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(LONDON) — Increasingly squeezed by allies and enemies alike, Ukraine’s armed forces are still setting records in their stubborn defense against Russia’s 3-year-old invasion, which — if President Donald Trump’s peace talks bear fruit — may soon see a partial ceasefire.

Month after month, Ukraine has increased the size and scope of its drone assaults within Russia. The high watermark this month came on March 10 as Kyiv launched at least 343 drones into Russia — according to the Defense Ministry in Moscow — representing Kyiv’s largest ever such attack. More than 90 drones were shot down over Moscow, the capital’s mayor describing the assault as “massive.”

The timing was pointed, coming hours before American and Ukrainian officials gathered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for ceasefire talks.

While straining to prove to the White House they were ready to discuss peace with Moscow, the Ukrainians were also exhibiting their ever-evolving capability to wage war deep inside Russia.

“We keep developing a lot of different types of long-range deep strikes,” Yehor Cherniv — a member of the Ukrainian Parliament and the chairman of his country’s delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly — told ABC News.

“Our capacity is growing to destroy the capacity of Russia to continue this war,” he added.

Ukraine’s strikes against Russian critical infrastructure, energy facilities, military-industrial targets and military bases have mirrored Moscow’s own long-range campaign against Ukraine. Cross-border barrages in both directions have grown in size and complexity throughout the full-scale war.

Ukrainian short-range drones are harrying Russian forces on the devastated battlefields while long-range strike craft hit targets closer to home. Kyiv this month even claimed the first successful use of its domestically produced Neptune cruise missile, with a range of 600 miles.

Since the opening of U.S.-Russian talks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Feb. 18, Russia’s Defense Ministry claims to have shot down a total of 1,879 long-range Ukrainian drones — an average of more than 53 each day. On four occasions, the ministry reported intercepting more than 100 drones over a 24-hour period.

“Ukraine is pulling every single lever that it can, as hard as it can, to get it the kind of lethal strike capability that it needs for both of those campaigns,” Nick Reynolds, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London, told ABC News.

Three years of Russia’s full-scale war have supercharged drone innovation in Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s armed forces and intelligence services have lauded what they call their “drone sanctions” — a tongue-in-cheek reference to drone attacks on Russian fossil fuel, military industrial and other infrastructure targets far beyond the front.

“Our Ukrainian production of drones and their continuous modernization are a key part of our system of deterrence against Russia, which is crucial for ensuring Ukraine’s security in the long term,” Zelenskyy said in a recent Telegram post.

Ukrainian drones have hit targets more than 700 miles inside Russia, have regularly forced the temporary closures of major Russian airports and have bombarded the power centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg. At sea, Ukraine’s naval drones have confined Russia’s fleet to the eastern portion of the Black Sea and made its bases in Crimea untenable.

It is no longer unusual for more than 100 attack drones to cross into Russian territory in the course of one night. Meanwhile, Kyiv is pushing to replace its relatively low-tech propeller-driven unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, with more jet-powered craft — potentially extending range, payload and survivability. “The number of rocket drones production will grow just like our long-range strike drones production did,” Zelenskyy said last summer.

Kyiv’s strikes have particularly disrupted Russia’s lucrative oil refining and export industry, prompting concerns abroad — including in the U.S. — that the Ukrainian campaign is driving up oil prices globally.

Federico Borsari of the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank told ABC News that Ukraine’s evolving long-range strike industry represents a “strategic advantage,” especially if Kyiv is able to protect its industrial sites from Russian strikes and stockpile weapons for future use.

“Ukraine has damaged Russian oil refining facilities hard since 2024 and destroyed several key storage bases of the artillery shells,” Pavel Luzin, a Russian political analyst at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts, told ABC News. “So, the Russians are highly concerned about this.”

“The amount of financial loss and material damage is huge,” Borsari added.

Drones of all ranges are expected to serve a key role in Ukraine’s future deterrence of repeat Russian aggression. Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, for example, said Kyiv is planning a 6- to 9-mile drone “kill zone” to buffer any future post-war frontier with Russia, “making enemy advances impossible.”

Ivan Stupak, a former officer in the Security Service of Ukraine, told ABC News that Ukraine’s drone threat could also prove an important lever in ongoing negotiations with both Moscow and Washington, neither of which want continued — or expanded — drone strikes on Russian oil infrastructure and other sensitive targets.

The weapons could also be vital to future deterrence of repeat Russian aggression, Stupak said, as Ukraine pursues a “hedgehog” strategy by which the country would make itself too “prickly” for Moscow to attempt to swallow again.

Ukraine’s success has not gone unnoticed by its foreign partners. Kyiv appears to be carving out a potentially lucrative niche in providing long-range, low-cost strike platforms.

