In a single weekend, three different signals came about Russian capabilities: an internal economic warning, satellite images of new drone infrastructure, and a series of arrests of suppliers of those same drones. Each of them speaks to something different and they contradict each other.
Key actors — tap for context
Andrey Klepach
Russian economist, deputy minister of economic development from 2008 to 2014, chief economist of the state development corporation VEB.RF from July 2014.
Why here: Dismissed on August 16, 2026, after his May speech about a losing exhausting war spread in Russian media.
More info →
Igor Shuvalov
Chairman of VEB.RF, first vice prime minister of the Russian government from 2008 to 2018 and long-time Putin confidant.
Why here: According to the independent portal The Bell, he gave Klepach his notice after a "call from above".
More info →VEB.RF
Russian state development corporation, former Vnesheconombank. Finances large infrastructure and industrial projects and is under Western sanctions.
Why here: Employer that dismissed Klepach after twelve years.
Rainer Saks
Estonian security expert who headed Teabeamet, later renamed to the current Estonian foreign intelligence service, and served as Chancellor of Estonia's Foreign Ministry.
Why here: Posed the question of why Russia is not using drones, which by its own figures should have full warehouses of.
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Andrey Belousov
Russian defense minister since May 2024, previously economist and first vice prime minister.
Why here: In June himself described one of the domestic drones demonstrated to Putin as "not exactly a quality product".
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The Moscow Times
Independent newspaper about Russia, published in English and Russian. After the invasion of Ukraine, it relocated to Amsterdam and Moscow designated it an "undesirable organization".
Why here: On August 14, this very publication reminded the public of Klepach's May speech, after which the economist lost his job.
More info →Geran-5
Russian long-range attack drone, a newer branch of the family derived from the Iranian Shahed-136, which Russia produces under the designation Geran-2.
Why here: Model for which, according to Telegraph, extended launch ramps are being created near NATO borders.
The Call from Above
- Washington Post broke down bank withdrawals into a nationwide figure. What we described above as individual depositor decisions, the newspaper evaluated overnight as a trend: Russians are withdrawing billions from banks. MKD.mk ↗
- "Is Putin losing control?" Polish press writes about the specter of Soviet shortages. It is the same mechanism that Klepach described — only transferred from the economic model to stores. Wirtualna Polska ↗
- Those four hundred billion rubles we wrote about above became a European story by day. German, Austrian, Luxembourg and Romanian press converted them to nearly four billion euros and uniformly framed them as "voluntary" gifts — G4Media straight with the headline "Putin asks, billionaires pay". G4Media ↗n-tv ↗Kurier ↗Luxemburger Wort ↗
- A motive has been added to the bank withdrawals. Tagesspiegel clarifies that behind them is fear of state confiscation, not ordinary caution — "nervousness is growing"; Onet adds that "everyone who can is trying to get money out". Tagesspiegel ↗Onet ↗
- The first figure has been added to the fuel crisis: gasoline is available at only 28 percent of Russian gas stations. So far we only had punishment for complaints and a Moroccan cargo in Murmansk; this is the first data on how large that shortfall really is. LSM ↗HVG ↗Rzeczpospolita ↗
- Politician of Yabloko Lev Shlosberg was sentenced to eleven years in prison — the same party that in the meantime has been removed from the ballot. Courrier International ↗
Klepach is among the most respected Russian economists. Before joining VEB, he headed the macroeconomic forecasting department at the Ministry of Economic Development and was its deputy minister for six years. Kurier ↗
At a May meeting of the Nikitsky Club of the Moscow Stock Exchange, he uttered sentences that are not spoken aloud in the Russian state apparatus. "We will not win this competition in an exhausting war," The Moscow Times quoted him. "We live in the illusion that everything will collapse there. It hasn't collapsed and it won't." And he added: "I believe Russia will not fall apart, but I am almost certain that we will enter a social crisis." Ukrajinská pravda ↗
The Bell wrote on August 16, citing two sources, that VEB.RF chief Igor Shuvalov fired Klepach after a "call from above," that is, from the Kremlin. The economist himself confirmed his departure to Forbes magazine but did not provide reasons. German media also cited the business newspaper Vedomosti, according to which Klepach left because his personal assessments could not be reconciled with the positions of the state corporation. n-tv ↗
The timing is crucial. Nearly three months elapsed between the speech and the dismissal, and the dismissal came two days after the quotes spread in the media. This suggests that what mattered was not the utterance itself, but its publicity.
