Signal No. 142 · Ushakov's step one

Yuri Ushakov, Putin's foreign-policy aide, spoke to Pavel Zarubin of the state broadcaster VGTRK on Wednesday, a day after the hour-long Trump–Putin call whose only readout is his. He said Putin had set out during the call steps the United States could take; asked what could bring the fighting to an end, he said: "First and foremost, probably stop providing any assistance to Kyiv." The conversation was in closed format, he said, and both presidents had discussed a peaceful settlement. On the format, he said the sides' representatives had met in Abu Dhabi before and could well continue meeting there, and that restoring the negotiating process with Ukraine is under active discussion. He gave no date. There was still no White House readout of Tuesday's call by publication, and no confirmation that the call to Zelenskyy that was to follow it has taken place.

In Kyiv the air-raid alert ran for more than six hours from the early morning. A drone struck a 24-storey block in Darnytskyi district at about 08:00, starting a fire on the twelfth floor; the city military administration counted six injured by 09:50. Further hits followed at 12:50 and 13:27, and at 16:21 a drone struck a nine-storey building in Dniprovskyi district, killing a woman. By evening the toll was one killed and 16 injured, two of them aged 15 and 16, from drones local authorities described as jet-powered. The night before, the air force counted 196 Shahed-type, Gerbera and Parody drones with 165 downed or suppressed by 08:30, plus Iskander-M missiles from Crimea and S8000 Banderol munitions from the Sea of Azov, with strikes recorded at 23 locations. Wednesday's daylight attack fell after both sides' counts of the capitals-only pause, Kyiv's to Monday and Peskov's three days through Tuesday, had run out.

Covenant Industries, the US-Israeli company that came out of stealth on Wednesday with more than USD 250 million raised and, by its own release, about USD 150 million in booked orders across qualification, development and production contracts, said its site of about one hectare north of Leipzig, by its own account already operating, will build its Anthem ground-launched cruise missile from the first quarter of 2027. Reuters had reported the plan from sources on 30 August, at about 1,000 missiles a year, with Anthem's identity and any German purchase unconfirmed.

On Wednesday the company put the Saxony site at a baseline of 1,000 a year, designed for 5,000, and Michael Kaufman, co-founder and chief executive, told Reuters the aim is "5,000 by 2028, or at least a run rate of 5,000 during 2028"; the company's release attaches the same 5,000-a-year figure to the Dallas plant it opened the same day. It says one European contract is signed and others are in talks, that less than five per cent of the bill of materials comes from outside Europe, and that warheads are not integrated at the site. Anthem carries a payload of more than 200 kilograms at a unit price the company describes as mid-six figures in euros; it has flown more than 200 times since August 2025, including tests with the US Army. Andreas Marlow, the retired lieutenant general who was deputy chief of the Bundeswehr, is an adviser to the company. Neither the company nor the ministry has said whether Germany is the customer.

In June, as No. 86 carried, ministry planning documents named Anthem alongside Fire Point's Flamingo and the Bars for a low-cost cruise missile to be qualified in 2027, the near-term track beneath Tomahawk, and the procurement agency had sent Covenant a request with a test in Israel that German officials were invited to watch; ministry documents reported in August put long-range strike at about EUR 12 billion from 2027, subject to the Bundestag. The Tomahawk letter of intent's month for US export approval ended in August with nothing announced. Of the three named candidates, Anthem is the one with a German production site on record; Flamingo's German line, Diehl with Fire Point, remains at the talks stage.

Leipzig is the fourth low-cost cruise-missile line announced in Germany and Poland this year: Rheinmetall and Destinus's Ruta at Unterlüß, first missiles targeted for the end of 2026 on the May announcement; PGZ and Anduril's Barracuda-500M at Bydgoszcz in July, more than 925 kilometres and about 45 kilograms; Auterion Airlogix's Anubis near Munich, 1,500 kilometres and 40 kilograms, in series production on the company's account; and now Anthem. Only Unterlüß runs through an established prime. For scale, Germany's Taurus inventory is about 600 on Reuters' count, and Raytheon's funded Tomahawk ramp runs from about 60 a year to more than 1,000; Covenant's 5,000 is a design figure for each of two plants, against about USD 150 million in booked orders.

The defence chapter was debated on Wednesday afternoon: EUR 109.7 billion in the core budget, up from EUR 82.7 billion, plus EUR 29.9 billion from the special fund, EUR 139.6 billion in all and EUR 31.4 billion more than 2026. The Bundestag's own breakdown gives personnel EUR 26.7 billion, up two billion; military procurement above EUR 60 billion, EUR 30.3 billion in the core budget and EUR 29.9 billion from the special fund, a wider line than the EUR 55.8 billion the finance ministry gave on Tuesday, which also counted about 30 billion from the fund; materiel maintenance EUR 8.6 billion; research and development EUR 2.9 billion, up 1.3 billion; and barracks and facilities EUR 19.3 billion against EUR 11.5 billion this year.

Boris Pistorius called the budget "a security promise", said "we stand literally in Moscow's crosshairs", and cited Russia's plan for an army of 1.5 million and its recruitment of mercenaries in North Korea and elsewhere. Sebastian Schäfer, the Greens' budget speaker, accepted the threat description and attacked "planless armaments procurement", said the F126 was stopped "far too late" and has become "a monument in steel" to a dysfunctional system, and that the budget committee is sometimes given only a week to examine dozens of procurement submissions.

Jan Nolte for the AfD put the F126 loss at EUR 2.3 billion; Dietmar Bartsch for Die Linke counted EUR 183 billion by the end of the decade; Kerstin Vieregge for the CDU/CSU repeated that Russia could attack a NATO state by 2029. Second and third readings are in November.

Prime Minister Kristen Michal said on Wednesday he will formally offer the defence ministry to General Martin Herem, and Herem confirmed in the afternoon that he will take it; the Reform Party board is to approve the candidacy at its next meeting, and the oath can follow once the Riigikogu reconvenes on 14 September. Michal said Herem holds that "the Russian threat is real and must be addressed" and insists defence spending stay at five per cent; the general is expected to run a reorganisation of the ministry.

Hanno Pevkur, the outgoing minister, asked the permanent secretary, Kaimo Kuusk, to step down on Wednesday, with the government to approve it on Thursday; Michal said Kuusk had been the first to take responsibility. Lauri Läänemets, the Social Democrats' chair, wrote that a permanent secretary may be dismissed only for objective reasons and a party's wish to install a minister is not one, attributing the demand to Herem, and had said on Tuesday that Herem would come "directly from a vital defence industry company into a ministerial position", and that "there are conflicts of interest there"; Herem has been military strategy adviser at Milrem Robotics since August 2025. Last Friday Herem described the approach as "an invitation to consider" and was not sure he should serve at that level.

The 48-year-old arrested near the Weisweiler plant on Tuesday was brought before the Aachen district court on Wednesday, which opened the Cottbus prosecutor's warrant and ordered him held: the charges are causing an explosion, disrupting public utilities and destroying important means of work, for launcher-fired rockets that laid conductive wire across high-voltage lines near coal plants in three states, at least two of which short-circuited and took generating units offline. He is held by Aachen police pending transfer, eventually to Cottbus prison. The Cottbus prosecutor remains the lead; the federal prosecutor general, examining a takeover since last Thursday, had announced none by publication, and no forensic match between the man and the Bergheim or Saxony devices has been made public.