While the Western media continues to hype Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russia as incredible military achievements that are sapping Russia’s will to fight, the reality is that Russia continues an unrelenting bombing and missile campaign that is destroying critical Ukrainian assets and infrastructure from Kyiv to Odessa.
On July 18–19, 2026 (primarily overnight into July 19), Russia conducted a major combined missile and drone attack, with Kyiv as the primary target. This was described as one of the largest ballistic missile assaults on the capital since the start of the war in February 2022. Reports indicate more than 40 ballistic missiles (including Iskander-M, S-400, and possibly Zircon hypersonic types), plus guided air-launched missiles (Kh-59/69) and others, destroyed targets across Kyiv. Multiple waves targeted Kyiv over roughly 30–60 minutes. In addition, Russia launched over 90–125 Shahed-type, Gerbera, Italmas, and decoy drones launched from various directions (Russia and occupied Crimea).
The previous day, July 17-18, Russia launched seven missiles and 90 drones on the Odesa Oblast. The missile mix was two Iskander-M ballistic missiles, two Onyx anti-ship missiles, and three Kh-59/69 air-to-surface missiles, alongside the 90 drones of various types. This attack has effectively closed the ports at Odessa and Nykolaiv and marks Russia’s a complete break with the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI), which was brokered by UN Secretary-General António Guterres and Turkish President Erdoğan in the summer of 2022.
After the February 2022 invasion, Russia’s navy blockaded Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, and Ukraine mined its own coastal approaches to deter an amphibious assault. Between them, roughly 20+ million tonnes of grain were trapped in silos, unable to move — Ukraine being one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat, corn, barley, and sunflower oil. Global wheat prices spiked, and the countries most exposed were food-import-dependent states in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Horn of Africa (Egypt, Lebanon, Somalia, Yemen among them). The UN framed it explicitly as a hunger-crisis intervention, not a favor to Ukraine’s economy.
Alongside the BSGI, the UN signed a separate three-year Memorandum of Understanding with Russia, committing to help facilitate Russian food and fertilizer exports to world markets. This is the piece often forgotten… Russian food and fertilizer were never formally under Western sanctions, but Moscow argued that secondary effects — sanctions on banks (including SWIFT cutoffs), shipping insurance, and port access — were choking its own agricultural exports. This MoU was Russia’s price for allowing Ukrainian grain out and, despite Moscow’s persistent complaint that the UN failed to deliver on it, Russia did not enforce a blockade until now.
Although Russia finally withdrew from the BGSI on 17 July 2023, declaring the initiative dead and its Black Sea guarantees void, Russia did not move to impose a full blockade on Odessa nor did it routinely attack grain ships entering and leaving Odessa. The ports in Odessa and Nykolaiv were able to conduct normal trade activities, notwithstanding occasional Russian attack on the Odessa port and grain infrastructure.
Now the situation is completely different. Putin’s press spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, announced two weeks ago that Russia was at war with Ukraine and its NATO allies. This was a clear shift from describing the fight with Ukraine as a Special Military Operation. The intense and varied attacks by Russia since July 6 on Kyiv and other key cities still held by Ukraine, marks a decisive shift by Russia in how it will manage the war with Ukraine in the coming weeks and months.
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Nima and I discussed the day’s events in the Persian Gulf and wondered what, if any, new military strikes by Russia would be forthcoming:
Despite Trump’s vow to “unleash the gates of Hell” on Iran, the US strikes on Iran were limited in scope and scale. Most interesting is that Iran has not responded in any meaningful fashion. Pepe Escobar and I have learned that there are some serious diplomatic initiatives taking place behind the scenes with China playing a major role. We will know more tomorrow when I speak again with Mario:
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Russia Continues to Pound Ukraine
Aggregated summary from an independent source. Read the original at Sonar21.