Lab fish cycles are hours out of sync with natural ones

Shifts in reproductive timing outside lab conditions may require reappraisal of previous research

Osaka Metropolitan University

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Medaka egg-laying behaviour is susceptible to external factors.

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Credit: Osaka Metropolitan University

When researchers moved medaka—a fish commonly used in experiments—out of the lab and into more natural conditions, their reproductive clock shifted by hours, suggesting that laboratory findings may not fully capture their natural reproductive timing.

Research using model organisms requires an understanding of their behavior and physiology in natural environments in order to accurately interpret experimental results. Medaka are widely used as a model organism in biological research because they are easy to maintain and spawn frequently.

However, most previous studies on medaka have been conducted under laboratory conditions, leading to concerns about how well these carefully controlled experiments reflect how medaka live and reproduce in the wild.

An Osaka Metropolitan University (OMU) research group has been actively researching these differences. They previously found that medaka spawn late at night, which was different to what was observed in lab animals at the time.

Specially Appointed Assistant Professor Yuki Kondo and Professor Satoshi Awata at the Graduate School of Science at OMU were interested in whether any other reproductive behaviors were different between wild and laboratory conditions, especially the timing of ovulation—the process that leads to spawning.

When the researchers compared the timing of ovulation in medaka under laboratory conditions with those in tanks placed outdoors, they found that medaka kept in the semi-natural conditions ovulated approximately 3.5 hours earlier.

“Because we used the same strain of medaka in both environments, the difference in the timing of ovulation is likely attributable to differences in rearing conditions,” Dr. Kondo said. “In laboratory settings, artificial lighting is switched on and off abruptly, whereas in natural environments light levels change gradually at dawn and dusk. In addition, water temperature fluctuates on a daily basis outdoors. These environmental differences may contribute to the observed shift in ovulation timing.”

Their findings have important implications in research, as many biological discoveries are based on model organisms in controlled labs. The study shows that these results may not fully translate to natural conditions and that timing-dependent processes, like reproduction, are especially vulnerable.

“This study highlights the challenge of generalizing findings from animal experiments based solely on laboratory results,” Professor Awata concluded.

“Going forward, it will be important to identify the environmental factors that cause differences in behavior and ovulation timing between laboratory and natural settings,” he continued. “It is important to clarify how these factors regulate the timing of ovulation.”

The findings were published in Royal Society Open Science.

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About OMU

Established in Osaka as one of the largest public universities in Japan, Osaka Metropolitan University is committed to shaping the future of society through “Convergence of Knowledge” and the promotion of world-class research. For more research news, visit https://www.omu.ac.jp/en/ and follow us on social media: X, Instagram, LinkedIn.

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Journal

Royal Society Open Science

DOI

10.1098/rsos.251946 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Temporal shifts in ovulation between laboratory and semi-natural environments in the model fish medaka

What Putin and Trump Owe Their Victims 

Walter Clemens

 May 18, 2026

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Photograph Source: Benjamin D Applebaum – Public Domain

Aggressors should compensate their victims for those killed, wounded, or displaced by their attacks as well as for damage to their buildings, bridges, and environment. By this logic, Iraq was forced to pay some $52.4 billion to Kuwait for damages resulting from Saddam Hussein’s 1990-1991 invasion and occupation. The process was managed by the United Nations Compensation Commission, created in 1991 as a subsidiary organ of the UN Security Council to handle claims and payments for losses and damage suffered by Kuwait.  Using revenue from oil sales, Iraq made its final payment in 2022.

The damages caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and US attacks on Iran have far exceeded Iraq’s obligations to Kuwait.

Vladimir Putin’s Special Military Operation has killed or wounded nearly a million Ukrainians—civilians and military. What is the value of one life? Depending on circumstances, the US government values one American life at $1 million to $10 million. While Ukraine’s economy is much smaller than the US, each Ukrainian life must still be worth at least $100,000. So the compensation for killing half a million Ukrainians would be close to $50 billion. If the damage for each of the 500,000 people wounded is valued at $10,000 each, that would add another $5 billion. Add another $10 billion for the millions of Ukrainians displaced and $10 billion for those suffering from PTSD. Damage to Ukraine’s buildings and infrastructure amounts to nearly $600 billion, according to the World Bank. Damage to the environment—soil, water, air, wildlife–could amount to another $600 billion. Bottom line: Russia owes Ukraine nearly $2 trillion for damage by Putin’s forces.

