Russian air force suffers worst day since Operation Spiderweb, as Ukraine destroys Su-34 strike aircraft on the ground (Ukraine Battlefield update, Day 1,695)

• In 2022, the Neptune missile sank the cruiser Moskva; in 2026, it is destroying aircraft at airfields.
• Ukraine has run out of Patriot missiles, while parts of Kyiv are without electricity following new air raids.
• The order to slow down Starlink came from the White House, Reuters reported.
• What is new in the “captured” part of Kharkiv region? Ukrainian soldiers capture a Russian soldier in its centre.
• Drones sank a ship off the Bulgarian coast, and Sofia turned to Nato.
• Maps of the day – Kharkiv region
• Videos of the day – a Russian drone destroyed a grocery store in Odesa while it was fully operational; a strange drone with a strange name

In 2022, the Neptune missile sank the cruiser Moskva; in 2026, it is destroying aircraft at airfields. On Thursday, the Ukrainian president released a report saying that a strike on the Borisoglebsk Russian military airfield in Voronezh region had destroyed four Su-34M strike aircraft on the ground and damaged two more.

Volodymyr Zelensky also released a satellite image, which is the lead photograph of Friday’s Ukraine Battlefield update.

The airfield lies around 340 km from the front line and was built to accommodate even the largest aircraft types in the Russian air force’s inventory: the Tu-160 and An-124.

In this war, however, it serves as a base from which smaller Su-34s take off for glide-bomb attacks. It is therefore a place from which otherwise almost invulnerable aircraft operate, bombing Ukrainian army positions directly on and near the front line.

Ukraine does not yet have fighter jets capable of shooting down enemy aircraft at the distances from which they release their bombs, while the Patriot system has no missiles of the type that have already shot down several Su-34s in mid-air. The destruction of four aircraft and at least damage to two more is therefore a major success.

Several aspects are noteworthy: the weapon used; the apparent capacity to react exceptionally quickly; the Russian military’s continuing reluctance to build protected aircraft shelters at airfields; as well as its carelessness during operations. Crucially, the impact on operations is easy to calculate in this case.

Zelensky confirmed that the successful attack was carried out using a Neptune missile. It is one of the Ukrainian arms industry’s most successful achievements.

It was originally designed to fight enemy ships. It is launched from ground-based launchers and flies close to the terrain on its way to the target. The manufacturer completed the first battery shortly before the invasion began.

Until it sank the Black Sea Fleet’s flagship in April 2022, it was not known whether the Ukrainians had made it operational. The sinking of the cruiser Moskva provided a clear answer.

Since then, the missile has been repeatedly upgraded. The aim was not only to extend its range, but also to enable it to strike ground targets. Both have been achieved, as the attack on Borisoglebsk demonstrates.

As almost always, local residents managed to record the moment of its arrival and impact on the target:

Ukrainian forces carried out a missile strike on Russia’s Borisoglebsk airbase tonight, with at least one massive explosion and post-strike fire seen. pic.twitter.com/aA1xxZlhCl

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) October 14, 2026

The photographs below most likely show the consequences. There are signs of fire at the aircraft stands marked one and six. The damaged aircraft probably stood there.

Two Su-34 wrecks are clearly visible at positions two and five, while at positions three and four, alongside a crane clearing debris, there is mainly a large burnt-out area and the outline of one Su-34.

Even the Russians do not keep so many aircraft together for long at an airfield relatively close to the front line during wartime. The Ukrainians therefore had a very short window between detecting the target and carrying out the attack. That they succeeded points to highly accurate intelligence and a very short response time.

Even so, it was very careless of the Russians to park at least four, but more likely as many as six, valuable combat-ready aircraft so close together, even for a short time.

Russian Z-bloggers criticised the fact that, despite repeated assurances that hardened shelters were being built, there are still none at Borisoglebsk airfield.

By 2022, Russia had built 147 aircraft, including prototypes. Exact production figures since the start of the invasion are not known, but according to Polish analyst Jaroslaw Wolski, Russia lost between a quarter and a third of its annual production on Thursday, which is estimated at between 18 and 24 aircraft. This is more likely an upper estimate, and average actual production over the entire period of the invasion is probably lower.

Meanwhile, the Oryx website has counted 44 Su-34s lost to date; with the additional six, the total has now reached 50.

Russia has therefore produced no more than around 200 aircraft of this type, a quarter of which it has lost in combat, while at least half of the remainder are unfit for combat as a result of wear and tear.

The Russian Z-channel Fighterbomber said on Friday that the annual flying time of a Russian air force fighter jet amounted to thousands of hours: “No, not hundreds, not one thousand, but thousands. Divide that by the number of days in a year and you will see how much each individual fighter jet works on average per day.”

It wrote this in connection with its claim that, although the Ukrainian air force was incapable of fighting the Russian one, it and Ukrainian drones were nevertheless “consuming the resources of all our fighter jets, which have essentially been continuously in the air for five years, taking turns with one another”.

Fighterbomber did not mention Su-34s in this context, but these aircraft bear the main burden of front-line missions, meaning they too are heavily used: “This inevitably leads to malfunctions and crashes, resulting in repairs that take an aircraft out of combat readiness, with another aircraft taking over its tasks …”.

Fighterbomber concluded that although “we have many aircraft, there are still too few of them”.

