress

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Russian FPV drones hunt almost anything that moves within 15 to 30 kilometers of the front. So Ukraine is hanging nets over its supply roads.

Overhead netting, wire-mesh canopies, and reinforced barriers catch an attacking drone before it reaches a vehicle. By mid-July, Ukraine had covered more than 1,066 kilometers of road, and it aims for 4,000 kilometers by the end of 2026.

Now it is national policy. A new government strategy for Ukraine's defensive lines through 2028 makes anti-drone protection of logistics routes a priority: one standard, with deadlines, assigned responsibility, and control mechanisms.

Every trench and net will go onto a single digital map, built on systems including DELTA, with photos and condition data for each structure, so officials can check what was built and what needs repair.

"The main goal is the protection of our service members and civilians," the Defense Ministry said.

🔗 Link in bio by @euromaidanpress

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Elon Musk reportedly urged Donald Trump to slow Starlink in Ukraine, a move that disrupted Ukrainian drone operations and weakened defenses against Russian jet-powered drones attacking Ukrainian cities, according to The Telegraph.

The restrictions reportedly capped the speed of Ukrainian drones using Starshield, SpaceX’s military-grade satellite network, at around 160 kph. That left Ukrainian forces unable to intercept some Russian jet-powered Geran drones traveling roughly twice as fast, while some Ukrainian drone missions against Russian positions had to be called off.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the restrictions also affected mid-range strikes against Russian military targets in occupied Ukrainian territory and drone deliveries of food and water to frontline troops. He said service was being restored, but speeds had not fully returned to previous levels.

Musk said the restrictions were decided by the US military and ultimately Trump. Trump denied that either he or Musk was responsible for Ukraine losing access, while an anonymous US official told AFP that Trump had not requested the reduction.

🔗Read more: https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/10/16/musk-pushed-trump-to-slow-starlink-in-ukraine/ by @euromaidanpress

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Flight SU6312 was supposed to go from Kaliningrad to Moscow. It landed in Nizhny Novgorod.

Moscow’s airspace was closed. Passengers stayed on board for about two hours and were allowed off at 3:30 a.m. The rest of the trip would be by bus—about seven hours. No food, no drinks. One woman couldn’t find a seat on the bus, so she bought herself a ticket for an early-morning train.

That was just one flight.

Overnight on 16 October, 27 Russian airports restricted arrivals and departures. All four Moscow airports stopped. By morning, more than 200 Moscow flights were canceled or delayed.

Russia’s Defense Ministry says it shot down 644 Ukrainian drones over 26 regions, occupied Crimea, and the Black Sea. Ukraine has not commented.

On 1 September, President Zelenskyy had warned airlines that “Russian airspace is becoming completely unsafe.”

🔗https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/10/16/zelenskyys-warning-that-russian-airspace-is-becoming-dangerous-is-proving-true-russia-temporarily-restricted-operations-at-27-airports-amid-a-massive-drone-attack/ by @euromaidanpress

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