🛢 🇷🇺 🇺🇦 Clément Molin on X: In 2026, at least 28 Russian refineries (out of approximately 48) were hit in 81 separate strikes.

Seventeen of the twenty largest Russian refineries were struck during the first eight months of the year, sometimes sustaining significant damage, such as at Orsk, Perm, or Ryazan.

The repeated strikes on major refineries (6 at Yaroslavl; 5 at Ilsky, Saratov, Syzran, and Tuapse; and 4 at Kstovo, TAIF-NK Nizhnekamsk, Ufa Bashneft, and Volgograd) disrupt the restoration of damaged key components, which typically take weeks or months to repair.

At the same time, Ukrainian forces continue to target crude oil and fuel storage tanks, both near refineries (in Moscow or Perm...) and at transit points (11 strikes: Perm, Yaroslavl, Vladimir...), storage facilities (26 strikes on major storage sites, excluding occupied Ukrainian territories), and export terminals (11 strikes: Novorossiysk, Ust-Luga, Primorsk...).

These strikes, targeting both production (which has become intermittent, slowed, or sometimes halted in certain regions) and storage, are contributing to widespread fuel shortages across a number of Russian regions.

In total, nearly 130 strikes on key Russian oil and fuel production, storage, transport, and export facilities have been recorded since the beginning of the year. This represents a tangible loss of revenue, only partially offset by the Iranian conflict and rising oil prices. While refineries are usually repaired quickly, the relentless succession and precision of the strikes are placing a strain on critical infrastructure. While the strikes hitting the storage tanks caused a lot of media attention, given the smoke they generated, it is the strikes hitting the critical parts of the refineries that matter.

My map of Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries (red) and other oil/fuel related targets (small pink round) :

📎 Clément Molin

🇺🇸 🇮🇷 🛠 State Dept reveals Portland Antifa connection to Hamas, Iran’s IRGC in sweeping terror action

A State Department memo reveals that an international technology collective, now under a U.S. global terrorism designation, provided services to overseas terrorist groups and violent far-left agitators causing chaos in American cities, according to a copy obtained by Fox News Digital.

The memo identifies Portland-based Rose City Antifa, known for its violent rioting and destruction, as one of the U.S. groups that relied on A/I Collective tools and services.

Rose City Antifa is listed in the memo alongside a media organization that the State Department says uses A/I Collective tools to disseminate information to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is proliferating inside the United States, Hamas, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hezbollah and others.

The memo also accuses the militant abortion-rights group "Jane’s Revenge" — which declared "open season" on pro-life organizations and threatened escalating attacks after the leaked Supreme Court draft signaling Roe v. Wade would be overturned — of using the collective’s services.

The State Department memo says the collective provides its services exclusively to left-wing extremists, screening users for ideological alignment before allowing them access to its tools.

The collective claims to host roughly 16,000 mailboxes, 1,500 websites, 5,500 mailing lists and 10,000 "blogs" on a custom-built platform. The State Department says militants frequently use those services to disseminate target information, tactical manuals and techniques and communiqués about recent attacks.

The memo stressed that while the infrastructure is overseas, it supports domestic far-left groups that for years have wreaked havoc in the United States, mostly under the label of Antifa, or antifascism.

Abroad, the memo says far-left extremists in France, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands used A/I Collective tools to claim responsibility for attacks on rail systems this year and to disseminate instructions for making improvised incendiary devices intended to disrupt railways.

Anarchists who claimed responsibility for sabotaging infrastructure supporting the Transalpine Pipeline, a major crude-oil artery into Central Europe, also used A/I Collective tools, according to the memo. The State Department says the same was true of the far-left Vulkangruppe, which has targeted German infrastructure since 2011 and claimed responsibility for a January attack that knocked out power to roughly 45,000 Berlin households.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/exclusive-state-dept-reveals-portland-antifa-connection-hamas-irans-irgc-sweeping-terror-action

🇪🇺🇺🇦🇷🇺⚡️ — EU countries, including Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, and Poland, are pushing Brussels to revive efforts to use more than €200 billion in frozen Russian central bank assets to help fund Ukraine, amid fears of a renewed Ukrainian funding crisis, FT reports.

Previous plans collapsed last winter after Belgium, where most of the assets are held, blocked the initiative.

A coalition of EU states is now preparing a letter urging the European Commission to restart work on the proposal and explore alternative legal and technical options to overcome Belgium’s objections.

🇮🇱🗳 A new election poll for the upcoming Israeli Knesset (Parliament) elections shows Benjamin Netanyahu's party, Likud, slipping further behind former IDF Chief of Staff, Gadi Eisenkot's liberal Yashar party.

Yashar stands to win 24 seats an impressive score as the party was founded just last year, while Likud has participated in every Knesset election since 1973.