What can be seen from satellite
- Rosneft introduced a 30-liter limit per customer at its gas stations, and lines for gasoline appeared in Moscow for the first time during this wave of crisis. Italian Repubblica sums it up simply: strikes on refineries put the oil giant into crisis. Adevărul ↗La Repubblica ↗
- Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak confirmed that fuel imports have already begun. The first shipment of gasoline from India arrived in early August at the Arctic port of Vitino — so alongside the Moroccan cargo in Murmansk, which we wrote about above, this is a second route. Kyiv Post makes this the thesis of his entire analysis: the energy exporter is becoming a fuel importer thanks to Ukraine. Adevărul ↗Kyiv Post ↗
- German ZDF reports that the gasoline crisis is intensifying again — meaning it's not a one-time outage that would fade, but a condition that returns after each new round of strikes. ZDF heute ↗
- Russian oil exports fell to the lowest level since late April. The reason is Ukrainian attacks on refineries and ports — that is, the same campaign whose infrastructure is mapped by satellite imagery above. N1 Serbia ↗
- Russia is launching mass production of mobile transformer stations. It's a direct admission that damage to energy infrastructure has ceased to be one-time and requires a constant response. N1 Serbia ↗
- Ukraine launched almost 800 drones at Russia targeting Moscow, the second night in a row. CBS News ↗La Repubblica ↗
- "Russia is burning and Kyiv has a possible ace up its sleeve," writes Norwegian Aftenposten about the same campaign. Aftenposten ↗
- The story was also picked up by Swiss media. NZZ summed it up in a single sentence in the headline: a Moscow top economist talks about Russia's defeat against Ukraine — and he's fired. Neue Zürcher Zeitung ↗
- Russia began punishing people for complaints about fuel shortage, while the crisis itself deepens. It's exactly the type of reaction the economist described — the problem is not solved, its reporting is solved. Kyiv Post ↗Onet ↗
- Russia ordered a shipment of fuel from Morocco — and it now sits in the Murmansk port. The country that exports oil imports fuel. Helsingin Sanomat ↗
- Russian billionaires transferred almost four hundred billion rubles to the budget after Putin called on them to contribute to financing the war. Ziarul de Gardă ↗
- "Who can, withdraws money." Moldovan BANI.md describes the other side of the same coin — billionaires save assets and people empty banks. BANI.md ↗
- Although PepsiCo announced its departure from Russia, last year it paid the state 237 million dollars. Kyiv Independent ↗
On the same day, the London Telegraph brought opposite-sounding numbers. According to leaked documents and satellite images, it shows at least 59 new launch pads at ten Russian drone bases. One is located near the Belarusian border, the rest are scattered along northeastern Ukraine and on occupied territory closer to the Black Sea. Dagens Nyheter ↗
According to Telegraph, approximately twenty pads are longer, which analytical firm DroneSec links to the latest Geran-4 and Geran-5 models. It's a Russian branch of the family derived from the Iranian Shaheed-136 — newer pieces are faster and can carry a warhead up to 90 kilograms. Seven of the ten locations were said to be used in recent attacks on Kyiv and one base has a capacity of over a thousand drones. Warsaw is also within range. Kyiv Post ↗
For the eastern flank of NATO, this is not an abstract report. On Sunday morning, a Spanish F-18 fighter in alliance service shot down a drone that had penetrated Romanian airspace from Moldova, debris fell in Galați county near the Ukrainian border. On Friday, allied fighter jets shot down another drone over Latvia, in forested terrain near the village of Rugāji. Aktuality.sk ↗
Latvian Defense Minister Raivis Melnis said on Monday that this machine flew from Belarusian territory. Authorities are still determining the country of its origin and according to current findings, it entered Latvian airspace as a result of Russian electronic jamming. LRT ↗