Putin’s war has also killed and wounded nearly one million Russian and ethnic minority soldiers, for whom restitution has been promised. Someone must also pay for the tanks, armored cars, missiles, planes, ships, and oil refineries devoured by the war. Russia’s wealth has also been depleted by slower GDP growth and the many problems caused by foreign sanctions. For its unprovoked Special Military Operation, the Kremlin owes its own subjects as much as it owes Ukraine–a total approaching $4 trillion.

Russia’s president could and should pay half this bill from his private hoard. The other half could and should be paid by Russian taxpayers, who did not launch this war but did almost nothing to stop it.

The US attacks on Iran have probably killed over 3300 civilians and military. If each Iranian life is valued at $100,000, that puts the total at over $300 million. Add $10,000 for each of 10,000 wounded— another $100 million due to Iranians. To assess damage to Iran’s infrastructure and the environment requires more information. But the United States probably owes the Iranian people and the regime, more than $1 trillion for its unprovoked damage to human and material assets.

Relatively few Americans have been killed or wounded in the Iran war, but the Pentagon has consumed hardware and fuel in ways that burned through close to $30 billion. The president now seeks to raise the defense budget by one-half to $1.5 trillion. Harvard economist Linda Bilmes estimates that the long-term costs of the Iran “excursion” (Trump’s term) will exceed $1 trillion including interest and veterans’ benefits.

The big picture is that the Trump administration should compensate Americans and billions of people around the world for the losses they suffer due to this entirely optional war. Inflated prices for fuel and other basics are part of these losses. So are 401(k) stock market losses. Higher prices for fuel and fertilizer are a serious blow to farmers everywhere and can inflict food shortages around the globe.

Should US taxpayers shoulder the expenses of a disastrous war launched and continued by a lone US president with hardly any support from the public, Congress, or his own cabinet? No! Since this war has been the brainchild of one man, Donald J. Trump, he should compensate his victims—at home and abroad–from his personal accounts, already bloated by his illegal emoluments as president. If his personal accounts run low, he might ask his sons, his son-in-law or accomplice Bibi for help, since they too have profited from his actions.

How to compel the Russian and US presidents to honor their debts is another question, But first we need to recognize the magnitude of their obligations.

Walter Clemens is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Boston University and Associate, Harvard University Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. He is the author Complexity Science and World Affairs and the Republican Virus in the Body Politic.

Scaling Patriot Production: The Industrial Base Crisis Explained – Analysis

Test firing of a US Patriot missile. Photo Credit: Jason Cutshaw, U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command

May 19, 2026 
Published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute
By Macdonald Amoah, Morgan D. Bazilian, and Lt. Col. Jahara Matisek

(FPRI) — On April 10, after coalition forces had fired at least 1,700 Patriots in just five weeks, the Pentagon announceda $4.76 billion contract to accelerate production. While a seemingly forceful response, the move only highlighted the core problem. At the current build rate of 600 missiles per year, it would take three years to replace what was used in a little over a month. Replenishment runs on an industrial clock, and that clock is measured in years, not days.

Patriot missile expenditure by the United States and its allies in the 2026 Iran War is the clearest case study in command of the reload. The problem is not simply how to fire more missiles, but how to sustain missile defense once the opening magazine is gone. That requires three things:Buying time through multiyear demand that gives industry room to invest;
Buying redundancy across the sub-tier bottlenecks that pace production
Buying efficiency through defensive doctrines that preserve premium interceptors for premium threats.

