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According to satellite imagery, Russia has resumed transporting cargo to North Korea via ships. It had been 2 months since the last cargo ship had docked in a North Korean port. The ship, Lady R, is expected to load the cargo containers that have accumulated at the dock before it makes its return voyage back to Russia. The cargo on the ship and the cargo that will be taken back on the return trip are currently unknown. The ship belongs to MG-Flot, a Russian shipping company that is under US sanctions. The Lady R has been carrying cargo back and forth between North Korea and Russia since at least October 2023.
On September 29, footage was released of a Ukrainian Shrike 10-inch FPV drone destroying a Russian Mi-8 helicopter. The drone was armed with an RPG-7 warhead. The helicopter caught fire, struggled to maintain altitude, and eventually crashed at a relatively moderate speed. A Russian milblogger named Alexei Voevoda claimed that the drone made it inside the helicopter with the troops on board. He stated that only 2 on board the helicopter, the flight engineer and a navigator, survived the crash. Everyone else failed to escape the aircraft and burned to death. The Mi-8 was initially misreported as an Mi-28.
German defense company Hensoldt has reported that it is expanding its production facilities in southern Germany to increase the production capacity of Radars and “anti-drone systems.” Hensoldt states they plan to produce 1,000 radars annually. Hensoldt makes the radars for the Iris-T air defense system, which has been touted by the Ukrainians as being incredibly effective at eliminating aerial threats.
Another POW exchange has taken place. 185 soldiers and 20 civilians were repatriated to Ukraine. The soldiers were mostly members of the Armed Forces, the National Guard, and the State Border Guard Service. Most were in captivity since 2022. Ukraine says the 20 civilians were illegally taken prisoner by Russia, which is common practice for the country. The soldiers range in age from 26-59. The last exchange took place on August 24th. One of the Russian POWS returned was Yevgeny Kovtov. Kovtov was mobilized in 2022 and was taken prisoner in 2023. His partner, Irina Krynina, an active member of an organization focused on supporting the families of POWs, moved to Kyiv with their children in 2023, working to secure his release. Kovtov, however, refused opportunities to be released. Krynina reportedly tried to persuade her husband to avoid returning to Russia over the past 2 years.
Ukraine has cut its diplomatic ties with Nicaragua after Nicaragua recognized the occupied Ukrainian territories as part of Russia.
Deepstatemaps reports that Russia has managed to capture 3 villages. Berezove and Kalynivske are in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, and Olhivske is in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. They added that Russia is advancing towards Novoivanivka in Zaporizhzhia Oblast and Vorone in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.
Colonel Vladyslav Voloshyn, spokesman for the Defence Forces of Ukraine's South, reported that on October 2, Russia launched 2 attacks on Ukrainian positions near Stepove in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. The assaults used motorcycles. He said that Russia is concentrating forces near the village of Zherebianky and is likely to attack in the direction of the village of Lukianivske. He also stated that Russia has been reinforcing its assault units in the Orikhiv direction with mobilized Russians who refuse to sign military contracts and join the Russian military.
Ukrainian media outlet Ukrainska Pravda has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Estonian MP and former intelligence chief Eerik-Niiles Kross. The basis for the nomination is UP’s role in democratic reforms in Ukraine and its work promoting freedom of speech, freedom of the press, exposing corruption, reporting on human rights abuses, documenting Russian war crimes, and serving as a major source of reliable information about Ukraine.
Poland’s spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry, Karolina Gałecka, reported that a Russian boat stopped about 300 meters from a gas pipeline for about 20 minutes, and that Poland’s Border Guard intervened.
Russian government bots have begun spreading propaganda to Russian citizens, telling them that there is no shortage of petroleum products and that the rising price of gas is related to “global events.” Since the beginning of the week, more than 550 bot accounts have been monitored that have been making comments downplaying Russia’s gas shortages and price increases. At least 20 regions of Russia and occupied parts of Ukraine are currently experiencing fuel shortages. Gas is extremely limited in Crimea, and limits on purchases have been implemented, and then the limits were tightened.
