Eastern Flank Review, 01.07-07.07.2026

Romania is purchasing Israeli air defence systems

The Romanian Ministry of National Defence has signed a contract worth over €2 billion with the Israeli firm Rafael Advanced Defence Systems for the supply of Spyder short- and medium-range air defence systems. The agreement also covers technical support and training for the Romanian armed forces and paves the way for further cooperation. The Spyder system, already in use by countries including the Czech Republic and Morocco, combats drones, manned aircraft and short-range ballistic missiles using Rafael’s Derby and Python interceptor missiles. This is the second-largest export deal in the history of the Israeli defence industry – after Germany’s purchase of the Arrow -3 system for USD 3.5 billion in 2023. Rafael beat its European competitors MBDA and Diehl in the tender, capitalising on its long-standing cooperation with Romania dating back to the country’s accession to NATO in 2004. Part of the production is to be based in Romania as part of offset agreements.

The contract forms part of the dynamic expansion of Romania’s air defence capabilities – alongside Poland, one of the leaders in modernisation on NATO’s eastern flank. Strengthening the short- and medium-range air defence layer is of direct importance given the growing scale of incidents involving Russian unmanned aerial vehicles, which regularly violate Romanian airspace. The choice of an Israeli supplier stems from a history of previous cooperation, as well as the diversification of major procurement processes across various external partners.

New Chief of the Czech General Staff

On 30 June at Prague Castle, Czech President Petr Pavel appointed Lieutenant General Miroslav Hlavač to the post of Chief of the General Staff of the Czech Army. Hlavač, who has served as First Deputy Chief of the General Staff since mid-2023, takes over from Karel Řehce, who had been the “first soldier” since July 2022. The appointment was approved by the government in May this year. Hlavač has a background in the land forces. President Pavel emphasised that the new Chief of the General Staff is taking up the post at a difficult time, marked by the need to adapt to a new reality within NATO – including the partial withdrawal of the United States from Europe – whilst operating within a limited defence budget. The ceremony was attended by Defence Minister Jaromír Zůna and the chair of the parliamentary defence committee, Josef Flek.

The new Chief of the General Staff is taking up his post under difficult political circumstances – during the government’s approval process, the Defence Minister reportedly withdrew his support. Furthermore, the President, who is himself a retired general, remains at odds with the Czech government, a conflict rooted, amongst other things, in defence policy issues. Hlavač has identified the continuation of the army’s modernisation processes, in line with the commitments made within the Alliance, as his priority.

The fifth adjustment to the authorised strength of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the slowing pace of expansion

On 12 June 2026, Putin signed Decree No. 419, setting the authorised strength of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation at 2,399,130 posts, including 1,510,000 professional soldiers, and repealing the earlier Decree No. 139 of 4 March 2026. The increase in authorised strength amounts to 7,360 soldiers, as immediately confirmed by RIA Novosti and Kommersant. This is the fifth such adjustment since the start of the full-scale invasion, carried out on a quarterly basis; the March adjustment added just 2,600 posts, whilst the increases in 2023–2024 were many times greater than the current one.

Russia’s armed forces’ establishment is currently expanding exclusively upwards, without any operational pause and without any signals that the West might interpret as a de-escalation of the conflict. The slowing rate of growth, coupled with the persistent silence of state sources regarding the actual staffing levels, indicates that the gap between nominal and actual numbers is widening, and the subject of recruitment has become something of a taboo in Moscow. Each successive decree by the President of the Russian Federation obliges the government to provide budgetary guarantees, which makes the military a structurally privileged institution within the mechanics of public spending, regardless of the state of the rest of the economy.

Russia – round-ups in Penza, announcement of an autumn mobilisation and compulsory recruitment at universities

Some Russian commentators, citing sources within the presidential administration and the security apparatus, report that on 24 June, the Kremlin was seriously considering a new wave of mobilisation following the State Duma elections in mid-September, likely in October 2026. The reasons are economic and demographic – in April, Moscow sent 1,708 contract soldiers to the front, but by May this figure had fallen to just 1,378; Western analysts have estimated the daily rate of contract signings in the first quarter of 2026 at 800 people, the lowest figure in three years. Regional recruitment payments rose from 358 to 802 million roubles per month. At the same time, in mid-June in Penza, an event unprecedented in the years 2023–2025 took place: mass street round-ups, during which military recruitment offices, assisted by the police, took men to military commissions and pressured them to sign contracts. The regional authorities consistently deny this, calling the footage from the streets a provocation, whilst the public prosecutor’s office is threatening penalties for disseminating information about the detentions. A Telegram channel documenting the round-ups has been blocked. Other Russian commentators have also described how, for a year, the authorities persecuted the family of a seriously ill deserter in the Voronezh region, whilst a video by former soldier Alexander Lunin, warning Putin of a mutiny in the garrisons due to torture and the treatment of soldiers, resulted in a night-time search, an arrest and eleven days’ administrative detention. The Ministry of Defence has also turned to students – the authorities have set universities a recruitment target of two per cent of their student numbers, and the Far Eastern Federal University sent thirty-two students on contracts as early as February this year. The Investigative Committee has proposed that war veterans be appointed as school headteachers.

