⚠️ 🇺🇦 🇷🇺 A major Ukrainian long-range drone operation is underway across Russia tonight, with explosions and fires already reported in Belgorod as UAV groups move along multiple attack vectors deeper into Russian territory. Russian monitoring channels have estimated roughly 400 UAVs involved across the broader operation, although that figure remains preliminary and highly uncertain. Belgorod is already seeing impacts. Videos from the city show explosions and fires during the ongoing attack, while local Russian authorities say six people have been injured, including three children. A 16-year-old is reported in serious condition. The scale of Ukrainian drone activity today was already unusually high before the current nighttime wave: Russia's Defense Ministry claimed 244 Ukrainian UAVs were intercepted between 08:00 and 20:00 Moscow time alone. Further groups are now being tracked toward Volgograd, Rostov and other regions, while additional UAV activity is reported over occupied Donetsk, Crimea and the Black Sea. Volgograd is particularly worth watching. Russian monitoring channels are again warning of drones approaching the city's oil infrastructure, barely a day after Ukrainian long-range strikes hit the Volgograd refinery. Earlier today, Zelensky told Reuters that Ukraine intends to intensify strikes against Russian oil refineries in response to Moscow's campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure. The ~400-drone estimate and reported flight routes remain based on Russian monitoring channels and should be treated as preliminary.

⚠️ FLYDUBAI FZ1073 UPDATE UAE prosecutors now formally describe Hamam al-Hammami’s actions as an attempted “terrorist attack,” saying the Omani first officer used the cockpit crash axe to attack Captain Smit Machchhar before trying to seize control of the aircraft. The finding marks an important shift from the UAE’s initial position, when terrorism was one of several possibilities under investigation. According to the UAE Prosecutor General, Hammami attacked Machchhar inside the cockpit with the aircraft’s emergency crash axe. The wounded captain managed to unlock the cockpit door, allowing passengers and crew to enter and overpower the first officer. Reuters’ reconstruction shows just how close FZ1073 came to disaster. Flying at roughly 34,000 feet over Saudi Arabia, the 737 MAX plunged more than 16,000 feet in just over 30 seconds and accelerated to around 600 knots during the violent sequence. The aircraft also suffered rudder damage. A reserve Flydubai pilot aboard the flight ultimately took control and landed safely at Tabuk. New reporting is also sharpening questions about how Hammami returned to a cockpit. AP reports that he passed Flydubai’s standard security screening before being hired, but a Gulf diplomat said the process focused primarily on criminal convictions and did not probe deeply into possible radicalization. Hammami had previously been removed from flying duties at Oman Air over concerns about extremist views. ⚠️ AP has also clarified another part of his employment history: Royal Air Maroc says Hammami underwent only about three months of theoretical training during a 2025 recruitment process and was ultimately not hired, contrary to the impression created by his now-deleted LinkedIn profile. Investigators from several regional countries, assisted by the United States and other Western governments, are now trying to determine whether Hammami acted alone or had links to an extremist organization. The UAE has formally classified the attempted attack as terrorism. What remains unresolved is whether anyone helped, encouraged or directed him. No publicly released evidence has established Iranian or other state involvement.

⚠️ RAF FAIRFORD UPDATE British investigators are examining whether the 25-year-old British-Iranian man arrested in London was a recruiter or key intermediary who enlisted the five original suspects as disposable proxies for the operation near the U.S.-used airbase. According to The Times, the sixth suspect was placed under surveillance after the initial arrests and is now being investigated as a potentially significant figure behind the group. Investigators reportedly believe the five young British men may have been recruited for relatively small sums of money, potentially without understanding who ultimately stood behind the operation. They are also examining whether the objective was not a conventional bombing but some form of disruptive security incident or “stunt” near RAF Fairford, potentially involving the petrol found inside three vans. Police have confirmed petrol was recovered but no improvised explosive device was found. One of the original five suspects also reportedly called the emergency services shortly before the arrests, an unusual detail investigators are considering as they reconstruct what the men believed they had been hired to do. These remain investigative theories reported by The Times, not established police findings. Counter Terrorism Policing has officially confirmed that the British-Iranian suspect was arrested on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts and that possible foreign-state involvement is under investigation. The British government has said there are “strong indications” Iran played a role, while Tehran denies involvement. The emerging question is whether investigators can establish a chain from the five alleged proxies, through the British-Iranian suspect, to whoever ultimately recruited, financed or directed the operation.

⚠️ 🇷🇺 A worker at one of Russia’s anti-plague institutes has died from plague in Siberia, triggering a quarantine and emergency containment operation involving nearly 200 people who may have come into contact with her. The woman, reportedly 27 or 28, worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute. She was hospitalized on September 29 with severe pneumonia, placed on a ventilator and died roughly two days later. Part of Shelekhov District Hospital has since been placed under quarantine. Authorities and Russian media have identified at least 197 potential contacts. Reports say 189 have been hospitalized for medical observation and preventive treatment, including 12 being monitored at the anti-plague institute itself. Irkutsk Governor Igor Kobzev says identified contacts currently show no signs of illness and laboratory tests have been negative. Some Russian media reports, however, say several people under observation have developed symptoms, with no secondary plague infection confirmed so far. Russia’s chief sanitary doctor, Anna Popova, traveled to Irkutsk and joined an emergency anti-epidemic commission as authorities deployed containment measures. How the woman became infected remains under investigation. Russian media, citing sources, report that she may have accidentally broken a test tube containing live plague bacteria while working at the laboratory and later told doctors about the incident. Another early account linked the infection to a recent work trip to Buryatia. Buryatia’s governor has rejected that version, saying she had not visited the republic and that the infection was unrelated to its natural plague reservoirs. There is also an important discrepancy in the official accounts. Irkutsk authorities have so far publicly described the case only as a “particularly dangerous infection,” without naming the pathogen. Buryatia’s governor, however, explicitly said the woman died from plague. Russian media have described the illness as pneumonic plague, but that specific form has not yet been publicly confirmed by Irkutsk health authorities. No secondary plague infection has been confirmed at this stage.

