A drone threat has been announced south of St. Petersburg shortly after US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, arrived in the city for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the Ukraine conflict. The warning comes just days after a massive Ukrainian drone barrage on the city and outskirts killed one person and injured 15 others.

Witkoff arrived at Pulkovo Airport on Wednesday morning. His motorcade headed for Constantine Palace, around 20 km southeast of St. Petersburg.

Shortly after arriving, Leningrad Region Governor Alexander Drozdenko announced a UAV threat in the airspace over Luga District, around 125 km south of the venue for the talks. The governor warned that mobile internet speeds could be reduced but did not specify the number, exact location, and direction of the drones, and did not report any interceptions.

Russia’s air regulator also imposed temporary airspace restrictions around Pulkovo Airport, citing flight safety. The facility earlier received Witkoff’s aircraft from Oslo, where he met with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky and European officials on Tuesday.

The alert follows Sunday’s unprecedented Ukrainian drone attack on St. Petersburg and the surrounding Leningrad Region. According to the Russian authorities, the strikes killed one person and injured 15, damaged residential buildings, and sparked fires at an oil terminal, oil depot, and industrial facilities.

Commenting on the raid at the time, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described it as “final manifestations of agony” of Ukraine. “The Kiev regime is fighting back [but] it cannot alter the course of history.”

Kremlin foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov said the Putin-Witkoff talks will center on the Ukraine conflict. This comes after the Oslo talks where the US, Ukraine, and Kiev’s Western backers discussed security guarantees, a postwar economic plan, and a broader European security architecture, according to Reuters.

https://rt-english.com/russia/647470-drone-alert-issued-putin-witkoff/

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ISW’s Shrinking War and the Drone Launched From Poland

 by Larry C. Johnson

If you get your picture of the war in Ukraine from the Institute for the Study of War, you could be forgiven for thinking Russia has spent 2026 standing still. According to reporting on ISW’s latest assessments, Russia’s actual territorial gains this year come to roughly 100 square kilometers, about 40 square miles, or a patch of ground smaller than the city of Washington, D.C. ISW’s admirers in the Ukrainian and Western press have turned that number into a headline: Putin, they say, has exaggerated his gains by a factor of 45.

I don’t buy it, and the numbers presented to Putin last week show why.

On October 16, Putin received a briefing from the Chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov. The headline figure: since January 1, about 6,500 square kilometers, roughly 2,500 square miles, and 310 settlements have come under Russian control. Since September 1 alone, Gerasimov reported more than 1,800 square kilometers and 92 settlements. In the Donetsk People’s Republic, about 500 square kilometers and 23 settlements changed hands in September and the first half of October. The Vostok group took 10 settlements and more than 180 square kilometers in eastern Zaporozhye. Luhansk is now entirely under Russian control. Ukraine holds just over 10 percent of the DPR and 16.5 percent of Zaporozhye oblast.

The briefing also described a security zone along the border with Sumy and Kharkov oblasts. Of a 660-kilometer strip, 465 kilometers, three-quarters of it, is now under Russian control. Building that zone alone accounted for more than 3,000 square kilometers.

These are not abstractions. The Defense Ministry’s weekly reports name the villages one by one. In the week of October 10 to 16: Lukashovo, Lobanovka, Reznikovo, Kupino, Nefedovka, Chernoye, Varvarovka and Nikolayevka in Kharkov oblast; Novotroitskoye, Petrovskoye and Lidino in the DPR; Nikolskoye in Zaporozhye. In the week of September 26 to October 2, ten more in Kharkov oblast alone. Add Dobropolye, Sergeyevka, Pervomaiskoye and Alekseyevo-Druzhkovka in the DPR, and in July the city of Konstantinovka.

Now try to fit that into ISW’s 100 square kilometers. Three hundred and ten settlements in 100 square kilometers works out to about a third of a square kilometer each, roughly 80 acres. That is not a village with its fields, roads and tree lines. That is a farmyard. A single town the size of Konstantinovka would swallow a large share of ISW’s entire annual total by itself.

You don’t have to take Moscow’s word for it, either. DeepState, the Ukrainian mapping project that no one has ever accused of being a Kremlin mouthpiece, counts about 1,300 square kilometers taken by Russia between January and mid-October. That is thirteen times ISW’s figure.

