A manufacturing plant in Russia’s Tatarstan region has significantly scaled up its production of Iranian-designed drones, using a range of Chinese components, and recruiting a low-skilled workforce of Russian teenagers and African women,

Both Russia and Ukraine expanded the use of drones in 2024 as a relatively cheap means of warfare that requires an opponent to use a much more expensive air defense system. Moscow and Kyiv acquired 1.

Ukraine's Air Force has carried out a precise strike on a factory producing ballistic missile fuel in Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, in Russiaʼs Rostov Oblast. Source: Centre for Strategic Communications (StratCom) of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Telegram Details: The military reported that the factory targeted was used by the Russians for producing solid propellant for the ballistic missiles which they use to strike critical and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.

The Finnish authorities said the tanker might be part of Russia’s shadow fleet, which emerged as a way to circumvent Western-imposed price caps on Russian oil transported by sea. The caps were introduced several months after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Finland has seized an oil tanker suspected of having severed undersea power and internet cables, with Finnish authorities saying the vessel may have been part of Russia's "shadow fleet" of ships aimed at skirting Western sanctions.

Damage to the power cable in the Baltic Sea is the latest in a spate of murky disruptions to undersea cables that have put European authorities on high alert.