The Russian Ministry of Defense announced on 19 May, without prior public notice, that its Strategic Missile Forces, Northern Fleet, Pacific Fleet, Long-Range Aviation Command, and elements of the Leningrad and Central Military Districts would conduct three days of exercises focused on the preparation and use of nuclear forces in conditions of a threat of aggression. The drill runs until 21 May. It mobilises 64,000 personnel, 7,800 pieces of equipment, more than 200 missile launchers, 140 aircraft, 73 surface ships, and 13 submarines, including eight strategic missile submarines. The exercise involves live launches of ballistic and cruise missiles at ranges inside Russia. The BBC’s Russian Service, citing Bulletin of Atomic Scientists data, assessed on 19 May that the drill will likely involve the majority of Russia’s estimated 320 nuclear-capable ICBM launchers.

The timing is conspicuous across three axes. First, the drill comes without the prior notification that accompanied Russia’s annual Grom exercises, which have been conducted every October since 2022. The last surprise nuclear exercise Russia conducted was in Summer 2024, focused on non-strategic tactical weapons, at a moment when Western capitals were debating supplying long-range weapons to Ukraine. ISW judges the current exercise follows the same structural logic: nuclear posturing calibrated to a specific Western decision-making moment rather than a change in Russia’s operational nuclear readiness. Second, the drill coincides with Putin’s state visit to China, a pairing that provides diplomatic cover and implicitly signals Sino-Russian alignment on NATO deterrence messaging. Third, it arrives one week after the first successful Sarmat ICBM test since a silo-destroying misfire in September 2024, allowing Moscow to frame the exercise as a demonstration of a modernised capability.

The Belarus dimension is the genuinely novel element. The Belarusian Ministry of Defense announced on 18 May that Russian and Belarusian forces had begun a joint exercise on the delivery and preparation of nuclear munitions from unprepared positions on Belarusian territory. Russia has stationed its Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile in Belarus since 2025 under a bilateral agreement. Oreshnik can deliver conventional or nuclear warheads. Practicing launch from unprepared positions, rather than fixed silos, increases the mobility and survivability of the forward nuclear posture. It also places the threat envelope significantly closer to NATO’s eastern flank than any previous acknowledged live exercise.

The ISW assessment of 19 May, derived from open-source reporting with a data cutoff of 12:15 PM ET, identifies Ukrainian advances at approximately grid reference 37U EB 46500 87200 (50.0800°N, 36.6200°E) in northern Kharkiv Oblast and in the Kupyansk direction to the south-east. Ukrainian forces also advanced in the Hulyaipole direction in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. ISW’s broader assessment is that Russian forces have failed to make meaningful gains in the spring-summer 2026 offensive and that Ukrainian forces have contested the tactical initiative in multiple sectors. The ISW map as of 13:30 ET on 19 May shows significant fighting circles in northern Kharkiv Oblast, the Donetsk city area, and near Zaporizhzhia, with the eastern frontline broadly stable in terms of major territorial shifts.

Commander-in-Chief Syrsky, in an interview published by the Militarniy outlet on 20 May, stated that Ukrainian forces had for the first time surpassed Russian forces in the daily number of combat assaults, a metric that has been a persistent indicator of Russian initiative throughout the full-scale invasion. He simultaneously warned of a major Russian troop grouping near Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast and of a possible northern offensive axis from Belarus, the same Belarus that is currently practising nuclear munitions delivery in coordination with Russian forces. The coexistence of a Ukrainian tactical advance and a credible Belarusian conventional threat in the north is the central strategic tension in the current phase of the war.

Russian forces launched 209 strike drones against Ukraine overnight on 19 May. Ukrainian air defences neutralised 131 of 154 drones launched since the evening of 19 May per Ukrinform, noting the discrepancy in total counts may reflect different reporting windows. Strikes hit Sumy Oblast, where at least four people were killed and nine injured across the 24-hour period per Ukrinform. Konotop in Sumy Oblast was struck by a massive overnight attack early on 20 May, damaging residential buildings and a local history museum and injuring eight. Chernihiv was struck by missile attacks on infrastructure, and a previous strike on Pryluky in Chernihiv Oblast killed four and injured 30. Kharkiv city and 21 surrounding settlements came under Russian attack on 19 May, killing one and injuring six, including a child.

Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service, SZRU, reported on 18 May that the Russian Ministry of Defense concluded 70,500 service contracts in the entirety of the first quarter of 2026. Against a stated monthly quota of 33,500 to 34,600 contracts, that implies a quarterly quota of 100,500 to 103,800. The actual figure of 70,500 represents approximately 68 percent of the lower target. The daily average for the quarter was 800 to 930 personnel, against an average of 1,200 during the same period in 2025. The shortfall is structural: casualty rates are outpacing voluntary recruitment despite signing bonuses increasing by 30 to 500 percent versus end-2025 levels across more than 40 Russian federal subjects.

The prison population data is the starkest indicator. Russia held approximately 465,000 prisoners at the end of 2021. By May 2026, the figure has fallen to approximately 282,000, a reduction of 183,000 over four and a half years in a country that has not reduced its incarceration rate through legal reform. The gap is wartime penal recruitment at scale, a practice that began under the Wagner Group’s Operation Convict programme in 2022 and has since been absorbed into formal MoD channels. The Russian State Duma’s 13 May law forgiving overdue loans for servicemembers who complete a year of service is one of several non-cash incentive mechanisms now operating in parallel, alongside the bonus increases, as the straightforward financial offer loses drawing power.

Cumulative Russian losses since the start of the full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022 reached approximately 1,352,070 personnel by 20 May 2026 per Ukrinform, including 920 in the 24 hours to that date. The figure encompasses killed, captured and medically incapacitated and is derived from Ukrainian General Staff reporting; it is not independently verifiable. Its rate of growth, rather than its absolute value, is the analytically useful signal: the 920 figure for a single 24-hour period, if sustained, implies a monthly loss rate of approximately 27,600, which would require roughly 920 new contracts per day just to hold the existing force size at the current ratio of losses to recruits, leaving nothing to rebuild depleted units.

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, claimed on 18 May that Ukrainian forces are preparing to launch drone strikes against Russian rear areas directly from the territory of Latvia, including Latvian military bases, and that Ukrainian drone operators have already deployed to those locations. The SVR further implied that Russia intends to strike the claimed launch points and Latvian decision-making centres in response. Latvia has flatly denied the accusations. ISW assesses the SVR claim as consistent with the Kremlin’s established practice of using the intelligence service to publish destabilising narratives intended to create pretext for potential aggression or interference against neighbouring states.

The same day the SVR claim circulated, a Romanian Air Force fighter operating under the NATO Baltic Air Policing Mission intercepted a Ukrainian drone over Estonian airspace. Ukrainian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi confirmed on 19 May that Russia continues to divert Ukrainian drones into Baltic airspace using electronic warfare systems and apologised to Estonia and other Baltic countries for unintended incidents. ISW has previously documented Ukrainian drones crashing in Baltic and Finnish territory as a consequence of Russian EW redirection. The incident is a real operational problem for Ukraine and a genuine irritant for Baltic NATO members. It is not, however, evidence of deliberate Ukrainian launch operations from Baltic territory, which is what the SVR alleges. The two facts are being conflated in Russian information operations.