What can be seen from the courtroom
- Fifth year of bribery: Russian corruption blocks drone production. Polish Rzeczpospolita describes exactly the mechanism that explains the discrepancy between reported stockpiles and actual deployment. Rzeczpospolita ↗
- The exclusion of Yabloko from the lists is already read in foreign press as a party ban. Bosnian media present it as Putin's purge before elections: the only anti-war party banned, its leader sentenced to eleven years. Klix.ba ↗
- A proposal appeared in Russia to strip voting rights from "traitors of the homeland". AGI ↗
- The Yabloko party was removed from ballot sheets, although the court decision is not yet final. Newsmaker ↗
- Another proposal from the same workshop: internet only for citizens with ID. Censor.NET ↗
- Russia imposed fines on Google, Telegram and Microsoft. Cumhuriyet ↗
Russian courts offer a third view of the same numbers. The Russian-language project Actual Time, connected with Radio Free Europe, mapped a series of arrests in the Russian drone industry. The former and current director of Drone Solutions faces up to ten years for large-scale fraud; Moscow court sent them to custody on August 8. Novinky.cz ↗
Also behind bars ended up Yuri Kozarenko, head of Transport Budushchevo, who personally demonstrated drones to Putin at the factory in Togliatti, and billionaire Valery Kustov, major shareholder of the Efko group. According to investigators, the companies siphoned off subsidies from the Ministry of Industry and Trade for developing their own drones, but actually bought finished Chinese machines and passed them off as Russian. Russian investigators calculated the damage at 8.6 billion rubles.
The quality of those machines was questioned not only by Ukrainian opponents. According to pro-war bloggers, Russian soldiers described them as unusable, and Defense Minister Andrei Belousov called them "not quite a quality product" before Putin in June.
The question that no one has yet answered
- Against Klepachev's thesis stands the German reading: war fatigue has not yet arrived in Moscow. An expert at n-tv claims this despite ongoing Ukrainian airstrikes — and it's exactly the opposite answer to the same question. (n-tv ↗)It was precisely this contradiction that Estonian security expert Rainer Saks noticed. In a commentary for Postimees, he asks why Russia doesn't use drones in attacks on Ukraine that it supposedly has in full warehouses according to its own declared capacities. He's not surprised by the construction of pads themselves — according to him, the entire Russian military infrastructure is built with a possible conflict with NATO in mind and drones are in the arsenal permanently, not temporarily. Something else worries him: most alliance members still don't have effective anti-drone defense. Postimees ↗
Limits of this perspective
The number 59 comes from a single newsroom. Dagens Nyheter and Kyiv Post take over Telegraph's findings, independent verification of satellite images by a third team is not yet available.The arrest of suppliers also should not necessarily be read only as a fight against fraud. In Russia, criminal proceedings are also a tool for redistributing a lucrative sector, and the fact that the state is prosecuting someone doesn't in itself say how many drones will actually be produced. The plant in Alabuga, which supplies the new bases, continues to run.
And finally, Klepach wasn't talking about drones, but about the economy as a whole. We don't know his May calculations in full — only quotes came out, not tables.
What hotinfo is watching
Whether VEB.RF or the Kremlin will officially confirm the dismissal and on what grounds.Whether there will be further arrests in the Russian drone sector and whether they will also affect the plant in Alabuga.
Whether any independent team will verify Telegraph's satellite findings through their own analysis.
How the share of defense in Russian public spending will translate into the 2027 budget.
The frequency of drone incidents on NATO's eastern flank — Romania and Latvia reported airspace violations just in the past week.
