Ukraine's second-largest city is now within reach of Russian drones that can't be jammed.

Dmytro Yatsenko, who leads war crimes investigations at the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor's Office, told Scripps News he expects what happened in Kherson to happen here.

Scripps News chief international correspondent, Jason Bellini, discovered the haunting reality in Kharkiv while embedded with the citys war crimes investigators.

The war between Russia and Ukraine has expanded far beyond the front lines, with both sides increasingly striking targets deep inside each other's territory. What constitutes a legitimate military target has become a growing point of contention.

A Russian drone on Sunday slammed into an ATB supermarket in Chernihiv, about 80 miles north of Kyiv, as shoppers filled their carts. Two people were killed, including a 9-year-old child, and 25 others were wounded.

RELATED STORY | Ukraine reports multiple deaths after ballistic missile, drone attacks from Russia

Chernihiv police said the drone was equipped with an optical camera, allowing its operator to view the target and watch the strike unfold in real time. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack deliberate.

Russia has defended the supermarket strike by pointing to Ukraine's repeated attacks on Wildberries, Russia's largest online retailer, which have killed nine people and injured dozens this month. Russian state media has argued that if the Wildberries warehouse is a legitimate target, then a grocery store is as well.

RELATED STORY | Russia unleashes one of biggest ballistic missile attacks of the Ukraine war, Kyiv says

Ukraine rejects that comparison, saying the Wildberries facility was used to move drone components and other sanctioned electronics for the Russian military. Drone products, including combat-ready quadcopters, are openly listed for sale on the company's website. Journalists with the Kyiv Independent also reported finding drone bomb-release mechanisms available through the online marketplace.

Russia has not publicly presented evidence that the supermarket in Chernihiv was being used for military purposes.

The air-raid sirens over Kyiv now sound after the explosions, not before. Russia has moved its ballistic-missile launchers close enough to cut the flight time to the capital to roughly three minutes too fast for the city to be warned in time.

Even so, Ukraine's air force said Tuesday it shot down five of them overnight, the first time in nearly two weeks it has stopped the hard-to-intercept weapons.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT | Ukraine's 'Highway of Death': How drones are strangling Russia's southern supply line

Others still broke through, sparking fires at two warehouses and damaging a school. Russia's Defense Ministry said it had targeted plants producing long-range missiles and drones.

The barrage lands as Ukraine races to rebuild its air-defense shield before winter, when Russian strikes on the power grid make the cold months nearly unlivable.

Zelenskyy, in France for Bastille Day, announced a 10-nation coalition to build a shared ballistic-missile shield for Europe, with a low-cost, mass-produced system possible within a year.

RELATED STORY | Ukraine, 9 others announce coalition to protect Europe from ballistic missiles

President Donald Trump said last week the U.S. will license Ukraine to build its own Patriot systems, though those are costly, scarce and slow to produce.

Ukraine kept up its own long-range campaign, striking Russian oil refineries and shadow-fleet tankers. "This war must be brought to an end, and all reasonable diplomatic proposals are on the table," Zelenskyy said.

The tankers were built to be invisible. But this week, Ukraine made them the most visible things at sea.

 

Ukrainian drones struck roughly 90 Russian vessels in the Sea of Azov over seven days, part of an intensifying campaign to sever the fuel lifeline to Russian-occupied Crimea. Robert "Madyar" Brovdi, commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, said his crews hit a Russian ship on average every 112 minutes during the week.

 

The targets are what analysts call Russia's "shadow fleet" aging tankers that move oil under flags of convenience, transponders switched off and ownership buried behind shell companies, to slip past Western sanctions and a G7 price cap. Most are small, with a weight of about 7,000 tons.

RELATED STORY | Ukraine, 9 others announce coalition to protect Europe from ballistic missiles

 

The logic of the campaign is economic. Oil export revenue funds roughly a quarter of Moscow's budget, and the strikes aim at the money more than the military.

 

Russia condemns the strikes as terrorism, noting the tankers are civilian. Kyiv counters that a ship carrying fuel for the war is a legitimate military target.

MORE FROM UKRAINE | Ukraine gets a Patriot license from Trump, but the missiles it needs most are years away

Two nights before President Trump stood beside Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the NATO summit here and handed him the words he'd been chasing since the last administration, Russia fired 29 ballistic missiles at Kyiv. Ukraine's air defenses stopped none of them. Zero for 29. Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat put it plainly: "The success rate is low, to put it mildly."

