标签： Europe

In a dramatic escalation of Ukraine’s cross-border aerial campaign, Ukrainian long-range drones have completely destroyed a major logistics warehouse operated by Russia’s largest e-commerce giant Wildberries — marking the second strike on the same facility in just over a month, local Russian authorities confirmed Wednesday.

Located in Russia’s Tambov region, hundreds of kilometers southeast of Moscow and far from the Ukrainian front lines, the depot first came under Ukrainian attack on July 18. That initial strike killed seven people and opened a new chapter of sustained drone assaults on Wildberries infrastructure that has rippled across Russian territory in recent weeks. Often compared to U.S. retail giant Amazon for its market dominance and central role in Russian domestic commerce, Wildberries has become a key target for Ukrainian forces. Kyiv officials say the company’s product catalog includes military equipment and technical components that directly support Russia’s military operations in Ukraine.

The expanded drone campaign, enabled by advances in Ukrainian unmanned aerial technology developed after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, has hit dozens of Wildberries facilities across Russia in recent weeks. Beyond disrupting potential military supply chains, the strikes advance Ukraine’s war objectives in two critical ways: they sow uncertainty and anxiety among Russian civilian populations living far from the combat zone, and they create growing strain on the Russian domestic economy.

The strike on the Tambov depot left two people injured, regional governor Yevgeny Pervyshov confirmed. A 19-year-old man suffered a concussion, while a 49-year-old woman sustained a broken finger. Wildberries itself acknowledged the overnight attack and subsequent fire, confirming all personnel were evacuated from the facility, but declined to comment further on the scale of damage. In a separate drone incident Wednesday in Russia’s Lipetsk region, south of Moscow, a falling drone crashed into a residential home and sparked a fire, killing two people and wounding two more, regional governor Igor Artamonov reported.

Wildberries is not the only critical economic target Ukraine has prioritized in its recent drone offensive. Ukrainian forces have also repeatedly targeted Russian oil infrastructure, the backbone of Russia’s state revenue and global economic power as one of the world’s top energy producers. On Wednesday, unconfirmed reports emerged of a large fire at an oil refinery in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, an area that has faced multiple Ukrainian drone strikes in recent months. Regional governor Gleb Nikitin confirmed an attack had caused damage to an unspecified industrial facility, but offered no further details on the site’s identity or the extent of destruction.

The latest wave of drone strikes comes amid consistent heavy exchanges of fire across the conflict. Russia has responded to the nightly drone assaults with large-scale missile and bomb attacks on Ukrainian territory, launching volleys of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, glide bombs and jet-powered drones that have killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians since the full-scale invasion began. On Wednesday, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that its air defense systems shot down 426 Ukrainian drones overnight across 15 Russian regions and the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula. Ukraine has stated its strategy of launching mass drone attacks nearly every night is designed to overwhelm Russian air defense networks, increasing the likelihood that drones reach their intended targets.

In the wake of the strike, Russian President Vladimir Putin has already issued a new decree that allows the Russian state to seize control of private infrastructure damaged in Ukrainian drone attacks, according to related reporting on the conflict.

The long-awaited release of U.S. Marine veteran Robert Gilman from Russian custody earlier this month has brought his family a long-desired homecoming, but it has also cast a harsh new spotlight on the plight of dozens of other American detainees still held in Russian prisons, many of whom are battling untreated health conditions in substandard correctional healthcare systems.

As Harold Jezler, whose wife Olga has been detained in Russia since 2022, watched media coverage of Gilman’s return, the 36-year-old’s gaunt, visibly unwell appearance struck a nerve. Jezler, who already waits anxiously for updates on Olga’s progressing endometriosis, says Gilman’s condition raised alarming questions about how the U.S. prioritizes detainee releases. “You just look at the pictures and the guy is not in good shape. It’s concerning for me and for all the families, I would imagine,” Jezler told The Associated Press in an interview. “Is this what it takes for the government to really make a move and prioritize this — that the person is basically in dire straits? It was a very bittersweet thing to see that.”

Gilman is only the latest American to be released from Russian custody in a years-long string of prisoner exchanges and negotiated releases. But his freedom has done nothing to resolve the crisis of the dozens of Americans still behind bars there. Advocates and family members report that many of the remaining detainees are living with serious, unmanaged medical conditions, receiving inadequate care that has amplified urgency for renewed diplomatic action to bring them home.

