https://novayagazeta.eu Говорим как есть. Пишем о происходящем в России, Украине и Европе. Новости, аналитика, мнения экспертов, специальные репортажи и журналистские расследования. en Sat, 11 Apr 2026 10:56:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/11/novaya-gazeta-journalist-remanded-in-custody-after-moscow-newsroom-raid-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/11/novaya-gazeta-journalist-remanded-in-custody-after-moscow-newsroom-raid-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
A Moscow court has ordered for Novaya Gazeta journalist Oleg Roldugin to be remanded in custody until at least May 10, according to the outlet Mediazona.
Roldugin was detained amid a raid by security forces of Novaya Gazeta’s Moscow newsroom on Thursday. The search began around noon Moscow time on April 9. The Interior Ministry announced the raid was part of a criminal investigation into the alleged unlawful use of personal data, and that Roldugin is suspected of illegally handling such data. He has not been formally charged.
During questioning, Roldugin reportedly acknowledged that he had created a Telegram channel containing exclusive information that "could not have been used in journalistic work." The judge did not name the channel.
Novaya Gazeta later reported in its newsletter that the raid was not related to the publication itself or its website.
“It was all long and exhausting — 13 hours — but they treated us politely. Everyone who was in the office is doing well and in good spirits,” the newspaper said.
The journalists promised to tell readers in more detail about the search later on and thanked everyone who had reached out and expressed concern.
The case marks the first time the statute on the illegal use of personal data has been used against a media outlet for working with leaked information. Previously, it had only been applied to administrators of leaked databases and security personnel who leaked data, according to the outlet Agentstvo.
Roldugin had published investigations in Novaya Gazeta into the inner circle of Chechnya Governor Ramzan Kadyrov and into the creators of Russia’s state messaging app, Max.]]> Fri, 10 Apr 2026 18:15:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/10/mannequins-in-the-watchtowers-en https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/10/mannequins-in-the-watchtowers-en Syuzhety · Obshchestvo Belov Oleg In mid-March, the head of Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), Arkady Gostev, announced that the agency was experiencing a severe staffing shortage. Earlier, his deputy Alexander Rogozin had stated that the nationwide shortfall averaged 37%, while in some regions, the shortage of junior and mid-level personnel approached 70%. Novaya Gazeta Europe reports on how this lack of staff is affecting prisoners and the Russian penal system as a whole.
Since the Russian Defence Ministry began actively recruiting prisoners for the war in Ukraine, the country’s prison population has sharply declined. According to official statistics, there were 433,000 people held in detention facilities at the beginning of 2023; by 1 January 2025, that number had fallen to 313,000.
Despite this decrease in the number of inmates, the FSIN’s staffing shortage continues to grow.
In an effort to address the deficit, Russian authorities have even lifted the ban on employment in law enforcement agencies for individuals with prior convictions.
Since 2022, according to the human rights project Open Space, 88 detention facilities have been closed in Russia. However, shutting down penal colonies does not solve the problem; it merely leads to further loss of staff from the penitentiary system.
“One colony here was closed, and the inmates were transferred to two others in the same area. But that didn’t make up for the shortages in those two facilities, because the colony that was shut down was already severely understaffed,” Alexandra (name changed for security reasons), a doctor working for the FSIN in one of Russia’s southern regions, told Novaya Gazeta Europe.
According to former FSIN analyst Anna Karetnikova, the agency’s leadership would prefer to transfer staff from closed colonies to other facilities, but this often requires relocation to different towns. As a result, many officers choose instead to resign and find civilian work.
“Housing is one of the most pressing issues,” Karetnikova explained. “There’s simply not enough staff accommodation near the colonies to which employees from closed facilities are supposed to be transferred. But more often than not, people are unwilling to move, owing to family ties and established routines. Instead, they resign, preferring to forgo a salary of 20,000 rubles (€220) rather than leave the place they’ve always called home.”
‘Total chaos’
It’s detainees who suffer most from the FSIN staff shortage. “If a person physically cannot manage to do the work, then it’s obvious that prisoners will be deprived,” said Anna Karetnikova.
This is confirmed by a former political prisoner who was released in 2025. According to her, over the past year many employees of the kitchen and warehouse in the colony where she served her sentence have quit, which significantly worsened the quality of food. After the staffing shortage worsened, there was “total chaos” in the colony: inspectors frequently started working overtime, and “the management sometimes shouted at them even more harshly than at the inmates.” To make up for the lack of staff, the activist said, they began hiring “all kinds of random people,” who quickly quit after encountering the realities of working in a penal colony.
Employees of the FSIN system perform several tasks with different levels of priority, Karetnikova explained. The top priorities include everything connected with courts and investigations — for example, conducting searches of suspects. Work that involves serving prisoners — checking letters, organizing meals, escorting them to the bathhouse — gets pushed into the background.
“Naturally, understaffing in the FSIN affects prisoners’ rights, not their obligations,” Karetnikova said. “Letters are delivered more slowly, because if the censor is on leave, then an officer reads them. But obviously, he will first deal with all his primary duties — taking confessions, properly intimidating everyone — and only then check the letters.”
Karetnikova notes that prisoners are very sensitive to staff shortages. The atmosphere in an understaffed colony or detention centre becomes tense: first inmates begin to complain, and then “disturbances” may start — refusal to return to cells after inspections or to leave them when ordered by inspectors.
Salaries half the national average
For a long time, according to employees who spoke with Novaya Gazeta Europe, service in the FSIN was attractive due to high salaries, early retirement, and a one-time payment for housing. Today, however, the salaries of FSIN inspectors in Russian regions are about half the national average.
“There used to be queues of doctors and nurses wanting to work in the FSIN, but now they don’t come, because salaries in [civic] healthcare are much higher than ours,” said employee Alexandra. “Why would medical staff work with convicts for less money, when they can work with ordinary patients who will thank you for your help?”
According to Karetnikova, her doctor colleagues in the FSIN earn on average 30,000 to 50,000 rubles (€330–€550), while doctors with the same qualifications and experience in civilian clinics and hospitals in her region earn about twice as much: 80,000 to 100,000 rubles (€880–€1100).
She also believes that the main reason for the staff shortage in the FSIN is uncompetitive pay:
“For example, the head of a detention facility during the period when I worked earned 70,000–80,000 rubles (€770–€880), while a junior inspector working a 24-on/72-off schedule received far less — around 35,000–40,000 rubles (€385–€440), including bonuses for years of service and rank.”
According to the Russian statistics board, the average salary in Moscow at the beginning of 2026 exceeded 173,000 rubles (€1,900). Yet none of the vacancies currently advertised online for Moscow’s Butyrka pre-trial detention centre come close to this level.
The dangers of negligence
The staff shortage in the FSIN is becoming a serious ordeal for those who continue to serve in the penal system. While the salaries remain the same, the workload has only increased.
“It’s impossible to work there now,” said Veronika (name changed), a former employee of a prisoner transport unit. “The salaries are low, while the workload and demands are insane. There aren’t enough people — sometimes they even put mannequins on the watchtowers to hide the staff shortage from the prisoners. Convoy officers practically live at work, and on top of that staff are treated appallingly!”
When she began her service in the agency, her department had about 600 staff members; now the number barely exceeds 200.
Other sources said that overtime has become a fixture of FSIN employees’ lives.
“If you’re supposed to go home in the morning but don’t manage to finish what you have to do, you’ll go home in the evening instead. These extra hours are often not paid,” said Anna Karetnikova.
On multiple occasions, she added, she has observed a single employee covering two or three posts at once. According to internal regulations, each inspector is responsible for a certain number of prisoners.
“He has to look them in the eye, register their requests, open doors for them, close the windows…” Karetnikova explained. “And if his partner doesn’t show up, he’ll be covering two or even three posts simultaneously. But he simply cannot physically do everything that’s required. Because of this, the risk increases that he’ll miss something or show some negligence. Someone could, God forbid, hang himself or escape — and then the officer himself could end up being imprisoned for it.”
‘Defenders of the Fatherland’
In March 2025, FSIN Director Arkady Gostev stated that 3,592 current and former employees of Russia’s penal system had “joined the ranks of the defenders of the Fatherland” and gone to fight in the war in Ukraine. Of these, he said, 249 had been wounded, and 343 had been killed.
FSIN employee Alexandra said that several of her colleagues had signed contracts with the Defence Ministry and gone to the front due to low salaries.
"On one hand, prisons are closing — and in many regions of Russia, prisons are quite literally the lifeblood of their towns," Yuri Borovsky, a human rights advocate with Russland hinter Gittern (the German legal entity of the Russia Behind Bars bars foundation), told Current Time. "When your main employer disappears, what are your options? You can sign a contract and go to war. And ideologically, it even feels like the right thing to do — you're defending your homeland, paying your debt to it."
Anna Karetnikova, who worked in Moscow, had a different perspective: in the capital, she said, FSIN employees are more likely to be reluctant to be sent to the front, despite having official exemptions.
“I worked in a relatively well-off region,” she said. “No one there was particularly eager to go to war, and they were even quite wary of mobilisation, even though they technically had exemptions. But I can imagine that this depends greatly on the region. In some places and for some people, this is a lot of money, so a certain number probably do choose to enlist.”
According to Alexandra, when Vladimir Putin announced mobilisation in September 2022, there was hope that young people would fill vacant positions in order to obtain exemptions from being sent to the front — but those hopes did not materialise. A few people did join the colony, but soon quit when it became clear that mobilisation would not become universal.
The war has become not only an alternative source of income for FSIN employees, but has also fundamentally reshaped the nature of their work. As former FSIN employee Veronika explained, the workload of convoy officers escorting prisoners during transfers has increased significantly. Whereas their duties were once limited to transporting inmates between facilities, they are now responsible for delivering them from penal institutions to major border cities, such as Rostov-on-Don, where prisoners who have signed contracts are handed over to the Ministry of Defence.
“Now they have these ’heroic’ convoys every day,” she said. “They’re transporting these future front-line soldiers. The workload has increased dramatically.”
At the same time, relations with prisoners have become more strained. Previously, detainees were heavily dependent on FSIN personnel; now, however, they can secure release at any moment by signing a contract with the Ministry of Defence.
“It’s now difficult for staff to deal with inmates: before, you could take pride in being an officer, while the inmate was ‘just a convict.’ But today he’s a convict, and tomorrow he’s a ‘heroic defender of the Fatherland’—and he may remember some grievance against you,” Karetnikova noted. “You can’t even raise your voice at him anymore.”]]> Fri, 10 Apr 2026 11:28:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/10/russia-s-telegram-crackdown-hits-record-high-with-95-of-requests-failing-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/10/russia-s-telegram-crackdown-hits-record-high-with-95-of-requests-failing-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
The rate of failed attempts to access the messaging service Telegram in Russia reached a record 95% on Friday morning, according to data from the internet measurement project OONI reported by the media outlet Agentstvo.
The failure rate is the highest recorded since Russia began ramping up its blocking of Telegram earlier this year. The previous day, failures were logged in 79% of cases, which is roughly in line with what has become the new normal in recent days.
The messaging apps Signal, which is officially banned in Russia, and WhatsApp, which has been effectively blocked, both showed a failure rate of 89%, Agentstvo noted.
User complaints on the outage-tracking platforms Detector404 and Sboy.rf surged on Thursday night, emphasizing the scale of the blockage. Detector404 logged 3,600 complaints over a 24-hour period, including 806 in a single hour. VPN users appear to have been affected as well: the Netherlands ranked third among complaint locations, behind St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Sboy.rf had received 1,026 complaints by mid-morning on Friday, compared to 1,771 for all of the previous day. The bulk of reports came from Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the Sverdlovsk and Novosibirsk regions.]]> Thu, 09 Apr 2026 18:14:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/09/moscows-man-on-the-inside-en https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/09/moscows-man-on-the-inside-en Syuzhety · Obshchestvo Pershin Nikolay On April 12, Hungarians will go to the polls to decide the fate of one of the E.U.'s most Russia-friendly leaders. The vote comes amid a wave of bombshell reports detailing secret communications between Russian and Hungarian officials, leaving little doubt that Budapest's efforts to impede E.U. sanctions in recent years were made at Moscow's direct behest. The Kremlin has a lot to lose if the prime minister is voted out, and according to Hungarian media, it’s going to great lengths to secure his victory. But Orbán wasn't always the Putin-praising right-wing populist he is today; in fact, he began his career as just the opposite. Novaya Gazeta Europe traces Orbán’s transformation and details the Kremlin's bid to keep him in power.
Freedom vs. Oil
On June 16, 1989, a ceremony was held at Budapest’s central Heroes' Square to mark the reburial of Imre Nagy, the leader of Hungary’s 1956 anti-Soviet uprising. At the event, a 26-year-old Viktor Orbán addressed a crowd of thousands, demanding free elections and the immediate withdrawal of Soviet troops. The violent suppression of the 1956 rebellion had long been a defining moment in Hungarian national memory, and the young politician was building his platform on staunch anti-communism. His speech at the square established him as a politician of national prominence.
Up until the late 2000s, Orbán and his Fidesz party consistently criticised Moscow. Having served as a pro-European prime minister from 1998 to 2002, he then spent his years in opposition actively warning the country against drifting back into the Kremlin's orbit. In 2007, for instance, Orbán spoke out against allowing Hungary to become “Gazprom's happiest barracks”, a riff on the country’s former reputation as the Eastern Bloc’s “happiest barracks” due to its relatively high living standards. The same year, Orbán proclaimed: “Oil comes from the East, but freedom comes from the West.” A year later, he condemned Russia's invasion of Georgia, describing it as “an imperialist act of pure power politics.”
Orbán’s attitude toward Russia began to shift after Fidesz returned to power in 2010, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Political scientist Bálint Magyar, who has written about Orbán's Hungary as a "mafia state," has suggested that the pivot could have been triggered by the prime minister being shown compromising footage of himself during a visit to Saint Petersburg in 2009.
"I’ve heard that story, but I don’t buy it," Hungarian journalist and political analyst Gábor Stier told Novaya Gazeta Europe. In his view, Orbán is “not a pro-Russian politician, but a man who pragmatically defends Hungarian interests."
Maxim Samorukov, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said he agrees that Orbán “has become neither anti-Western nor pro-Russian.”
“It's one thing to be in opposition and criticise the government for 'selling the country to Russia,' and quite another to come to power and realise that gas and oil have been coming from there for decades, that nuclear technology is also tied to Russia, and so on,” he explained.
After securing a parliamentary supermajority, the Fidesz government initiated a fundamental revision of Hungary's foreign policy. In 2011, Budapest proclaimed the doctrine of “Eastern Opening”, premised on the idea that Hungary could diversify its foreign policy while simultaneously retaining the benefits of EU membership. Official documents framed this as a need to expand exports and attract investment from China, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, and other countries.
In practice, it came down to cooperation with Moscow and Beijing — and the actual trade results were modest. Hungarian exports to Russia, for example, began declining as early as 2011, well before the first European sanctions were introduced in 2014.
A client-patron relationship
Manoeuvring between West and East allowed Budapest to gain additional leverage in its relations with Brussels — which, by the early 2010s, the Hungarian authorities had come to regard as their main adversary.
Orbán laid out the ideological foundation for this course in the summer of 2014. Speaking before ethnic Hungarians in the Romanian town of Băile Tușnad, he rejected Western-style liberalism and announced the construction of an "illiberal state," citing Russia, China, and Turkey as models.
Orbán began openly praising Vladimir Putin as a strong national leader who stands up to "liberal rules" and defends "traditional values." As Bálint Magyar noted, the relationship between Orbán and Putin began to resemble a client-patron dynamic, with the Kremlin rewarding the Hungarian elite through various corrupt and semi-legal schemes, and Budapest repaying it with political services that undermine the unity of the EU and NATO.
This dynamic became especially pronounced after February 2022. Orbán has met with Putin four times since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. In 2024, he travelled to visit Putin while leading the country that held the EU's rotating presidency, provoking particularly sharp outrage in Brussels.
"Orbán’s current closeness to Moscow would have triggered big protests ten or 15 years ago. But people have got used to this and it no longer provokes shock or anger," a former senior Hungarian diplomat who had previously worked closely with Orbán told The Times. "When it comes to his approach to Russia, Hungary is like a frog that is slowly being boiled alive."
Energy dependence on Russia
Moscow and Budapest's mutual dependence is most visible in the energy sector. According to Maxim Samorukov, Hungary has long relied heavily on Soviet-era energy supplies, and successive governments kept that relationship with Moscow alive after the USSR's collapse. When Orbán returned to power in 2010, those contracts let him keep fuel costs and utility bills in check.
"The corrupt element is undoubtedly enormous: those who 'sit on the pipeline' in Hungary make insane money. But there’s a real economic benefit for the country, and every Hungarian feels it," Samorukov said.
Brussels, according to the experts interviewed by Novaya Gazeta Europe, has offered few viable alternatives to Russian energy. Between 2022 and 2025, Russia's share of Hungary's oil imports grew from 61% to an unprecedented 92%. While the European Union was attempting to restructure its logistics and gradually phase out pipeline deliveries, Budapest systematically carved out exemptions for itself.
The situation in the gas sector is similar. The European Commission plans for all EU member states to fully phase out Russian gas by early 2027. The Hungarian government, however, insists it cannot yet do without Russian energy, even as it continues a policy of supply diversification.
The flagship project that tied Hungary most firmly to Moscow is the expansion of the Paks nuclear power plant. The agreement to build two new reactors, a project known as Paks II, was signed in early 2014, behind closed doors and without an open international tender. The project is valued at €12.5 billion, of which €10 billion is provided as a state loan from the Russian federal budget. On February 5, 2026, Rosatom began pouring concrete for the foundation of the first of the two new reactor units. One of the key Hungarian subcontractors was an entity linked to oligarch Lőrinc Mészáros, a longtime friend of Prime Minister Orbán.
Still, there have been some efforts to reduce Hungary's dependence on Russian nuclear fuel. The potential alternative supplier is the United States, which is currently just as friendly toward Orbán; U.S. President Donald Trump has openly backed the Hungarian prime minister ahead of the upcoming elections. During Secretary of State Marco Rubio's visit to Budapest in February, an agreement was signed to purchase fuel from the U.S.-based Westinghouse Electric Company as a supplement to Russian supply. However, deliveries are not expected to begin for at least another three years.
No secrets here
Russia's influence over Hungary's affairs has gone well beyond industry and energy. In 2019, the Orbán government invited the International Investment Bank (IIB) — a Russian government-controlled financial institution and a relic of the Soviet-era Council for Mutual Economic Assistance — to relocate its headquarters from Moscow to Budapest. The bank was granted an unprecedented set of privileges, including exemption from financial oversight, zero taxes, and diplomatic immunity for its staff. Its leadership was also given the right to bring an unlimited number of guests into Hungary, who could then move freely throughout the Schengen Area without the standard security checks.
NATO allies openly described the IIB's Budapest headquarters as a base for Russian intelligence and a Trojan horse in the heart of Europe. Budapest brushed off its partners' concerns until the spring of 2023, when the U.S. Treasury imposed direct sanctions on the IIB and three of its senior executives. Only then did Hungary hastily announce it was pulling out as a shareholder.
In its willingness to sacrifice Euro-Atlantic security to preserve its exclusive ties with the Kremlin, Hungary has repeatedly put its own security at risk. As the Hungarian investigative outlet Direkt36 reported, hacking groups APT28 and APT29, both of which have ties to Russian intelligence, had constant administrative access to the IT infrastructure of Hungary's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade for at least a decade.
The most significant breach involved the compromise of a secure external network that diplomats use to transmit encrypted NATO and EU documents classified as restricted and secret. Despite the scale of the intrusion, the Orbán government never publicly blamed Russia or reached out to NATO allies for emergency assistance. Instead, it adopted a policy of institutional silence, while diplomats continued using the compromised communications systems, putting Alliance data at risk.
When the scandal eventually broke into the political arena, Fidesz members did their best to kill it. In 2024, ruling party MPs simply didn't show up to a parliamentary session called to address the issue, dismissing it as a sham. Opposition lawmakers responded by placing small Russian flags on every empty seat.
Diplomatic fallout
These security failures were compounded by direct leaks at the political level. In March 2026, The Washington Post, citing European intelligence services, reported that Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó had been systematically using breaks during closed sessions of the EU Council to call his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. Moscow was receiving real-time readouts on member states' positions, the details of sanctions packages, and the parameters of aid to Ukraine. Szijjártó initially dismissed the story as a "ridiculous conspiracy theory," then switched tactics and insisted such contacts were standard diplomatic practice.
This set off a crisis within the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy. Politico, citing multiple EU diplomats, reported that in response to the revelations, decision-makers across the bloc have begun "limiting the flow of confidential material to Hungary,” with leaders “meeting in smaller groups". European diplomacy and defence planning have indeed shifted substantially toward narrower formats and coalitions — the E3 (Germany, France, the UK), the E4 (the same plus Poland), the E6 (Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain), the Weimar Triangle (Germany, Poland, France), and the NB8 (the Nordic-Baltic states).
"The news that Orbán’s people inform Moscow about EU Council meetings in every detail shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. We’ve had our suspicions about that for a long time," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on X. He also revealed that back in 2019, Lithuania had asked for the Hungarian delegation to be excluded from a NATO meeting over fears of classified leaks. Former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, meanwhile, told Politico that Hungary's potential role as a leak source had come up at the 2023 NATO summit in Vilnius.
Hungary's function as a back channel to Moscow is reinforced by its systematic exploitation of the EU’s decision-making architecture in Russia’s interest. The unanimity requirement in Council votes has allowed the Orbán government to turn its veto into a tool of blackmail. In 2026, Budapest blocked the 20th sanctions package against Russia and vetoed a €90 billion macro-financial loan to Ukraine. Its official justification for the latter was Kyiv's decision to halt Russian oil transit through the Druzhba pipeline.
Budapest has also been quietly negotiating carve-outs from sanctions lists for members of the Russian elite. Hungarian diplomacy blocked sanctions against Patriarch Kirill and secured the removal of restrictions on the sister of oligarch Alisher Usmanov, businessman Vyacheslav Kantor, and Russian Sports Minister Mikhail Degtyarev. As researcher Dorka Takácsy of the Hungarian Center for Euro-Atlantic Integration and Democracy told Novaya Gazeta Europe in March 2025, at least 27 individuals avoided being sanctioned thanks to Hungary's efforts.
Brussels has long been searching for mechanisms and legal workarounds to get around the Hungarian veto, but so far no solution has been found that is both effective and painless for the EU as a whole. That search may not be needed for much longer, however. Péter Magyar — the leader of Tisza (Respect and Freedom), currently Hungary's most popular political party — is no unconditional pro-European, but he is far from the die-hard Brussels antagonist that Orbán has been.
Online influence efforts
Judging by the polls, Péter Magyar might already have cause to celebrate: 49% of voters support Tisza against just 39% for Fidesz. But in Hungary, only 93 parliamentary seats are allocated by party lists — 106 are decided in single-member constituencies. And there, partly thanks to gerrymandering in those constituencies, Fidesz is on stronger ground. The Nézőpont Institute think tank, for instance, claims that Fidesz and its junior partner, the Christian Democratic People's Party, could win 66 of those 106 constituencies, with Tisza candidates taking just 39. That said, Nézőpont is widely regarded as being close to the current government, so its figures should be taken with a grain of salt.
Losing a friendly government in the heart of Europe would likely be unacceptable to the Kremlin — and so, according to independent analysts and investigative journalists, Russia's leadership has launched an interference operation of unprecedented scale to maintain the status quo. The outlet VSquare, citing sources in several European intelligence services, reported that the operation is being overseen by Kremlin Deputy Chief of Staff Sergey Kiriyenko, who in 2025 road-tested similar tactics — bribery, bot networks, orchestrated protests, and the like — during the elections in Moldova. Operational control on the ground, the report alleged, lies with Vadim Titov, head of Russia’s Presidential Directorate for Strategic Partnership and Cooperation.
According to the Financial Times, a detailed plan to flood Hungarian social media with pro-government messaging and undermine Magyar was developed by the U.S.-sanctioned Russian firm Social Design Agency. The campaign focused primarily on Hungarian TikTok.
Journalists identified dozens of anonymous accounts involved, including a cluster of 34 profiles created within a 48-hour period that shared AI-generated content. For politically engaged audiences, the operation produced fabricated news-style broadcasts featuring AI-generated presenters and commentators criticising Magyar on various grounds. For less politically engaged users, it relied on deepfake videos of Hollywood actors, with clips depicting “Leonardo DiCaprio” and “Johnny Depp” warning Hungarians about rising energy costs if the opposition were to win.
Russia’s influence operation has put particular effort into exploiting tensions between Hungary and Ukraine. Fake videos have spread across X, including one carrying a Reuters logo that falsely claimed Volodymyr Zelensky had told Politico: "Only backwards people could vote for and support Orbán.” Content posted by accounts posing as Human Rights Watch alleged that Ukrainian refugees had carried out thousands of attacks on Hungarian citizens across various EU countries.
Orbán himself has played into this narrative as well. The most striking example was the March 5 arrest of a transit convoy belonging to Ukraine's state-owned Oschadbank, travelling from Vienna to Kyiv carrying $40 million, €35 million, and 9 kilograms of gold. According to VSquare, the original plan had been to intercept illegal weapons and manufacture a media scandal around a narrative of "terrorist threat" or "arms trafficking." When no weapons were found, those running the operation ordered a fabricated money-laundering case to be opened, and government propaganda began pushing the idea of a Ukrainian "military mafia."
Russian intelligence involvement
Russian intelligence services have been directly involved in the Hungarian election campaign, according to investigative journalists. According to VSquare's sources, several weeks before the April vote, a team of three career officers from Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU, was deployed to Budapest. The operatives arrived under diplomatic cover, giving them de facto immunity from expulsion, and were reportedly tasked with managing networks of local agents of influence and coordinating information operations.
Opposition leader Péter Magyar took reports of this operation seriously enough to demand the officers’ immediate expulsion. An unnamed member of the parliamentary national security committee later told the Hungarian news portal Telex that such information had indeed come in from Western intelligence services, but said there were no Russian agents in Hungary.
Russia's foreign intelligence service, the SVR, has also been involved. In the summer of 2025, it issued a statement claiming that Brussels was “furious at Budapest's attempts to pursue an independent policy" and was "seriously considering scenarios for regime change in Budapest." Kyiv, the SVR added, had, "on Brussels' orders, actively joined the campaign to bring Péter Magyar to power." Hungary's state news agency MTI ran the statement without comment.
By March 2026, it was clear that the SVR had effectively joined the Hungarian election campaign directly. The Washington Post published details of an internal SVR report, intercepted and verified by European intelligence services, describing a plan codenamed Gamechanger. The strategy involved staging a fake assassination attempt on Viktor Orbán, with the goal of replicating the dramatic electoral effect of the real attempt on Donald Trump's life in July 2024. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov predictably dismissed the report as disinformation.
A turning point
Viktor Orbán himself has dismissed the entire idea that Russia is interfering in the election as "a pathetic spectacle" and "a fairy tale of rather poor quality." How it will end remains to be seen. If Fidesz manages to hold its parliamentary majority, Budapest's foreign policy will stay exactly as it is, and the country's isolation within the EU and NATO will reach new depths.
Politico reported that the EU is actively drawing up contingency plans for another Orbán victory. The options on the table include expanding the use of qualified majority voting to areas that currently require unanimity; leaning even more heavily than now on flexible formats such as informal coalitions of the willing and smaller groups of member states; stepping up pressure on Budapest by freezing or cutting EU funds; triggering procedures that could strip Budapest of its voting rights for systematic disregard of European values; and expelling Hungary from the EU altogether.
Every option carries risks and complications. The last one, for instance, is essentially off the table: the EU's founding treaties contain no mechanism for expelling a member state.
Magyar's team, for their part, has kept its focus throughout on domestic issues — the economy and corruption. That, according to analyst Maxim Samorukov, is precisely where its strength lies: "Tisza avoids getting drawn into active debate on the war in Ukraine, cooperation with Russia, or relations with Europe. And that is exactly why its ratings are where they are."
One thing that’s clear is that a Magyar victory would usher in a honeymoon period with Brussels. "Good relations with EU leadership will come regardless of who Magyar's allies actually are or what their real views turn out to be," Samorukov told Novaya Gazeta Europe. "Brussels will be ready to welcome them in, show them some warmth, and demonstrate that walking away from Orbán will bring Hungary clear dividends. And since Budapest's room for manoeuvre would be considerably wider in that period than it is now, it will be much harder for Russia to push anything on them."
At the same time, dismantling the "illiberal democracy" will not happen overnight. Over 16 years, Orbán has built an electoral autocracy in which Hungary’s courts, regulatory bodies, and media are all tightly bound to the Fidesz party machine. Even if Magyar wins, his cabinet could face institutional obstruction at every turn. Pushing through the deepest possible reforms would require a constitutional supermajority — two-thirds of seats — which is not a realistic prospect.
Whatever happens, the April 12 election is set to settle an enormous question: whether Hungary will remain Russia's Trojan horse inside the EU, or begin the slow and difficult journey back into the European mainstream.]]> Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:34:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/09/russian-security-forces-raid-novaya-gazeta-office-in-moscow-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/09/russian-security-forces-raid-novaya-gazeta-office-in-moscow-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
Security forces raided the Moscow newsroom of Novaya Gazeta on Thursday, the Russian newspaper said.
Masked officers arrived around noon and began carrying out searches, the outlet reported on Telegram. "We don't know the reason — our lawyers are being refused entry to the office, where some of our staff are also present," it said.
According to attorney Kaloy Akhilgov, the search at Novaya is being conducted by Moscow's Investigative Committee. Akhilgov himself was turned away from the building after the search was underway, with officers telling him he was "too odious”.
What are authorities investigating?
State news agency RIA Novosti, citing law enforcement sources, reported that the searches may be linked to a case involving the alleged unlawful use of personal data.
According to the Russian Interior Ministry, a criminal case was opened on March 10 over similar charges.
"Investigative activities allowed us to identify a group of individuals who accessed personal data through illegal information resources," the ministry said in a statement, without specifying whom the case targets. It added that security forces had determined that this personal data was being used to prepare articles containing "negative content about Russian citizens”.
“In the course of the investigation, it was determined that in 2025–2026, private data storage resources were queried to obtain citizens’ personal data, which were later used to publish articles on Telegram channels,” the statement said.
At least one detention
Later on Thursday, RIA Novosti reported that Novaya Gazeta journalist Oleg Roldugin had been detained for mishandling personal data and was being interrogated. Roldugin is one of the co-founders of the newspaper Sobesednik, where he wrote about corruption by Russian’s leaders. His stories in Novaya Gazeta have included investigations into the inner circle of Chechnya Governor Ramzan Kadyrov and Russia’s state-run messaging app Max.
Novaya Gazeta's editorial team said it could neither confirm nor deny that the case against Roldugin may be linked to the searches.
"All we know is that on the morning following the search of his apartment, he was taken to the Moscow branch of the Interior Ministry's Main Investigative Directorate for questioning," the outlet said.]]> Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:01:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/09/kremlin-says-its-defending-against-piracy-after-reports-russian-frigate-escorting-tankers-through-english-channel-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/09/kremlin-says-its-defending-against-piracy-after-reports-russian-frigate-escorting-tankers-through-english-channel-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that Russia had “the right … to defend its interests” against what he termed “piracy”, in response to British reports that a Russian warship had escorted sanctioned tankers through the English Channel.
“​​We have witnessed multiple instances of piracy in international waters in recent months,” Peskov continued. “These instances of piracy have also damaged the economic interests of the Russian Federation.”
According to The Telegraph, the Russian Black Sea frigate Admiral Grigorovich was seen escorting two sanctioned “shadow fleet” oil tankers past the UK’s southern coast on Wednesday, in defiance of British threats to seize Russian-linked ships transiting its waters.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer authorised the British military to board and seize sanctioned Russian ships two weeks ago, claiming the move would force Russian vessels “to either divert to longer, financially painful routes, or risk being detained by British forces”.
The move aims to emulate similar seizures of Russian “shadow fleet” tankers by the Belgian, Swedish and Finnish navies in recent months. However, the Telegraph noted that the Royal Navy is yet to intercept a single Russian-linked ship.
The two ships escorted through the Channel were identified as the oil tankers Enigma and Universal, which were sailing from the North Sea towards the Atlantic. Publicly available tracking data shows that Enigma is travelling under the flag of Cameroon, and is heading from Russia’s Baltic port of Primorsk towards Mersin in Turkey. The final destination of the Russian-flagged Universal is unknown.
Since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine in 2022, Russia has been relying on a clandestine network of so-called “shadow fleet” tankers, with murky documents tracing ownership, registration and insurance, to keep shipping costs down and evade international sanctions on Russian exports and imports.]]> Thu, 09 Apr 2026 11:46:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/09/russia-declares-nobel-prize-winning-human-rights-group-memorial-extremist-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/09/russia-declares-nobel-prize-winning-human-rights-group-memorial-extremist-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
Russia's Supreme Court applied an “extremist” designation to the Nobel Prize-winning human rights group Memorial on Thursday, making any cooperation with the organisation punishable by imprisonment.
The specific entity named in the case, the “Memorial International Public Movement”, does not formally exist. Russian authorities previously dissolved Memorial’s legal entities in the country, Memorial International and the Memorial Human Rights Centre, in early 2022.
In February 2026, the Justice Ministry declared the international Memorial Human Rights Centre an “undesirable” organisation, making cooperation with the organisation punishable by a fine for a first offence and by imprisonment for further offences.
The “extremism” hearing was held behind closed doors, according to human rights group Slovo Zashchite. „
Following the ruling, the organisation plans to announce the suspension of its activities in Russia.
The request to designate Memorial an “extremist” organisation was filed on March 27 by the Russian Justice Ministry. As the independent media outlet Mediazona noted, Memorial has dozens of regional projects, but none carry the phrase “international public movement” in their name. According to journalists attending the hearing, the ban will apply not only to the movement itself but also its regional branches.
Before the decision was announced, the Nobel Prize Committee in Norway called on the Russian authorities to drop the case. It also appealed to international actors to speak out and take measures to protect people inside the country whom the designation would put at risk of prosecution.
Memorial itself said it had not been notified of the proceedings and learned of them only through press reports.
“The case is classified top secret — we have not seen the lawsuit and most likely never will. We may learn of the ruling through future criminal cases, but given the classification, there is a high chance we will not be shown anything,” said Natalia Sekretareva, head of the legal division at the Memorial Human Rights Centre.
She added that following the ruling, the organisation plans to announce the suspension of its activities in Russia.
Memorial was originally founded in 1987 to document Soviet-era human rights violations. In 2022, the organisation was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its “outstanding effort to document war crimes, human right abuses and the abuse of power,” despite the fact that the Russian authorities had ordered its liquidation earlier that year.
In the years since its dissolution in Russia, Memorial has continued operating through its international branches.
In February 2024, Memorial co-founder Oleg Orlov was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for "discrediting the Russian military." He was later released in the August 2024 prisoner exchange between Russia and several Western countries.]]> Thu, 09 Apr 2026 10:20:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/09/former-radio-free-europe-correspondent-arrested-for-treason-in-russias-far-east-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/09/former-radio-free-europe-correspondent-arrested-for-treason-in-russias-far-east-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
A former correspondent for the American state-funded media organisation Radio Free Europe has been arrested on suspicion of treason in Russia's Far Eastern Zabaykalsky region, according to a statement from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) published Thursday.
The FSB claims the man joined a Telegram group controlled by the Security Service of Ukraine “with the goal of assisting the Ukrainian side”. There, he allegedly passed information to Ukrainian operatives about “the resources of a local publication specialising in covering the special military operation”, as well as about local infrastructure facilities.
The agency alleges that Ukraine used the information to “conduct cyber attacks on the specified facilities”. The man is now being held in pre-trial detention, and if found guilty of treason will face a life sentence.
The FSB did not identify the man, but said that he was born in 1960, resided in Zabaykalsky's regional capital, Chita, and previously worked as a freelance foreign correspondent for Radio Free Europe. The independent news outlet 7x7 reported on Thursday that the FSB statement likely refers to journalist Alexander Andreyev, 65, who was arrested in Chita on 1 April.
