Welcome back to Frontline Updates. I'm your host. Today is February 23, 2026, and the Russian Ministry of Defense has released its daily briefing. The numbers are striking. In a single 24-hour period, Russian air defense forces reportedly intercepted 541 unmanned aerial vehicles. Five hundred and forty-one. That is nearly double the previous day's count of 326, and it represents a massive investment by Ukraine in drone warfare met by an equally massive defensive response. But that's not all. Twenty-one HIMARS rockets were intercepted, along with a Neptune cruise missile. And on the ground, Russian forces report destroying an Israeli-made RADA counter-battery radar, a system we haven't seen mentioned before in these briefings. To help us make sense of this data and what it tells us about the evolving character of the war, we are joined by Colonel A.C. Oguntoye. Colonel Oguntoye is an Infantry Officer with deep expertise in combined arms operations and the technological dimensions of modern warfare. Colonel, welcome back.

Today's briefing contains a wealth of information about the state of the air defense battle and the ongoing campaign to blind Ukrainian artillery. The 541 UAV intercepts demand our attention, but so does the continued destruction of Western-supplied systems and the expansion of deep strikes to 148 districts. Let's dive in."

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