Among those still detained are a Navy veteran living with chronic gastrointestinal illness, a man with a life-altering autoimmune disease, another detainee with severe, untreated dental damage, and Olga Jezler, who was diagnosed with endometriosis after her 2022 arrest. Olga traveled to Russia to visit her sister, who was battling cancer, and was detained on charges of possessing legally permitted CBD capsules. Her condition has progressed, with a growth on her ovary steadily expanding; her family fears Russian medical providers will opt to fully remove the ovary rather than pursue fertility-sparing treatment that would standard in the U.S., permanently ending her chance to have children. The couple recently marked their seventh wedding anniversary, the fifth they have spent apart. “She’s been there way over half our marriage,” Harold Jezler lamented.

Eric Lebson, chief strategy officer for Global Reach — an organization that advocates for hostages and detainees and represents multiple Americans jailed in Russia — says there is no excuse for waiting until detainees are on the brink of death to prioritize their release. “These are American citizens who are innocent of violations of Russian law. They’re being held in Russia because they are Americans or because they have American status, and we shouldn’t need to wait for their health to be on the brink of death for there to be an urgency to bring them home,” Lebson said.

Former detainee Paul Whelan, a Michigan man who spent more than five years in Russian custody on baseless espionage charges before being released in a 2024 high-profile prisoner swap, says he has firsthand knowledge of the poor quality of Russian prison healthcare. Whelan, who believes he received better care than most detainees due to his high-profile status and value as a bargaining chip, described systemic deficiencies during his detainment. When COVID-19 spread through Russian prisons, he says authorities distributed extra raw onions as a supposed immunity boost. Prisoners with damaged teeth typically had them pulled instead of receiving restorative care, first-aid supplies were so scarce that inmates had to fashion makeshift bandages, and fresh produce could only be obtained by bartering with guards. When Whelan finally received emergency middle-of-the-night surgery for a hernia he had complained about for months, he watched medical staff pick up dropped instruments off the floor and put them directly back into the surgical tray. “The poor conditions are part of the punishment,” Whelan explained. “You are supposed to get less of everything than normal citizens would get.”

The poor state of Russian prison healthcare is not a new revelation. The issue has drawn international scrutiny for decades, dating back to the 2009 death of Russian whistleblower lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died from untreated pancreatitis. More recently, U.S. Marine veteran Trevor Reed reported severe health complications including coughing up blood, lung pain, and a broken rib before his 2022 release.

Gilman, a Massachusetts teacher who had been detained since 2020 on disputed assault charges the U.S. government calls false, was in extremely poor condition by the time he was released. Lebson says Gilman spent 47 days in a “dissociative stupor” from prison abuse before being transferred to a hospital, where he was placed on a feeding tube and handcuffed to his bed. Liz Richards, director of hostage advocacy and research at the Foley Foundation, says images of Gilman’s frail condition on his flight home confirm he never received the care he needed while imprisoned. “I really do think Russia realized, if we don’t release him, he is going to die, and that would create an international incident between our two countries — to have a Marine Corps veteran, an American, die in custody in Russia because of their treatment,” Richards said.

The current crisis is exemplified by the case of 59-year-old Chuck Zimmerman, who was intercepted by the Russian navy in international waters in June 2022 while sailing from the U.S. to New Zealand. Russian authorities charged him with transporting firearms on his yacht, though his representatives note he voluntarily disclosed the weapons after arriving at the Black Sea port of Sochi. He was sentenced to five years in prison, and within months began experiencing excruciating stomach pain so severe he induced vomiting to find temporary relief. Initial Russian tests failed to identify the cause, but independent medical consultations arranged by advocacy groups point to possible diagnoses including a gastric ulcer, pancreatitis, or a hiatal hernia with gastric bypass disorder. “It’s heart-wrenching to know that he’s having to make himself do that to stop the pain,” said his sister Robin Stultz. “It’s hard for me to sit down and eat dinner knowing that he’s throwing up his.”

In recent weeks, 16 U.S. senators sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, citing Gilman’s weakened condition to push for more aggressive action to secure the release of five detained Americans beyond Zimmerman and Jezler: Aleksandr Antonov, who lives with a traumatic brain injury; Andre Khachatoorian, jailed for nearly five years with an autoimmune disease; and David Barnes, who needs urgent dental surgery. Other Americans still in Russian custody include Stephen Hubbard, accused of fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine and classified as wrongfully detained by the U.S., and Travis Leake, an American rock musician held on drug charges. Richards estimates that roughly 28 Americans are currently detained in Russia, with six classified as wrongfully detained by the U.S. government.

In response to inquiries, the U.S. State Department said it is aware of concerns about inadequate medical care for detained Americans and continues to raise the issue directly with Russian authorities. The Russian Federal Penitentiary Service did not respond to requests for comment.

