Ust-Luga gas complex hit; zero crude tankers cross Hormuz

Ukraine’s day split between grim arithmetic and defiant projection. A Russian drone strike on a high-rise in Marhanets, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, killed a three-month-old boy overnight and injured 11 more people, seven seriously — the latest entry in a town that has already spent August fighting a water-supply crisis and an Aug 5 blackout affecting 126,000 households. Zelensky, briefed by commander-in-chief Mykhailo Drapatyi, said Ukraine expects to eliminate at least 30,000 Russian occupiers this month and confirmed reinforcements have been directed toward the Sloviansk and Kostiantynivka axes; he separately flagged a growing funding gap for the second half of the year and said talks with partners on additional financing are underway. Ukraine’s reach into Russian energy infrastructure widened further: overnight drone strikes hit the NOVATEK-Ust-Luga gas condensate complex in Leningrad Oblast — an 8-million-tonne-per-year facility feeding Russian military and economic activity — with fires reported and two processing units confirmed hit, days after the Sheskharis terminal shutdown at Novorossiysk and the Flamingo strikes on Savasleyka airbase and Samara. On Iran, the rhetorical war over Hormuz sharpened: Iranian Deputy FM Kazem Gharibabadi mocked Trump’s claim that the US would soon declare the strait American territory, saying it ‘cannot be seized by tweet’ and insisting Hormuz ‘has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian.’ The practical picture backs Tehran’s leverage claim regardless of the rhetoric: Reuters/Kpler data showed zero crude oil cargoes transited Hormuz on Aug 14, with only a grain carrier, an empty dry bulk ship and an empty LPG tanker making the passage — against a pre-war baseline of about 130 vessels daily. A parliamentary committee has separately approved an Iranian plan to formally bar US, Israeli and other ‘hostile’ countries’ assets from the strait.