Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, has not signed off on transfers from allied countries, even though those partners already paid for the missiles. U.S. officials say he has not formally rejected the deals, but the paperwork is stalled. A Ukrainian official told reporters last week that Kyiv has only a couple of these missiles left. Patriots are the systems that shoot down Russian ballistic missiles before they hit cities.
This comes as relations between Washington and Kyiv stay tense. President Trump has criticized Volodymyr Zelensky for months and said someone else should negotiate for Ukraine. On Monday, Russian strikes killed six people near Kharkiv, including three children. One was a one-year-old in a stroller. Zelensky also said the U.S. gave Ukraine only 60 seconds of warning before a ballistic missile attack on Kyiv. Marco Rubio called claims that the U.S. is deliberately withholding information “scandalous,” but he acknowledged that some interceptor batches have not arrived. Zelensky has pressed for more interceptors, better early warnings, and restored Starlink access.
Can Glenn Beck be right on it all?
🚨 BREAKING NEWS 🚨 GLENN BECK BREAKS DOWN TRUMP’S “3D CHESS” MASTERPLAN ♟️🔥
In this video, Glenn Beck uses a whiteboard to dissect exactly how President Donald Trump is playing the geopolitical game—and why nobody else seems to get it!
Beck details a strategy where Russia, Ukraine, and the USA all come out on top by shifting the focus to Rare Earth Minerals (REM), effectively boxing out China and putting America First.
According to Beck, this move stops the never-ending cash pipeline, reduces corruption, and secures a win for the U.S. without dragging the country into a nuclear war.
“This guy is a freaking genius… We all win.” — Glenn Beck
OP: Glen Beck https://t.co/njWG0jw5tT
#Geopolitics #Trump #GlennBeck #AmericaFirst #China #WhiteboardStrategy
— JM (@WebAddictCanada) October 19, 2026
The ground war looks different from the air war. The front lines have barely moved since the big shifts of 2022. Russia already held about 7 percent of Ukraine before the full-scale invasion—Crimea plus parts of the Donbas. In the first months of 2022, Russian forces pushed deep into the country and briefly controlled close to a quarter of the territory. Ukraine then drove them back from the Kyiv area, most of Kharkiv region, and the right bank of the Dnipro River near Kherson. Those counterattacks shrank the Russian-held area sharply.
Since early 2023 the map has stayed largely the same. Tracking groups that follow the war put Russian control at roughly 19 percent of Ukraine today. That includes the land Russia held before February 2022. Between January 2023 and September 2026, Russia gained about 8,300 square kilometers in total. That is a small fraction of the country. In 2026 alone the net gain through September was under 900 square kilometers according to one open-source map, and independent analysts put the figure even lower in some counts. Daily advances average a few square kilometers—slow enough that a person walking could outpace the front in many sectors.
BREAKING: Trump post on Ukraine and Russia, says Zelensky ‘doesn’t want to end the war, and probably never did’. https://t.co/gOejrfbWzs
— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) October 18, 2026
Most of the fighting remains in the east. Russia controls nearly all of Luhansk and the large majority of Donetsk. Ukraine still holds the key cities that form a defensive belt there. In recent months Ukrainian forces ran Operation Vivaldi in northern Donetsk. They retook roughly 277 square kilometers and 16 settlements, blunting a Russian push aimed at encircling those cities. Russian troops continue assaults elsewhere, but their gains have slowed compared with 2025. Both sides use drones heavily. Infantry advances are costly, and neither army is breaking through on a large scale.
Zelensky Meets US Envoy Witkoff for High-Stakes Talks Amid Strained Ties
The result is a grinding war of attrition. Russia fires missiles and drones at Ukrainian cities and energy sites almost daily. Ukraine hits Russian oil facilities and logistics. Civilian deaths continue. The United Nations reported that civilians were killed in Kyiv on 22 of 30 days in September—the highest monthly total since the invasion began. Air defense stocks matter more than ever because the front itself is not moving fast enough to decide the outcome soon.
Trump has said Russia “has been fine on Ukraine” and has not been doing much. Battlefield maps show limited territorial change this year. The cost in lives, missiles, and destroyed infrastructure keeps rising while the lines stay roughly where they settled after 2022’s major moves. Talks involving U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and European leaders are set for this week, with a possible later meeting involving Putin. Whether more interceptors reach Ukraine before winter will shape how many more strikes hit the cities behind those stable front lines.
Whatfinger News is tracking the war at https://militarywar.whatfinger.com/.
— The Whatfinger News Team: Sgt K and Sgt R, with Grok on edits
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