Since the start of April this year, Russia has dramatically ramped up targeted strikes against civilian fuel filling stations across Ukraine, a campaign that has killed and injured dozens of civilians, rendered key transport routes without operational fuel infrastructure, and forced widespread changes to daily life for Ukrainian motorists, new data from independent analysts and think tanks confirms. As of late August, at least 246 Ukrainian petrol stations have been hit by Russian drone and missile attacks, according to Oleksandr Sirenko, an energy analyst at Kyiv-based think tank Nafto Rynok (Oil Market).

The frequency of these attacks has accelerated sharply in recent months. Open-source non-profit organization the Centre for Information Resilience verified 114 confirmed strikes on filling stations in July alone, a 72% increase from the 66 attacks recorded in June. The targeting strategy has also evolved: initial strikes relied on small, remote-controlled drones, but Russian forces have increasingly deployed larger, far more destructive Iranian-made Shahed drones in recent months. Each Shahed drone costs an estimated $20,000 to $50,000, a cost that outstrips the value of many small regional filling stations. Sirenko told the BBC that one petrol station was hit by five separate Shahed attacks, a striking example of the resources Russia has committed to this campaign.

The human and logistical costs of the strikes have been felt acutely in frontline regions across the country. On Monday, two drone attacks on petrol stations in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city in the country’s northeast, wounded two civilians. Just one week prior, a similar strike on a filling station outside Kryvyi Rih killed three people. In response to the growing threat, Ukrainian law enforcement has issued urgent public guidance: motorists must leave filling stations immediately and even abandon their vehicles if air raid sirens sound, with authorities emphasizing that safety outweighs property. “You can fix your car, but you won’t get your life back,” a Dnipropetrovsk region police force noted in its public warning.

Large swathes of critical infrastructure have already been knocked offline. The major highway connecting Kharkiv and Dnipro, two of Ukraine’s largest cities, now has no functioning petrol stations left. All filling stations surrounding Opishnya, a large village in Poltava region, have been destroyed. Local village chief Mykola Riznyk laid out Russia’s clear strategic goal in a public video posted to Facebook: “You can see our enemy’s strategy. They want to deprive us of fuel.” In response, local authorities have begun stockpiling small caches of fuel scattered across multiple hidden locations to avoid further targeted losses. In the partially occupied Kherson region, almost half of all filling stations in Ukrainian-controlled territory have ceased operations, and remaining sites face near-daily drone attacks, according to deputy regional administration head Oleksandr Tolokonnikov. In Trostyanets, a 20,000-person town near Ukraine’s northeastern border with Russia, every petrol station has been destroyed. Local authorities have adapted by dispensing fuel directly from mobile tanker trucks that change locations constantly to avoid detection.

Ukrainian civilians have rapidly adapted to the new threat, with widespread compliance with safety guidance. “Fill up quickly and move on,” Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov advised local drivers, a rule that most motorists now follow strictly. Oleksandr Melnychuk, head of strategic marketing at major Ukrainian fuel chain BRSM Nafta, told reporters that customer behavior has shifted dramatically: “Clients aren’t browsing the aisles anymore, looking at what we’ve got on our shelves. They fill up and are keen to get on their way as soon as possible.” BRSM Nafta has lost eight stations to attacks and is rebuilding two more, and has implemented a series of protective measures for remaining locations: building concrete customer shelters at forecourts, installing anti-drone netting, reducing working hours, and cutting on-site staff numbers to minimize casualties if an attack occurs. Southern Ukrainian resident Kateryna Stokolya, a driver based in Mykolaiv, said most civilians have accepted new restrictions that close filling stations during air raids, with no signs of panic buying or public unrest. “Security comes first. If you can’t fill up now, you’ll fill up later. There are no queues or panic buying,” she explained. Stokolya echoed other analysts in noting that Russia’s core goal for the campaign is to erode public morale: “[They want] terrorising the public so we force the government to capitulate or accept agreements that do not favour Ukraine.”

Despite the widespread disruption and loss of civilian life, the campaign has so far failed to achieve its goal of crippling Ukraine’s overall fuel supply, analysts and official data show. The National Bank of Ukraine estimates that only 4% of the country’s total filling stations have been damaged or destroyed, and the impact on national fuel markets has been minimal. Increased sales in regions further from the front line and border have fully offset losses from destroyed and damaged sites, the bank’s report found. Unlike Russia, which relies on large, vulnerable domestic oil refineries, Ukraine imports nearly all of its fuel via road tankers, and its market is structured around a dense network of independent filling stations that provide alternatives when individual sites are hit. “You curse and drive on to another petrol station. OK, you travel for 10km more than you bargained for, but that’s not such a big problem,” Sirenko explained. He added that most attacks leave the most valuable infrastructure — underground fuel tanks — intact, and that geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and Iran have had a far larger impact on domestic fuel prices in Ukraine than Russian strikes.