According to local newspaper Chita.ru, Andreyev briefly headed the local branch of the pro-EU opposition party Western Choice, before it was dissolved by the Russian government in 2014. He had also written for opposition news outlet Kasparov.ru, founded by chess grandmaster and liberal political activist Garry Kasparov, as well as for exiled businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s now-defunct MBKh Media.
Radio Free Europe has been designated as an “undesirable organisation” in Russia since 2024, meaning that its activities in Russia are banned. Russians who participate in its activities can face up to four years in prison.
Russia has imprisoned several journalists with connections to Radio Free Europe in recent years, including Alsu Kurmasheva, who was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison in 2024 for “spreading fake news” about the Russian military, before being released in a prisoner exchange with the US later that year.]]> Wed, 08 Apr 2026 11:32:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/08/nearly-half-of-russians-continue-to-use-telegram-for-news-despite-blocks-survey-finds-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/08/nearly-half-of-russians-continue-to-use-telegram-for-news-despite-blocks-survey-finds-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
Nearly half (49%) of Russians said they read Telegram news channels at least once a week in March, according to a new poll released on Tuesday, despite attempts by the Russian government to block the popular social media platform.
The poll was conducted by an independent Levada Centre polling agency between 18 and 26 March, coinciding with efforts to block the platform that saw up to 80% of attempts to access it in Russia fail, as well as massive internet outages which struck Moscow and St. Petersburg that week.
The figure is down only 4 percentage points since March 2025, when 53% of respondents said they regularly consulted Telegram for news. The number of respondents who said they read Telegram channels “several times a day” also fell, from 25% to 20%.
The Levada Centre also reported the first-ever fall in the number of Russians who regularly read news online since it began collecting data in 2016 — from 76% to 72%. However, there was no corresponding increase in the number of Russians who regularly watched news on television.
The polling centre found significant disparities in news sources between different sectors of the Russian population. Russians who were younger, highly educated, more affluent, and disapproved of Vladimir Putin were more likely to access their news online or on social media. Television news was preferred by older and less affluent respondents, as well as those with no more than secondary education, and those who expressed support for Vladimir Putin.
Widespread problems accessing Telegram in Russia last month caused speculation that Russia’s planned total block against the platform, originally expected to begin on 1 April, had already started.
The Kremlin had previously instructed internet service providers to throttle traffic on Telegram, and has already blocked all voice and video calls on the platform, as part of its broader crackdown on free and uncensored internet access for Russians.
A previous poll by the Levada Centre in March found that over three-quarters of Russians had encountered difficulties accessing the internet that month, and that a majority (55%) of Russians disapproved of the authorities’ plans to block Telegram and Whatsapp.
Officially, the Kremlin blames its expansive internet restrictions on security concerns regarding Ukrainian drone strikes, financial fraud, and alleged cooperation between foreign social media platforms and Ukraine’s security services.]]> Wed, 08 Apr 2026 09:55:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/08/masked-security-forces-shut-down-grassroots-festival-in-russian-urals-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/08/masked-security-forces-shut-down-grassroots-festival-in-russian-urals-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
A festival for grassroots initiatives and local activists in Tyumen, in the Russian Urals, was raided and shut down by security forces on Saturday, according to the independent news channel 7x7.
The festival, titled “Taking Everyone to the Future”, was scheduled to run throughout the weekend, with a programme including discussions of street art, regional feminist initiatives, AI usage, and public spaces. However, about an hour after the start of the festival on Saturday, several armed men wearing masks raided the venue and shut down the event.
A source told Novaya Europe that security forces checked participants’ phones for anti-war posts and other “suspicious” messages. All attendees were subsequently let go without charges.
Organisers initially announced that a planned podcasting event would not go ahead, before confirming that the second day of the event was cancelled on Saturday evening. On Tuesday, one of the festival’s participants confirmed in a post on X that the cause for the cancellation was a raid by security forces.
The festival organisers also confirmed the raid on Telegram, though the channel has since been deleted.
7x7 added that riot and anti-terrorism police in Tyumen, alongside members of the far-right paramilitary group Russian Community, raided a punk concert at a local bar the same day over alleged links to anarchist and anti-fascist groups.]]> Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:49:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/07/russian-regional-youth-council-ousts-members-who-won-t-weave-nets-for-war-against-ukraine-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/07/russian-regional-youth-council-ousts-members-who-won-t-weave-nets-for-war-against-ukraine-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
Members of a youth advisory body under the legislature of Russia's Tyumen region are being expelled for refusing to weave camouflage nets for the war in Ukraine, according to the parliament's first deputy speaker.
Andrey Artyukhov said six people were removed from the last cohort of the region’s Civic Youth Chamber for opting out of net-weaving, and that he receives weekly reports tracking who has been making nets for what Moscow calls its "special military operation."
"I take a hard line on people who slack off," Artyukhov said. "If someone doesn't show up to weave nets, we expel them. I always say: what kind of future public figure are you if you can't find even an hour to come to the Duma building — your own Duma — and weave nets with everyone else?"
He held up the chair of the previous cohort as a model volunteer, noting that she had regularly travelled to Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine on what he described as "humanitarian missions."
Artyukhov also warned incoming members that anyone who joined the body "just for the credentials" would be "out in five seconds."]]> Tue, 07 Apr 2026 14:30:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/07/russian-court-declares-chechen-government-in-exile-terrorist-organisation-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/07/russian-court-declares-chechen-government-in-exile-terrorist-organisation-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
A court in Chechnya, in the Russian North Caucasus, has ruled the region’s government-in-exile a “terrorist organisation”, citing its role in the Ukrainian war effort, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) announced in a press release on Tuesday.
The decision was issued by a district court in Chechnya’s capital, Grozny, and relates to the government of the separatist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (CRI), which has operated in exile since its defeat in the Second Chechen War in 2000, along with “29 of its branches in 14 European countries”.
The ruling means that Russians can be sentenced to life in prison for any participation in or engagement with the organisation, including sharing its content online.
The CRI ruled the region as a de facto independent state from 1991 until 2000, and fought two devastating wars against Russia in 1994–97 and 1999–2000. Since 2007, the unrecognised government has been headed by exiled former Deputy Prime Minister Akhmed Zakayev, who resides permanently in the United Kingdom, where he received asylum in 2003.
Justifying the ruling, the FSB said that members of the CRI had been engaged in “combat operations against the Russian Armed Forces as part of the Ukrainian army” since 2022, and accused the organisation of sabotage on Russian territory, and murders of Russian military personnel and civilians.
Chechen fighters have volunteered in Ukraine’s international battalions since 2014, and the CRI has received backing from the Ukrainian government, including through a 2022 parliamentary resolution which recognised Chechnya as “temporarily occupied by Russia”.
Zakayev resurrected the CRI’s armed forces in 2022 as the Separate Special Purpose Battalion. The unit fights in Ukraine alongside several other Chechen units, including the Dzhokhar Dudayev Battalion and the Sheikh Mansur Battalion, both of which have been active in Ukraine since the war in Donbas began in 2014.]]> Tue, 07 Apr 2026 09:23:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/07/russia-threatens-baltic-states-with-consequences-after-alleging-they-let-ukraine-use-airspace-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/07/russia-threatens-baltic-states-with-consequences-after-alleging-they-let-ukraine-use-airspace-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova issued thinly veiled threats to the Baltic states on Monday over allegations that they permitted Ukraine to use their airspace to carry out drone strikes on Russian ports — a claim their governments have denied.
“These countries have been issued an appropriate warning. If the regimes in these countries have any sense, they will listen. If not, they’ll have to deal with the consequences,” she told reporters.
In late March, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia reported drones straying into their airspace from Russian territory. The aircraft were later identified as Ukrainian ones that veered off course as Kyiv ramped up attacks on Russian oil facilities on the Baltic Sea. Ukraine’s foreign minister said that Kyiv has intelligence indicating Moscow intentionally diverted the drones towards the Baltic states.
Ukraine apologized over the incursions, and the Baltic states named Russia’s aggression as the root cause of the incidents. Meanwhile, Moscow sought to exploit the situation via a disinformation campaign, with pro-Kremlin outlets spreading claims that the Baltic states were actively allowing Ukraine to use their airspace to attack Russia.]]> Mon, 06 Apr 2026 15:40:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/06/man-convicted-in-crocus-city-hall-terror-attack-case-dies-in-apparent-suicide-russian-authorities-say-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/06/man-convicted-in-crocus-city-hall-terror-attack-case-dies-in-apparent-suicide-russian-authorities-say-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
One of the men convicted of involvement in the 2024 terrorist attack at Moscow’s Crocus City Hall concert venue has died by suicide, according to Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service.
“Resuscitation efforts were carried out at the scene, but they were unsuccessful. An investigation is currently underway, and its results will be available today,” the agency told the media outlet RBC.
Daniel Gauthier, a lawyer for victims of the Crocus attack, said the person in question was Yakubjoni Yusufzoda. According to Mash, a Telegram channel with links to the Russian authorities, Yusufzoda attempted to hang himself in his cell and later died on the way to the hospital.
Yusufzoda had been given a life sentence in connection with the Crocus attack. Investigators allege that he sent money to the perpetrators several days before the attack and again afterward.
RBC and Kommersant report that another person sentenced to life in prison for the attack, Dzhabrail Aushev, has also attempted suicide in his cell multiple times but survived. Aushev was convicted on charges of illegally trafficking weapons and ammunition.
At least 150 people were killed in the Crocus City Hall shooting, Russia’s deadliest terrorist attack since the 2004 Beslan school siege. In March 2026, a Moscow military court sentenced 19 people in connection with the attack, including four men found guilty of carrying it out and 15 others identified as accomplices.
The terrorist group Islamic State — Khorasan (IS-K) claimed responsibility for the attack shortly after it occurred. Russian authorities have repeatedly alleged, without providing evidence, that Ukraine was involved, a claim Kyiv has denied.]]> Mon, 06 Apr 2026 12:04:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/06/ads-for-service-in-russias-drone-forces-appear-in-volgograd-schools-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/06/ads-for-service-in-russias-drone-forces-appear-in-volgograd-schools-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
Advertisements for contract service in Russia’s Unmanned Systems Forces, a relatively new military branch dedicated to drone warfare, have appeared on the social media pages of two schools in the southern Volgograd region, independent media outlet Groza reported on Friday.
The posts, published on February 13, proclaim that “The Homeland needs you!” and promise a one-time payout of 2.1 million rubles (€22,700).
According to an internal Russian Defence Ministry document made public in March, the UAV forces are expected to recruit 78,800 people in 2026.
Russian Science and Higher Education Minister Valery Falkov informed the rectors of the country’s largest universities earlier this year that at least 2% of their total student body must enlist to serve in Ukraine, independent news outlet Faridaily reported last week, citing a source close to the head of a Moscow university.
It was also reported in February that the Defence Ministry was actively attempting to recruit students at over 70 universities and technical colleges across Russia to serve in the war in Ukraine.
Students are generally told that they can join the Unmanned Systems Forces as drone operators, remaining far from the front lines while gaining valuable tech industry experience. Recruitment pamphlets also assure students they can combine active military service with their studies, referring to students sent to the front as being on “academic leave”, with discharge guaranteed after one year.
Despite these assurances, Artyom Klyga, a lawyer for the Russian Conscientious Objectors Movement, found that students recruited from Moscow’s Higher School of Economics who were promised discharge after completing a year of service had in fact signed regular military contracts that cannot be terminated.
When confronted by journalists about the reports, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he wasn’t aware of any orders to recruit students into the UAV forces.]]> Mon, 06 Apr 2026 08:35:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/06/russian-governor-says-abortion-too-much-of-a-luxury-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/06/russian-governor-says-abortion-too-much-of-a-luxury-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
Gleb Nikitin, the governor of Russia’s Novgorod region, said on Saturday that the number of elective abortions performed at state clinics in the region fell by 30 percent in 2025 compared to 2024 — and was nearly five times lower than 10 years ago.
“Yes, we’ve had these small victories, but that’s not enough,” Nikitin said at an event dedicated to raising Russia’s birthrate. “The [demographic] situation in our country is critical, and allowing elective abortions is too big a luxury. Our task is to try to prevent such cases — not through bans, but through high-quality work, care, and responsibility.”
Officials also noted at the conference that in the last year, the number of private clinics licensed to perform abortions in the Novgorod region fell from 55 to nine.
In recent years, Russian authorities have taken extensive measures to curb abortions, including anti-abortion PR campaigns, revocation of clinics’ licenses, and official bans on “coercing” women into abortions.]]> Fri, 03 Apr 2026 11:11:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/03/manufacturing-contempt-en https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/03/manufacturing-contempt-en Syuzhety · Politika Khult Garri As the US-Israeli war with Iran enters its second month with no obvious exit strategy, Russia has emerged as one of the conflict’s net winners. As well as earning the Kremlin a vital and unexpected financial windfall due to soaring crude oil prices, the war has also ensured that negotiating a peaceful resolution in Ukraine has become even less of a priority for US President Donald Trump than it was before.
Though this sudden change in Russia’s fortunes has been music to the ears of Russian propagandists, who do their best work when global instability and fractured Western opinion allows their narratives to thrive, reaction to the war against Iran in the wider Russian media landscape has actually varied enormously.
Four weeks into the war in the Middle East, Novaya Gazeta Europe explores how Russia’s propagandists and provocateurs have reacted at the four different layers of the Kremlin’s information pyramid.
The balancing act
Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin’s own mouthpieces have been openly critical of the war in Iran, framing the attacks as Western interventionism, a longstanding Russian grievance, and describing them as unjustified and counterproductive. Nonetheless, the Kremlin has been careful to avoid any direct criticism of Trump himself.
Shortly after the war began, Vladimir Putin denounced the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a “cynical murder”, and expressed Russia’s “unwavering support” for Iran and solidarity with its efforts to “resist armed aggression”.
But on 9 March, Putin and Trump held a “frank and constructive” telephone conversation, in which Putin reportedly called only for a swift diplomatic settlement of the war. The contradiction in terms seems to indicate that Russia is stuck uncomfortably between supporting a key ally, and maintaining favour with the White House.
Rather than criticise Trump directly, the Kremlin has preferred to integrate the Iran war into older, broader narratives of Western instability and unjustified aggression. In an interview on 8 March, Putin claimed that the current situation was the fault of “systematic mistakes” by Western countries, and baselessly compared the attack on Iran to Ukraine’s Euromaidan, which Russia has long claimed was a West-backed coup.
By maintaining amicable relations with Trump, Putin hopes to ensure that the US president will continue to look favourably on Russia’s territorial demands in Ukraine, and perhaps even further relieve sanctions on Moscow. But in doing so the Kremlin also hopes to position itself as a stable, neutral mediator in the crisis, as part of its broader strategy of power projection.
This is also evident in the Kremlin’s positioning of itself as a reliable energy supplier at a time of turmoil, which in turn plays into the well-established narrative that Russia’s oil and gas reserves are vital for global energy security. Only now these are being legitimised by the White House’s decision to lift sanctions on some Russian oil — a move the US Treasury claims won’t earn the Kremlin significant revenue, but will serve to reinforce Kremlin propaganda narratives.
Familiar narratives
Reactions to the war in Russia’s traditional media landscape have focused similarly on amplifying the perceived economic and strategic benefits of the war for Russia. However, unlike the Kremlin’s official channels, Russia’s mainstream media outlets have been more than willing to lambast Trump directly.
In fact, much of the criticism of the US war on Iran that has appeared in Russia’s establishment media bears a striking resemblance to that published by Western news outlets, and is focused on Trump’s seeming lack of coherent strategy, vague war goals, and muddled messaging.
“To write about ‘Trump’s strategy in the Iran conflict’ is laughable,” wrote state-affiliated tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets on 16 March, “Trump improvises as he goes along, constantly swings from one extreme to another and issues non-stop statements, each of which nullifies the one that preceded it.” „
Needless to say, self-censoring Russian analysts leave out the parallels that could very well be drawn with Putin’s own war in Ukraine.
Just two days later, state-affiliated daily newspaper Izvestia wrote that despite Trump's claims of a swift campaign, “the conflict with Iran is dragging on, and key objectives remain unachieved.”
The fact that these criticisms could just as well have been published in the West points to the fact that, at present, Russian media outlets don’t feel the need to spin events to suit the Kremlin’s propaganda narratives, as the chaotic Trump presidency has already done that for them.
On the other hand, some Russian analysts have developed a more targeted line of attack against the US, accusing it of staging drawn-out negotiations with Iran as a smokescreen, while preparing for new attacks.
In a sense, this version of events contradicts the idea that Trump is an unstable and incompetent actor, but is nonetheless important as it plays into narratives that foment popular mistrust and fear of US and NATO aggression — a key component of Russia’s justification for illegally invading Ukraine.
Needless to say, self-censoring Russian analysts leave out the parallels that could very well be drawn with Putin’s own war in Ukraine, now in its fifth year and hardly a beacon of moral or strategic success. Indeed, Kyiv has repeatedly accused Russia of employing an identical strategy there, convening endless rounds of peace talks while simultaneously pummelling the country’s infrastructure in drone and missile strikes.
But this parallel is not necessarily problematic for the Kremlin, which has already shown itself to operate comfortably amid blatant contradictions. For Russia, the important similarity between the wars in Ukraine and Iran is not that both have failed equally, but that Trump is creating a new world order in which such attacks and invasions become normalised.
Echo chamber escalation
The more extreme pro-Russian talking points reside in state TV and in semi-official and informal Telegram channels, where reactions to the Iran war have taken on a far more incendiary character.
For one, the US-Israeli attacks on Iran are painted as part of a broader global conflict, in which Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine is another central arena. For instance, pro-Kremlin Telegram channels have been quick to accuse Ukraine of being complicit in the US war against Iran for having provided anti-drone technology to US allies in the Gulf.
Vladimir Solovyov, Russia’s best-known TV propagandist, has framed the war in Iran as a direct call-to-arms for Russia to strike the West in supposed self-defence. “The current situation is incredibly dangerous,” he told millions of viewers of his evening talkshow on 22 March: “Diplomacy is no more, unfortunately it is dead … The time for terrible actions has come.”
Similar conclusions have been drawn by Russian pro-war Telegram channels, such as the popular Dva Mayora, which on 28 March lauded Iran’s willingness to “strike targets in any country it can reach”, and called on Russia to adopt a similar approach in Eastern Europe.
Reactions to the situation in the Middle East on this level often dive into conspiracy theories, such as the supposed involvement of Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring in a US strike on an Iranian girls’ school. With antisemitic flair, pro-war Telegram channels have taken to referring to the US-Israeli alliance as the “Epstein Coalition”, playing into more insidious Russian narratives about Western “moral collapse”.
Russia’s extreme ultranationalist social media landscape does not take its cues directly from the Kremlin, and some far-right commentators have even criticised Russia’s failure to come to Iran’s assistance. Instead, Moscow has carefully curated a media ecosystem in which a variety of views appear to coexist, while still ensuring that public opinion remains pro-regime in general.
The farther each narrative is removed from the Kremlin, the more distant from objective reality it becomes. Nevertheless, these channels are often the Kremlin’s most successful tools of influence, exploiting nuggets of truth (the material facts of the Epstein case, the geopolitical link between Ukraine and Iran) to push the boundaries of accepted fact towards alternative versions of reality.
Disinformation abroad
The final layer of Russia’s information strategy is concerned with spreading Kremlin narratives abroad, part of what analysts refer to as foreign information manipulations and interference (FIMI). Differing from the Russian propaganda aimed at domestic audiences, it primarily relies upon seeding fabricated stories on popular Western social media platforms.
On 13 March, the EU’s disinformation monitoring task force EUvsDisinfo identified three news stories propagated by Russian aggregators since the start of the Iran conflict, which it said focused on “blaming Ukraine and portraying the United Kingdom and the European Union as drivers of escalation.”
One story asserted that Kyiv would stage a “provocation” to regain the West’s attention and to prevent the diversion of Western military aid to the Middle East. Another, propagated through a report falsely attributed to Euronews, claimed that Iranian missiles had damaged a luxury residence in Dubai belonging to a senior figure in the Ukrainian military, feeding a narrative designed to undermine Western support for Kyiv by painting Ukrainian institutions as endemically corrupt.
An earlier analysis by the Dutch cyber threat group SecAlliance identified another eight fake video clips circulated by a Russian FIMI network in the first week of the conflict in Iran. These contained a variety of disinformation linked to the situation in the Middle East, which the group said was aimed at “undermining Western governments, damaging Ukraine’s reputation, and inflaming social tensions in Europe”, once again reshaping time-tested Russian narratives to fit new realities.
SecAlliance also highlighted the speed and efficiency with which Russian disinformation networks adapted their output to the attacks on Iran, which by all accounts caught Kremlin strategists off guard. Across all levels of its operation, the Kremlin’s information ecosystem proved it could be “rapidly activated and redirected to exploit unfolding global events,” SecAlliance concluded.
E pluribus unum
Russia has long understood that it stands to benefit from chaos in the information space, which is why the narratives it promotes outside Russia are not aimed at consistency, but at disruption and destabilisation.
In many respects, the response of Russia’s narrative spinners to the war in Iran mirrors that which has been developed over the past decades, with the same tropes and storylines simply adjusted in line with global events. What’s particularly striking this time, however, is that the Trump White House has made that task far easier for Russia’s propagandists.
At the highest level, Trump has seemed more than happy to be courted by Putin while other Kremlin mouthpieces exploit his war for their own ends. Meanwhile, the chaos Trump has sown among his NATO allies allows Russia’s traditional media to report on genuine criticisms of the war’s prosecution and on the fragmentation of opinion in the West.
Most worryingly of all, the overwhelming and contradictory messaging strategy of pro-Russian social media and disinformation campaigns has much in common with the chaotic and manipulative way the second Trump administration communicates its own talking points. At the very least, the latter has provided fertile grounds for the former to take root.]]> Fri, 03 Apr 2026 10:21:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/03/belarusian-parliament-passes-russian-inspired-law-banning-lgbt-propaganda-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/03/belarusian-parliament-passes-russian-inspired-law-banning-lgbt-propaganda-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
Belarusian lawmakers passed a bill on Thursday criminalising so-called “LGBT propaganda”, as well as the promotion of child-free lifestyles, Belarusian news agency BELTA has reported, echoing similar laws on the books in neighbouring Russia since 2013.
The legislation, which was first proposed over two years ago, was passed by the lower house of parliament last month, and its approval by the upper house on Thursday means that the bill will become law once it is signed by the country’s dictator, Alexander Lukashenko.
The law, which will make the “promotion” of what the authorities term “homosexual relations, gender changes and childlessness” illegal in Belarus, baselessly links all three to the “normalisation of paedophilia”. Individual violators will face fines of up to €260, while businesses can be fined between €1,300–2,000.
In 2013, a similar law was first passed in Russia prohibiting the promotion of “non-traditional family values” to minors. Copycat laws have since been passed in several countries, including Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, while the Russian law was amended in 2022 to extend it to people of any age, not just children.
Although same-sex relations have been legal in Belarus since 1994, LGBT Belarusians still face significant discrimination, violence, legal inequality, and social stigma. According to ILGA-Europe’s Rainbow Map, a project that ranks European countries according to the rights and protections each affords sexual minorities, Belarus comes fifth to last, ranking only above Russia, Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The new anti-LGBT law is part of a sweeping range of amendments to Belarus’s Code on Administrative Offences, which will include 10 new articles and 43 new offences. Another proposed law, which is aimed at undermining Belarus’s exiled opposition movement, would make “illegally representing Belarus at international events” subject to fines of up to €13,000.]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 14:20:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/02/cut-in-russian-oil-production-looms-as-20-of-export-capacity-disabled-by-ukrainian-drone-strikes-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/02/cut-in-russian-oil-production-looms-as-20-of-export-capacity-disabled-by-ukrainian-drone-strikes-en-news Novosti · Ekonomika Masters Tom
Ukraine’s recent spate of drone strikes targeting Russian oil refineries, storage facilities and ports have reduced the country’s fuel export capacity by around 20%, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing three industry sources.
Though that figure is down from the approximately 40% reduction in fuel export capacity reported on 25 March, the damage done to Russia’s oil infrastructure means that its remaining facilities are now overloaded, with storage facilities filling up rapidly.
As a result, some oil fields will be obliged to reduce their output, the sources told Reuters. Russia’s oil pipeline agency Transneft, which transports 80% of the country’s oil exports, has already warned it is unable to accept the full quota of fuel from producers planning to ship their exports through the Baltic port of Ust-Luga, which was badly damaged in a Ukrainian drone strike last week.
In addition to the damage done to the port of Ust-Luga, Russia’s two other major oil facilities in the Baltic at Primorsk and Kirishi were forced to reduce operations last week after Ukrainian drone strikes.
A reduction in levels of oil production by Russia, the world’s second-largest exporter, would exacerbate the already tense outlook for global energy markets, which are already reeling from supply disruptions caused by the war in the Middle East.
As Russian oil is taxed not on the basis of export volumes, but at the wellhead during extraction, the cash-strapped federal budget also stands to lose out if oil producers are forced to cut production, with four years of international sanctions and vast military spending on the war in Ukraine taking their toll. ]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 12:11:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/02/medical-company-co-owned-by-putins-daughter-posts-largest-profit-in-three-years-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/02/medical-company-co-owned-by-putins-daughter-posts-largest-profit-in-three-years-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
A medical company co-owned by Vladimir Putin’s eldest daughter, Maria Vorontsova, has recorded its largest profit in three years, independent Russian investigative outlet Mozhem Obyasnit (MO) reported on Thursday.
According to public financial statements reviewed by MO, Vorontsova’s New Medical Company (Nomeko) reported assets worth €23.8 million, and a net profit of €2.49 million in 2025, a 22% increase on the previous year.
Though Nomeko spent just €192,000 on salaries for its seven employees, it spent €3.24 million on vacations for the company’s management. Besides taking large dividends, Vorontsova herself earned approximately €8,640 per month at Nomeko, MO added, citing leaked data from Russia’s Federal Taxation Service.
An endocrinologist by training, Vorontsova also took a salary from Russia’s National Endocrinology Research Centre, as well as from her work as a laboratory director at the Kurchatov Institute, which is headed by Mikhail Kovalchuk, a close associate of her father.
In total, her monthly income from these and various other employers amounted to between €11,000–18,000, depending on the month. According to Russia’s government statistics agency Rosstat, the average monthly wage in Russia in 2025 was the equivalent of €960.
Vorontsova became a co-owner of Nomeko, a St. Petersburg-based company specialising in developing nuclear radiology projects and diagnostic tools, in 2019. Shortly afterwards the company was awarded a government contract to build a state-of-the-art medical complex in a hamlet near Russia’s border with Finland. The complex was scheduled to open in 2021 but was delayed by three years, with the final cost unclear.
Vorontsova was largely unknown in Russia before her appointment at Nomeko, as any discussion of Putin's family was considered taboo. In a previous investigation in 2024, murdered opposition politician Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation found that Vorontsova had made over €10 million at the company between 2019–22.]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 10:29:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/02/dissident-tells-russias-supreme-court-putin-is-new-hitler-after-his-appeal-is-rejected-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/02/dissident-tells-russias-supreme-court-putin-is-new-hitler-after-his-appeal-is-rejected-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
Dissident Alexander Skobov told Russia’s Supreme Court that Vladimir Putin was “the new Hitler” on Wednesday after it upheld a 16-year prison term handed to him last year for “justifying terrorism” in a Telegram post, SOTAvision has reported.
Attending the hearing by video-link from the penal colony where he is serving his sentence, Skobov, 68, told the court that he had lodged the appeal for the sole purpose of “calling on European countries to join the war and defeat the Russian Federation.”
During the hearing, Skobov shouted “Death to the Russian fascist invaders! Death to Putin, the new Hitler!”, before being cut off by the judge. He also told his wife, Olga Shcheglova, that he was doing “everything possible to meet the Ecuadorian frog”, a reference to the toxin used to murder imprisoned opposition leader Alexey Navalny.
The Supreme Court dismissed Skobov’s appeal, and upheld the 16-year sentence he was handed for “justification of terrorism” and “participation in the activities of a terrorist organisation” over a Telegram post Skobov wrote arguing that Putin could “not be overthrown with ‘wallets’” and calling for him to be hit with missiles instead.
Skobov, who was also found guilty of membership of the Free Russia Forum, a Russian opposition platform that has been deemed a terrorist organisation in Russia, has always maintained his innocence, and has used each one of his court appearances to criticise Putin and the war in Ukraine.
A well known Soviet-era dissident, Skobov was twice confined to three-year stints in a psychiatric hospital for his pro-democracy activism under communism, a common fate for political dissidents at the time.
Skobov refused to leave Russia when he was declared a “foreign agent” in March 2024, and was arrested the following month. Since his detention, his general health, and his eyesight in particular, have deteriorated significantly, and his family and supporters have warned that a long custodial term would effectively be a death sentence.
Shcheglova told SOTAvision that her husband was actually doing “quite well” in prison, and had been feeling less ill than he had been before he was imprisoned, adding that “the will to resist has a revitalising effect on people.”]]> Wed, 01 Apr 2026 14:58:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/01/crunching-the-numbers-en https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/01/crunching-the-numbers-en Kommentariy · Politika Rents Bettina, Walker Charlie Russia has begun a spring offensive in Ukraine, launching a major assault on the “fortress belt” of heavily defended cities in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. At the same time, a wave of nearly 1,000 drones and missiles targeted civilian, energy, and transport infrastructure across a wide swath of territory in a bid to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defences.
Ukraine’s technology-driven tactical nous has enabled it to kill or wound more Russian troops than are being recruited, month on month. But reports from Ukraine’s military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi that the Kremlin plans to add more than 400,000 new recruits in 2026, suggest that Russia intends to continue with its “meat grinder” strategy of attempting to overwhelm Ukraine along the front lines with sheer weight of numbers while undermining national morale by destroying its energy infrastructure.
Of course, the meat grinder involves a high level of casualties on the Russian side. This has led some Western observers to suggest that Vladimir Putin might be forced to the negotiating table simply because his military can’t get enough troops to continue in this way.
The idea that Russia will have trouble recruiting enough soldiers is a hangover from some of its past wars, where the dire treatment of its soldiers and veterans led at times to considerable disillusionment. This idea has been raised in the current war against Ukraine.
During the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s and the first Russian-Chechen War in the 1990s, soldiers’ mothers organisations across Russia placed the conditions in which their sons served their country under the spotlight. Poor service conditions, hazing and corruption — and the state’s failure to provide adequate support and recognition to veterans and the families of fallen soldiers — eroded the image of the Russian military. This led to a breakdown in society-military relations and serious problems in the recruitment and retention of soldiers.
This theme remains ever-present in Western reporting of the war. There has been a great deal of media focus on draft avoidance, low morale and discipline in the field and, the poor treatment of veterans. In addition, the enlistment of people serving prison terms as well as troops from allies such as North Korea and Serbia are also a big focus of attention in Western media coverage.
Advertising soldiering as a “real job” for “real men” appeared to signal desperation, while the fact that soldiers appeared only to be fighting for money — or because they were coerced — implied that genuine support either for the war or the regime was weak. Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin’s attempted mutiny in 2023 was a more concrete and spectacular example of the potential for Russia’s military mobilisation to implode.
But in one important respect, this war is being waged differently from the wars Russia fought in Chechnya and Afghanistan. Putin has been determined to prevent any kind of breakdown in relations between the military and society as a whole, and has made a concerted effort to re-engineer the relationship between the army, the state and Russian society since the 2000s precisely to avoid a repetition of this outcome.
Both the Afghan and first Chechen wars were marked by a breakdown in the social contract between soldiers and the state, or what’s known as “military citizenship”. This is the reciprocal relationship whereby the state provides soldiers with forms of social and legal recognition such as living wages, access to housing and decent healthcare, family support, and a degree of social respect. In exchange they carry out military service. „
Civil society organisations such as the Immortal Regiment, a massive and highly active organisation of veterans, are helping to mobilise Russia’s proudly held military traditions from World War II.
These forms of reciprocity clearly collapsed after the Afghan and first Chechen wars. It created a rift between the military and the state that was personified by the political marginalisation of soldiers in society and by dissent and disillusionment among high-ranking officers. Russia made significant long-term changes in response and formed a civic council under the control of the Defence Ministry specifically to guide this process.
That was followed in 2008 by the Strategy for the Development of the Russian Armed Forces, which led Russia to introduce extensive material benefits relating to housing, pensions, salaries and social guarantees for soldiers. The in-house newspaper of Russia’s defence ministry, Krasnaya Zvezda, trumpeted that, following these reforms, “contract soldiers are becoming the country’s middle class”. This is, of course, the government line, but it reflects the importance the Kremlin places in being at least seen to address this historic problem.
This programme of reforms has been accompanied by work to rebuild military patriotism. Civil society organisations such as the Immortal Regiment, a massive and highly active organisation of veterans, are helping to mobilise Russia’s proudly held military traditions from World War II.
These forms of material and symbolic recognition will not, of course, appeal to all Russian men. Putin has been forced over the course of the war to introduce stringent rules and severe punishments to prevent draft dodging and the mass emigration of those eligible for conscription.
But on the other hand, many Russians still live in hardship as a result of the country’s shaky economic transition after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. For many young and older men in deindustrialising parts of provincial Russia, the army is still seen as the only prospect of social mobility, something that has only been reinforced by the benefits provided to soldiers in recent years. „
Given the boost to Russia’s economy provided by the current war in the Middle East, the West would do better to focus on how it can assist Ukraine on the battlefield.
This does not mean that there are no concerns about military conditions, the quality of social protection for soldiers and their families, and, ultimately, about the legitimacy of the war in Ukraine. The relationship the Russian state has attempted to re-establish with society, and with its men in particular, is still problematic. It is still marked by tensions Putin is either trying to address or attempting to hide, and desertion remains a significant problem for the Russian military.
But the high military salaries and sign-on bonuses continue to attract a steady stream of recruits. So we need to question the idea that relations between the military and wider society will now fall apart and force Russia to the negotiating table. Given the boost to Russia’s economy provided by the current war in the Middle East, the West would do better to focus on how it can assist Ukraine on the battlefield.

This article was first published in The Conversation. Views expressed in opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the position of Novaya Gazeta Europe.

Charlie Walker is associate professor of comparative sociology at the University of Southampton, and Bettina Renz is professor of international security at the University of Nottingham. ]]> Wed, 01 Apr 2026 12:53:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/01/russia-claims-full-control-of-ukraines-luhansk-region-for-third-time-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/01/russia-claims-full-control-of-ukraines-luhansk-region-for-third-time-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
The Russian Defence Ministry claimed on Wednesday that its forces had taken full control of Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, which together with Donetsk makes up the coal-rich Donbas, control of which has always been the Kremlin’s ultimate objective in its invasion of its neighbour.
In a statement issued on Wednesday morning, the ministry claimed that units belonging to Russia’s Western military contingent had “completed the liberation of the Luhansk People's Republic”, referring to the unrecognised autonomous government that has claimed the region since 2014, and which Russia has claimed as its territory since 2022.
However, a source in the command of the 11th Corps of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) which defends the Ukrainian line in Luhansk, denied the Russian reports, telling Novaya Gazeta Europe that the AFU continued to hold its positions in the region.
The vast majority of Luhansk has been under Russian control since an initial rapid advance in the early stages of the war in 2022, but a small area in the west of the region, bordering the Kharkiv region, was retaken by Ukrainian forces in a successful counteroffensive later that year. Since then, the front line in Kharkiv and Luhansk has remained largely static.
This is not the first time that Russia has claimed to have captured the entire region. As recently as June, the head of the Russian administration in Luhansk, Leonid Pasechnik, claimed that the region was 100% under Russian control. Three months later, however, Vladimir Putin conceded that approximately 0.13% of the region’s territory was still in Ukrainian hands.
According to Oleksandr Kovalenko, a military and political observer at Ukraine’s Information Resistance Group, the two small areas of the Luhansk region still under Kyiv’s control amount to approximately 80km2.