For decades, US grand strategy was what Barry Posen famously called “Command of the Commons,” the ability to dominate every war-fighting domain to shape the terms of a conflict. That advantage still matters, but the Iran war exposed the harder foundation beneath it. The United States can expend advanced precision-guided munitions in weeks, while the defense-industrial base takes years to replace them. Command of the commons now depends more heavily on “Command of the Reload.”


Time-money mismatches are not a budget glitch; it is a structural crisis that we describe as the “Iron Triangle of the Defense-Industrial Base.” Unlike the classic management triangle of cost, time, and performance, this is a supply-side triangle where time, capacity, and cost are in constant tension. Constraints at any point within the defense-industrial base ecosystem (e.g., sub-tier suppliers, specialized test infrastructure, long qualification cycles, etc.) means that industry cannot “make it now” just because Washington policymakers want more missiles. The Patriot interceptor is the perfect example: It’s expensive, low-density, and indispensable. The shortage did not begin with Iran; by July 2025, US Patriot stocks had already fallen to 25 percent of the Pentagon’s minimum requirements due to transfers to Ukraine. The conflict did not create the deficit; it merely exposed a fragility that many think tanks like the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Payne Institute for Public Policy, and RAND had been warning about for years.

The strongest indicator that Washington understands the constraint is what it is doing outside the traditional defense sector. The Pentagon is now asking major US manufacturers, including automakers and other industrial firms, to explore expanding weapons production, which appears to be a return to the World War II “Arsenal of Democracy” playbook. You don’t start calling Detroit unless the existing defense-industrial ecosystem cannot reload fast enough.


The PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) interceptor surge announcement should be viewed through that lens. The contract action allows work to start while final terms are still being negotiated, which is the Pentagon admitting urgency while also admitting that the pipeline cannot be rebuilt instantly.

Achieving command of the reload requires more than buying missiles after stocks run low. Washington must buy time through consistent multiyear demand that allows industry to invest. It must buy redundancy to break single points of failure in the supply chain. And it must buy efficiency through layered defensive doctrines that preserve premium interceptors for premium threats. The United States is trying to buy back an endurance that war revealed cannot be surged on command.
Buy Time: The Clock of War

The first requirement for command of the reload is time, and the Patriot interceptor missile illustrates this timing problem. Every PAC-3 MSE interceptor carries a production lead time of 24 months for the missileand 30 months for the solid rocket motor. Such timelines are due to physical industrial constraints, such as the lengthy curing time required for solid rocket motors and the complex, multi-year process of qualifying any new component supplier. Interceptors funded under the April 2026 contract will probably not arrive until mid-2028 at the earliest. The contract is large and urgent, yet its timeline exposes the paradox of modern defense procurement: Even an emergency response moves at a pace that is strategically irrelevant in the short term.

That is why the significance of the contract is less about the money and more about the demand signal it sends to the industrial base. A one-time infusion of money does little to persuade suppliers to hire specialized labor or expand tooling. As Pentagon leaders and congressional counterparts increasingly argue, defense firms make those long-term investments only when they receive a stable, multiyear demand signal. In that sense, consistent demand must be paired with industrial policy.


Washington has begun moving in this direction. In January 2026, the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin signed a seven-year framework agreement to raise PAC-3 MSE production from 600 missiles annually to 2,000 a year by 2030. This is a serious effort to buy time before the next emergency. Still, the scale of the gap remains striking. Lockheed delivered only 620 interceptors in 2025, or about 1.7 missiles per day for a global network of allies. While the production curve is improving, its industrial slope cannot match modern combat.

The Iran war simply revealed how little slack remained in the system. The failure to maintain a robust industrial pipeline after the Cold War, when the defense industry was hollowed out following the 1993 “Last Supper” meeting, offers a cautionary tale. Countries sustain combat by treating munitions demand as a long-term signal rather than a crisis response. Industrial capacity grows only when governments buy time before they need it.
Buy Redundancy: The Weakest Link

Buying time is not enough. The second requirement for command of the reload is redundancy, especially below the prime contractor, where output is truly determined. Modern missile production moves at the speed of its weakest indispensable supplier. Lockheed Martin assembles the final PAC-3 MSE interceptor, but actual throughput depends on a fragile network of producers for seekers, rocket motors, energetics, and specialized test infrastructure.