On October 1, it was reported that Russia attacked a power substation in Slavutych, leaving the town without power. More seriously, this also led to a blackout at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Specifically, the power was lost at the New Safe Confinement, which “isolates the destroyed fourth power unit of the Chornobyl NPP and prevents the release of radioactive materials into the environment.” Within 3 hours, Ukrainian engineers and repair crews managed to return power to the confinement structure. The IAEA reports that Ukraine is keeping the New Save Confinement powered with emergency diesel generators. The rest of the Chornobyl site is connected to the main power grid.
At the European Community Summit, Emmanuel Macron endorsed the idea of European countries downing unidentified drones.
European leaders failed to come to an agreement about providing a €140 billion loan to Ukraine using frozen Russian assets. Ukraine would be expected to repay the loan after the war and after Russia pays reparations. Belgium, France, and Luxembourg strongly opposed the plan, citing legal concerns. A majority of the frozen Russian assets are held in Belgium, putting Belgium at a uniquely large risk of a lawsuit from Russia. Ursula von der Leyen said that the plan needs further development, and any risk needs to be shared by all EU members. All 27 member states need to agree to the loan before it can be provided. European leaders will meet again in Brussels in 3 weeks, but FT reports that it is unlikely that all of the problems with the loan scheme will be hammered out by then.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen stated that Europe underestimated the threat that Russia poses to Europe and that Ukraine is the first line of defense for the continent. She added that Europe has responded too slowly to this threat. Ukraine is providing Denmark with assistance in shooting down hostile drones.
The next Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting, the “Ramstein” meetings, will be held on Wednesday, October 15, at NATO’s headquarters. The last meeting was held on September 9 in London.
According to sources in the Polish government, including in Poland’s Internal Security Agency, evidence has been discovered that shows Russia was planning a series of sabotage attacks using drones and explosives in Poland, Lithuania, and Germany. A Polish man named Władysław G. was working on behalf of the GRU, was instructed to obtain a shovel and dig up cans in a cemetery that were labeled as sweetcorn. He was then instructed to place them at a specific location in Łódź. He is also believed to have transported drone components and SIM cards between Lithuania, Germany, and Poland. Władysław G. faces life in prison, and the investigation into his activities is expected to be concluded by the end of the year.
Knowable magazine published a long article on some of the medical challenges Ukraine is facing due to the war. One of Ukraine’s major challenges is antimicrobial-resistant strains of various infections. These are endangering both soldiers and civilians. The prevalence of these strains and strains resistant to pandrug treatment is increasing as well. Strains previously susceptible to treatment with carbapenems are resistant or are becoming so. Ukrainians infected with these bacteria are dying at higher rates than those infected in other European countries. The three most dangerous genera of bacteria are: Pseudomonas, Acinetobacter, and Klebsiella. All pose a major risk of causing sepsis. Klebsiella baumannii creates “biofilms” that can cover surfaces and can spread through the air. These biofilms are generally resistant to standard cleaning methods.
One of the causes of the rise of antibacterial-resistant strains in Ukraine is the limited supply of antibiotics. Some doctors prescribe low doses of antibiotics to ensure that everyone receives treatment, but these doses are often not enough to fully wipe out an infection; the bacteria that survive are the ones most resistant to antibiotics, and with the weaker strains eliminated, they resistant strains have room to proliferate. Compounding this problem is that soldiers are frequently moved from various medical facilities, enabling the spread of diseases they are infected with. Antibiotic-resistant diseases are common in the civilian population, too. Lviv hospitals are a particular hotspot for these strains. Lviv is only 70 km from the Polish border, increasing the risk that these strains will become international more easily. An analysis of 6,800 samples from Lviv’s hospital complex showed that at most, 30% of bacteria are still susceptible to antibiotic treatment. Normally, 80% would be expected to be susceptible. Ukraine’s economy isn’t strong enough to import the extra-powerful antibiotics that may treat the toughest strains. Soviet-era problems complicate the matter on top of everything else. Ukraine had easily accessible antibiotics, and some pharmacies provided antibiotics without a prescription. It used to be common to treat fevers with antibiotics. This overuse made antibiotic resistance higher in Ukraine than elsewhere in Europe, even prior to the 2022 full-scale invasion.