One of the few settlements in Luhansk still in Ukrainian hands is the village of Novoyehorivka, which had a pre-war population of just 36. In January, the Russian Defence Ministry announced that its Western military contingent had successfully expelled Ukrainian troops from the village, a claim that was immediately rejected by commentators on both sides.
Citing sources on the front lines, popular pro-Kremlin blogger Yury Podolyaka accused the leadership of the Western contingent of deliberately deceiving Russia’s central command and claiming fake advances to cover up their “incompetence”.
Kovalenko told Novaya Europe that Moscow’s latest claim to have full control of Luhansk appeared to be yet another “credit-line land grab”, and said that Russia was increasingly resorting to making untrue statements of military victories in Ukraine amid a string of battleground failures.]]> Wed, 01 Apr 2026 09:57:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/01/thirty-killed-as-russian-military-transport-plane-crashes-into-cliff-in-annexed-crimea-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/01/thirty-killed-as-russian-military-transport-plane-crashes-into-cliff-in-annexed-crimea-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
Thirty people have died after a Russian military transport plane crashed into a cliff near the city of Sevastopol in occupied Crimea on Tuesday evening, Russia’s Investigative Committee announced on Wednesday.
Contact with the plane was lost on Tuesday evening as the Antonov An-26 carried out a routine flight over Crimea carrying 23 passengers and 7 crew members, according to Russian news agency TASS. The aircraft subsequently crashed into a cliff in the peninsula’s southern Bakhchysarai region, killing all those onboad.
Investigators have opened a criminal case for “violation of flight rules or rules governing flight preparation”, TASS added. Preliminary reports from Russia’s Defence Ministry suggested that the accident was caused by an unspecified “technical malfunction”, and that there was no evidence of a strike on the aircraft.
The An-26 is a twin-engine turboprop plane that was produced in the Soviet Union between 1965 and 1989 and which can be used to transport up to 40 troops in its military transport configuration.
Ukraine’s main military intelligence agency has previously targeted An-26s while on the ground at airbases in Crimea, including two that were destroyed by Ukrainian drones in September. They are widely used by Russia for transporting personnel and cargo to Ukraine.
Ageing Soviet aircraft are still widely used for both military and civilian purposes in Russia, where Western sanctions have complicated acquisition and maintenance of more modern Boeing and Airbus aircraft, as well as the development of new domestic alternatives.
In July, 43 people were killed in Russia’s Far East when an Angara Airlines Antonov An-24, a similar aircraft to the An-26, crashed in the Amur region, which Russia’s aviation authority concluded had been caused by a faulty altimeter setting.
Reuters reported in January 2024 that Angara Airlines and Polar Airlines, both based in Siberia, had appealed to the Russian government to extend the service life for their An-24 and An-26 aircraft, due to sanctions preventing the acquisition of more modern planes.
“By 2030, a quarter of these planes will be written off. It is expensive, it is impossible to afford without state support. We are today working in a market in which there are no alternatives to the An-24 and An-26,” Sergey Zorin, deputy CEO of Angara Airlines, told Reuters.]]> Wed, 01 Apr 2026 09:02:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/01/russia-s-education-ministry-sets-2-quota-for-university-students-to-fight-in-ukraine-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/01/russia-s-education-ministry-sets-2-quota-for-university-students-to-fight-in-ukraine-en-news Novosti · Politika Masters Tom
Russia’s Education and Science Minister Valery Falkov informed the rectors of the country’s largest universities earlier this year that at least 2% of their total student body must enlist to serve in Ukraine, independent news outlet Faridaily reported on Wednesday, citing a source close to the head of a Moscow university.
As there were 2.2 million men enrolled in Russian universities in 2025, meeting the quota demanded by the Education and Science Ministry would effectively mean that the Russian military would gain an additional 44,000 recruits. Were the same requirement be set for technical colleges, that number would rise to at least 76,000.
In early March, a leaked Defence Ministry memo outlined plans to recruit some 78,800 people into unmanned combat units this year, since when universities across the country have been offering students significant incentives to take extended leave from their studies if they sign up to serve in Ukraine.
Though military recruiters were holding drives in educational institutions last year, they have been seen far more frequently since February, according to Faridaily. A senior staff member at a university in Siberia was able to confirm that Falkov did indeed meet with Russian rectors to discuss military enlistment earlier this year, Faridaily said.
An investigation by independent media outlet Echo in late February found that the Defence Ministry was actively attempting to recruit students at over 70 universities and technical colleges across Russia. Nevertheless, on Monday Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stressed that a declaration of full mobilisation was “not on the agenda”.]]> Tue, 31 Mar 2026 16:22:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/31/russias-national-debt-rises-by-21-as-73-regions-report-budget-deficits-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/31/russias-national-debt-rises-by-21-as-73-regions-report-budget-deficits-en-news Novosti · Ekonomika Masters Tom
Russia’s national debt rose by a staggering 21% in 2025, jumping by over €65 billion to reach almost €375 billion, according to an interim report prepared by the Accounts Chamber of Russia that was seen by Russian business daily Vedomosti.
While the country’s foreign debt fell 15.4% to €48 billion over the year amid ever-tightening international financial sanctions on Moscow, domestic borrowing rose by 29.1% to reach €327 billion as the Kremlin continued to pour unprecedented sums of money into prosecuting its war in Ukraine.
The cost of servicing Russia’s national debt also grew from 5.8% of the federal budget in 2024 to 7.5% of the federal budget last year, business news broadcaster RBC reported. Regional public debt grew by €.3.5 billion to reach just over €37 billion, a 10% rise since the start of 2025, with the largest increase in bank loan debt.
A budget deficit was recorded in 73 of the 88 regions Russia claims as its own territory, which include four unrecognised regions of Ukraine, the republic of Crimea and Sevastopol. In 2024, just 41 regions reported a deficit, while another 17 recorded a budget surplus. The number of regions now in the red reflects the fiscal burden they have been forced to bear in paying out signing bonuses for those who enlist to fight with the Russian military in Ukraine.
At the start of February, Russia’s external public debt stood at €53 billion, the highest level since 2006. Russia’s GDP growth is not expected to exceed 1% this year as international sanctions, untenable levels of defence spending, the continued decline in foreign investment and the knock-on effects of Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia’s energy infrastructure are increasingly making themselves felt.]]> Tue, 31 Mar 2026 11:46:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/31/russians-offered-last-chance-to-buy-telegram-premium-subscriptions-as-payments-to-apple-blocked-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/31/russians-offered-last-chance-to-buy-telegram-premium-subscriptions-as-payments-to-apple-blocked-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Masters Tom
Users registered with Telegram under a Russian number received a message from the app on Tuesday offering them the chance to purchase a two-year Telegram Premium subscription “while the opportunity is still available”, as the Russian authorities continue their progressive crackdown on the use of foreign tech platforms.
“In the near future, it may become technically impossible to subscribe to Telegram Premium in your region,” the message from the hugely popular Dubai-based app read. “Today is your last chance.”
Though he made no mention of the Premium subscriptions, Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov, did criticise Apple for complying with requests made by Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor to remove dozens of VPN apps from its Russian App Store. Durov described “targeting those that helped users bypass Russia’s DPI-based censorship” as “not cool, Apple”.
Roskomnadzor began restricting calls to Telegram in mid-2025 as part of a “fight against fraud”, and in late February plans to completely block the messaging app in Russia from 1 April were revealed.
On Monday, RBC reported that Russia’s Digital Development Ministry had instructed the country’s “big four” telecoms providers to block people making payments for Apple services via their phones on 1 April, citing the need to prevent VPN services being purchased via the US tech giant. As a result, Russian customers will no longer be able to update their Apple ID balances.
In March 2022, Apple suspended all sales and deliveries of devices to Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. Since then, users in Russia have only been able to top up their App Store, iCloud and Apple Music accounts via their mobile phone bills or by using gift cards.
The Digital Development Ministry said that the restrictions could force Apple to restore its Russian services on the App Store. “Temporary restrictions by operators may prompt the tech company to comply with Russian legislation, as the lost revenue would otherwise be too great,” a ministry source told Interfax.]]> Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:11:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/31/apple-reveals-it-bowed-to-kremlin-pressure-to-remove-190-apps-from-russian-app-store-over-three-years-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/31/apple-reveals-it-bowed-to-kremlin-pressure-to-remove-190-apps-from-russian-app-store-over-three-years-en-news Novosti · Politika Masters Tom
Apple removed 190 apps from its Russian App Store at the request of Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor between 2022 and 2024, the company’s own annual transparency reports for those three years show.
Though the number of apps removed from the Russian App Store has risen every year, that number rose hugely in 2024, when the Russian authorities began cracking down far more aggressively on online freedoms than it previously had done.
After removing just seven apps in 2022, and 12 in 2023, Apple deleted 171 apps in 2024, meaning that Russia ranked second only to China by the number of apps removed at the request of the authorities.
In the vast majority of cases — 182 out of 190 — Roskomnadzor invoked the same piece of Russian legislation setting out the grounds for blocking websites in its requests to the US tech giant. These range from the dissemination of materials by “undesirable organisations” to incitement to terrorism. A further seven apps were removed for breaching Russian financial laws, specifically to combat illegal securities trading, online fraudsters and the theft of personal data.
Though Apple doesn’t detail which apps were banned each year in its reports, the apps it removed from the Russian app store in 2024 included the Foton-2024 app, developed by Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation in the run-up to that year’s presidential election, which allowed users to randomly determine which of Vladimir Putin’s three opponents to vote for.
Others included apps for US funded broadcaster Radio Liberty, Current Time TV and some 98 apps offering users virtual private networks (VPNs), which are needed to access blocked websites. Data for years prior to 2022 has not been made available, and figures for 2025 have not yet been published.
When asked to comment on its removal of apps in late 2024, Apple said that failure to comply with Russia’s local laws “could mean that Apple would no longer be able to operate an App Store or distribute content in the country”, and added that the US government had encouraged it to continue to work in Russia as “democratic principles are best aided through the availability of these services”.]]> Tue, 31 Mar 2026 08:45:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/31/second-foreign-civilian-tortured-to-death-while-in-detention-in-russian-city-of-taganrog-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/31/second-foreign-civilian-tortured-to-death-while-in-detention-in-russian-city-of-taganrog-en-news Novosti · Politika Masters Tom
A Polish citizen who was detained by Russian forces while travelling through eastern Ukraine in 2023 died in a pretrial detention centre in the southern Russian city of Taganrog later the same year after being tortured by prison guards, Polish daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza has reported.
Responding to an official request for information, Russia’s Foreign Ministry recently informed the Polish Foreign Ministry that Krzysztof Galos had died in Taganrog Pretrial Detention Centre No. 2, Galos’s son Paweł told Gazeta Wyborcza.
Telling people he wanted to “see what was going on there”, Galos, a postal worker from Kraków, travelled to Ukraine in April 2023 where he visited the southern Odesa and the southeastern Kherson regions, both of which were under Ukrainian control.
Subsequently, however, Ukrainian troops prevented Galos from attempting to reach the Russian-occupied city of Enerhodar in the Zaporizhzhia region, where he claimed his girlfriend was planning to meet him. Though the Ukrainian soldiers forced him to turn back, Galos somehow eventually made it to Enerhodar on his own, where he was detained by the occupying Russian forces.
After being transported to Russia’s Rostov region, Galos was placed in Taganrog’s Pretrial Detention Centre No. 2, according to independent Ukrainian media outlet Slidstvo.info. Ukrainian prisoners of war held in the same facility told the outlet that a Polish national had died after being tortured, something that was confirmed by human rights organisation Memorial.
One of the Ukrainian servicemen in captivity with Galos told Vot Tak, a Russian- language media outlet based in Warsaw, that on one occasion Galos had been brutally kicked and beaten with sticks for looking out of his cell window into a courtyard where he could see the prison guards without their faces covered.
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, Galos died of natural causes due to “cardiomyopathy of unknown aetiology, which led to the development of cerebral oedema, pulmonary oedema and acute cardiovascular failure” on 4 June 2023 and was buried in Taganrog the following month.
Taganrog’s Pretrial Detention Centre No. 2 was also where Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchina died after being brutally tortured by prison staff following her detention in eastern Ukraine while reporting undercover from the occupied territories in August 2023. ]]> Mon, 30 Mar 2026 15:42:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/30/veterans-of-war-in-ukraine-flood-united-russia-primaries-to-become-candidates-for-duma-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/30/veterans-of-war-in-ukraine-flood-united-russia-primaries-to-become-candidates-for-duma-en-news Novosti · Politika Pich Sem
An investigation by Novaya Gazeta Europe has found that 261 Russian veterans of the war in Ukraine have already registered to stand in primaries to run as candidates for the ruling United Russia party ahead of elections to the State Duma in September.
Nationwide, a total of 3,017 candidates registered, meaning that former combatants in Ukraine comprise 9.1% of the pool or 1 in 11 candidates. However, in some remote regions the proportion of veterans standing was much higher, for example in the region of Yakutia in Russia’s Far East, where the two registered candidates are both veterans of the war.
In the country’s two biggest cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, veterans also comprise a larger proportion of the candidate pool, with 38 of the 189 would-be candidates in Moscow and 17 of the 62 would-be candidates in St. Petersburg having fought in Ukraine.
The latest development is not unprecedented, with the war in Ukraine already being an established springboard into politics for veterans. This trend was observed in September, when many demobilised soldiers stood in local elections with little transparency about the nature of their service. As Novaya Gazeta Europe reported at the time, some prospective candidates were linked to military battalions believed to have committed war crimes against Ukrainian civilians.
Registration for the primaries for United Russia began on 11 March and will remain open until 30 April, with the official list of candidates expected to be confirmed at the United Russia party conference in June.
The State Duma elections, which are due to take place in September, will not only be the first held since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, but will also include 11 new constituencies in Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine that the Kremlin claims voted to join the Russian Federation in 2022.
United Russia currently holds 314 of the 450 seats in the legislature, and political forecasters are confident that the party will retain its majority, with only a couple of other Kremlin-sanctioned parties predicted to pick up more than 5% of votes. ]]> Mon, 30 Mar 2026 13:58:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/30/the-art-of-war-en https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/30/the-art-of-war-en Intervyu · Politika Kaneva Yuliya “I don’t even know who I’m supposed to be meeting,” confesses 16-year-old Masha Moskalyova apologetically as she arrives an hour late for our interview in Paris. With her father in tow, she appears to be in charge of getting the pair to the flurry of media engagements they’ve been doing since they finally reached in France in early March.
Masha is no ordinary 16 year old, it’s safe to say. Aged just 12, she very unexpectedly made headlines in Russia and beyond when the principal of her school in central Russia’s Tula region reported her to the authorities for an “anti-Russian” drawing she did of a woman with a Ukrainian flag defending a little girl from a Russian rocket.
The police investigation that followed ultimately led to her father Alexey Moskalyov, somebody who had already spoken out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine online, being charged with “discrediting the armed forces” and sentenced to two years in a prison colony. Meanwhile Masha was sent to an orphanage, before going to live with her estranged mother until her father was released.
In conversation, Masha quickly eases out of her organisational role and becomes just like any other young person, raving about how much she loves Paris. That she doesn’t much miss her home town of Yefremov is clear, and she tells me that the only thing she remembers about it fondly is her best friend, although even she “isn’t the same person anymore”, she admits. “She’s grown up and now we have almost nothing in common. She has a completely different vibe.”
When asked about the fateful drawing she did that changed both their lives forever, Masha sighs and says that she’s “told the story hundreds of times”, before dutifully going on to do so once again. “We had an art class one day at school. The teacher told us to draw something political, even though that was usually forbidden. She said we should draw something to show our support for the troops, the war, and the president.”
“I drew the picture, and then after the lesson one of my classmates, whose father is a policeman, came over to me. She was interested in what I had drawn and started to ask questions. Though she was only 12 at the time, I shouldn’t have been fooled, she was no innocent child."
Masha’s classmate first told their teacher about the drawing, then the school principal, and then finally the police, who came to the school two days later. While they questioned Alexey in one room, in another they attempted to convince Masha to join the local pro-war youth movement. She refused.
The single father
After their apartment was searched in December 2022, Alexey and Masha moved to the town of Uzlovaya, some 100km from Yefremov, in the naive hope that the authorities would forget about them. However, within a week, Alexey had been detained and placed under house arrest, while Masha was sent to an orphanage. The prosecutors in the case requested the court hand Alexey a three-year sentence for his online criticism of the war.
However, on the day he was due to be sentenced, Aleksey, who had been placed under house arrest rather than in pretrial detention ahead of the court’s verdict, broke his house arrest and fled across the border into neighbouring Belarus. He’d done this with the help of human rights activists who had assured him that they would be able to help Masha leave the country herself in due course.
Even breaking his house arrest would prove to be far more difficult than he had expected, Alexey says. “I was guarded by four cars: special forces, police, traffic police and the FSB. They had surrounded my flat to ensure I didn’t do a runner. I had some binoculars at home, and could see them standing around, smoking, and waiting for me.”
“When the pre-arranged time for me to leave my apartment came, it looked like it would be impossible for me to leave undetected,” he says, adding that he waited until 4:30am to call a taxi and then slipped out into the night. “The cars just remained where they were in front of the building. It seemed that I had done it — the officers had apparently fallen asleep. They’re only human, after all.”
After being driven the 320km to Moscow, Alexey was met by human rights activists who helped him to remove his electronic bracelet and bought him a train ticket to the Belarusian capital Minsk, aware that the border between the two countries is not tightly controlled. Rather foolishly, however, Alexey says that he kept his ankle tag as a souvenir, believing that it would only work within the bounds of his apartment.
He was wrong, of course, and the Belarusian security services apprehended him in Minsk the following day and returned him to Russia, where he was placed in a Tula region prison colony.
“They found any number of reasons to punish me; either I didn’t address the guards properly, or I wasn’t holding my hands in the correct way or something else like that. As I understand it, they received a call from the FSB telling them to put pressure on me,” Alexey says.
“The punishment cell is a tool for breaking someone’s resolve. I didn’t always have a mattress, and I often had to sleep on just the uncovered bed frame, wrapping the thin blanket around my head to protect myself from rat bites. I was worried that they would give me a nasty infection.”
A month later, he was placed in “slightly more comfortable” conditions, although things didn’t improve much. On the second day of his new prison regime, riots broke out when prisoners were prevented from receiving cigarettes. The guards sprayed the inmates in Alexey’s cell with a fire extinguisher before sending in riot police.
“They said that they were going to beat us up for what had happened,” Alexey recalls, adding that one terrified prisoner had even attempted suicide. “He was covered in blood, and they asked us to come out into the corridor. How could we? This poor guy was bleeding out. They shouted: ‘We’ve seen hundreds like him before, we don’t care.’ We stood in the corridor with our arms out in front of us for two hours, but luckily no beating came.”
Family ties
As Alexey speaks, Masha sits nearby scrolling on her phone, clearly having already committed every line of her father’s story to memory. Nevertheless, the obvious closeness between the two also belies tensions elsewhere in the family dynamic, with Alexey and Masha’s mother Olga separating shortly after their daughter was born, something he ascribes to their characters being “rather incompatible”.
“I let her go and live on her own,” Alexey says, while he lived with Masha and her older half-sister Dasha until Dasha went to live with her own mother when she was 10 years old.
Despite having had little contact with her daughter during her formative years, Olga came to collect her from the orphanage where she had been temporarily placed by the authorities following Alexey’s arrest. Though human rights activists had paid off Olga’s debts and provided her with money each month to cover Masha’s expenses, the years in which they hadn’t been close had taken their toll and the pair remained estranged today.
Masha says that staying with her mother long term was never an option: “Where had she been for the past 10 years? It doesn't really bother me — we were never in contact with each other, so there was no point in starting now. We are just very different people.”
Masha was allowed no contact with her father for the first year and a half of his prison sentence. “After hundreds of visits to the prison administration, they finally allowed me to have a telephone card. I will never forget what happened next,” Alexey recalls. “Masha picked up the phone … I asked if she knew who it was, there was a pause, then silence and then I could hear crying on the other end. She was in hysterics, so much so that she cried through all of the minutes I had paid for, despite my attempts to calm her down.”
It was only on the day he was released from prison that Alexey was finally able to hold his daughter in his arms again, and even then he recalls how that fleeting moment of pure joy was swiftly replaced by fears that the authorities would arrest him again. Indeed, the FSB agents had warned him that they wouldn’t forget him once he got out of prison. Soon afterwards, the pair left Russia for Armenia.
Freedom at last
Alexey makes a point of expressing his gratitude to Russian-Israeli businessman Leonid Nevzlin, who supported the pair financially while they were in Armenia and continues to help them out today in France. Having attempted to claim political asylum in Germany, the pair decided late last year to abandon that plan and to apply for a French visa instead, which they received earlier this month.
“I never expected us to make it out of Armenia, as they have an extradition agreement with Russia and I was worried that at any minute the authorities would send us back. We were very lucky to get out when we did,” Alexey says.
Neither father nor daughter ever wants to have to deal with the authorities in Yefremov again, and Masha says that returning to Russia would only be possible for them once there has been a change at the very top, which she doubts will happen anytime soon.
She is referring to the same administrative workers who helped to break the family up and worked with child protective services to restrict Alexey’s parental rights. There are also the building managers who turned off the family’s gas while Alexey was under house arrest.
Though both Alexey and Masha understandably feel great resentment towards the entire administrative apparatus that was used to split them up and to restrict Alexey’s parental rights, Masha says she reserves particular disdain for teachers who denounce their own pupils to the authorities. Such people will always be a staple of life in Russia, she says. ]]> Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:27:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/27/one-last-dance-en https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/27/one-last-dance-en Syuzhety · Kultura Kiselyova Natasha More than eight years since Kirill Serebrennikov’s ballet Nureyev premiered at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre in 2017, the groundbreaking work has been given a revival in Berlin. The ballet, about an artist who fled his own country never to return, has ultimately followed the same path as its protagonist.
Despite initially being performed on Moscow’s most prestigious stage, Nureyev’s queer subtext was at odds with prevailing Kremlin orthodoxies, which led to the ballet all but being cast out of the Russian cultural sphere. Or, in the words of ultranationalist Russian film director Nikita Mikhalkov, “If you want to hang Nureyev’s cock on the back of the stage … why do it in the Bolshoi Theatre?”
Nureyev was quickly relegated to the Bolshoi’s repertoire and has not been performed since 2021, after Serebrennikov’s public condemnation of the invasion of Ukraine and the tightening of a law banning so-called “LGBT propaganda” saw all future performances cancelled.
However, almost a decade after its ill-fated first production, and after the seismic changes caused by four years of war in Ukraine, Nureyev’s revival in a very different cultural context outside Russia has been the cause of great excitement among both critics and audiences alike.
“We weren’t trying to predict anything; we were simply telling the story of a man — an artist fighting for freedom, for the right to be himself, for the right to live and work as he sees fit,” says composer Ilya Demutsky, who wrote the music for the ballet. “But art sometimes has a strange quality; it begins to reflect reality even before that reality has fully manifested itself.”
When Nureyev premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre in 2017, it was seen as the story of a Soviet dancer who, at Paris’s Le Bourget Airport in 1961, did something that changed not only his own life forever, but that of ballet as an artform itself.
The Berlin production tells the story not only of a ballet legend, but also that of a country that has once again come to mistrust anything that is free, uncomfortable or uniquely talented. A migrant like its protagonist, Nureyev the ballet became a sensation in the West even before its premiere, much as Nureyev the man did, and the Berlin production is already the hottest ticket in town, with performances selling out faster than the posters promoting them can be put up.
Staging a ballet about the Soviet Union’s most famous dancer was the brainchild of the Bolshoi’s former director, Vladimir Urin, whose readiness to push the envelope artistically was the product of a very different cultural climate in Russia. The powers that be have always had a complicated relationship with Nureyev, who though undoubtedly the greatest dancer of the 20th century and cultural icon, was also a defector and an unashamed homosexual who died of AIDS.
Nevertheless, Urin pushed ahead with the project and invited Russian theatre’s enfant terrible Serebrennikov to direct it, and Yury Possokhov to choreograph. However, as the storm clouds closed in on the relatively tolerant cultural climate of the 2010s in Russia, the ballet’s premiere was postponed several times on orders from above, with one statement put out by the Bolshoi saying simply: “The production is not ready.”
The rot truly set in during the summer of 2017, when Serebrennikov was placed under house arrest after being accused of embezzling approximately $1 million in state funds for the Gogol Centre, the contemporary theatre he ran at the time. Nevertheless, Serebrennikov continued to direct the ballet from his apartment, sending written and video feedback on rehearsals to the performers and crew.
When the premiere was finally given the go-ahead in December 2017, it became one of the most politically charged and surreal events in Russian cultural history. Members of the Kremlin elite, including Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov and director of Russian state TV, Konstantin Ernst, gave the performance a standing ovation that Serebrennikov was unable to receive in person, his request to attend the premiere having been denied.
Tellingly, Bolshoi Theatre prima ballerina Svetlana Zakharova, who danced in the original production, spent the evening of the ballet’s Berlin premiere last Saturday giving interviews about how Russian culture had been cancelled in the West, while the audience at the Deutsche Oper awarded the revival with a standing ovation, one that Serebrennikov was able to accept this time.
The story of the ballet’s revival begins with German choreographer Christian Spuck’s decision to fly to Moscow especially to attend the 2017 premiere of Nureyev. Spuck recalls being stunned by the production and moved to tears by the performance, resolving then and there to bring it to Germany one day. A few years later Spuck found himself in a position to make that happen when he was appointed artistic director of the Staatsballett Berlin — the ballet company of the Deutsche Oper, on whose stage Nureyev once danced.
“I realised straight away that I wanted to bring this ballet to Germany, even before all the events that unfolded involving both the ballet and Kirill. I wanted to stage it on this very stage, where Rudolf Nureyev himself had danced,” Spuck told Novaya Europe.
“The German public adored Nureyev. When I became artistic director, we set about making this project happen. … this ballet had to live on. Now, when this ballet is banned in Russia, when homophobic laws have been passed, and artists are forced to leave the country, this production has special significance for both us and the audience. It helps us understand what it means to be free, what it means to make a choice and remain true to oneself, and what the price of freedom is,” Spuck said after the first performance.
Finally able to attend the premiere of his work, Serebrennikov told Novaya Europe how important it was to him that he recreate the ballet that moved Christian Spuck to tears in Moscow. “That’s why we decided to create a sort of time capsule, to stay as close as possible to that production at the Bolshoi Theatre. It’s a reflection on dance. A ballet about ballet. About an artist who overcomes his own ego, about a man who is fragile, yet whose art outlives his body.”
Restaging his ballet in a foreign city with an international troupe of dancers also proved to be an eye-opening experience, Serebrennikov says. “They are very young people. For them, our tragedies of emigration or the drama of a banned performance are almost history. They’ve grown up in freedom. For them, queerness isn’t a problem, and emigration isn’t a tragedy either. They’re all from different countries. They simply moved to where it’s interesting to work.”
“I told them about the rehearsal at the Bolshoi Theatre, when everyone already knew that this would be the final performance and it would never be staged again. At the end of the rehearsal, the ballet dancers gave themselves a standing ovation, in tears,” Serebrennikov recalls. „
Both on stage and in the auditorium, there are many present who also had their own personal Le Bourget Airport moment in 2022.
“A few officials were sitting in the empty auditorium, and the dancers shouted obscenities at them from the stage. It was practically a mutiny, which is completely out of character for ballet dancers. Ballet is a very disciplined environment. But at that moment, it was a genuine human reaction. And I realised just how important this performance had become to so many people.”
In its Berlin iteration, Nureyev has become a formula for life. Both on stage and in the auditorium, there are many present who also had their own personal Le Bourget Airport moment in 2022 and leapt into the unknown.
Fittingly, Rudolf Nureyev is played by Brazilian dancer David Motta Soares, himself a former principal dancer at the Bolshoi who left Russia after the invasion of Ukraine and is now a principal with the Staatsballett Berlin. “He is absolutely incredible,” Serebrennikov says, “The audience holds its breath when they see him on stage. His Nureyev combines natural nobility, explosive passion and an inner sensuality. He is 100% Rudi.”
Approaching the role with great single-mindedness, Motta Soares says that he read books and watched documentaries about Nureyev for three months straight to prepare himself for the role. “Sometimes I couldn’t tell whether I was performing a role or experiencing my own emotions,” he says.
What made Serebrennikov, who is known for his aversion to revisiting old productions, make an exception for Nureyev? “Yes, I don’t like doing that. I feel we must move forward, rather than dwelling on the past. Productions are a reflection of what we’ve experienced, of who we were a few years ago. And all that is gone now. No man ever steps in the same river twice.”
“But Nureyev has, in some miraculous way, become a historical fact. A whole mythology has sprung up around it: stories, legends, gossip. Its revival is a separate feat of immense collective effort,” Serebrennikov continues, adding that he sometimes feels that Nureyev himself “really wanted this production to be revived. He did everything to make it possible, from some realm of his own. Rudy always lives where there is freedom. That is his true homeland.”]]> Fri, 27 Mar 2026 12:55:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/27/funeral-of-chechen-honour-killing-victim-fleeing-domestic-abuse-held-in-armenia-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/27/funeral-of-chechen-honour-killing-victim-fleeing-domestic-abuse-held-in-armenia-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
A Chechen woman who was murdered in a suspected “honour killing” after she fled to Armenia to escape domestic violence in her homeland was buried at a cemetery outside Yerevan on Friday, five months after her violent death.
The funeral of 23-year-old Aishat Baymuradova, which had to be postponed as her relatives in Chechnya did not respond to requests to take charge of her body, was attended by just 20 mourners. As Baymuradova’s partner and friends were denied permission to arrange her funeral themselves, the Friday ceremony was organised by the Armenian authorities.
Baymarudova was strangled on 16 October by two Russian citizens, Karina Iminova and Said-Khamzat Baysarov, who investigators said had acted on the instructions of “an unidentified person”. Having made friends with Baymuradova on Instagram, the pair lured her to a Yerevan apartment where she was later found dead by police.
Though Iminova told Baymarudova that she herself had fled to Yerevan from Dagestan, another deeply conservative Muslim-majority region in Russia’s North Caucasus, she in fact had strong ties to the Chechen security forces and several of her social media followers were later found to have connections to Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-installed head of Chechnya.
The Armenian authorities placed both Iminova and Baysarov on the Interpol wanted list in February, but they believe the pair have since returned to Russia, where they’re unlikely to face any legal consequences for Baymarudova’s murder.
Investigators said that Baymuradova’s body showed “small and large areas of haemorrhaging, consistent with blunt force trauma, [and] two small superficial marks on the right side of her face,” which they believe could have been caused by burning.
At the time of her murder, human rights activist Lidia Mikhalchenko told independent news outlet Caucasian Knot that Baymuradova had been the victim of an “honour killing”, a practice involving close male relatives murdering women for what they deem to be immoral behaviour in order to cleanse the family name.
Activists believe honour killings and attempts to kidnap Chechen women who have fled their homes are likely to continue, with one human rights activist telling Caucasian Knot that such killings simply “become more sophisticated and organised, better planned and more brazen”.]]> Fri, 27 Mar 2026 11:04:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/27/ukrainian-drone-strike-forces-one-of-russias-largest-oil-refineries-to-close-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/27/ukrainian-drone-strike-forces-one-of-russias-largest-oil-refineries-to-close-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
The largest oil refinery in northwestern Russia has been forced to cease operations after being targeted in a Ukrainian drone strike, Reuters reported on Thursday.
The attack on the Kirishi Refinery in Russia’s Leningrad region means that, alongside the ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk, all three major oil logistics hubs on Russia’s Baltic coast are currently damaged and unable to operate at full capacity.
The largest oil refinery in the Leningrad region and one of the largest in Russia, Kirishi has a processing capacity of approximately 20 million tonnes of crude oil per year. In 2024, the plant processed 17.5 million tonnes of oil, or some 6.6% of all oil refined in Russia.
Over the past few days, Kyiv has ramped up its strikes on Russian oil facilities in a bid to prevent Moscow profiting from high oil prices and increased demand, amid global supply disruptions caused by the war in Iran.
On Wednesday, Reuters reported that up to 40% of Russia’s crude oil export capacity, about 2 million barrels per day, was out of action as a result of the Ukrainian attacks on critical infrastructure. That figure also includes unrealised exports through the Druzhba pipeline to Hungary, which has been closed since January.
Robert Brovdi, a top Ukrainian drone commander, said on Telegram that the strike on Kirishi was part of a “systematic” approach by Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces to attack Russia’s “oil arteries, refining, and export of raw materials”.
Oil logistics in northwestern Russia’s Leningrad region had been “slightly disrupted”, Brovdi added, thanks to what he called a “freedom-loving Ukrainian Bird and his pyrotechnic displays”.
On Friday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov accused Ukraine of also targeting critical oil infrastructure belonging to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which transports oil from Kazakhstan to Russia’s Black Sea port in Novorossiysk, and condemned Ukraine’s strategy as “energy blackmail”.]]> Fri, 27 Mar 2026 09:07:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/27/putin-asks-russias-oligarchs-to-bridge-military-funding-gap-as-he-makes-final-push-for-donbas-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/27/putin-asks-russias-oligarchs-to-bridge-military-funding-gap-as-he-makes-final-push-for-donbas-en-news Novosti · Politika Masters Tom
With Russia struggling to maintain its colossal scale of military spending after years of Western sanctions, Vladimir Putin has asked select oligarchs to help finance the war in Ukraine for the first time, independent Russian media outlet The Bell reported on Thursday.
Speaking to some of Russia’s wealthiest business leaders in a closed session following a speech he delivered to the annual congress of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs in Moscow on Thursday, Putin reiterated his determination to capture Ukraine’s entire Donbas region, according to the publication.
“They said, ‘We will fight,’” one of The Bell’s sources said, recounting Putin’s speech. “We will go as far as the borders of Donbas,” added another. After that, Putin suggested that the businessmen make voluntary contributions to the budget to support the war effort, both sources said.
Though this is not the first time the Kremlin has shaken down the country’s billionaire class in an effort to bridge ever-widening budget deficits, this is the first time that Putin has done so directly, and is a step the Russian leader is likely to view as a humiliating but necessary concession to financial reality.
Among those who immediately pledged to donate funds at the meeting was Suleyman Kerimov, an oligarch rumoured to control Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retail company, who reportedly promised to contribute 100 billion rubles (€1 billion). Metals magnate Oleg Deripaska also reportedly signalled his readiness to donate, though he didn’t name a figure in the room, the Financial Times reported.
Citing one of its sources, The Bell said that the idea of “shaking up business at a difficult time for the country” had originated with Rosneft CEO and close Putin associate Igor Sechin, who had previously outlined the proposal in a letter to the Russian leader.]]> Thu, 26 Mar 2026 16:07:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/26/russias-baltic-ports-continue-to-burn-48-hours-after-ukrainian-drone-strikes-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/26/russias-baltic-ports-continue-to-burn-48-hours-after-ukrainian-drone-strikes-en-news Novosti · Ekonomika Pich Sem
Fires have continued to rage at some of Russia’s most important Baltic Sea ports after massive Ukrainian drone strikes caused significant damage on Monday and Tuesday night, Ukrainian Telegram channel Exilenova+ reported on Thursday.
As a result of the extensive Ukrainian attacks on Russian infrastructure, 40% of Russia’s crude oil export capacity was out of action, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
The northwestern port of Ust-Luga, near the border with Estonia, was targeted in one of Ukraine’s largest drone strikes of the year on Tuesday night, and is still on fire 48 hours later.
The port is a crucial export hub for Russian fossil fuels, hosting a large LNG terminal as well as a significant crude oil export terminal.
Ukrainian drone strikes on Monday struck the port of Primorsk, which is also in the northwestern Leningrad region, causing a large fire. The port, another crucial export terminal, was reportedly still on fire on Wednesday, with sources telling Reuters that smoke was visible from mainland Finland.