So how does ISW arrive at 100? Its number is a net figure. It subtracts ground that Ukraine claims it has retaken in its counteroffensives this year from ground Russia has captured, but there is no evidence to substantiate that claim. ISW also counts only advances it can confirm from geolocated imagery, which means its maps lag the front and systematically miss gains in areas where little footage escapes. The security zone in Sumy and Kharkov oblasts, much of it fields and forest with few cameras, is exactly the kind of ground that falls through that net.

Putin said Russia took 1,301 square kilometers in September; the Defense Ministry’s own mid-month figure was 670, and other Russian outlets reported 858. Some of the 6,500 is surely generous rounding, and some of it is the gray zone the Russian army controls but has not yet occupied. The truth is likely somewhere between DeepState’s 1,300 and Gerasimov’s 6,500. What it is not is 100. A figure that small is not analysis. It is reassurance for Western governments that would rather not ask what their policy has produced.

The second story of the week matters more, because it could widen the war.

On the night of October 18, Ukraine launched what the Russian Defense Ministry called more than 1,000 drones at Russia, the largest such attack of the war. St. Petersburg and Leningrad oblast took the brunt. The Petersburg oil terminal and the Ruchyi depot burned, a VK data center was hit, Pulkovo airport closed for eight hours, and at least one person was killed. One of those drones did not reach its target. It exploded in Lithuania’s Pasvalys district, hitting a moving car.

Lithuania’s defense minister, Robertas Kaunas, says the drone entered Lithuania from Polish airspace. Lithuania’s prime minister says there is “no doubt” it came from the Polish side, and Vilnius says it has credible evidence the drone crossed the Polish border. Ukraine has admitted the drone was Ukrainian and apologized, blaming Russian electronic warfare for pushing it off course. Warsaw, for its part, says its radars show no confirmation of a crossing, has denied leaked reports that the drone was launched inside Lithuania, and Prime Minister Donald Tusk has demanded an explanation from Kyiv. The two NATO allies have now set up a joint team to investigate.

Warsaw’s denials do not square with what I have learned, and the stray drone in Lithuania is the smaller part of the story. An independent source tells me that the drone that struck St. Petersburg was itself launched from a site inside Poland. This was not a Ukrainian weapon that wandered through Polish airspace by accident. The attack on Russia’s second city began on Polish soil. That is the difference between an embarrassing incident and an act of war. A strike on St. Petersburg flown from the territory of a NATO member makes Poland a participant in that strike, whatever its government says in public.

It also explains a lot. Russian media have taken to calling it the “Baltic route”: Ukrainian long-range drones flying up the NATO side of the border, through Polish and Baltic airspace that Russian air defenses cannot touch, and then turning east into Russia. Ukrainian drones bound for Russia have strayed into Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland several times this year. A launch point in Poland shortens the flight to St. Petersburg, keeps the drones out of Belarusian and Russian air defenses for most of the trip, and puts the operation under NATO’s air-defense umbrella. Lithuania’s officials, who have been more candid than Warsaw, have already said the drone that came down in their country crossed from the Polish side, which fits the same picture. Moscow is not going to treat the country that launched the strike on St. Petersburg as a bystander.

I expect it will. In public, the Kremlin has so far kept its powder dry. Peskov’s answer to the St. Petersburg strikes was that Russia is already hitting Ukraine “constantly,” and on October 20 the Defense Ministry reported strikes on the launch sites of Ukraine’s long-range drones. There has been no public threat against Poland yet. But Moscow rarely announces its responses in advance, and it has drawn a clear line before: a state that lets its territory be used to strike Russia becomes a party to the conflict.

Russia has options well short of open war and every incentive to use them: hitting the launch infrastructure itself, electronic warfare that spills across the border, drones and missiles probing Polish airspace as they did in September 2025, sabotage against the logistics hubs that feed Ukraine, and pressure on the Suwalki corridor between Belarus and Kaliningrad. Any of those could come quickly. Each carries a risk of escalation that nobody in Warsaw, Vilnius or Brussels has been asked to vote on, and NATO’s Article 5 was never meant to protect a member that launches attacks on Russia’s cities and then cries foul when Russia answers.

The lesson connects to the first half of this column. Western policy toward this war rests on a set of comforting numbers: Russia is barely advancing, Russia is running out of men, Russia will not dare respond. When the numbers are wrong, the policy built on them is wrong too. ISW’s 100 square kilometers tells Western leaders they can keep raising the stakes at no cost. A strike on St. Petersburg launched from Poland, with a stray drone exploding in a Lithuanian field, is a reminder that the cost is real, and that it is coming closer to home.

https://sonar21.com/isws-shrinking-war-and-the-drone-launched-from-poland/

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Rosenberg: US diplomatic push offers little hope for imminent Ukraine peace

After two days of diplomacy – in Norway's capital and Russia's St Petersburg – is the war in Ukraine any closer to ending?