The war also has more direct, immediate impacts on medical treatment. The Dnipro State Medical University hospital is next to Pivdenmash, a Soviet-era aerospace factory that made ballistic missiles and spacecraft. Strikes on Pivdenmash often damage the hospital, which performs up to 50 operations per day. Most of these operations are on soldiers. The chief of surgery, Dmytro Balyk, said that Acinetobacter is the most challenging bacterial infection to deal with at the hospital. He said that ¼ of all patients infected with it have pandrug resistance. [resistant to all or nearly all drugs]. The hospital does its best to isolate these patients. Acinetobacter is treatable by removing dead tissue and by creating a vacuum over the wound, which starves the bacteria of oxygen. Many patients treated with these methods, combined with antiseptics and antibiotics, are successfully cured; however, if the infection has spread to the blood, there may be no treatment options left. Hospitals in Ukraine are capable of culturing and testing which strains of infections individuals have and then creating a careful antibiotic regimen to target them specifically, but the results of these tests may take up to a week to come back, and for urgent cases, waiting for results is unthinkable. There are more rapid tests available on an individual basis, including experimental DNA sequencing. There is a commercially available test that can identify 364 antibiotic resistance genes, but there is a Ukraine-specific test in the works that limits the testing to the 10 most problematic/abundant resistance genes in the country, shortening the time it takes for test results to come back. These tests are expected to be 2-3 times faster than the current methods being used. One of the scientists working on this new type of test aims for test kits to become available next year.
Pandrug-resistant Klebsiella is the most troubling disease facing Ukrainians. Roughly 80% of Klebsiella strains in Ukraine have genes providing them resistance to Carbapenem antibiotics. Klebsiella can acquire resistance from other nearby bacteria without having to develop it itself. It was reported that in 2023, a Ukrainian soldier infected with pandrug-resistant Klebsiella died from sepsis after suffering from 6 resistant bacterial strains at once, including a pandrug-resistant Klebsiella. Klebsiella can cause bloodstream infections, ventilator-associated pneumonia, urinary tract infections, and abscesses. Klebsiella can survive without oxygen. Some Ukrainian doctors say it is rare to find a strain of Klebsiella that can be treated with antibiotics. Before the war, these strains were rare.
Fortunately, Ukraine is working on solutions to the Klebsiella issue. One of these solutions is attacking it with 2 drugs at once: azithromycin and Meropenem. So far, more than 100 patients have been treated with this or other similar combinations of drugs with a reported 90% success rate. A Ukrainian soldier arrived in the hospital in March, suffering from a fractured leg and multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Proteus mirabilis. Standard treatments failed. The doctor put him on azithromycin and meropenem for 10 days. The Proteus mirabilis was cleared up, so the doctor switched to a combination of piperacillin and tazobactam in order to combat the Pseudomonas. The infection was cleared up in 2 weeks. If this treatment failed, the soldier likely would have had his leg amputated to save his life. A Ukrainian soldier sent for treatment in the Netherlands spent 5 months getting treated for the 14 different strains of Acinetobacter baumannii. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Dutch hospitals have seen a dramatic increase in the number of extremely antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections. Before the war, they were seeing 1-2 per year, and now they see 10-15. Hospitals in Europe isolate Ukrainian patients and extensively decontaminate wards to prevent the spread of these bacteria.