According to Russian news agency Interfax on Thursday, firefighters have been able to bring the fires at both ports under control, but smaller fires within the facilities are continuing to burn.]]> Thu, 26 Mar 2026 15:26:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/26/russia-denies-western-intelligence-reports-saying-it-is-sending-drones-to-iran-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/26/russia-denies-western-intelligence-reports-saying-it-is-sending-drones-to-iran-en-news Novosti · Politika Pich Sem
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Thursday denied reports that Russia has been sending military attack drones to Iran amid the ongoing war in the Middle East, dismissing them as media fabrications and urging people not to “pay attention to them”.
On Wednesday, the Financial Times reported that Western intelligence agencies had concluded that Russia was “close to completing” the phased shipment of drones, medicine and food to its close ally Iran, having agreed to provide all three after the Israeli and US airstrikes began earlier this month.
Russia is likely to be transferring its domestically made Geran-2 drones to Iran, which are themselves based on Iranian Shahed-136 drones, the FT said.
In January 2025, Vladimir Putin met with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in Moscow, where the two signed a bilateral deal boosting economic integration, energy cooperation, and investment in shared infrastructure interests in the Caspian Sea. However, the deal lacked the mutual defence clause that was set out in a similar deal signed by Russia and North Korea the previous year.
Russia was quick to condemn the initial US and Israeli strikes against Iran, and Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is thought to be undergoing treatment in a Moscow hospital for wounds he sustained in the Israeli strikes on his father’s residence in Tehran.
In early March, the Washington Post reported that Russia had shared intelligence about the location of US military assets in the region, including aircraft and warships, with Tehran. However, when asked about the report on 6 March, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth responded by saying that the Pentagon was “not concerned”. ]]> Thu, 26 Mar 2026 11:43:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/26/adam-kadyrov-reappears-in-public-following-fatal-car-accident-in-grozny-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/26/adam-kadyrov-reappears-in-public-following-fatal-car-accident-in-grozny-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
The Kremlin-appointed head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, posted a video on Wednesday showing a meeting of the republic’s security chiefs, among whom was Kadyrov’s 18-year-old son and rumoured successor, Adam Kadyrov.
This was the first public appearance made by Adam Kadyrov since he was involved in a fatal car accident in the Chechen capital Grozny in January, after which he was flown to Moscow for medical treatment.
Adam was driving his own car on 16 January when he lost control of his vehicle at high speed, striking another car and killing its driver, US-funded RFE/RL affiliate Kavkaz.Reali reported.
Having spent almost three weeks at Moscow’s Botkin Hospital recovering from the “non life-threatening” injuries he sustained in the crash, Adam Kadyrov was discharged in February. According to a source, the only serious consequence of his accident was damage to his optic nerve.
Three of the Chechen leader’s son’s bodyguards also disappeared from public view following the accident. At least two of them — Bislan Kaimov and Apti Iraskhanov — were also evacuated to Moscow with far more serious injuries than Adam. Kaimov, according to the Chechen Telegram channel NIYCO, may be paralysed for life.
The day after the accident, Ramzan Kadyrov posted a video of Adam that turned out to have been recorded several days before the crash. In February, rumours of AI use circulated when Kadyrov shared another video featuring his son, in which he appeared to have lost a significant amount of weight.]]> Thu, 26 Mar 2026 09:43:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/26/russian-parliamentary-group-arrives-in-washington-at-invitation-of-republican-congresswoman-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/26/russian-parliamentary-group-arrives-in-washington-at-invitation-of-republican-congresswoman-en-news Novosti · Politika Fisk Oliver
A group of Russian parliamentary deputies has arrived in Washington after accepting an invitation extended to them by Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna to visit the US this week, Russian news agency Interfax reported on Wednesday.
According to Interfax, the group will be headed by State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, a senior figure in the ruling United Russia party, and is known to include Communist Party lawmaker Vladimir Isakov.
Both Isakov and Volodin are under Western sanctions, including designation by the US under one of its principal sanctions frameworks, the US-Russian Harmful Foreign Activities program.
State Duma Deputy Alexey Chepa told Interfax on Wednesday that the planned visit would be “very, very much of a working nature.” Hours later, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that he welcomed the visit, which he said could be a way of “reviving dialogue” with the US.
“It could only be welcomed if this kind of contact between parliamentarians from the two countries takes place; it is truly necessary,” Peskov said.
The trip comes amid reports that Russia has been sharing the locations of US military assets in the Middle East with Iran to facilitate their targeting, something Vladimir Putin has said it would stop doing if the US halted its own intelligence sharing with Ukraine.
Luna, a rookie Congresswoman from Florida, announced in January that she had been granted permission from the State Department to invite members of the Russian legislature to Washington to meet members of Congress for “peace talks”, though that meeting never took place.
A longstanding critic of US aid to Ukraine, Luna is known to have close working relationships with a number of senior Russian officials, including Special Envoy Kirill Dmitriev, and has repeatedly been accused of amplifying Kremlin propaganda narratives.
In October, Luna said that Russia’s ambassador to the US had given her a 350-page report on the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy, which she later published. One month earlier, she had announced that she wanted to organise a meeting with Russian officials to discuss UFOs.]]> Wed, 25 Mar 2026 16:11:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/25/state-of-the-art-russian-military-icebreaker-damaged-in-ukrainian-drone-strike-on-vyborg-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/25/state-of-the-art-russian-military-icebreaker-damaged-in-ukrainian-drone-strike-on-vyborg-en-news Novosti · Politika Pich Sem
A brand new Russian military icebreaker thought to have cost at least €220 million was damaged in one of the Ukrainian military’s largest drone strikes on Russia to date, Ukrainian Telegram channel Exilenova+ reported on Wednesday.
The icebreaker, which has been under construction at the Baltic port of Vyborg, in Russia’s northwest, since 2023, was seriously damaged in the strike overnight on Tuesday and can be seen listing on its port side in photographs published following the incident.
Most media outlets have identified the icebreaker as the Purga, one of four vessels being built for Arctic operations for the Federal Security Service (FSB), which oversees Russia’s coast guard, and the Russian Navy. However, at least one Russian blogger has claimed that the damaged icebreaker was actually the Dzerzhinsky, which is also under construction in Vyborg.
Though there has been no confirmation of the vessel’s name, The Barents Observer, a Norwegian independent media outlet, confirmed that the image showed a Project 23550 icebreaking patrol ship, which are capable of breaking ice up to 1.7 metres thick and are used to conduct search-and-rescue operations, and for transporting cargo to remote locations.
The attack, the first time a Ukrainian drone has damaged a Russian warship in the Baltic Sea, was part of large-scale Ukrainian strikes across northwestern Russia on Tuesday. The governor of the Leningrad region said that up to 56 drones had been intercepted over the region, while the authorities in Latvia and Estonia both reported incursions into their territory by wayward drones.]]> Wed, 25 Mar 2026 13:56:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/25/just-deserts https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/25/just-deserts Syuzhety · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta In recent years, only a few dozen deserters from the Russian military have been granted political asylum in the European Union. However, if the leaders of eight EU countries who have called for stricter visa rules for all Russians who have taken part in the war in Ukraine get their way, Europe may no longer be an option at all.
Earlier this month, eight EU member states publicly called on the bloc’s leadership to tighten visa regulations for Russian citizens who served in the country’s war in Ukraine. In a letter to European Council President António Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, leaders including German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned that the war was creating longer-term internal security risks for the Schengen free-movement area, and argued that once demobilised or rotated out of the war zone, Russian soldiers might attempt to travel to the EU, where they could potentially contribute to a rise in organised and violent crime.
“Individuals who have participated in the war as part of the armed forces of the aggressor state pose serious internal security risks, including through violent crime, organised criminal networks, extremist movements or hostile state activity in the broader context of Russia’s hybrid action,” the letter said. “Among them, there are more than 180,000 previously convicted criminals who were recruited from Russian prisons and sent to the front.”
Indeed, the number of visas being issued to Russian citizens continues to rise despite the war in Ukraine, with 80% of the approximately 670,000 Schengen visa applications made by Russian citizens last year being granted, a figure that makes Russians one of the five nationalities granted the largest number of EU visas.
“Any entry may therefore have serious consequences for the security of a Member State or the entire Schengen area,” the open letter continued, before its authors urged the European Commission to prepare “targeted amendments” to the EU’s Visa Code “or other appropriate instruments with a view to enabling a coordinated European approach”.
That said, the EU has significantly tightened access to the bloc for Russian citizens since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and most Schengen visas are now issued for shorter periods and with more limited validity.
Transit asylum
The new rules could make life much more difficult for deserters from the Russian army seeking refuge in Europe. Many of them, however, initially settle in Armenia, which Russians don’t require a visa or even an overseas passport to enter.
Oleg Lapshin*, a Russian former serviceman currently living in Yerevan having deserted the Russian military, says that the initiative being taken by EU leaders would leave deserters with less room for manoeuvre, though he remains confident that countries such as Armenia would “continue to take people in” even if Europe no longer does. „
Military personnel in Russia generally don’t hold foreign passports — either they’ve never been issued one, or they surrendered it to the authorities upon enlisting.
“If the EU completely restricts entry for those involved in the war without vetting them, without a hearing, without consideration of the individual merits of each case, then that is regrettable. People who are aware of this but still wish to desert the Russian army will take this into account, and it’s likely to be one of the factors deterring them from deserting.”
At the same time, Lapshin concedes that the European Union has the right “to regard us all as criminals and refuse us all entry”, though he stresses that such an approach wouldn’t lead to anything good, as the aim should be to encourage desertion in order to reduce Russia’s military capabilities.
Anastasia Burakova, founder of The Ark, notes that military personnel in Russia generally don’t hold foreign passports — either they’ve never been issued one, or they surrendered it to the authorities upon enlisting This inevitably plays an important role in how deserters choose a country to flee to. Russian citizens can only enter Armenia, Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan without an international passport. However, the latter two are far less safe, with a higher risk of extradition or abduction.
“In the context of deserters, it is not easy to get anywhere; people maim themselves, shooting themselves in parts of their bodies, so that they can flee the front via a hospital. Armenia does not take any steps towards actual extradition, so staying there is safer, but due to the lack of a land border, fleeing to Armenia is more difficult than to Kazakhstan,” Burakova says.
The path to Europe
Most military deserters are determined to get as far away as possible from Russia, and tend to view well-established destinations for anti-war Russians such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia as being too close to Russia both politically and geographically to be safe.
One of those who initially fled Russia to Armenia is Alexander Polyakov*, who had enrolled in a military academy at the age of 18 as he was unable to finance a university education. After graduating in 2021, Polyakov joined the Russian army as a professional soldier, and in early 2022 was sent to Russian-annexed Crimea for what he had been told were military exercises, but which turned out to be preparations for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
On 24 February, he found himself crossing the Ukrainian border with his unit and being on the front line, where he says he immediately realised that the Russian military was totally unprepared to fight a war. Assigned to work in military communications, Polyakov was constantly moving between positions under fire and narrowly escaped death on multiple occasions. After several months of the war, he decided to leave the army for good and, having been granted leave, returned to Russia.
When mobilisation was announced in September 2022, it became clear that he would soon be sent back to the front, and so Polyakov bought a flight to Kazakhstan, where he lived in fear for the next two years. Being wanted by the Russian authorities, Polyakov only used cash and rarely went outside, fearing arrest or extradition.
During that time, however, he got to know human rights activists and other deserters, and began helping to verify the stories of Russian soldiers who had also fled the army. Eventually, he began to speak out publicly against the war and got involved in various human rights initiatives alongside a group of deserters from the Russian military.
After a year and a half of negotiations, Polyakov and five other deserters from the Russian army were eventually granted laissez-passer documents allowing them to fly to France, where they applied for political asylum upon arrival.
Polyakov’s case is not unique. Before the war, Kamil Maksimov* was studying to be an astronomer, worked as a technician and had no plans to join the military. That all changed in 2023, however, when he was detained on drug charges. According to him, he was given a choice: go to prison or enlist to fight. He reluctantly agreed to sign a military contract, hoping that he’d have the opportunity to desert once deployed.
After completing his basic training, Maksimov was sent to the front in the Donetsk region, where he was soon wounded and transferred to a unit he describes as a “suicide battalion” for troublemakers. Realising he would soon be sent back to the frontline, Maksimov decided to desert and shot himself in the foot. After recovering from his injury at a hospital in Russia, he absconded to the city of Kazan once he got wind that his redeployment was imminent.
Still recovering from his self-inflicted injury, Maksimov spent several months in hiding during which he barely left the house. As soon as he was well enough, he fled Russia through Georgia, where he decided to claim asylum in France. Upon arrival in Paris, he told his story to an immigration officer, applied for political asylum and was given a temporary document allowing him to live in the country, access healthcare and receive benefits.
Polyakov now lives in Nice, where he’s learning French and hoping to find a job. He says that for the first time he can remember, he feels at ease and no longer fears being stopped on the street and sent back to the front line.
Justice for deserters
According to Grigory Sverdlin, who heads Get Lost, an underground organisation assisting Russian soldiers to desert, the number of requests his NGO receives is continually rising and has seen a 30% increase so far this year alone. In January and February, Get Lost helped 248 Russian servicemen to desert and go into hiding.
Sverdlin says that the security concerns raised by some EU leaders about Russian deserters being granted asylum in Europe are unfounded. “The war has been going on for four years; a number of Russian deserters have been in Europe for a long time, yet I haven’t heard of a single case of one of them committing a serious crime.”
Though he says he fully supports the “thorough vetting of applicants and preventing those involved in the invasion from entering the Schengen area” per se, he warns that it all depends on how such a policy is implemented.
Noting that around 85% of those supported by Get Lost never saw active combat in Ukraine, and weren’t even in the occupied territories, Sverdlin wonders whether those reviewing asylum applications in Europe will consider such details or simply refuse anybody who has ever been in the Russian army. He suspects the latter approach is more likely to prevail.
“It would be right to create a separate track for Russian deserters and conscientious objectors to obtain refugee status. These people risk being imprisoned in Russia, and if they’re found to have deserted their units they face up to 15 years behind bars,” Sverdlin says. “Establishing a working procedure for deserters to obtain political asylum would increase the number of deserters from the Russian army and thus help Ukraine.”
Earlier this year, InTransit, an organisation that assists Russians being persecuted for political reasons to leave the country, told Novaya Europe that attitudes towards Russian deserters in Europe had noticeably hardened even since the early years of the war in Ukraine. Northern Europe in general and the Baltic states in particular don’t generally accept Russian military deserters, and have even, in some cases, forced them back across the border, InTransit said.
Only a few countries — such as Germany, France and Spain — consider asylum claims made by deserters in a relatively objective manner, according to InTransit, though there are only a few dozen cases of this happening, while the majority of Russian deserters remain in transit countries such as Armenia.
According to Anastasia Burakova, the founder of The Ark, an NGO that supports anti-war Russians living in exile, Estonia has already introduced a ban on issuing visas to Russians who fought against Ukraine. “Last summer, the Baltic and Nordic countries met to discuss such a measure. Overall, this is a step towards individual, rather than collective, responsibility and an assessment of the danger to society. I think other EU countries may soon adopt this approach,” Burakova warned in January.
At the same time, The Ark and Get Lost are currently discussing proposals to allow exceptions to be made for former Russian soldiers who did not commit war crimes and often didn’t even reach the front line, and for those who fled the country before they could be drafted, or were conscripted against their will. “Such people often become key witnesses in investigations into war crimes,” Burakov notes.
Deserting an army committing war crimes will in time be understood as a brave moral position, of course, something demonstrated by the monuments that stand in Hamburg, Cologne, Hanover and Vienna today in honour of those who refused to serve in the Wehrmacht during the Nazi era.
“It would be good to treat people who refuse to fight against Ukraine fairly, right now,” says Sverdlin, “rather than erecting monuments to them in 50 years.”
*Names have been changed for safety reasons]]> Wed, 25 Mar 2026 13:16:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/25/kremlins-oil-revenues-rise-to-highest-level-since-the-start-of-war-in-ukraine-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/25/kremlins-oil-revenues-rise-to-highest-level-since-the-start-of-war-in-ukraine-en-news Novosti · Ekonomika Evropa Novaya gazeta
Russia’s daily revenue from the sale of its oil abroad has doubled since January, jumping from an average of $135 million to $270 million and bringing Russian oil revenues to their highest level since March 2022, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.
The rise in revenues has been driven by both increased oil shipment volumes from Russian ports, as well as the massive increase in prices for Russian oil grades amid disruptions to global energy supplies as a result of the US-Israeli attacks on Iran.
Bloomberg said Russia was also benefiting from a sanctions waiver issued by the US Treasury two weeks ago, which has seen the country’s flagship Urals crude command a premium over North Sea Brent in the Indian market for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russian business daily Kommersant reported on Wednesday that ESPO, a premium Russian export grade drilled in Russia’s Far East, was trading at over $100 per barrel for the first time in at least 10 years. The primary customer for ESPO crude is China, which has also increased its consumption of Russian oil after disruptions in supplies from the Gulf.
“If these prices are maintained at least until June, the [Russian] budget will be balanced as approved last year, perhaps even better than planned”, economist Vladislav Inozemtsev told independent news outlet The Insider on Wednesday.
“The rise in oil prices will be followed by a fall in the ruble’s exchange rate”, Inozemtsev continued. “Revenues will be higher, but they will be channelled into closing the deficit, and not into any significant improvement in the economy.”
The news comes a day after the Kremlin confirmed it was reconsidering a planned tightening of its fiscal rules, delaying a planned lowering of the “cut-off price” of Russian oil until next year, as Russia’s budget calculations continue to benefit from the attacks on Russia’s strategic partner Iran.
On Monday, Vladimir Putin urged restraint in assessing the impact of the Iran war on the Russian budget, calling for “prudent decision-making [...] to guarantee the long-term balance” of the country’s finances.]]> Wed, 25 Mar 2026 12:59:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/25/latvia-and-estonia-hit-by-stray-drones-as-kyiv-launches-largest-ever-strikes-on-russia-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/25/latvia-and-estonia-hit-by-stray-drones-as-kyiv-launches-largest-ever-strikes-on-russia-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
An unidentified drone flying from Russian airspace has struck a power plant in Estonia, while another has crashed in neighbouring Latvia, officials in the two Baltic countries said on Wednesday, amid a massive Ukrainian drone strike on northwestern Russia.
According to a statement from the Latvian Defence Ministry, the country’s air force “identified a foreign unmanned aircraft entering Latvian airspace from Russia” early on Wednesday morning, before the drone exploded harmlessly in the Kraslava region, near the border with Belarus.
A spokesperson for Estonia’s Internal Security Service said that another drone had hit the Auvere Power Plant in Narva, on the border with Russia, adding that nobody was injured in the incident. Auvere’s operator said that there was no immediate damage to either the power plant, or to Estonia’s electricity grid.
The authorities in both countries confirmed that the drone strikes appeared to have been accidental, with Latvian Prime Minister Evika Siliņa saying on X that the drone that crashed in Latvia was likely launched from Ukraine.
The drone incursions coincided with a large-scale Ukrainian drone attack on Russia overnight, during which Russian air defences reportedly downed over 389 drones, including over the Leningrad and Pskov regions which border the Baltic states.
In a post on Russian messaging app MAX on Wednesday morning, the Leningrad region’s governor, Alexander Drozdenko, said that up to 56 drones had been destroyed over the region, which surrounds Russia’s second city St. Petersburg.
The attacks caused a fire at the Russian port of Ust-Luga, near the border with Estonia, and struck a residential building next to the local headquarters of Russia’s Federal Security Service in the city of Vyborg, near Russia’s border with Finland.
According to an estimate by Russian state-owned news agency TASS, the overnight attack was the largest of its kind by Ukraine to date.
On Monday, a similar Ukrainian attack on the Russian port of Primorsk, also in the Leningrad region, caused a massive fire at the port’s oil terminal and saw another stray drone crash in Lithuania, near its border with Belarus. The Lithuanian Defence Ministry confirmed on Tuesday that the drone was Ukrainian.]]> Wed, 25 Mar 2026 07:30:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/25/several-dead-and-dozens-injured-in-perverse-russian-drone-strikes-on-western-ukraine-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/25/several-dead-and-dozens-injured-in-perverse-russian-drone-strikes-on-western-ukraine-en-news Novosti · Politika Masters Tom
The Russian military launched a massive daytime attack on Ukraine on Tuesday, firing over 550 drones at targets across the west of the country that killed several people and injured dozens more, regional administrations have reported.
Among the worst affected was the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, where 27 people were injured in multiple drone strikes on different parts of the city, Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said on Wednesday. Though he stressed that nobody had been killed, Sadovyi said of the 27 injured, seven had been hospitalised overnight.
Lviv’s historic Bernardine Monastery complex, a UNESCO World Heritage site, was among the buildings damaged in Tuesday’s strikes, with photographs showing fires blazing from the roof of a building next door.
In his nightly address to the nation on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the use of Iranian Shahed drones to strike a church in Lviv as “utterly perverse” and called it something “only the likes of Putin could take pleasure in”.
A separate Russian airstrike on the western Ukrainian city of Ivano-Frankivsk killed a member of the country’s National Guard and his newborn daughter and injured four others, Mayor Ruslan Martsinkiv told RBC Ukraine. In the western Vinnytsia region, one person was killed and another 13 were injured, the head of the regional military administration said on Tuesday evening.
The Ukrainian Air Force said that Russia had launched 556 drones at Ukraine throughout the day on Tuesday, making it “one of its most massive attacks” to date. The unusual daytime strikes came after Russian forces launched 34 missiles and 392 drones at Ukraine overnight on Monday, killing two people in the Poltava region, one in the Zaporizhzhia region and one in the Kharkiv region, and meaning that in total Moscow launched nearly a 1,000 drones at Ukraine in a 24-hour period.
“The scale of today’s attack strongly indicates that Russia has no intention of really ending this war,” Zelensky said in his nightly address on Tuesday, adding that “the fact that sanctions against Russia have been partially eased serves Russia’s interest to continue the war” and noting that the additional $2 billion Russia is set to earn from rising oil prices was “dangerous for everyone”.
Posting a photograph of Lviv’s Bernardine Monastery in flames on X on Tuesday evening, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha addressed the organisers of the Venice Biennale, in which Russia is planning to participate later this year. “This is the ugly face of barbaric Russia — destroyed UNESCO World Heritage in the protected center of Lviv. This is the barbarism you wish to normalize at the Biennale. Get real!” ]]> Tue, 24 Mar 2026 14:50:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/24/giant-fire-rages-for-second-day-at-russian-baltic-port-of-primosrk-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/24/giant-fire-rages-for-second-day-at-russian-baltic-port-of-primosrk-en-news Novosti · Ekonomika Masters Tom
An oil depot in the Baltic port of Primorsk in northwestern Russia has been on fire for a second day following an attack by Ukrainian drones, Radio Liberty reported on Tuesday,
Citing satellite imagery, Radio Liberty said that a thick pall of smoke coming from the oil depot was clearly visible despite the cloudy weather, while Ukrainian Telegram channel Supernova+, which monitors news of strikes on Russia, also reported that the fire was continuing to burn.
On Monday, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported that a Transneft oil terminal had been struck by Ukrainian drones in the port of Primorsk, although Leningrad region Governor Alexander Drozdenko, claimed on Monday that the fire had broken out following debris falling from an Ukrainian drone.
The loading of crude oil has now resumed at the port, Reuters reported on Tuesday. The extent of the damage is as yet unknown. If the port does not resume full operations in the near future, industry companies and the Russian budget will suffer significant losses, one source told Novaya Europe.
The port of Primorsk, 137km from St. Petersburg, is the largest export hub for Urals crude, and can normally handle up to 1 million barrels of oil per day. Last year, due to an attack by Ukrainian drones, the port temporarily reduced its oil loading volumes.]]> Tue, 24 Mar 2026 13:43:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/24/kremlin-confirms-it-is-reviewing-oil-revenue-rule-change-amid-iran-war-windfall-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/24/kremlin-confirms-it-is-reviewing-oil-revenue-rule-change-amid-iran-war-windfall-en-news Novosti · Ekonomika Evropa Novaya gazeta
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has confirmed that Russia is reconsidering plans to tighten its fiscal rules, as rising oil prices caused by the war in Iran continue to benefit Russia’s budget calculations, Russian business news outlet RBC reported on Tuesday.
The Kremlin statement came a day after Reuters reported that a planned lowering of the “cut-off price” of Russian oil, used to forecast Russia’s finances despite constant price fluctuations, would be delayed until next year.
Above the cut-off price, which is currently $59 per barrel, excess oil revenues are channeled into Russia’s National Wealth Fund (NWF) rather than spent on operational expenses. If oil is sold below the cut-off price, the shortfall is covered by the NWF’s reserves.
Asked about the Reuters report at his daily press briefing on Tuesday morning, Peskov confirmed that they were “now under consideration”, adding that any rule change was “the prerogative of the government”.
Russia’s plans to change the budget rule were first reported on February 25, when Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that the change could be implemented “within a couple of weeks”. A subsequent decision by the Finance Ministry on 4 March to pause sell-offs of the NWF’s foreign currency reserves in anticipation of the change led to the Russian ruble falling 6% against the dollar earlier this month.
In February, Urals crude oil was trading at lows of under $45 per barrel, meaning that the NWF was used to cover a significant shortfall for each barrel sold, amid a near 50% fall in year-on-year oil revenues.
However, since then the US-Israeli war on Iran has sent the Urals barrel price skyrocketing to over $100, as global supply has suffered from severe disruptions to key shipping routes in the Gulf. According to preliminary calculations made by Reuters, Russian oil revenues could reach nearly 1 trillion rubles (€10 billion) in April, their highest monthly level since October.
In a bid to stabilise the global market, the US Treasury dropped its sanctions on Russian oil and petroleum already loaded onto tankers worldwide earlier this month, although it claimed the measure would “not provide significant financial benefit to the Russian government”.
On Monday, Vladimir Putin urged restraint in assessing the impact of the Iran war on the Russian budget, calling for “prudent decision-making [...] to guarantee the long-term balance” of the country’s finances.]]> Tue, 24 Mar 2026 12:07:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/24/russia-launches-first-batch-of-satellites-in-bid-to-create-starlink-rival-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/24/russia-launches-first-batch-of-satellites-in-bid-to-create-starlink-rival-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
Russia launched its first 16 high-speed internet satellites into orbit on Monday evening as it attempts to develop Rassvet (Dawn), its own version of SpaceX’s Starlink network, according to aerospace company Bureau 1440.
Bureau 1440 said that the launch marked the “transition from the experimental phase to the development of a communications service”, after two previous test launches for the project in 2023 and 2024.
The satellites were transported into space by a Soviet-developed Soyuz rocket that took off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, in northern Russia’s Arkhangelsk region. “Dozens of launches and hundreds of satellites in Russia’s low-Earth orbit constellation are to come, enabling communications on a global scale”, Bureau 1440 added.
The Kremlin plans to invest over 100 billion rubles (€1 billion) in Rassvet by 2030 as part of its Data Economy and Digital Transformation project, Russian business daily Kommersant reported.
The satellite internet system is officially intended for civilian use, providing internet connections to passengers on flights and train journeys, oil and mining operations in remote areas, as well as to emergency services. However, experts now believe that the Kremlin is now more interested in the project’s military applications.
In February, Elon Musk restricted the use of his SpaceX Starlink satellite communications system in Ukraine to exclude terminals acquired illegally by the Russian armed forces, depriving Moscow of a key communications tool on the front lines. Over 50,000 Starlink terminals have been provided to Ukraine since the start of the war.
Rassvet has suffered various delays, and Monday’s launch had originally been scheduled to take place late last year. According to the official project timeline, 172 satellites are to be launched by the end of 2026, but it is unclear whether this can still be achieved.
According to Russian space commentator Vitaly Egorov, approximately 250 satellites would need to be launched before Rassvet could become a functional communications system. By comparison, over 10,200 satellites are currently used by SpaceX to run Starlink.]]> Mon, 23 Mar 2026 14:05:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/23/shock-and-awe-en https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/23/shock-and-awe-en Syuzhety · Politika Volzhskiy Ilya Ukraine has significantly stepped up its attacks on Russian cities and industrial sites in recent months, using long-range drones, Storm Shadow missiles supplied by the UK and France, as well as its own domestically developed Flamingo long-range cruise missiles.
Last week, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said that Moscow had come under attack from the highest number of Ukrainian drones targeting the capital since the start of the war. Other Russian cities have also reported an increase in strikes.
What explains this rise — and where might Ukraine strike next? Novaya Gazeta Europe spoke to military analysts and experts about the growing number of drone raids and missile attacks on Russian territory.
A record wave
“Sobyanin reported around 250 drones intercepted over that weekend, either on approach to Moscow or at secondary defensive lines further out,” an analyst from the Georgia-based investigative group Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) told Novaya Gazeta Europe, speaking on condition of anonymity. “That’s not just a record for this year, it’s a record for the entire war.”
Quite what the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) hoped to gain by striking the Russian capital, however, is not entirely clear. “Given that Moscow is the most heavily defended area in Russia, and that none of the drones appears to have reached their targets, it’s difficult to say what exactly the objectives of the attack were,” the CIT analyst said.
“It may be about creating disruption — delays at airports, internet outages, a general sense of tension. Another potential objective could be tying up Russia’s air defence systems, so that any plans to redeploy them to less protected regions are abandoned. But without confirmed hits or even much footage of the drones, it’s hard to draw firm conclusions.”
According to Alexander Kovalenko, a military and political analyst with the Ukrainian group Information Resistance, Moscow is currently the best-protected region in Russia in terms of air defence, surrounded as it is by a dense, multi-layered system of anti-aircraft defences, and well supplied with equipment and ammunition. One of Ukraine’s objectives, he suggests, is to wear those systems down through frequent engagement.
“The aim is to exhaust Russia’s air defences and create shortages in anti-aircraft munitions,” Kovalenko said. “Judging by the reaction of pro-Kremlin military bloggers and propagandists, this is having an effect.” Ukraine is also seeking to gather intelligence, disrupt airport operations and inflict economic damage, he added.
“Large-scale attacks on Moscow are primarily intended to expose and exhaust the capital’s air defence systems,” said Roman Svitan, a Ukrainian military expert and retired colonel. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the next step is missile strikes that bypass the weak points identified by these drone raids.”
“At the same time, by concentrating additional air defence systems around Moscow, Russia is forced to pull them away from the front line or from other key sites — making those targets easier to hit.”
Intensifying strikes
“The escalation is primarily linked to the expansion of long-range drone manufacturing,” Svitan told Novaya Europe. “Storm Shadow and SCALP missiles are expensive, supplied in very limited numbers and are for use against fortified targets. Oil infrastructure and other energy facilities, by contrast, are usually targeted by drones.”
Ukraine is now producing a wide range of long-range strike drones in the hundreds each day, according to Ukrainian experts. Russia, Svitan argues, cannot fully protect its cities from these attacks. “Even a single city like Belgorod is constantly under fire,” he said. “Drones are effectively operating freely over much of European Russia.”
The choice of weapon depends on the target. “If Storm Shadow or SCALP missiles are available, it makes sense to use them,” the CIT analyst said, who gives the example of a recent Ukrainian strike on an important microelectronics plant in the Russian city of Bryansk , for which Storm Shadow missiles “were likely chosen as their technical characteristics made them more suitable. They may have a shorter range than Flamingo missiles, but in this case, that didn’t matter. They are more advanced, harder to detect and more resistant to electronic interference.”
At the same time, other strikes — such as an attack on a military plant in the city of Votkinsk in Udmurtia in central Russia in February — were carried out using Flamingo missiles, suggesting that the AFU is using a mix of systems depending on the situation. How far the escalation continues will depend on Ukraine’s own defence industry and the degree of support Kyiv continues to receive from its allies.
“The intensity of strikes depends entirely on available capabilities,” the CIT analyst said. “If there are enough weapons, the attacks will continue. But there’s a great deal of uncertainty — both regarding Western assistance and Ukraine’s own production capacity.”
The Ukrainian company behind the Flamingo missile previously claimed it could produce up to 200 missiles per month, though analysts say that level of output has not yet been observed. However, Ukraine’s production of long-range drones is now approaching — though not yet matching — that of Russia. „
Ukraine is now deploying roughly twice as many drones as it did a year ago — even accounting for frequent overestimations by Russia’s Defence Ministry
Storm Shadow and SCALP missiles, Kovalenko noted, are highly sophisticated weapons that are difficult for air defence systems to intercept, making them suitable for heavily protected targets.
By contrast, the Ukrainian-made Flamingo missile is cheaper and simpler to produce, while offering greater range and a larger warhead. Ukraine is also developing more advanced systems, such as the long-range Neptune missile, capable of striking targets up to 1,000 kilometres away — though these require both significant resources and more time to manufacture. Closer to the front, Ukrainian forces are increasingly using drone platforms that carry several smaller FPV drones, typically operating within 20–30 kilometres of the front line.
Overall, analysts agree that the number of Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia has increased significantly. According to Kovalenko, Ukraine is now deploying roughly twice as many drones as it did a year ago — even accounting for what he describes as frequent overestimations by Russia’s Defence Ministry regarding the number of AFU drones it intercepts.
New objectives
“There is definitely an increase in strikes,” said Russian military researcher Kirill Mikhailov. “Priority targets include oil infrastructure — a key source of revenue for the Russian state — as well as defence industry facilities, particularly those producing explosives and missiles. These strikes also serve as a form of preemptive defence against Russian attacks on Ukraine.”
Attacks on energy infrastructure in the border region of Belgorod, he added, often come in response to Russian strikes on Ukraine’s own energy system. In the near future, energy assets — especially oil — are likely to remain a central focus for the AFU.
According to Svitan, rising global oil prices in light of the US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran, have made it even more important for Ukraine to limit the flow of revenue into Russia’s budget. At the same time, production facilities for drones and missiles used against Ukraine are also likely to be targeted.
Despite earlier expectations, however, Ukraine’s missile production remains limited. Svitan notes that fewer than three Flamingo missiles are currently being produced per day, and the system has so far been used only a handful of times.
For now, the overall scale of deep strikes — attacks far inside Russian territory — has not fundamentally changed. “We’re not seeing a qualitatively new level yet,” the CIT analyst said. “It looks broadly similar to the past six months.”
Many strikes follow a pattern of retaliation. For example, an attack on Belgorod followed a large-scale Russian strike on the Kyiv region. “It’s almost a direct response cycle,” the analyst said. “If there’s an attack on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, there will almost certainly be a strike on infrastructure in the Belgorod region later the same day.” „
“I would not rule out that by 2027, many Russians — including those in Moscow — may find themselves seeing the New Year in by candlelight.”
At the same time, there has been a shift in targeting. Compared with the second half of last year, there are fewer AFU strikes on Russian oil depots and refineries. Instead, attacks are now aimed more at defence industry factories including chemical plants and missile production facilities.
“The focus appears to have shifted,” the analyst said. “Previously, it was oil infrastructure; now it seems to be the defence sector. But this could change again later in the year.”
“Strikes on Russian territory will continue to scale up,” says Kovalenko. “In 2026, they will be more intense than in previous years. I would not rule out that by 2027, many Russians — including those in Moscow — may find themselves seeing the New Year in by candlelight.”
“The range of targets will expand,” he continues. “Ukraine is likely to intensify strikes on oil infrastructure, gas transport systems and industries that generate revenue for the Russian state.”]]> Mon, 23 Mar 2026 13:33:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/23/russians-have-access-to-telegram-restored-after-near-complete-block-over-weekend-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/23/russians-have-access-to-telegram-restored-after-near-complete-block-over-weekend-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
Russia’s efforts to restrict access to messaging app Telegram lessened considerably on Monday after a near-complete block over the weekend, independent news outlet Agentstvo has reported, citing data from the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), an online freedom NGO based in Italy.
Attempts to connect to Telegram from Russian networks on Monday were blocked in only 51% of cases, compared to nearly 80% between Friday and Sunday. Issues accessing Telegram reported to Russian outage tracker Sboi.rf were down to 1,500 on Monday, after Friday’s peak of nearly 14,000 complaints.
Widespread problems accessing Telegram in Russia were last reported around a week ago, causing speculation that Russia’s planned total block against the platform, originally due to come into force on 1 April, had already begun.
