West’s New Proposal for Peace in Ukraine

Russia Matters, 10/16/26

1.  New Peace Plan: U.S. and European negotiators are developing a peace proposal that would combine Ukraine’s reconstruction, security guarantees, economic integration and a territorial compromise, according to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. A U.S. official summarized the proposal’s approach as “Make the problem and the solution bigger.” The proposed framework would seek to end the war along the existing “line of control.” “The package would have four basic components, according to the U.S. official. The message to Putin would be: Don’t just end the war with Ukraine. Make an economic and security deal with Europe that would restore stability to the region after an upward spiral of escalation,” Ignatius writes. Ukraine’s reconstruction would be the first pillar… Security guarantees would be the second essential component… A third pillar would be economic integration of Russia, Ukraine and Europe,” according to Ignatius. “The final piece of the deal would be the most unpalatable. Russia, which began the war hoping to conquer all of Ukraine [sic], would agree to a ceasefire along the existing front line, or ‘line of control,’ as negotiators describe it. For Ukraine, that would mean allowing Russia to control the territory it occupies—including the bitterly contested area known as Donbas,” according to Ignatius. A well-connected source told Russia Matters that in his commentary Ignatius captured where the push to end war in Ukraine stands now.*
2. Civilian casualties in Ukraine rose 85% in September as Russia intensified missile and drone attacks, according to U.N. monitors cited in a Bloomberg story. At least 328 civilians were killed and 2,105 injured—the highest September total since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022, according to the monitors.
3. Russia has gained a net of 16 square miles of Ukrainian territory (about 7/10ths the area of Manhattan Island) in the past four weeks (Sept. 15–Oct. 13, 2026), according to data from Ukraine’s DeepState OSINT group analyzed in the latest issue of RM’s Russia-Ukraine War Report Card. In comparison, during the previous four-week period, Russia’s net gain was 57 square miles of Ukraine’s territory, according to DeepState’s data. In the period of Oct. 10–15, Russian forces advanced in or near seven distinct settlements, according to the DeepState map. In contrast, Ukrainian forces liberated three settlements and regained control of areas near two additional settlements, in the same period, according to DeepState.
4. For the month of September 2026, Ukraine intercepted 85.59% of Russian drones, 69.84% of cruise missiles, and 0% of ballistic missiles, according to data collected by CSIS and analyzed by the Belfer Center. Ukraine’s 0% interception rate for the Russian ballistic missiles is mostly explained by the lack of interceptors for U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems, which have been the only reliable tool for shooting down Russian ballistic missiles. Recent media estimates of Ukraine’s arsenal of Patriot interceptors range from a couple to having run out.
5. To add insult to injury caused by the lack of Patriot interceptor supplies, Ukraine has this week endured temporary slowdowns and interruptions of its U.S.-supplied military-grade version of Starlink service before service was restored on Oct. 15. Two U.S. officials told Reuters that the order to slow Starshield, on which Ukrainian drones rely for guidance, came from the White House. In contrast, a senior U.S. official told Axios this week that the Trump administration had nothing to do with the alleged Starlink service constraints. The competing claims were reported in the Western press as Donald Trump tried to have Ukraine commit to an energy ceasefire with Russia in order to lower diesel prices ahead of midterm elections in the U.S.

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NATO War on Russia Over the Body of Ukraine

By Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Substack (Excerpt), 10/15/26

…As I write, it seems that 600,000 residents of Kiev lack electricity; the metros are not working; even water is rationed or unavailable, sewerage services disrupted, locomotives have been bombed, and the mayor is recommeding people to leave. Russian Zircons have managed to penetrate the cement roof of a crucial electricity substation that, given previous Russian destruction of Kiev’s own electricity generation facilities, feeds the capital with electricity from western Ukraine and Europe. The situation in other major cities such as Donetsk, Zapporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Odessa and Izyum is not much better.

The most recent Russian attacks seem to be going a bit easier on Odessa. But not all is quiet. Recent Russian drone and missile attacks on Odessa have increasingly targeted digital infrastructure, ports, and transit corridors. On October 10-11, Russian forces struck the technological complex of local internet service provider Tenet at 106 Bazarna Street in central Odeswa, damaging cooling systems and power equipment and causing temporary local network interruptions. On October 6, Russian drone strikes hit a key transit node between Odessa and Moldova, damaging trucks and passenger vehicles and injuring five civilians. Over September and October, additional overnight drone and missile barrages have targeted residential areas, medical and educational facilities, and local production sites, following a heavy wave of summer shelling that killed dozens across the Odessa region. From July through to October, Russian forces have continued to target foreign-flagged cargo vessels and port infrastructure near Odessa and Chornomorsk to disrupt Ukrainian maritime exports…

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The fallout from Ukraine’s drone strikes on Yandex

The Bell, 10/12/26

Ukraine has launched a new deep-strike campaign on data centers operated by Yandex, the country’s biggest internet company, whose services underpin Russia’s entire digital economy. So far, three strikes in the space of a week seem to have been every bit as effective as Kyiv’s attacks on oil refineries (something that Donald Trump insists Ukraine must cease). The drone strikes have destroyed or seriously damaged three of Yandex’s six data centers, forcing the company to restrict the operation of several services — from taxis to payment systems and banking — while also having to disconnect some clients from cloud services.

‘It’s a disaster’

“It’s a disaster. We’re working on it. But we definitely won’t be able to restore some [capacity] at all,” one of Yandex’s managers wrote to The Bell after the first drone attack on the night of Oct. 8. “There are no good options. We’re choosing bad ones,” he added after the second attack. At the time he speculated that a further attack might jeopardize the work of the company’s core services — exactly what’s happening now.