⚠️ FLYDUBAI FZ1073 UPDATE UAE prosecutors now formally describe Hamam al-Hammami’s actions as an attempted “terrorist attack,” saying the Omani first officer used the cockpit crash axe to attack Captain Smit Machchhar before trying to seize control of the aircraft. The finding marks an important shift from the UAE’s initial position, when terrorism was one of several possibilities under investigation. According to the UAE Prosecutor General, Hammami attacked Machchhar inside the cockpit with the aircraft’s emergency crash axe. The wounded captain managed to unlock the cockpit door, allowing passengers and crew to enter and overpower the first officer. Reuters’ reconstruction shows just how close FZ1073 came to disaster. Flying at roughly 34,000 feet over Saudi Arabia, the 737 MAX plunged more than 16,000 feet in just over 30 seconds and accelerated to around 600 knots during the violent sequence. The aircraft also suffered rudder damage. A reserve Flydubai pilot aboard the flight ultimately took control and landed safely at Tabuk. New reporting is also sharpening questions about how Hammami returned to a cockpit. AP reports that he passed Flydubai’s standard security screening before being hired, but a Gulf diplomat said the process focused primarily on criminal convictions and did not probe deeply into possible radicalization. Hammami had previously been removed from flying duties at Oman Air over concerns about extremist views. ⚠️ AP has also clarified another part of his employment history: Royal Air Maroc says Hammami underwent only about three months of theoretical training during a 2025 recruitment process and was ultimately not hired, contrary to the impression created by his now-deleted LinkedIn profile. Investigators from several regional countries, assisted by the United States and other Western governments, are now trying to determine whether Hammami acted alone or had links to an extremist organization. The UAE has formally classified the attempted attack as terrorism. What remains unresolved is whether anyone helped, encouraged or directed him. No publicly released evidence has established Iranian or other state involvement.

🇺🇲 🇷🇺 SCOOP: Putin personally raised a multibillion-dollar Lukoil asset sale with Trump's own negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, at the Kremlin on September 5, as part of the same talks meant to end the Ukraine war. The NYT reports the deal is now moving forward, and the buyer group reads like a map of everyone with financial proximity to Trump's inner circle. The lead investor is Todd Boehly, a $2 million Trump donor with no oil industry background. Alongside him: Qatar's Al-Khayyat brothers, who are simultaneously partnering with Kushner and Ivanka Trump on a luxury resort in Albania, and an Abu Dhabi fund controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, the UAE's national security adviser, who separately made a $2 billion crypto purchase into World Liberty Financial, Trump's own crypto company co-founded by Witkoff, that generated Trump $799 million last year. Sheikh Tahnoon is also a major stakeholder in Kushner's post-White House private equity firm. The same handful of people are buyers, business partners, and crypto investors with the Trump family, simultaneously, across three unrelated deals. Witkoff's spokeswoman says he "has no conflict of interest and no financial stake in this matter." That may be technically true of Witkoff personally. It doesn't address why the people sitting across the table from him in these Ukraine negotiations are the same people building luxury resorts and buying crypto stakes with his son and his negotiating partner's son-in-law. The strategic logic the administration is citing isn't fabricated, Lukoil's European refineries produce diesel and jet fuel that have been scarce since the Iran war drove up prices, the same shortage we've tracked affecting gas prices and midterm politics for weeks. U.S. approval would also instantly increase the assets' value by lifting sanctions, a direct financial windfall for whichever buyer group wins, timed to the exact administration deciding whether to grant that approval. The bidding history shows how contested this prize already was before politics entered it. Treasury rejected Gunvor's bid outright in November specifically over its Russia ties. Carlyle had a "nonexclusive" deal since January that simply stalled, administration approval never came, until Boehly's group, with its web of Trump-adjacent investors, emerged as the frontrunner instead. Hui Chen, a former DOJ prosecutor, called the entanglement "alarming," asking the question that actually matters: whether personal interests are shaping which bidder wins, not whether the deal itself has legitimate strategic value. @anneapplebaum 's framing is sharper than "conflict of interest" because it names the mechanism rather than just the appearance: Putin raising a deal that personally enriches people in Trump's orbit, during active negotiations over a war Russia is still waging, with US policy response visibly muted while Russian strikes on Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure escalate. Whether or not any law is broken, Applebaum's point is that the incentive structure itself, a Russian president offering access to wealth to the exact people negotiating peace terms, doesn't require explicit payment to function as leverage. It only requires the other side to have something to gain from staying quiet. This is also the fourth story in a month tracing wealthy, Russia-or-Gulf-linked figures into Trump's immediate orbit, after Kremlev's wedding gift, the A7 sanctions-evasion network, and Sokolov's Armenia mine deal. The pattern isn't one scandal, but a recurring structure.