However, Russia’s media regulator Roskomnadzor appeared to encounter problems enforcing blocks on all restricted web traffic, according to a report by Forbes Russia on Wednesday. Access to Telegram was partially restored for Russian users on Tuesday through Thursday, with OONI data indicating that only 18% of traffic to Telegram on Thursday was blocked. Some other previously banned sites, such as Youtube and WhatsApp, have also become accessible on occasion.
Roskomnadzor has denied any issues with its RuNet traffic filtering tools, which Forbes said had become “overloaded” due to bandwidth restrictions when attempting to block Telegram. A Roskomnadzor representative told independent Russian media outlet Podyom that the reports did “not correspond with reality”, but offered no explanation for some restricted resources periodically becoming accessible.
The Kremlin has previously instructed internet service providers to throttle traffic on Telegram, and has already blocked all voice and video calls on the platform, as part of its broader crackdown on free and uncensored internet access for Russians.
Following weeks of mobile internet outages in Moscow, Roskomnadzor has now expanded the use of “whitelists” of authorised websites to all networks in the Russian capital, which limit internet traffic to a small number of domains pre-approved by the Kremlin.
On Saturday, internet users in Russia’s second city St. Petersburg also began experiencing a near complete loss of mobile internet coverage, indicating that the restrictive measures taken in Moscow are now being replicated in other major Russian cities.
Officially, the Kremlin blames its expansive internet restrictions on security concerns regarding Ukrainian drone strikes, and alleged cooperation between foreign social media platforms and Ukraine’s security services.
At a briefing two weeks ago, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that outages would last “as long as additional measures are necessary to ensure the safety of our citizens.”]]> Mon, 23 Mar 2026 11:18:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/23/zelensky-attempts-positive-spin-on-peace-process-despite-war-in-iran-distracting-trump-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/23/zelensky-attempts-positive-spin-on-peace-process-despite-war-in-iran-distracting-trump-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
Ukrainian and US delegations concluded two days of talks aimed at ending Russia’s war in Ukraine over the weekend in Miami, Florida, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Sunday.
Russian negotiators were not present at the talks, meaning that the current pause in trilateral peace negotiations between Ukraine, Russia and the US continued, after a previous round of talks in Abu Dhabi were cancelled two weeks ago in the wake of the US-Israeli attacks on Iran.
In his evening address to the nation on Sunday, Zelensky said it was “clear that the attention of the American side at this time is primarily focused on the situation around Iran”, though he added that he had received “signals that further exchanges may be possible”.
The Ukrainian delegation in Miami was led by former Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, accompanied by Zelensky’s chief of staff Kyrylo Budanov, parliamentary leader Davyd Arakhamia, and Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Serhiy Kyslytsa.
They met with a US delegation led by Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Witkoff called the meeting “constructive” in a statement on X, and initially claimed there had been “a breakthrough on a key humanitarian matter”, before his post was edited to say that the delegations had simply focused on “critical humanitarian efforts in the region”.
Umerov in turn said on Telegram that the talks had been focused on “issues of reliable security guarantees and the humanitarian track, in particular the exchange and return of our citizens”, and thanked the United States for its “consistent engagement in the negotiation process”.
The talks come amid concerns that Trump’s recent focus on the Middle East would hamper Ukraine’s war effort, after Zelensky told the BBC last week he had a “very bad feeling" about the impact of the conflict on the war in Ukraine.
Zelensky said that peace negotiations were being constantly postponed for “one reason — war in Iran", adding: “For Putin, a long war in Iran is a plus. In addition to energy prices, it means the depletion of US reserves, and the depletion of air defence manufacturers.”
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed on Friday that Russia hoped the current pause in three-way talks would be “temporary”. The last trilateral peace talks were held in Geneva in February, and ended with little progress, although later reports suggested Russian negotiators had accepted certain US security guarantees for Ukraine.]]> Sun, 22 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/22/a-new-low-en https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/22/a-new-low-en Kommentariy · Politika Rosko Lusto Mark Relations between Hungary and Ukraine have deteriorated significantly over the past month. In early March, the Hungarian authorities arrested seven Ukrainian bank workers who were transporting millions of US dollars worth of cash and gold through Hungary to Ukraine.
Affiliated Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, at Central European University in Vienna
„
Hungary’s tax authority said they had been detained on suspicion of money laundering, which prompted a furious response from Ukraine. In a post on social media, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha denounced what he called “state terrorism and racketeering”.
This incident followed an earlier decision by the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, to deploy the military to guard power plants after warning that Ukraine planned to disrupt his country’s energy system. Orbán had previously accused Kyiv of holding back Russian oil deliveries through the Druzhba pipeline, which passes through Ukrainian territory.
In these conflicts with Ukraine, Orbán’s eyes are certainly on the home front. Hungarians head to the polls in April for parliamentary elections and, with ordinary people having suffered from high inflation and limited job prospects in recent years, Orbán may well be ginning up international incidents to distract from his poor economic record.
But a deeper dive into the region’s history shows that Orbán has often picked diplomatic fights with neighbouring states, with Ukraine taking the brunt of this campaign. When the Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed after World War I, several countries in central Europe inherited ethnic Hungarian communities within their new borders. One of these communities was in Transcarpathia, a region of Czechoslovakia that was taken over by the Soviet Union in 1946. The Hungarian minority there became citizens of independent Ukraine in 1991, along with the rest of Transcarpathia.
A hallmark of Orbán’s nationalist politics since the 1990s has been his willingness to criticise neighbouring countries over their treatment of their Hungarian minorities, and after becoming prime minister for a second time in 2010, he fulfilled a longstanding pledge to offer Hungarian citizenship and passports to ethnic Hungarians in surrounding states.
Several years later, in 2014, Orbán then called for “autonomy” for ethnic Hungarians in Ukraine and has since then kept up a series of complaints about the Ukrainian government’s treatment of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia.
Following Russia’s 2014 incursions into eastern Ukraine, for example, Kyiv instituted laws restricting the use of minority languages that were introduced to promote the Ukrainian language and limit Russian. Orbán complained that the laws violated the rights of Transcarpathia’s Hungarian minority to their own culture and language. He has subsequently used the rationale of defending minority rights to block a variety of measures promoting cooperation between Ukraine and the EU.
Ukraine has been a major focus of Orbán’s campaigns regarding ethnic Hungarian rights. But the country is not alone in being targeted by Budapest. Orbán also referred to southern Slovakia, where there is a large ethnic Hungarian minority, as a “partitioned part” of Hungary in a July 2023 speech.
It has become complicated for Orbán to maintain his rhetoric of protecting ethnic Hungarian rights as the war in Ukraine has continued and Hungary has drifted further into Russia’s sphere of geopolitical influence. For example, he has more recently muted his criticism of neighbouring countries for their treatment of ethnic Hungarians if they are supportive of Russia.
The Hungarian prime minister initially looked the other way when Slovakia’s government, which has been led by pro-Russia Robert Fico since October 2023, passed a new law in January criminalising speech against a set of post-World War II laws called the Beneš decrees. This law has widely been seen as targeting Slovakia’s ethnic Hungarians.
The Beneš decrees were used by Slovakia’s government to deport thousands of Hungarians from the country in the 1940s. While leaders of Slovakia’s Hungarian minority continue to denounce these decrees as a crime against their community, under the new law they could be put in jail for such statements.
Orbán’s initial response was cautious. He pledged to talk with Fico but only once he had a “sufficiently deep understanding” of the situation. Orbán’s opponent in the upcoming election, Peter Magyar, then led a protest in front of the Slovak Embassy in Budapest where he denounced the new law. And under pressure, Orbán announced he would be appealing the law to the European Commission. „
It’s likely that whoever leads Hungary’s government after the upcoming election will continue to pick fights with neighbouring states over the issue of national minorities.
The new law put Orbán in a bind. Should he criticise Slovakia over this assault on the collective rights of ethnic Hungarians and risk sowing discord with a fellow Russian partner? Or should he defend the Slovak government against criticism from Magyar and pay for it at the ballot box?
It’s likely that whoever leads Hungary’s government after the upcoming election will continue to pick fights with neighbouring states over the issue of national minorities. Magyar has signalled he will continue Orbán’s approach, and not only with his protest in front of the Slovakian Embassy.
In 2025, he made a point of travelling to Ukraine and Romania to meet with ethnic Hungarians. And he has also consistently demonstrated concern for these minority communities in his campaign speeches.
Given his record of chiding neighbouring states over their treatment of Hungarian minorities, a Magyar win in April will not mean an end to tensions between Hungary and Ukraine. But it could still be a fresh start after years of hostility under Orbán.
This article was first published in The Conversation. Views expressed in opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the position of Novaya Gazeta Europe.]]> Fri, 20 Mar 2026 15:39:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/20/peskov-russia-wont-participate-in-planned-us-ukraine-peace-talks-tomorrow-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/20/peskov-russia-wont-participate-in-planned-us-ukraine-peace-talks-tomorrow-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
Russian negotiators will not be present at the planned Ukraine peace talks to be held in the US on Saturday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed at a press briefing on Friday.
The announcement indicates that the current suspension of trilateral peace negotiations between Ukraine, Russia and the US will continue, after a previous round of talks in Abu Dhabi was cancelled two weeks ago in the wake of the US-Israeli attacks on Iran.
Peskov said that the negotiations on Saturday would consist only of “bilateral contact between the Ukrainians and Americans”, but nonetheless claimed that the Kremlin hoped the current pause in three-way talks would be “temporary”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky previously announced that he had sent a delegation to the US ahead of an expected meeting on Saturday, but did not specify who would be participating in the talks.
In a post to his followers on Telegram on Thursday, Zelensky said that Ukraine had “received signals from the US side indicating readiness” to engage in renewed negotiations, adding: “There has been a pause in the talks, and it is time to resume them.”
Since launching massive airstrikes on Iran on 28 February, US President Donald Trump has appeared to lose interest in negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine, with several analysts in the West and in Russia suggesting that the war in Iran has improved Russia’s strategic position in Ukraine.
European leaders have warned that the massive deployment of US military equipment in the Middle East risks jeopardising Ukraine’s supply of expensive US-made missile systems, which play a vital role in Ukrainian air defence.
Trump has consistently snubbed Ukraine’s offers to provide technology to counter Iranian Shahed drones in exchange for American missile systems, telling Fox News last week: “We don't need their help in drone defence. We know more about drones than anybody. We have the best drones in the world, actually.”
The last trilateral peace talks were held in Geneva in February, and ended with little progress, although later reports suggested Russian negotiators had accepted certain US security guarantees for Ukraine.]]> Fri, 20 Mar 2026 12:02:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/20/belarus-frees-a-further-250-political-prisoners-in-exchange-for-us-sanctions-relief-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/20/belarus-frees-a-further-250-political-prisoners-in-exchange-for-us-sanctions-relief-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
Belarus freed 250 political prisoners on Thursday, Belarusian human rights group Viasna announced, after negotiations in which the US agreed to drop sanctions on several Belarusian companies.
According to Viasna, 15 of the prisoners were deported to Lithuania, while the remaining 235 will stay in Belarus. Among those released were Belsat journalist Katsiaryna Andreeva, blogger and public figure Eduard Palchys, human rights activist Nasta Loika, and Mikalai Kuliashou, a former customs official who helped smuggle political prisoners across the Belarusian border.
The mass release came hours after a meeting between Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko and US envoy John Coale, held at the Independence Palace in Minsk on Thursday. As part of the deal, the US agreed to lift sanctions on Belarusian investment and development banks, several fertiliser producers as well as the Belarusian Finance Ministry.
In a post on X, Coale called the deal a “significant humanitarian milestone and a testament to the President's commitment to direct, hard-nosed diplomacy”, adding: "President Trump constantly refers to President Lukashenko as his good friend and a respected leader".
Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya thanked Trump in a post on Telegram, saying that his humanitarian efforts were “saving lives” and urging the release of over a thousand political prisoners still detained in Belarus.
Belarus has faced wide-ranging Western sanctions since Lukashenko’s regime brutally suppressed massive protests against rigged presidential elections in 2020, and allowed Russian troops to invade Ukraine from Belarusian territory in 2022.
However, since returning to the presidency last year, Trump has signalled a willingness to normalise relations with Lukashenko, including holding a direct telephone conversation with the Belarusian dictator in August. Previous US sanctions relief deals with Belarus have seen 189 political prisoners released and forcibly deported from the country over the past year, in June, September, and December.
Trump’s friendly attitude towards Lukashenko has been met with criticism among European leaders, with Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda saying on Thursday that Europe should not follow America’s lead on easing sanctions on the country.
Last week, the International Criminal Court officially opened an investigation into crimes against humanity committed by the Lukashenko regime, which has held an iron grip on power in the country since 1994, after a complaint brought by the Lithuanian government.]]> Fri, 20 Mar 2026 11:35:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/20/from-trench-to-grave-en https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/20/from-trench-to-grave-en Data · Ekonomika «Novoy gazety Evropa» Data-otdel Despite a sudden reduction in the size of the military enlistment bonuses paid out by Russia’s regions and republics to bolster recruitment late last year, the amounts being disbursed to those who sign up began rising again recently and are now at their highest level at any time since the start of the war in Ukraine.
Those who voluntarily sign a contract with the Defence Ministry are at present not only guaranteed a significant one-time cash payout, but also a broad package of other benefits, which are overall more generous than those offered to large families or people with disabilities.
In autumn 2025, for the first time since the war began, several regions sharply reduced the size of the signing bonuses they paid out. For example, the republic of Tatarstan in Russia’s Volga region went from paying out a colossal €29,700 to just €4,400, while at the lower end, the neighbouring republic of Bashkortostan reduced its signing bonus from €14,300 to €6,600.
Even more startling was the decision by the authorities in Russia’s second city St. Petersburg to cancel a payout of €17,600 to those who enlisted in the Combat Army Reserve with immediate effect. In an act of baffling cruelty, new recruits were only informed of the change after they’d signed their contracts.
Governors around the country attributed the signing bonus reductions to budget deficits, and they weren’t lying — last year saw the total regional budget deficit reach 1.48 trillion rubles (€16.3 billion), over three times larger than the regional budget deficit for 2024 (407 billion rubles, €4.5 billion), which was itself the highest recorded deficit at the time.
At the time, it seemed that financial constraints might force Russia’s regions and republics to cap military signing bonuses at a far more modest size. However, the regions entered the new year with revised budgets and renewed optimism, and those sums began climbing again. „
“Sooner or later the federal authorities will plug all the budget holes — through subsidies, debt write-offs, or preferential loans.”
Almost all the Russian regions that reduced the size of their signing bonuses late last year raised them again in 2026, most returning them to their previous levels, meaning that bonuses are still rising regardless of whether regional budgets can realistically absorb them, simply as pressure from Moscow for each region to meet its military enlistment quotas is far more persuasive than eventual budget deficits.
Every region that increased payments for contracts with the Defence Ministry in 2026 planned its budget for the current year with a deficit — which in total will amount to about €4.3 billion. Most likely, however, the real deficit will exceed the planned one, as happened both in 2024 and 2025.
“Poor regions have nothing to lose,” explains Russian defence expert Pavel Luzin. “Sooner or later the federal authorities will plug all the budget holes — through subsidies, debt write-offs, or preferential loans. All they need is to get through the day and survive the night, reporting back with soldiers and ‘patriotism.’ Each region is acting according to the current administrative reality.”
At the same time, fluctuations in the average size of regional signing bonuses have been seen for the first time — until October 2025, the figure had only been rising. Although the indicator is now at its highest level — about €17,600 — the pace of growth has slowed sharply.
For example, in February 2025 the average payment was 5.4 times higher than a year earlier. By 2026, however, the average payment had increased by just 1.5 times compared with 2025.
One-time payments for signing a contract with the Defence Ministry represent only one part of the financial burden the war places on regional governments, however, as regional governments are also responsible for funding benefits programmes for soldiers and veterans, as well as paying out compensation to those injured and to the families of those killed in the war.
Though some of these benefits, such as priority access to state and municipal services, allocating university places through quotas, priority medical care, or recuperation in sanatoria, cost regional budgets little or nothing, other veteran benefits such as subsidised energy and heating, free school meals, subsidised public transport access and home visits from social workers, require direct spending.
Russians who have enlisted to fight in Ukraine often enjoy higher than average standards of living. On top of what are by Russian standards enormous signing bonuses, a Russian soldier’s monthly salary of approximately €2,300 is more than three times the size of the average Russian wage, and almost five times the size of the average wage in some parts of the country.
The state’s largesse towards those that enlisted to fight in Ukraine dwarfs the benefits provided to other, arguably far more needy, groups such as large families and people with severe disabilities. Indeed, Novaya Gazeta Europe’s calculations show that soldiers receive nine times more support from the Russian government than large families, and three times more than people with severe disabilities.
This includes subsidies for key workers and packages designed to get them to move to remote areas. For example, the maximum possible golden handshake payment for a doctor who is a specialist in a necessary field and who is willing to relocate to a remote and poorly connected area of the Leningrad region would amount to about €26,600, where as somebody enlisting to serve in the army in the same region would be eligible for a signing bonus of about €39,000.
Professional soldiers and their families are also eligible for a wide range of additional payments and benefits: the write-off of loans of up to about €110,000, a land certificate or compensation of about €5,000, grants of up to €3,800 to start a small business or to train for a new skill, as well as admission to universities by quota.
The abundance of benefits creates the impression of a large-scale social policy. However, according to experts, most of these measures — with the exception of direct payments — are largely symbolic.
“Most benefits for participants in the ‘special military operation’ and support for their families are, to a significant extent, propaganda,” says Luzin. “They are cheap to provide, but they allow regional officials to report success without actually solving any systemic problems. Kindergartens, free public transport — these things are of marginal importance.”
According to Luzin, the main long-term financial burden on the state will be paying for veterans’ prosthetics and providing lifelong support for those who lost the ability to work while fighting in Ukraine — potentially hundreds of thousands of people.
“Buying a prosthesis once and making sure nobody starves — there are enough resources for that. But replacement prostheses every few years and lifelong support for disabled veterans? That’s something nobody is seriously planning for right now.” ]]> Fri, 20 Mar 2026 10:58:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/20/former-regional-lawmaker-serves-nine-day-jail-sentence-for-attending-memorial-to-boris-nemtsov-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/20/former-regional-lawmaker-serves-nine-day-jail-sentence-for-attending-memorial-to-boris-nemtsov-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
Former regional lawmaker and opposition party leader Mikhail Borisov was released from jail on Friday, after serving a nine-day sentence for attending a memorial to assassinated Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, independent Russian news outlet Mediazona has reported.
The sentence was delivered by a court in Yekaterinburg, in the Russian Urals, but due to a “lack of available space” in the city’s jail cells, Borisov was held in a detention centre in the nearby city of Pervouralsk. According to his lawyer, Alexey Antonov, he spent his jail time in complete isolation, due to the lack of non-smoking communal cells.
Last week, a city court found Borisov guilty of “organising an unauthorised public event” and sentenced him to nine days of “administrative arrest”. The court considered evidence provided by Russian security forces, who photographed Borisov holding a bouquet of flowers at the memorial event on 27 February, and subsequently shared the photo with a local pro-Kremlin Telegram channel.
68-year-old Borisov and his co-defendant Alexey Mosin, head of a local branch of the human rights organisation Memorial, were also accused of leaving graffiti at the site, reading “Boris” in Ukrainian. They denied the accusation.
In court, Borisov and his lawyer argued that the memorial was not an unauthorised event but a “private meeting between two old men”, and questioned why nobody had been detained for leaving flowers at a memorial to playwright Nikolay Kolyada, who died on 2 March.
Borisov served as a member of the Sverdlovsk Regional Council from 1990 to 1993, and headed the Yekaterinburg branch of the liberal People’s Freedom Party from 2013 until it was outlawed in 2023. He regularly attended the annual memorial to Boris Nemtsov, an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin, who was the national leader of the People’s Freedom Party at the time of his assassination in Moscow on 27 February 2015.]]> Thu, 19 Mar 2026 17:14:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/19/chernovik-ot-19-03-2026-19-13-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/19/chernovik-ot-19-03-2026-19-13-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
Workers at several construction firms in the occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol have not been paid their wages since December, independent news outlet ASTRA reported on Tuesday, citing information from Russian pro-war volunteer Sania Denisova.
One worker at Industrial Special Technologies (PST), a Russian company contracted to rebuild damaged buildings in Mariupol, told Denisova that despite repeated promises of payment from the employer, he and his colleagues had been left living “on pennies” and forced into debt.
An employee at the Mariupol branch of Ostrob, a construction firm based in St. Petersburg, said that “practically no decent firms” were left in Mariupol that paid their workers’ wages on time.
ASTRA examined the accounts of several Russian construction companies engaged in rebuilding work in Ukraine, and discovered many were facing severe financial difficulties. Russian bank accounts linked to PST have been frozen since at least 11 March, while another company subject to complaints from workers, SpetsSnabTrans, has recently filed for bankruptcy.
The news comes amid broader economic worries for the Russian military-industrial complex, as the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine enters its fifth year. In February, regional governments across Russia posted their largest-ever total budget deficit, attributed in part to a difficult climate for Russian business.
As recently as January, Russian economic analysts were also sounding the alarm about low prices for Russian oil, which reached historic lows of $35 a barrel. That concern proved short-lived, however, as global oil shortages caused by the US-Israeli attacks on Iran have sent oil prices skyrocketing, and gifted Russian oil producers a €9 billion windfall since March.]]> Thu, 19 Mar 2026 13:01:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/19/pro-war-blogger-reportedly-receiving-psychiatric-care-after-unprecedented-break-with-kremlin-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/19/pro-war-blogger-reportedly-receiving-psychiatric-care-after-unprecedented-break-with-kremlin-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta Russian pro-war blogger and ex-Kremlin loyalist Ilya Remeslo has been admitted to a hospital in St. Petersburg, where he is currently undergoing psychiatric treatment, Russian independent news outlet Bumaga reported on Thursday, citing pro-Kremlin Telegram channels.
The development comes two days after Remeslo, previously a staunch supporter of Putin’s regime, shared a post with his followers on Telegram entitled “Five reasons why I no longer support Vladimir Putin”, sparking massive speculation about the reasons behind his sudden and unprecedented break with the Kremlin. „
I actually reckon that Putin’s regime won’t last until the end of the year; his service life is up.
In an interview with exiled Russian journalist Alexander Plyushchev on Wednesday, Remeslo explained that he had first become disillusioned with Putin after Yevgeny Prigozhin, co-founder of the Russian mercenary Wagner Group, led a failed mutiny against Moscow in 2023.
Since then, he said that it had become clear that both the system propping up Putin’s regime and Russia’s endless war in Ukraine were “doomed to failure”, adding that Putin’s centralised leadership style lacked a “mechanism for self-correction”.
“I actually reckon that Putin’s regime won’t last until the end of the year; his service life is up”, Remeslo continued. “That system is self-destructing, and it will self-destruct.”
Asked whether others in the pro-war movement shared his point of view, Remeslo claimed he had spoken to several well-known figures who had privately expressed similar discontent with Putin’s regime. One unnamed pro-war blogger allegedly compared the current situation to that in Ukraine in 2014, before the Maidan protests that swept pro-Russian president Victor Yanukovych from power.
Remeslo’s abrupt change in position has so far received no public backing in loyalist circles, with prominent propagandist Apti Alaudinov initially suggesting that his account had been hacked, or that Remeslo was being held hostage by pro-Ukrainian forces.
The news of Remeslo’s admission to psychiatric care on Wednesday evening aligns with later speculation from both pro-Kremlin and exiled opposition figures that Remeslo was having a “mental breakdown”.
In a Telegram post on Thursday, Plyuschev noted the reports that Remeslo had been taken to a psychiatric hospital, and said that since their interview Remeslo was no longer replying to messages or WhatsApp calls.
The Kremlin routinely punishes Russians harshly for any criticism of Putin and the war in Ukraine. On Wednesday, a 56-year-old political prisoner died in pretrial detention in Russia, where he was being held for calling the invasion of Ukraine “a shameful war by a shameful president”.]]> Thu, 19 Mar 2026 11:36:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/19/internet-loopholes-russia-struggles-to-block-restricted-online-resources-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/19/internet-loopholes-russia-struggles-to-block-restricted-online-resources-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Archer Dzhordzhi
RuNet’s traffic filtering tools, used by Russia’s media regulator Roskomnadzor to restrict access to banned online resources, are overloaded and unable to fully enforce blocks, Forbes Russia reported on Wednesday.
As a result, some previously restricted platforms, including Whatsapp, owned by Meta, which has been designated an extremist organisation and banned in Russia, occasionally become accessible. Some users have also reported intermittent access to YouTube, which has been blocked in Russia.
According to Forbes, Roskomnadzor lacks the bandwidth to process all Russian Internet traffic and completely block certain resources. Its technical countermeasures system (TSPU) acts as a filtering mechanism across telecom operators, but the equipment has bandwidth limitations. When the traffic exceeds capacity, the system can switch to a bypass mode.
The temporary availability of blocked resources may also be linked to the reallocation of TSPU capacity to slow down Telegram, Leonid Konika, a partner at Comnews Research, told Forbes.
If filtering systems fail, they can switch to a “skip without filters” mode, a source working in IT security at a large company told Forbes, allowing users to access websites that have long been blocked.
Roskomnadzor has denied any issues with its blocking systems. A representative told independent Russian media outlet Podyom that the reports “do not correspond with reality,” but did not explain why some restricted resources periodically become available.]]> Thu, 19 Mar 2026 10:22:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/19/russians-now-ten-times-less-likely-to-receive-multiple-entry-schengen-visas-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/19/russians-now-ten-times-less-likely-to-receive-multiple-entry-schengen-visas-en-news Novosti · Politika Archer Dzhordzhi
From January to March 2026, the number of multiple-entry Schengen visas issued to Russian citizens decreased by 90% compared to the same period last year, the Association of Tour Operators of Russia (ATOR) reported on Wednesday, citing market participants.
Some companies described the decline as much steeper, with one major tour operator estimating a drop of 99% in receipt of multiple-entry Schengen visas, while others report having received virtually none for their customers this year.
Instead, Russian tourists are now being issued double-entry visas in 50-60% of cases, primarily for cruise holidays, according to tour operators. This approach has been observed at consulates in Italy, France, Spain and Greece.
According to experts at the tour operator PAX, France, Italy and Hungary can grant a double-entry visa with extended validity for Russians with a good visa history and frequent travel to these countries. However, in most cases, Russian citizens are issued only single-entry visas valid for the duration of their trip.
In November last year, the European Commission tightened restrictions on issuing multiple-entry Schengen visas to Russian citizens. Under the new system, Russians must apply for a new visa every time they want to visit Europe, although exceptions have been made for journalists, human rights defenders, and relatives of people living in the EU. ]]> Wed, 18 Mar 2026 16:31:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/18/russian-political-prisoner-dies-in-pre-trial-detention-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/18/russian-political-prisoner-dies-in-pre-trial-detention-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Pich Sem
A 56-year-old man accused of posting “false information” about the Russian military has died in a pretrail detention centre in the northwestern Russian city of Ukhta, the human rights project Penal Advocate reported on Wednesday.
The deceased, Vladimir Osipov, was sentenced to six and a half years in a prison colony in November for posts he made on Russian social media site Odnoklassniki critisicing Vladimir Putin, condemning the targeting of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure by the Russian military, and calling the invasion “a shameful war by a shameful president”.
Having been held in a detention centre in Kolomna, a city approximately 110 kilometres south of Moscow, until January, Osipov was transferred to Ukhta, over 1,500 kilometres away, and, according to independent Russian media SOTAvision, was awaiting a postponed hearing for the court appeal of his sentencing, set to take place on 19 March.
Osipov refused to plead guilty to the charges, and according to his wife and daughter was badly beaten by law enforcement officers. He was in poor health, and at the time of his November sentencing, SOTAvision reported that, due to his suffering from high blood pressure, an ambulance was called to nearly every hearing, and the judge chose to interpret statements about his poor health as a refusal to speak, depriving him of the opportunity to make a final statement before sentencing.
Earlier in March, SOTAvison reported that Osipov attended a Moscow court hearing virtually from Ukhta, and when asked by court representatives whether he understood his rights as they had been explained, replied “I don't understand the rights, because I don't have them”.
The independent Russian human rights project Support for Political Prisoners.Memorial recognised Osipov as a political prisoner, and on Wednesday updated his status in their “lists of the persecuted”.]]> Wed, 18 Mar 2026 15:06:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/18/polish-court-approves-extradition-of-russian-archeologist-to-ukraine-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/18/polish-court-approves-extradition-of-russian-archeologist-to-ukraine-en-news Novosti · Politika Pich Sem A court in Warsaw, Poland, has approved the extradition of a Russian archeologist to Ukraine for damages done during unpermitted excavations in Crimea, Novaya Gazeta Europe reported on Wednesday.
Alexander Butyagin, an archeologist who works for the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg arrested in Warsaw in December, has been approved for extradition to Ukraine by a court in Poland in line with an indictment issued by the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office in November 2024 for illegal excavation works in Russian-occupied Crimea.
The Ukrainian authorities allege that the excavations, conducted in the Crimean city of Kerch at the site of the ancient Greek city of Myrmekion, caused over 200 million hryvnia (€4 million) in damage, and were organised without the permission of the relevant authorities. At the time of the indictment’s issuance, Butyagin responded, speaking to Russian media from Crimea in 2024, he said he had overseen work at that site since the late 1990s.
Butyagin’s lawyer, Adam Domansky, speaking to Novaya Gazeta Europe, said that the Ukrainian side had failed to provide proof of the damage done by the archeologist during the excavations, adding that he believed that an extradition to Ukraine would deprive Butyagin of his right to a fair trial and threaten his life and wellbeing.
The archeologist’s defence are awaiting an official translation of the verdict to deliver to him, following which they will have seven days to appeal the court’s decision. If the extradition goes ahead and Butyagin is convicted in Ukraine, he could face up to 10 years in prison.
Butyagin’s arrest in December was met with outrage from the Russian Foreign Ministry, and in February, the Russian Science and Higher Education Ministry warned universities and research institutions about trips to “unfriendly countries” in light of Butyagin’s arrest, and many such institutions have frozen planned trips for the spring.]]> Wed, 18 Mar 2026 10:53:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/18/the-nuclear-option-en https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/18/the-nuclear-option-en Syuzhety · Obshchestvo Naumlyuk Anton Just weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, 51-year-old engineer Ruslan Lavryk witnessed the fully operational nuclear power plant where he worked being forcibly seized by Russian troops in a military operation.
The Russian capture of the facility was truly an unprecedented event: never before had a working nuclear power plant, let alone the largest one in Europe, been taken over by a foreign army.
By early March 2022, resistance from local Ukrainian defence forces had been crushed, and the Russian army set about establishing a field operations base among the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant’s concrete reactor buildings.
Many plant workers fled the facility and the nearby city of Enerhodar in the aftermath of the occupation, but some, including Lavryk, stayed behind at the request of the plant’s management, to ensure the six reactors at the facility could continue to operate safely, even if under Russian control.
That decision would ultimately cost him dearly, however. Alongside a dozen other former workers at the power plant, Lavryk would later be abducted by the FSB, subjected to torture, and sentenced to over a decade in a penal colony for treason.
Ten men from Rosatom
Administrators from Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned atomic energy agency, first arrived in Enerhodar in mid-March, around two weeks after the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant had been occupied by Russian troops.
Up to that point, the plant had been in a state of utter chaos. Russian soldiers had mined the area surrounding the plant seemingly at random, and periodically “raided” buildings that had already been seized.
Upon their arrival, the Rosatom administrators — mostly from Russia’s own Balakovo Nuclear Power Plant, on the Volga river — quickly placed the plant’s remaining staff under their command, replacing the Ukrainian management entirely. „
These civilian specialists played a very significant role in this, including torturing our staff — if you disagreed, they, including Romanenko himself, would single you out.
“There were about 10 of them at first, and they were not engaged in maintenance as such,” an unnamed witness cited by a Truth Hounds report in 2025 said. Another explained: “They were monitoring the processes and actions of the Ukrainian personnel. … They were in direct contact with the general director, the chief engineer, and held several joint meetings.”
Around October 2022, the new Russian management, which was headed by Balakovo’s chief engineer Oleg Romanenko, began “terrorising” the plant’sUkrainian staff into signing new contracts with Rosatom, with those who refused facing severe reprisals.
“All this was happening on a massive scale,” another witness told Truth Hounds. “These civilian specialists played a very significant role in this, including torturing our staff — if you disagreed, they, including Romanenko himself, would single you out.”
All in all, Truth Hounds has recorded 78 incidents of the Ukrainian staff at Zaporizhzia being subjected to physical or psychological torture, including Andriy Honcharuk, a former diver at the plant, who died after being beaten by officers at a local police station.
The plant’s deputy press secretary, Andriy Tuz, who had kept the world updated on the battle for the facility right up until the Russian army captured it, was another victim of the Russian management’s brutality. Stopped by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) while attempting to flee to Georgia via Russia, Tuz had his fingers burnt with a lighter before being forced to record a video in which he retracted his previous claims that Russian troops had shelled the nuclear plant.
According to Vladimir Zhbankov, coordinator of the NGO Search Captivity, which provides assistance to Ukrainian prisoners of war and their families, at least 13 Zaporizhzhia staff members are currently in detention in Russia, including Ruslan Lavryk.
A village called Blessing
Despite pressure from Russian administrators, Ruslan Lavryk was one of the Ukrainian staff members who refused to sign a new contract with Rosatom. Instead he spent his time sabotaging Rosatom’s work at the plant, focusing on the technical equipment it had brought in to do live broadcasts for Russian state television.
After repeated attempts to get Lavryk to sign a new contract failed, in late 2022 he was overtly threatened by a group of 12 FSB agents. Fearing for his life, he told Rosatom he could no longer work at the plant, and left his home in Enerhodar to live in his small summer house some 16km away, in a village called Blahovishchenka.
It was impossible for Lavryk to avoid Enerhodar altogether, however, as Russian troops frequently requisitioned empty apartments in the city and even set cars on fire if they were left unattended for too long.
It was on one of these trips, about a year after quitting the power plant, that Lavryk was stopped at a military checkpoint and told he could no longer enter Enerhodar without a Russian passport. As a result he was obliged to acquire Russian citizenship in January 2024, a reluctant decision that would later allow investigators to charge him with treason.
Lavryk remained in Blahovishchenka, making infrequent trips to Enerhodar, until summer 2024. One day, a group of Russian paratroopers set up camp at a nearby grain elevator in the village, covering their equipment with camouflaged netting. Lavryk identified their position on a map on his phone, took a screenshot, and sent it to his son Vladyslav to pass on to Ukrainian troops holding the line in Marhanets, on the opposite bank of the Dnipro.
Though he had little money, from time to time Lavryk also donated to charities raising funds to buy drones and radio equipment for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Though it’s unclear what ultimately attracted the FSB’s attention, eight armed men in balaclavas drove into Blahovishchenka on the morning of 7 June 2024, and immediately surrounded Lavryk’s dacha. „
Later in court, the FSB would claim that Lavryk had immediately admitted his guilt to all accusations during his first interrogation.
Wearing no identifying symbols on their uniforms, the men broke down the front door and dragged Lavryk’s wife Inna out onto the street, before beating Lavryk and ransacking the house. Lavryk, along with all his computer equipment, mobile phones, documents, and the keys to his flat and car in Enerhodar, were then taken away.
Inna immediately went to the police in Enerhodar to report the abduction and plead for information, but she was told that the raid was a matter for the FSB, and that nobody knew where her husband had been taken.
As it turned out, Lavryk was being held nearby, in the basement of an FSB facility in Enerhodar. Having found evidence of both his AFU donations and his sharing of the paratroopers’ position on Lavryk’s phone, the FSB threatened him with summary execution. Terrified, Lavryk told them that he hadn’t known to whom his son would send the information, and that he had transferred money to the Ukrainian fundraisers by mistake.