The scale of that vulnerability is easy to miss in peacetime and impossible to ignore in war. During the first four days of the Iran war, coalition forces expended Patriot rounds at an estimated rate of 225 missiles per day, while Lockheed’s Camden facility produced just 1.7 per day. This consumption-to-production ratio of roughly 132:1 highlights a massive warfighting endurance gap.

The primary bottleneck sits one level below the prime contractor. Boeing produces the active radar seeker for every PAC-3 MSE from a single facility in Huntsville, Alabama, and in 2025 it delivered only around 650 to 700 seekers. Recognizing this choke point, the Pentagon signed a framework in April 2026 to triple seeker production, an admission that final assembly capacity is irrelevant if the sub-tier cannot keep up. The same logic applies to the missile’s solid rocket motor, manufactured by L3Harris’s Aerojet Rocketdyne. The Pentagon’s recent $1 billion investment in that firm underscores its unique vulnerability; its motors are a critical input not just for the Patriot but for the THAAD, Tomahawk, and Standard Missile programs as well.

For decades, Washington favored lean supply chains and peacetime efficiency. That approach saved money, but under the pressure of conflict it is revealed as fragility dressed up as discipline. A country that depends on one qualified source for a key missile component does not possess surge capacity; it possesses hope. The answer is selective redundancy where it matters most: second-source qualification for critical components, pre-cleared technical data packages, and a standing surge architecture built before a crisis begins. This work is unglamorous, but it is what determines whether the United States can sustain a fight once its opening stockpile runs low.
Buy Efficiency: The Defensive Economy

Command of the reload requires efficiency. Even an expanded industrial base cannot match a risk-averse air defense doctrine. The US Army’s revised acquisition objective for 13,773 PAC-3 MSE interceptors, at a total program cost of over $53 billion for 60 US Army Patriot batteries, underscores a simple truth: these assets are too valuable to waste.


The solution is a defensive economy: reserving premium interceptors for the high-end threats, such as ballistic missiles. Cheaper threats, such as one-way attack drones, must be pushed down to more sustainable layers, including guns, short-range missiles, and “anti-drone” drones. A layered defense architecture does more than improve tactical performance; it stretches finite magazines and buys the industrial base time to replenish what combat consumes.

The economics of failing to do so are stark. Firing a $4 million PAC-3 MSE at a $35,000 Iranian dronecreates a ruinous 114:1 cost ratio. The reality on the battlefield can be even worse; Ukrainian military advisors in the Gulf were shocked to see coalition batteries firing eight interceptors to shoot down a single Iranian drone. A defensive posture built on that exchange rate becomes financially and industrially exhausting. The answer is not simply to manufacture more interceptors, but to preserve them for the threats that justify their cost, a trend already visible in our Payne Institute proprietary ledger tool, which shows the wartime use of over 450 Raytheon Coyote “anti-drone” drones against Iranian drones.

This need for efficiency is intensified by overwhelming global demand. Of the April 2026 contract, 94 percent of the funds came from Foreign Military Sales. Allied governments are the primary customers driving industrial expansion, and the combined demand queue from over a dozen countries, like Saudi Arabia, Germany, and Poland, represents a backlog of over 4,300 Patriot rounds. This is basically seven years of Patriot output at 2025 production rates.

Ultimately, layered defense is industrial preservation by other means. Better sensor discrimination and a more efficient shot doctrine at the battery level now shape strategic endurance at the national level. Buying more missiles without changing doctrine simply creates a larger arsenal to be consumed inefficiently. Better doctrine without industrial depth, conversely, eventually collides with the hard reality of finite supply. Command of the reload requires both: one expands the arsenal, the other preserves it.
Reloading American Power: The New Grammar of War

The Pentagon’s use of emergency authorities to accelerate arms sales is not a sign of strength; it is a confession of weakness. Washington has realized, mid-conflict, that the US military does not have the industrial endurance it assumed. But these are policy stopgaps, not solutions. The fundamental problem is governed by the iron triangle of the defense-industrial base: munitions can be good, fast, or cheap, but never all three. Surging production under wartime pressure means sacrificing “cheap,” a reality starkly illustrated when the US Navy required over $2 billion to replenish $1 billion in munitions after its Red Sea operations.

