Russia’s War against
Ukraine Sounds like Science Fiction: Death Takes no Vacation
Death and mayhem do not take a vacation during the Russian
war against Ukraine.
AI killing machines, drone strikes against a passenger train,
and other attacks on Ukraine spread terror and fear among the people. But
resilience and belief in victory don’t diminish.
A Russian jet-powered unmanned aerial vehicle – a drone – struck
the locomotive of passenger train No. 147 Zhytomyr-Odesa in Odesa Oblast.
Passengers and railway staff were evacuated in time.
This is not the first time that the Russians have hit a commuter
train.
Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, Chairman of the Board of
Ukrzaliznytsia (Ukrainian Railways), said Ukrzaliznytsia’s monitoring team
announced the evacuation in advance, and the train was urgently stopped between
stations. No passengers or members of the train and locomotive crews were
injured in the attack, he said. There were 593 passengers on the train,
including 15 children.
That was no small consolation for the passengers –
especially the parents of the children – who had to contend with the sound of
unexpected explosions. Imagine boarding a train or bus in the morning for your
trip to work or school and a drone strikes your mode of transportation.
A Russian drone guided completely by AI killed three
Ukrainian civilians.
On July 6, Tetiana Bubynets, a 19-year-old accounting
student, was sheltering near a gasoline station in Zaporizhzhia when a Russian
drone crashed into a wall and detonated. No human operator reportedly issued
the final strike command. The drone chose its target autonomously.
According to Kateryna Bondar of the Wadhwani AI Center at CSIS, this is the
first documented case in the Russia-Ukraine war where civilians were killed by
a fully autonomous AI targeting system.
The hardware at the center of it: an Nvidia Jetson Orin minicomputer
that was repurposed for war. A widely available AI chip — sold legally around
the world — was recovered from the wreckage of a Russian strike drone.
The Jetson Orin is an off-the-shelf AI
computer chip, the kind of board used in university robotics labs and computer
vision projects. Ukrainian investigators recovered one from drone wreckage.
Because it was not encrypted, they read everything stored on it directly:
terrain imagery for visual navigation and object-detection code trained on
categories like propane tanks and fuel storage.
The drone was one of roughly six launched in a
wave against the city. No radio antennas connected it to a human operator. No
data link existed. Every decision, from navigation to detonation, ran entirely
on the onboard chip. Sounds like a movie.
That distinction matters. Earlier AI drone deployments
in this war used AI only for last-mile navigation — a human still selected the
target. Here, the final decision about what to hit and when was delegated
entirely to the onboard model. The machine made the call.
Investigators’ findings, confirmed by Nvidia and reported by
The New York Times, paint a clear picture:
Humans pre-routed the drone to the gas station; the AI
autonomously chose the exact strike point.
Object-detection code targeting categories including “propane
tanks” was recovered from the unencrypted module
Nvidia confirmed the module is a genuine Jetson Orin; the
company says it does not sell into Russia directly, though resellers distribute
it widely.
As technology advances, the aerial and ground devices will become
stronger and deadlier.
Russian attacks killed at least four people and injured at
least 95 across Ukraine over the past day, as Russian forces attacked rescue
workers in Kramatorsk, eastern Donetsk Oblast, local authorities said on August
25-26.
Russian forces launched a double-tap attack on rescue
workers who were dealing with the aftermath of a Russian strike on a nine-story
residential block in Kramatorsk, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said on
Telegram on August 25.
A Russian first-person view (FPV) drone struck an armored
ambulance belonging to the State Emergency Service. The vehicle was damaged,
but no personnel were injured, the rescuers said.
This attack marks the second incident this week in which
Russian troops attacked rescue workers on duty, according to the State
Emergency Service
“Despite the danger, emergency services continue to help
people and deal with the aftermath of Russian strikes,” the Telegram statement
read.
The attacks on Kramatorsk injured 26 people over
the past day, regional governor Vadym Filashkin said on August 26. He
added that 37 high-rise buildings, three educational, and one infrastructure
facility were damaged – none of them sound like military installations.
Across Donetsk Oblast, one person was killed, and
eight were injured.
Russian forces launched 163 drones across Ukraine overnight
on August 26, the Air Force said. Ukrainian air defense downed 132
drones over the north, south, and east of the country. Some drones made it
through and struck 18 locations, while the debris of downed drones was found at
three locations, the report read.
In northern Chernihiv Oblast, Russian troops
carried out 28 attacks over the day, killing a 39-year-old woman and her
four-year-old daughter with a drone and injuring 14 others in the region,
governor Viacheslav Chaus said on Aug. 26.
In southern Kherson Oblast, Russian attacks in the
region killed one person and injured 12 others, regional governor Oleksandr
Prokudin said.
In northeastern Kharkiv Oblast, over the past day, 23
people were injured, including two children, regional governor Oleh
Syniehubov said.
In southeastern Zaporizhzhia Oblast, nine people were
injured by Russian attacks, regional governor Ivan Fedorov said.
Russian forces carried out 935 attacks on 47 settlements in Zaporizhzhia Oblast
over the past day, Fedorov said.
Russian attacks on Dnipropetrovsk Oblast injured
six people over the past day, Governor Oleksandr Hanzha reported, according to
the reports published on August 25 and 26.
July of 2026 saw the most civilians killed or injured in
Ukraine since March 2022, according to the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission
in Ukraine (HRMMU). At least 437 civilians in Ukraine were killed and 2,610
injured in July alone, the monitoring group said on Aug. 13. This
represents a 30% increase from June, which previously held the record for the
deadliest month since April 2022.
Ukrainian civilian casualties in July 2026 were 70% higher than in July the previous year, while casualties among children also rose to their highest level since April 2022, with 17 children killed and 166 injured.