Later in court, the FSB would claim that Lavryk had immediately admitted his guilt to all accusations during his first interrogation. Nonetheless, for whatever reason the FSB did not open a criminal case against him, and let him go home after a few days. Fleeing the region was impossible; all traffic in and out was checked at military blockades. There was nothing to do but wait. Two days later, they came for him again.
‘Riding the electric train’
Lavryk would spend the next six months in a string of detention centres, going through a process known as the “administrative carousel” — a term used to describe the practice of Russian law enforcement constantly issuing detainees with administrative offences, which allow them to hold someone without trial for as long as they like.
Lavryk would be repeatedly “released” from custody onto the streets of the occupied city of Melitopol, only to be immediately rearrested for violating curfew. The little we know about Lavryk’s lengthy detention comes mostly from short letters he managed to smuggle out of jail, which eventually made their way to relatives in Ukraine.
In those letters, he describes walking through literal puddles of blood, pooling out from rooms where detainees were being tortured. Lavryk himself was often beaten, and more than once recounted being subjected to electrocution. „
That’s how the FSB works. Young women have hanged themselves by their bras, or just killed themselves. It’s all very brutal. They don’t consider us human beings, even while telling us that we are one people.
Judging by the symptoms he describes, at some point while in detention Lavryk suffered a severe concussion. Often, particularly after being made to take medication, he would experience headaches that were so painful that he wondered whether the Russians were performing medical experiments on their prisoners.
“In all the time I’ve been in here, the sheer number of people I’ve seen… it’s awful,” he wrote in one letter. “It’s hard to watch when an 84-year-old woman is taunted by these bastards, and made to ‘ride the electric train’ — that is, electrocuted. Or when a 74-year-old man is strung up with his hands tied behind his back and tormented, or beaten so hard he goes flying across the room.”
“That’s how the FSB works. Young women have hanged themselves by their bras, or just killed themselves. It’s all very brutal. They don’t consider us human beings, even while telling us that we are one people.”
According to Lavryk, most of the acts of torture were carried out by FSB agents, or by those he calls “turncoat Ukrainians” who act as cruelly as possible in an attempt to earn favour.
“They came to us every day, bringing us some papers or other to sign,” Lavryk’s cellmate Vitaliy Kolotylo, who was released and deported via Georgia to Ukraine in December 2024, would later recall.
“Who knows what was written on those papers — but if you didn’t sign them, they’d put a bag over your head and beat you. Sign here, or the beatings continue.”
Laundry letters
Until January 2025, Lavryk was held under a series of “administrative arrests”. He did not have a permanent lawyer, and was routinely denied both family visits and official correspondence. In effect, he was kidnapped and kept in total isolation from the outside world. Despite all this, he managed to establish a surprisingly effective system for smuggling letters out of jail, even though it worked in one direction only.
These letters contained not only a record of the conditions of his imprisonment, regular acts of torture, and his own state of mind, but also lists of imprisoned Ukrainians that Lavryk met while detained. In total, Lavryk identified 40 prisoners this way; so far relatives have been found for 13 of them, who are now coordinating efforts to get their loved ones released.
Lavryk took any opportunity to get his messages out. Most commonly he asked cellmates who were being detained only briefly to smuggle the letters out with them when they were released, handing them the contact details of his family members. Sometimes even guards at the jail would agree to pass the messages on, albeit for a fee.
But Lavryk struck upon his most ingenious method when he was given the opportunity to pass dirty laundry to his relatives — the detention centre had no laundry facilities of its own — during trips to court or investigative hearings. „
‘They threatened to go after you as well, if I didn’t sign the confession,’ he wrote to his wife.
He sewed notes into the seams of his clothes, where they could be retrieved by his family later: “No one rummaged around in the dirty laundry.”
Tired of the constant cycle of administrative cases against him, Lavryk’s family hired a lawyer to represent him in early 2025, though staff at the detention centre in Melitopol turned the lawyer away. The visit did not go unnoticed, however: within half an hour, a criminal case for treason was drawn up against Lavryk.
Lavryk was accused of two crimes: sending the location of Russian paratroopers in Blahovishchenka to the Ukrainian army, and donating money to the Ukrainian army to buy drones.
“They threatened to go after you as well, if I didn’t sign the confession,” he wrote to his wife. “They beat me and electrocuted me. They hit me hard on the head and arms with the back of an axe, and put a bucket or a pot over my head.”
Aside from Lavryk’s mobile phone and the confessions beaten out of him, no other evidence was collected by investigators. In September 2025, the treason case was transferred to a court in Melitopol.
Committing treason
For the last six months, Lavryk has been held at a detention centre in Simferopol, in occupied Crimea, where he was assigned to yet another public defender — Alexander Chibrikov — who advised him to sign a confession, write a letter of repentance addressed to both the FSB and Russian Defence Minister Andrey Belousov and donate at least 10,000 rubles (€100) to support the “special military operation”.
Chibrikov represented Lavryk until he was found guilty by the Zaporizhzhia Regional Court, connected by videolink to the Supreme Court of Crimea, in its verdict in October 2025. “I beg you to get me out of here,” Lavryk wrote to his family after the verdict. “I’m so tired; I just want to go back home, back to all of you.”
“I’ve been in here with Russian soldiers who broke their contracts. One of them told me: ‘I’d rather do the time, and let the idiots go and fight.’ And with priests, too. I’ve heard so many things, it’s horrifying what’s going on. They’re all totally insane, totally brainwashed, probably irredeemably so. One Russian priest told me that the government has turned Russia into a concentration camp.”
Lavryk was ultimately found guilty of treason and sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security facility; the sentence was upheld at appeal. He is currently still being held in a pretrial detention facility in Simferopol, awaiting transfer to a penal colony later this month. „
‘I really want to go back to Ukraine, I don’t want to go anywhere else,’ Lavryk wrote in his most recent letter to his family in mid-February. ‘I really, really want to leave here and go home.’
Throughout his drawn-out detention, Lavryk’s health has been in decline. He suffers from frequent migraines and tinnitus, which he attributes to the beatings he received at the hands of the FSB. He also has problems with his teeth, a few of which have been knocked out.
The only real chance Lavryk now has of regaining his freedom is through a prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine, but civilian convicts are rarely included in the lists Ukraine prepares for exchange.
The Ukrainian Association of Relatives of Political Prisoners of the Kremlin (ORPK) and investigative group Truth Hounds have launched a campaign to support former employees at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant who are currently in Russian detention. According to Ihor Kotelyants, head of the ORPK, at least 35 people with some connection to the plant are imprisoned by Russia, including current and former employees and their relatives.
To draw attention to their plight, activists and human rights activists have started a petition which they intend to deliver to Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency. So far the petition has been signed by nearly 53,000 people.
“I really want to go back to Ukraine, I don’t want to go anywhere else,” Lavryk wrote in his most recent letter to his family in mid-February. “I really, really want to leave here and go home.”]]> Wed, 18 Mar 2026 09:25:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/18/russian-anti-war-activist-jailed-for-tribute-to-ukrainian-poet-released-from-prison-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/18/russian-anti-war-activist-jailed-for-tribute-to-ukrainian-poet-released-from-prison-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Voug Tom
A St. Petersburg anti-war activist jailed last year for “repeatedly discrediting” the Russian military after she paid tribute to a Ukrainian poet and condemned Moscow’s war in Ukraine has been released from prison, her support group announced on Wednesday.
Darya Kozyreva, 20, was met by relatives upon her release from the penal colony in the city of Kineshma in Russia’s central Ivanovo region where she had been serving her sentence early on Wednesday morning, independent news outlet Mediazona reported.
“Dasha is free! A huge thank you to everyone who supported her,” the Free Darya Kozyreva group wrote in a Telegram post.
Kozyreva was first detained by police when she was just 18 on 24 February 2024, the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, after she left flowers at a St. Petersburg monument to Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko alongside a handwritten excerpt from one of his poems.
Later that year, she was also charged with “discrediting the military” for giving an interview to news outlet Sever.Realii, an affiliate of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that has been declared an “undesirable organisation” in Russia.
In April 2025, after using her closing statement in court to quote Shevchenko and reiterate her support for Ukraine’s independence — for which she was later fined 40,500 rubles (€450) — she was sentenced to two years and eight months behind bars.
Prior to the criminal case against her, Kozyreva had been targeted by the Russian authorities for her activism as a teenager.
In December 2022, while still a high school student, she was detained for spray painting an installation on St. Petersburg’s Palace Square celebrating the city’s relationship with the occupied Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, which Russian forces captured after a brutal three-month siege earlier that year.
A year later, Kozyreva was expelled from St. Petersburg State University’s medical faculty for posts she made on social media network VK in March 2022 criticising Russia’s wartime censorship laws.
In July, she became the youngest signatory of a joint letter from jailed Russian dissidents to world leaders calling for the mass release of political prisoners in Russia and Ukrainian civilians held by Russian forces — estimated at over 10,000 people — as a key term in any peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv.]]> Tue, 17 Mar 2026 18:24:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/17/russian-government-preparing-new-anti-migrant-legislation-amid-tensions-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/17/russian-government-preparing-new-anti-migrant-legislation-amid-tensions-en-news Novosti · Politika Pich Sem
The Russian government’s lower parliamentary chamber will review a draft law which, if passed, will lead to further restrictions and stricter penalties for migrants in Russia, Russian state-affiliated business daily Kommersant reported on Tuesday.
Officials from the Russian Interior Ministry have put forward amendments to the country’s existing migration policy that will increase penalties for migrants, including harsher fines and broadened grounds for deportation.
To be included in the list of new offences punishable by deportation are participation in unauthorised rallies, abuse of media freedom, and minor hooliganism committed while refusing to comply with police orders. Furthermore, the amendments would see fines for illegal labour activity or illegal employment rise from 2,000-5,000 rubles (€22-54) to 4,000-7,000 rubles (€43 - 76).
The Interior Ministry justified these new measures, citing both a rise in instances of unrest involving foreigners and increased illegality in the labour market. However, narratives around rising crime among migrants have seen contradictions between government sources in the past. For example, in 2025 Investigative Committee Head Alexander Bastrykin said that migrant crime had risen sharply, but data from the Interior Ministry at the time showed that it was falling.
The Russian government has sought to reform its migration policy, and on Monday, speaking on other legislation that will expand the tax burden of migrants, State Duma house speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said that since 2024, 22 federal laws had been introduced “aimed at improving migration policy”. The Crocus City Hall terrorist attacks, allegedly perpetrated by Central Asian migrants in March 2024, is seen by many experts as the catalyst for Russia’s anti-migrant turn. ]]> Tue, 17 Mar 2026 16:02:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/17/eu-members-warn-damaged-russian-tanker-in-mediterranean-threatens-major-environmental-incident-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/17/eu-members-warn-damaged-russian-tanker-in-mediterranean-threatens-major-environmental-incident-en-news Novosti · Politika Pich Sem
Nine EU member states have called for swift coordinated action to deal with a damaged Russian vessel currently drifting between Italy and Malta, The Financial Times reported on Tuesday.
In a joint letter to EU Commission President Ursula Von De Leyen, the signatories called for collective action to prevent a ”major ecological disaster”, noting that two weeks had now passed since the ship was targeted in a drone strike that Moscow subsequently blamed on the Ukrainians.
According to the letter, the ship, which is currently drifting between Malta and the island of Lampedusa in southern Italy, is in a “precarious condition” and poses an imminent risk to the marine environment.
The letter also stressed the need to crack down further on Russia’s shadow fleet, the group of ships with opaque ownership structures being used by Moscow to circumvent Western sanctions that allow the country to export its natural resources.
The Russian-flagged Arctic Metagaz, a ship carrying 450 tons of diesel and liquefied natural gas, was struck by drones in the Mediterranean on 3 March, an incident Moscow blamed on Ukrainian forces, but which Kyiv has neither confirmed nor denied.
In December, Ukrainian forces struck the QENDIL2, another Russian tanker in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Crete. Ukraine later argued that the strike had not risked causing an environmental disaster as the tanker had been empty at the time of the attack. ]]> Tue, 17 Mar 2026 11:43:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/17/nearly-80-of-attempts-to-access-telegram-in-russia-blocked-on-monday-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/17/nearly-80-of-attempts-to-access-telegram-in-russia-blocked-on-monday-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
Nearly 80% of attempts to access popular messaging service Telegram from Russia were blocked on Monday, according to Russian business daily Kommersant, which reported a massive rise in complaints from Russian internet users to internet outage detector websites over the weekend.
Citing data from the network monitoring company Merilo, Kommersant said the rate of failed network access requests to Telegram-linked domains on Monday was 79.4% on average across Russia, up 47 percentage points from 9 March. In some regions of Russia, almost 90% of requests were blocked.
The largest individual rise in failed connections to Telegram was recorded in Russia’s Central Federal District, which includes Moscow, where the rate skyrocketed by 60 percentage points to 76.5%. The Russian capital has been suffering from severe disruptions to its mobile data and public Wi-Fi networks, supposedly as a countermeasure taken against “sophisticated” Ukraine drone strikes since 5 March.
Anastasia Bidzhelova, director of operations at Russian network exchange Telekom Birzha, told Kommersant that although blocking Telegram for 100% of users in Russia was difficult due to technical constraints, it would be “entirely possible to bring the situation to a point where [the platform] becomes unusable.”
“The outcome will be the same either way,” Bidzhelova continued. “Either the authorities manage to get the messaging platform to stop working entirely, or users will simply get tired of the endless problems and switch to a more stable alternative.”
The massive rise in connectivity issues indicates that Russia’s planned total block against Telegram, originally set for 1 April, has already begun. The Kremlin has previously instructed internet service providers to throttle traffic on Telegram, and has already blocked all voice and video calls on the platform, as part of its broader crackdown on uncensored and encrypted social media platforms.
For the past year, Russia has been attempting to drive Telegram users to MAX, a Russian-developed alternative that provides no anonymity or privacy protections for its users. However, reception of the home-grown app in Russia has been mixed, with some Russian military units in Ukraine reportedly banning its use entirely.
On Tuesday, independent Russian news outlet Faridaily reported that some civil servants in Moscow have opted to buy new phones and SIM cards to install MAX, rather than risking the app spying on their personal data.]]> Tue, 17 Mar 2026 10:50:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/17/russian-plane-found-to-have-flown-to-iranian-border-on-day-of-alleged-khamenei-evacuation-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/17/russian-plane-found-to-have-flown-to-iranian-border-on-day-of-alleged-khamenei-evacuation-en-news Novosti · Politika Basmanov Aleksey
A plane belonging to Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry flew from an airbase on the Iran-Azerbaijan border to the Russian capital on Thursday, the day on which Iran’s new supreme leader was supposedly evacuated to Moscow for medical treatment, flight tracking data accessed by Novaya Gazeta Europe has confirmed.
The detail comes after an unconfirmed report by the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida, which, citing a “high-ranking source”, claimed on Sunday that Vladimir Putin arranged for Mojtaba Khamenei to be flown out of Iran on Thursday to receive medical treatment in Moscow after he sustained serious injuries in the Israeli airstrike that killed his father and former Iranian supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
Information available on tracking website Flightradar24 shows that a Russian government plane flew from Moscow to the Azerbaijani city of Lankaran, 40km from the Iranian border, on Thursday before returning to Moscow that evening. According to local reports, the plane was officially transporting 13 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Iran, which was picked up by vans sent by the Iranian Red Crescent.
During the flight from Moscow to Lankaran, the plane followed a relatively normal flight path, with some small anomalies near Moscow likely due to anti-drone measures in the capital. However, on its return to Russia, the aircraft made erratic jumps in its position, indicating either that the transponder was transmitting spoofed location data, or that the aircraft was targeted by severe GPS jamming.
The plane in question is an aging Soviet-era Ilyushin Il-76 that was recently used to evacuate Russians stranded in Israel, Lebanon and Iran following the outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East earlier this month. According to the website of Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry, aircraft of this type can accommodate up to five medical modules, each capable of transporting four injured patients.
Initial American claims that Mojtaba Khamenei had been “disfigured” in the Israeli attack on the Khamenei compound in Tehran were first substantiated on Wednesday by Iran’s own ambassador to Cyprus, Alireza Salarian, who said in an interview that the younger Khamenei had been “lucky to survive the strike”. The new ayatollah reportedly sustained severe injuries to his leg, arm and hand.]]> Tue, 17 Mar 2026 09:15:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/17/hostile-environment-en https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/17/hostile-environment-en Syuzhety · Obshchestvo Polyakov Roman Obtaining refugee status in Europe is becoming increasingly difficult for queer Russians fleeing their homeland, despite the vast amount of carefully documented evidence proving the omnipresent threat of discrimination and violence facing members of the country's LGBTQI+ community.
In Germany, one same-sex couple was almost split up from their disabled child when only the parents were granted asylum by the authorities, while in Finland, another couple has fought for years to overturn a decision denying them asylum due to an error in their application.
Frightened off by the sheer proportion of applicants that have their asylum claims rejected, some queer refugees are now actively avoiding the EU altogether when choosing where to apply for asylum. Novaya Gazeta Europe spoke to three queer Russian refugees about their experiences of claiming asylum in Europe.
Insufficiently queer
Artur Maksimov, his husband Rudolf, and their adopted son Viktor were forced to wait for over three years to learn the outcome of their asylum claim. Upon their arrival in Germany in August 2022, they were forced to live in a refugee camp, from where they submitted their application, having had nearly all their cash seized by the state.
Under German law, all asylum seekers must declare their assets, the total amount of which generally determines their eligibility for state benefits. The amount of cash an individual asylum seeker is permitted to bring into the country is also tightly controlled, with any excess being confiscated. In Bavaria, for example, an asylum seeker may bring no more than €200 in cash with them. „
There was definitely no place for LGBT people in our camp in Bamberg — almost everyone there held very negative opinions about queer people.
According to Artur, his family’s first year as asylum seekers in Germany was a living hell. “We were saved from the camp by the human rights group Quarteera, which was able to find us safe accommodation. Time after time the camp administration placed us with religious families, which naturally led to conflict. Radically-minded neighbours demanded that we be housed elsewhere as soon as they found out that we were a gay couple.”
“We were moved three times in the middle of the night to new temporary accommodation, where refugees stay for a day at a time while they recheck documents and find a new place for them to live. We stayed there for weeks, and the fourth time we were moved to a really dangerous place where the police would be called every day to break up fights.”
“There was definitely no place for LGBT people in our camp in Bamberg — almost everyone there held very negative opinions about queer people and had chosen to double down on their pre-existing homophobic views rather than adapt to their new surroundings.”
Moving to a new flat made things easier for the trio, but it was still far from ideal. Viktor, 26, lives with learning difficulties and has a serious form of cerebral palsy. Artur first met him 14 years ago while filming a documentary in his children’s home. Since then, Viktor has become Artur’s ward and calls him dad. Artur, who met his partner Rudolf five years ago, has in turn dedicated his life to fighting for Viktor’s rights to proper care and treatment.
Of the over 8,000 asylum claims made by Russian refugees in 2024, Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) granted just 414, rejecting 3,652, and putting another 4,000 on hold pending the provision of further information, a 19% decrease from 2023. „
The current policy on migrants is in direct contradiction of the 1951 Refugee Convention, as they are breaking families up into separate cases to make it easier for them to reject applications.
Things became easier for Artur, Rudolf and Viktor in March 2025, when both Rudolf and Artur’s asylum claims were approved. However, a few weeks later, the German authorities wrote formally rejecting Viktor’s own asylum claim, reasoning that as Viktor himself was not LGBTQ+, he was not considered at risk in Russia. Since then the family has been left in limbo.
“To this day, our son is still considered an asylum seeker,” Artur explains, adding that they’re appealing the ruling. “The current policy on migrants is in direct contradiction of the 1951 Refugee Convention, as they are breaking families up into separate cases to make it easier for them to reject applications. According to them, we were not able to prove that a young man with a severe disability and no support network in Russia would be in danger if he was forced to return.”
Arthur and Rudolf got married in Germany and have been awarded joint custody of Viktor until 2030. The denial of Viktor’s asylum claim seems even more suspect when taking German law into account, where a person in the care of their relatives is legally considered a child until the age of 25 and therefore cannot be separated from their legal guardians. As Viktor was still 25 when BAMF rejected his asylum claim, the agency appears to have simply ignored the fact that, legally, his case should have been considered alongside that of his adoptive father.
The ramifications of this situation have inevitably been far reaching, and the German authorities shortly afterwards withdrew their social housing without offering any guidance on what to do with their mobility-impaired son.
The family nevertheless managed to find a new apartment in Nuremberg, but were ultimately unable to move into it due to Viktor’s status as an asylum seeker. The three are currently still living in social housing albeit in an awkward legal limbo. „
The whole process was like some tragic comedy. The representative from the migration authorities came several hours late due to the snow, and it turns out that our translator held certain anti-LGBT views.
Artur can hardly contain his emotions when discussing their situation. “They issued Viktor a temporary stay of deportation order, which didn’t have a specific timeframe. How would immigration enforcement react to that? We know how these authorities work very well — they break down the door in the middle of the night and march people out at gunpoint.”
On 29 January, Viktor’s case went to court. His adoptive family are hoping for a miracle, but they have little faith in the justice system. When the date of the hearing was decided in December, the trio received a foreboding notification, stating that free legal aid would be withdrawn, as the court did not foresee a positive outcome in their case.
“Quarteera arranged some support for us at the courthouse. Around 34 people came, mainly from German human rights and student groups. It was a really big boost for us,” recalls Artur. “The whole process was like some tragic comedy. The representative from the migration authorities came several hours late due to the snow, and it turns out that our translator held certain anti-LGBT views. She couldn’t even bring herself to say the word ‘gay’ for the first half of the hearing. She described us as ‘belonging to that LGBT party,’ which made people whisper and laugh.”
Artur says that despite everything, he remains hopeful. “We just want to be safe and happy. I am grateful that Germany has accepted our family. I had fought the system for so long and spoken out so much against the war and against Putin that becoming refugees became our only option. We are hoping to stay here and that justice will win out.”
Maria Kristina
Maria and Kristina’s life has been an endless series of asylum claims and rejections since the couple left Russia for Finland three and a half years ago. Having always been out in Russia, not to mention posting war-critical content online, both women were accustomed to receiving threats. Indeed, by the time Maria fled to Finland, the Russian police had already paid her parents a visit and questioned her mother about her daughter’s whereabouts.
Meanwhile in Finland, Maria had her claim for asylum rejected, after a court ruled that she had been unable to prove that staying in Russia would be dangerous for her. “We were completely blindsided by the decision. We were sure that everything would be fine because we had a strong case, but when our claim was rejected we discovered that our legal aide hadn’t filled out the paperwork correctly, meaning that the court didn’t consider a lot of our evidence.”
“For example, my mother’s testimony about the visit by the police was not taken into account. We therefore think that the court is at fault for not providing us with adequate legal assistance.”
As is the case with nearly every failed asylum bid, Finland’s Supreme Court refused to review Maria and Kristina’s case, and so the couple decided to submit a fresh application, this time including documents and testimony confirming their public statements, including their support for independent Russian media.
In February last year, the couple submitted their second asylum claim, before being sent to a deportation processing centre. “We expected the migration service’s decision on 15 December, but we heard nothing. Our lawyer has reassured us that this time around they will grant us asylum. If we are refused again, the court will be on our side. The more absurd the decision the migration authorities take, the greater our chances are that it will be overruled by the courts.”
A message from murderers
Mark Yakovlev was born in Makhachkala, in the republic of Dagestan. He is now 19, but fled Russia as soon as he became an adult. While he was still in college, one of his tutors publicly insulted Mark. The teacher was subsequently fired, but the other students turned on Mark and bullied him. They threatened him, filmed him admitting under duress that he was a homosexual and leaked the clip online along with his picture and home address. When Mark filmed a suicide note on top of an 18-story building, he received a message saying, “Hooray, one less gay in Dagestan!” Thankfully, he was saved that night.
At 16, Mark moved from Makhachkala, the capital of the ultra-conservative republic of Dagestan in Russia’s North Caucasus, to St. Petersburg where he became involved in LGBT activism, started his own blog about queer rights and began giving regular media interviews. At 18, he left Russia for Yerevan, from where he applied for a humanitarian visa in France, which was ultimately rejected.
Mark’s friend Aishat Baymadurova, a refugee from Chechnya, was murdered in Yerevan in autumn 2025, having been stranded there after the German humanitarian visa she had applied for was rejected. On the same day they strangled Aishat to death, her killers sent Mark a message from one of her social media accounts promising that he would soon be found himself.
This was not the first time Mark had received death threats since his arrival in Armenia, however, where aggressive responses to his involvement in local queer campaigns over the previous year both online and in his daily life had become the norm. The denial of his asylum claim by the French authorities forced him to reconsider his options. “I flew to Sarajevo, and from there I was sent to Bihać, a town on the border with Croatia,” recalls Mark. “The Bosnians let me go, and the Croatians refused to accept me. I described my situation as an LGBT activist but they didn’t choose to listen, because it was a Saturday of all reasons. They told me to come back on Monday.”
“I found a hostel in Bosnia and waited until Monday, but at the start of the week my mother called me; she said that the police had come and informed her that I was wanted for discrediting the Russian military. They said that it would be better to return to Russia and deal with the police directly. I don’t know whether it was just an idle threat or a genuine one. I checked and there was nothing on both the old and new versions of the court website. This is probably because they are still gathering evidence. I will only find out for certain if I go to the police myself.”
Mark suspects that his anti-war content, which has garnered millions of views, is the reason for this alleged investigation.
After receiving his mother’s news Mark consulted with a human rights organisation and decided to return to Yerevan, to submit a second humanitarian visa application. He had heard awful stories from other refugees in Croatia; for example, a gay couple from Russia were threatened with murder and psychologically pressured in a refugee camp in Zagreb, with the guards being aware of the situation but not intervening.
Mark says he remains hopeful that he will eventually be granted asylum in Europe and that he can live safely there. For now though, he is living with friends in Yerevan and attempting to find work, though he says that his “typically gay appearance” has made that difficult, in the service industry at least. ]]> Mon, 16 Mar 2026 16:49:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/16/moscow-mayor-claims-russian-military-thwarted-mass-ukrainian-drone-strikes-over-weekend-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/16/moscow-mayor-claims-russian-military-thwarted-mass-ukrainian-drone-strikes-over-weekend-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said in a Telegram post on Monday that over 250 Ukrainian drones targeting the Russian capital had been intercepted by the Russian military over the weekend.
If confirmed, the barrage of Ukrainian drones would be the largest attack on Moscow since the start of the year. However, due to the severe internet outages that have plagued the city for over two weeks, the veracity of Sobyanin’s claims have proven challenging to verify.
Reports of Ukrainian drone strikes appeared primarily in Telegram channels known to have close ties to Russia’s security apparatus, and lacked the photo or video evidence from witnesses which has characterised previous Ukrainian drone attacks deep inside Russia.
Residents allegedly witnessed drones flying overhead in several areas west and northwest of Moscow. Explosions were said to have been heard in nearby cities including Podolsk, Dubna and Domodedovo, and in the military town of Kubinka.
Novaya Gazeta Europe examined several Telegram channels associated with residents and local governments in these areas, but found no reports of drone sightings, and little evidence that residents had witnessed anything unusual.
One Telegram channel based in Dubna reported on air defence operations on Sunday evening, but comments from residents were mostly complaints of power outages. Almost all other local channels checked by Novaya Gazeta Europe seem to have missed the massive drone strike entirely.
On Saturday, Ukrainian media outlet Exilenova+ published three videos purporting to show drone strikes on Moscow, but did not specify where or when the videos were taken. Novaya Gazeta Europe found no other independent evidence of the strikes.
Russian open source intelligence analyst Kirill Mikhailov told independent news outlet Agentstvo that the lack of visual confirmation of the drones was highly unusual, adding that “even the smallest number of drones” would normally result in photo or video evidence.
The alleged drone strikes on Moscow come during the second week of massive internet outages in the capital, which the Kremlin has publicly attributed to necessary countermeasures against sophisticated Ukrainian drone attacks.
However, the recent implementation of “whitelists” of approved websites on Moscow’s internet networks suggest that the outages are part of a wider Kremlin crackdown on uncensored access to online content, which has seen popular platforms such as Whatsapp and Telegram targeted by the authorities.]]> Mon, 16 Mar 2026 12:36:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/16/kremlin-declines-to-comment-on-reports-that-mojtaba-khamenei-is-in-moscow-hospital-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/16/kremlin-declines-to-comment-on-reports-that-mojtaba-khamenei-is-in-moscow-hospital-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has declined to comment on media reports that Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has been transferred to Moscow for medical treatment after he was severely injured in the Israeli airstrike that killed his father on 28 February, TASS reported on Monday.
The claim was first circulated by the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida on Sunday, after widespread reports that Khamenei was severely injured in the attack that killed his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei late last month.
Citing a “high-ranking source close to the new Iranian supreme leader”, Al-Jarida claimed that Vladimir Putin personally offered Khamenei medical treatment in the Russian capital during a phone call with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Thursday, after which, it said, a Russian military plane flew the new supreme leader to Moscow later the same day.
When asked about Al-Jarida’s claims during a press briefing in Moscow on Monday, Peskov said that the Kremlin did “not comment in any way on such reports”.
Initial American claims that Mojtaba Khamenei had been “disfigured” in the Israeli attack on the Khamenei compound in Tehran were first substantiated on Wednesday by Iran’s own ambassador to Cyprus, Alireza Salarian, who said in an interview that the younger Khamenei had been “lucky to survive the strike”, which killed six of his family members.
The new ayatollah reportedly sustained severe injuries to his leg, arm and hand. As a result of his condition, his first public address to Iranians after his appointment on 8 March was delivered by proxy, with a newsreader reading a prepared statement on Iranian state TV.
One of Russia’s closest allies in the Middle East, Iran enjoys a close “strategic partnership” with Moscow against US and NATO interests in the region. Putin immediately condemned the US assassination of Ali Khamenei as a “cynical murder”, and pledged Russia’s “unwavering support for Tehran” during its efforts to “resist armed aggression”.
Mojtaba Khamenei would not be the first Middle Eastern leader to be evacuated to Russia in times of crisis. After rebels toppled Syria’s government in December 2024, the country’s Moscow-backed dictator, Bashar Al-Assad, was flown into exile in the Russian capital, where he is currently reported to be living in a luxury apartment complex.]]> Mon, 16 Mar 2026 11:44:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/16/russian-soldiers-ordered-to-delete-telegram-as-nationwide-block-begins-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/16/russian-soldiers-ordered-to-delete-telegram-as-nationwide-block-begins-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
Russian soldiers on the front lines in Ukraine have been ordered to delete the popular messaging app Telegram, with those not doing so threatened with transfer to the Russian military’s dangerous Storm-Z penal units, according to pro-war Russian Telegram channels.
The reports come amid evidence that a nationwide block against Telegram in Russia has already begun, after 18,000 people submitted reports to а Russian outage-tracking website that they were having problems accessing the app over the weekend.
On Sunday, Russian pro-war Telegram channel Dva Mayora reported that “orders have been issued on the front to delete Telegram from mobile phones”, citing unnamed sources in the Russian army.
Dva Mayora added that Russia’s military police had been tasked with checking soldiers’ phones for the app, with those refusing to comply with the order being transferred to Storm-Z penal units, which are made up of former prisoners granted early release to fight in Ukraine, and which have extraordinarily high mortality rates.
The report was confirmed by another pro-war channel, Belorussky Silovik, which said that the orders likely originated from within individual units, rather than the Defence Ministry itself, noting that command structures in a “number of other units” continued to operate via Telegram.
For the past year, Russia has been attempting to drive Telegram users to MAX, a Russian-developed alternative that provides no anonymity or privacy protections for its users. According to Dva Mayora, uptake of MAX on the front lines has been mixed, with some units banning its use entirely, while others have already migrated their chats onto the app.
Telegram is set to be blocked fully in Russia from 1 April, though initial reports suggested that Russian military units in Ukraine could be exempted from the ban. However, Vladimir Putin later indicated that he was in favour of banning the app on the frontlines as well.
Without providing any evidence, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed in February that using Telegram posed a “life-threatening” security risk to Russian troops, due to the alleged cooperation between the Dubai-based platform and the Ukrainian intelligence agencies.]]> Mon, 16 Mar 2026 07:30:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/16/mr-nobody-against-putin-wins-best-documentary-feature-oscar-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/16/mr-nobody-against-putin-wins-best-documentary-feature-oscar-en-news Novosti · Kultura Masters Tom
The documentary Mr Nobody Against Putin, which explores the growing use of military propaganda at a Russian school following the invasion of Ukraine, won Best Documentary Feature at the 98th Academy Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday night.
Pavel Talankin, an educator from the city of Karabash in the Russian Urals, shot much of the footage used in the film during his time working as a videographer at a local school, a role that required him to film “patriotic” events, school plays and parades.
However, he also used the opportunity and his unique access to document the growth of ultranationalist and pro-war propaganda being used to brainwash pupils within the Russian school system. After fleeing Russia, Talankin shared his footage with American director David Borenstein who put the film together.
“Mr Nobody Against Putin is about how you lose your country,” Borenstein said in his acceptance speech. “What we saw when working with this footage is that you lose it through countless small, little acts of complicity.”
Making a allusion to the current political situation in the United States under Donald Trump, Borenstein cautioned that “we all face a moral choice” when “a government murders people on the streets of our major cities, when we don’t say anything when oligarchs take over the media and control how we can produce it and consume it, … But luckily, even a nobody is more powerful than you think.”
Also addressing the academy, Talankin, who spoke in Russian via a translator, said that: “For four years now, we have been looking up at the starry sky and making our most important wish. But there are countries where it is not stars that fall from the sky, but missiles and drones. For the sake of the future, for the sake of the children, stop all wars now.”
When asked to comment on the film’s win on Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that he “couldn’t possibly”, explaining that he hadn’t seen the documentary himself. “To comment on it, you need at least to understand what it’s about. I’ll refrain from making any comments for now.” ]]> Sun, 15 Mar 2026 13:01:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/15/no-pushover-en https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/15/no-pushover-en Kommentariy · Politika Volff Stefan, Gorbatiuk Marina When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the prospects for Moldova did not look good. But four years have now passed and, despite a relentless Russian campaign to destabilise the country, Moldova has survived and made significant progress.
It has, for example, progressed on its path to EU membership. Moldova transitioned from applicant to candidate status several months after the outbreak of the war and formally opened accession negotiations two years later. The government is now carrying out reforms to align with EU standards.
Such progress was not a foregone conclusion given the many challenges Moldova has faced as a result of the war in Ukraine. The country was an early destination for Ukrainian refugees, which put significant pressure on already stretched public services and resources.
With a decades-old foothold in Transnistria, a breakaway region in eastern Moldova, Russia also seemed to have a springboard for conflict escalation in Ukraine’s rear. This foothold gave Moscow a possible destination to push westwards along the Black Sea coast, too.
Russian false-flag operations in April 2022 seemingly provided further evidence that Moscow planned to destabilise Moldova. And one year later, the so-called soccer plot underscored Moscow’s intention to continue its efforts against Moldova. This was a Russian-planned and sponsored attempt to infiltrate Moldova with saboteurs from Russia, Montenegro, Belarus and Serbia.
Perhaps the most serious challenge for Moldova came in January 2025, when Ukraine stopped the transit of Russian gas through its territory. Transnistria, which had for decades been kept completely dependent by Moscow on Russian gas supplies, was plunged into an immediate crisis.
The authorities there cut off central heating and hot water to all residential buildings. They also ordered the closure of industrial enterprises not involved in making critical food products. The impending humanitarian disaster and ensuing information war between Russia, Moldova, Transnistria and the EU over who was to blame posed a serious threat to stability in Moldova yet again.
In addition, two Moldovan elections in recent years presented the Kremlin with an opportunity for interference. Yet, despite Russian meddling, Moldova’s incumbent pro-Europe president, Maia Sandu, secured a second term in 2024. Her party then won another absolute majority in parliamentary elections the following year.
So, how has a small country wedged between Ukraine and Romania with a decades-old conflict of its own managed to withstand Russian pressure?