If Likud was to win 19 seats, it would be the party's worst score since the 2006 Knesset elections when it won just 12 seats, the worst performance in its history.

Former PMs Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid's Together alliance would come third with 13 seats.

Notably, the Arab-Israeli parties united in an electoral alliance called "Joint List" are set to gain 10 seats, the highest number of seats Arabs ever won in any Knesset election.

61 seats are needed for a majority.

🔗 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/2026-08-26/ty-article/poll-likuds-decline-continues-new-right-wing-party-fails-to-cross-threshold/000001a0-3f77-d1ec-a7ec-7fff54df0000

🇲🇦🌍⚔️🇪🇸 4 Spanish soldiers were injured last night in Ceuta when a group of 40 Maghrebian and Subsaharan migrants attacked their army jeep with stones.

Other nearby police officers intervened leading to the migrant group dispersing. 12 of the migrants were later arrested with the others still on the run.

🔗 https://www.aragonplay.es/aragonnoticias/espana/doce-migrantes-detenidos-apedrear-herir-cuatro-militares-barrio-ceuti-benzu.html

🇺🇸⚔️🇮🇷 The USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) will depart for the Middle East in the coming weeks to relieve the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) who has served inside CENTCOM's AoR since March and is beginning to suffer from the same supply issues and low morale as the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) did.

USS Theodore Roosevelt is expected to undergo a 7 month deployment.

🔗 https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/27/world/live-news/iran-war-trump?post-id=cmtavnkl400293b6rzxi6trkw

🇺🇸🇷🇺⚡️ — U.S. officials confirmed to RFE/RL that Washington will brief its allies on the details of CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s Moscow visit next week.

A Baltic diplomat said officials had been “pre-warned” about Ratcliffe’s trip to Moscow.

🇾🇪⚔️🇸🇦🇬🇷 Ansarallah/Houthis launched a drone attack on the Saudi oil terminal at Yanbu on the Red Sea coast

The attack was repulsed by Greek air defenses.

Greece has deployed a ​U.S.-made ⁠Patriot air defence battery, operated by Greek personnel, in Saudi Arabia ⁠since ​2021 under an agreement ​to help protect the kingdom's energy facilities.

🔗 https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/greek-operated-air-defence-system-shoots-down-drones-over-saudi-2026-08-27/

🇪🇹🤝🇪🇹 Once bitter enemies Amhara, Tigray reach understandings in fight against Ethiopian govt

In mid-August, the leader of the Amhara insurgency fighting to overthrow Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed made a surprising announcement.

The collection of armed Amhara movements fighting in the country’s northwest under the unified Fano umbrella would join an alliance of seven other anti-government groups across the country, Fano leader Zemene Kassie told the Swiss publication, Le Temps.

What makes the move surprising is that the alliance includes members of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), whom the Amhara forces that make up the Fano fought against during the 2020-2022 war.

In addition to the TPLF, the alliance includes forces from Gumuz, Oromo, the Berta people and Somalia, Zemene said.

At the national level, the fight between Ethiopian oppositional groups and the government comes against the backdrop of a struggle over the future of the country’s multinational federal system and state’s right to self-determination.

However, this tension has a larger regional dynamic given Ethiopia’s involvement in the war in Sudan and its expressed desire to secure access to the Red Sea either by diplomatic coup or by force.

While fighting between the Fano and the Ethiopian government has transformed much of the Amhara Region into an active war zone since late 2023, the beginning of August saw clashes between TPLF forces and the Ethiopian military that threatened to transform long standing simmering tensions between the groups into an active war.

🔗 https://www.madamasr.com/en/2026/08/26/news/u/one-time-bitter-enemies-amhara-tigray-reach-understandings-in-fight-against-ethiopian-govt/

✊🇲🇦❌🇪🇸 Leftwing NGO members were spotted handing over pepper sprays to migrants roaming on the streets of Ceuta.

In Spain, pepper sprays are legally considered weapons and can't be sold without providing an ID card. The migrants roaming Ceuta are ID-less.

Leftwing NGOs are worried that the migrants might be harassed by locals for loitering around their homes or the many, many cases of robbery and attempted robbery that have happened since they came.

@CIG_telegram

🇪🇺 Von der Leyen acknowledged that the economic prosperity of the EU was based on energy from Russia, exports to China, and Western technological dominance, none of which exist anymore.

However, the President of the European Commission still believes the EU can compete with Chinese industry and technological development without the cheap Russian energy it once had access to.

Von der Leyen pledged to make the 2027 budget of the EU about reducing the EU's dependency on Chinese rare earth metals and reviving EU industry without going into too much detail, making vague promises of reducing bureaucracy and the cost of administration while also threatening to use "instruments" against Chinese dumping practices all while acknowledging that the EU depends on China for sometimes as much as 90% for a particular rare earth element used in various industrial processes.

🔗 Ursula von der Leyen