By New York Post (World News) | Created at 2026-08-15 22:35:50 | Updated at 2026-08-15 22:48:29
20 minutes ago
Russia suffered some of its most staggering losses of the war in July, while Kyiv made its largest territorial gains in more than a year, according to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.
Moscow’s military lost 42,860 men on the battlefield last month, which includes soldiers killed and wounded, the most since January 2025 — and the fourth bloodiest month since the start of the war in 2022.
With total casualties now allegedly nearing 1.5 million and recruitment increasingly becoming an obstacle for Russian President Vladimir Putin, the tyrant could soon be forced to engage in peace talks if he runs out of soldiers, experts have posited.
Putin has become so desperate in recent months, he’s had to lure his countrymen to join the war effort with false promises of “quiet service” — or recruit Africans under similarly deceitful schemes.
An estimated 30,000 to 50,000 North Koreans troops are being prepared to be deployed in Russia, according to Ukraine. The Putin ally already sent 15,000 soldiers back in 2024.
Ukraine, meanwhile, says it has liberated close to 300 square miles along the southern front, retaking 26 settlements along the frontline and placing them back under full Ukrainian control.
Kyiv has pushed Russian troops back more than seven miles on the southern front, near the intersection of the Dnipro, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions, through small attacks to gradually erode Russian control gradually.
Overnight int the past day, Ukrainian forces fired missiles deep inside Russia — causing “significant damage” at a military airbase, an oil depot and a state-run aerospace center.
Long-range Flamingo missiles struck the Savasleyka airbase in western Russia, 435 miles from the border. It houses MIG-31 jets carrying ballistic missiles that strike Ukrainian cities and villages, but it’s not known how many jets were hit in the attack.
Explosions were also heard in Samara, where Kyiv struck the Progress Rocket Space Center, one of the key enterprises of the state-run aerospace corporation Roscosmos.
“The progress center, which was involved, among other things, in producing electronics, was hit. Flamingo missiles were used — a good achievement,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
At some 560 miles from Ukraine’s border, it was Kyiv’s deepest strike into Russia of the war. Ivan Noskov, head of the Samara, called it a “massive attack.”
Kyiv also damaged an oil facility in Ust-Luga, which caught on fire, 500 miles from the border, Zelensky said.
“It is important that Russia’s war potential be reduced,” he wrote on X. “Peace is needed, and this must be evident in Russia – through concrete damage to specific facilities.”
Ukraine fired at least seven guided bombs, 17 Flamingo cruise missiles and 1,328 drones over the past day, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
Russia responded with 152 Shahed drones, killing a 3-month-old child in Dnipro and injuring 49 others across Ukraine.