“There is immense interest from our friends around the world in Ukraine’s developments, our capabilities and our technological production,” Zelenskyy said recently.

Last fall, reports emerged indicating that Ukraine was considering lifting a wartime ban on drone exports, seeking to take advantage of growing demand worth as much as $20 billion annually, per an estimate by Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksandr Marikovskyi.

Ukraine’s military and intelligence services collaborate with domestic and international private companies to expand their drone capabilities. Kyiv has estimated there are more than 200 domestic companies working in the sector. This year, Zelenskyy wants Ukraine to produce 30,000 long-range drones and 3,000 ballistic missiles.

This month’s brief U.S. aid and intelligence freeze has raised concerns within Ukraine’s domestic drone industry, arguably one of the most insulated and resilient areas of the country’s defense sector.

“The reality is that Western-provided intelligence — and the Americans are a big part of that — does feed into a better targeting picture,” Reynolds said. “The efficiency and effectiveness is, in part, tied to that.”

“Ukraine became partly blinded as to how and where Russian anti-aircraft and electronic warfare systems are being deployed,” Stupak said.

If such a freeze is repeated, “I suppose it will be more difficult for Ukraine to avoid anti-aircraft and electronic warfare systems and maybe we will see decreased levels of successful strikes,” he said.

Ukraine’s largest drone attack of the war thus far came days after the U.S. announced its intelligence sharing freeze. It is not clear whether Ukraine used previously shared intelligence to carry out the strike, in which scores of craft reached Moscow.

Some targets are easier to find than others. Airfields — like Engels strategic bomber air base — oil refineries, ports and the like are static and their locations known to Ukrainian military planners.

Still, a lack of intelligence would make it harder for Kyiv to locate and avoid Russian defensive systems. The pause in American intelligence sharing was brief, but for Ukrainians highlighted their level of reliance on U.S. assistance.

A long-lasting paucity of intelligence would represent “an important vulnerability,” Borsari said. “For very long-range targets, they require satellite information, satellite imagery — and most of the time this information comes from Western allies.”

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(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration is facing scrutiny over the use of the commercially available app Signal to discuss plans for a U.S. military attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen, but did anyone break the law?

Inadvertently included on the chain was The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, who recounted how he was texted information about weapons packages, targets and timing before the strike unfolded.

Goldberg’s report quickly sparked questions about the administration’s handling of sensitive defense information, including whether the chat violated the Espionage Act.

The 1917 law “is the primary statutory vehicle through which the government typically brings criminal prosecutions for mishandling or leaks of classified information,” said national security attorney Bradley Moss.

Signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson soon after the U.S. entered World War I, the Espionage Act was aimed at cracking down on disloyal wartime activities.

Despite its title, Moss said “most of the statute has nothing to do with actual espionage and instead more broadly criminalizes the unauthorized storage, dissemination or modification of national defense information.”

President Donald Trump was charged under the Espionage Act for allegedly mishandling classified materials after his first term, allegations Trump denied. The case was dropped after the 2024 election, with the special counsel citing longstanding Justice Department policy not to prosecute sitting presidents.

The statute was also used in high-profile cases against Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira, who was sentenced last year to 15 years in prison for exposing defense information, and Chelsea Manning, who was imprisoned for the unauthorized release of hundreds of thousands of classified government documents to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.

Democrats have called for an investigation into the use of the Signal group chat to discuss a military operation and for some officials involved to be fired or resign.

The White House and top officials have sought to minimize the incident, stating in their defense that there was no classified material involved in the message chain.

“This was not classified. Now, if it’s classified information, it’s probably a little bit different,” Trump said as he was hit with questions on the matter during a meeting with some of his ambassadors on Tuesday afternoon.

The exact content of the messages is unclear. The administration denies they included “war plans” though Goldberg said it included operational details of strikes on Yemen, including information about targets and attack sequencing. National Security Council spokesman, in a statement to ABC News on Monday, said the message thread that was reported “appears to be authentic.”

The Espionage Act, though, predates the modern classification system.

“In this context, information related to national defense also has to be information the possessor has a reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation,” said Sam Lebovic, a historian of U.S. politics who has studied the century-old statute.

“And if, as has been alleged, operational details were in that information, I think you could make the case that would be information which could be used to the injury of the U.S. or to the advantage of a foreign nation. And technically, whether or not it’s classified doesn’t have bearing on that definition,” Lebovic said.

Still, the expansive nature of the Espionage Act — which Lebovic said could cover essentially any disclosure of information related to national defense to someone unauthorized to receive it — has resulted in it being relatively rarely used other than in the most egregious cases.