This new reality demands a focus on the command of the reload. It is the ability to keep fighting after the opening exchange, to defend allies without emptying one’s own magazines, and to win a war of industrial attrition without watching tactical success turn into strategic exhaustion. When it comes to deterring China and Russia, industrial endurance is becoming a core element of military power itself.

To achieve industrial resilience, Washington must pursue three interconnected policy reforms. First, it must buy time through consistent, multiyear demand, including subsidies and tax credits that give industry a stable footing. This would transform the industrial base from a reactive job shop into a proactive strategic asset, capable of anticipating future needs. Second, it must buy redundancy by investing directly in the sub-tier supply chains for critical materials, chemicals, and components. Dependence on a single factory for a vital missile component stifles surge capacity and creates a strategic vulnerability. Finally, Washington must buy efficiency by enforcing layered defense doctrines and tactics that preserve premium interceptors for premium threats. A smarter shot doctrine is the most effective way to stretch finite magazines and prevent adversaries from winning a war of attrition through cost-imposing attacks. Unlike a reactive emergency appropriation, these reforms are a proactive investment in lasting industrial power and credible long-term deterrence.


The lesson of the Patriot missile goes beyond just a single weapon system. For decades, American power was measured by its ability to strike anywhere on the globe. The Iran war has shown that it will now be measured by its ability to reload.

About the authors:Macdonald Amoah is an independent researcher with interests across critical mineral supply chains, advanced manufacturing gaps, the industrial base, and geopolitical risks in the mining sector.
Morgan D. Bazilian is the director of the Payne Institute for Public Policy and professor at the Colorado School of Mines
Jahara “FRANKY” Matisek, Ph.D., is a U.S. Air Force command pilot, senior fellow at the Payne Institute for Public Policy, and a visiting scholar at Northwestern University. The views in this article are his own and do not represent those of the U.S. Air Force, Department of War, or any part of the U.S. government.

Source: This article was published by FPRI

Trump-Xi summit sparks Taiwan headlines, but raises doubts over US grasp of bigger picture

Trump and Xi shake hands. / Donald Trump - Truth SocialFacebook

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By Mark Buckton in Taipei May 18, 2026

The rhetoric emerging from the May 2026 meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in the Chinese capital has generated a series of dramatic headlines in Washington. In Asia, it has barely registered.

At issue is a renewed emphasis on Taiwan and the familiar language around independence and whether or not the island of 24mn is pushing in that direction. Yet regional policymakers and analysts see little substance behind the statements made by either Trump or Xi as nothing has materially changed.

For years, US officials have been far more focussed on efforts to constrain China’s military reach, particularly its access to the Northwest Pacific, than Taiwanese moves towards independence.

Official US policy on Taiwan is built around a deliberately ambiguous framework that has remained largely consistent for decades. At its core is the so-called One China policy pushed by Beijing, under which Washington “acknowledges” China’s position that there is one China and that Taiwan is part of it, but the US has never explicitly endorsed that claim, and neither has Donald Trump. Without an act of Congress he couldn’t.

Yet, for all Trump’s bluster in recent days, Washington remains legally committed to maintaining a defensive perimeter that limits Chinese expansion beyond the first island chain – read Taiwan – and into the Western Pacific.

US doctrine has, for decades, relied on a chain of strategic positions — stretching from Japan’s Okinawa islands in the north, through Taiwan and down to the Philippines - what defence planners and think tanks have previously referred to as “unsinkable aircraft carriers”.

This is not a new concept as the US has always sought to deny China uncontested access to the North Pacific. Alongside allies in Tokyo and Manila, Taiwan is one, albeit legally unrecognised, element in that system. Taiwan is not, despite claims to the contrary by Taiwanese governments trying to ingratiate themselves to different US administrations, the objective in itself. At least not for the US. And that distinction is critical — but frequently misunderstood in Washington’s political messaging and for casual observers of the status of Taiwan vis-a-vis its role in the Beijing-Washington relationship.

