Jul 31, 2026

Overnight into July 31, Ukraine reached deeper into Russia than it ever has. Its drones set fire to the Lukoil refinery in Volgograd — one of Russia’s ten largest, and the biggest fuel producer in the country’s south — along with a vast Wildberries logistics hub in the same city.

But the striking part was not where it began; it was how far it went. From Volgograd, the drones kept flying — another 1,100 km east, all the way to Tatarstan, where residents of Nizhnekamsk reported more than 30 explosions near its refineries. President Zelensky said the night’s targets sat between 500 and 1,300 km from Ukraine. An aircraft plant was also hit in occupied Yevpatoria, Crimea. In Volgograd itself, Russia admitted what it usually hides: one woman killed and eight people hurt. The message was distance — almost nothing behind the front is now out of range.

THE NIGHT OVER UKRAINE
Russia’s answer came in the dark: around 255 Shahed drones, of which air defences brought down close to 200; the rest struck 14 locations. Over the day, 9 people were killed and 48 wounded, from Dnipropetrovsk in the east to Kherson in the south. But the most unsettling piece of this barrage did not land in Ukraine at all. One of Russia’s cruise missiles — a Kh-101, Warsaw has now confirmed, built only this spring in a factory near Moscow — overshot the border and crashed in a field in eastern Poland, near Lublin. Polish investigators, joined by a Ukrainian expert, examined the wreckage; it carried, they said, a significant charge of explosive. PM Tusk pointed squarely at Moscow — but stopped short of invoking NATO’s Article 4. His deputy called it what it plainly was: a test.

THE SANCTIONS VICE
In Washington, the pressure kept building. The sweeping sanctions bill named for the late Senator Lindsey Graham is now expected to clear the full Senate this week, with a broad bipartisan majority — tariffs of up to 100% on countries that keep buying Russian energy, fresh measures against the shadow fleet that moves Russia’s oil, and sanctions on Putin’s inner circle. The one brake is the calendar: the House does not return from recess until late August. And on the phone, Zelensky spoke with Vice President Vance — top of the list, as ever, the Patriot interceptors Ukraine needs to stop nights like the last one.

RUSSIAN LOSSES & FRONTLINE
Russia’s losses ran on much as before: 1,340 more soldiers in a day, its total now above 1,446,000, and its drone tally past 435,000. On the ground, the fighting stayed fierce but static — 269 clashes along the line, the heaviest around Kostiantynivka, where 45 Russian assaults were repelled, and Pokrovsk, with another 35. No settlement changed hands.