Children’s hospitals in Lviv show significantly higher rates of antibiotic-resistant bacteria than children’s hospitals in Kyiv. In Kyiv, 59% of Klebsiella infections can be treated with carbapenems, compared to just 28% in Lviv. Acinetobacter can be treated 37% of the time in Kyiv with carbapenems and 21% of the time in Lviv. Pseudomonas can be treated 53% of the time with carbapenems and only 24% in Lviv. Treating children can be harder because fewer antibiotics are approved for use on children. Some are looking for a totally new approach: treating wounded soldiers, all of them, as if they were attacked with bioweapons. The strategy involves applying aggressive decontamination and antiseptics as close to the front lines as is practicable, cutting the spread of resistant strains as early in the chain of transmission as possible.
A delegation of Ukrainians met in Washington, DC, to try to negotiate a deal to sell tens of millions of drones to the US. The deal has backing from both Trump and Zelenskyy. The delegation presented various drones, how they operate, and what the best situations to use them in are. Which exact models presented are unknown. Aerial drones were surely presented, but it is possible or even likely that ground and naval drones were also presented. The US military is currently testing long-range drones that Ukraine has developed. A spokesman for Ukraine’s Brave1 initiative said that a deal would benefit both the US and Ukraine, as the US requires more drones than it can currently produce and Ukraine can produce more than it can afford to build, and a partnership between the two nations would lead to additional innovations as well. Additionally, Ukraine has real combat experience with these drones, so it has insight and experience that the US lacks. Finalizing any drone deal is expected to take months and may take years to fully implement.
Reuters reported that Trump is unlikely to sell Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine. Citing unnamed US officials, Reuters said that the US was more likely to provide shorter range missiles or let Europe buy longe-range missiles and then provide them to Ukraine. Russia released various threats in regards to the potential provision of Tomahawk missiles. Previously, JD Vance said that the US was considering Ukraine’s request for Tomahawks.
A training facility for both Ukrainian and NATO troops, Camp Jomsborg, opened in Poland on October 1. It is capable of training up to 1,200 people at a time. This is the largest Western training facility for Ukrainian troops. Ukrainian troops will not only get training there, but they will be able to share their expertise in drone warfare with NATO partners.
Russia's oil and gas tax revenues fell to $7.1 billion in September, down 25% from the same month last year. The Finance Ministry reported the figures on October 3. Russia's budget deficit reached $49.4 billion by the end of August. The deficit exceeded the government's annual target and forced Russia to cut planned military spending for 2026. Russia's total oil and gas revenues dropped $20.7 billion since January to $80.4 billion. Mineral extraction tax revenues from oil fell 32% in September compared to last year. Gas tax revenues dropped 52%. Export duty revenues fell 27%. Lower global oil prices, sanctions, and a stronger ruble reduced Russia's export-related income. The Finance Ministry proposed raising the value-added tax from 20% to 22% on September 24 to help offset the costs of the war in Ukraine. Russia planned to spend $164.5 billion on defense in 2025, which is about 32% of all expenditures. In 2026, that figure will decrease by $7.3 billion or about 4.4%. Sberbank CEO German Gref stated on September 5 that Russia's GDP growth slowed to near zero in July and August after a drop in the April-June timeframe. He described the second quarter as stagnant.
Swedish company TERASi designed the RU1, a pocket-sized radio that creates secure wireless links. The device transmits data in a laser-like beam between two units, making interception difficult. TERASi sells the hardware outright rather than offering subscriptions, meaning Ukraine can control the infrastructure and aren't at the whims of third parties. Elon Musk cut Starlink coverage multiple times, including during Ukraine's Kherson counteroffensive in September 2022, disrupting drones, artillery targeting, and troop coordination. He later refused to extend service near Crimea for a naval drone attack. The Wall Street Journal reported Putin asked Musk to restrict coverage over Taiwan at China's request.
Quote of the Day:
“May I introduce… the R-7. … Thrust, at lift-off, will be over 403 tons. More than anything achieved before…."
"What is that in hedgehogpower?”
“That would be approximately 6.4 million."
-A conversation between Sergei Korolev and Nikita Sergeyevich."