Face-saving

To this end, the post-meeting statements from both China and the US are little more than the latest performance in a long-played out version of political theatre. For Trump, the optics matter – oftentimes more than the content itself. After a summit that came up woefully short on deals agreed, and yielded few tangible concessions from Beijing, Trump reiterating a hard line on Taiwan offers a domestic narrative of strength and influence.

For Xi, the calculus is similar. Reasserting China’s position on Taiwan - particularly Beijing’s opposition to a declaration of formal independence - comes at little cost, given that Taipei has never actually moved in that direction and shows no sign of doing so.

For both the US and China, this is thus a classic face-saving exercise. Both sides needed something they could present as a win, and talking tough on Taiwan is the easiest way to package that because the status quo is more often than not stable.

Indeed, Taiwan’s own political reality undercuts much of the rhetoric. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party administration in Taipei, in power since 2016, has consistently maintained that it does not need to declare independence. It already operates as a sovereign entity in practice, with its own elections, currency, military and a significant international economic presence.

The main Kuomintang (KMT) opposition party, traditionally more China-friendly, has shown no appetite for a formal declaration although some of its members at least acknowledge the island’s de facto independence.

Against that backdrop, calls to avoid independence by both Trump and Xi ring hollow. They are little more than statements aimed at external audiences, not fully versed on the political realities of East Asia. Such claims do not reflect imminent policy risk.

Goals unchanged

Because of this, what has not changed is US defence policy which continues to prioritise containment of China within the first island chain. Taiwan’s role in that framework is geographic as Trump has indicated, not ideological. It is simply a node in a broader network designed to restrict Chinese access to the Pacific.

As a number of US strategists have said in recent years, if China can break through that line, it would change the balance of power across the entire North Pacific, but while Taiwan is part of that line, the line itself is the point; as clear as it gets on why the question of Taiwan’s formal political status has always been secondary in military planning. Whether or not Taipei declares independence does not alter its geographic importance.

Crucially though, this also explains Beijing’s increased targeting of Taiwan of late. Among the components of the US-aligned chain – Okinawa, Taiwan and the Philippines – Taiwan is perceived as the most vulnerable. Japan’s strength and alliance with the US, and the presence of tens of thousands of US troops make Okinawa effectively untouchable. The Philippines, despite periodic political shifts, also remains closely tied to Washington.

Taiwan sits in between, both geographically and politically exposed even if there are always rumours and 'sightings' of US military ‘advisers’ working alongside Taiwanese forces – a concept that dates back to the mid 1880s when the north of the island was briefly invaded by French forces and at least one US Civil War veteran was recorded as aiding the locals against the invaders.

Long time observers of the region are more than aware that Trump’s approach risks missing this broader context. His emphasis on arms sales and short-term leverage plays well domestically with a populace known for its lack of international awareness, but sits uneasily with the longer-term strategic picture half a world away.

For now therefore, while the US continues to supply Taiwan with weapons, reinforcing Washington’s own defensive capacity. China continues to assert its claims. These dynamics are not new and will continue once Trump is upset by the next imagined Chinese faux pas and plays his arms-to-Taiwan card.

What has changed in the short term at least is the more explicit acknowledgement of each side’s position, without altering the underlying balance.

For some observers, this rightly reinforces doubts about US reliability in the region as was covered by IntelliNews weeks before Trump’s latest visit.

Taiwan the battleground

The core strategic reality then remains stark. In the event of a Chinese push into the Pacific, and subsequent conflict, the US would not be defending Taiwan for its political status. It would be seeking to prevent China from gaining unopposed access to Hawaii and the West coast of the mainland US. Should that happen, Taiwan would be the battleground, not the end goal – a distinction well understood in Beijing and across Asia but less clearly articulated in US political discourse.

