The Wildberries warehouse in Koledino in Russia’s Moscow region burns after a Ukrainian attack, August 16, 2026
EA on Pakistan TV: Ukraine Counter-Attacks Rattle Kremlin and Rock Russian Economy
EA on TVP World and DW News: Why Did CIA Chief Ratcliffe Visit Moscow?
Friday’s Coverage: Kyiv’s 13 Air Raid Alerts on Thursday
UPDATE 0644 GMT:
Ukraine’s air defenses downed 233 of 267 drones launched by Russia overnight. Strikes were recorded at 15 locations.
UPDATE 0639 GMT:
Russia has sentenced an abducted Ukrainian woman to 15 years in prison over her alleged donations to Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
A “court” in occupied Crimea condemned Victoria Serhieieva, 56, on a charge of “treason”.
Serhieieva denies having made any such donations since 2021. She retracted her “confession”, saying it was extracted through torture.
UPDATE 0614 GMT:
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has hailed a briefing from US officials on the outcome of “meetings in Moscow”, welcoming the Trump Administration’s “realistic vision” for ending Russia’s invasion.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe made an unannounced visit to the Russian capital on Tuesday, following a phone call between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
No details of Ratcliffe’s conversation with the head of Russia’s State security service FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, have been made public. However, US officials have said that the CIA Director warned Russia about its hybrid warfare operations in Europe. They said he presented intelligence of Moscow’s mounting economic and military problems, making the case that Russia should engage in talks to end the invasion.
Zelensky posted:
I am grateful for the information and for the necessary tone of the conversation with Russia. We value the coordination of steps and the fact that America is advancing a quite realistic vision of what needs to be done and what must be done. Russia must end its war, and all conditions must be created for that to happen.
ORIGINAL ENTRY: Putting further pressure on the Russian economy, Ukraine has struck the warehouses of leading retailers inside Russia overnight.
Ukrainian forces attacked a logistics facility of Okon, Russia’s second largest online retailer, the sixth assault on the company in a week.
The site is in Rostov-on-Don in southwest Russia. The company claimed a “small fire” was immediately extinguished, but operations have been suspended.
Elsewhere in the Rostov region, a warehouse of appliance and electronics retailer DNS was set ablaze. Rostov Governor Yuri Slyusar said drone debris was found on the territory of a warehouse, without identifying the facility or referring to any damage.
In the nearby village of Leninskoye, a warehouse of the Russian supermarket chain Chizhik was hit.
Slyusar claimed seven people were injured in the attacks, with two adults and two children hospitalized.
Ukraine began its campaign against retailers with attacks on Russia’s largest online company Wildberries from mid-July. The strikes have inflicted billions of dollars of damage on the firms and the businesses who supply stock to them.
Wildberries is seeking Government support. Its CEO Tatyana Kim, Russia’s richest woman, has lost more than $2 billion of her estimated $8.1 billion fortune.