"Good and constructive" is how Norway's prime minister described Tuesday's talks between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, US President Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff and European representatives.

In Oslo, the idea of a trilateral meeting at leaders' level was floated. The hope was that Steve Witkoff's trip to Russia would pave the way for President Vladimir Putin, Zelensky and Trump to meet and agree an end to the fighting.

But Putin has shown little desire to share a table with Zelensky - unless that table is in Moscow.

The Kremlin says it may be willing to resume trilateral talks next month in Abu Dhabi, but only at the technical level.

In a post on X, Steve Witkoff himself conceded that "there is still important work to do", though he claimed "President Trump remains committed to seeing this war end..."

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm98zn5j89kdo

LIKE THE REST OF THE WESTERN MEDIA PEN-PUSHERS AND POLITICIANS, ROSENBERG LIVES IN A DELUSION BUBBLE THAT BELIEVES RUSSIA IS LOSING OR NOR ADVANCING.... PUTIN WON'T BUDGE OR SHOULD NOT BUDGE FROM HIS POSITION WHICH IS SOMEWHAT LIKE THIS:

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT (WW3) HITS THE FAN:

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

THESE WILL ALSO INCLUDE ODESSA, KHERSON AND KHARKIV.....

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

TRANSNISTRIA TO BE PART OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION.

RESTORE THE RIGHTS OF THE RUSSIAN SPEAKING PEOPLE OF "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

RESTITUTE THE ORTHODOX CHURCH PROPERTIES AND RIGHTS

RELEASE THE OPPOSITION MEMBERS FROM PRISON

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE EU.....

EASY.

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

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.

Poland has accused Kiev of making unacceptable “suicidal” moves after the Ukrainian city of Lviv dedicated 2027 to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and its leader, Nazi collaborator Roman Shukhevich.

To celebrate the 120th anniversary of Shukhevich’s birth and mark 85 years since the creation of the militant group that perpetrated mass killings of ethnic Poles, Jews, and Russians, the Lviv Regional Council decided on Tuesday to organize “cultural, memorial, scientific, and mass media events,” as well as exhibitions and national-patriotic rallies.

The announcement was met with widespread condemnation in Poland, which regards the UPA as perpetrators of genocide against Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia and its leader, Shukhevich, as a key ‘architect’ of the massacres. From 1943 to 1945, Ukrainian nationalist militants murdered an estimated 100,000 ethnic Poles in the regions, which are now largely part of modern Ukraine.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called the move a “suicidal tactic,” and Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz called it “unacceptable.” Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski condemned the announcement, calling for the resolution’s key sponsor, Lviv regional lawmaker Svyatoslav Sheremet, to be placed on Poland’s travel ban list.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry attempted to downplay the incident, blaming the Lviv regional authorities for making the “harmful decision.” The ministry also said the regional council did not consult any central authorities regarding “the consequences of their actions for bilateral relations with Poland.”

The resolution ultimately vanished from the Lviv council’s website without any explanation. Speaking to Polish media on Wednesday, Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Bosacki said Warsaw received assurances from Kiev that the resolution would not be implemented.

“We take on faith the words of the administration of Vladimir Zelensky that this catastrophic decision will not be implemented,” Bosacki stated, calling the disappearance of the resolution from the council’s website a “good sign,” but cautioning against interpreting it as an official cancellation of the celebrations.

Ukraine’s increasingly open honoring of WWII-era nationalists and Nazi collaborators has drawn criticism from Warsaw, which remains one of Ukraine’s key backers in the conflict with Russia.

Poland regards the UPA and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which collaborated with Nazi Germany during the early stages of its 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, as perpetrators of genocide, while modern Ukraine cherishes them as freedom fighters and national heroes.

Earlier this year, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky named a military unit after the ‘Heroes of the UPA’ and established a ‘pantheon of outstanding Ukrainians’ at Kiev’s main military cemetery, where OUN leader and Nazi collaborator Andrey Melnik was reinterred with state honors in May.

https://rt-english.com/news/647503-poland-ukraine-nazi-collaborator/

THIS NEWS WON'T MAKE IT IN THE WESTERN MEDIA OR WILL BE DILUTED TO BLAME POLAND....

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