The recruitment system is entering a phase in which the traditional contract has ceased to be a means of replenishing the ranks, and is being replaced by targeted street round-ups, coercion at universities and preparations for a new wave of mobilisation. The mechanism of rounding up individuals with outstanding maintenance payments or so-called ‘legal vulnerabilities’ is innovative and signifies that coercive measures have now become the primary tool, whilst marketing efforts are merely cosmetic. The word ‘rebellion’ is today strictly prohibited by the police in Russia; it is not merely politically inconvenient, as evidenced by the authorities’ reaction to a video recording by opponents of the current regime.

Centralisation of the security apparatus around the FSO and FSB, and purges within the Ministry of Internal Affairs

Three phenomena are currently overlapping within the security bloc. The first is the formal expansion of the FSO – for the fourth time since 2022, Putin has increased the staffing levels of the FSO’s central apparatus, this time from 785 to 812 officers, for the first time in the middle of the year rather than in the usual January–December cycle. On 10 June, Putin also signed a law expanding the FSO’s powers in the area of threat assessment, and on 16 June, Law No. 177-FZ amending the State Protection Act came into force. The second development concerns the FSB, which has lowered the physical fitness standards for candidates over the age of fifty, whilst at the same time being assigned new investigative tasks at the intersection of terrorism and sabotage; the intensity of these tasks was the subject of Security Council meetings on 19 and 25 June, attended by Mishustin, Matvienko, Volodin, Medvedev, Vaino, Shoigu as Secretary of the Council, Belousov, Kolokoltsov, Lavrov, Bortnikov, as well as Naryshkin and Dumin. The third development concerns the Rosgvardia – there are indications that Zolotov, alongside the FSB leadership, is lobbying for the postponement or cancellation of the Duma elections, citing mounting pressure on Moscow. Peskov denied these reports on 24 June; however, as early as 30 June, a third region declared a state of heightened alert due to the fuel crisis, which, in accordance with Article 10.1 of the Law on Electoral Rights Guarantees, opens a legal loophole for postponing the vote. Separately, criminal proceedings are underway within the Ministry of Defence. A court has seized assets worth 55 billion roubles from former Deputy Defence Minister Ruslan Calikov, whilst former Rosaviatsia head Alexander Neradka has been charged with embezzlement in Domodedovo in a case involving a land trustee of Arkady Rotenberg’s group.

The expansion of the FSO mid-year and the lowering of FSB standards point to internal personnel tensions within the services themselves, rather than an outward-facing development plan. The combination of Zolotov’s lobbying, Peskov’s denials and the heightened state of readiness in the third region appears to be a deliberate effort to lay the legal and factual groundwork for adjusting the electoral calendar, whilst maintaining a narrative in case of accusations of an authoritarian rollback of the electoral cycle. The seizure of Calikov’s assets and the Nieradka case show that no one within the system is safe any longer, and Belousov is systematically purging his inner circle of the remnants of Shoigu’s faction.

The accelerated pace of repression and the new elite of war veterans

In the first quarter of 2026, Russian courts handed down no fewer than 107 verdicts in cases relating to state security, convicting 110 people; in March alone, 48 verdicts were handed down, a monthly record since records began. On a working-day basis, the courts are convicting two people a day, mainly under Article 275 of the Criminal Code on high treason, with an average sentence of fifteen years and five months. On 10 June, Putin signed a law permitting the seizure of assets belonging to citizens residing abroad who are accused of acts against the interests of the Federation; the law comes into force on 1 September 2026. At the same time, a wave of confiscations of private plots of land is underway at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office, with 11,000 plots seized in a single criminal case. Yabloko deputy Maxim Kruglov was sentenced to seven years in a penal colony for two posts about the war, whilst human rights defender Nina Litvinova committed suicide, writing before her death that she had run out of strength. Figures from 29 June indicate that as many as 1,305 participants in the war (the Special Military Operation) have already been elected to office or hold positions within the government, with the rate of these appointments rising from 45 in 2023 to 754 in 2025 and 311 in the first five months of 2026.

The state is literally forcing out the last pockets of resistance, whilst lawyers and human rights defenders are being worn down faster than the apparatus of repression. The influx of war veterans into local and regional administration, with priority given to them over civilian managers, is the most enduring sociological change that the war has brought about within the Russian power structure, and will shape the composition of these posts long after hostilities in Ukraine have ended.

Nuclear rhetoric and the ‘Union State’ formula as an internal tool

Russian nuclear rhetoric in June and July 2026 became more frequent, albeit more ritualised. RIA Novosti published an extensive article explaining the five situations in which, in accordance with current doctrine, Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons. At a meeting with graduates of military academies on 23 June, Putin stated that the nuclear triad was being consistently modernised. Later that same week, Lavrov warned that a clash between NATO and Russia could escalate into an exchange of nuclear strikes, whilst Peskov added that only nuclear weapons protect the world from global war. Gatilov announced a Russian counter-response to the possible deployment of nuclear weapons in Finland or Poland. In an article for Politico Europe – which was removed by the editors and reprinted by Rossiyskaya Gazeta – Lavrov wrote that the real aim of European leaders is not to negotiate with Russia, but to save Zelenskyy as a foothold for further fighting. Grushko of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated in *Rossiyskaya Gazeta* on 22 June that real preparations for war with the Russian Federation are underway in NATO countries around the turn of the 2030s. The Belarusian issue operates on two levels – the diplomatic level, where Putin and Lukashenko met on 26 June at Valdai and held talks for over a day, and at the institutional level, where the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announces that joint regional force deployments, defence systems stationed on Belarusian territory and tactical nuclear weapons provide a counterbalance to Ukraine and NATO, whilst Peskov confirmed that Russia would support Minsk in the event of an attack.