 

Ukrainian Drones Hit Patrol Vessel, Cargo Ship and Port Infrastructure

AFU / Volodymyr Zelensky

Published May 17, 2026 8:24 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

Ukraine's drone forces continue to take a heavy toll on the Russian Black Sea fleet, and are reaching further and further into protected regions of the Russian hinterland. The ease with which Ukrainian UAVs operate over Russia suggests that air defenses are faltering, multiple Russian and Western analysts conclude - indicating increased prospects for further deep strike and "middle strike" operations. 

The latest round of attacks hit a Russian Border Guard Project 10410-class patrol vessel, a Be-200 amphibious aircraft, a Ka-27 helicopter, at least four level-luffing cargo cranes at the port of Berdyansk, a naval communications tower in Crimea, and a cargo vessel at Berdyansk, which Ukraine claimed was carrying ammunition. The aircraft strikes are noteworthy: the Be-200 is relatively rare, and its original engines are no longer available. It was staged at Yeysk, on the Sea of Azov, and could be used for maritime counter-drone patrols - an essential part of Russia's effort to tamp down Ukrainian maritime drone boat attacks in the Black Sea.

The Svetlyak-class patrol ship hit over the weekend was located in the Caspian, about 800 nautical miles to the east of Ukrainian shores. Video footage of the strike shows that the Border Guard ship attempted to defend itself with its rear-mounted AK-630 close-in weapons system as the drone approached from astern; the outcome is uncertain. The Svetlyak-class fast patrol boat has no long-range weaponry, and is a common sight on Russia's coastlines: 50 were built and nearly three dozen remain in service around the Russian Federation. 

Separately, far to the northwest, Ukraine's drone forces hit a variety of targets in and around Moscow - the best-defended region in Russia. Bystander videos show Ukrainian drones flying overhead without challenge, followed by apparent strikes on fuel tanks and a refining complex. 

"These are our entirely justified responses to what the Russians are doing. We will continue to increase both the range and scale of these sanctions," said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in a statement.

Russian Drones Strike Three Commercial Ships Including Chinese Bulker

Damage to the Chinese-owned and crew bulker (Ukrainian Navy)

Published May 18, 2026 1:06 PM by The Maritime Executive

Ukrainian officials are reporting that three commercial ships inbound for the ports near Odesa were struck on Monday. Although there was only minor damage, Ukraine quickly latched on to the reports highlighting that one of the vessels was Chinese-owned and crewed just hours before the summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The Ukrainian Navy released a photo showing the black spot from a scorch mark on the accommodation block of the vessel KSL Deyang. The 53,451-dwt bulker registered in the Marshall Islands was inbound toward Odesa. Reuters reported it was heading to the port to load a cargo of iron ore concentrate.

The vessel, which is owned and managed by a Chinese company in Nanjing, was struck by a single drone. They are reporting that there were no injuries to the crew and that the crew was able to extinguish a fire. The ship has minor damage and was continuing on its voyage.

“The Russians could not have failed to know which vessel was at sea,” asserted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a post on social media. Putin is arriving in Beijing just four days after Donald Trump’s visit. Ukraine asserts that Russia is importing more than 90 percent of sanctioned technology from China. 

The strike on the vessel was part of the current ongoing barrage by Russia on various parts of Ukraine. Oleh Kiper, the regional governor for Odesa, reported that two other vessels were also struck without supplying the names of the ships. He reported one was registered in Guinea-Bissau and later posted that another vessel registered in Panama was also struck. He said the third ship was traveling along the Ukrainian Corridor to the entrance to the port of Chornomorsk and said both ships reported small fires that the crews were able to extinguish.

Ukraine reported that more than 30 people were injured across the country and a small number killed after Russia launched hundreds of drones and missiles overnight into sections of Ukraine. Ukraine’s air force claimed to have downed most of the 546 drones and four of the 22 missiles launched at the country. Zelensky said there were 524 strike drones and 22 missiles of various types—ballistic and cruise—in this attack.

Russian officials countered, reporting that they had downed most of the over 3,100 drones Ukraine had launched in the past week.