Since this year, Russia has been able to mount six glide bombs under each Su-34, rather than four. The loss of six aircraft — since even damaged aircraft cannot fight, at least temporarily — therefore means at least 36 fewer precision-guided bombs against Ukrainian positions each day.

This assumes, of course, that every aircraft flies only one mission per day. In practice, they fly more, making this a significant relief for soldiers on the front line.

Ukraine has run out of Patriot missiles, while parts of Kyiv are without electricity following new air raids. A shortage of the most advanced surface-to-air missiles, which alone can effectively shoot down Russian ballistic missiles, is nothing new. Ukrainian batteries have previously had nothing to fire, leaving them to watch Russian air raids helplessly.

CNN reported most recently that this had happened again. Russian missiles consequently damaged three Kyiv power plants again on Wednesday morning.

The destructive air raid was repeated on Friday morning. It led to emergency power cuts. “Power outages have been recorded in Kyiv, as well as in Kyiv, Volyn, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Sumy and Chernihiv regions. Work to restore supplies has already begun wherever the security situation permits,” NEC Ukrenergo said.

The NV website reported that 370,000 customer connections in Volyn region alone had been left without power.

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the heating season officially began in Kyiv on Thursday. However, as NV wrote, this was not possible in two Kyiv districts because energy workers had not had time to deal with the consequences of the attacks.

At the same time, a dispute is under way between Volodymyr Zelensky and the capital’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko. According to the president, Kyiv’s leadership had “almost entirely” failed to meet the deadlines of the so-called Resilience Plan, which was intended to prepare the city for winter. Klitschko rejects this, but he had already come under criticism from the media in previous months.

The order to slow down Starlink came from the White House, Reuters reported. The respected news agency said, citing sources within the administration itself. However, it has no information on who specifically issued such an order.

The restriction concerns the military component of the system, called Starshield. Elon Musk also drew attention to this in a post, which essentially confirms the accuracy of the Reuters report.

No reliable information on whether the system was functioning was available on Friday.

What is new in the “captured” part of Kharkiv region? Ukrainian soldiers capture a Russian soldier in its centre. In the context of the entire war, this is an insignificant episode, but the Russian defence ministry still insists that it has captured 65 villages and 1,200 square km of territory in the north-eastern part of Kharkiv region, and has moreover encircled some Ukrainian units.

A video has appeared online from the village of Buzove — its location is highlighted in red on the map of the Ukrainian Petrenko account — where a group of Ukrainian soldiers captured a Russian hiding in bushes by the road. There was also a dead Russian soldier there.

For comparison, this is how Russian maps — specifically those of the state news agency Ria Novosti — depict the same territory. Buzove is not named on the map, but it lies roughly halfway between the village of Reznikove — marked by a black assault-rifle symbol in a white circle — and Ivanivka, which is a short distance to the left and below. According to the Russians, the village is 12 km in a straight line from the nearest Ukrainian positions.

Drones sank a ship off the Bulgarian coast, and Sofia turned to Nato. Drones attacked in Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone as recently as last week. One of the vessels sank and all 10 sailors are presumed dead.

Earlier this week, the HS Dignity, flying the flag of Guinea-Bissau, was sunk 31 km off the Bulgarian coast. According to the BBC, 10 people were missing.

As many as 18 drones damaged the Ukrainian vessel Chelsea-3, which was sailing from Turkey to a Ukrainian port along the Black Sea coast to avoid the Russian military.

🛳️ Route of the vessel hit by drones off Bulgaria's coast overnight

Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev said that the Chelsea 3 is Ukrainian-owned and sails under the Maltese flag.

The crew — seven Ukrainians and eight Azerbaijanis — was rescued.

An accelerated screen… pic.twitter.com/yIjgHZ0Lqr

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) October 13, 2026

Video of rescue operations after the Chelsea-3 was hit:

Екипажът на моторен кораб CHELSEA 3 е спасен източно от Бяла pic.twitter.com/sSK7Nw7ABW

— Maritime.bg (@MaritimeBul) October 13, 2026

It is almost certain that Russia was behind the attacks. Even the government, which is otherwise sympathetic towards Russia, is convinced of this and has summoned the Russian ambassador. Sofia has also asked Nato to deploy aircraft to protect vessels in the Black Sea.

Videos of the day

A Russian drone struck an ordinary grocery supermarket in Odesa while it was fully operational.

Russian forces carried out a drone strike on a Ukrainian supermarket in Odessa this morning.

A Geran-4 slammed into a busy Tavria V supermarket in Mayaky, injuring multiple people and setting the building ablaze. pic.twitter.com/iuDmascrvV

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) October 15, 2026

The drone in this video not only looks unusual, but also has a highly unusual name — Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich. This design allows vertical take-off, after which the drone transitions to conventional flight, increasing its speed and range compared with ordinary FPV drones. According to the manufacturer, its range reaches 50 km.

Це — новий російський дрон-камікадзе «Князь Владимир Святославич». Був.

Ворогом цей безпілотник заявлений як «ударний для середніх дистанцій». Але до цілі він не долетів — один із підрозділів «Дронопаду» збив його перехоплювачем, який ми передали бійцям завдяки вашим донатам.… pic.twitter.com/UXN9lFLkTP

— Повернись живим (@BackAndAlive) October 15, 2026