Royal Marine commandos and National Crime Agency officers boarded a sanctioned oil tanker belonging to Russia’s shadow fleet as it passed through the English Channel – the first UK-led operation of its kind, the Ministry of Defence said. The vessel, identified as the SMYRTOS, was intercepted in a move aimed at cutting off the revenue funding Moscow’s war in Ukraine. Prime Minister Keir Starmer declared: “This successful operation delivers yet another blow to Russia and reminds those fueling Putin's war in Ukraine that we will not let them hide.”
The interception came as Ukraine launched a massive overnight drone strike against Russian industrial facilities. Russia’s Defense Ministry said 249 aerial objects were shot down across the country. In the south of Moscow, debris from a downed drone fell onto the site of a chemical plant, according to Governor Dmitri Miyaev. Unverified video footage and social media reports showed a fire at the Asot facility, one of Russia’s largest chemical plants, which produces fertilizer and components for ammunition. In the Yaroslavl Region, Governor Mikhail Yevrayev reported a drone attack on fuel storage facilities, causing a fire but no injuries.
“UK commandos boarded a sanctioned Russian oil tanker in the English Channel, the first such operation against Moscow's shadow fleet.”
While Ukraine targets Russia’s war infrastructure, a separate, deeply unsettling trend has emerged on Russian social media: families using AI to generate videos of soldiers killed in Ukraine, portraying them as heroes returning home. Since mid-2025, AI-generated clips have proliferated, most posted by relatives of servicemen. One popular blogger, Katya Jin, posted a 15-second AI video of a woman embracing a soldier in uniform on a Moscow street, with billboards reading “The Special Military Operation is over” and “Our heroes are coming home.” In reality, like tens of thousands of Russian soldiers, her husband disappeared at the front. Jin, who had 10 million TikTok followers and 50,000 Instagram followers, also offered tutorials and custom orders: dozens of people submitted photographs to have similar videos made. After the BBC approached her for comment, she removed the AI content from her accounts.
The practice has drawn sharp reactions. Many Ukrainians who have seen the videos are appalled, while some grieving families say it helps them mourn. Deepfakes have even been used at funerals. Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basińska, a researcher at the University of Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, said: “Creating 'deadbots' of Russian soldiers or deepfakes of fallen Russian soldiers returning from Ukraine is extremely complex and ethically difficult to assess in a clear-cut way.” The long-term psychological and social impact of this technology on grief remains largely unknown.