Early in the war, the most serious danger for Moldova was an escalation of the conflict in Transnistria. While this may have served Moscow’s interests, politicians in Moldova and Transnistria were keen to preserve stability in their relations.
On the Transnistrian side, this was mainly driven by economic interests. The region has been part of the deep and comprehensive free trade area between Moldova and the EU since 2016, and 80% of all exports from Transnistria now go to EU countries.
Economic stability also helps ensure the continuation of the ruling Transnistrian regime. Business and political interests there are often one and the same, embodied in the all-dominant Sheriff conglomerate.
Sheriff dominates Transnistria’s economy, operating a network of supermarkets, gas stations, construction companies, hotels, radio and TV stations and a mobile phone network. It also controls the political party Obnovlenie, which runs the government in the regional capital, Tiraspol.
At the same time, stability reduces the risk of a humanitarian crisis and a refugee wave that could destabilise Moldova. Maintaining the relatively substantial levels of confidence that has been built between the two sides was therefore high on the agenda of politicians in Chișinău and Tiraspol.
The ability of Moldovan and Transnistrian politicians (helped by EU assistance) to avoid a major escalation of the energy crisis in 2025, as well as keeping relations generally stable and predictable over the past four years despite Russian disruption efforts, bodes well for the future.
The Moldovan state budget continues to earmark resources for joint projects involving communities on both banks of the Nistru River, which separates Moldova and Transnistria. This included €1.5 million for 30 projects in 2025, bringing the total investment to over €11 million across more than 600 projects since 2011.
However, while Moldova has weathered storms over recent years effectively, there are still threats to its stability. For example, challenges to the reintegration of Transnistria into Moldova remain. After more than three decades of separation, there are significant social, political, economic and legal hurdles to overcome.
On the one hand, the fact that chief negotiators from both sides met again face-to-face in late February after a 15-month hiatus indicates their commitment to making progress and resolving their differences peacefully and through dialogue. But, on the other hand, there are some signs that trust between the two sides remains fragile.
On the eve of the meeting, Sandu signed a decree revoking the Moldovan citizenship of nine people who serve in the governmental structures of Transnistria. Two of them had also fought against Moldova during the brief civil war in 1992 that created Transnistria. The timing of the decree was condemned by the Transnistrian side for putting undue pressure on Tiraspol.
As Sandu recently acknowledged on the anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, her country’s survival is due to the heroism of Ukrainians in defending their country and thereby keeping Russia away from Moldova. But beyond simple survival, Moldova seems to have emerged stronger from the challenges it has faced.
At a time when the narrative of inevitable Russian victory against Ukraine is beginning to crumble, it is important to remember the limits of the Kremlin’s power. Russia’s neighbours, through their own efforts and with support from their European partners, are not the helpless pawns that Moscow wishes them to be.
This article was first published in The Conversation. Views expressed in opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the position of Novaya Gazeta Europe.
Stefan Wolff is professor of International Security at the University of Birmingham and Marina Gorbatiuc is a researcher at the Centre for Political Research and International Relations at Moldova State University in Chișinău. ]]> Fri, 13 Mar 2026 15:36:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/13/eu-threatens-to-withhold-funds-for-venice-biennale-if-russia-is-allowed-to-participate-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/13/eu-threatens-to-withhold-funds-for-venice-biennale-if-russia-is-allowed-to-participate-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
Russia’s planned participation in this year’s Venice Biennale may constitute a “breach of contract”, which could lead to the EU withholding a €2-million funding package for the event, Reuters reported on Thursday.
At a news conference in Brussels, European Commission spokesperson Thomas Régnier condemned the decision by the Fondazione Biennale to allow Russia to participate in the seven-month contemporary art show, saying that “culture in Europe should promote and safeguard democratic values”, which he said were not honoured in today’s Russia.
Régnier explained that the commission’s funding for the Biennale was at stake, referencing an “ongoing project of €2 million” supporting film producers at the festival. “If there is a breach of the contract, like we have with any grant agreement, the commission will terminate or suspend the contract”.
Régnier’s statement comes two days after a press release from the European Commission on Tuesday, which urged member states to “avoid giving a platform to individuals who have actively supported or justified the Kremlin's aggression against Ukraine”, and promised further action against the Biennale’s organisers, including the suspension or termination of its EU funding.
The announcement last week that Russia would be participating in the 2026 Biennale drew immediate backlash, including from the governments of Ukraine and 21 other European countries.
In a joint letter to Fondazione Biennale president and former right-wing journalist Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, European culture ministers argued that “granting Russia a prestigious international cultural platform sends a deeply troubling signal”, and called for the organisers to reconsider their decision.
Russia has never been formally barred from the Venice Biennale, but chose not to open their pavilion at the last iteration of the festival in 2024, having previously been unable to participate in 2022 due to the last-minute withdrawal of the Russian artists contracted for its pavilion due to their opposition to the war in Ukraine. The Fondazione Biennale has stressed that it does not decide which countries are able to participate in the exhibition, as the nations themselves own the pavilions at the event.
The organisers’ assertion has been refuted by Russian opposition groups, including feminist art collective Pussy Riot, who told their followers on Instagram that allowing Russia to participate would constitute “a political decision by Italy”.
“The Russian pavilion is not an embassy: it is not sovereign territory and does not have diplomatic status”, Pussy Riot said. “This means that the Italian government, the authorities of Venice, and the Biennale itself can say ‘no’ to Russia if they choose to.”]]> Fri, 13 Mar 2026 12:05:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/13/kazakh-court-overturns-deportation-order-for-anti-war-russian-teenager-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/13/kazakh-court-overturns-deportation-order-for-anti-war-russian-teenager-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
An appellate court in western Kazakhstan has overturned a lower court’s order to deport 17-year-old Russian citizen Timur Turkov, who crossed the Kazakh border on foot in September to avoid military conscription, RFE/RL reported on Thursday.
In its ruling, the court found that although Turkov was guilty of crossing the Kazakh border illegally, he could not be deported from the country as Kazakh law does not allow for the deportation of minors.
Turkov’s grandmother and legal guardian, Valentina Turkova, who travelled from Russia to attend the hearing, told the judge that her grandson’s life would be in danger if he was deported from Kazakhstan.
Turkov fled on foot across Russia’s border with Kazakhstan on 12 September, subsequently presenting himself to Kazakh border officials in the city of Oral. Originally from Russia’s Arctic Komi republic and aged 16 at the time, Turkov said that he wanted to claim asylum in Kazakhstan due to the “militarisation of schools” in Russia and his fear of being conscripted and sent to fight in Ukraine upon turning 18.
Minors cannot enter Kazakhstan without the consent of both legal guardians. Turkov was thus left with no choice but to cross the border illegally, as neither of his grandparents supported his decision to emigrate.
On 12 December, a juvenile court in Oral found Turkov guilty of violating Kazakhstan’s migration law, fined him, banned him from entering the country for five years and ordered he be deported back to Russia. That deportation order has now been cancelled.
Tamara Eslyamova, editor-in-chief of a regional newspaper in Oral, noted on Facebook that a representative of the Russian consulate “fought hard” at the hearing to have Turkov returned to Russia, and also attempted to have Turkov’s lawyer, Aigul Orynbekova, removed from the case.
The ruling comes amid warning signs that the Kazakh government is preparing for a mass deportation of anti-war Russians, tens of thousands of whom have fled to Kazakhstan and acquired forged residence permits due to the lack of a pathway to claim asylum.
In recent months, officials in Astana have demonstrated a growing willingness to cooperate with the Kremlin in deporting or extraditing Russian citizens wanted for various crimes in Russia, often on politically motivated grounds.]]> Fri, 13 Mar 2026 10:42:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/13/us-waives-sanctions-on-all-russian-oil-at-sea-amid-iran-war-price-surge-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/13/us-waives-sanctions-on-all-russian-oil-at-sea-amid-iran-war-price-surge-en-news Novosti · Ekonomika Evropa Novaya gazeta
The United States has temporarily waived all sanctions on Russian oil and petroleum products that were loaded onto tankers by 12 March, the US Treasury Department announced on Thursday.
The move will allow any country to purchase and offload Russian oil for 30 days without contravening US sanctions, in a bid to further ease shortages in the global oil market amid price surges sparked by the US and Israel’s war on Iran.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed that the sanctions relief would not provide significant financial benefits to the Russian government, because the Kremlin “derives the majority of its energy revenue from taxes assessed at the point of extraction”.
However, the move will still provide a much-needed boost to the Russian military-industrial complex, which has already seen revenues of €6bn since the start of the war in Iran two weeks ago.
According to data cited by Fox News, the US waiver will apply to approximately 124 million barrels of Russian oil currently loaded on tankers worldwide, which it said would cover “five to six days” of current global supply shortfalls.
At the current Russian Urals price of $89 per barrel, up 60% since last month, that amounts to a further €9.6 billion worth of oil.
In his daily briefing on Friday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov welcomed the move, and said that Russian and the US interests were aligned. “In the current instance, we recognise the United States' actions as an attempt to stabilise energy markets”, he added.
The news comes one week after the US issued a similar 30-day dispensation to India, which eased sanctions on stranded Russian oil for the Indian market only. A spokesperson for the Indian government later rejected the need for “permission from any country” to continue buying oil from Russia.]]> Fri, 13 Mar 2026 09:44:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/13/international-criminal-court-to-investigate-lukashenko-regime-for-crimes-against-humanity-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/13/international-criminal-court-to-investigate-lukashenko-regime-for-crimes-against-humanity-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Thursday opened an investigation into “past and present allegations” of crimes against humanity dating back to 2020 committed by the Belarusian government under dictator Alexander Lukashenko.
The court announced that it had “reasonable grounds” to believe that the authorities in Belarus carried out “coercive acts leading to deportation” of its political opponents as part of state policy that was “approved by the highest levels of government”.
The court added that these crimes seemed to form part of “a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population”, due to the “large scale, the number of victims, and the organised nature of the acts”.
The case was originally referred to prosecutors in The Hague by the government of Lithuania in September 2024, and had been under preliminary examination by the court since then. The ICC examined evidence submitted by Belarusian human rights organisations, which covered “transnational” crimes committed by Lukashenko’s regime against the Belarusian opposition on the territory of both Belarus and Lithuania following widespread anti-government protests in 2020.
Although Belarus itself is not a party to the ICC, any crimes against humanity committed “in part” on the territory of a participating state, such as Lithuania, can fall under the remit of the court. As such, the investigation will concentrate on criminal actions by Lukashenko’s government that resulted in his political opponents being forcibly expelled to Lithuania, as such crimes are considered to have taken place within the ICC’s jurisdiction.
Over half a million Belarusians are believed to have fled the country in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, when Lukashenko launched massive reprisals against his political opponents after hundreds of thousands of Belarusians turned out to protest against the regime. Of those that fled, some 60,000 resided in Lithuania as of 2024.
Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya told her followers that she welcomed the ICC’s decision to open an investigation. “This decision gives us hope that legality will be restored, that the guilty will be held to account, and that the victims will have the right to truth and justice,” she wrote on Telegram.]]> Thu, 12 Mar 2026 14:10:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/12/muscovites-face-second-week-without-online-access-as-kremlins-war-on-internet-continues-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/12/muscovites-face-second-week-without-online-access-as-kremlins-war-on-internet-continues-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
A mass internet outage in Moscow entered its second week on Thursday, with residents of the Russian capital, including lawmakers in Russia’s State Duma, continuing to face difficulties connecting to wireless networks across the city.
Residents first experienced outages in the southern and central districts of Moscow on 5 March, but by Tuesday issues with mobile data and public Wi-Fi networks were being reported in at least 23 districts of the city, as well as by internet users in Russia’s second city St. Petersburg. Russian telecom operators have apologised for the outages, citing circumstances beyond their control.
At a briefing on Wednesday, Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the outages would last "as long as additional measures are necessary to ensure the safety of our citizens." Blaming the need for the internet outages on hostile actions by Ukraine, Peskov claimed that Kyiv’s "increasingly sophisticated attack methods require more technologically advanced countermeasures."
Experts cited by Russian business daily Kommersant on Wednesday estimated that the total economic loss to Moscow’s businesses of the week-long outage could be as much as 5 billion rubles (€54.5 million), with small business owners particularly affected.
Sarkis Darbinyan, a lawyer and co-founder of the Russian anti-internet censorship NGO Roskomsvoboda, told Novaya Gazeta Europe that the outages were likely due to a "wild fear of a repeat of Operation Spiderweb", a meticulously planned remote-controlled drone strike on four Russian airbases launched from within the country by the Security Service of Ukraine in June.
Regional internet outages have been regularly reported across Russia since at least May, the objective of which — officially at least —was preventing potential Ukrainian drone strikes. A similar four-day internet blackout was imposed on Moscow in the run-up to the annual Victory Day parade in May, which Darbinyan said was technologically identical to the current outages.
The latest blackouts are part of a wider Kremlin crackdown on Russians enjoying uncensored access to online content, which has seen popular platforms such as Whatsapp and Telegram targeted by the authorities citing alleged security concerns.
In the Kremlin’s daily briefing on Thursday, Peskov said that the planned block of messenger app Telegram next month could be avoided if the platform acceded to demands that it "comply fully with Russian legislation."
Telegram has previously refused requests from the Russian authorities to hand over the platform’s encryption keys, which would grant authorities a "back door" to spy on private messages sent on the platform.]]> Thu, 12 Mar 2026 12:13:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/12/independence-day-en https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/12/independence-day-en Kommentariy · Obshchestvo Khollovell Leland At Moscow’s 29th Russian Internet Forum in September 2025, the Kremlin’s influential deputy chief of staff, Sergey Kiriyenko, stressed the importance of ensuring Russia’s “internet sovereignty", arguing that only then would it mean “nobody can dictate to us”.
postgraduate student at University College London’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies
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“Only three countries in the world possess the full spectrum of this digital sovereignty: America, China, and, more recently, Russia,” Kiriyenko told delegates. To Kiriyenko’s mind, internet sovereignty can only be provided by Russian companies that are based in Russia, and that comply with Russian legislation.
While Kiriyenko’s September comments appeared to imply that he believed the job was already largely done, since then, the Kremlin has taken further steps to ensure that the internet in Russia remains tightly under its control.
The concept of a "sovereign internet" in Russia is based on legislation passed in 2019, which has drawn comparisons with existing policies in Iran and China. In all three countries, the authorities have attempted to replace foreign-owned social media apps with domestic alternatives, something China has done with particular success.
In recent weeks, Russia has taken various steps to ensure its own digital sovereignty, most notably its total block of popular messenger Whatsapp along with other Meta products last month, and media regulator Roskomnadzor’s announcement that it will be blocking all access to Telegram from 1 April.
Kiriyenko may genuinely believe in the importance of a “sovereign internet”, but he also has a personal interest in forcing well-established foreign-based apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram out of the Russian market, and channeling social media users towards the new state-backed “everything app” MAX instead.
Since MAX was launched last year, the Russian authorities have been attempting to make it the go-to app for Russians. It’s no coincidence that MAX was developed by Russian social media giant VK, whose CEO is Kiriyenko’s son Vladimir, which has led some to dub Kiriyenko père the ”godfather of MAX”.
The degree of privacy MAX offers is near nonexistent, with many analysts alleging that the app is designed to spy on its users on behalf of the state. In addition, Reporters Without Borders has warned that the Kremlin is attempting to make MAX the “backbone of online life”, not just in Russia, but also in the areas of Ukraine it occupies. „
WhatsApp and Telegram’s non-compliance and the reluctance of most Russians to make the switch to MAX are both less significant problems for the Kremlin, with those two apps now harder to access in Russia.
Russia’s drive for digital sovereignity will also affect the residents of Russian-occupied Ukraine, who are required to use Russian numbers. While it’s long been impossible to make phone calls between Russian and Ukrainian SIM cards, the replacement of Telegram and WhatsApp by MAX would make communication between Russian-occupied Ukraine and the rest of the country even harder.
To date, many Russians have opted to continue using Telegram or WhatsApp, using a VPN to access the latter, as the Kremlin has been able to force the owners of both apps to submit to its rules. In December, a source close to the Presidential Administration told Russian independent media outlet Verstka that the authorities may not be able to get Russians, even those working in the government, to switch over to MAX.
WhatsApp and Telegram’s non-compliance and the reluctance of most Russians to make the switch to MAX are both less significant problems for the Kremlin, with those two apps now harder to access in Russia. While many will use a VPN to get around the block, many others will reluctantly switch over to MAX, not least as the app is increasingly required to access certain government services, including for school children and university students.
As a result, it now looks inevitable that MAX will eventually become the most popular messaging app in Russia. Indeed, both the owners of WhatsApp and Telegram have said that they believe this to be the real motivation behind their apps being blocked.
Kiriyenko, who was reportedly not only in favour of banning Telegram, but of adding it to Russia’s list of extremist organisations as well, clearly has an ulterior motive in advocating for MAX. As well as his son being the CEO of the app’s developer VK, his close associate Yury Kovalchuk also stands to benefit from MAX becoming predominant in the Russian market.
Kovalchuk actually owns a majority of VK shares through a holding company called Sogaz, while Kovalchuk’s patron and close friend, Vladimir Putin, also has a direct financial interest in the promotion of MAX, as he also owns shares in Sogaz himself through his cousin’s son.
In addition, it was reportedly Kiriyenko who led the charge to reduce YouTube download speeds in a bid to frustrate the platform’s Russian users and persuade them to migrate to Kremlin-controlled VK Video.
VK video has had mixed success in achieving that goal. That said, it was most likely the security services, with whom Kiriyenko is known to have a difficult relationship, that orchestrated the campaign against Telegram.
Despite this, before YouTube was blocked in Russia, VK Video struggled to achieve widespread popularity. While many big-name creators had VK Video accounts, in most cases their YouTube channels nevertheless remained more popular.
That said, it was most likely the security services that orchestrated the attack against Telegram, with whom Kiriyenko is known to have a difficult relationship. According to the outlet Istories, the increased activity of the FSB has become a problem for the presidential administration, with officials linked to Kiriyenko having been arrested without his prior knowledge.
The Kiriyenko family stands to gain financially from the elevation of both VK and MAX, and the more their competitors are pushed out of Russia’s tech sector. Vladimir Kiriyenko has already been tapped by some analysts as a future high-flyer, assuming his father maintains his influence in the Kremlin.
That influence expanded greatly last year, particularly following the departure of Kiriyenko’s fellow Presidential Administration deputy head Dmitry Kozak, whose role managing the Kremlin’s relations with Armenia, Moldova, and the breakaway Georgian republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, was passed to Kiriyenko. „
If the start of 2026 is anything to go by, Kiriyenko’s influence will continue to grow this year.
Since taking over from Vyacheslav Volodin as the Presidential Administration’s first deputy chief of staff in 2016, Kiriyenko has overseen Russian domestic policy while also growing the role into a far more powerful one than it ever was under Volodin’s tenure, and Kiriyenko has also been tasked with overseeing Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.
He also has a hand in appointments at all levels of government through his links to the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), which overseas, among other programmes that train future politicians and bureaucrats, the School of Governors, from which 55 of Russia’s current 89 governors graduated, and the Time of Heroes programme, which was created to prepare a so-called “new elite” of veterans of the war in Ukraine for government service.
If the start of 2026 is anything to go by, Kiriyenko’s influence will continue to grow this year. However, his personal interest in expanding his family’s influence will likely put him increasingly at odds with other actors within the regime, a likelihood that is only set to increase with time, as the competition between various Kremlin factions to succeed Putin grows.
Views expressed in opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the position of Novaya Gazeta Europe.]]> Thu, 12 Mar 2026 11:58:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/12/russian-political-prisoner-alexey-moskalyov-arrives-in-france-with-daughter-maria-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/12/russian-political-prisoner-alexey-moskalyov-arrives-in-france-with-daughter-maria-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Archer Dzhordzhi
Russian former political prisoner Alexey Moskalyov and his daughter Maria arrived in Paris on Wednesday evening after the pair were granted humanitarian visas and laissez-passer documents allowing them to enter France without passports, Novaya Europe has learnt.
Berlin-based human rights group InTransit helped request the documents from the French Foreign Ministry in late December, although the Moskalyovs had initially planned to obtain German visas.
The Moskalyov family’s persecution began in April 2022, when 13-year-old Maria drew an anti-war picture at school. Her father was subsequently charged with “discrediting” the Russian army, while Maria was sent to an orphanage and later to live with her mother.
On 28 March 2023, the day his verdict was due to be announced, Moskalyov fled his house arrest and attempted to go abroad, but was later detained in Belarus and extradited to Russia where he spent two years in prison.
After his release from prison in October 2024, Moskalyov was repeatedly harassed by the security services, with FSB officers coming to his home and his building being watched.
The Moskalyovs have been facing increasing persecution in Russia in recent months. In late December, the Russian authorities began searching for Maria, whose anti-war Telegram channel could have seen her prosecuted for “discrediting” the Russian army despite still being a minor. This ultimately prompted the pair to leave for Armenia.
They later sought help from InTransit to obtain humanitarian protection in Europe. However, the process was complicated by the gradual closure of schemes aimed at assisting war-critical Russians. Germany stopped considering such applications from May 2025, and its humanitarian visa programme has effectively been frozen since August.
“They have now reached Paris. We are very pleased,” an InTransit coordinator told Novaya Europe, thanking both the German and French Foreign Ministries for their efforts to support the Moskalyovs.]]> Thu, 12 Mar 2026 11:23:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/12/fossil-fuel-exports-earn-russia-eur6bn-since-start-of-war-in-iran-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/12/fossil-fuel-exports-earn-russia-eur6bn-since-start-of-war-in-iran-en-news Novosti · Ekonomika Archer Dzhordzhi
Russia has earned an estimated €6 billion in revenue from fossil fuel exports since Israeli and US strikes on Iran began on 28 February, according to data collected by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), which was published by German NGO Urgewald on Thursday.
The analysis found that Russia took in around €510 million per day from fossil fuel exports in the week following the strikes, 14% above the February daily average, an amount that could fund the purchase of approximately 17,000 Shahed 136 attack drones each day, based on a commonly cited estimate of $35,000 per drone, Urgewald said.
Last week, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a temporary 30-day waiver allowing Indian refiners to buy Russian oil already at sea, a short-term move he said would have only a modest impact on Russia’s income.
However, US President Donald Trump is weighing up a broader rollback of Russian oil sanctions as the Iran conflict caused energy market turbulence. In his first phone call with Vladimir Putin this year on Tuesday, Trump addressed Ukraine, energy and the Iran conflict, reportedly telling Putin that sanctions on “some countries” could be lifted to relieve a global oil shortage.
Campaigners warn that easing sanctions could boost Russia’s war effort in Ukraine by allowing it to stop selling oil at discounted prices and regain access to higher-paying markets.
Alexander Kirk, a sanctions campaigner at Urgewald, said the situation refleted “the reality of fossil fuel geopolitics.”
“This is a political choice. Governments can hold the line on sanctions, or they can signal that if energy prices rise high enough, the West will always find a reason to blink. That choice will not just prolong Ukrainian suffering. It will undermine the security of Europe as a whole,” Kirk added.]]> Thu, 12 Mar 2026 10:54:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/12/moscow-court-hands-perpetrators-of-crocus-city-hall-terror-attack-life-sentences-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/12/moscow-court-hands-perpetrators-of-crocus-city-hall-terror-attack-life-sentences-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
A Moscow military court has sentenced the four perpetrators of the 2024 terror attack on the capital’s Crocus City Hall, in which 149 people lost their lives, and 15 of their accomplices to life imprisonment, Russian state-affiliated news outlet RBC reported on Thursday.
For carrying out the attack, Tajik citizens Shamsidin Fariduni, Dalerzhon Mirzoyev, Murodali Rachabalizoda and Muhammadsobir Fayzov were each given life sentences of between 16–18 years in prison, with their remaining terms to be served in a corrective labour colony.
The court also handed down life sentences to 15 accomplices to the attack, including four men it found guilty of providing the perpetrators with transport and accommodation. The court also imposed fines on 15 of the 19 culprits ranging from 500,000 rubles (€5,470) to 2.7 million rubles (€29,500).
During the seven-month trial, approximately 2,700 experts were consulted and a case file spanning 478 volumes was produced, according to a spokesperson for Russia’s Investigative Committee.
In a post on MAX, the Investigative Committee also said that it had “definitively proved” that the attack was planned and carried out in the interests of Ukraine’s government, “with the goal of destabilising the political situation” in Russia.
The attack on the popular Moscow concert venue took place on 22 March 2024, and in addition to the 149 dead, left around 600 more people injured, after multiple armed men entered the suburban Moscow entertainment complex and opened fire at people gathered there for a concert. Fires were also set on the upper floor of the venue as the shooting continued, with several explosions being reported before the roof eventually collapsed.
The Islamic State — Khorasan (IS-K), a branch of IS which operates primarily in eastern Afghanistan and recruits members from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, claimed full responsibility for the attack in 2024.
An alleged member of IS-K was arrested in the United States in March 2025 accused of planning several terrorist attacks, including that on the Crocus City Hall. Mohammad Sharifullah confessed to the FBI that he had taught the perpetrators of the attack in Moscow to use rifles and other weapons on behalf of the IS-K leadership.
Moscow has repeatedly asserted that Ukraine was also involved in planning the attack, however, a charge which Kyiv has always categorically denied.]]> Wed, 11 Mar 2026 15:51:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/11/fourteen-new-russian-names-added-to-forbes-world-billionaires-list-in-2026-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/11/fourteen-new-russian-names-added-to-forbes-world-billionaires-list-in-2026-en-news Novosti · Ekonomika Pich Sem
The 2026 World's Billionaires List, which was published by Forbes Magazine on Tuesday, includes 14 new Russian billionaires, bringing the country’s total to 149 and with a new name topping the list.
According to Forbes, of the 14 new Russian billionaires added to its annual list, 10 were self-made, while four inherited wealth generated during Russia’s post-Soviet privatisation spree in the early 1990s.
Seven of the new billionaires are involved in agriculture and the food industry, the richest of whom, Alexander Tkachyov, a former agriculture minister and governor of the Krasnodar region who is now the majority shareholder in the company Agrocomplex, has been sanctioned by the EU, UK, Canada, and Australia for his support for Russian actions in Ukraine.
Agrocomplex, which was formerly controlled by Tkachyov’s father, acquired large quantities of land during his tenure as Russian agriculture minister between 2015–2018, a position which he denied created a conflict of interest. According to The Wall Street Journal, in the first year of Russia’s war in Ukraine, Agrocomplex seized over 1,500 square kilometers of farmland in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
At first glance, 2026 marks the fourth year that the number of Russian businessmen on the list has grown, however, confusion over the nationalities of Russian billionaires in the 2025 list meant the initial report including 146 Russian businessmen had to be amended to include an additional 24 names including Alisher Usmanov, the founder of global conglomerate USM, who had been listed as Uzbek.
At the top of the list of richest Russians in 2026, overtaking Lukoil’s Vagit Alekperov, who was the richest Russian in the world for the previous two years, was steel tycoon Alexey Mordashov, with an estimated net worth of $37 billion (€31.8 billion). Once again, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk topped the global ranking by a considerable margin with a net worth of $839 billion (€724.7 billion). ]]> Wed, 11 Mar 2026 14:37:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/11/artist-given-17-year-sentence-for-tearing-down-military-recruitment-flyers-in-russias-far-east-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/11/artist-given-17-year-sentence-for-tearing-down-military-recruitment-flyers-in-russias-far-east-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
A 54-year-old artist from Khabarovsk, in Russia’s Far East, has been sentenced to 17 years in a penal colony for tearing down Russian Army recruitment flyers at the behest of “Ukrainian intelligence”, the Khabarovsk region’s Prosecutor’s Office announced on Wednesday.
Artist and fashion designer Yelena Karaniku was convicted of treason and “participation in the activities of a terrorist organisation” after a court found her guilty of tearing down at least 14 military recruitment flyers. As well as her long custodial sentence, Karaniku was ordered to pay a fine of 200,000 rubles (€2,166).
Karaniku, who was detained by the authorities in Khabarovsk in January, was originally found guilty and sentenced by a military court on 19 February. Prosecutors alleged that Karaniku had shared photographs of several of the flyers, as well as information she had found online about a dead Russian soldier, with a Ukrainian intelligence officer “in exchange for travel abroad”.
According to information provided by If There Was No War, an independent database of political prisoners in Russia, the case against Karaniku stemmed from Telegram correspondence she entered into with the Freedom of Russia Legion, a Ukraine-based paramilitary group composed of Russian citizens. Karaniku was initially arrested on suspicion of “collaborating with a foreign government”, before terrorism and treason charges were added to her docket.
Born in Khabarovsk, Karaniku had lived in Greece since 2000 before returning to Russia to visit relatives in 2020. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 she had wanted to leave the country, but was unable to do so.
The Freedom of Russia Legion was declared a terrorist organisation by Russia’s Supreme Court in March 2023, meaning that Russian citizens who join or collaborate with the group can face up to 20 years in jail.
In recent years, Moscow has used an increasingly broad definition of terrorism to arrest and detain large numbers of political prisoners, including teenager Arseny Turbin, who was found guilty of applying to join the Freedom of Russia Legion when he was just 15. ]]> Wed, 11 Mar 2026 11:45:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/11/peskov-warns-russias-influence-abroad-undermined-by-its-refusal-to-use-hostile-social-media-platforms-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/11/peskov-warns-russias-influence-abroad-undermined-by-its-refusal-to-use-hostile-social-media-platforms-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has warned that Russia’s own policy of not using “hostile” social media platforms such as Telegram to spread its message abroad was effectively depriving the Kremlin of a useful propaganda tool, TASS reported on Wednesday.
Speaking at a technology and media conference held at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, Peskov warned that the Russian government’s policy of not using foreign-owned social media platforms to broadcast its narratives was harming the Kremlin’s ability to project influence abroad, especially in countries belonging to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the grouping of post-Soviet states that maintain friendly ties with Moscow.
Stressing that traditional methods for spreading propaganda, such as television broadcasts, were no longer effective outside Russia’s borders, Peskov said: “We don’t work with Telegram. So how are we supposed to get our message across? We will have to figure that out.”
Domestically, Russia has been waging war on foreign social media platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram for over a year, with WhatsApp being blocked in Russia since February and Telegram set to be entirely blocked in the country from 1 April.
Peskov’s comments suggest that attempts to promote Russia’s home-grown, state-backed “everything app” MAX have been met with limited success abroad. On Tuesday, MAX celebrated the platform reaching 100 million registered users, although it did not specify how many of those were located outside Russia.
On Thursday, MAX announced that it was beginning to register new users in 40 additional markets across Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East, having already been accessible to users in most of the CIS since November.
The Kremlin’s planned Telegram ban and aggressive promotion of MAX has sparked widespread discontent in Russia, including among pro-Kremlin bloggers and government officials.
Planned protests in defence of Telegram were shut down by the authorities in at least eight Russian cities in recent weeks, while Russian internet users warned last week that MAX’s mobile application contains spyware that can detect the illicit use of virtual private networks.]]> Wed, 11 Mar 2026 09:46:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/11/six-killed-and-42-injured-in-ukrainian-missile-strike-on-russian-city-of-bryansk-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/11/six-killed-and-42-injured-in-ukrainian-missile-strike-on-russian-city-of-bryansk-en-news Novosti · Politika Masters Tom
Seven people were killed and another 42 were injured in a Ukrainian missile strike on the western Russian city of Bryansk on Tuesday, according to Bryansk region Governor Alexander Bogomaz.
Describing the strike as an “inhumane act” of terror, Bogomaz said that all the injured had been taken to hospital where they were receiving medical assistance.
The target of the Ukrainian attack was, according to Ukraine’s Defence Ministry, the city’s Kremniy El microelectronics plant, which it described as “a key supplier of microchips for Russian precision weapons”.
Confirming that it had used Storm Shadow missiles in the strike, the ministry said that the attack had damaged production facilities and that its “systematic pressure on Russia’s military-industrial complex” was continuing.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky congratulated the Armed Forces of Ukraine on successfully striking the factory. “This plant produced control systems for all types of Russian missiles. Well, congratulations. Our armed forces are doing a great job. Thank you for your service,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram.
Footage shot elsewhere in Bryansk that was subsequently shared online showed that missile or drone debris also struck elsewhere in the city, with several fires reportedly starting.
Bogomaz announced a day of mourning on Wednesday for those killed in the strike, saying that flags would be flown at half-mast in the region, and requesting that local TV stations cancel their normal programming. ]]> Tue, 10 Mar 2026 16:30:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/10/first-fine-issued-for-sharing-content-on-russian-everything-app-max-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/10/first-fine-issued-for-sharing-content-on-russian-everything-app-max-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Pich Sem
The first fine for sharing illegal content on MAX, the state-controlled super app that the Russian government is hoping will supersede Telegram and WhatsApp, was issued by a court in Russia’s North Caucasus on 3 March, investigative journalism outlet Verstka reported on Tuesday.
A court in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region fined local resident Ivan Kazhan 1,000 rubles (€11) for posting an image that contained the symbols of a banned criminal organisation on MAX, Verstka said.
The photo, which Kazhan set as his profile picture, showed a tattoo that included an octogram, or an eight-pointed star, which, according to the court, is a symbol of the AUE, an underground criminal code that forbids all cooperation with the police and acts as a parallel justice system in Russian prisons. The group was banned by the Russian government in 2020.
Kazhan came under investigation in February, and admitted his guilt when interviewed by the police. The case, according to Verstka, is the first in which a fine had been issued for posting content on MAX. According to the SOVA Centre, which monitors Russian anti-extremist legislation, the majority of fines issued for social media posts are for content published on Russian platform VK.
The Russian government has been pushing MAX, a new state-backed “everything app”, as an alternative to popular privately-owned social media such as Telegram, which according to Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, will be blocked on 1 April.
The new app contains a form of spyware that can detect when a device is using a virtual private network, a feature often used to access blocked websites that is banned by the Russian government. ]]> Tue, 10 Mar 2026 15:44:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/10/russian-lawmakers-seek-to-remove-automatic-right-to-postpone-conscription-during-appeal-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/10/russian-lawmakers-seek-to-remove-automatic-right-to-postpone-conscription-during-appeal-news Novosti · Politika Pich Sem
Deputies in the lower chamber of the Russian parliament have introduced a bill that would allow conscripts to be drafted into the military regardless of whether they appeal against the military commission’s decision to call them up, according to documents posted on the State Duma’s website on Tuesday.
Under current legislation, conscripts who wish to appeal a military commission’s decision to draft them into the Russian military can do so in court, a process that automatically suspends their conscription until the conclusion of court proceedings.
The proposed law would make any suspension of an individual’s conscription subject to the court’s discretion. According to nonprofit human rights organisation Conscript School, which campaigns for a fully professional Russian army, the new law changes the phrasing from “the decision of the draft commission is suspended until the court decision comes into force”, to “the decision of the draft commission may be suspended by the court”.
Alexey Tabalov, the director of Conscript School, criticised the change, saying that “the current legal norm insures against arbitrariness, without it this arbitrariness will become total”, adding that under the new legislation, “it will become much more difficult to defend your rights” as a conscript.
In November, Vladimir Putin signed a new bill into law expanding the conscription system, and extending the time frame given to military enlistment officers to draft recruits, making it possible year round, rather than limited to two seasonal windows.]]> Tue, 10 Mar 2026 14:46:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/10/biennial-blues-en https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/10/biennial-blues-en Data · Kultura Evropa Novaya gazeta If Russia winning its first Paralympic gold medal since 2014 at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics on Monday wasn’t shocking enough given the country’s invasion of Ukraine recently entered its fifth year, Russia’s attempted return to the international artistic fold at this year’s Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art does seem to be generating widespread outrage.
Russia’s return to its storied pavilion at the Giardini will be the country's first appearance at the prestigious artworld event since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when the Russian artists awarded the commission withdrew from the project in protest, leaving the pavilion to stand empty for the duration of the seven-month event.
The Russian art collective Pussy Riot, several members of which have first-hand knowledge of just how little tolerance the Putin regime has for self-expression, was among the first to express its outrage at the scale of the international community’s collective amnesia about the Kremlin’s crimes and argued strongly against allowing its return to the art world’s most prestigious event.