“They’re often not prosecuted because the law is so broadly written, it gives prosecutors a great deal of discretion to decide when to bring charges and when not to,” Lebovic said.

FBI Director Kash Patel was questioned by Democratic Sen. Mark Warner on Tuesday in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on whether his bureau would investigate the incident. Patel said he had just been briefed on the matter Monday night and Tuesday morning and didn’t have an update. Warner asked for one by the end of the day.

Officials with the White House’s National Security Council said they “are reviewing” how a reporter was added to the Signal chat, though the scope of the review, including whether it would attempt to determine why high-level discussions about military planning were taking place outside of official channels, was not immediately clear.

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(TEL AVIV, Israel) — Three weeks ago, Hamdan Ballal stood on the stage at the Oscars, golden statue in hand, winner of the award for best documentary as the co-director of “No Other Land.” It was an inspiring moment of unity and coexistence.

On Tuesday, bloodied and bruised, he spoke to ABC News on the phone from a hospital bed in Hebron in the West Bank.

“I’m afraid,” Ballal said. “Really, I’m afraid. I feel, when they attack me, I will lose my life.”

Ballal said he was severely beaten at the hands of Jewish settlers at his home on Monday, just outside the village of Susiya.

Settlers had come into the village throwing stones and harassing residents, including his neighbor, something Ballal says had been happening with increasing frequency since his Oscar win earlier this month.

He started filming before rushing home to his family, trying to block settlers from coming into his house. That’s when the attack began, he said, with several men attacking his head and body, including hitting him with guns.

“It was a hard, hard attack,” Ballal said. “You know, I feel I will die, because this attack was so hard, I bleed from everywhere. I’m crying from deeply in my heart. I feel pain everywhere in my body. So, they continue attacking me like 15-20 minutes.”

He said that, in addition to a plainclothes settler, there were two men present he described as “soldiers with guns,” although he could not say for sure who they were or which Israeli authority they might have represented.

The Israel Defense Forces and Israel Police have denied being involved in any beating.

Israeli authorities said that Ballal was detained along with several others on suspicion of throwing stones, damaging property and compromising the security of the area. A Jewish settler was arrested, as well.

The Palestinians — including Ballal — were questioned, held overnight and ultimately released “on conditions that include not contacting other people involved and self-bail,” according to a police statement.

Police say the investigation is continuing, but Ballal strongly denies he did anything wrong.

“I didn’t throw stones, I didn’t do any problems with the settlers,” Ballal said. “The settlers came attacking me and beating me. That’s it.”

Ballal’s Oscar-winning documentary focused on a community’s attempts to resist forced expulsion of Palestinians from a southern area of the West Bank by the Israeli government.

The number of Israeli settlers has dramatically increased in the West Bank in recent decades.

Palestinians, human rights groups and the United Nations have accused them of playing an unofficial role in the attempted displacement of Palestinians through the West Bank, with extremists carrying out violent attacks designed to intimidate, instill fear and ultimately force people out of a place they have called home for generations.

“The settler violence has worsened considerably since the war,” said Sari Bashi, a program director at Human Rights Watch. “The people whom the army doesn’t directly displace are left to fend for themselves among violent settlers who scare them off their land.”

Critics say the right-wing coalition of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has, at best, turned a blind eye to the violence and, at worst, outright encouraged it, with the ultimate goal, according to prominent settler activists and some far-right members of the government, of annexing the West Bank entirely.

The government has denied responsibility for settler violence and has primarily blamed Palestinians for the continued unrest, though sometimes it blames settlers as well. Netanyahu’s government, which refers to the West Bank by its biblical names of Judea and Samaria, argues that the area is replete with terrorist activity that targets Israelis both in West Bank settlements and inside Israel. The government argues its actions in the West Bank are necessary to keep Israelis safe.

Activists often say that the Israeli Police and the IDF, who have security control over most of the West Bank, fail to protect them from settler attacks or adequately prosecute cases of settler violence. The IDF intervenes when scuffles between settlers and activists escalate, but prosecuting settler violence is rare. From 2005 to 2024, only 3% of more than 1,000 investigations ended in convictions, according to the nongovernmental organization Yesh Din.

The settlers often cite a deep religious imperative for their actions. Others view attacks as vengeance for deadly Palestinian terror attacks. Many routinely deny responsibility for the West Bank acts of violence that have risen in recent years but have gone on for decades.

Ballal was released from the hospital on Tuesday. ABC News asked why he chose to speak publicly if he is afraid for his life.

“I’ve been afraid like this since I was born, until now,” Ballal said. “So, I have to speak. Yes, I’m afraid, but I live this situation all my life. So I hope, I hope, because I speak with [ABC News], it can change something.”

ABC News’ Guy Davies, Mike Pappano and Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.

 

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