Ironically, while Russia’s campaign against Ukrainian filling stations has had limited strategic impact, Ukraine’s own campaign of drone strikes against Russian oil refinery infrastructure has triggered widespread fuel shortages across almost all regions of Russia. Last week, major Russian newspaper Izvestia reported that only 28% of Russian filling stations currently have available petrol for sale, a crippling shortage that has disrupted domestic economic activity across the country.

Weeks after a historic mass migration event that put unprecedented strain on Spain’s North African exclave of Ceuta, the Spanish national government has issued a formal apology to local residents and announced sweeping changes to the country’s immigration and asylum legislation to address long-standing systemic gaps.

In testimony before a parliamentary committee, Defence Minister Margarita Robles delivered the official apology on behalf of the Socialist government led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. “I want to apologise to all those who may have felt, or who even still feel, abandoned or not sufficiently cared for,” Robles stated, adding that she had directly observed the widespread anxiety, sense of abandonment, and insecurity that has gripped the local community since the crisis unfolded.

The emergency began on July 30 and 31, when more than 72,000 migrants crossed the border from Morocco into Ceuta, a small Spanish territory located on the northern coast of Africa. Most migrants bypassed the fortified border barrier by swimming around it, according to official accounts. Ceuta Mayor Juan Jesús Vivas has confirmed that at least 100 migrants died during the dangerous mass crossing, a death toll that has drawn international attention to the risks migrants face attempting to reach European territory.

While the vast majority of those who crossed returned to Morocco within hours of entering Ceuta, several thousand remain in the exclave to this day. Among those still in Ceuta are many unaccompanied children, and the majority of the remaining migrants lack formal shelter, forcing them to sleep in open-air public spaces including beaches and city streets. With Ceuta’s total permanent population standing at just 84,000, local residents and Ceuta’s regional government have repeatedly complained that the ongoing presence of thousands of unhoused migrants is completely unsustainable, piling mounting political pressure on Sánchez’s national government to take decisive action.

In response to the crisis, the Sánchez administration has formally declared a national security emergency in Ceuta, centralizing all crisis management efforts under national control. The government has appointed Territorial Policy Minister Ángel Víctor Torres to lead and coordinate the national response, removing the Ceuta local government from its previous leadership role in managing the emergency.

Parallel to the emergency management restructuring, the government has announced a comprehensive overhaul of Spain’s migration and asylum laws, designed to bring Spanish policy fully into alignment with updated European Union regulations. Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska stated that the reforms are intended to create a migration process that is orderly, efficient, and maintains all possible legal and humanitarian guarantees for migrants.

Key changes to the legislation include cutting the maximum period of time undocumented migrants can be held for medical screenings, biometric data collection, and initial legal evaluation from the maximum allowed seven days under EU rules to just three days. The reforms will also introduce a two-tiered processing system for asylum claims, which is designed to speed up consideration of cases classified as urgent.

Despite the flurry of government action, the response has left critical questions unresolved, most notably a public contradiction between top cabinet officials over advance warnings of the mass crossing. Robles told parliament that Spain’s CNI intelligence agency shared information with security forces about a possible imminent large-scale crossing shortly before the event occurred, but Grande-Marlaska appeared to directly contradict this account. “There was no report that hinted that on 30 July what eventually happened was going to happen,” he said. Robles later clarified that the advance information was not shared via a formal written report, leaving uncertainty over how thoroughly the threat was communicated to on-the-ground security teams.

Sánchez has publicly blamed human trafficking networks and viral social media content encouraging migration for the mass crossing. But many political opponents and analysts have pointed the finger at the Moroccan government, which has a long history of controlling migration flows through the Ceuta and Melilla borders to exert political pressure on Madrid and the European Union.

Speaking during questioning of Robles in parliament, Esther Muñoz, a lawmaker with the conservative opposition People’s Party, argued that the crisis was years in the making. “The crisis in Ceuta didn’t begin on 30 July,” Muñoz said. “It’s been brewing for years and you know it, because you know that [the Moroccan authorities] have spent years sizing us up, sizing up our ability to respond and our willingness to do so.”

The emergency has also amplified long-simmering geopolitical tensions over territorial claims to Ceuta and its sister exclave Melilla. Just last week, Moroccan Justice Minister Abdellatif Ouahbi reaffirmed his country’s claim to the territories, stating Morocco holds “historical and geographical right” to the cities and calling for formal bilateral negotiations with Spain on the issue.

Robles rejected the claim outright during her parliamentary testimony, stating that she would not allow “any minister from any government, in this case Morocco, to question the Spanish status of Ceuta and Melilla.”