That's the arithmetic sitting underneath everything that happened in Ankara on Wednesday.

RELATED STORY | Trump says Ukraine war could end 'hopefully soon' as Kyiv burns Russia's fuel lifeline

Trump told Zelenskyy the United States would grant Ukraine a license to manufacture its own Patriot missile interceptors the system that, more than any other, has kept Russian ballistic missiles from finding their targets in Ukrainian cities across more than four years of war. "We're going to give a license to you to make Patriots," Trump said. "That's pretty cool, right? This way, he can't complain that we're not giving them enough. I say, make them yourself."

It is, on its face, a significant concession, exactly the kind of long-term industrial commitment Zelenskyy has been requesting since he first raised it with the previous administration. He made the case again as recently as May, in an interview with CBS News' "Face the Nation": "I asked previous administration, I am asking today's administration give Ukraine licenses. We will increase the production of Patriot missiles."

Patriot interceptor isn't hardware you photocopy. It's seekers, propulsion, and guidance systems built on decades of classified engineering, the kind of intellectual property Washington has historically guarded even from close allies. When Germany negotiated a licensed PAC-2 production line years ago, meaningful output still wasn't expected until late this year or next. One Ukrainian defense analyst pointed to Poland's experience localizing missile production: nearly a decade to get there, and Poland wasn't building it under Russian bombardment. Military analysts estimate that even in the best case, Ukraine's first viable PAC-3 interceptor is years away, not months.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT | Russia's missile and drone attacks on Ukraine kill at least 20

Security analysts note a quieter risk nobody at the podium mentioned: a compromised manufacturing facility inside a war zone wouldn't just be an industrial loss. It would hand Moscow a look inside America's own counter-ballistic secrets.

So the acute crisis the one that let 29 missiles through in a single night -- is not what this license solves. What might solve it, at least in the short term, is blunter and less cinematic: Kyiv is appealing to nearly 40 partner nations to loan interceptors now, from their own stockpiles, in exchange for future deliveries already under contract. That's the version of help that could matter this month. The license is the version that matters in 2030.

There's a reason the timing is this tight, and its name is Iran. The Patriot shortage squeezing Ukraine isn't only a Ukraine problem. The U.S.-Israel war with Iran has already burned through roughly a third of the global stockpile of Patriot interceptors, at a cost of $4 million to $5 million a piece.

A 24-foot autonomous drone boat just saved two American lives and may have permanently rewritten the rules of military search and rescue.

A U.S. Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopter crashed at 7:33 p.m. EDT Monday in waters off the coast of Oman, near the Strait of Hormuz, leaving its two-person crew in the water. President Trump said Tuesday that Iran shot down the helicopter while it was patrolling over the Strait of Hormuz, adding that the United States "must, of necessity, respond to this attack."

"There were two pilots involved, both are safe and uninjured," Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Iran has not publicly claimed responsibility.

How those two soldiers got out alive is the story.

The drone used in the rescue was a 24-foot vessel called a Corsair, manufactured by Saronic Technologies, and assigned to Task Force 59, the Navy's AI and drone unit stood up in 2021 to police maritime security across the Middle East.

The surface drone ferried the soldiers to a staging point on the water, where a helicopter hoisted them to safety. The two crew members were rescued within approximately two hours.

U.S. officials are calling it exactly what it is: the first time an unmanned surface drone has been used to successfully rescue crew members at sea. The military had rehearsed this capability. Monday night was the first time it was done for real.

The Corsair is a 24-foot autonomous surface vessel designed for rugged, long-duration missions. It can operate at speeds greater than 35 knots, carry up to 1,000 pounds, and cover 1,000 nautical miles with all-around sensor coverage for round-the-clock operations, which likely proved critical in locating the downed crew in dark, open water.

Saronic Technologies is an Austin, Texas-based defense tech company. Reports indicate Saronic is already planning to manufacture hundreds of Corsair vessels to meet projected demand.

Army AH-64 Apaches have been part of a U.S. military effort to enforce an ongoing blockade of Iran and protect commercial shipping. Last month, a joint Apache and Navy MH-60 Seahawk operation took out six Iranian fast boats that had been menacing commercial traffic near the Strait.

The shoot-down of this Apache is the latest escalation in a theater that has been reshaped, month by month, by drone warfare from Iran's Shahed attacks on commercial shipping, to American drone boats patrolling some of the world's most contested waters. Now those same drone boats are pulling American soldiers out of the sea.