At 5 a.m. on July 26, a salvo of explosions interrupted the pre-dawn stillness in the Russian city of Stavropol when Ukrainian UAVs bombed the Signal Radio Plant, one of the nation’s most important defense electronics plants,

Russian attacks continued on Tuesday morning, with a drone strike leaving two utility company workers injured in the eastern city of Kostiantynivka. Serhiy Horbunov, head of the city’s Military Administration, called it “cynical aggression by Russian occupiers” against civilian infrastructure.

"Ukraine's Defense Procurement Agency (DPA) signed an additional Hr 158 billion ($3.8 billion) in contracts with domestic weapons manufacturers in the first six months of 2025, compared to the same period last year,

U.S. defence company Auterion will provide 33,000 artificial intelligence guidance kits for Ukrainian drones, funded by a $50 million Pentagon contract, it said on Monday.

The attack, which came just hours after President Trump gave the Kremlin a new deadline to work toward ending the war, was part of a wave across the country, the authorities said.

DA WEI is Director of the Center for International Security and Strategy and a Professor in the Department of International Relations at Tsinghua University.

Defense officials cited the example of Ukraine, which produces its own drone-simulator games to improve hand-eye coordination.

Ukraine’s early advantage in battlefield drone technology is eroding as Russian investment, industrial scaling and technological innovation reshape the aerial landscape of the conflict, particularly in the deployment of fibre-optic guided unmanned systems.