The frequency with which nuclear declarations are repeated in the official media suggests that, in Moscow today, nuclear doctrine is used more as a tool of everyday rhetoric than as a contingency operational option, and is primarily directed at the Russian domestic apparatus and the domestic audience, rather than an external adversary; this must be taken into account when forecasting NATO’s response to Moscow’s subsequent declarations. The clarity and repetition of declarations regarding the defence of the Union State are just as important as their content, because certain circles in Minsk are attempting to position Belarus as a discreet mediator, whilst the Kremlin is systematically closing that door.

Key technological challenges for the Armed Forces of Ukraine

Serhiy Beskrestnov, an adviser to the Minister of Defence known by the pseudonym ‘Flash’, published on Facebook a subjective, nine-point list of the greatest technological challenges facing the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Topping the list was the lack of a solution to counter Russian guided aerial bombs. Further down the list were, above all, various limitations in the field of electronic warfare: against Mesh modules (modems) and video transmission channels from drones, as well as the lack of domestically produced ballistic missiles. S. Beskrestnov also drew attention to the insufficient number of tactical radars, which reduces the effectiveness of interceptor drones below its potential, as well as to the Russians’ significant successes in deploying unmanned aerial vehicles in frontline areas. At the same time, Flash pointed out that the Ukrainians lack the means or methods to effectively strike the enemy’s tactical radars. With regard to Ukrainian long-range drones, the main challenge identified was the need to develop alternative navigation systems; in the case of medium-range unmanned aerial vehicles, the focus was on countermeasures against anti-drone systems.

The post published by S. Beskrestnov, despite its laconic style, perfectly captures the challenges facing the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the Ukrainian authorities. Contrary to Kyiv’s propaganda claims, drone technologies present as many opportunities as they do problems, and resolving these issues requires ever-increasing expenditure and the use of the most sophisticated technologies. Presumably due to his experience and background, S. Beskrestnov focused almost exclusively on technologies relating to the air forces in the broadest sense, virtually overlooking those relevant to the ground forces, for example. This does not mean, however, that the army is not facing challenges of the same nature.

Further advances by the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine

In June this year, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (AF RF) recorded further successes as part of their ongoing ground operation. In particular, these relate to the Russians’ almost complete capture of Konstantynówka, as well as their forces making significant advances towards Kramatorsk. The latter of these towns is now reportedly within the constant range of FPV drones. These successes are confirmed by Ukrainian estimates (the Deep State analytical group) and Russian estimates (TG: Creamy_caprice), which put the Russian Armed Forces’ territorial gains at 84 km² and 112 km² respectively. At the same time, the above facts – particularly the almost complete expulsion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces from Konstantynówka – are virtually absent from Ukrainian media coverage. Instead, the coverage highlights almost daily, often successful, long-range attacks on high-value targets in Russia. Recently, targets hit have included power stations and combined heat and power plants in Crimea, refinery facilities in Moscow, Slavyansk and Ufa, and arms factories in Volgograd. Meanwhile, the Russians have continued to terrorise civilians in the largest cities, particularly Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, frequently striking multi-storey residential buildings. High-value targets have included gas industry facilities belonging to the Naftogaz group.

The situation on the battlefield is unlikely to change significantly until at least the end of this summer. Neither side has the manpower or equipment required to break through the front line. Consequently, we can expect the Russian Armed Forces to continue making slow but steady territorial gains, alongside mutual long-range attacks using missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles.

Kyiv orders high-mobility vehicles for the Ukrainian Armed Forces

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence has commissioned the Defence Procurement Agency (the equivalent of the Polish Armaments Agency) to purchase 5,000 pick-up trucks and 1,500 motorcycles. According to a statement from the ministry, both types of equipment are in particularly high demand by military units. Pick-up trucks form the backbone of Ukrainian logistics in frontline areas and are also widely used by mobile fire teams to combat, amongst other things, unmanned aerial vehicles. Motorcycles, in turn, are the best means of transport for individual soldiers in areas particularly at risk from FPV drones. Both procurement processes are being carried out under restricted confidentiality, via a tender procedure.

The very high demand for, and rapid wear and tear of, high-mobility vehicles should be one of the lessons learnt by the Polish Army. It should maintain large, as uniform and modern as possible, fleets of vehicles and motorcycles, as well as be able to rapidly develop its own capabilities for servicing and repairing this type of equipment. Importantly, these do not necessarily have to be based on the latest-generation vehicles, as maintaining them in field conditions may prove impossible, for example due to the advanced electronics they incorporate.