Original sin
The irony is that Russia was never actually banned from participating in the biennale — the last-minute withdrawal of Russian artists Kirill Savchenkov and Alexandra Sukhareva, as well as the Russian pavilion’s Lithuanian curator Raimundas Malašauskas, in 2022 left Moscow no option but to skip the event, with the three calling the war “politically and emotionally unbearable,” and insisting that there was “no place for art in conflict”.
No doubt sensing that the international community wasn’t ready for a Russian return to Venice ahead of the next biennale in 2024, Russia simply loaned its coveted pavilion in the main walkway of the Giardini to its friends in Bolivia, a rather brilliant way to shield itself from any further criticism while also burnishing its credentials as a force for good in the Global South.
Since then, that zero-sum game appears to have been transformed into one that Moscow believes it has a chance to profit from, and so has re-entered the fray for the 61st biennale, which is due to open on 9 May, a date already considered auspicious in Putinist Russia, being a national holiday of an increasingly jingoistic nature on which the Soviet Union’s (single-handed) triumph over Nazi Germany is celebrated.
“I would like to note that Russia never left the Venice Biennale,” Putin’s Special Representative for International Cultural Cooperation Mikhail Shvydkoy, told ARTnews last week. “Therefore, since we have not gone anywhere, we are not ‘returning.’ We are simply seeking new forms of creative activity in the current circumstances.”
Citing the fact that the exhibit being mounted at this year’s Russian pavilion will involve more than 50 artists from all over the world, Shvydkoy said that this was “further proof that Russian culture is not isolated, and that attempts to ‘cancel’ it — undertaken for the past four years by Western political elites — have not succeeded.”
“That is precisely why we decided to create a project in which a multilingual polyphony of cultures will be heard — cultures that do not consider themselves peripheral in relation to the West,” he added.
Pie in the sky
Titled “The Tree is Rooted in the Sky,” the exhibit will centre on the idea that “politics exists within temporary dimensions, whereas cultures communicate in eternity,” Shvydkoy explained. “In our new project, eternity prevails over momentary concerns, culture over politics… unfortunately, not everyone is capable of understanding this.”
On the Russian pavilion's Instagram page, the project is described as a “wide-ranging cultural initiative”. The organisers plan to make the space one in which “a true musical festival will come to life, featuring musicians from various regions of Russia and from countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Mali, and Mexico.”
The event aims to highlight “the creative potential of peripheral areas and practices, showcasing traditions, musical languages, and experimental approaches that emerge far from major cultural centers”, but precisely because of this, it will also “preserve an authentic and innovative expressive power”. „
”No one can deprive Russia of the right to artistic self-expression,” Shvydkoy said defiantly.
“Through the meeting of different cultures, the project aims to create a space for dialogue and exchange, where local roots can intertwine with global visions, generating new artistic perspectives and strengthening a sense of international community,” the post continues.
“Various sanctions may be devised, and official Western institutions may be prohibited from working with us, but no one can deprive Russia of the right to artistic self-expression,” Shvydkoy said defiantly, though he added that the Biennale itself was “ready to seek a compromise [to ensure the pavilion remains open], naturally without wishing to jeopardise the work of the entire Venice Biennale.”
The organisers of the Biennale themselves have stressed that they do not decide which countries will participate in the exhibition.
Curated by Rostec
It could perhaps be argued that the Russian pavilion at Venice wasn’t inherently political in nature, were it not for the fact that Anastasia Karneyeva, who was appointed its commissioner in 2021 for an eight-year term, is the daughter of Nikolay Volobuev, who has been the deputy director general of Rostec, a state-owned defence conglomerate, for almost two decades.
Prior to that appointment, Volobuev served in FSB and in its Soviet-era predecessor the KGB, as well as the deputy head of Russia’s customs authority. He is also on Kalashnikov’s board of directors, making the appointment of Karneyeva a political one — there are simply no coincidences like this in Putinist Russia.
Karneyeva is married to Moscow businessman Dmitry Karneyev, who, according to independent Russian media outlet Proekt, from 2010–2017 was chairman of the board of the commercial bank Khovansky, “which since the 1990s has been used for financial transactions by the Izmailovo organised crime group”.
Having studied at University College London, Karneyeva went on to work for Christie's auction house in Russia before becoming a self-styled “collector and patron of contemporary artists” alongside Yekaterina Vinokurova, the daughter of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, with whom she owns Smart Art, the company that was ultimately awarded the contract to manage the Russian pavilion in the Giardini.
Running riot
Upon learning of Russia’s planned comeback at this year’s Venice Biennale, Pussy Riot immediately announced that they would be leading the push back, denouncing the move as “a political decision by Italy” and publicly accusing the event’s organisers of lying when they said that Russia’s participation was beyond their control.
“The Biennale consists of the main international exhibition and national pavilions. One of them is the Russian pavilion. However, although the building belongs to Russia, it is located in the Giardini, which are the property of the Italian state and the city of Venice, and it functions only through agreements with the Biennale. The president of the Biennale is appointed by the Italian government,” the group’s statement said.
“The Russian pavilion is not an embassy: it is not sovereign territory and does not have diplomatic status. This means that the Italian government, the authorities of Venice, and the Biennale itself can say ‘no’ to Russia if they choose to.”
Pussy Riot also described Russia’s participation in the Biennale as “a serious blow to Europe’s security”, and noted that since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, cultural “soft power” had become part of Russia’s military doctrine and an instrument of hybrid warfare.
“It is the cultural expansion of imperial Russia into the heart of Europe. Pussy Riot is coming to Biennale with an intervention. We want to express unconditional support for Ukraine, for the victims of Russian war crimes, for Russian political prisoners, and for Ukrainian prisoners of war.”
Pussy Riot ended its statement by lamenting the fact that Russia’s “best” citizens were nowadays either “sitting in prison for anti-war gestures or have been killed — while Europe opens its doors to Putin's officials and propagandists”.]]> Tue, 10 Mar 2026 13:11:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/10/kazakhstan-preparing-mass-deportation-of-anti-war-russians-rights-group-warns-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/10/kazakhstan-preparing-mass-deportation-of-anti-war-russians-rights-group-warns-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee is investigating dozens of draft-age Russian men it suspects of possessing counterfeit residence permits, Russian legal defence advocacy group Slovo Zashite warned on Tuesday.
In a post on Telegram, Slovo Zashite said that several human rights activists, who wished to remain anonymous, had been assisting Russian anti-war migrants residing in Kazakhstan since the investigation began in late February.
The activists said they feared the investigation could lead to a “mass deportation” of Russians who have fled to Kazakhstan to avoid military conscription at home, noting that the investigators assigned to the case had been working with unusual speed, interrogating three to four people at a time.
According to Slovo Zashite, the number of Russian citizens currently residing in Kazakhstan in a legal “grey area” could be in the tens of thousands, as obtaining legal permanent residency in the country is only possible for those employed in Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan has previously “turned a blind eye” to the availability of fake residence permits to Russians fleeing conscription, who lack alternative routes to normalise their legal status in the country, Slovo Zashite said.
Pointing to the fact that the investigation is being led by the National Security Committee rather than Kazakhstan’s migration police, and that it has so far targeted individual Russian migrants rather than those producing the fake permits, activists believe that the investigation is being carried out in collaboration with the Kremlin.
Kazakhstan has been one of the main destinations for Russians fleeing the country since the invasion of Ukraine, due primarily to its large Russian-speaking population and visa-free regime for Russian citizens. According to Kazakh government data, in March 2025, 87,000 Russian citizens held permanent residency in Kazakhstan, making them by far Kazakhstan’s largest immigrant population.
In recent months, however, Astana has demonstrated a growing willingness to cooperate with the Russian government and deport or extradite Russian citizens wanted for various crimes in Russia, often on politically motivated grounds.
In February, Kazakhstan deported Ukrainian citizen Alexander Kachurkhin to Russia, where he was immediately charged with treason for an alleged bank transfer to Ukraine. A former volunteer for Alexey Navalny, Yuliya Yemelyanova, is currently facing extradition in Almaty after being detained by Kazakhstan in February.]]> Tue, 10 Mar 2026 11:35:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/10/trump-and-putin-discuss-iran-and-ukraine-in-first-phone-call-since-december-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/10/trump-and-putin-discuss-iran-and-ukraine-in-first-phone-call-since-december-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin held an hour-long telephone conversation on Monday, Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov told reporters on Monday evening.
Ushakov said that the focus of the leaders’ “frank and constructive” conversation was on the situation in Iran and “trilateral negotiations on the Ukrainian settlement”, adding that the White House had requested the call.
In his conversation with Trump, Putin reportedly expressed his support for a swift “political and diplomatic settlement” of the war in Iran, Russia’s long-term strategic partner. In turn, Trump gave his assessment of US-Israeli operations in the Middle East, which Ushakov called a “substantive and useful exchange of views”.
Putin also told Trump that Russian troops were “advancing very successfully in Ukraine”, and noted that Kyiv should feel under pressure to make further concessions in peace negotiations as a result, Ushakov said. The issue of the US intervention in Venezuela was also raised in relation to the current instability in global oil markets, he added.
The phone call was the first held between the two leaders since December, and both Trump and Putin reportedly reaffirmed their earlier commitment to stay in contact on a regular basis.
Speaking to reporters in Miami after the call on Monday, Trump called the conversation “positive” and indicated he would be lifting sanctions on “some countries” to relieve a global oil shortage triggered by the war in the Middle East, which has sent crude oil prices rocketing past $100 per barrel.
The US has already issued a dispensation allowing Indian refiners to purchase Russian oil without facing sanctions. Further sanctions relief from the US would provide a much-needed injection of export revenue to Russia’s economy as oil prices continue to rise.
The amicable phone call comes less than two weeks after Putin denounced the US assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as a “cynical murder”, since when Russia has consistently voiced its support for Tehran in its war against the US.
On Monday, Putin congratulated Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the assassinated ayatollah, on his appointment as Iran’s new supreme leader, expressing Russia’s “unwavering support for Tehran” and its solidarity with Iran during its efforts to “resist armed aggression”.]]> Mon, 09 Mar 2026 16:27:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/09/anti-corruption-foundation-publishes-kremlins-tailored-autopsy-of-alexey-navalny-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/09/anti-corruption-foundation-publishes-kremlins-tailored-autopsy-of-alexey-navalny-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
Russia’s exiled Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) on Monday published excerpts from an official forensic examination of its founder Alexey Navalny’s body carried out by the Russian authorities in response to rumours that the contents of the report would be leaked by what it described as “sensationalist” media outlets this week.
The report details the results of forensic testing and an extensive autopsy conducted at the Russian Ministry of Health’s Centre for Forensic Medical Expertise (CFME) in the summer of 2024, several months after Navalny’s sudden death in an Arctic penal colony. Its findings had previously not been publicly available.
In a post on X, AFC chair and head of its investigative department Maria Pevchikh said that the report in question had been available both to the ACF and Western scientists for over a year and a half, but had not been released because its contents did “not meet even the most basic ethical standards”.
Stressing that laboratories in five European countries had already proven that Navalny was murdered using epibatidine, a powerful toxin derived from a South American tree frog, Pevchikh warned that the “sanitised” findings from the CFME examination would “add nothing significant” to what was already known about Navalny’s death.
According to the 289-page document, Russian examiners concluded that Navalny died from what they termed a “combined disease”. The report further alleges that Navalny suffered from dangerously high blood pressure that had already caused damage to his blood vessels and organs, as well as widespread scarring of the heart muscle. These conditions were linked to several complications, including brain swelling, arrhythmia, and fluid in the lungs.
Pevchikh charged that the forensic medical examination showed “signs of obvious ‘tailoring’ to fit the desired result: that Navalny died of natural causes”.
"According to the experts we spoke to, the list [of tests performed] is unusually broad and uncharacteristic of what the Kremlin calls ‘death from natural causes’,” Pevchikh added, pointing to the fact that examiners “looked for poisonous substances, including toxins from plants and mushrooms”.
The only unusual substance identified by Russian examiners in Navalny’s body was atropine, an antidote for certain types of poisoning, while the specific toxin which European labs later identified as Navalny’s cause of death, is not mentioned in the report at all.]]> Mon, 09 Mar 2026 14:10:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/09/swedish-prosecutors-charge-russian-citizen-after-shadow-fleet-cargo-ship-seized-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/09/swedish-prosecutors-charge-russian-citizen-after-shadow-fleet-cargo-ship-seized-en-news Novosti · Ekonomika Evropa Novaya gazeta
Prosecutors in Sweden filed criminal charges against the captain of a Russian “shadow fleet” vessel on Monday, after the ship was boarded and impounded by Sweden’s coast guard on Friday as it sailed through Swedish waters.
According to Swedish broadcaster TV4, the charges against a Russian citizen arrested on board the cargo vessel Caffa relate to “gross misuse of false documents, violation of maritime law, and violation of ship safety law”. The ship has also been ruled unseaworthy by the Swedish Transport Agency, which means it cannot leave Sweden until appropriate safety measures have been taken.
Senior prosecutor Adrien Combier-Hogg, who is leading the investigation, told TV4 that the Caffa’s Russian captain presented several certificates and documents that the Swedish authorities suspected of being forged during their search of the ship. “We are now interviewing the suspect and others involved, and reviewing the relevant documents,” he said.
The Russian Embassy in Stockholm confirmed on Sunday that it was “in contact with the relevant Swedish authorities,” and would provide consular assistance to the Russian members of the Caffa’s crew “if necessary.”
The legal proceedings are the result of a Swedish operation on Friday evening codenamed Svart kaffe (Black Coffee), in which the Swedish Coast Guard and a Swedish Police task force boarded the Caffa as it sailed past the southern city of Trelleborg. Images released by Stockholm showed a helicopter and several soldiers landing on board the rusting ship, which it identified as the Caffa.
The Russian-linked vessel was travelling under a false Guinean flag, and sailing with a cargo of grain from the Moroccan port of Casablanca towards St. Petersburg, The Moscow Times reported, adding that a majority of its 11 crew members were Russian nationals.
At a press conference on Saturday afternoon, Daniel Stenling, deputy chief of operations at the Swedish Coast Guard, said that Sweden had acted on information that the Caffa was “present on the Ukrainian sanctions list, where it is alleged that it has been transporting grain stolen from Ukraine.”
Since the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022, Russia has been relying on a clandestine network of so-called “shadow fleet” tankers, with murky documents tracing ownership, registration and insurance, to keep shipping costs down and evade international sanctions on Russian exports and imports.
A growing number of Russian-linked ships have been seized by Western governments over alleged safety violations in recent months, including one oil tanker seized by the Belgian Navy only a week ago.]]> Mon, 09 Mar 2026 12:19:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/09/supreme-court-of-ukraine-upholds-landmark-ruling-recognising-de-facto-same-sex-marriage-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/09/supreme-court-of-ukraine-upholds-landmark-ruling-recognising-de-facto-same-sex-marriage-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
The Supreme Court of Ukraine officially recognised the “de facto” marriage of LGBT activists Zoryan Kis and Tymur Levchuk in a decision on 25 February, the Ukrainian human rights organisation Insight LGBTQ announced on Monday.
The couple had previously been recognised as a family by a Kyiv district court in June, and the Supreme Court upheld that decision in the face of an appeal against it brought by conservative movement Vsi Razom (All Together). The ruling is the first of its kind in Ukraine, where, according to the country’s 1996 constitution, marriage can only be between two members of the opposite sex.
The court process was triggered by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry’s 2024 refusal to acknowledge Levchuk as Kis’s family member, denying him the right to accompany Kis on a diplomatic posting to Israel.
Lawyers for Levchuk and Kis successfully argued that as the couple had lived together since 2013, had been married in an unofficial ceremony in Ukraine in 2016, and had officially registered their marriage in the US in 2021, they should be recognised as a family under Ukrainian law.
Calling the Supreme Court’s ruling “a tremendous precedent”, Insight LGBTQ said that the decision would prevent any “homophobic or conservative organisation” from using the courts “as a tool to persecute or overturn decisions in favor of LGBT+ people under the guise of ‘social morality.’”
Ukraine’s current roadmap for joining the European Union, which was agreed in May, includes a commitment for Kyiv to provide greater recognition and protection for same-sex couples as a prerequisite for its accession to the bloc.
However, Ukrainian rights organisations warned in February that a new draft of the country’s revised Civil Code threatened to nullify the “de facto” recognition obtained by Kis and Levchuk, and provided no alternative pathway for same-sex relationships to be recognised, in contravention of Ukraine’s EU accession requirements.
A proposed law to allow civil unions for Ukrainian same-sex couples introduced in 2023 has been stalled in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada for the past three years due to a lack of necessary approval from the Legal Policy Committee.]]> Mon, 09 Mar 2026 11:56:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/09/varvara-voronchikhina-wins-russias-first-paralympic-gold-since-2014-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/09/varvara-voronchikhina-wins-russias-first-paralympic-gold-since-2014-en-news Novosti · Sport Evropa Novaya gazeta
Russian para-alpine skier Varvara Voronchikhina won Russia’s first gold of the Paralympic Winter Games on Monday, meaning that the Russian national anthem will be played at a Paralympics medal ceremony for the first time since the Sochi Winter Olympics 2014.
Two days after taking Russia’s first bronze medal in the standing downhill, 23-year-old Voronchikhina won the women’s super-G (standing) event, which took place at the Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre in Cortina on Monday morning.
Speaking to Russian sports broadcaster Match TV after her victory, Voronchikhina thanked all the fans who had supported her and said: “We are a big country, and I cannot believe that our anthem will be heard today — I have goosebumps!”
This is the first time that Russia has been allowed to participate in the Paralympics under its own flag and anthem since 2014. The decision of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) to let six Russian and four Belarusian athletes compete in the games has drawn fierce criticism, however, leading to several European countries joining Ukraine in boycotting the opening ceremony over the presence of the Russian flag on Saturday.
Russia was originally banned from the Paralympics in 2016, due to the participation of both Russian Olympic and Paralympic athletes in a state-sponsored doping programme. In 2018, Russian athletes returned to the Paralympics under the three-crescent “Agitos” flag, the Paralympic version of the Olympic rings, while in 2020 they competed under the flag of the Russian Paralympic Committee.
Russia was once again banned entirely from the Paralympics in 2022, having launched its invasion of Ukraine just two weeks before the games’ opening ceremony in Beijing, in violation of the traditional “Olympic Truce”.
Justifying their readmission, the IPC argued that Russia and Belarus had been suspended for using the Paralympics as part of their military propaganda, which it said no longer appeared to be the case in 2026.
At a congress of the IPC in 2025, 91 countries voted in favour of readmitting the Russian and Belarusian Paralympic Committees as full members. The countries later won an appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport against the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, which had maintained its opposition to Russians and Belarusians competing at Paralympic snow events. As a result, 10 para athletes from the two countries were invited to participate with their full national regalia, including Voronchikhina.
IPC President Andrew Parsons has publicly defended Russia’s participation at the Milano-Cortina Paralympics, saying that the IPC’s democratic processes must be respected. In an interview with the BBC on Friday, he also indicated he was happy to let Russian veterans from the war in Ukraine compete at the Paralympics, saying: “We are against any war, any conflict, but what we offer is an opportunity for those who are injured in war to be reintegrated into society through sport.”
The situation for Russians at the Paralympics differs markedly from that at the Winter Olympics held last month, where a limited number of Russian athletes competed under a neutral flag and anthem, and did not participate in the opening or closing ceremonies.]]> Fri, 06 Mar 2026 16:21:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/06/us-to-let-india-buy-millions-of-barrels-of-russian-oil-from-vessels-stranded-by-iran-war-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/06/us-to-let-india-buy-millions-of-barrels-of-russian-oil-from-vessels-stranded-by-iran-war-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
The United States has granted India a 30-day dispensation allowing it to buy “crude oil and petroleum products” from sanctioned Russian vessels stranded by the war in Iran, according to a press release issued by the US Treasury Department on Friday.
In a post on X, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the temporary waiver would “not provide significant financial benefit to the Russian government as it only authorises transactions involving oil already stranded at sea.”
Indian refiners have been hit hard by the renewed hostilities between Iran and the US, which have caused almost all shipping to grind to a halt around the Strait of Hormuz. Almost half of Indian oil imports normally pass through the strait, the narrow passage connecting the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea.
The move by Washington is intended to relieve India’s acute short-term need for crude oil, after the country agreed to US demands in February that it cease all oil imports from Russia. US President Donald Trump had previously slapped India with a 25% tariff “surcharge” for importing Russian oil.
Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Wednesday that Russia was ready to increase the volume of oil it supplied to India and China, adding: “Our oil is always available. If they want to buy it, we will sell it.”]]> Fri, 06 Mar 2026 14:38:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/06/hungary-seizes-eur70-million-in-cash-from-ukrainian-bank-staff-as-rift-with-kyiv-worsens-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/06/hungary-seizes-eur70-million-in-cash-from-ukrainian-bank-staff-as-rift-with-kyiv-worsens-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
The simmering tensions between Hungary and Ukraine escalated dramatically on Friday after Budapest confirmed it had arrested seven Ukrainian bank employees and seized around €70 million in cash as part of a money laundering probe.
Hungary’s Tax and Customs Administration announced late on Thursday that it had impounded two armoured cash trucks belonging to Ukraine’s state-owned Oschadbank, and apprehended seven Ukrainian nationals, including a former general in Ukraine’s intelligence services.
According to a statement from Oschadbank, the employees were transiting Hungary from Austria carrying a cargo of €70 million, as well as 9kg of gold worth a further €1.3 million.
Ukrainian government officials reacted in outrage to the incident on X, with Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha demanding the “immediate release” of the Ukrainians “taken hostage in Budapest”, and Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko likening Hungary’s actions to “1990s-era Moscow”.
Hungarian officials said that all seven Ukrainians arrested would be expelled from Hungary, but did not clarify what would happen to their multi-million-euro cargo, prompting Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski to say on X that the money had been “stolen”.
The row follows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky telling a government meeting in Kyiv on Thursday that unless Orbán removed his government’s veto against a stalled €90 billion EU loan for Ukraine, “we will give this person’s address to our guys so they can call him and speak to him in their language”.
A spokesperson for the European Commission condemned Zelensky’s rhetoric and his apparent personal threat to the Hungarian prime minister, calling it “not acceptable”, and “neither helpful nor conducive to achieving the common goals we all have”.
Pro-Orbán media in Hungary rounded on Zelensky for his comment, which it called a “death threat” against Orbán, who is currently facing tough parliamentary elections in April, which opinion polls indicate he is likely to lose to pro-European opposition party TISZA.
The two neighbouring countries have been at loggerheads over Kyiv’s closure of the Druzhba pipeline in late January, which runs through Ukraine and supplies Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia. In February, Orbán confirmed he would veto both a €90 billion EU loan to Ukraine and a new package of sanctions against Russia until Druzhba was reopened.
Ukraine maintains that the pipeline in question was damaged and rendered inoperable by a Russian attack, a claim that Orbán and Slovakia’s Robert Fico have dismissed as a lie.]]> Fri, 06 Mar 2026 12:28:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/06/russia-and-ukraine-release-500-pows-each-in-largest-prisoner-exchange-since-may-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/06/russia-and-ukraine-release-500-pows-each-in-largest-prisoner-exchange-since-may-en-news Novosti · Politika Evropa Novaya gazeta
Ukraine and Russia completed a two-day exchange of prisoners of war on Friday morning, which saw a total of 1,000 servicemen released and repatriated, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Telegram.
The exchange, which saw 200 POWs released by each side on Thursday, followed by another 300 POWs on Friday, was reportedly agreed during the last round of US-brokered peace talks in Geneva last month and was the largest since a total of 2,000 prisoners of war were released by the two countries in May.
Russia’s chief negotiator at the Geneva talks, Vladimir Medinsky, confirmed in a Telegram post on Thursday that 500 Russian POWs would be successfully returned by Ukraine to Russia, adding that the main thing was “that our people will return.”
Confirming that the second part of the swap had taken place on Friday morning, Zelensky added that two Ukrainian civilians had also been handed over by the Russian authorities.
Irina Krynina, coordinator of the Russian prisoner of war advocacy group Nash Vykhod, told Novaya Gazeta Europe that “many of these soldiers may face disappointment upon their return to Russia.”
“Instead of going home, they will be sent to barracks outside Moscow, before being returned to their units on the front,” she explained, adding that Nash Vykhod has been contacted by hundreds of Russians whose loved ones were exchanged in prisoner swaps, before being immediately redeployed to fight in Ukraine.
Citing data provided by the Ukrainian-run project I Want to Find, which helps relatives to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine, Krynina said that 54% of the soldiers returned to Russia on Friday were captured in 2025, and a further 43% in 2024, and that the average age of the Russian soldiers involved in the exchange was 45.]]> Fri, 06 Mar 2026 11:57:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/06/family-matters-en https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/06/family-matters-en Syuzhety · Obshchestvo Merkureva Karina When Russian tanks began rolling across the Ukrainian border in February 2022, Kristina stopped talking to her mother almost entirely. Though her relationship with her family was already strained due to their support for Vladimir Putin’s regime, the invasion of Ukraine was the final straw for her.
But just a few months later, Kristina’s mum reached out to apologise to her daughter. “I’m ashamed of myself,” she admitted. “You tried to tell me the truth so many times, and I refused to listen.”
While many Russians have been unable to rebuild relationships with their loved ones that broke down due to political disagreements only growing since the war began, others found that the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and its consequences acted as a catalyst for finally changing their relatives’ minds.
Breaking the spell
“I remember, on the day of the invasion in 2022, I had overslept. I didn’t look at my phone straight away — when I saw the news, I phoned my relatives in Kyiv first, since I’ve always been close with them.”
Until 2014, Kristina and her parents regularly travelled to Ukraine to visit family. Her parents didn’t watch state television, and always seemed to think critically about the government. But by 2022, Kristina’s relationship with both of them was under pressure: her mother and father, now divorced, supported an invasion of Ukraine.
“When I finally called my mum that morning, I realised she was buying the government line.” „
“I tried to convince her that none of this was right, and that they were lying to us on TV. But nothing seemed to work.”
The narrative of “de-Nazification” of the Ukrainian state, promoted heavily by Russian media, was particularly convincing for Kristina’s mother.
“Mum was hugely influenced by her upbringing with her grandma — my great-grandmother — who had lived through World War II. When the war broke out with Germany she was only 14 years old, and was drafted to work 12-hour shifts in a weaving mill on the ‘home front’. My mum heard a lot of stories from that time when she was a girl.”
“And so, when [the media] told her that Russia was fighting against ‘fascists’ in Ukraine, of course Mum decided that was perfectly right.” From then on, every conversation Kristina had with her mother about the war ended in an argument.
“I tried to convince her that none of this was right, and that they were lying to us on TV. But nothing seemed to work. Even her colleagues, whose sons were being sent to the front, were telling her the same thing: they’re lying to us on TV. I suppose she was hearing all of that and taking it in, but she wasn’t fully processing what it meant.”
For Kristina, the situation was a traumatic experience. “I was in shock: it was as if they’d put my mum in a trace. I didn’t know how to get through to her.”
Over time, Kristina found she was able to break the trance her mother was in. She started sending her a few Youtube videos made by opposition politicians and suggesting interviews by dissenting journalists for her to watch. „
“She told me she realised how difficult it had been for me and my husband, and that she felt guilty for leaving us without support. She was shaken by how well they’d managed to deceive her.”
In September 2022, the Russian government announced the first wave of mandatory mobilisation to the front. Kristina’s husband had previously completed his military service, and the couple were afraid that he might be called up again. His employer refused to grant him a deferment, so they decided they needed to leave Russia.
It was only after they left that her mother began to properly change her attitude toward what was happening, Kristina says.
“When we left, Mum started actively looking for information online, and reading the things I was sending her. And then, when we were in Kazakhstan, she called me to apologise. She told me she realised how difficult it had been for me and my husband, and that she felt guilty for leaving us without support. She was shaken by how well they’d managed to deceive her.”
After that, Kristina steadily rebuilt her relationship with her mother. When Alexey Navalny was murdered by the Russian government in 2024, they both sat in the kitchen and drank in silence.
Today Kristina’s mother has a different opinion entirely. She has taught herself to evade the government’s internet controls, watches independent Youtube channels, reads the news and regularly discusses current events with Kristina.
“Last New Year’s we celebrated together,” Kristina recalls. “It wasn’t a very cheerful holiday — we were constantly calling people in Kyiv to ask how they were, and hearing how they were sat there with no heating, no water, no power. I want to cry again now, just thinking about how they’re struggling.”
However, it’s not an entirely happy story — Kristina still hasn’t managed to “break the trance” her father appears to be in, and they are not on speaking terms.
More unites than divides us
As soon as the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, 35-year-old Sergey phoned his father, a veteran of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to lament what he called a sad example of history repeating itself: “Fascists are attacking Kyiv once again”.
Within a year, however, Sergey’s father had changed his opinion on the war dramatically, something that Sergey attributes to the effectiveness of the propaganda broadcast by Russian state media, which is targeted specifically at the older generation. The strongest influences on his father, Sergey believes, were the narratives about NATO and the West “seizing control” of Russia and imposing so-called “foreign values”.
When Putin announced partial mobilisation in September 2022, Sergey left Russia for good, and communication with his father became ever more difficult: their views were now poles apart, and the physical distance between them only made it harder for them to reconcile.
“I wasn’t in a great state of mind at the time,” Sergey says. “I was regularly arguing with friends and relatives, who had just accepted the war as something normal. But it seemed awful to argue, or just cut contact, with my father… I didn’t know what to do.”
Sergey began looking for advice on how to maintain relationships with loved ones in these kinds of situations. Plenty of people appeared to be in the same boat: there were materials online, seminars to attend and videos put out by Russians in exile on the subject.
“But because I got so upset when conversations [about the war] started, I just couldn’t pull off what those videos and posts told me to do,” Sergey says. “I wasn’t any good at talking to people who had a different perspective to me. I could barely even accept they were human beings, since they had so little humanity.”
Sergey began working with a therapist, and learned to handle his emotional reactions better. He suggested to his father that they should carry on talking, but stop discussing the war altogether, at least for a while.
“My basic idea was, why should we argue when we’ve got plenty of other things to talk about? We have far more in common than what keeps us apart.”
For a while Sergey and his father would only ever talk about everyday life. Then, Sergey began cautiously sending his dad news from independent Russian media — at first only snippets about the worsening economic situation.
“I started discussing some news that was fairly neutral, but which was nevertheless a consequence of the war. I asked him questions. Sometimes I went as far as to mention Russia’s lack of success on the front.”
“I realised that my father had his own skin in the game, just as any average Russian does. As long as our conversations were based on his reality, he was willing to listen: he was always particularly interested in how everything was getting more expensive.” „
“I can chat calmly with people who have bizarre opinions. It’s safe enough for me, and there’s value in doing it — after all, more and more of these people are starting to have severe doubts.”
Beside rising prices, Sergey’s father also cared about losing access to social media and messaging apps. Although he didn’t use them very often, he was irritated that the government was making it harder for him to talk to his son.
The journey from full support to scepticism of the war took him approximately two years. Sergey thinks his brother-in-law also played a part in changing his dad’s mind: he was mobilised to fight for the Russian army in Ukraine, but periodically came home to visit and told stories from the front.
Today, Sergey takes it upon himself to talk to people who have radically different points of view.
“I’ve reached some level of Zen by now,” he jokes. “I can chat calmly with people who have bizarre opinions. It’s safe enough for me, and there’s value in doing it — after all, more and more of these people are starting to have severe doubts.”
No exit
Kirill first tried discussing politics with his mother in 2012, when he was 25 and she was almost 60. Though he wasn’t particularly political — he’d never been to any protests — he was critical of the regime and had always hated Putin.
“Mum thought of herself as a wise grown-up,” Kirill remembers. “She always told me that I shouldn’t get involved, that there wasn’t any point thinking about politics — I should just go to work and keep my head down.”
In 2014, after the Russian annexation of Crimea, Kirill tried again, telling his mother about the Malaysia Airlines plane downed by Russian separatists in Donbas. Again, he was met with disapproval.
“When the war started, I honestly thought she would come around quickly,” Kirill admits. “But no. She watched all the nonsense they were putting out on television, and decided that Putin was doing everything right.” „
“I’ve been called a traitor, a misfit; I’ve been accused of betraying the Motherland and giving up my roots.”
On the contrary, Kirill was shocked by how quickly his mother changed her mind in the opposite direction. When he was a teenager playing post-apocalyptic video games, he remembers her shaming him for his interest in nuclear weapons — until Russian propaganda started advocating for nuclear war.
“It was as if she’d totally forgotten what she used to think. All of a sudden nuclear weapons were a good thing, and Russia ought to use them. We Russians were doing everything right.”
She refused to believe that any of the atrocities in Ukraine, in Bucha or Mariupol, had even happened. When Kirill tried to argue the case, she called it “bullshit”. And beyond simple disbelief, Kirill says he had to endure personal attacks from her for expressing his opinions.
“My mum is a very vocal person. She’s always expressed her views emotively. I’ve been called a traitor, a misfit; I’ve been accused of betraying the Motherland and giving up my roots.”
Asked how he could carry on having those sorts of unpleasant conversations, Kirill replies that “there was no other option.”
“There’s a war on, that’s a fact. To stop talking to her entirely would be impossible.”
In the end, Kirill found that the only way to convince his mum was to show her how the facts presented in state media were inconsistent, or contradicted each other.
“Mum still wants to consider them an authority, she wants to believe that everything they say is the truth, and everyone else is lying. But she has started doubting that it is so black-and-white.”
“For one thing, every time I tell her something will happen that doesn’t line up with the narrative on TV, it turns out that I’m right. Even she’s now realised that the war isn’t going as planned.”
Kirill’s mother was most affected by his departure from Russia to work as a doctor in Germany. State media had told her it was impossible for Russians to get visas to live in Europe, but Kirill managed to secure a job anyway. Now he regularly tells her about his life in Europe — particularly the lack of hostility from the “Russophobes” that state media would have her believe are ubiquitous in the West.
“All this has shaken her beliefs somewhat,” Kirill imagines. “It’s hard to say what her true position is now. But certainly the tirades about taking Kyiv in three days, or the ‘fascists’ in the Ukrainian government, are over.”
“At the very least, she’s more inclined to think that getting involved was a mistake.”]]> Fri, 06 Mar 2026 11:07:00 +0000 https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/06/russia-ramps-up-social-media-crusade-in-favour-of-spyware-loaded-super-app-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/06/russia-ramps-up-social-media-crusade-in-favour-of-spyware-loaded-super-app-en-news Novosti · Obshchestvo Evropa Novaya gazeta
Vladimir Putin has signalled his commitment to a blanket ban on messaging app Telegram, including for Russian military personnel on the front lines in Ukraine, independent media outlet Agentstvo reported on Thursday.
The latest escalation comes amid allegations that Russia’s state-backed Telegram alternative, so-called “super app” MAX, is loaded with a form of spyware which can detect whether a device is connected to a Virtual Private Network (VPN), use of which generally indicates an attempt to evade strict Russian internet censorship.
At a meeting with female military personnel ahead of International Women’s Day, Putin agreed with a statement made by Lieutenant Colonel Irina Godunova, who argued that the use of “communications systems that are not ours and not under our control” by Russian troops in the battlefield posed a “danger to personnel”.
Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, announced in February that Telegram would be blocked in the country from 1 April, causing widespread discontent among pro-war bloggers and soldiers who use the app as their main method of communication. However, various Russian officials, including Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadayev, last month indicated that soldiers on the front would be granted an exemption from the ban.
In a further escalation of Russia’s social media crackdown, the country’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) confirmed on Thursday that all advertising by Russian businesses on Telegram and other banned social media platforms was now illegal, according to state-affiliated business daily Kommersant.
The decision was taken “in connection with the adoption of measures to restrict access to social platforms Instagram and Facebook, video hosting YouTube, VPN services, [as well as] messaging apps Telegram and WhatsApp”, the FAS statement said.]]>